Crewin06

He's 45 right now. I was thinking till 50 as a closer and til 55 as a LOOGY http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

I would think it would be easier than throwing 100+ pitches every 5 days and 180+ innings in a season. I would think that throwing 60-70 innings and stretching out every day would be easier on a 45 year old than trying to throw 100+ pitches every 5 days and stay in the routine. Plus he wouldn't have to worry about endurance so maybe in relief he could get a few more ticks on the fastball. I am in firm belief that he could be one of the top closers in the N.L. next season.

Who else would love to see The Big Unit come to Milwaukee and be the closer for the Brewers next season? I bet he could get new life as a reliever. He might be more valuable as a starter, but I bet he would be absolutely devastating as a closer.

The two players I wouldn't mind seeing are Felipe Lopez and Juan Cruz. To bad Juan Cruz is a type A Free Agent and would cost us a first round pick to sign him. Other wise I would easily do a 5 million a year offer for 3 years. Maybe we should still do it. Felipe Lopez would be a nice addition as a Super Sub and Juan Cruz could take over our closer role freeing up Torres for longer relief and shut down spots

I see his career road ERA isn't the best but his last 2 years have been 3.84 and 3.88 which is right in line with his regular ERA. I see a young pitcher like that and I would love to see him in a Brewer's uniform. I guess I have a different opinion than most people on this board. I think Prince has much more trade value right now than J.J. Hardy. I am reminded that Prince is only 24 years old and only a year removed from a 50 HR season. I think trading Prince right now would be selling low on him. I think next year he will be the most feared hitter in baseball. You just don't give those guys away after one bad season.

Really? I would think Hardy for Cain right now would be a no brainer. A pitcher that threw up a 3.76 ERA and placed in the top 15 in K's and IP doesn't interest you. I mean forget the fact that he just turned 24 or is under contract for 3 more years. How can't you do a Cain for Hardy swap? I know it's a pipe dream but Cain for Hardy and re-sign CC CC Cain Gallardo Parra Bush Suppan goes to the pen. Sorry back to reality.

Like others have said I don't see Hall as having much trade value at all right now. If the Royals would want to do a Bill Hall for a PTBNL right now I would do it. Even if the PTBNL turned out to be Ben Hendrickson. I would still do it. Does Ben still pitch for the Royals by the way. Honestly I can't see any team trading for Bill Hall right now except if someone else had a contract like Suppan's and was looking to get rid of it. hey maybe we can get the Royals to look at Suppan also.

Agreed. Not every loss or losing streak should be pinned on the managers in spite of what a lot of fans think.

I have to agree with JJHardy 7. 2 months ago I didn't think there was a prayer that we would sign C.C. long term. However looking back at Melvin's and Attanasio's track record, they like to spend money on veterans. And not always wisely. When they signed Suppan I never though it would happen. I never thought the Gagne, Cameron or Kendall Signings would happen either. The Mota trade seemed kind of wild also. What am I trying to say? Basically I have seen Melvin and Attanasio throw more good money than needed at mediocre players in the past. It wouldn't suprise me anymore if they decided to make a big fair market offer to one of the best pitchers in baseball.

Prince Fielder for David Price. Boom. OK thats never going to happen. But it would be a lot cooler if it did.

If Draft Picks mattered as much in Baseball as they do in Basketball or Football I would agree with you. However I would bet that less than 50% of the first round picks in the baseball draft ever make it to the Pros. I bet that number is closer to 25% when you talk about low first round picks that would be surrendured during a FA aquisition. And of those low first round picks I don't really even want to guess what the percentage is that goes on to become an all-star type player. Sacraficing picks is tough but to aquire a player of CC's calibur or most type A Free Agents, I think it is a minor inconvenience if anything.

Actually I shouldn't really say "Small Market" I should say "Small Revenue". But I agree with your overall point The Cardinals are always one of the higher spending teams in the N.L. because they have a comparitively decent market and good fans.

I didn't really want to do an extensive analysis compared to the other sports. It was just a off handed comment. But if you want me to compare. Super Bowl Winners in the 1980's pre revenue sharing 1980- Oakland Raiders 1981-San Francisco 1982-Washington Redskins 1983- LA Raiders 1984- SF 49ers 1985-Chicago 1986-NYG 1987-Washington Redskins 1988-SF 49ers 1989-49ers 1990-NY Giants 1991-Washington 1992- Cowboys 1993-Cowboys 1994-49ers 1995- Cowboys 1996-Green Bay 1997- Denver 1998- Denver 1999- St. Louis 2000-Baltimore 2001- New England 2002- Tampa 2003- New England 2004- New England 2005- Pittsburgh 2006-Indianapolis 2007- New York Giants Actually never mind if you call yourself a Green Bay Fan or just a fan of the NFL in general and you cant see how money or market size played a huge factor in the 1980's and pre revenue sharing and now it doesn't play a factor at all- I don't really want to have a discussion with you anyways. No teams are perpetually bad because of an inherent financial disadvantage. The only disadvantage a team in the NFL has is a disadvantage that plagues teams in any sport- horrible management. If you want examples look at the Chicago Cubs or the Los Angelos Clippers. As for the NBA- it is a different beast. A Great Player generally makes a great team. Because of the draft, player control, the controling team being able to offer the first and most money and the salary cap- movement of great players doesn't happen alot. Tim Duncan on San Antonio makes them great, Chris Paul on New Orleans makes them good, just as in a big market Kobe and Pau on LA makes them very good. Again if you can't see competitve balance between small (San Antonio) and Big (Los Angelos) market clubs then I don't know what to tell you. There I discussed it. I didn't really want to on a baseball forum but there it is.

And you are talking 2 different Leagues. They have had 2 different leagues since forever. If you want to discuss changing the American League vs National League concept that is an entirely different discussion. As long as we are on the topic of the Cubs lets delve into them. They are a perfect example. Great/Dominating Regular Season then they get to the playoffs and they run into an 84 win team and get swept. Great Regular season battling the ups and downs for 6 months. Like you said the most grueling schedule in any sport. They grab the top spot and in 4 or 5 days their season is over. It happens more often than you think. Yes you could make an argument that they were not the best team in the NL. But the fact of the matter is that they were the 3rd highest payroll team in the NL ($200,000 behind the Dodgers) and they ended up with the best record in the N.L. Money Breeds Winning. So lets look at where each of the playoff teams ranked this season in terms of payroll for their league A.L. Red Sox 3 Chi Sox 4 LAA 5 Devil Rays 14th NL Dodgers 2 Cubs 3 Phillies 6 Brewers 9 Out of 16 teams Also you want to know one of the reasons the A.L. is the tougher League? Because 5 out of the top 6 teams in Payroll play in the American league. Baseball's competitive balance compared to any other of the big 3 sports is a joke.

Am I the only one that had a dad that routinely had 1-3 stout drinks a night when he got home kept his job, raised his kids, stayed married to his wife and was a great father. Actually I don't think I was because I had about 5 uncles that were exactly the same way. Drinking is definitely in the culture and I don't understand what the problem is exactly. Yes there are idiots that think they need to drink the bar everytime and think they are superman. But there are extremists in every group. I don't think that drinking is always the problem in most circumstances, my belief is that people are generally the problem. Alcohol is just an excellerent.

You must have missed the other part of my point. In baseball the odds of a better team beating a worse team are narrower. Like I said it is pretty much a coin flip once a team gets to the Playoffs. In Football the better team has home field advantage. In Basketball you can put the ball in the hands of your best player or players and have him or them carry your team like in the regular season. In baseball the bat can be taken out of your best players hands and the only home field advantage you get is one extra game. Your also wrong with the biggest difference is that you don't get penalized for being in the same division as the best team in the sport. The biggest difference is that the wild card adds one more coin flip to the odds that the best team won't be the champion at the end of the year. Look at the past 7 years would you say that the best team in baseball any year won the world series? I mean you have 2 wild card teams winning and an 83 win team winning the championship. Before this season a wild card team has been in the World Series every single year for the past 6 years. Including 2 wild card teams in the World Series in 2002. The Braves-backed by a cable station and with the deep pockets of Ted Turner won 15 straight division titles or something like that and had the best record in the NL 8 times during that run. For all their Greatness they won 1 World Championship during the Wild Card Era. Greatness is overrated nowadays. A 90 win season or in some divisions an 85 win season is just as good as a 105 win season. Competetive Balance because of city size and tv markets is worse than ever. Just because more teams get into the playoffs and occasionally a small market team sneaks in does not mean that competitive balance is fixed. You want real competitive Balance. Have real revenue sharing like the NFL. Take control of the individual TV Contracts and disperse them evenly throughout the ball clubs. In the Playoffs you want to emphasize the Regular season more give real home field advantage to the team with the better record. 4 home games in the divisional series. 5 home games for the LCS.

The illusion of competitive balance in baseball has been created by killing the importance of a 162 game baseball season. No longer does a great regular season mean anything. Play above average for 6 months or just average as is the case for a couple of divisions each year and you are in the crapshoot called the Major League Baseball Playoffs. If the Bud Selig Years operated under the pre 1969 LCS format. A top 5 payroll team in each league would have probably represented their league in the World Series every year in the World Series. That is not Competetive Balance. A Baseball Series is basically a coin flip in my opinion. The Best team in Baseball each year usually has a winning percentage of 62%. When the best team plays against other top teams I bet that number gets dwindled to about 55%. Especially when you consider that they hardly ever even play three games in a row. Now can you see how adding more rounds to the playoffs creates the illusion of Parity. The Playoff format in baseball is a joke Want more so called competitive Balance in Baseball. Open up the playoffs to 8 teams in each league, don't change the playoff format at all and make the regular season even more meaningless.

1.) 2 Balls you walk, 2 strikes you're out. Foul Balls are strikes no matter what, if you foul off the ball for your second strike, you are out. This would speed the game up alot. Pitchers would be more apt to putting the ball over the plate and the hitters wouldn't try to foul off 5 pitches to get their pitch. 2.) You don't have to tag up on fly outs. Speed guys would again be at a premium. They get on and a guy like Prince or Braun hit the ball a mile high and the speedy guy could score from first on an out.

1.) More playoff disparity for division winners in the Playoffs. A team that wins 100 games in the regular season gets 1 more game at home per series than a Wild Card team? If Baseball wants the division to mean something Let the Top 2 teams host 4 of the 5 games in the first round and 5 of the 7 games in the second round. Something needs to be done to create a bigger advantage for winning 105 games compared to 85 games. 2.) More Revenue Sharing. The top revenue teams have a huge advantage over the smaller revenue teams. If they even this out Baseball would be much better off. Once the Milwaukees, Pittsburghs, and Kansas Citys of the world know they can compete they will create more interest in their own home towns which will in turn create more revenue for the entire major league baseball. Some of these cities are so beaten down that there is no way out except a very, very long-term approach that has no room for errors. O.K. So I only have two. I would really love to see these changes implemented, although I know there is no way either is going to happen.

Sheets really hasn't pitched that badly. He only has one miserable start in July and August. The Cubs game and if the Brewers have an above average defensive first baseman that game, the outcome would have probably been much different. He isn't going as deep into games as earlier in the year and he isn't winning as much but I believe that has more to do with run support and the defense than with Sheets. If the Brewers get the guy some runs and play average defense, I think Sheets will do just fine. Edit: Removed unnecessary part of quote. Please watch what you're quoting. - Toby

If Gagne signs before the arbitration deadline the Brewers don't really need to offer him arbitration to get the pick. Elias takes into account the prior 2 years for a player when ranking them as type A or type B free agents. After last season Gagne was categorized as a type B free agent although he missed pretty much all of 2006. With the screwed up way that Elias ranks players I think Gagne will again be a type B free agent. If a team decided they wanted Gagne, they wouldn't lose anything for signing him if he is a type B free agent. Since they wouldn't lose anything for signing him the team might be more inclined to sign him and wouldn't worry about the Brewers offering arbitration later on. I don't know when the exact deadlines are. But I am fairly certain that Free Agency starts well before the deadline in which teams need to offer Free Agency. If Gagne has a good rest of the season I could easily see the Brewers getting a sandwhich round pick when Gagne leaves in F.A.

Yeah I can see how Rickie would have a tough time figuring out for himself that he was having a rough game. I think about 10,000 fans booing would help him realize he was having a horrible game. I guess that I never understood why I need to further point out what the Player already knows. I am pretty sure that Rickey felt bad enough about it already.

I agree with the ones most have mentioned. Another one is when you are on a two way highway and you need to get over and there is a 2 car lengths between a car and the car in front of them. You want to merge in so you can turn about a mile or two up the road. You throw on your blinker thinking the trailing car might slow down a bit to create more room or remain at the same speed so you can get in. Instead the trailing car speeds up and makes sure that you can't get in. I have found that Blinkers are useless on a 2 lane highway. I still use them all the time but don't see much help by actually using them. BTW I am a huge defensive driver but if you are going to the speed limit, slightly over or the same speed as the guy in the right lane move the F over.

I know you guys want players. But In Tecmo Super Bowl the 49ers are unstopable when they are controlled by a player. It was so bad that whenever me and my friends or siblings would play no one could take the 49ers because they were so unstopable. Over the years I have played alot of Video games and no other players or teams were ever banned. I still break out Tecmo Super Bowl once in a while to play with friends for nostalgic purposes and the 49ers are still banned.

I don't think the Dodgers would do it. But if they would I would definitely go for it. Billy Hall has 3 years and 20 million left after this season Andy LaRoche has 3 years of pre arby and 3 years of arby left after this season. I know clubhouse is important but if LA would do it, I would have to do it. A top Prospect and shaving $19 million of salary for a player quite a few wanted to get rid of just a month ago. You have to do that, right?