Thurston Fluff

The only answers are to improve the draft regulations, increase revenue sharing of media dollars, and forcing cheap teams to invest a minimal amount back into player salary and development. The union will not allow a salary floor either. Teams that get money form other teams are only allowed to spend that money on certain things now but it is not allowed in the CBA to force teams to pay a minimum in salary on the major league roster.

Given he still had one option left and the Brewers aren't exactly overflowing with OF that had played above A ball, (they had to re-sign 30 year old retread Adam Stern (a lesser player) to replace him), it's a puzzling move. Not likely to backfire into anything significant, but you never know. with Burns, Weeks and Riske coming off the 60 day DL they would be over the 40 man limit. They can cut Riske to get under but that leaves no room on the 40 man for new pitchers. If Melvin is telling the truth he wants to add 2. Trading some players will open up space but limits the options if it has to be a strict player for player swap. At this point I think having a little flexibility on the 40 man is more useful than Bourgeois would be IMHO.

A very large portion of Yankee fans grew up as fans of the team before they had such a huge payroll advantage. They've had a payroll advantage since the 80's. They just didn't use it very well until the 90's. That may be true, but the problem is now, the Yankee's can just tell players "Hey, we'll pay you xx million up front if you let us draft you in the 3rd round" -- when players are now deciding where they go, instead of going to the first team that wants to draft them, something is wrong. That is an exaggeration. They cannot tell a player to not get drafted nor does first round talent make it to the third strictly so they can get signed by the Yankees. Players have little control over who drafts them despite what is said. Otherwise Washington wouldn't have Strasburg now. Granted the very elite players who hire Boras do scare some teams away for signability reasons but they never make it to the third round. I'd also argue the Yankees are far from the only team that would take a chance on them so there is no way they Yankees control the draft process enough to land them top prospects in the third round. They get picked up by teams in the mid to late first round at worst. Ialso think if that was true the Yankees would have a much better fram system than they do. I do think it makes some amount of difference but relatively small. Slotting would make players earn their contracts and I'm all for it but that is more of an issue of how players divide their money as opposed to how rich teams get richer. Maybe Washington signing Strasburg means the don't pay Nick Johnson thus the wealthy teams get a shot at him but will never get a shot at the phenom in the draft.

He's not a bad 25th man at all, due to his versatility and speed, but his production does not begin to deserve a 40 man spot all winter. He is if you don't have any better options. Houston doesn't have a good farm system. If he can be a decent 25th man on the roster and there is little else on the 40 man that can't be exposed why not take him?

This is mostly semantics but when you offer only 62% of the market rate, that's not really a fair offer in my mind. It was 62% of what he got not the market rate at the time the Brewers offered him the deal.

I don't get how their fans can really get all that excited about it either. sorry to double dip but I don't get it either. It's like playing the all madden team against the Lions on playstation. Of course you win more often but what was the point? Just not much fun to win a rigged game and far more frustrating to lose it. I like the fact that Melvin has said on several occasions he thinks small market teams presents the real challenge of running an organization that he likes as GM. We may not get as many world championships as the Yankees but we will never yawn while watching out team win one either.

It hurt them in the 2009 draft, but will not affect the 2010 draft and was a very smart move... instead of losing their first round pick 3 straight years signing one player at a time, they loaded up on FA in a single draft year and only gave up 1,2,3 in 2009. That assumes they won't be getting any free agents in the future which they most certainly will have to. Considering their age at positions like catcher, outfield, the bullpen and rotation they will need to find replacements for a lot of their team in the near future. 2. If they ever let a player walk in FA they will still get compensation picks just like everyone else, comp picks have kept systems like the Dodgers and Red Sox strong even though they are players in the FA market. They only let players walk when they are less valuable than the ones they sign. I don't really see those big market teams letting too many class A free agents walk. But for those rare occasions they do every player they let walk they replace with another free agent. I think teams like Boston and L.A. will end up in the same spot as the Yankees are now. So far they have some players they can plug in just as the Yankees did in the 90's. That will change as they get further along in FA market spending sprees. I think some of the market mechanisms in place like draft pick compensation takes a decade or more to effect teams negatively. Teams like Boston have players in their system to take over and they use their FA losses to somewhat compensate for it. That makes for a long slow march to farm system depletion. As those compensation picks gradually lose ground to other teams, or are fewer and further in between, they end up having to pay to replace them. Just look at what the Yankees looked like in the 90's. They had a stocked farm system, a great team on the field only partially complemented with the best free agents money could buy. Then though trades and draft pick losses their farm got depleted and they ended up with old, expensive players that could only be replaced when they retired or let go as less than type A free agents. They then had to replace them with younger but far more expensive Free agents. That doesn't even take into consideration what the trade market does to these teams. For every mid-season trade these teams make they lose prospects they cannot easily replace. Since most of them resign with those high payroll teams they get no compensation at all in return. Though they get to keep their draft pick which ends up being lost for another free agent signing. It is a long term problem for big markets but, in the end, a problem none the less. I guess what I'm saying is while we don't have competitive balance yet the system does have some mechanisms in it that, over time, can level the playing field somewhat. Over time it still takes good management and sound personnel decisions to win constantly. It is far easier to be the Yankees but it is not nearly as impossible to be the Brewers as it used to be.

Even scarier is that many of the top teams have discovered player development, so the one advantage that the small market teams had is going away. Same thing happened with the Oakland A's. The problem with that is they don't have the draft picks to get good prospects. The Yankees, for example, lost it's top two picks and the third round pick is a lot lower than it would appear after all the compensatory sandwich picks are added in. They can go international but they do not get top picks in the daft. That is sort of the catch 22 for some teams and the system as a whole. They can't develop enough of their players internally so they have to sign free agents which means they don't have enough picks left to find good prospects. Thus they are stuck in a cycle of spending to get better. It hurts the big payroll team in the sense that they could have less of a payroll for the same championship caliber team and it drives up the price for future free agents thus they get caught in a never ending cycle of free agent spending that eventually will get so high even they cannot afford all of them. It hurts the lesser payroll teams because they lose their best players.

Yeah turn the public against the player! That'll be a great idea! If he takes the deal then the public won't be against him. If he doesn't so what? He won't be here anyway.

I like to hear both sides of the story and if Jeff is reading I hope you are doing well. I never had any reason to like or dislike him and thought he did his job well enough for us in some very difficult times. I do think while one or two incidents can be explained away when you see so many of them popping up in different places with different people the person should own some of that as being on him. Not all but some. I really don't think it's always everyone else's fault. The interview itself was done very well. It allowed us to see him from a different point of view while not avoiding uncomfortable questions. Not a candy coated piece by any means. Excellent job.

It's a forum for Brewers fans. Some are fans of the team more than the game. I usually like the playoffs but when it's years like this where the only team left are big money teams it seems more like playing the all madden team on the playstation. Sure everything is played at it's highest level but it's not really teams as much as all star lineups put together solely based on one teams interests. It's really hard to get into rooting for one super rich, well stocked team vs another. It's sort of like cheering for bankers to start getting their multi-million dollar bonuses back while being laid off.

I don't know if all of us know Bush will suck again. He was pretty good befoer the injury and was pretty much average his entire career. Average doesn't suck average would have had us back in the playoffs this year. As for Parra being make or break lefties with great stuff are never in make or break years while in their 20's. See DeLaRosa, Jorge. I like the Peterson hire in that he already knows the job and has a well thought out philosophy he will implement. I like the forward thinking scientific types so another positive in my opinion. I loved Bill Castro but he was sort of behind the times in some regards. When I read in spring he had to learn how to use the computer to set his pitchers workouts I had thought that was not a good sign.

The balloon (20 ft x 5 ft) doesn't seem to be big enough to lift a 50 pound kid. I don't think he was ever inside I didn't notice the dimensions the first time I read it. It is not nearly big enough. That is why the plywood was so thin. It has to be because Mylars have very little lift for it's weight. Not sure why the parents wouldn't have known it wasn't capable of it if they have used it before. One of the local tv stations came by the shop when my wife was here and she told them at the time he couldn't have been in it. While they were here the reporter got a call saying they found him and he was never on the balloon. Strike one up for the Balloon lady.

Not good. Mylar balloons are bad for the outdoors mostly due to the fact that they are not good in wind at all. They can leak fairly easy especially at their seems which are just heat sealed. They also conduct electricity very easily. I hope he did fallout at a low enough height to survive and can be found. It would probably be the best way for him to survive. I don't think he could go so high that the air pressure difference pops it since mylars lose a lot of lift power as the air gets colder but that is not a good type of balloon to have for a controlled landing.

I will certainly go with something measured objectively than the observations of any one person. If you go by the sample sizes there are to work with you can't find anything more from measured stats than you can from eyeballing it or listening to what people in the know say. It is impossible to compare the two using ZR at this point. From comments made by Melvin like he is a once in a generation defensive shortstop or Gord Ash who said he makes a spectacular play a couple times a week I think we can know more about their defensive abilities than what ZR tells us. Hardy is very good but Escobar is supposed to be great. Until we have more numbers to work with ZR is useless. Except Wolf wants to and likes to be playing near the west coast for whatever reason. I don't believe the Brewers were even in the running to get Wolf last year even if they did go after him. Maybe so. But I tend to think money changes minds. I hope it can anyway.

I'm not sure why they do that but I have seen that posted in lots of bras around here. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/laugh.gif

I thought we should have went after Wolf last season. He is left handed and was coming back for some injuries that depressed his value. Now he has put in a pretty decent year and will be more expensive but probably still as good a pitcher as we can hope to land. If he was willing to do a shorter deal for more per year I would jump all over that. We might have to pay more than he is worth but that is the case for any free agent. It is the most expensive way to go but a lefty with good stuff and a decent track record is pretty much what the doctor ordered. If we land him then it would be time to focus on a young pitcher who is cheap during the same time Wolf costs us more than he is truly worth so his cost is offset.

I don't recall Oakland having a veteran laden team. He hardly played Gerut at all until injuries set in. Given how poorly Hart was playing it seems reasonable that if Macha was more inclined to go veteran that would have been a likely place to have done so. He used several young players quite a bit including McGehee and I don't recall Oakland having a veteran laden team. He hardly played Gerut at all until injuries set in. Given how poorly Hart was playing it seems reasonable that if Macha was more inclined to go veteran that would have been a likely place to have done so. He used McGehee, YoGa and Stetter quite a bit this season. So if he is willing to use some quite a bit and others not so much there must be some other reason than age going into it.

I think you take care of what you can take care of when you have the opportunity. It may be a priority to revamp the starting pitching but that can't be addressed now. I don't think Melvin would do this deal if he thought it would hamper his ability to address the starting pitching. If fact it could help him in the sense that it could clarify the way he goes about revamping the starting rotation. Cost certainty is going to come into play when deciding who to target and what way to get starting pitching. If he has the bullpen set then he knows how much he is working with when revamping the stating rotation. Knowing his parameters makes his job more focused. He will know how much he has to spend and what avenues he should go to fill those needs.

If the Yankees win it all and there is no excitement generated by it I think we might see baseball as a whole wake and uneven playing field as a real problem. It's one thing to have big market teams win a lot if it generates interest in the baseball world as a whole but quite another if all it does is make the rest of the baseball world yawn. It's probably the only way to really change the thinking of the owners.

totally agree endaround. (how often does that happen?)http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif I'd rather they revamp their AAA staff with younger guys via trade than stick older ones there. Anyone his age who could realistically be sent to AAA is probably not good enough to help if needed.

I'm not a huge fan of Macha but I don't think he was the problem this year. Generally speaking I don't think managers make all that much difference. Not so much so that we should have a revolving door looking for the perfect one. It hurts more to have constant change than it does to have one slightly less perfect than another.

He's at least good enough to be a swing man to start with. He could be a long man in the pen or spot start on occasion. If he comes in and light it up in spring maybe he starts out as the #5 and Suppan goes to the long man role. He's young, left handed, cheap and has decent stuff. What more can we realistically expect out of the 5th/6th man in the rotation?

He has proven time and time again in Texas as well as Milwaukee that he is incapable of putting together a top flight pitching staff. They were one of the top pitching staffs in the league in 08 weren't they? You also have to question Melvin if he believes that Macha is the right man to handle young players. The guy just seems spooked at the thought of giving a young player the chance to play. Last year they fired a manager who was very good with young players. Now that they have a taskmaster who prefers veterans people are again unhappy. I think it says more about how impossible it is to makes some people happy than how good the GM is at finding competent managers. Dan O'Dowd is a free agent after the season and the owner would be smart to hire him away from Colorado. That would be the Dan O'Dowd who after this season will have managed to have 3 winning seasons out of 11. The guy who has a career record of 757-849 as of today. The guy who has less than half the post season appearances of Melvin run teams. The guy who acquired pitchers Denny Neagle and Mike Hampton to long-term contracts in an effort to build around them. I guess the grass is always greener…until you have to eat that grass.

Schneider was worse than Kendall this year and turns 33 in November. No thanks. Earlier I thought Chris Snyder might be a good buy low pickup but he's been awful this year. Maybe he'd be worth a shot, but I wouldn't give up anything of value. If you take the Money Ball approach these are the types of guys who may be undervalued now days. They have shown themselves to be good players in the past but have struggled recently so their value is depressed. You get them cheap and they don't have to rebound much to be better than what we have now. It's a small gamble with a possible big return. fi they still suck so what? We suck now and there are very few good answers at a price that won't inhibit the team from getting more pitching. If it works out then we have an abundance of players at a position that is always in short supply of. That would be nice chips to trade with next year.