Thurston Fluff

This is either a sign that the Brewers are so deep that they can let someone of his caliber go or they misjudged his value. From everything I have seen so far I'd pick the former. It seem odd Cincy picked him up considering the state they are in. I guess it makes some amount of sense. They needed some help at second and their farm isn't as deep as ours so he probably isn't blocking someone who needs to be on the 40 man. if he hits more to his ceiling than floor they can flip him in the next year or so. If he really blows he still has an option left to boot.

While we all want to win, in some ways years like this are the most fun to follow for hard core fans. I really love the stage of a rebuild where you start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The games themselves are decent and the various story lines over the season are usually interesting. In a weird way it's more fun because of the lack of stress when you fret over every game when the proverbial window is open. Not that I want to be in this stage all the time but life long fans know it's a cycle. For me anyway this is a fun part of that cycle. If we hit another Sal Bando stretch if incompetence I reserve the right to change my mind.

Even if we had all the guys we traded back Thornburg is having some arm issues, Smith wasn't all that great after the trade and well all know the issues with Jefferess. With relievers you can never tell from year to year anyway so I see it as the same.

Thomas is the best of that group, but none of them are anything special. Ryan and Martinez would be better served as backups IMO as neither has the speed that I think is necessary nor do either of them cover overly well. Nothing wrong with them, but just all around average players to me. That is way premature IMHO. Look at the jump both Ryan and Thomas made after one season. That position went from one of the worst in the league to league average with three guys who had a combined two years experience between them. To think that amounts to nothing more than being a backup seems to completely miss the fact that all are on the rise. i also think you are wrong on Martinez ability to cover. He did fairly well at it and better than expected against the run. Though the expectation against the run was admittedly low to start with. Those three can play but to take away their chance to play essentially guarantees they will not ever be more than backups. Which would be fine if you were replacing them with an all pro. None of the ILB's left are anything close to that. I'm not sure any of them are actually better than what we have.

Or it's like autocorrect and your brat and beer will end up being a vat of beer. So either way you win.

The draft has a boatload of high level corners and safeties. I would not be too worried about that. The corners were young and/or banged up. A little health and some well earned experience will go a long ways toward shoring it up. Add in a potential high ceiling guy with the ability to play at least the slot corner right away and I'm not all that worried about corner. As far as MLB goes the reason Burnett played it some down the stretch was because of injury. We need some depth but I just am not a fan of using FA for depth. I am not against using it to replace a subpar starter like we did with Peppers or Woodson but if they aren't demonstrably better at a position that needs to be demonstrably better at why bother?

As an unapologetic optimist I look forward to this thread every season. The offense seems more balanced than it has in quite some time. Both in wich side of the plate they hit from and type of hitters we have. Some power, some speed, some OBP ability. I don't have any actual evidence for this but I always felt balance like that helps teams from getting into long slumps. On the pitching side there are options despite a lack of top talent. We may not have an ace, or something even close, but we also have enough major league level talent that we won't be essentially giving up a game or two every time through the rotation.

Is middle linebacker all that weak now? WE have three player vying for two spots as it is. Two are entering their third season which is usually when players enter their prime. Both of them solidified a position that was God awful the prior season. The other was a pleasant surprise as a rookie. He had a rep of being a good in coverage and didn't disappoint while also being much better against the run than most people anticipated. He has plenty of room to grow if he's allowed to, as do the other two. What Brown would bring is nothing more than we should expect out of what we have now. What he would also bring is less playing time for our current guys to possibly be much better than he is. Better to use that spot on a rookie who might help us in the future when one or more of our current MLB's move on.

Not saying you're wrong but during one of the broadcasts this past week someone said that Davies was. It was probably Rock meaning it was almost certainly wrong but someone said it. He was the only other possibility and it's a preseason game on tv. They probably hyped it a bit. Which is telling about the state of our starting pitching. We have enough talent fill out the back end but not a lot of choices at the top.

How dare you utter that name in here. It's not saying Joe Johnson but still.... I humbly apologize. I thought the cuss filter would have changed it enough to be acceptable.

Revis at one time was the best corner in the game. Even at his peak though 80% of his talent would have been closer to average than top tier. So what would probably be about league average as the most one could expect of him you sacrifice the chance of finding a player who may turn into more than that for years to come. Take Sam Shields for example. He came in as an undrafted rookie and turned into the slot corner in a Superbowl winning team that season. He then became a starter who was better than 80% of Revis at peak value. Hell he was close to that as a rookie. Add in this is an exceptionally strong draft for both safeties and corners it makes no sense at all the use a spot on an aging veteran who will only ever be, at most, average with a significant risk of being well below average. To maintain a long term winning team you need to constantly give young players a chance to learn and grow. The best way not to do that is by always giving those roster spots away to people who are clearly on the downswing and will never be more than they are now.

Wood son was 29 and coming off an injury which held his value down. He also wasn't cut IIRC his contract ran out. It wasn't like the team had to eat money to get rid of him. Revis is 32 and sucked enough without being injured that the team decided to eat some money to get rid of him. The two are not comparable at all. Hardy Nickerson or Jeff Saturday would probably be better comparisons.

No. He pretty much sucked last year and has not been nearly as good as his reputation for a couple years. All name no game free agents is pretty much exactly the type of FA Ted doesn't go after.

I think people are writing off Ranal and Rollins to soon. They both dealt with injuries and looked much better as rookies so there is talent there.

There is nothing wrong with trying something new but new isn't always better. I don't know how long they have been doing it nor what data there is to show it is better than any other program. It would be interesting to see if they have less arm injuries than other teams. One has to wonder though if they are all in on this why not tell Thornburg to do all of them daily instead of just sending him a list of exercises? They may be on the cutting edge of shoulder maintenance but they also appear to be behind the times on communication.

All this is fine and dandy and I think most would agree with you but also most would agree that there are more creative ways to improve this team. Signing Perry again doesn't jump this team up a notch. Might help keep it where it's at but it doesn't make that defense much better if any. The previous post to yours laid out what the Patriots have done so far and that's a team fresh off the Super Bowl. Why can't we use other avenues to improve this team? If TT is not creative enough, time to move on to someone else. OK, so would have letting Perry walk been better? And did I miss something? Is the offseason done? Btw, the Patriots history with big ticket FAs isn't that pretty. The Gilmore signing is a treadmill move if they trade Butler, arguably the better player. And they just lost another starting CB in Logan Ryan. Packers fans love to add up gains and departures then point only to other teams signings while ignoring their losses. It's been shown countless times that the best use of free agency is 2nd and 3rd tier hole pluggers, something GB uses it for all the damn time. The big contracts go to guys who get paid like 1st tier players in price only. True blue chippers and difference makers don't make it to free agency. They're extended and franchised. Green Bay always uses the cap money somehow, some way. They've got more than usual and I'm actually encouraged their letting some guys walk like Hyde (overrated) and hopefully Lang who will be overpaid unless he takes a discount to stay. So unless they sit on $20 million in cap space, I think it's a good bet we see some vets signed at low level deals. Just to expand on this a little the Patriots only have 2 players in the top of the pay scale at their position in Gronk and now Gilmore. That would not be the case if they did a lot of top tier free agent signings. This season they did at corner and it seems like a pretty big overpay. The other being Gronk. They usually do what the Packers do and wait for the crazy period to end and find bargains who fit what they do. Granted they have been more active on the next level of free agents than the Packers but they also don't draft as well so they kind of had to.

While that is high for what he did so far they are paying for what he is going to do. Projecting that is a bit tricky with Perry. This was the first relatively healthy season he's had and he did well in both pass rush and run defense. A guy with pass rush skills and can play the run pretty well is worth what they are paying. As long as he can stay on the field. Something both he and Matthes have had their share of trouble doing. It's one thing to have a guy in a position group that is injury prone but two key members is harder to deal with.

Just a public service message. If you are going to yell at a salesperson over the phone because they didn't tell you something was cheaper somewhere else before they sold it to you, it might behoove you not to tell them you will never use them again. If you are never going to buy anything there ever again any interest in listening to you scream at them vanishes. BTW it's not their job to find the best prices for you.

How could anyone know if Weeks could have done what Perez did or not unless he tried it? It's not too much to ask someone sitting on the bench while being paid like a starter to at least try to be more flexible in that role.

I think every concern you have is legit but I wonder if an extra day off might allow the starters to throw better the days they do start thus go deeper into games more regularly. The only way to find out is to try it.

I thought the same thing. Nate silver seems like a place to start an inquiry. He's a baseball guy who pretty much started the aggregate polling trend in politics. I haven't gone there for a while but Nate Silver's 538 website used to have a place to suggest topics of inquiry and I know they had a sports section. This seems like something right up their ally. I don't know if you knew this but Nate Silver actually created PECOTA. He might not be the least biased guy out there to test this. It is also a really hard thing to track. You can nail a players WAR perfectly but come about it from completely different stats than you expected. That isn't really a win for your system. Projections are also a wide range of predictions turned into an aggregate. So you can be 'wrong' yet still be right very easily. Since stats are stats and he is a stats guy a bias to his system wouldn't really be a problem. All he would be doing is crunching the numbers of different systems and seeing what comes out the other end. It would take a while to see how accurate it is vs single systems but I would think anyone who created a system would like the chance to see how their system compares to an aggregate of all systems. It's more his experience aggregating different means of measuring the same thing that I think would help make sense of all the different systems.

I thought the same thing. Nate silver seems like a place to start an inquiry. He's a baseball guy who pretty much started the aggregate polling trend in politics. I haven't gone there for a while but Nate Silver's 538 website used to have a place to suggest topics of inquiry and I know they had a sports section. This seems like something right up their ally.

Adding the most talent to the 40 man roster as possible is something a team should be doing no matter what stage of competitiveness they are in. I like the idea of using the bottom of the 40 man to filter through fringe players and see what they have.

No. Not until the penalty for gambling on baseball is lifted anyway.

But he would have less impact on each game he plays.