Thurston Fluff

Maybe I'm old school but I find I like the screwdrivers with vodka in them best.

I think that argument is more compelling if you are talking about a normal reliever, in a normal year, being used the normal way. AS it stands the Brewers can pick and choose how they use him in the pen better than they can if he starts every 5th day. There wouldn't be nearly the stress on the arm if they used him an inning or so then let him rest for five days then use him again for example. That has to be less stress on the arm than being used multiple innings every 5th day. So was mine though looking at it in print it probably was so subtle I should have replied in blue.

He's out of options next season so they can't just move him up and down when they want. Overall my only concern is how healthy his arm is. I'd hate to add to his workload after he narrowly missed TJ surgery last season. I don't know the amount of time it takes to come all the way back from non surgical recovery of a strained elbow ligament relative to surgical repair, but why risk the added workload in the first year back when you don't have to?

Personally I don't think they want to trade K-Rod. Or maybe the better way to put it is they know K-Rod signed a deal with us specifically because he likes it here and they are respecting his desire to stay. It might just be one of those things where taking player's desire into account helps the organization more than a prospect would. I usually am not that big on that sort of thing but from everything I've read or heard K-Rod has taken on the role of mentor in the pen. While that might not be a good thing off the field, he certainly has been professional in every respect on it. It really doesn't hurt to have someone with his track record (on the field) helping young relievers learn how to handle the job.

Chop suey was credited with Americans accepting Chinese into our culture. Prior to that they were not treated very well to say the least. Some towns made laws that stated you could not be prosecuted for harassing or beating a Chinese person. As a matter of fact the spread of Chinese cuisine throughout the US is partially due to the discrimination they faced early on. While their food gave them some acceptance the fear of harassment made them agree with each other to designate territories were small groups of Chinese would move to. No other Chinese families were allowed to move into that area. That way each family had a way to make a living and the population never got big enough to attracted the wrong type of attention. The food along with small numbers in each community allowed them to live without too much harassment. It also meant their cuisine spread through the whole country in a fairly even distribution pattern.

The only two that I care about are Parra and Cotts. The others are under team control for another year or more. No need to trade them now for less than we could get if we traded them after the season. You're right that this is a reason that I won't completely jump off the ship. That said, it is very, very likely that the stock will only go down for Lind, Gomez, maybe Fiers, and K-Rod. Lucroy and Braun are hard to put a direction on. Lucroy's numbers should improve but if somebody believes he's just got bad numbers due to the early season injury but is ready to go, telling teams "he has 2 more affordable years left" is better than telling teams "he has 1 more affordable year left." Lind - Could easily get hurt. He's hitting about as well as he can. You can try to get more value by telling teams they'll have him for an extra year. Gomez - Numbers aren't great and injury situation is cloudy, but you can market the extra contract year. Fiers - Pitching very well and has been erratic over his career. You don't want to just give him away, but every year the "X years of control left!" is X-1. K-Rod - He's pitching well. Contract is so-so. I'll bet the brewers would pay for the deferred part, but his stock is pretty high, and you can still say that they won't have to deal with re-signing him. Braun - Hard to say. His contract still looks bad but he's hitting pretty well. It's possible that in a year or two he falls off a cliff in production and still has a few expensive years left. Maybe you can eat a year or two (easier said than done) to get some value back for him. Lucroy - See my comments in the paragraph earlier about him. His numbers aren't great, but saying "2 very affordable years!" is better than "1 affordable year left!" He could obviously get injured, too. Of course, with all of these guys, you don't want to give them away. However, other than Braun/Luc as "not sure" - these guys' stock will never be higher in a Brewer uniform. I don't think any of the player's we are talking about will have their stock rise or fall much in two months. All them have a long enough career to make a two month stretch pretty much irrelevant. AS far as the difference between trading now and the off season it isn't two years of control vs one. It is 1 1/2 years vs 1. While this season does matter to a contending team it doesn't to non contenders. Waiting for the off season allows more teams to get involved which should more than offset the two moths of team control.

The only two that I care about are Parra and Cotts. The others are under team control for another year or more. No need to trade them now for less than we could get if we traded them after the season. As far as Flores goes I think judging his value on his low OBP now is somewhat short sighted. Gomez was exactly the same guy when we got him. As a secondary piece in the trade I thought he had value. At worst he sucks and never pans out while the team is struggling anyway. At best he blossoms like Gomez did at about the time the team gets competitive. If we are still not there by then he gets flipped for a bigger return than he cost us. Potential is nothing to sneeze at even if it has yet to be realized.

Why would Parra want to sign with us? Offense is getting harder to come by these days. A player who not only has some offensive ability but can play sound defense at multiple positions will have plenty of choices. If I was in his shoes I would try to sign with a team that has a chance to win.

If Doug is limited by not texting then so is the GM who refuses to make a call. As far as taking a day to call the guy back I seriously doubt Doug would not have his phone on him at all times at this time of year. There wouldn't need to be a call back, he'd actually answer it. If not I think it would be a matter of minutes not days. I also doubt Melvin doesn't respond to texts at all. He probably gets a text and then calls the GM to talk as opposed to texting back and forth. It just seems silly to think someone in his position would miss out completely on such a basic communication tool. It would be as silly for other GM's not to use the phone as well. All in all they may have their favorite way of communicating but if one team thinks the other team is offering the best deal it seems far fetched to think something as silly as that would prevent either one from doing the deal. Did not know that. It certainly changes my mind about it.

I think most of us would. Problem is teams who have good farms tend to value high picks who won't need protection on the 40 man roster for the next several years way more than they value guys who aren't ready but need to be protected soon. The Brewers on the other hand are working with a weak farm so they can just put him there and not risk losing someone else.

WAR has major sample size issues with defense as it is let alone using small samples for everything. If a guy plays 3 games and goes 3 for 9 with an intentional walk and has one great defensive play his WAR is going to look might good. That in no way implies he is truly better than Segura. I seriously doubt there are a number of bench or utility guys who are actually better than Segura. If WAR says they are then it's time to look at what WAR really tells us. IMHO not much. No, that isn't true at all. WAR is a counting stat. The more you play, the more you accumulate. You can't have a "Mighty good WAR" after 3 games. Segura since the start of June 2013: BA: .260 OBP: .296 SLG: .343 OPS: .639 Comparatively speaking yes you can. Segura has 320 PA's and a -5 offensive WAR. Jorge Polanco of the Twins has 4 ab's and his WAR is .2. The total WAR difference between the two is .6. In WAR terms that is negligible. Yet would you base your assessment of them as comparable players knowing one player has 4 plate appearances and one game while the other has 320 in 77 games? WAR doesn't differentiate between them. Fangraphs can probably explain the problem with counting stats better than I can. http://www.fangraphs.com/library/principles/counting-v-rate/ Granted I was exaggerating to make a point about monty57's setting plate appearances at zero to show Segura was only the 27th best shortstop in the league. But that is pretty much exactly the mistake Monty57 made is setting the PA to zero.

WAR has major sample size issues with defense as it is let alone using small samples for everything. If a guy plays 3 games and goes 3 for 9 with an intentional walk and has one great defensive play his WAR is going to look might good. That in no way implies he is truly better than Segura. I seriously doubt there are a number of bench or utility guys who are actually better than Segura. If WAR says they are then it's time to look at what WAR really tells us. IMHO not much.

I would assume the deferred money would be treated the same as if it was paid now. It would be prorated just like the non-deferred part of the contract would be.

Nothing. Most player in Ramirez situation don't end up netting much in return. I read the discussion to be not so much about how much we could get for that kind of player but if he was playing himself out of getting us even that much. At least that was how I was reading the comments. I doubt anybody ever thought he was going to bring us a blue chip prospect. The fear was he wouldn't bring us anything. This hot streak that coincides with his usual pattern should get us back to what we should have been able to expect out of him to start with.

I don't think you get much in return for 2 months of any player who isn't elite so no, I am not expecting much. Just that his history shows this hot streak is a more reliable indicator of finishing strong than it would for a lot of players. I have little doubt most teams know his history and might have been waiting to see if he was just off to his usual cold start or was really done. This is probably enough to convince one of them to give up someone who might actually make it to the majors someday. If that happened I would be thrilled.

Given Ramirez's history of slow starts and strong finishes I think some teams would view his current surge as more than just a streak and be willing to pay accordingly.

I saw this documentary on general Tso's chicken and decided to make it. Worked out well. But as I was researching recipes I read the T in Tso is silent. Think about that for a second. Someone had to translate Chinese writing, which is made up of symbols for words, into English, which has letters making up words. Why did they need silent letters?

Money ball still requires two willing parties for trades. Nobody rents an apartment by selling their house even if there are a lot of houses to buy and few apartments for rent. The intrinsic value of each is so different it makes no sense regardless of relative scarcity. Teams who are looking for prospects might want legit five tool, can't miss prospects in return but I don't think a single contending team is willing to give that up. If you have a legitimate can't miss prospect you do not give up six years of that for half a season of even the greatest player. AS the Houston Astos acquisition of Randy Johnson in his prime shows, one single player, no matter how great, does not guarantee you a ring. No matter what the market is, giving up six years of can't miss production for anything but can't miss short term results is giving up a house for an apartment. There is never a point in which the former's value is lower than the latter.

If he is being mentioned in an article about revamping the operation and who the new GM might be I think it is unlikely he is being considered for a nothing job. That assumes of course that he is actually being considered for a role at all and not just a bit of speculation on the reporter's part.

Whether it is his son or brother the point still remains giving family members a job usually doesn't work very well. I could see helping them get a job in baseball. I'm even ok with giving them a low level job to get their career's started. I just think it is better not to have them in the same organization in any meaningful role. Too many issues outside of anyone's control to think it can work even if they are good at the job. Let alone if they are not.

I can only judge them on their public persona and their public persona is all the same. Judgmental, angry, insulting and aggressive. Since they all represent the same type of person does it matter which one I choose?

I think it is easy to confuse the use of traditional scouting in combination with more modern analytics as not being a sabre oriented team. There is nothing wrong with incorporating both. In fact I would argue it is the best system. The wave of pitching we've seen coming up lately is far better than anything we have seen in pretty much our entire history. Certainly since the 80's. It has it's genesis in that sort of mold. Melvin did a comprehensive study into why he failed to develop pitching for so long. He set about evaluating successful pitchers for key similarities. He based success on numbers. He also looked at health issues. He broke down pitching mechanics, body type and workload to find out what patterns he could find in the data to set up a new way of finding and developing pitchers. The end result was the body stress analysis and an organization wide implementation of a set system to find a particular type of pitcher and have them pitch a particular way based on the results of that study. The final touches of that came when they hired Rick Peterson as pitching coach. Obviously to do that you have to look at pitchers mechanics (scouting) along with results (sabre.) That could not be accomplished by just using one or the other.

Actually Melvin has always used analytics. As far as Attanasio's son being involved I am always leery that. Hard to imagine it was an earned role or he was simply the best man available. But who knows? Maybe it will work out as well as Sal Bando hiring his kid to coach third base or Bud Selig hiring his daughter and son in law to run things.

In regard to the curve ball not working in CO I'm not sure that is accurate. I was listening to an interview in the pregame show once about the curve in CO. I don't remember who it was but think it was Jungman. He didn't say the curve doesn't work there. You just have to really be on top of it to make it do what you want. Maybe I'm wrong but I took that to mean you really have to throw it perfectly to get it to do what you want. If that is the case I could see that as a plus in that it forces the pitcher to learn to throw the curve better. While it may not help him there I could see how the experience could help later on.

I didn't get the reasoning behind that. I seriously doubt Mark is going to hold his current job against his chances of a promotion if he is worthy of it. What does it matter what role he is in now or how far along in it he is? If he's the best he's the best. Stagnating a guy's career is not the way to attract talent to the organization. Not to mention makes him available for another organization who wants him as GM. Then you have to start over anyway and lose the most qualified GM for your franchise. The only prerequisite should be if he is the most qualified GM for this franchise.