Thurston Fluff

UZR has flaws but it is probably the best we can get right now. It would be nice to know how well a player fields balls depending on where they are positioned. I wonder why they don't time how long a ball stays in the air and measure how far each one is from the defender's original position. Perhaps there just isn't enough camera angles to show each one but it would really help to find what distance an average fielder could cover in a set amount of time. Not to go too far down my war against WAR road here but if it includes measures that we all know to be lacking why does anyone still put any stock in their results?

Should we then not just go to the Cards, and find their top 10 people in the organization and offer them all 200k pay rises. So you have spent 2 mill to completely transform your organization. Except the Cards have more money to offer them than we do.

But they didn't sign McGehee to a long term deal because he didn't think their offer was good enough. How do you know the risk factor unless you also include what the Brewers were willing to pay him and for how long. If you know how much the Brewers offered in length and money then maybe I could answer how much it could have hurt them. Same with Axford. Considering Ax seems to be putting together a decent season after a rough start perhaps the long term deal wouldn't have hurt at all. Maybe even help in the long term. I'd also say the YoGa deal was a win for the club. Even if his next couple season's are average. As far as Harts trade value I don't think it is next to nothing yet. If he comes back and is the same Hart we always see he will be a decent rental for someone. His inability to stay healthy over the course of a contract will not be a hindrance to a team looking for a short term fix.

That's probably what the FO was thinking when they signed Lohse, but look how things turned out. Yes, you can have talented players on a team but in the game of baseball lots and lots of things could go wrong. I don't think you build a team with fear of what could go wrong. There is always something that could go wrong with any strategy. Prospects don't pan out when you trade your best player for them as often as free agents end up busts. As far as the Lohse thing goes maybe we should let more than 2 months of the three year deal play out before looking at how things turned out. I don't think that being perpetual buyers would be sustainable especially for a mid-market team like the Brewers. At some point the bubble's going to burst and it is very possible that this team could go into chronic Astros-mode. At this point the Brewers should start focusing on looking ahead to the future and replenish the farm system than rather hoping that they're one or two major league guys from competing. I am not suggesting being perpetual buyers forever. I am saying when we have a lot of good players under contract for at least another couple seasons why is this the time to tear it all down? Someday we very well could be the Astros. The Astos got here after some division titles, even more playoff appearances and their first and only World Series appearance. They got that by not giving up when the goal was in reach. Like the season they were in last place and around 10 or so games below .500 turned into that World Series appearance. 4) Melvin's unwillingness to move guys when their value is at it's peak. I'm not saying trade everyone when their value goes up but you don't need to offer every single player a long term deal after one or two good seasons. It isn't like they just open up the money truck and give every player with a year of success whatever they want. They target a player and offer what is a lower than market offer if they continue to produce. That player then decides if he wants the security or the shot at a bigger payday. While there is a risk to that type of strategy there is also a reward. Would we have YoGa at $8,000,000 this season if he went through year to year arbitration? That isn't even counting his pending free agency if he wasn't signed long term early in his career.

When you look at the players instead how the team is performing right now we are set at virtually all positions for the next couple seasons. If we had one or two starters added to the mix this would be a very good team. In other words we are one or two players away from being right where we want to be. That hardly seems like the time for a total rebuild.

I think it's a reminder that people are watching. It has to be kind of embarrassing to get one.

Speaking of crap. I thought this was a wonderful idea. http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/blog/2013/06/05/town-with-dog-poop-problem-sends-poop-back-to-owners-via-special-delivery/index.html

they should keep thornburg on the major league roster. he can't possibly do worse than the idiots in the rotation at the moment. Never challenge worse.

But if they're going into rebuilding mode, which I hope they are, they're still going to need guys to play the games. Francisco could be a cheap option at 3b, or he could be a 400-PA 4C reserve, through two or three dark years, until which he conveniently won't be expensive. Plus he has at least some upside. If you're tanking this season, and for that matter next season, this is exactly the kind of guy you should go get. We already have Green and Bianchi for long term use in the dark years as well as Yuni for the short term. Getting Francisco is a good long term move no matter what they do with Ramirez and Hart so it seems less likely a signal they are planning on trading them than it is they are looking to get some help now and for the future. Except Weeks' option can vest with 600PA in 2014 regardless of his PA in 2013. I thought in was a combination of either X amount of AB's in a single season or X amount in a two year period. If that is the case then his option might vest even if he only got 599 AB's next season.

Having Weeks hit LHP exclusively is a good way to increase his trade value. He'll do better and will show a contending team that he can still hit MLB pitching. That's possible. I think if either of these moves was made with a trade in mind it's promoting Gennett. They can do like you said and it might take away enough AB's to negate that last option year. One less season guaranteed might make Weeks contract more palatable. Kind of the opposite of demoting Hardy just short of a year of service made him more tradable.

Juani? Kind of sounds like they should be on a romance novel cover. I tend to agree with Yaz that this has nothing to do with potential trades down the road. If they trade Hart or Ramirez they are giving up on the season. What sense does it make to trade for someone who doesn't really project to be the future at either position if you are giving up on the season? I think it more likely they are doing what they can to turn this season around. That would also explain bringing up Gennett. If they planned on selling everyone already they would leave Weeks play so they can get him going to make a trade more profitable.

Bob Uecker on the Brewers broadcast talking about the debated homerun call in today's game "... and they're going to have a gathering of the minds. Well of the umpires anyway."

I think you can thank our owner for that not Melvin.

Braun has a no trade clause which he is not likely to waive considering he signed it to be a Brewer for life. Criticize him for the moves that were made and his overall approach to building the organization. The Brewers organization as a whole needs to be better at identifying and developing pitching talent, period. For the most part, the Brewers have swung and missed with many early round draft picks on pitching, they used minor league prospects to acquire major league pitching via trade with a high level of success. IF we criticize his lack of success on drafting pitchers, which I agree with, he should get partial credit back for finding minor league players that can fill out a rotation. Narveson and Estrada weren't drafted by the Brewers but they were still discovered by the Brewers. Sometimes the minor league scouting is as important as the amateur scouting is. They knew Segura was a legit shortstop when most people thought he wasn't for example. That sort of thing helps cover the shortcomings in drafting. Our current or near future rotation is made up of almost exclusively of pitchers the Brewers either drafted or mined form the minor leagues. While that doesn't look good now I think given the relative age and experience level of them it is bound to improve. Not to mention they are still mining for more. I would rather have a guy who can do everything perfectly. I am realistic to settle for one who can compensate for his shortcomings by doing well in other areas.

Wait, so trading 1 or 2 of our MLB hitters for young impact pitchers automatically means we would have never been better than .500? Where's any factual, empirical, or historical evidence to support that notion? Were is your evidence that teams were willing to give up young impact pitchers for 1 or 2 MLB hitters? If Fielder couldn't net us one what makes you think any others on our team would?

Great organizations like the Cards focus on drafting and developing and always have an eye on younger players. They also do other things well. Such as find players like Carpenter. Lohse trade for Furcal and get older players that seem washed up to play well. I don't think it is any one thing that makes an organization great. I don't even know if they do all those things better because they are that good or if they just spend more on it. Something I always wanted to see is a team by team comparison of money invested in scouting and player development. I'd also like to see the % going to marketing vs product improvement related endeavors. Then I might be able to assess how anyone in particular is really doing.

In one sentence you say it was easier to keep a team together back then and in another you wonder "what this team would look like with both Greinke and Sabathia on it. That would have been possible if it was 1982." Guess what, if it was easier for the Brewers back then then it was easier for the Royals and Indians too and they wouldn't have traded away either pitcher to the Brewers. It goes both ways. So while I understand your point, the point applies to every team, not just the Brewers. They came via trade not free agency. Cleveland might not have traded CC if he wasn't facing FA but Greinke was not traded due to pending free agency. He was traded because he asked to be traded. Yeah and saying a GM who has a worse track record is better is kinda bass ackwards. I think I said as good as. If I did say "better than" my bad. To me they are both competent GM's who have shown they can build a winning team. I think when you find one who can do the job you keep him because continuity seems to be a factor in maintaining a good franchise. Green and Bianchi? Now your just making Fluff up..... Making Fluff up? Excellent. But I stand by the idea that Green and Bianchi were supposed to be backups coming in. Backups usually are the backup plan to injury aren't they?

So, his contingency plan to back up two oft injured player was a player that had just missed the entire season with a knee injury. Good to know. Mat Gamel, Taylor Green and Jeff Bianchi were plan B, C and D. You are criticizing Melvin because plan E is Yuni? Exactly how many players do you think a team can reasonably afford to carry to cover each position?

And that's because of what? It's kinda implied in the fact that there's more series now. Give up? It's because a lot more teams get into the playoffs now than during Dalton's time. Twice as many. In fact only 1 out of 7 teams made the playoffs then and 1 in 4 or 4/15ths now make the playoffs. Using the old rules, the Brewers don't make the playoffs in 2008. It's harder to make it to the playoffs when there are fewer teams that get in than it is to win 2 series back to back in the playoffs. That's because you play a whole season to be one of 2 teams, while in the playoffs you only need to win 2 series in a row. Yeah "only" seems kinda easy, but no Melvin team has ever done it. I don't know what you are getting at here. Who implied giving up? It was also easier to keep a team together back then because the free agent market had yet to blow up. It was an era where teams colluded with each other to keep player salaries low. One has to wonder what this team would look like with both Greinke and Sabathia on it. That would have been possible if it was 1982. Seems to me that and fewer teams competing for quality players made his job easier as well. He was playing on a much more even playing field than Melvin is. I'm not trying to belittle what Dalton did. I think he was very good at what he did. I'm just saying Melvin is doing as well as Dalton did. Well one almost achieved the ultimate goal and the other has failed for 25 years. Is Melvin incompetent? No, he's just not the man who's going to build the Brewers team that is going to return to the World Series. One almost achieved it? When someone almost achieves something that means he failed doesn't it? I think a man who build a 96 win team can probably build a team that wins a world series. After all a 95 win team almost won it. A good GM should have had at least a decent contingency plan in place in the likelihood that these guys did get hurt again. Instead we had Alex Gonzalez and Yuni Betancourt, who are barely Major League players. When they did get hurt, 1/4 of our lineup turned to crap. Actually he had Gamel as the backup plan. I'm not sure there are many teams whose plan C involves much more than barely major league capable.

xisxisxis said: Texas never won until he got there and Milwaukee has been as good under his watch as any GM in the team's history. Won-Lost: Brewers under Harry Dalton = 1149-1062 (52.0%) Brewers under Doug Melvin (ignoring partial year he was hired) = 732-725 (50.2%) World series appearances: Under Dalton = 1 Under Melvin = 0 As good? OK...... I guess it doesn't matter in the least that one team had a whole other layer of playoffs to get to the world series? Dalton had one five game series and he's God but Melvin has to win a five game series and a seven game series just to match him? They won the same number of playoff series. Who cares? Point is they are/were both competent. When you find competent people you keep them and help them achieve the goal. This whole idea of "should we keep them for fire them," just feeds on itself. It's a loop from hell that Pittsburgh has been in for decades. Steinbrenner was that way In NY. Then he stuck with one manager and one GM for a while and look at how things changed there. If you are always asking whether someone should be fired or not you are failing to ask what else needs to be done. There is so much more to getting to the level we all want to be at than just finding Mr. Perfect.

I stand corrected. Obviously if people are raiding our staff that says something about the man who put the staff together doesn't it? I think Melvin has shown he can find competent people to do the job of scouting and developing. He's managed to get two franchises with terrible histories to division winners and relatively consistent post season contenders. Texas never won until he got there and Milwaukee has been as good under his watch as any GM in the team's history. While I want to see a perennial winning team and a WS title as much as anyone I think stability is far more likely to get us there than changing every down cycle does. If you have competent people let them do their job. I believe Melvin to be competent. I understand some disagree with me on that. What I do not think helps is constantly looking for the proverbial better man once you find someone who has shown he knows how to build a winning team.

Who am I missing outside of Jack Z.?

Seriously? From 96 wins two years ago to 12 games under .500 with the worst pitching staff in baseball, and one of the worst overall farm systems of all Major League teams. Oh, and no first round pick in this year's draft. Under what stretch of the imagination could this franchise possibly be on the right track? I think you are overstating how bad the franchise is due to a bad start to a degree. Frankly the team isn't as bad as you are making it out to be. Granted they are playing poorly right now but that doesn't mean they are doomed to be this bad all season long. While it isn't anywhere near good it is an exaggeration to say the pitching staff is the worst. In fact the bullpen is one of the best. The starters are really bad right now. But I seriously don't believe YoGa is going to be as bad as he has been going forward. Barring some kind of injury we don't know about pitchers don't usually go from good to bad in one season. There is no reason to think Lohse in anything other than a mid 3's ERA type of pitcher he has been so far. Estrada has been around long enough now to think he is at least an average pitcher. That leaves two spots going forward that we don't know much about. Given how many options we have I think we can find two that end up being at least serviceable going forward. Remember last season at this point Peralta was struggling in AAA as was Fiers. Burgois was in A ball. These are players who are likely to improve. Now to your doom and gloom farm system issues. The cost of the past two season's was five of the organization's top prospects. All of whom are either in the top 100 prospects or contributing in the majors. The only one who looks like he could be a bust is Jeffress. You don't lose five players like that without your farm taking a hit. How much better would the farm look if we had kept all of them and traded Fielder for a couple more. But that would have meant no playoff run. That was the tradeoff. It takes time to rebuild the farm. Given we have the same people who built the system into one of the best a few short years ago it seems likely they can do it again. Keep in mind the farm system isn't the end all be all. It is to supplement the big league club. If the farm was the prize then the Pirates wouldn't be going on 20 some losing season's. To sum up I think we are on the right track because we have a team that has very few holes on it, most of whom are locked up for two or mores season's. We have a GM that has already built good teams, an owner who may be meddlesome but is willing to spend. I'd also add that he seems to understand stability is a key to maintaining a good franchise. Look at the teams who have stable long term management and compare that to teams who change management every few years and that should tell you something about the value of stability. We also have enough options between the farm and salary space to supplement an already fairly complete team. Two months of bad baseball doesn't erase all that.

I think Mark A's best course of action right now would be to accept a full blown rebuild, but I don't think he will. I don't know if he has it in him. This is why firing Melvin and starting over won't work. The problem, if one feels the organization isn't going to be able to compete soon, isn't Melvin. It's the owner not allowing the GM to do his job without interference. Personally I'm not so sure the organization is going on the wrong direction. Yest his is a bad stretch. I don't think this team is out of it yet though they are digging a pretty deep hole. I think the pitchers aren't as bad as they look now. Guys like Peralta and Fiers weren't doing very well at AAA at this point last season. They started to put it together as the season moved on. Even if this season is a step back we knew this was a year when we needed everything to go right to contend to begin with. Not to mention so far the team has had the toughest strength of schedule in baseball. They aren't playing well at the moment and have to do it against the toughest schedule. That isn't going to be the case all season.

2. I'm talking about PITCHING overall. This include the starting rotation and bullpen. Even if their starters only went 5 innings, they did a good enough job to slow down the Brewers offense. They won because their pitching was better than the Brewers pitching. The scoreboards indicate that. In the end the Cardinals scored more runs than the Brewers, which that Cardinal pitching was better than Brewer pitching. In 2011 the Brewers staff had more k's, fewer walks, gave up fewer hits, had a lower ERA and had a lower WHIP than the Cards. They did so in a more hitter friendly ballpark and a poorer defense behind them. There wasn't a single category that the Cards staff did better than the Brewers staff. It had less to do with who had the better pitching than it did who had the hot pitching at the moment. The playoffs are as much about getting hot at the right time as it is about who is better. The Cards pitched well over their heads the entire post season. Not just against the Brewers. RRR didn't have the luxury of any particular group of players playing well above anything they did before that run or after. If you wish to give LaRussa credit for that go ahead. It just seems weird that he could do that one season but fail to do so in several other post season runs when he had even better pitching and overall better teams. Except of course the only other time he won a WS with them. The one where Jeff Suppan pitched like Cy Young.