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Thurston Fluff

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Everything posted by Thurston Fluff

  1. Thurston Fluff
    Well done. It almost makes me wish Wendy Selig Prieb was still the owner. She would have fit so perfectly in this.
  2. Thurston Fluff
    I was never a huge baseball fan as a kid. If it was on tv I liked watching the games but didn't follow or know any teams. In 1982 as an 18 year old just out of high school i worked at a factory on the night shift. I basically put a nut on a bolt for 8 hours straight all summer. The dude next to me was a huge Brewers fan and he always had the games on. Trying to think of one memory outside of the obvious ones is hard. I remember almost to the moment when I was hooked as a fan. I was standing there listening to a late game and thinking, I'm perfectly happy standing here putting a nut on a bolt when the Brewers are on.
  3. Thurston Fluff
    I was never a huge baseball fan as a kid. If it was on tv I liked watching the games but didn't follow or know any teams. In 1982 as an 18 year old just out of high school i worked at a factory on the night shift. I basically put a nut on a bolt for 8 hours straight all summer. The dude next to me was a huge Brewers fan and he always had the games on. Trying to think of one memory outside of the obvious ones is hard. I remember almost to the moment when I was hooked as a fan. I was standing there listening to a late game and thinking, I'm perfectly happy standing here putting a nut on a bolt when the Brewers are on.
  4. Thurston Fluff
    I often wonder what impact foreign leagues have on it. It just seems intuitive that having more players have longer chances to become major league players we would see better overall production. Add how much international scouting has progressed over the past decade and I wouldn't be surprised to see surges like this over time without any PEDs, improved bats or tighter wound balls.
  5. Thurston Fluff
    Just my personal opinion but I don't believe Cooper was traded because he was blocked. He has options left and neither Thames nor Aguilar are so established that it's a slam dunk they are going to be productive beyond the years in which they could exercise Copper's options. I'm not sure they planned on using a 40 man spot on him next year and decided to get something for him that they would be willing to use a 40 man roster spot on.
  6. Thurston Fluff
    I've been working on a bouillabaisse recipe for a few months now and just realized I never actually made the original recipe exactly as it says once in that time.
  7. Thurston Fluff
    For as often as I'm wrong about things here (Briggs and I argued vehemently that you can't just make up an injury to protect a rule five player. Then our rule five player magically had an injury about five days after he had accumulated enough service time to keep him is one that comes to mind.) This is one I called last year when some thought the Brewers should aim for contention further down the road because the Cubs were just too good. I said back then they would have some issues with players just like we did when our great young talent came up and hit some rough patches. Hardy, Weeks, Hart and company were good major league players but they all didn't turn out to be stars for years on end. Neither will the Cubs young talent. Schwarber looks more like Weeks than Fielder. Addison Russell appears to be as streaky as Hardy and someone is going to have injuries along the way like Hart and Braun did. Things rarely work out like they did last season for the Cubs. Let alone year after year for the same team.
  8. Thurston Fluff
    Almost all businesses operate on a budget, usually annual. Braun's salary in future seasons will be a part of that budget, unless it gets moved sooner as a "prepaid expense". If the Brewers pay it earlier then they would discount that for the time value of money - it wouldn't cost "millions more". Discounting $19M (2019 salary) for two years at 5% per year yields a net present value of ~$17,200,000, or a difference of $1.76M. If you were to offer to split that with Braun evenly it would cost $880K, and I'm sure Braun would jump at it. Discounting Braun's 2020 salary ($17M) by three years at 5%/year yields $14,685,000 net present value. I don't think the OP was intending to entirely pre-pay it, but to front-load some of it so the future salaries (that will count against future budgets) will be reduced, allowing for the addition of more players/salary expense in those future season's budgets. Most businesses set their budget based on how much they have to spend. If they take the same money they are saving now and invest it that money will grow so they can set a higher budget later. If they just give it to Braun now all the money that investment would have made is lost.
  9. Thurston Fluff
    If you extend Arcia (or anyone else) during the pre-arby years, you expect to get a substantial discount to market value. That makes the player very valuable on the trade market if a solid replacement is ready in the minors. Look at the Lucroy and Gomez deals to see what teams are willing to pay for a good player signed to a "team friendly" contract. I hope that we are able to keep good players coming up through the system, allowing us to trade guys who are more expensive with less team control. That's the only real way I can imagine that a smaller-revenue team like the Brewers can hope to sustain success for longer than a "window." If done correctly, you can actually get better when the vet is traded, as we would have a strong replacement and could use the trade to add talent in an area of greater need. That is fine if we get a Lucroy style deal but lets be real about how often that happens with top prospects. If Arcia wants to sign a well below market value contract now fine. I don't really see that happening. He knows he is a top prospect already playing well at a young age. Lucroy didn't. Even then it isn't like Arcia wouldn't have any value with one less season of control. So then we have to measure how much an extra season of control will return to us vs the risk of giving out a decent sized contract.
  10. Thurston Fluff
    I think we have to also take into consideration what we have coming up at that position. Why pay a lot for a relatively small upgrade in production in one area and not have the money to get a larger upgrade somewhere else? Arcia circa 2020 might be better than someone like Dubon but is he worth more than Dubon plus the extra money we can spend to upgrade a true weakness?
  11. Thurston Fluff
    The brewers pick up Oakland's castoff and he contributes more here than he did Oakland right away in the same year that the Cardinals release a big contract free agent because he sucked so bad. Those are two things that usually happen in the reverse order. I guess the good Karma moved north.
  12. Thurston Fluff
    I love how this team makes pitchers work every inning. They just don't seem to have a lot of three up, three down innings. I was thinking about that a couple days ago when the Brewers scored 7 runs in one inning but did little else the rest of the game. Even the years where we had good offenses it seemed to be more boom or bust like that. This season they seem to put pressure on pitchers each and every inning more often than not.
  13. Thurston Fluff
    True, but beside the point. I was talking about what sample size we should base their performance on. There is nothing that says at least the last year's worth of performance shouldn't count. It's how we measure everything else in baseball. We don't have a first half MVP. We don't take the first half winners and second half winners. So why should we choose all stars based on one half on one season? It's simply because some people believe how well a player starts the season should be the only determining factor. Obviously plenty of people feel differently or Bryant wouldn't have a shot at it while Shaw doesn't. It's fine to believe only this season should count when you vote but that doesn't mean people who take more into consideration are wrong. There Is at least as much reason to take more into consideration than a player having a hot start to a season than not Personally I think there is more reason to take more into account than not.
  14. Thurston Fluff
    So you'd leave your hottest hitter in the 8th spot? Even if you take his entire season's work as the baseline, he belongs near the top, not the bottom. If you move players around based on the hottest hand you have a continually changing order. I am not a fan of that. You will always be setting your order on what someone did over a short period of time as opposed to a longer period of time. I not a fan of that. Overall there is relatively no difference between hitting 8th, 3rd, leadoff or any other position. The major difference seems to be more about prestige or respect than anything else. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the respect angle may be part of what you are getting at. If that is the case keep in mind he is a 22 year old rookie. A month or two of being a little better than someone a few slots higher in the batting order just isn't enough to make me think there is any value is the move. Dude is good where he is and there is no reason what so ever to change what is working.
  15. Thurston Fluff
    Why should only the first half a season count? Why a sport that constantly measures itself over a long period of time and is constantly aware of small sample sizes should pick it's best players based on half a season is beyond me. Wha about slow starters who get better in the second half? Or the reverse? In 1989 Robin Yount won league MVP but wasn't an all star. Let that sink in for a second. The league MVP wasn't an all star the year he was MVP. To top it off he finished 11th the previous season in MVP votes and 18th the season before that. He was not an all star in any of those seasons. Three seasons of top 20 MVP votes and one MVP and no all star appearances during that time. How does that make sense? Only if to many people think only how fast you start the season is the only thing that matters. I don't really care if the fans vote someone is for having a great half season or a manager is forced to choose someone from every team. It doesn't change my belief that all stars are not made in half a season. If you really think Shaw deserves it more than Bryant would you be ok with a straight up trade of the two? If you would why? After all, Shaw is better over the past 80ish games. Isn't that all that counts when assessing who is a star?
  16. Thurston Fluff
    If the only thing that counts is how well a player is doing so far this season players like Shaw have an argument over players like Bryant. But all stars should be judged on more than how well they do for the first half a season. Shaw was doing quite well the first half of last season as well and tanked the second half. As such I don't have a problem with guys like Bryant getting a shot over guys like Shaw. If Shaw puts together a good second half this season and maintains it through next he will get his shot.
  17. Thurston Fluff
    It's a good question, not sure the answer but I think it's still a possibility. He is a classic buy-low guy. Two-time all-star having a down year, arby eligible after this year but team control through 2020. Even if the team is struggling, if he gets back to career norms he suddenly has trade value to acquire young, controllable pieces or even be a part of a contender in 2-3 years. He's under control for as long as Thames is and roughly the same age. So there is precedence saying they would have. The goal is to accumulate as much controllable talent as possible. I don't think that goal is related to the state the team was in but the organizational philosophy moving forward.
  18. Thurston Fluff
    Anyone who says always should go back for more training on personal management and training. It could be Cravy won't let it go. If he is still pouting or causing problems internally Stearns may have decided he is not worth the headache. Or this is a wake up call. Either way how someone handles themselves after the fact is not always decided in a few days. If it is some form of discipline, it is for how he's dealing with what happened not what he said about it. I don't really think it is about disciplining him in any event. An organization that has stated it's goal is to accumulate as much talent as possible wouldn't go to this extreme for a relatively minor incident that happened three months ago. To me this is just about the organization thinking that spot would be better spent on someone else. They have done that in the past with decent success. Perez being a prime example.
  19. Thurston Fluff
    That was who I thought of right away when reading about Shaw's stealing. Good base stealers aren't always the ones who steal the most bases. Some just have a knack for when to steal them.
  20. Thurston Fluff
    Not to nitpick but the prorated portion of his contract puts him around $1.5 million and we also can subtract Bandy's salary so it's probably more like a $1.25 million gamble.
  21. Thurston Fluff
    Nobody is lost, the major league production will be no worse off and we have more talent throughout the system. Stearns said the goal is to improve the talent throughout the system. This move does that. Good job IMHO.
  22. Thurston Fluff
    Ditto. Add in the sample sizes need to be larger for defense than offense and you have about as useful a stat as batting average over any given month. That said our outfield corner defense isn't good. I don't really care as much about corner outfield defense as I do the infield and center so to me it isn't a big deal. I'll take well below average defenders who can hit over a gold glove right/left fielder who struggles to be an average offensive player any day.
  23. Thurston Fluff
    I have no idea which play was harder to make but Arcia's looked better to me because of the throw. I'm not saying we shouldn't have traded Escobar but had we not traded him we'd have went from Hardy to Escobar to Arcia at short. I'd be hard pressed to think of any team that had three consecutive defensive wizards at short that equalled those three.
  24. Thurston Fluff
    Woah, there has to be a better one. Heck I think I have seen better by Arcia. Really good display of how strong of an arm he has, but it isn't like he had to really rush it or do anything off balance. He was playing deep and made a nice dive, but he has a lot of time to get up and set his feet. Definitely a SC Top 10 play of the day...but I really don't think it was much more than that. It doubt it is the best ever but I think you are underselling how great his arm is that allows such plays. He didn't have to rush the throw because of his arm. Virtually anyone else would have had to rush and throw off balance to make up for not having Arcia's arm. That doesn't make the play itself any less amazing.
  25. Thurston Fluff
    Melvin and Dalton are both in the same league as far as I'm concerned. They both left the team in better shape than they found them in and built a team that could contend for a championship. The major difference appears to be the person who took over for them. I often wondered what might have been with a competent front office post Dalton. With Stearns, I think we might get something close to an answer.
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