Thurston Fluff

Days inn city center 406 N Washington st (920) 425-4484 and Holiday inn city center 200 main st. (920)437-5900 are both close to the downtown bars. Pretty good selection of places to go for that age. There are more bars with in a soccer players walking distance across the river as well.

The big issue is Axford is 27. He probably has 4-5 really good years in his arm including this one. Of those 4-5 seasons, this is a wasted one, next year is likely a wasted one if both Fielder and Hart are moved (and Weeks coudl be moved as well). While it is true the team will have some changes I'm not sure those changes mean another sub par season. Exchanging sluggers with poor defense with good pitching on a good slugging, defensively poor team who needs pitching can be the key to a turnaround not the beginning of another long rebuild. I think there are enough examples of teams who suck for a year or two but rebound quickly to think with a few changes and next year is far from likely to be wasted. That is assuming you mean any year without a playoff is truly wasted. I still like to watch my team play good baseball even when their overall year isn't up to specs. Having good young players getting their first taste of the majors and doing well is a pretty entertaining substitute. I just wish we'd have a little more of the other type:) Yes you can keep him but you also have to deal with the fact his arm could blow out at any time. The guy you trade for could get injured as well. I'm not sure how one would go about justifying a trade made of fear of a future injury that has no sign of occuring. On occasion you can get someone like Harden who is constantly injured and you trade him between DL stints but that isn't the situation here.

While he will never be a star I think regular major league players have more value to the team as a player than they have as a trading chip. Teams don't trade good, young, high upside guys for average players. They trade them for big time difference makers. The upshot is what we could get for him is another version of him. If there is one who fits our needs better and we have a replacement ready then fine. Otherwise he should be in the long term plans. (long term meaning the next couple years).

Pretty much any player who is performing well and under control for more than next season should be playing for us not bringing us the next batch of guys we trade when they are ready to help us. I never bought into the trade when the value is high philosophy. If we did that the Brewers roster would be full of under achievers, unproven rookies or guys who will never be good enough for the big stage every season. The only time I think we should trade our guys is when we have a replacement for the guy or when he is about to leave anyway. As far as the depleted offensive player in minor league system goes I don't think it's all that depleted. We have some guys like Cain, Gamel and Lawrie still in the minors to go with the handful of good young talent already on the major league roster. By the time all those guys hit their FA years we will have the next batch ready.

Agreed, suspensions are no big deal for a pitcher. I get a kick out of how some here are so worried about losing one of the relief pitchers to suspension for a few games, yet at the same time, they want to 'sell high' on everyone who is having a good year. For the record I am not one of the sell high people. You sell when you have to not when you get the most in return. Prince should be trade regardless of how good a season he's having and Hart should be kept around if he's reasonable in contract negotiations and traded if not. It has nothing to do with how good either are playing it has to do with how valuable they are to us. I do think a 5 game suspension is not good for a pitcher. Sure it give the starter an extra day of rest but the reason they don't routinely get that extra day is because of the burden it puts on the pen. To be fair it should be increased if they really want to put a stop to it. To say, since the penalty isn't severe enough we should resort to the hitting each other for perceived slights, is odd. Years of beaning players have shown that does nothing to stop it either. So why not try something radical like raising the number of games they are suspended for until it is enough to stop the silliness? Kershaw got suspended for 5 games, so in essence, he will get an extra day off between starts and that is only if he doesn't get his suspension reduced, which it more than likely will anyway. Can you come up with a single example of a starting pitcher getting his suspension reduced from 5 games? I doubt it since the whole idea of the 5 game suspension is to make him miss his scheduled start. Even if Tony or Ozzie went out in the media and said they'd have a pitcher drill an opposing hitter in the face for each time one of their batters were hit, some Cardinals or White Sox would get hit because the high majority of hit batters are accidental. Instructing retaliation in those kind of instances i find ridiculous. I think you missed the point. LaRussa is famous for finding reasons for hitting the opponents. He perceives everything as some sort of slight on him and his team thus the need to retaliate. That is the type of thing that only increases when self policing is the norm.

I want my pitchers and my managers to protect me, otherwise, what's going to stop the rest of the league from taking liberties? Instead, Macha takes the 'high road', goes to the league, and a reliever gets suspended for 4 days- big deal. I want my manager to keep my pitchers available for all the games not be out for no reason for the better part of a week. What will stop the league from taking liberties with our hitters is suspensions and fines. That actually hurts for days not minutes. Yes to players missing four game checks/action is a big deal. Why would they appeal if it wasn't? By the way, Gibson didn't always hit guys. A little mid-90's chin music can make quite a statement. You will find far more players have a problem with pitchers who throw chin music than ones who hit them in the middle of the back. No hitter or team ever wants anything near the head intentionally. I agree with them. Risking giving someone a serious head injury just to send a message is not only stupid but should lead to a long suspension and huge fine. Not going high is one of those unwritten rules that most old school managers follow closer than hitting their guy if they hit yours. Take a manager like LaRussa. He seems to have his pitchers throw at the other team whenever he feels someone hit one of his guys wrongly or for his belief of showboating. He's the perfect example of why I wish more people would go Macha's way and let the league handle it. Dude finds reasons in every game that requires retaliation. His teams get in fights all the time with the virtually every team. Someone takes an extra 10 seconds to round the bases hit the next guy. Someone fist pumps a big HR someone else gets hit tomorrow. Never mind his players are as bad as all the others. If his players get hit for the same reason he orders hits he needs to retaliate because they plunked his guy intentionally. LaRussa is the problem not the answer. Self policing is not the answer. Unless the question is what is the definition of vigilantism.

what Piniella's time with the Cubs shows is no matter who the manager is the team is only as good as it's players.

Body armor itself isn't a problem. It's when guys wear it so they can get a free base that bothers me. Biggio used to stick his armored elbow out as he "attempted" to get out of the way. Then he'd take the free base without having earned it. I think the best way to get rid of and easy base would be to make any pitch that hit body armor a ball not a free base. Then you'd only see it for protection not a substitute for offense. Perhaps a brawl would have given these guys a little spark. Instead, Macha goes and whines to the league. I could not see someone like Yost or Garner doing that, but then again, those guys actually had some passion for their job. While loved Yost his fire wasn't the reason for it. I don't think passion=get in your face and beat people up. Passion or fire, what every you want to call it, runs as deeply in the quiet ones as it does the fire and brimstone types. Espeically in a game in which it is widely acknowledged that not getting too high or too low is a key to long term success. As far as Macha being some sort of wimp for not beaning their guy in retaliation how brave is LaRussa or Cox to sit in the bugout and order his guys to hit someone? Not very brave at all. I'm sure Macha's fine with the label as long as the end result is best for his team and worst for the Braves. As it stands their team plays without one of their top lefty setup guys for four games and the manager for one and they both pay a fine. The Brewers OTH have no negative fallout to deal with. If he had ordered a plunking then we'd have a guy sitting out as well or their punishment would have been less. I think if you'd ask their team which penalty they would prefer to pay they'd all say hit one of ours and be done with it. Macha made them pay more than that. So to me he's done more to hurt the Braves than an old school manager would have. props to him for understanding how to really hit someone where it counts.

For the most part I don' t think Weeks or Prince care about getting hit. They know they crowd the plate and doing so means taking one on the elbow or knee on occasion. To them it's part of their success. If they crowd the plate they either have a better chance of hitting the ball or the ball hitting them. Either way they get on base. I think when they get hit intentionally because their team is doing to well and the opponent doesn't like getting beat so badly they do care. This was clearly a case of being mad at getting beat so they did what most true losers do in that situation. Take out their frustrations on a guy who was just doing his job better than they were.

To be fair the people who ripped on him preseason mostly just assumed age meant bad defense, that or they were basing it on a small sample of UZR from 2008. Defense is just a hard thing to judge, stats take forever to become meaningful and fans can watch the same player and one says he is below average and the next says he is great... think J.J. Hardy as an example. Bingo. UZR is useless in small samples. I wish people would quit using current season UZR as some sort of indicator/predictor of ability going forward. If you want to say a player hasn't been very good in a certain period of time fine. It's perfectly fine to describe why you think the team/player got to the point it's at now. To use it to say they are/n't good defenders because their UZR this season is low is to misuse the stat. Which also happens to be why I think WAR is the most useless stat in baseball. Any stat that derives it's value using stats that have no meaningful value is bound to come up with wildly inaccurate information.

Just like you shouldn't use a months worth of OPS to determine how good a player is you can't use 1/2 a season's worth of UZR to rate how good someone is on defense. All it tells you is they were good/bad for a small time. So small as to be useless in determining true worth. A couple well played or misplayed balls skews the rating way too much to be of any use at all. Yet it gets used all the time in such situations. UZR, while useful for players with a lot of data to look back on, is quickly becoming the most abused stat in baseball.

Just like you saying McGehee doesn't have to be special (based on ZIPS, which would have had McGehee as garbage in '09) to be better than Gamel, the reverse is also true. Neither guy is a very special player at this point, but the reason I rally so hard in favor of Gamel is that he has room still to grow, whereas we're seeing 100% of Casey McGehee's upside. I never meant to imply McGehee was a good defender only that using McGehee's lack of defense as a reason Gamel could do what he is at the major league level implies Gamel was better defensively. He's not so why bring it up as a reason he should be playing? Gamel does have upside and as soon as that upside turns into actual production he should be here. Until then why not keep the guy who actually performed better in head to head competition, in the same amount of playing time, ahead of him?

So far what we know about Casey from his MLB time is that a high BABIP (.330) played a large part in his success last season. With a much more normal BABIP (.297) this season, he's a middle of the pack bat at 3B. Adding in his bad defense, he's just not a very special player. ZIPs projects Gamel OPSing .694 and CHONE has him at .753 with bad defense to boot. McGehee doesn't have to be special to beat that. Gamel may very well be a good player in the future but isn't anything special yet. I think for him to get there he has some growing up to do. He certainly has to show he can play at a high level an entire season before we should rate him as special. Until then McGehee is the better option just like he was last season. With a minimum of 270 PAs this season, FanGraphs' wOBA ranking has him 13th of 25. WAR has him 16th of 25, largely due to him ranking dead last in terms of fielding. wOBA is only an offensive statistic. IMHO WAR's major flaw is how it treats defense. It should not be weighed the same as offense since the general consensus is it takes about three season's worth of data to get as accurate a reading as one season of offense. Hell WAR had JJ Hardy being better than Escobar and Gomez combined this season. I highly doubt any GM would trade both Gomez and Escobar for Hardy even up even if all other aspects like salary and service time was equal.

The scary part about Bush is he seems like the type of player the Cards find in FA who ends up helping them win the division.

I never thought I'd be relieved to hear a pitcher had elbow tendinitis. Not that I'm happy but a relapse of a heart issue would be more scary for his entire life not just his playing career. I think Cain will play. Macha's been pretty consistant in his philosophy of prodcution = playing time so Gomez is likely the odd man out and Edmonds is showing his age. The only way Cain doesn't play much is if he's over matched. Having him get his feet wet now should help the team next season so there is some good coming from center field this season. We at least will see who is ready to be our future there.

If you look back at Gamel's last couple season's you will find he faded as the season wore on. His best season was in AA and it ended with his numbers in a steady decline. That it happened again in AAA should be more of a concern about him than I think you have. IMHO a guy whose numbers decline as the season goes on once, while not good, is at least understandable. More than once it appears to be a pattern. It might be easy to write it off as Macha and Melvin messing with him but it happened before they did so at a level lower than he is at now. For my part Gamel has to show he belongs before I'm going to think of him as the next great prospect. Until he does he's just another Brad Nelson or Ben Hendrickson. Obviously I hope he si the next great thing. We could use him soon. As far as what McGehee did in AAA who cares? We have better information on McGehee's abilities in the majors than what he did in AAA. What he has done since he has been in the majors is far more important. Especially when you take into consideration they came form different teams who may have different approaches, parks, team's competition etc.

If you look back a page Topper posted a pretty good article showing the Yankees spent pretty much the same vs their revenue as league average. Overall I don;'t beleive one season of losses means much. Especially when some new stadium expenses are most likely included. If it did that means Detroit's owner must want it more than the Yankees ever did yet the city's overall problems has more to do with the fiscal problems there than the owner having some sort of super desire to win that no other owner comes close to having. Overall if you look at the long view I suspect you will find the Yankees made as much or more overall profits than any other team. I don't think that means they wanted it less over that same span of time anymore than I think last season's losses meant they wanted it more than any particular season they didn't money in. Honestly I beleive virtually all the team owners want to win. Now that the Cubs have been sold I think Loria is the only one who stands out as wanting profit more than winning. Shame on him.

You spent a whole paragraph trying to disagree with me, when this sentence matches what I wrote. I didn't say Steinbrenner was the only one to care about winning. When you say "while other owners are happy to make a profit without doing their most to provide a competitive product to their fans." you make it appear as though you mean the other owners not just some. I just misinterpreted what you meant. The word -some- might have made it clearer he was one of a majority of owners who cared about winning. To address what you apparently meant. Being one of the vast majority who felt, and did to the best their situations allow, the same as he did doesn't really mean much does it? 99% of the owners want to win as badly as he does. They just don't happen to be in a situation that allows them to spend as much.

Steinbrenner deeply cared about winning and invested in his team, while other owners are happy to make a profit without doing their most to provide a competitive product to their fans. I think it's a stretch to think other owners don't care about winning as much as he did simply because they didn't have a team that generated revenue like the Yankees did. While there are some like Loria and the Tribune company that may have done so there are plenty of owners who do care and are investing as much into winning as Stenibrenner did. The only difference is they are working in markets that cannot support the level of investment as a NY team can. Hell Bud cared so much about baseball he gave up his team do work for the betterment of the game as a whole. To say he somehow was more interested in money than winning because he didn't have a Yankeesque payroll is wrong. If anyhting he has shown he cared more. He spent a great deal of his life making the whole game better not just his little segment of it. My major complaint about Steinbrenner was his lack of interest in the game as a whole.

the "not good for baseball" points are debatable. only if you replaced "baseball" with "the Brewers" would you be so absolutely right. i'd be curious about the ratings and general interest in a KC/Milwaukee World Series. Steinbrenner also was never responsible for the betterment of baseball as a whole--that's Selig's job. Steinbrenner's responsibility is to make the Yankees better, and he absolutely did--namely through the policies you mentioned. so of course he opposed those things. what person in his situation wouldn't? To me every owner is responsible for the betterment of baseball as a whole. Anything that helps the game grow is good for every team. That includes the Yankees. While the game did grow it also lost ground to other sports in the same period of time. That could have been avoided had some owners like Steinbrenner not been short sighted as to what a level playing field would mean for the game as a whole and, by extension, the Yankees in particular. Yes a KC/ Milwaukee WS would be every bit as exciting as a Yankees/ Dodgers one. Just like a Green Bay/Pittsburgh Super bowl would be as exciting as a Giants/Patriots one. FTJ defends Steinbrenner but takes every possible shot he can at Ned Yost. Interesting. Wile he and I vehemently disagree on Yost I don't think it is wrong of him to like one and not the other. The large part of his objection was that there was no mechanism in place to ensure that teams would actually be forced to spend money on player salary rather than just owners pocketing money. That was his stated objection yet he was no more interested in revenue sharing when they had a plan in place to make sure said shared revenue had to be invested in the clubs receiving the revenue. Really he was simply trying to keep the system that was rigged in his favor to remain rigged in his favor. Wile I understand why he would want such it was short sighted IMHO. I would much rather have a smaller share of a large pie than a larger share of a small one. That, to me anyway, was a mistake on his part.

Invader, if you are saying George was evil in a "baseball" sense only, I can agree with you. Everything else, I do not know about, whether he was a good person or not, only those around him know. Dave Winfeild might disagree with you. Dude tried to destroy another man through lies about his character so, no, he wasn't a good man. Perhaps he changed but I don't think being just good enough not to be banned from baseball can be considered good. I really think it is unfair and inaccurate to claim that he "tore baseball apart" In the 90's he was instrumental in keeping out any salary restraint mechanisms. The ownership was fractured and he was the leader of the group of "haves" in baseball that worked very hard to make sure the system remained in the have's favor. That was not good for baseball. He was against any sort of revenue sharing and fought tooth and nail to limit revenue sharing any way he could. That was not good for baseball. He fought to keep out a luxury tax. That was not good for baseball. The team that dominated in the 90s was largely home-grown as well.... And again, Steinbrenner certainly opened his checkbook, but he also paved the way for his spending by creating cable deals that eventually benefited a lot of teams. They could be kept while other teams couldn't do so because of hw much he paid the ones he did keep. The Yankees did a lot to inflate the FA market. The Yankees also had the added bonus of being able to buy foreign players who were not eligible for the draft. He bought young, unproven, players like Mariano Rivera whom only teams like the Yankees could afford to take a chance on at such a young and unproven time in their careers. So the whole homegrown thing, while true, was also misleading. As far as one example of his charitable donations is concerned, he died at a hospital with a Steinbrenner Emergency/Trauma Center for Children. Al Capone was a very generous man who donated a lot of money to soup kitchens in the great depression. Far more than many honest people did. Still didn't make him a great man. Not belittling the benefits of his contributions but he inherited a fortune and gave a small % of that back to the community. To his credit he didn't have to give any of it back. He died though. That is sad. I don't think expressing contempt for a sports-figure on the day he passes is appropriate. This isn't like a division rival retiring, this is an actual man dying. I am guessing what he did as a human being far surpasses what he did as a sports figure. Absolutely agree. While I am no fan of his he was a human being. That said he was elderly and the elderly die. His life wasn't a sad one so I tend to look back on the life not mourn the loss. While that may sound heartless I did not know him and there are plenty of other people who had less fulfilling lives who died anonymously yesterday. I wish all their families well, hope they move on and are happy again soon.

Oops my bad. I inadvertently used his entire season of AAA which was .839. Still as a good stats guy I'm sure I don't need to remind you of the severe limitations one month's worth of data gives you. I think the larger amount of data we got from his entire season, though still very limited, would be a better indicator. Personally I don't buy into his bench time ruining his ability to hit so to me the idea that Macha somehow ruined his season is still hard to accept but I can respect the difference of opinion on that. It just seems to me since McGehee was hardly used at all for the first 6 weeks or so yet did much better than Gamel when he did get a shot shows it isn't cut and dry that bench time hurts a player over time. When he first starts to get regular AB's he might have some rust but Gamel had enough regular time when he got sent down to get back anything he lost.

Gamel was Branyan-ing AAA pitching before he got the call, and then was treated like a regular old backup player instead of a 23-yo top prospect that annihilated AAA ball & deserved to get handed the keys. McGehee is what he is: a decent option at a corner IF spot, without any more realistic room for growth. I really don't think you can call a .839 OPS in 273 ab's as annihilating AAA. IF it is then you would have to call McGehee and his .855 OPS in 355 ab's at the major league level the same. Maybe Casey doesn't have the room to grow like Gamel but how much growth is needed for a guy who is already annihilating the majors?

It's easy to point fingers. Harder to back up why. Before the blame game starts we should ask a couple questions. Have the Brewers suffered more injuries than average over the last decade? Have the injured players remained injured longer than normal for the types of injuries they had? If the answer is no to either of them then I don't know why the trainers are being blamed.

I refuse to hope for failure, and I am not a sap. Amen to that. I just don't see how getting less revenue and less interest is somehow good for the future. There are a couple assumptions being made that is hard to see as true. 1- Mark A. is really only interested in the bottom line. 2- He believes a good showing at the gates = team performance doesn't matter for continued attendance. While I have no idea how much he really wants to win I also think it very cynical to think he doesn't care at all as long as the gate is good. I also have a hard time thinking he doesn't beleive performance is a key factor in continued attendance even if they draw well this season.