Thurston Fluff

I just don't buy into the idea we will get back to winning by tanking a few games and getting a marginally higher pick next year. The chances of players drafted next season of making an impact in the next five years is slim to begin with. We can and should expect to be contenders again before then. I think guys learning how to play hard to the end, understand what it takes to win late in the season, knowing no matter what management is going to expect you to win every day has more impact on the group of players we can expect to be here to help turn this thing around as fast as possible. I also think where we draft is far less important than who is drafting and how deep the draft is. So pencil me in as one of the people who want to win everyday. There just is never a good excuse for wanting to lose.

I have a feeling Houston fans are thinking the same thing. They got two major league players under team control for more than a year. One is a bona fide all star while the throw in of the deal has been nothing short of spectacular for them.

It's not on his agents. Contracts in baseball are not supposed to be performance based. That's what the MLBPA has fought for. I personally don't have any sympathy for a millionaire baseball player getting screwed out of being a larger millionaire, but I can still understand why Garza would be mad. Yes it is. They are the ones who negotiate the contract. Making sure all the i's are dotted and the t's crosses is a major part of their job. They add all kinds of crazy things in them. AS far as them not supposed to be performance based I don't know where you are getting that from. Alex Rodriquez has incentives if he hits certain career milestones. A lot of players have all star bonuses in their contracts. If those aren't performance based I don't know what is. If Garza and his agent wanted to negotiate the clause to mean only lost playing time due to being on the DL then they should have clearly written it out to say that.

I have no sympathy for a player who doesn't live up to his contract and the team uses a loophole to reduce the damage done by said poor performance. Teams can't get out of contracts signed by PED users even though the team didn't know he was on PEDs without specific language stating such. While we all know that clause was put in there for health reasons it doesn't specify that is the only reason. If he didn't specifically add that to the clause then it's on him and his agent not the Brewers.

If they are putting him straight back into the rotation next year I just don't see the reason for such a move. Unless of course there are injury concerns. I mean sure they can get a tiny look at other players...but that really won't tell them much. A start or two is pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I'd be for this move if they were taking away his spot and make him earn it back, but they are basically taking 4-5 starts away and have already named him to the 2016 rotation. Really confusing if you ask me. Makes it sound like they are just trying to avoid paying him more in the future. Which I really don't care about, but the players union will and so will players around the league. Pretty much everyone knows why they are doing this. It's to reduce the damage done by a bad contract. If he was playing well and the team sat him simply because they didn't want to pay him when they were rebuilding other players would justifiably have a problem with that. That isn't the case here. He just sucks. It will have no more effect on Brewer/player relations than sending Hardy down to AAA to get an extra year of control. In both cases the action was justified by the production. You just can't be bad and get sympathy in pro sports.

No offense Matt, but you can't play as horribly as you did and expect the team to fall all over itself to help you reach financial incentives. Incentives, I might add, the team would have to pay for the honor of keeping your suckitude around for another year. Dude, do you not know you REALLY sucked this season?

Obviously not since it has been tried several times and failed as Danzig6767 pointed out. At some point what actually happens has to count for more than what someone thinks should happen. It doesn't work as often as it doesn't work with a proven guy. Trevor Hoffman? Anecdotal evidence of that one time it didn't work doesn't mean it never worked. Seemed to work fine for the 2008 Brewers. Things haven't changed in the last 50 years. Teams still win 95% of the games they lead going into the 9th inning. http://joeposnanski.com/the-closer-you-get/ I don't get what your point is. It doesn't give any breakdown to show if there was a difference in the win % of a team that used set roles vs those who went by committee. How each pen was used is kind of a major factor to determining if one way is better than another. Sure some eras had lower scoring than others but again what does that prove about roles in the pen vs using relievers in every role depending on the situation? If the point is that teams won as many games without set roles in the 60's I think you are mistaken. The 60's was when teams started to have relief specialists. http://1960sbaseball.com/1960sBaseball_Top10_relief.html I should also point out the idea of using any reliever in any inning based on the situation is far more than just the ninth inning. Since I think you were addressing the specific argument originally brought up by Danzig6767 and supported by me I think it is fair to address as you did. Although using the 08 Brewers closer by committee as an example of how well it works is pretty hard to figure out. That season the pen blew 20 of 65 save chances. Of that number Torres, who ended up getting most of them after he was the only one getting the opportunity, saved 28 out of 35. That leaves the rest of the closer by committee members with a whopping 17 out of 30 saves. If you are using a season when the team blew 20 saves, and only one had anything close to a respectable save rate, as an example of success for closer by committee I think you may find it hard to convince anyone it is the way to go. As far as your Trevor Hoffman comment goes I have no idea what you are getting at. If it was how bad he flopped his final season even though he had a set role what does that prove? I don't think anyone said just having a set role means everyone will succeed. It just means it gives them the best chance to succeed. The pen itself didn't get better that season by going to closer by committee. They got better because Axford took over that role and did well in it.

Obviously not since it has been tried several times and failed as Danzig6767 pointed out. At some point what actually happens has to count for more than what someone thinks should happen.

Why couldn't a manager tell three of his bullpen guys to be ready for the 8th and 9th inning and where a team is in the lineup will determine who he uses and when? That is letting them know their role. Also, wouldn't a pitcher be more comfortable knowing he's going in against hitters he has a track record of getting out? To me, that would be a lot more comfortable pitching than some guy batting .400 off me with 15 home runs but I'm in because I'm the closer or 8th inning man. If you are in the 6th inning you know the 8th inning is coming up. You don't know who will be hitting then until it happens. What happens when each pitcher did the best against one of the three batters up in the inning? Then there is the major issue of managing the game based on small sample sizes. To run an entire pen based on how a few pitchers did against a few batters seems to leave a lot of uncertainty for everyone. What about the fact that some players have never faced some pitchers? I think that would be a lot of players a lot of the time. What about young players? They don't have any record to go on at all. That isn't even touching the concept of performance based incentives. That usually comes in the form of promotions. In the pen going from middle relief to late innings or closing is being promoted. Again it's human nature to work for such things as recognition and potential career improving actions by your boss. Personally I think the better pitchers should be put in the most prestigious roles no matter how they did in a handful of appearances against said batter. I also believe most pitchers tend to do better when they know they are going to be called on for a set role. I do not believe a set role can realistically be based on how someone did in his previous 15 appearances against one batter. Thus the only realistic way of providing a stable predictable bullpen is to give players roles. Obviously performance dictates how long those set roles are but that is not the same as not having roles. For all the criticism Ned Yost got for his bullpen management and set roles he has managed to have one of the very best relief corps in the game the past two years. While the majority of the credit goes to the pitchers, how he handles them has some effect on how well they are doing.

If pitchers were robots roles wouldn't matter. I tend to think people to do better when they know their role and what is expected of them. If you simply use players based on match ups players don't get a chance to get a routine they can get comfortable in. If someone is watching the game develop they pretty much know if they are going to get in the game or not. Sure things can change in a hurry but they usually don't. Humans being human, they tend to mentally prepare themselves for what the day most likely will bring them. While I understand some players don't need comfortable routines to pitch well some, I would argue more, players do. What's more, I don't think nearly as many, if any, players do better with chaotic use. So the chances of getting the most out of the most players may very well lay in giving them predictable roles. Even if the particular match up that day says it shouldn't.

Closers are overrated but relievers who don't flame out in a year or so aren't. In fact I would argue they are one of the more underrated assets in baseball.

But to me KRod is much closer to not playing up to his contract as soon as next year. I can see him hitting a cliff at any point in time and having negative value. Hence I would have moved him in July for best deal on table. Or another way to put it, if KRod was a free agent today, would you sign him to a $7.5M contract for next year? I guess I wouldn't, as I am punting next year anyways. The only good thing about having KRod next year is that Jeffress (or whoever ends up closing) will not be accumulating closer stats now and he will be cheaper in the arby years. I have much more confidence that the other three players, Braun, Lucroy, and Lind, barring injury, will play to a minimum to their contract cost next year. What about him makes you think he is close to falling off a cliff as early as next season? He has already shown he can be effective without a great fastball. He's 33 not 38. He's been a legitimate all star two years running. His ERA+ is the exact same as it was 10 years ago. Outside of a lack of velocity there is nothing about him that screams ready to implode. Considering he has been working without that velocity for several years, not to mention a couple all star appearances, I don't see how that makes him ready to implode. As far as the value of his contract being more likely than the others to be underwater next year I just don't see that either. Lucroy is likely to be a better value but not Braun. Sure Braun has come back to being a well above average player at his position. But K-Rod never left those ranks. And he makes less than half of what Braun will make next season.

There seems to be a lot of negativity about him. Not just here but around baseball he doesn't seem to get his due for how good he's been. Justifiably so considering his off field issues. It's hard to like someone who hits women. That said we don't have to like him to understand he is a very good player and has been for quite a while. On the field he is an elite closer on a reasonable contract. That certainly has value in and of itself. Add to it, by all accounts he is a positive influence on the rest of the relievers. He is pretty much universally viewed as the leader of the bullpen. That has value too. Even to a team who may not need an elite closer next season. While we may not be in contention during the life of his contract there is nothing that says he cannot be extended after it. He obviously likes it here and is willing to work on short term contracts for less money than his production says he's worth. He's already reinvented himself from a flame thrower to an effective soft tosser who knows how to pitch so the fear of him becoming ineffective shouldn't be all that high. Given his ability to pitch with average stuff and the willingness to work on short, team friendly contracts he isn't likely to be a waste of payroll for any significant amount of time. To sum up my feelings about his future here, I understand he won't help us win a pennant next year but we do need people like him to help develop the young players who will help us win one down the road. Maybe even be good enough himself three years down the road to help us directly.

Honestly it sounds like he was a corporate yes man so I bet the owners loved him. I got the impression it is an ownership problem. it does look that way but that does not mean Jack Z. is blameless. He either agreed to be a yes man ahead of time or failed to stand up to them when it became apparent that was what the owners wanted. Either way it is not a good reflection on him.

It was in reference to a thread on here a few years back asking if he was the new Billy Beane.

So much for the new Billy Beane. Classic example of the Peter Principal in action.

What a coincidence it's also my first fantasy bowling draft tonight.

When multiple teams have the same issue with a player it probably means that player is at least partially to blame. That said, considering baseball is supposed to be entertainment, too many teams have a very boring view of how the game is supposed to be played.

No one says he is an ace but his 215 IP, 3.13 ERA, 9.3 K/9, 2.9 BB/9, 1.0 HR/9 line kind of does. Obviously he also has no hit stuff. It seems odd nobody, myself included, look at everything but his numbers to determine what level pitcher he is.

Good players are only truly cheap their first three seasons. After that they get paid more in line with how good they are. If he keeps pitching the way he is he won't be cheap when he hits his arbitration years. The risk with him is more about how long he can maintain this level of play vs someone with better pure stuff. Guys with funky deliveries who rely on deception and location are going to be more of a risk to maintain their production than guys who have great stuff. If he can't maintain it he might be getting paid in his last couple arbitration years for being good in the first few years of his career. If that happens it would hardly be considered a value. Personally I hope he does keep it going. He is a great story and a very easy person to pull for.

http://cdn1.sbnation.com/imported_assets/896484/Yuni1B.gif.opt.gif http://cdn0.sbnation.com/imported_assets/896487/YB.gif You can blame him for a lot of things that season. The playoffs are not among them. In the Cardinals series he didn't allow five runs to score. He did help score five runs. He didn't allow 8 hits to get through. He did get 8 hits. He didn't allow 13 total bases by his bad defense. He did hit for 13 total bases. All in all I get he wasn't a great defender. I also agree he was horrible for us overall. Except the playoffs. In that single series I think it is pretty safe to say his offense more than offset his defense. If you disagree fine, we'll leave it at that. Don't want to hijack the thread any further.

How was Yuni's .875 OPS against the Cardinals part of the reason we missed the World Series?

I like the way they are approaching this. No scorched earth, start from scratch mentality. Just work on a smooth transition from one to the next. I also think moving Melvin into a senior advisory position allows the team to tap into all the knowledge he gathered throughout his time in the league. No worries about our scouting director hacking another team's system to find out if they are stealing proprietary info. It would seem like a waste of resources, for instance, to have spent years revamping how to draft and develop pitching if we jettisoned Melvin now and he took that info with him at about the time it is starting to pay off.

Agreed. I would add that it is also nice to have some amount of balance. Ideally we would like to have all our players be at least average at every aspect of their job but in reality every player has warts. That gets exacerbated if most of them have the same warts.

Disagree. Its one thing to have a second baseman with no power or a utility infielder with no power, or a catcher with no power. Its another thing to have a starting OF'er with zero power. Some have said they like him as a 4th OF'er. I disagree with that as well. Typically, you want your extra OF'ers to have some power to come off the bench late and try to tie a game with one swing, or be excellent/fast defenders to be a late inning defensive replacement. As for the Cirillo comparison. Cirillo was a 10-15 HR guy between his 25 and 31 year old seasons and hit about 40 doubles a year. Peterson is a tweener. He's Scott Podsednik without the speed. That said, I'm happy hes getting a chance and I hope he proves us wrong. I don't think power is any more important in a bench player than OBP. While he may not win the game with one swing of the bat he will certainly start a rally more often. All I want in my bench players is the ability to do something well. Be that hit for power, get on base, play defense or steal bases it doesn't really matter. All of those things can come in handy at one point or another. The best thing to have is a little of each. I think the best we can hope for is he has a good year and we can flip him for someone else later.