xisxisxis

PTBNL = Prince Fielder.

I don't want to dig the horse up so we can beat him again.... Baseball is a business, but not all businesses are the same and the way you manage your "talent" should be a lot different than the way you manage the "drones". I really think the issue with this move is just another example of poor communication within the organization. Zach is obviously pissed off because Boras is blowing off his big mouth. I just think whoever broke the news to Zach really didn't do a good job of laying out the reasoning. And if they werent thinking someone in the players posse wasn't calculating the "$" then there needs to be some educatering donst in dat dere offices....

I just hate the "no" means "no" criteria for sex abuse/rape. If someone does not say "yes", then it's a "NO". Whether it's a stanford swimmer penetrating an unconcious women to every guy or judgemental woman whose said someone was asking for it, if they don't say yes then it's a big unconditional "no". When we stop requiring the victim to prove they said "NO" and require the accused to prove the victim said "yes" then we might make progress in the exploding sexual abuse problem we have in our society. Unfortunately the deck has been stacked against female victims by a failure of our legislatures (historically almost exclusively male) to address the laws to protect the victim. /end_rant

Absolutely ****** draft for the Bucks. Brogdon looks like he runs with his feet in cement, way too slow for the NBA. Won't be able to keep up with the 1st step on 95% of the NBA guards. I liked the McCaw pick and then they just give him away to the Warriors. This franchise looked like they were going to shake off the Kohl years, but they appear to think they are smarter than everyone else, except they aren't. Hated the trade for Greivas Vasquez last year and look what happened... he was absolute ****. Maker has a huge upside and they better take the ******* money they got from the warriors and hire a coach just for Maker to work with him 24/7.... bunch of bs....

Terrible. I am amazed that there appears to be very little done when there are awful calls by umpires. Horrible positioning by AJ Ellis for both of those pitches. He's basically partially behind the batter in his stance. Of course the ump is going to take the inside position on a RH hitter and be even farther inside than normal. Yes the pitches were pretty much down the heart of the plate, but the catcher had to reach back to the outside which is the opposite side of Ellis for the umpire. I am sure the ump thought they were outside because of where he is positioned, but his positioning is predicated on where the catcher decides to position himself. And robots don't need to worry about getting a view behind a catcher so they inherently have an advantage over humans....

A few years from now we could have an OF of Ray, Clark and Phillips. That would be an incredibly athletic group. You don't need an athletic outfield to watch balls land in the stands....

Well Dave Krynzel is very happy wherever he is....

This year? I can't remember when the White Sox were a well run organization. They have been a mess for year and even when they won the World Series their decision making was pretty crappy. Even with their quick start, they haven't energized their fan base, I guess the cubs are the Chitown darlings for now.

can I dislike the pick before it's made? It's the brewers.... they'll screw it up no matter what.... Fangraphs had an analysis this winter that the brewers were one of the few organizations with top 100 talent to have no "elite" players. Looking at the brewers I'd have to agree. Stern has made some nice moves, but he needs to add "elite" talent. You do that at #5 by making the right decision and go with the player with the highest ceiling. Don't go with the weak college conference talent because you've just set the ceiling at meah....

He tossed 5⅔ scoreless innings in his only career start against the Marlins. LA Marlins of Anaheim?

I'd hold out for September when the Brewers pay you to come to the park for the month...

Analysis this offseason showed with overlays that each and every one of Khris Davis' HR's in 2015 would have left Oakland's ballpark as well. And it was also clear from that overlay that the reason the A's park skews toward a pitchers park has nothing to do with the distances to the walls. In fact if you overlay the outfield fences for most pitchers parks there's nothing spectacular about the distance to the fences. Dodger stadium is as vanilla as they come when it comes to distances to the wall, but its historically a pitchers park some of which is related to the huge foul territory (which has been eaten away over the years by addition of premium seats) and being in chavez ravine where you have to sell a kidney to buy a breeze. Given NA parks location I won't be surprised to see 15 to 20 feet coming off Davis's average flyball distances and a number of those balls that were showing up as home runs before will become long outs.

2012 - .381/.462/.714 2013 - .367/.377/.550 2015 - .309/.349/.424 Career - .350/.384/.510 2 thoughts came to mind when I saw those numbers: 1) in 2012, Segura must have faced some pitchers who were practicing their IBB; 2) where's the display in cooperstown for spring training stats. Wait, there isnt one? why not? I bet many people would gladly spend their entire visit there. Maybe the HOF could add a whole wing for small sample size displays ....

So looking simply at RBI% it would appear many of the games better players are pretty BAD. by better do you mean above average? above replacement? or just a handful of guys you like? During that period (2014-2015), Davis ranks in the low 140's for players with a minimum of 250 Runners on. Not horrible, but clearly not an elite slugging OF, but heck we got OPS and other metrics to see that KD is a one trick pony (HR). He'll be cheap for 1 more year and below market for 3 additional. Given his overall age, makeup, etc. I would take the under on him getting better over that period...

RBI Percentage (baseballmusings.com) is a measure of the success rate when a hitter bats with batters on and is calculated as: RBI Percentage is 100*(RBI-HR)/Runners On Khris Davis for 2014-2015 (2 seasons) his RBI% = 14.10 which puts him just below the RBI Machine Jace Peterson (14.11), but above Derek Jeter (14.02) yet not as good as Scooter Gennet (14.17). For comparison, the #3 on the list for that time period is Ryan Braun at 19.39. Looking simply at RBI% and Khris Davis is pretty BAD....

Let the tanking begin....

As scoring goes up, defense becomes less relevant/valuable and as scoring goes down defense becomes more valuable. As the trend from the last 5ish years shows, scoring is going down, hence their may be a window to acquire defense while it is still undervalued. I believe Stern is correctly emphasizing the value of defense moving forward... If several of the possible PTBNL are rule 5 eligible, it looks to be a nice return for an unnecessary closer who has little market demand.

And of course Dbacks GM Dave Stewert has tweeted that he's surprised no one has asked permission to interview Assistant GM Dejon Watson. Ignoring his horrible record in talent evaluation as a GM and his other stupid twitter comments, Stewart just walked into a situation where he could be called on the carpet by his bosses. If I'm Stewart's boss I am going to ask him if his job as GM of the Diamondbacks is to make sure his valued assistants get jobs with other organizations or is it making sure the talent within the Diamondbacks is the best that it can be. Unless Watson is a [expletive deleted by moderator] assistant that he wants to get rid of and this is the easiest way (not likely), Dave Stewart is not doing his job for the Diamondbacks. If other agenda's are more important than making your employer better then as his boss I would ask him to explain how having Watson interview for other positions makes the diamondbacks better and if he doesn't have a good answer I would ask him to keep his mouth (and fingers) shut or I would show him the door. Is this that big of a deal? No, it's not big enough by itself, but he has been pretty poor so far as a GM and having an agenda other than making his team the best (front, back, side office and on the field) then he should have the freedom to lead any other agenda he wants on his own dime...

Thanks God for Blessing me with good teammate, trainers and coach this years. I wanna Thanks to everyone who has supported me. He didn't even thank his agent! Living in LA for as long as I have that seems like a mortal sin......

The brewers farm system was highly ranked for many of the years that Jack Z's draftees were in the system. After he left, his replacement was abysmal and the system bottomed to the point it has been ranked near the bottom for several years. He took a poor farm system and made it one of the top 10-15 and left the brewers better off than when he joined. JZ did a good job while he was with Milwaukee. Period. He was abysmal as a GM for Seattle and may not have left them better off after he left than before he came. From the dysfunctional front office to poor decision making on the major league roster (think Dean Taylor II the revenge of the nearsighted....). The AL West has 2 very pitcher friendly parks where you should be looking for high OBP line drive hitters with gap power who are plus defenders and maximize your pitching. Like Proller is finding with SD, no matter how many bats you add you cant overcome a strong pitchers park. The steroids era is over and pitching dominates and as others have pointed out, JZ isn't very good at identifying pitching. Would I want him back now? nope. Some people really want to be the boss even though they don't have the DNA to do the job and the self-awareness to know what they are good at. JZ wanted the GM gig so bad even though he didn't really have what it takes and now he's probably done with baseball or he will have to take a job several steps lower (even lower than scouting director). Too bad because from all indications he was/is a nice guy.

Right now, it is 2002 in my mind. It really isn't as bad as 2002 as we have a better minor league system and still have some trading chips (Lucroy and Braun). The brewers will always be the last team in MLB for market and likely local TV revenue. We need to move past that and realize it is what it is, that doesn't mean the Brewers can't be competitive. To be competitive they have to be smarter and right now we are stuck with an organization that is mired in 45+ years of not being smart enough. It isn't impossible to do get smart people, but with some of the historic issues and current leadership, there are definite negatives that make it less likely the Brewers can be competitive for the top young GM talent. Not impossible, but the Brewers need to start putting their house in shape. A complete cleanout with a new GM might be enough, but it might take incremental steps to put into process the changes needed to make the brewers an attractive place for the best in baseball. Many people here don't remember what a dumpster fire the packers organization was in the 70's and 80's. They were the milwaukee brewers of the NFL - an organization that was completely adrift, lost and nobody of quality wanted to work for. That changed with a few key decisions including replacing the top guy. The Brewers are in the same situation, except they don't have a ton of lombardi trophies to fall back on. The Brewers need to change the organization in fundamental ways from the bottom to the top. Maybe Mark A can accomplish it, maybe he continues to be a part of the problem, but I would like to see real changes to address these issues. 2002 again? nope, but it does seem like we have lost 13-14 years.....

Of course, now after five minutes of searching, I can't actually find any proof that she was the one that beat up a good player in the parking lot... Someone help me out here... Who was that? Alex Sanchez?

MLB Trade Rumors has a post suggesting that a frontrunner might be Cleveland assistant GM Mike Chernoff...........He declined to interview for the San Diego job..... You are clearly wrong about that last part. As several posters have pointed out in this thread, nobody turns down the opportunity to be one of the 30 GMs in MLB....

I agree it's an interesting situation with Melvin sticking around, but since there are only 30 spots available and most of those are filled, it would be pretty hard for someone to pass up the opportunity. There isn't a huge base to pick from, you have the fired GM pool, the current GM pool, asst GMs, scouting/player development directors and maybe for a few orgs another layer. At best its 4-5 x 30 teams or 120 to 150 people in the potential pool to select from. Nobody is going to hire Bill James based on his books, they want people in the systems who have some experience with the details of the job. So if I am in this pool at one of the top 10 successful organizations, I am not even applying to the Brewers and only entertaining an option if they call me. If I am in the middle 10 orgs, I am likely going to apply and of course bottom 10 then I am definitely applying. Now it doesn't mean that a good person can't be found in the 20 teams not at the top, but it will be harder to find that person. Someone mentiond Mike Girsch earlier. He's in one of the top 10 orgs and is likely going to not even entertain the opportunity. Looking at it another way, if you are at Harvard as an associate and UWM calls and asks you to interview for a director position, you are going to say no thanks (no offense to UWM people) and wait for an opportunity at another IVY league school. Not much difference here. Melvin definitely adds value from a "let me show you the ropes" standpoint. It's been reported that young GMs comment that Melvin is hard to deal with because he takes so long to respond to texts and emails. If they are making those comments to reporters they are likely making worse comments when there isn't a reporter around. Dougie is a grandpa when compared to the younger generation, most of whom think he's a dinosaur. They aren't going to welcome his advise and if they are really good and have an ego they won't be asking for his advise. Baseball has changed a lot in the last 20 years let alone 40 years. I don't ask my grandpa how to setup my DVR and most young GMs aren't going to ask Dougie what he thinks about the latest metric or analytic. It's also an inherent problem with the brewers and why they are a crappy organization. Setting up a new GM with the person he is replacing still lingering around is not a win win situation. It is a lose lose. How do you gut an organization where the person responsible is in the next office? The Brewers need to stop doing the right thing for the mediocre people they have hired and put good people in their place who have the tools to succeed. The Seligs ran it as a family shop and Attanausea is not doing much better. Entrenched craptitude? New GM would be inheriting a top 10 farm system and a current scouting dept that has done quite well, based on early returns. Where's Boise State in the BCS preseason rankings. Don't know. Don't care.... yeah there are flash in the pan organizations all the time that have a brief period in the spotlight while 99% of there history has been division II that nobody pays attention to once they disappear. The Brewers jumping in the rankings will be another ho hum to 99% of the baseball world when they fall back into oblivion where they've been for 43 of their 45 seasons... To make people notice you need CONSISTENT success, not every generation or so....

Imagine interviewing for a job and the dude who used to have that job is still there, but now he's an adviser to your new boss...... Yeah that's got to seem attractive to someone with no other options, but not to someone who is in demand.... I still have a small (0.2%) hope that the next GM may be the right person, I doubt with the cards stacked the way they are (meddling owner, franchise with a history of not succeeding, entrenched crapitude, and the guy you are replacing still there) you can say goodbye to the top 50% of candidates and pick from the group of Melvins that are left.... Yeah Brewers... keep on being there for other organizations to run circles around ya.....