Thurston Fluff

The way they did it leads me to think it might be just the Astros. It was not sophisticated and depended on them knowing the passwords from former Card front office employees who now work for the Astros. The amateurish aspect of it makes it all the more funny. The best part is the next time one of their fans says anything about Braun I can fire back from the high ground.

To be accurate the black hole at first did not come after Prince left. Prince was replaced quite well by Hart. In fact I think the combination of offense and defensive at 1st, 3rd and RF more than made up for the loss of of Prince. I was the loss of Hart when the problems really started.

I think people should also keep in mind Braun was an above average LF. He was considered for a gold glove there a few years back. While we debated whether that was an indictment of the gold glove process or the dearth of good players at the position it's hard to argue a below average player would be considered. While he wasn't Gomez good there, he was actually pretty good in comparison to the league as a whole.

Not only are we winning series lately we are doing so against some pretty good teams.

Agree he has worth. Maybe potential is a better term. I just don't think going with the sample size we have to work with here is enough to judge anything yet. Especially with someone who hasn't seen consistent playing time if a while.

Oh I hope we give Sardinas more than 70 PA's to show what he's worth. If we give up on him this early, there's no way he's going to get us anything worth a darn in a trade. I don't think sending him down is giving up on him. Nor do I thin kit's necessary to have him get major league AB's at this point to see what we have in him. He's a young player who got a taste of what it takes to play in the majors. If he is worth his salt he will take that with him to AAA and prepare himself for the future. So far I like what I see in him but he does have some things to work on that can be done in AAA as well as the majors.

Probably the same as a mediocre prospect would.

Our 31 year old $105M OF'er needs periodic treatment that will keep him from playing here and there and that its not big deal? If we remain a 18-35 caliber team I guess so but if we have aspirations of being a competitive team ever I am not sure about this POV. The periodic treatment is once, maybe twice, a season. The here or there he will be prevented from playing is a total of about one week if he needs it twice in a season. In the meantime there are dozens of players who have periodic back flareups, hamstring issues, foot problems, shoulder and arm issues that can flare up at any time that keep them out weeks or months to heal that get offered contracts . A team is taking a bigger risk with Ramirez or Lind than Braun. Josh Hamilton is a prime example of someone who was a far bigger risk when he got his mega contract than Braun is now. Crawford was traded while in the midst of several arm and wrist issues and had fives years of his seven year $142 million dollar contract left. This is a known issue that has a known way to deal with it that requires a few days off to fix. That is nothing comparatively speaking.

I don't see how this hurts his trade value at all. If he has to miss a few days every couple months so what? All this shows is his thumb issues are something that can be controlled with minimal playing time missed. If it doesn't even require a 15 day DL stint to get him back to his old self nobody is going to care. If anything this is a good thing to show it isn't going to be an ongoing issue that will last the whole season.

My biggest problem with him is he seemed content to use it as an excuse instead of figuring out a way to deal with it.

I think this falls in the category of; if all things are equal go with the younger guy. While they may not be totally equal, the position the team is in probably shifts the scale enough to see the logic. On a side note am I the only one who feels bad for guys like Herrera when this happens? I really pull for those fringe guys to make it. At least make it long enough to be considered legit major league players.

He also was coming off an injury and was back playing in a far shorter period of time than most people thought prudent at the time. I don't think that happens without some input from management. If it did that is in itself a failing on his part.

He may have said that but that sure wasn't how he acted. The first thing he did was to trade our few good assets for Jimmy Haynes and Jaimie Wright type of players. If you don't plan on winning in the next three years why trade for major league ready players? Then he spent money Jose Hernandez and Jeffery Hammonds and rushed our best pitching prospect up the ladder so fast it cost him his career. All of that shows more of a desire to win sooner than later. I don't necessarily blame him for it. He had to be under some amount of pressure to put a competitive team into the new stadium.

This. I have said before, without any reaction here, that the Brewers should establish a Senior VP-Pitching (or whatever they want to call it.) Reports directly to GM, with dotted line to Owner. This would be the single most important thing the Brewers could do to turn things around. One thing I've learned in business is that intense focus is needed to change anything. I firmly believe baseball isn't much different. Find a proven star from a pitching rich organization, and give him the authority to do whatever he needs. Let him bring in new scouts, new ways to develop pitchers, new coaches. Anything. Everything. Let the GM handle the big picture for baseball operations as a whole, and this VP-Pitching would be wholly responsible and accountable for identifying and developing pitchers. Goal should be to take the Brewers from where they are now to a top 5-7 organization for pitching talent. Do that, and you've WHOA SOLVVD a lot of the problems this organization has today. Wasn't this the plan with Rick Peterson, and then he was just kind of shoved aside. That happened because they fired the manager so they could start for the third time in four years.

They can also send a few former players, coaches and such to sign autographs and do general meet and greet stuff. Doing things like that helps give those fans a connection to the parent club. It also might help boost attendance which is always a good way to suck up to affiliates. As far as the talent thing goes I just don't think there is that strong a correlation. We lost the Indianapolis affiliate the year they were going to get Fielder, Hart, Weeks, Nelson Cruz, Jose Cappellan, and Brad Nelson. That was along with a good dose of veterans who helped the team actually win games as well. It was also a time when the Brewers had one of the best overall farm systems in baseball. So the future looked good prospect wise. Arguably better than any other club in baseball as a matter of fact. Yet the Indy club wouldn't even talk to the Brewers about extending their relationship. That leads me to believe talent was not at the top of the list in what they were looking for.

Nashville is definitely the canary in the coal mine. They didn't see any reason to continue with us. That says a lot about what teams think of how we fill and incubate out talent pipeline. Something MAJOR has to change. I'm not as sure it has to do with the talent pipeline as much as maybe lack of spending on the farm system as a whole. Obviously that is related to player development but not wholly the same. Helping with promotions, spending on equipment or having recognized names attached to the team all might contribute to better relationships with our minor league affiliates. The one example of how things other than sheer talent can help foster a good working relationship with an affiliate is Timber Rattlers. That is one of the better facilities in the Midwest league and has a good long standing relationship with the Brewers. That has more to do with the Major league club's proximity to them than talent of players. We just have to find out what some of these minor league facilities want out of a major league team and start to cater to that better. If we can create some stability with a good affiliate with good facilities it is bound to help develop players. As it is we were stuck with Nashville when their facilities sucked and lost them once they were good enough that a more desirable team wanted to go there. Pushing us once again to a crappier place than our competitors. I also think we need to expand our international scouting. We can hire as many GM's managers and minor league instructors as we want but if we are being seriously outspent in amateur scouting it will be very difficult to keep up with those who spend more on it.

When it comes to player development I am starting to wonder of there isn't some issues with our minor league philosophy going on. There is a reason the last two AAA affiliates didn't want to renew with us. We are now sitting in a place nobody wants to be in AAA. It was like musical chairs and we were left with out when the music stopped. I don't know if they skimp on things or if it's about how well the major league franchise helps draw customers to the AAA games but something unfavorable seems to be going on.

They do a statistical analysis to come up with the number of runs saved but fail to put that number in any sort of context. Just player X saved Y number of runs over a certain period of time. It doesn't appear to be weighted to consider playing time over that period. Nor does it appear to consider the ability of the pitcher to actually execute the called pitch. There seems to be no explanation at all how they isolated the catcher in the pitcher, catcher tandem. Let alone the background work usually done by the coaches and scouts. Maybe it does account for all those things but they sure didn't bother taking the time to tell us how.

Are you talking about service dogs who assist in daily activities or therapy dogs who are there for companionship?

I'll always be cool with the one per team requirement because it was the only way I got to see a Brewer in the All-Star game through most of my childhood. Of course, a few times the guy never got to play, but I still loved seeing him introduced for some reason. It also gave Rickie Bones something to tell his kids.

I'd pick a lot of guys over Lucroy...no way he makes it with only one good month. Even if he mashes his stats will be pretty lackluster. Maybe. I guess it depends on how one view all stars. I don't think it is about who is having the best start to a season. It always seemed silly to me to rate guys like that. It's as though an entire half, arguably the most important half no less, of a season doesn't count doing it that way. It is, or at least should be, about who is the star of the team. Lucroy is most definitely that for the Brewers injured or not.

KC's season was pretty much all because its bullpen was insane. It played EXACTLY into Yost's managerial style: rigid, unchanging player roles. He had his 7th inning guy, 8th inning guy, and closer. Never changed. The thing was, those three guys were unhittable last season, so his strategy worked. He fell into a World Series. On top of that, they shouldn't have even gotten past Wild Card game. The A's pulled a massive choke job. Yost isn't a good manager. When you start with the answer you will inevitably find anything that justifies said answer. Yes they did have a great bullpen. What made them great? Obviously talent is the major factor. But there must be something that allowed them to excel when other equally talented relievers fail. According to you that couldn't possibly be due to the manager having determined roles and sticking to them. The consistency of knowing their roles and adapting to them cannot possibly have anything to do with it. Why? Because you already determined their manager sucks and predetermined roles are a bad thing. What I think is, it doesn't matter a hill of beans if there is or isn't predetermined roles. I think it matters that the team adjusts to whatever system the manager has in place. The longer the manger is there the more stable the environment that players have to learn to adjust to. Not to mention the longer one guy is there the more players who do well with that particular style of play can be accumulated. Those things in and of themselves lead to better results.

One of the first things Yost did was to bench a guy (can't remember his name but he was the first guy busted for PEDs) for Podsednik. His reason stated publicly was he saw him busting his butt shagging flyballs and such while the other guy was loafing around. We had that but fired him anyway. Then when the next guy stated how he wanted things done he was run out of town after the team essentially quit on him. That is pretty much the problem right there.

So at the time if Yost had been retained and overseen that collapse you would have kept him in the offseason after two straight second half collapses, really? First of all he didn't oversee two straight second half collapses. He got fired with 12 games left while the other had more to do with injuires IIRC. Second of all, after seeing him guide a team to the playoffs without collapsing and seeing our team collapse without him, it seems apparent that any supposed collapse probably didn't have much to do with him. When does someone get fired then? When they are actually the problem. Why isn't Phil Garner still manager, he got Houston to the playoffs, must have been good. He was. Look what they went through after he left. I think Garner could have done that just as well. Also, you don't think Ned learned from his experience with that and is now an improved manager and leader because of it? Yes I do. Problem is we fired him before he could use those lessons to help us. We then went on with a new manager who had to learn those lessons over again. Once he did he was fired as well. So we got a new manager who learned things then got fired. See the pattern? And really didn't his teams before last seasaon in KC disappoint every year and had at least one late season collapse. Plus I think they collapsed late last season but squeaked in on the WC, but got hot in the playoffs. No. they went 17-10 in September of 2013 and 16-11 last season. Neither of those Septembers seems like much of a collapse to me. What they did prior to that is hardly relevant because of the stage of development that team was at then. One playoff run in 12ish years as manager and it makes up for underachieving every year. I'd expect them to blow it this year too. The guy was basically crying in the post game pressers in 2008. You can say underachieving as much as you want but you might want to check on what they actually did before coming to that conclusion. Basing your ideas about him on two collapses that never happened is not really a good way to do it. Keep RR and cut/trade all the players huh, why not both, I think his firing was the first step in that. This isn't Tony Larussa, what has he done in his career to have that kind of cache or clout. You are right. All he ever did was lead the team to the best record it ever had in his first year as manager. That is hardly an indication that he can actually lead a team. 3 year deal instead of an interim manager is the point there. Having an interim and the cloud hanging over the season and offseason of who the manager will be was avoided by giving that deal. I think that shows they don't want a revolving door happening. Then why not give him a deal that would make it impossible to get rid of him? That would probably go a longer way towards telling the players who is next to leave if things don't turn around. Then the collapse and start this year happened and it seemed the whole team had checked out on him. So instead of holding the guys who actually checked out fire the one who didn't? Makes sense to me.

If Lucroy comes back soon and mashes I think he'd be the guy.