Thurston Fluff

Note I said the guarantee was that the money was spent. Contracts in baseball are guaranteed, so if you sign someone, you are on the hook to pay them, regardless of team or player results. My bad I misunderstood your meaning there. Yes you are correct it will guarantee we spent that money. But again that is the only guarantee ever. No matter how much, or little, is spent. So couldn't that same argument be used to justify spending next to nothing? Wouldn't waiting for that someday to arrive were we spend all that money we saved act as an incentive to allow the owners to just reap the profits and never invest in winning? When tomorrow never comes one shouldn't wait for tomorrow to do try to accomplish the goal. I don't really want to continue this "debate," because it seems something I have said has upset you. That seems to be that I said I would not want to go "in the red" unless there was a really good chance that the additional spending would land us in the playoffs or sell a lot more tickets (both of which would increase revenues, hopefully at least offsetting the extra payroll expenses). I'm cautious that way. I've seen too many businesses fail because they shoot for the moon and don't reach it. I have tried to present an argument to explain my reasoning, and I'm sorry that my terminology was upsetting, as that was not the intent. As I don't believe this is anything worth getting upset over, I'll just stop posting in this thread. It is perfectly fine to outline you views and give reasons for it. You did. I outlined why I thought your reasoning didn't hold up by using a fairly common debate tool. As far as being offended by something you said not at all. I merely pointed out what I thought was a mistake in reasoning and attempted to explain why I thought it was so. As far as seeing businesses fail I have seen plenty fail trying to save a buck as well. If you aren't moving forward you are falling behind is a pretty good principal to follow when trying to decide to spend or not. Usually it isn't a question of whether to spend more or not. It is question of where to spend it. Reopening a baseball academy, spending on international free agents, and boosting the scouting or player development are probably better than spending it on a free agent or two. However that wasn't what the thread was about. It was whether we could spend more on FA's and should we. To that I would rather they spend than not.

I have no info/proof/newspaper clippings to back any of this up..... What coaching is being done on the basepads? Anyone? Does anyone have an article with any Brewers coach over RR's time as manager discussing teaching tactics on the basepads? Sorry....Being aggressive can not be an answer. Specifics. I hear Schroeder talking about how a pitching coach or hitting coach helps a pitcher/hitter from time to time with a certain grip of the ball or changing the batting stance.... not a baserunner, however. Just be aggressive, right? What coaching is going into teaching guys how to run the bases with risk/reward in mind? Seems like we could have an article or fifty about this important issue when Hank THE DOG has had a few hundred. Since I presume there is none out there (or I would have read about it somewhere), I'll assume it isn't a priority in the organization. Easy to make that point and super sad to see idiots play the game the wrong way. Are you asking what specific drills they use to teach a runner when to take the extra base and such? I honesty don't know if anyone ever wrote about that. Probably because it would be about as interesting as watching paint dry. It seems like there is a drill or two for every aspect of the game so I imagine there is something. It's probably in some book about coaching baseball somewhere. I also think it would be about as mundane and league wide as every other drill every team does. I doubt there is something the Brewers are doing differently that somehow makes them worse at it than others. If you want something that I think can be pointed to that shows how a manager can set the tone look at how Matt Williams handled Bryce Harper for baiting a player into an out on the base paths. http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/bryce-harper-throws-out-runner--draws-ire-of-his-manager-023644876.html There are a few things that stand out to me. First it goes to show players on other teams make mistakes on the base paths. Second I am not so sure doing it publicly is the right way to go. I think I'd rather it be kept in house. Even if you get accused of not trying to fix it. Third it shows how managers address things to get certain styles of play. It didn't take a specific spring training drill to get the message across that Williams prefers the passive safe plays over the aggressive ones. That doesn't mean Harper will suddenly stop being Harper. But he knows he will have a harder time explaining an aggressive mistake than a passive one in the future. That is pretty much all a manager can do. He certainly isn't going to bench one of his best players or something equally silly. If he does he sure as heck better win without him. Or he will be gone way before the player will. On a side note much like Gomez, I don't think it is how you get the most out of Harper.

It's an organizational issue because Sedar makes far too many mistakes under the guise of "being aggressive" and he is rewarded for it because it's exactly what RR wants his team to do. I do agree, we notice the Brewers mistakes more since we see every game. I'm sure many teams have lots of mental errors also. With that said, I dismiss any stats trying to quantify base running, since it's just too subjective. Considering how many times I saw them run through stop signs last year I think it's a bit harsh to put it on Sedar. Setting that aside I think RRR is more willing to forgive a mistake made in the heat of the moment if it was an aggressive one as opposed to passive. The thing that won't happen is perfection. There will be times when you think you see something that wasn't there or you are unsure of which way to go. Yet in those moments you still have to make a choice. So when those times come RRR wants them to error on the aggressive side as opposed to the passive. I have absolutely no qualms about that. What I don't think is going on is RRR saying lets not even try to lessen those instances of uncertainty. I have no doubt he talks over mistakes and works to reduce the number of uncertain times. Nor do I believe he would put up with a coach who had an unusually high number of those times. After last year's meltdown if there was an egregious amount of mistakes made by a coach that would have cost them their job. That Sedar is back after the coach blood letting last year I think it's clear they do not believe he had to many of them.

Sweet. Another series that is short but good is Firefly. Sadly, it was cancelled after one season but had such a cult following they did the movie Serenity to satisfy Firefly fans. Both the series and movie are quite good. I have no idea why they axed it. Then again Family Guy was given the axe after three seasons once upon a a time as well. So the suits aren't infallible.

Trailer Park Boys is hilarious. It takes a few episodes to get into but when you do the characters are pretty easy to identify with.

As I mentioned in the part of my post you did not quote, in order for that to work, your the rate of return ® has to be greater than your cost of investment (I). It is far from a foregone conclusion that increasing spending will guarantee a return on investment greater than the interest paid on the loans taken out. As I mentioned in the part of my post you did not quote nobody said it was guaranteed to work. I mentioned specifically that nobody said owning a major league baseball franchise was for the meek. Your claim that unless we can guarantee something like several championships and a World Series title or two as the threshold to invest as much as possible seems to me to be more than a bit out of line. Nobody can guarantee any future event. Which was why I used the argument about $550 million vs $20 million. Which by the way is not a straw man argument. It is an argumentum ad absurdum. By saying something had to guarantee a certain outcome you set your criteria at level that cannot be met. I used argumentum ad absurdum to show how doing so could be used to justify spending virtually nothing. After all nobody can guarantee spending any amount would do anything. It is simply impossible. If you wish to change your assertion to it not getting us any closer to our goals fine. But that isn't what I was addressing. Speaking of straw man arguments when you said "If someone can prove to me that spending an additional $5-10 million per year will guarantee the "3-5 playoff appearance and World Series appearances" people are trumpeting, then I am all for spending that money." was a real straw man. As far as I remember nobody said it would guarantee that. Merely that it would have helped get there more than not spending it would have. You're going "strawman" on me with the $500MM vs $20MM argument. What we're looking at in this thread is whether the Brewers should borrow against their franchise value in order to add a few million to the team's payroll. I've already addressed the straw man aspect. However I think you are short changing what the thread is about. We are looking at whether we can spend more or not. Borrowing against franchise value is one aspect of it. I mentioned the profit to interest margin as one way borrowing against the franchise value can actually lead to short term gains as well as increasing the long term value. All it guarantees is that money is spent and if you have to borrow to increase the payroll, it guarantees that you will have to pay off those loans in the future, cutting into what the team will have for available funds in the future. It does not guarantee any such thing. While it is one possibility it is not the only one. And far from the guaranteed outcome. Another is it increases the value of the franchise while also creating a short term profit that could either be used to pay off some of the debt load, thus increasing our future spending capabilities, or it could be redirected to payroll or other improvements to increase short term prospects. All of which increases our future spending potential more than saving a few bucks would if it didn't also increase the franchise value. It is also possible to be revenue neutral. Only one of three outcomes is going to hurt long term. And even then when the time comes where we have to spend less I think that is the time to spend less. Seems silly to me to be so worried about being able to spend more at some undetermined future that you neglect to do what you can to make a better present. There is always a tomorrow we can wait for. It is also a crutch that can be used to enable an owner to just make money. If he can pay all of the debt off without winning he will be able to continue to make money by paying even less afterward. Then he doesn't need to ever win does he? Sure it might be nice and he may want to win anyway but separating winning and making money is hardly an incentive that helps create a winning team.

Thurston, it doesn't seem you would fall into what I was getting at. I by no means want him benched or traded. It does remind me of an incident with Andruw Jones, after hot dogging a ball in CF in his early career I believe he was pulled mid inning on defense, again, I'm not advocating that, this just reminded me of it. IIRC Jones problem was he didn't try very hard. He would sometimes miss a play he could have made because he was relying on natural talent to be good instead of trying to make the most of it. I can understand how that sort of thing could be addressed by pulling him from a game or sitting him the next game. Gomez's issues is more of the overly aggressive to the point of stupid kind. I don't see how negative reinforcement is going to make him do it less without curbing his aggressiveness in a negative way too. I have no doubt every time he makes a stupid mistake he is being reminded of it and why it was stupid in that situation. What we hope is that he learns from it someday. I don't know how much more a manager can do without taking the choice away from him like Macha did with players or to sit/pull him when ha makes the boneheaded mistake. Both of those options have a downside to them as well. One never allows the player to learn on his own while the other would take away the natural tendency that is a major part of his game. The thing that I doubt is an option is that any manager can do something to make a player's weakness disappear in a year or two. Which seems to be the complaint as far as I can tell. That in no way should imply people stop trying to get him to make better decisions. Just that we have to accept it is who he is now and that is actually pretty darn good. Given there is a reasonable explanation to go the route RRR did with him and other ways of approaching it haven't produced anything close to his production this approach did, why complain about doing it this way?

FORGETTING how many outs there are in an inning (Reynolds), Yet the Cardinals, a team that allegedly is better than us because they don't tolerate such things just signed him. Many teams are less "tolerant"of mental mistakes than the Brewers, and yes it makes a difference in clubhouse moral, team chemistry, respect of the manager, and in the standings. See above. For those making the argument that RR freeing him and his aggressiveness is what has made him good, I think you're missing two key points you're acting like these things are mutually exclusive. He can be aggressive and swing hard without making just asinine decisions that lead to him getting thrown out by 30 ft and/or attempting a pointless steal of 3B with 2 outs when Braun is at the plate. You're already one of the fast players in the league, you don't need to be at 3B to score on a hit. Try to steal third all day with 1 out though, that is smart aggressiveness. No we are saying you work on that without humiliating, sitting or showing up the guy in public. I think you are also assuming that RRR just told Gomez to stop making boneheaded plays Gomez would all of a sudden get it and make better decisions. Every time Gomez took off for third he believed he was going to get there. I seriously doubt he ever thought "I have a poor jump and there is little chance of me stealing third but what the hell I'll try anyway." Second, you're kind of insinuating that he's good already and therefore shouldn't be asked to improve. That is just illogical. It would be like saying well player X is hits 300 with a 333 obp, wouldn't we all be still wishing he took more walks and got the obp over 350. Or Khris Davis is a good example, he's been pretty good and has good power, but are we are still saying it would be great to move the average up a few points and start taking more walks to get a respectable obp. I think you are insinuation RRR doesn't try to get him to improve. I think that is not true. As I mentioned above he could go the Macha route and just put the stop sign on. But please explain to me how that is going to make Gomez a better decision maker on the basepaths better than letting him learn from his mistakes. So Ennder, you just accept that he can't improve? There's no reason a player can't get smarter with age, it happens in all sports very often. Examples, in baseball an older player learning to hit opposite field as he ages or a pitcher learning placement as his velocity goes down. Once again this seems like a false assumption that he isn't trying to get him to learn. I think it boils down to how do we get the most out of him now while trying to get more out of him tomorrow. You can't just do things that might improve his future production at the expense of today. Especially when he might not be here for that future performance to help us. Nor should you assume letting the player play isn't a way to get him to improve. How do you learn when to steal a base if you are told never to steal a base? Conversely if you let him steal a base how do you make sure he only steals them at the right time? That getting better with age thing you speak of usually comes due to experience.

I don't think it's as much about complimenting the Cards as it is about attributing false characteristics about why they have generally been better than we are. They are not better because the team is less tolerant of mistakes than we are. Perfect example is Fernando Vina. I only saw a player get picked off on a fake throw to third then throw to first twice in my life. The first time was when Vina got picked off first as a Brewer. The second time was when Vina got picked off first as a Cardinal. He was atrocious on the bases with us and he didn't get better with the Cards. Yet they kept him for four years. Speaking of Vina the Cards let him run as much as Milwaukee did and he always had a poor success rate for them as well. Then there is the defensive side of bonehead. I think errors are an decent way to get a feel for the level of incompetence a team is willing to tolerate. In 2012 the Cardinals had the 9th most errors in all of baseball. In 2011 they had the 4th most. Those were obviously mistake prone teams managed by LaRussa and did very well as a team. It isn't an unwillingness to tolerate mistakes that make them better. To claim it is certainly deserves to be challenged.

Many of the "aggressive" things they do are incredibly stupid. How many threads last year were there about outs on the bases? Remember when Schaefer got thrown out at 3B on a ball hit to the short stop and that very likely cost the team the game? BF.net was livid and Ron was ho-hum whatever about it. There's aggressive and stupid. Last year this team put more tallies on the stupid side than aggressive and I don't think this is going to change. They made two major bone head baserunning blunders in the few minutes of the first spring training game I saw. None of that means he encourages boneheaded play. If you disagree that the level of stupidity compared to the value he's getting is more than RRR should accept fine. But that is not at all the same as saying he almost seems to be doing it intentionally. To say so does nothing to further advance the argument of where to find that balance. It's just seems more like an insult to Reonicke than an actual comment on where the line is.

You agree Ron encourages stupidity under the guise of being aggressive? I have never seen any manager encourage poor play or boneheaded mistakes. I understand may feel he is to accepting of it but that is far from encouraging it. Seems more like inflammatory rhetoric than a real possibility.

If someone can prove to me that spending an additional $5-10 million per year will guarantee the "3-5 playoff appearance and World Series appearances" people are trumpeting, then I am all for spending that money. Nobody can guarantee that with a $500 million payroll either. But I think it's a pretty good guess that it would help us get to that goal. To say that boosting the payroll should only be done if it guarantees us something is an argument that could be used if we had a $20 million payroll as easily as it could with what we spend now. Does that mean we should reduce our payroll to $20 million?

You might want to reread the thread title. I seriously doubt Roenicke encourages making boneheaded mistakes. I think he puts up with it because he wants them to play a certain way and is willing to take the good with the bad. This team is made up of players who are aggressive. They will make mistakes. Especially in early March.

Why complain about turning a career underachiever into one of the best center fielders in the game toady?

Since there are multiple WARs and they don't always agree with each other trying to use WAR to determine how many games a particular part of a team won or lost is pretty futile. It also seems to me the wrong way to use WAR. The player with the best WAR in baseball can let an easy ground ball go between his legs for a game winning run. Had he not made that mistake they would have won the game therefore he lost the game for the team. That does not drop is WAR by one game.

So you provide a link to show they have the 6th worst valuation in MLB and have one of the smallest revenues....yet middle of the pack in payroll. But somehow you think Attanasio is cheap. I didn't read that as saying he was cheap. It looks more like he's saying he can do more if he wants to. There are precious few investments that will land you more than double the value in 10 years time. He got some of that value by essentially going from bottom feeder to middle of the road. If he could take the next step imagine what that would do for the value in the next ten years. It is a risk and it does take some money. If he fails to invest well the value of his franchise may not be worth much more than he paid for it But nobody said owning a sports franchise was for the meek.

Had we not spent every dime we had in the 80's and 90's we would not be in business today. We would have stagnated and been passed up by competitors. There simply is no comparing household debt to business debt. For one household income is not tied to debt. In business you borrow to make more money. In households you borrow to get something that most likely makes you poorer. For the most part the only investment people borrow for that increases in value is a home. Other than that borrowing loses you money. IF you borrow for a car you pay more than if you pay cash. That is not how it works in business. In business you borrow to make more than the interest paid on debt. Then there is the issue of how long personal income can last as opposed to how long businesses can make money. Individuals know they will eventually not make what they are now. they will eventually retire. Thus individuals have to take into account a finite number of years of making the money they do now. Businesses don't. Even if an individual owns the business that business can continue to make money long after any individual owner is gone. Then there is the issue of value. No matter how well I take care of my car is loses value. I can even add cool rims and a new sound system in the car but eventually it will become worthless. Not only that but if I borrowed for that stuff it's cost increases making the cost to value ratio go south even faster. Same goes for everything other than a house. That is not true with businesses. Generally speaking a business that has expanded is worth more than one that didn't. So expanding not only covers the interest it adds value all on it's own. Thus businesses and households are not working within the same parameters. Granted business do have to have enough cash reserves to survive tough times. No team should borrow to the point where they don't have enough liquidity to survive a tough stretch. But that is not the same as needing to prepare for a day when you will never make money again and have to survive solely on what you saved. In fact business liquidity is usually measured in how much you can borrow if necessary as opposed to how much cash reserve you have at any given time. There simply isn't any comparison between the two. Even if it seems like it should.

I don't think you can compare franchise costs to individual living expenses. Living expenses is dictated by the amount of income one makes. Like a lot of investments owning a team is less about how much the owner makes annually than it is how the value of the franchise grows while he owns it. Given the value of the franchise is at least partially dependent on the competitive value of the team borrowing against the team can actually increase the overall profit margin the owner makes when selling it. Not to mention operating at a loss also help when it comes to taxes. Especially considering annual losses can be carried over year to year to cover profits made from other business ventures. It also outlives the person who owns it. So all the person who owns it has to do it make sure the money he owes is less than the difference between what he paid and the value of the franchise when he sells it and he makes a profit on the team.

If Attanasio trusts Melvin, and if he is not a "meddling owner," then he should simply tell Boras that he needs to deal with the GM. That he does not do that leads me to believe that he either lacks confidence in Melvin, or that he likes "playing GM" himself. It's possible but there is another alternative. They have an understanding of where they are headed and divided up the task of getting there. I am sure Melvin and Attanasio discussed the limits of what K-Rod was worth and how far along discussions with him, as well as others Melvin was talking to, were. I seriously doubt it could ever have happened that Melvin finalized a deal for Pappelbon only to find out afterward Mark agreed to a deal with K-Rod.

I think K-Rod can be pretty dang good again but there are plenty of reasons watching him pitch easily makes us all nervous, too, strong stats notwithstanding. Personally I'll take reality over perception any day of the week. I sometimes think fans see the homeruns and lack of velocity and get nervous regardless of the outcome. I think it even goes to the perception that he never has a clean inning. Yet in reality his WHIP last season was only.075 worse than Kimbrel's.

Relief pitchers are unreliable, overvalued, and generally deserved to be crapped on. Outside of a handful of elite talents (like Kimbrel), any given RP could end up being fantastic or horrible next season. The reason people target the guys you've listed is because they are unnecessarily expensive given the above facts. In his 13 year career he only had two seasons where he had an ERA about 4 and never had one above 4.5. Half the time he produced an ERA under3. His career ERA is 2.73 and is 10th in career saves. If it is true that relievers have to be classified as either elite or to be crapped on then K-Rod has to be put in the elite category. I would suggest a third alternative. A group that includes pitchers who can be relied upon to give you at least average production year in and year out. Personally that would be where I put Rodriguez. Which is well worth what he is being paid.

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1642&position=P Yes, this one. The last 3 years he has basically combined to be a replacement-level pitcher according to it. I think that tells you more about WAR than it does K-Rod's ability.

I think if he gets more days off he should be able to make it through the season and still be productive. Given how long he's played I think he's smart enough to know that as well so he probably won't fight getting more time off. It's nice that we have Lind to help in the four hole of needed. I think at this stage Ramirez would be better suited in the 5 or 6 hole.

Depends if it is deferred with interest and how long the deals are. If it is interest free (which I believe Braun's deferred money is) and a longer deal inflation would reduce the actual amount in real dollars.

Ditto. I am more concerned with how fast he can get himself back on track and how long he can stay there than how long his suspension is.