Thurston Fluff

He could go either way but I think he's done enough to warrant a spot in the rotation to begin the season. What I don't want is him trying to earn a spot in spring when he should be working on getting better.

By that point wasn't Aoki already an everyday player? Or did he mean a Prince Fielder, never get a day off, type?

I thought when he was signed Melvin said they didn't really scout the league. Am I misremembering that?

I concur that bunting and base stealing are tools to have in the arsenal. The Brewers are stealing at an 80% rate, which puts them in the black. As implied directly above, stealing and bunting shouldn't be overly relied upon. But they do have their time and place. Attempting to steal against a team like the Pirates, who have trouble throwing out runners, would seem to be a good idea. How do you get to the point of being able to use the running game against Pittsburgh unless you have been doing it enough to be good at it? It's nice to have tools in the arsenal but rusty tools don't work as well. Picking the times to use it is key IMHO. Given the rate at which they succeed it appears the Brewers have figured that out.

So let me get this straight. When we sucked, and everything was going wrong, there were certain people on this site who said it was not because of RR. Now that we are winning, there are those who think RR deserves the credit? Sure but please don't try to portray people you disagree with as the only ones guilty of it. Some who blamed Ron for losing are not giving him credit now that they are winning. People have preconceived notions of the manager and look for things to reinforce that opinion. It's natural to do so. How come in professional baseball we give the manager so much credit for keeping the players motivated? I think the motivation now is the playoffs. You could put a chimp in now and the players would be motivated. A month or so ago that motive was a lot less apparent. I don't know if motivation is the right word. Focused maybe. While players will play hard for selfish reasons alone I think keeping them focused on team goals does have some impact. Why, for instance, would a player try to move a guy over trying to hit to the right side if he was only interested in his stats or his future paychecks? Why would he slide in hard to second to break up a double play or run hard on a grounder? When the team is in contention personal motivation for money and success are enough to explain it. When a team is as far back as the Brewers were and just traded their best pitcher it is less obvious simple greed is the answer. To come out and do all those little things shows a team wide focus on winning games despite their position not because of it. Self motivated to do well isn't the same as being focused on making the team better. It's the manager's job to keep all that self motivation focused on the end result. Some do it better than others. I tend to believe those who do it best make the best overall managers. Admittedly I cannot give anymore than anecdotal evidence to show it. Then again I don't think anyone has ever given much evidence game strategy makes a whole heck of a lot of difference either.

I do think you're right to emphasize how much talent we had on hand just beneath the surface. Isn't that what Melvin said last season after we traded half our top prospects for Greinke? So many outsiders just looked at what we lost and thought there was no way we could have much left. Yet here we are winning with those leftovers.

I agree there is little correlation. However the small amount there may be is in keeping players focused and playing when they could give up. Not in who he pitches in the late innings or how he orders his lineup or strategic moves during a game. I think this late run, after everything that happened up to August, is evidence of that. Even then I think a lot of that goes to the players who buy into what is being sold. But you still need the salesman to sell it.

Ha! I was actually thinking the opposite. In that the more the opponent prepares for the execution of your own "normal" philosophy, the more the opposite philosophy will work. Wouldn't you be making the opponent account for more by being more flexible with your strategy? Guess I wasn't being very clear on what I meant. If you are an aggressive team be consistently aggressive. If you like to sit back and wait for the three run homer do that consistently. Overall don't have guys running wild one week then change and don't allow them to do so the next. Either way you go the players will have a better chance of succeeding in doing the things you want them to do well if they know that is what is going to be expected of them. On occasion it's fine to try to catch people off guard. Even then I think it's as easy to catch your own players off guard as it is the opponent. Expecting someone to get a squeeze down properly isn't as easy to do if you never do it for example. Yes it may catch the defense off guard but that doesn't mean the runner won't give it away or the batter can get a bunt down when he has never been asked to do it before. One missed sign or one aspect that gets poorly executed and the surprise element is negated. That is more likely to happen if the players mindset was never on doing such things.

I think we just disagree on the amount of risk our young pitching represents. Yes some are not quite ready. They won't have to be right away next season. Yes some of our projected starters might not pan an out. But most of them have some degree of success already and all of them have pretty good stuff. I don't know how much more risk they are than any starter on the list for the money we'd have to pay. By the time some fail or get hurt there are enough other options that a capable replacement is likely to be there. As likely our a veteran is to be for the money anyway. Granted that is taking a risk but, as Wolf, Suppan and Gagne proved everything has some risk to it. It's a matter of mitigating the amount of risk. Frankly I don't see why taking that money and spending it on more relievers is more of a risk. Even if some of the relievers don't pan out. Or keeping it in case another K-rod, money dump, type trade comes up. Mark Rogers' arm has been healthy for three full seasons now. He pitched all of 2010 and all of this year. I'm not concerned about the fluke double carpal tunnel syndrome he had last year. Obviously he's still a risk but I don't think the risk is as bad as some people make it out to be. I agree on pretty much everything you said. I am not that worried. Partially because of the depth of pitching we have and partially for the reason's you gaVE. However it's hard not to remember arguing Ben Sheets injuries were all freak, one time things as well. Not that one is indicative of the other but just hard to shake the "here we go again," syndrome after Sheets.

If you're getting value on a starting pitcher capable of improving your rotation, no I don't think that's spending money to spend money as long as the Brewers can afford to spend it, especially when the pitching pool is rarely this deep. Any decision obviously has to have a baseball side and a financial side to it. I guess it depends on how you define value. I think someone may be worth more than he is getting paid and still not be a value to a particular team. Someone else could be overpaid and have more value for that same team. A lot of it depends on if that player adds something the team did not have.

Someday I would like to have on my business card: Dr. Funketown, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Empirical Throwing Analysis. Years ago I had a batch of cards printed that said: Professional card giver. We used to sell a bunch of them. Probably should make some more. Thanks for the reminder.

I'm sure there is still a time and a place for it, as with most strategies. I just thing RR attempts one much too often. The odds of success are very much dependent on whether the defenders are ready for one and obviously, the Brewers have lost that advantage (opponents are positioning for the bunt attempt now). The good thing is that RR can now leverage that fact into greater odds of a base hit. I hope he does just that. I think you hit on something here that is so hard to measure. How can you measure the effect doing the squeeze play has on production in squeeze situations that the team chooses not to do it. Pulling guys in to defend it means a higher chance of getting a base hit so doing it enough makes it more likely not doing it will end in a better results as well. This is just a personal opinion but I tend to think the more you make the opponent have to account for the better your chances of success. I think in the end it makes up for the outs made by being aggressive. That said I have no problem with a manager going the other direction. I think the key for success is consistency of following one philosophy more than which philosophy is followed.

Wow girls really do throw like...well...girls. I have to believe they only arrived at their results because they didn't test BF.net girls. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/throw-like-a-girl-with-some-practice-you-can-do-better/2012/09/10/9ffc8bc8-dc09-11e1-9974-5c975ae4810f_story.html?hpid=z1

I love this guy. Really hope he can come back & contribute again down the stretch for ATL. Ditto...unless the Brewers are in it obviously. I hope someday Sheets comes back to our organization in some manner. He would be a great color commentator. Replacing Schroeder with Sheets would be a great thing. Or maybe when Uecker hangs it up someday he could step in.

The offense is set. If you can get a decent deal on a free agent starter that fits in the budget, they would be crazy not to consider it. At some point isn't that spending money just to spend money though? Maybe use that money to extend someone like Hart or Weeks. Maybe just don't spend it and use it in the future when we don't have so many internal options. right now it just seems like we have so many starting pitching options that it is likely enough will pan out to put up a representable rotation. IF we can find a top tier guy maybe go for it. Other than that I really don't think a solid #3 is worth the money we would have to pay in FA. If we are going to spend money to get to a certain level of spending then I think spending more on short term deals with good proven relievers makes more sense. I'd rather slightly overpay for something we don't have than get a good deal on something we have a lot of. We have enough options that the starting pitching should be fine. We don't have quality relief.

Ron was the one who it took till September to realize that Casey wasn't going to figure it out last year. That's more damning than his love of bunting and getting runners thrown out on the bases. Lets not turn this into a Ron Bashing session. We are specifically talking about his use of the squeeze play and the overall value of such plays. Please keep it that way.

Because despite RR's sub-optimal strategies (IMO), he's been lucky enough to manage for a team with good hitters. Even a bad manager isn't generally going to cost his team 50+ runs/year. I don't mean to suggest I think the squeeze attempts have cost the Brewers 20+ runs. He is no more lucky than Macha was. In fact given McGehee's decline last season I'd argue he had a worse offense to work with last season. This is not meant to be scientific by any means. But we do have two years each of about as extreme a difference in management styles as you can get with essentially the same players. I do think the comparison is helpful when pure stats don't tell the whole picture. Macha's approach averaged 767.5 runs per season over his two years here. If we extrapolate this season's current average over the whole season Ron will have averaged 747 per season. That is the 20 runs you spoke of. But I think you would agree last season's drop off was due more to McGehee falling off a cliff than Ron's management of the run game. This season the team is pretty close to Macha's years here. Frankly I don't think there is much difference between the two styles as far as overall run production. I know stats suggest a leaning toward not running produces more runs but also I think there is value to knowing how to manufacture runs when it comes to winning more games. You can't learn how to do that if you're not doing it. I think it can have an impact, either positive or negative, depending on when you let them do it just to learn how to do it. That, to me, is where we can debate Ron's effectiveness of employing it.

Everyone (but apparently RR) also knows that you have to have an extremely high success rate to justify doing it in the first place, though. Considering our run production the past two seasons I don't know how Ron can be doing so badly at maximizing run production. Frankly I'm not sure it's completely measurable. How do you measure the effect it has on a defense that the squeeze is a real threat? How does that effect the way the defense aligns itself or how much the pitcher has to think about while pitching? Also have to wonder how much better a team gets by doing that they can do it when only one run is needed? Those are not as easily measured as comparing the scoring rate between using and not using the squeeze.

Pluto is no longer a planet and Mercury is getting friendly with everyone. What is out solar system coming to?

All I know is we scored more runs than anyone else in the NL so far and I feel way more comfortable every time a ball is thrown slightly off target to first this season. Prince was a great dude who played well when he was here. But he was effectively replaced for a fraction of the cost. He got his and we didn't miss a beat. Win win as far as I'm concerned. My guess is he's happy it turned out this way as well.

What I'm saying is - win out make miraculous playoff appearance or who cares I care. I like having a season that was interesting with good story lines. If that happens by a nice run late that falls short I may be disappointed but I sure as hell cared. When all is said and done if this team comes up with a nice little run that even gets us close but falls short it will have been a fun ride to the finish. This is all being done with a bunch of rookies playing key roles. What a great way for them to get a little taste of September if nothing else.

A person came into our store, bought some balloons, went home and inflated them with air then called wanting his money back because they didn't float. How can an adult in modern times not know helium is what makes a balloon float? Predictably, when I explained that to him his response was "you should have told me that when I bought them." It really would have been nice to just say "well sir I didn't realize you were a moron," but courtesy prohibits such comments.

Personally I think he is a year away. It wouldn't bother me at all to have a stopgap player next season until he is actually ready for the majors. That could very easily be sometime next season or it could be a whole year but why have him up if he isn't actually ready?

You just have to find out if that person is a Cub fan. If s/he is you simply have to hire that person and MAKE him/her regret being hired.

Which is why I wanted to know what the reasoning for saying he probably is going to give us 150 innings. I didn't know it that comment was based of of some sort of projection or if it was just personal opinion.