Thurston Fluff

In which small sample? The stats just with the Brewers? Or the .213 BA/.244 OBP and 44 OPS+ he's put up vs MLB pitching in 2015? I think he has an MLB caliber glove & arm. Jury is still out on his bat. Granted the jury is still out on his bat but to compare his time in Detroit to here is not apples to apples. He was getting very inconsistent ab's in Detroit. During his time here his production has gone up as his playing time has gone up. While I understand both are small samples the samples themselves are not equal in value. If the trend was reversed and his numbers went down as he played more I would be more inclined to think the small sample was why he had good numbers in Detroit and we are seeing him regress to his actual level of play. As it is there is some amount of hope his issues were playing time related as opposed to just not being very good.

The thing about that statement is we just do not know until he's allowed to play consistently for a long period of time. Ship Aram and lets do it. Fine let him play the rest of the year. I'm not opposed to that. But I wouldn't pencil him into the lineup next year just yet. I would. Next year is likely to be a tough season no matter who plays there. If he sucks it just means we know for sure and he'll help us lose more games to get a higher draft pick. If he doesn't suck we just found a cheap guy to cover third throughout the rebuild. Maybe even beyond.

That depends on how merchandise sales are divided up. Is it connected to the number of sales each team's gear sells or is it split evenly throughout the league no matter how many each team sells? I ask because if the team gets a larger percentage of it's player's gear then there is more to it than just signing him to get people to go to the games.

He's also in single A and not doing very well there. At this point he is looking like he is at least five years away from being close to major league ready.

I think that was more a product of them not having developed any than it was sheer talent level. Even then if it would have taken giving up an ace prospect who wasn't quite ready to get an equal but proven talent who was ready to go when they needed him think they would have still pulled the trigger. The only difference is they probably wouldn't have included so many second tier prospects. I think they kind of went off script a little because they saw how close they were and decided to go for it more than maybe their original plan was. But that is only a guess.

Even if it does I don't think paying a guy for 3 or 4 years for the hope that he gives you 1 or 2 good years is worthwhile. It has the same net effect as giving too many years to older veterans. We are talking league minimum money. That is easily worth while if he pans out. Look how we handled Marco Estrada. We could easily keep Wang in the minors for a few years then use him in the back end of the bullpen while he develops. Especially considering how the team looks in the next few years that is not a very big deal. We are also talking about a spot on the team that could be used for someone who is actually good enough to be there. Not to mention those years are only cheap if he sucks. JDLR was not good here. Marco Estrada was. Even in his cheap years. It takes one good year to change that once he hits arbitration. If we carry a guy for three years and in year four he gets good we then get a guy who is decent but we have to pay for that in his arbitration years like we would have for someone like Estrada who was a capable contributor in the cheap years. Yet we didn't get the production during those cheap years. Where is the advantage in that?

Had to do a gig for a woman while she was in chemotherapy today. Bit of pressure trying to be funny while people are hooked up to IVs and fighting cancer. But it is nice to bring a little humor to people who could use a laugh. Not to mention inspiring seeing people with a sense of humor despite what life throws at them.

Even if it does I don't think paying a guy for 3 or 4 years for the hope that he gives you 1 or 2 good years is worthwhile. It has the same net effect as giving too many years to older veterans.

Baseball had a team throw a World Series game for gamblers, the NFL did not. Baseball then put in a rule that clearly stated what their policy response was to that. In all the years of collective bargaining that ban was never negotiated away. My guess is because the union agreed with the importance of that rule to the integrity of the game. Which is saying something considering how hard they fought against PEDS. AS far as gambling being a sickness so what? Alcoholics choose to drink and drive or stay home and drink. Those who choose to put others in harms way pay the penalty. Why should his gambling addiction negate the well known penalty for betting on baseball when there are literally thousands of other things he could have bet on?

Which is why I am interested in seeing how it plays out for them. They could be the case study that most resembles our situation but chose a different approach. I would dearly love to think we could manage continued success without major overhauls along the way. WE gave up some prospects everyone thought would be very good at the time. I don't think the fact they didn't pan out means they weren't viewed as Cole level players when we traded them. AS far as teams being lucky to get some guys who blossomed, when you give up a lot of decent prospects for one player you increase the odds of that happening. I don't think the Pirates did a deal like that either. Probably because they thought the likelihood of such a thing was too great. I want to be clear I am not saying the Pirates are doing it the right way either. I just think the jury is still out on them. I hope it does work because then we know there is a way to do it. As it stands I am not so sure it is possible for teams our market size to sustain success without major rebuilds every five or so years. Though I will never blame Melvin or Mark for trying. Just for not succeeding.

Spot on. The bigger issue is if we let him in the next Pete Rose will be tempted to do it because he will know he will eventually get in anyway. Pete Rose should not get in ever. Not now, not when he is dead, not a 100 years after he is dead. To let him in ever would undo everything baseball did to overcome the Black Sox scandal. If you cannot be sure the game's outcome isn't predetermined you don't have a game. You have pro wrestling. Gambling on games is the fastest way to do that.

While its true the playing field isnt level, had we just not signed Lohse and invested his money in the scouting and development and the draft pick was used correctly, we would be much closer to being competitive. It's not as simple as putting one player's money into scouting and player development and everything will be better. But I understand your point. Problem is if we had put that money into player development and such and we get the better players we still have to pay them when they get good. So we either let them go and start over or pay them. If we pay them that money has to come from somewhere. If we don't it's pretty hard to maintain a competitive team when you always have to depend in young developing players. Perhaps it is possible to maintain a good team like that but I don't see any teams doing that. Not even the Cardinals. After all it isn't like they are winning with the $100 million payroll limit we have. They spend more on their major league roster than we do and I am quite sure they outspend us on player development while doing so. Then you can look at the Cubs. They are full of young talent and built their team through the draft and develop model. Yet their payroll is higher than ours. Almost as high as the Cardinals is. Despite doing everything the right way and building one of the best farms systems in the game they failed to develop enough pitching to make all their efforts to build a good offense useful. Sound familiar? So they had to buy an elite pitcher to supplement their incredibly good draft and develop effort. Something we could not do when we were in their shoes. We had to give up some of our good talent to get one. Even then we could only rent one for a year or two. If they couldn't afford to buy theirs on the free agent market they would not be nearly as competitive for nearly as long as they can be now. Pittsburgh is doing a very nice job right now so maybe there is some hope. Yet what they have done so far isn't any more than we did over a five year stretch when our team was in it's prime. Time will tell if they can hold it together. If they can they would be the model we look to if we want to maintain success without going through rebuilds every five years or so.

You don't think having more money to put into anything they want helped? A lack of resources does hurt minor league player development and amateur drafting. Hard to expect a team who has half the resources of another to produce the same results. We can put more of our resources into it but that comes at the expense of putting it in other areas. When virtually every team has more money than you they can outspend you at any front they choose and there is nothing you can do about it. I could very easily see a team like the Brewers skimping on international scouting if they thought they couldn't land any decent prospects anyway. So we were at a disadvantage right there with nothing that could be done to help it so they invested in other areas. That can offset some of the damage done but it isn't the same as spending more on both. Now that the rules have changed we are starting to see them add a presence in some of those countries. But if that comes at the expense of scouting here in the US or player development is it going to help? That has to be especially tough when the major league payroll is maxed out by trying to maintain a competitive team. Which goes back to the problem of whether we can actually manage to continually field competitive teams without going through a rebuild phase. Just because the Cardinals can do it doesn't mean we can. We simply may not have the resources they have to pull it off. The reality of the situation seems to suggest we may have to change the way we look at building a successful franchise to fit the reality of what our team can realistically do.

I'm also an Archer fan. Trailer Park Boys is funny as well. Not family tv but funny. Not only is it a good series but they have a couple of shows where they do live performances that are hilarious. If you get Hulu Deadbeat and Quick Draw are quite good.

Personally I always felt any pitch that hits body armor is not hitting the person so he should not be allowed to take a base. You want a free base for getting hit you got to deal with the pain of getting hit. I doubt Tabita would have done that if he actually had to take it on his elbow and risk injury. Especially in a game whose outcome was long ago decided.

Not to pick on you for this statement because I have seen it in one form or another lot. The claim that the team doesn't have a long term plan or direction is just plain old wrong. The plan was outlined years ago. In fact it was outlined by Dean Taylor and Doug and Mark continued on with it. It was to build a franchise that would be competitive year in and year out. When you look at it through that lens the off season moves of the past few years actually make sense. They went out and got players they hoped would keep the team competitive. While they may have failed to do that it does not mean the team had no direction or actionable plan. It means they failed to pull it off. It isn't just semantics either. Failing to see the problem makes it harder to find the solution. So the real issue to me isn't about getting a long term plan. It is deciding if the one they've had for about 15 years now is possible in Milwaukee and adjusting accordingly once they determine that.

Hows is the Brewers situation now any different than either the Marlins or Astros when they had him? If you have a lot of hitters who don't care how much they strike out and you are judging pitchers on it at some point the evaluation of pitchers based on strikeouts will get skewed. I think using the standard idea that K's aren't bad for hitters but are good for pitchers needs some looking into to take into account the fact hitters are easier to strikeout that they used to be. Obviously strikeouts are good for pitchers and bad for hitters to some extent. I just wonder if the level of importance should be tweaked a little. I also question the value of using decades old metrics as the best way of finding undervalued assets in today's game. That makes me wonder if ground ball pitchers and low K, contact hitters might be the new undervalued player.

Fair point. it was his ability to take a walk that made him different. But that is something that can be learned to some extent. Power can't. One ironic thing about stat gurus is they say K's don't matter for hitters but do for pitchers. I know they are measuring different things but if you don't care about one the other is going to be effected.

That was what I was thinking too. Personally I never got the Branyan love here but there used to be a lot of love for 3TO players. Something else I never understood, but I digress. I think that is changing because we've seen what having a lot of that type of player does to the team. Part of the problem some people might have with Dominguez isn't with him as much as he is so much like all the rest of the players we have. We need OBP guys not all or nothing power guys. Problem is those types do not come via waiver wire pickups. So while I want a different type of player than Dominguez I don't mind picking him up until something better comes along.

This is why I was wondering about the black sox scandal. Unless the owner, GM, or President can be linked I don't think there will be much of a punishment for the franchise. The perpetrators will get lifetime bans and that will be it. That might be true but it sure as hell puts a major kink in the Cardinal way armor. If their way is the right way someone forgot to make sure all the front office employees knew about it. Whoever did it was not a janitor, vending or in promotions. It was someone who was actually part of that specific player acquisition apparatus. This is already every bit as embarrassing to them as Braun was getting caught was to us. At this point both are single employees doing wrong and getting caught. If more comes out than a single employee with a grudge it will be that much worse.

Some of the names on there are highly paid veterans who the team would be on the hook for if we DFAed them now. It would be much better to hold onto them for another month and see if their trade value goes up a bit. Even if it doesn't some team will be willing to take a flyer on the prorated portion of the contract if they don't have to give up anything in return. Heck they might be willing to give us an A ball pitcher with an ERA better than the 5.93 Wang is sporting now. If they DFA them now the team is stuck paying for them even if another team picks them up. The last thing I want to do is pay Lohse to pitch for the Cardinals and get nothing in return. The other thing to consider is any other team would have to put Wang on their 40 man roster. When you have one of the worst farm systems in baseball how many teams have a spot for one of your rejects?

I doubt it. He was the mop up man to begin with so it wasn't like anyone they had in his place was going to be helping us win a particular game. Rob Wooten was the guy who would have sat on the bench and did that. Doubt he was going to come in and help us win a game we wouldn't have won anyway.

I'm not sure how you can enforce proprietary information from the person who helped develop that information. I know sometimes noncompetitive agreements are required to protect sensitive information but most of them are not worth the paper they are written on. Many times it is direct conflict with the right to earn a living and enjoy the fruits of one’s labor. Usually the person has to be in violation of a patent or copyright to supersede it. They are also immensely hard to prove unless you actually have physical evidence of it. Suspicions or hearsay isn't going to cut it. If the way you found out about it was by illegally hacking into servers that probably doesn't qualify either.

I honestly don't see the big deal with this. Wang only has two options left and he isn't anywhere near two years away from being major league ready. So we'd end up having to carry him two years on the 40 man then carry him on the 25 man roster even though he would not be ready or expose him to waivers at that point. That would essentially mean we carried and trained someone else's pitcher for a couple years only to lose him a year or so from being useful. By exposing him to waivers now we save the hassle and probably have a better chance of keeping him than if we do it two years from now. If we lose him then at least they have to keep him on the 40 man and decide if they want to keep him on the 25 man roster two years from now even if he isn't ready.

every player from the black sox scandal was banned from baseball for life I mean the actual business organization. Not the players. It was the players who cheated not the organization. It's hard to penalize the team for something they had no part in. Though the loss of all the players involved had to hurt plenty as is.