Thurston Fluff

He's got a veteran right fielder hitting his prime with two all star appearances to show for it. That will become more important as we lose some of our other veterans. As far as flexibility goes we don't really have that much on the books after this season. He should have taken a look at the finances before making a blanket statement like that. Next year we have to find a real center fielder and at least one starting pitcher and a first baseman. I think Cain is in the plans at center and Prince gets us the starter and first base can be covered with Gamel or a FA. So for the next two years we will have prearby options at catcher, first, short, third, center, three starters and several relievers. In the last year of Hart's contract several of them will be in the early arby years. Unless I'm missing something the amount of money needed to keep this team intact over the Hart contract is probably less than we spent this season.

I can see you put a lot more stock into their minor league performances than I do, especially when it came to Hall who I felt was rushed while Hart was given extra time to mature. They both got to the big leagues at the same age (23). Hall wasn't rushed by choice he was out of options by then so he had to stay. That he wasn't good enough to have made it on his own merit by the same age as Hart did should also tell us something about the variance in ability. I'm not trying to cut on Hall. That he made something of himself at the major league level even though he wasn't really good enough to be there to begin with is a credit to him. I have a great deal of respect for Hall for that. Just don't think he was every as good as Hart even if he did have a couple really good seasons. You would be wrong to give McGehee a contract. He will be 32 in his first season of free agency. We should go year to year with him. At no point should we extend him. Not advocating one. Just saying I wouldn't do one unless he proved himself in a bigger stretch of time than Hart.

Even when we are having a bad year pounding the Cubs makes the day go by so much better.

So you missed the part where we were talking about their performance before giving them their contracts and ignoring hindsight then? You originally took issue with someone who was worried about Melvin handing out this contract since it was a similar situation to when Hall's contract was given out. I then provided data to show that up to the point of their contracts being signed Hall was the superior player so I think it is a valid concern. Are you no longer taking issue with this topic? I think we were talking past each other. I took issue with it being the next Bill Hall contract because it was not the same situation as Hall. Hall was never very good as a prospect and only had a two year period where he did produce. He then got a contract and went back to being Bill Hall. Hart was always a good prospect who showed he could play well in the majors and then had a couple below average years. Even then those below average years were not nearly as bad as it was being out to be. Given their histories I tend to think it is far more likely we have seen Hart's worst while Hall was still a question mark when he got his contract. I would compare Hall more to McGehee than Hart. For me McGehee would have to show at least a couple more years of production before I would be comfortable handing him a contract of any significance. He's well below average imo, and enough so that I think it cuts into his overall value. There are some positions I think defense has to be valued higher than others. Corner outfield is one of those spots where offense plays a more significant role than defense. Good defense is a plus but not nearly like it is at short or catcher.

I disagree with looking at how low a they played before signing their contracts in this situation because Hart's lowest came as a full time featured player while Hall's came during sporatice playing time while he was young and developing at the major league level. No it didn't. Hall's was last season not when he was young and developing. Given that he played himself out of the lineup and it's hard to blame sporadic playing time for his demise. He would have had more if he had been good enough to warrant it. Harts happened last season as well. I only took years in which they had significant playing time to make sure I didn't do what you just said I did. Hall's worst came after the contract not before. He had 334 ab's in 108 games played between Seattle and Milwaukee. Harts worst also happened to be last season and he had 419 ab's in 119 games. If you want go back a year and Hall's 404 ab's with a 689 OPS 128 games played go ahead. Hart's worst came in roughly the same playing time as Hall yet was much better offensively. How to rate defense and it's value in contracts is hard to determine. I don't buy into looking at the season's UZR or any other defensive metric as telling. It takes way more information to do that. I will say I beleive Hall was good not great while Hart is average at best. So, yes, he had some value that way just not that much more. But good defensive players with no offense can be had a lot cheaper than Hall's got paid.

That only makes sense if you don't take into account position or defense. Hall OPSed .837 and .899 while playing above average defense at SS and CF before signing his contract. His WAR those 2 seasons was 3.7 and 5.0. Hart is one of the worst corner outfielders in baseball and has only OPSd better than Hall's best this season. His best WAR came 3 years ago (4.3) before his offense and defense started to regress sharply. This season he will probably WAR around 3.4 to 3.5. Looking at it objectively and without hindsight, Hall may have actually been the better signing. Hall never played above average defense in center field and was nothing special at 3rd. I give him full credit for being more versitile and a great season defensively at short though his overall defense dating back to his minor league days should tell us more about his true defensive value than the season of above average play does. But to give fair comparison, yes, Hall's defense was better and at more premium positions. I think for it to be the next Hall type contract we have to look at how low a guy plays not how high. Hall's lowest OPS for a season was about 150 points below Hart's worst. Was his defense so much better that it made up for 150 points of OPS? If the question is will this be the next Hall contract? I say no. Hall's worst was really bad. Harts was slightly below average. If the worst is .753 I can live with that. If the worst is 606 I can't. Even at a premium defensive position. Unless that defense is other worldly good.

You can't compare a SS to a corner outfielder this way. I'm not. I'm comparing a utility player to a corner outfielder.

Yet, now everyone is singing Melvin's praises for extending a player that is midway through a breakout season after 1 and 1/2 seasons of terrible baseball. If you ask me, this smells like the Bill Hall contract part deux. Cory's worst OPS for a season is .753 which is one point higher than Ball Hall's career OPS never in his entire career did he approach Bill Hall awfulness. His career OPS is 814. Even his year and a half of terrible baseball was not that terrible. In fact if he was only putting up those numbers this season he would be above the likes of Jay Bruce, Shane Victorino, Lastings Millage, BJ Upton, Melky Cabrera, Niger Morgan, Jason Bay, Carlos Lee, Skip Schumaker, and Jeff Francoeur. If that is the worst he is going to do then big deal. It wouldn't be good but far from useless like Hall or Suppan were. While there is a risk of him regressing to his former self but even if he does it wouldn't be nearly as bad as you're making it out to be.

On the trade side of the coin, unless you're advocating a total rebuild and take anything any other GM offers you for your proven ML talent, you have to insist on comparable value in return in any deal. To back this point up that is what Pittsburgh has done. Look where that got them.

He's shown he can turn a team in KC's situation into a contender. Hopefully he will be allowed to finish what he started in KC.

Melvin's little presentation was somewhere between a desperate GM begging to save his job & raising the white flag (on past pitcher non-development) Funny how people can look at the same thing and see two completely different things. I see a guy who is implementing a long term plan to fix a problem. I don't know of many people in any profession who take the long view without some amount of job security. If he was really desperate to save his job he'd be doing patch work stuff not implementing systemic changes that only helps in the long term. As far as raising the white flag on past failure a good test of any manager in any profession is seeing your own weaknesses admitting them for what they are and fixing them. I am much more comfortable with a guy who knows he had shortcomings and takes a serious approach to fixing them than someone like Sal Bando who came up with excuses then went out and made the same mistakes over again. Sure, but why not deal for an emerging guy that didn't get his no-trade deal yet? Like Dave Bush or Chris Cappuano? Yes he should do such and has. There are a lot of that type of pitchers to be had how many top flight young pitchers are out there to be had? Teams just don't trade Gallardo type prospects very often. When they do there is a lot of competition for them which means someone overpays thus making the trade less beneficial. We have a wonderful chance this winter to get one of those types this winter for Prince. If we can get one top flight pitcher for him I'd be ecstatic. It would bridge the gap somewhat until the system they are implementing starts to work.

How much is a catcher with mediocre power who gets on base less than 30% of time worth? He never got many walks to start with and that got worse as he hit AA and AAA. Decent contact hitter with no patience. Maybe he's a great defensive catcher which would add a lot of value but I just don't see a guy who can't take a walk and has mediocre power being all that valuable. IOW he's not a slam dunk can't miss prospect. I think sometimes people put too much stock into how high a guy is rated in the system vs how good he actually is.

for all the grief I have been giving Melvin, i now want Bill Smith fired as well. This would be like us trading Matt Gamel for Chad Cordero last year... wow, just wow. Great trade for the Nats. Ramos + should have netted Lee, Oswalt, or atleast Lilly, and instead we got a mediocre reliever. Not picking on you but if the trade was made then obviously that is the value not what fans think their players are worth. I think it's a high price as well. We paid a premium price for a couple months of Sabathia. We did so because we had a first baseman and left fielder already so LaPorta was essentially a spare part. It got us four extra games and we all thought it was worth it. Years later most still do. I realize the difference between Sabathia and Capps is huge so was the price we paid to get him compared to Capps.

that's an interesting point endaround. Range is more important at some positions than others. Reflexes seem more important at third and first than actual range. I also think first basemen in particular should be rated higher on their ability to prevent errors by other players than how much range they have.

With Lawrie in the minors I don't think Weeks is replaceable after next season. Especially given his injury history. I could see them trying to do a trade for someone like Oswalt to bring in a legitimate stud with a big contract with the money saved but really that's the only way they could spend that much to get good players in the short term wihtout screwing up the salary long term.

I don't know why you should get flack for saying it. It's not saying he sucked or you are happy you just spoke the truth. He reminds me of Ben McDonald only easier to cheer for. Great pitcher who just didn't have the durability necessary to make the career his ability dictated. I hope he does try again but understand if he doesn't. That's a lot of tedious work with little guarantee of results. Fortunately for him he made enough money to live comfortably but I'm sure he would rather be playing. In the end he may be serviceable but he'll never be the guy he was.

He said he will look for a team who wants him as a first baseman when he hits FA. Given his desire to out do his dad and his stated desire to be a complete player I am willing to take him at his word on that. So no NY really isn't a fit for him.

I think the Suppan contract makes Wolf's contract seem worse than it really is. Wolf is getting less and is a better pitcher. I wouldn't be all that surprised if he actually earned (earned being a relative term) his money in the future years. Full disclaimer. I wanted the Brewers to sign Wolf two years ago and was happy to see them sign him last off season. So I may very well be biased on that.

What's the point of making our payroll that small? It won't help land a top tier FA like Cliff Lee because of the risk involved with so much payroll going to one player. All it would do is give us the flexibility to sign more Wolf and Hawkins type players. If that's all we can do why not just keep the ones we have?

All a single season of defensive stats tell you is a player was/n't good at that time. It tells you little about their overall ability. You need about three seasons to get credible information from them. The probelm is young players improve so the first of the three years is outdated by the time the information is useful. Older players regress so the same is true in reverse. What we are left with is valuable information about players in their prime who have been playing for a while. Typically we already know quite a bit about them at that point. It didn't take UZR or Dewans to tell us Carlos Lee was not good nor did we need them to tell us Ozzie Smith was great. By the time those stats had meaning it was already pretty obvious.

I hope he's prepared for when he goes to a big market, and gets in a bit of a slump. The Milwaukee media hasn't ridden him too hard over the years. All he needs to do is look at Ortiz to see how a slow start gets magnified in a big market. Every year he started slow, unlike here, every season he does so will lead to questions about his size and whether or not he's breaking down. It will only get worse even if his starts don't get worse than they already have been.

Did Prince mention the fans of Milwaukee once in that article? Funny I thought the same as I read the article. No mention of how the fans. Fans BTW who support their team on a better per capita basis than the Yankees do. Fans who support this team even when it's below .500 and their prized first baseman is once again treated April like it was still late February. Dude wake up. If it wasn't for the fans you'd have to have paid to go to college or be working on a factory floor somewhere. Maybe, just maybe, you should show a little gratitude to them. At least enough to mention you'll feel bad to leave them behind. Even if you don't mean it. If you actaully scooped a ball out of the dirt once in a while we'd think you were a good first baseman. Dude it isn't your size that makes us think you aren't that good. It's watching you day in and day out that makes us think so. Soon that will be another team's problem. I don't think he's a bad guy at all. I like the way he plays the game. I think his teammates genuinely like him. All that said he just seems like a guy who has no idea at all what it's like not to have the world handed to him on a silver platter. If he did he certainly wouldn't have forgot to mention those who made his easy life possible. In a time when so many are struggling to get by that gets a little irritating. Good luck where ever you land, I won't hate you but I'm not gonna cheer for you either. I'll save that for someone more deserving.

Hope you are back soon Ben. You are still a Brewer even if you play for another team. Being one means we pull for you.

By any fielding metric I've seen this season, he's near or at the bottom of the fulltime third basemen in the league. The mistake is using a season of defensive metric to make that determination. If you have some information on his past three seasons you will have enough to make a reasonable determination. Less means not enough information to go on. Until we have enough we have to use the eyeball test. I am not smart enough to judge so I won't. The beauty of stats is it helps eliminate prejudices that eyesight sometimes brings. In the eye ball respect Casey is screwed. He looks like a butterball so he must defend like one. In all honesty I think he is a poor defender and the limited evidence suggests so but I am not smart enough to know. How poor is yet to be determined by solid empirical evidence. In another year or so and we'll have that information. Until then it seems useless to use stats that are lacking of useful information. It will not get us any closer to his true defensive value. What percentage of baseball is fielding, again? ...Just sayin'. [sorry. had to put it out there.] If the guy gets on base regularly, then one can certainly sacrifice a significant amount of fielding ability. 50%. I would rather have good hitters with average defense than bad hitters with great defense. I would also rather have average offensive player with great defense than above average offense and below average defense.

I a way I'm not at all comforatble with I am happy he's still struggling. I'm not happy at his failure as much as knowing it was him not our staff that was the probelm. Even the genious can't make Suppan or Kip Wells so much as serviceable. All that said I don't like to see someone, who by most accounts was a nice guy, have his career end with such a thud. A part of the territory I guess.