sveumrules

The trend of rising strikeouts is certainly an interesting one. As you mention the information revolution has overtaken front offices and the fact that they are seen as a positive for pitchers and a net zero for hitters will only encourage them to seek out pitchers who can strike people out while not being dissuaded from pursuing hitters who strike out often. I also think on an anecdotal level that the idea of a "two strike approach" is no longer relevant, or at the very least on a severe decline, as a number of hitters seem to have one approach and one approach only. At the same time, with a good number of front offices looking to be ahead of the curve I think that contact rate is likely undervalued currently. In a short series (read, the playoffs) a team that makes contact often has more chance for "luck" to fall in their favor than does a team of grip it and rip it all or nothing sluggers. While relying on 3 run homers and big innings may work in the regular season when a large number of games are against league average or worse pitchers, in the postseason when you're facing top end starters and managers have a quicker hook to get to the flame throwing relievers it would seem beneficial (in theory at least) to have guys who can at least put the bat on the ball and maybe luck into an infield hit or make the pitcher work for by fouling off pitches and seeing 10 or 11 pitches before making an out. Definitely interesting to see "small ball" skills like defense and speed on the rise league wide which would make you think intuitively that k rate should decline correspondingly but that's definitely not the case.

Doug Melvin's plan for first base going into the year was for Corey Hart to start and for Mat Gamel to back him up. He likely considered Taylor Green and Hunter Morris to be 3rd and 4th options. The Corey Hart got hurt. Then Mat Gamel got hurt. In spring training it looked like Taylor Green and Alex Gonzalez would share the job until Hart returned. Then Taylor Green got hurt. The organization thinks Morris needs time at AAA and I'll defer to them as they know the player far better than do I. Our opening day MLB lineup of Aoki, Weeks, Braun, Ramirez, Lucroy, Gonzalez, Gomez and Segura is still well above average even with Gonzalez at first base. Recently Braun, Ramirez and Segura have been injured. The problem isn't Alex Gonzalez at first base or not having a plan at first base, the problem is we've lost 3 starters (including our 2 best hitters) to injury in 3 games. I'm not sure what GM of a small market team could plan for such a series of events.

I'm done. Call me in June of 2014 to let me know who we took with the first pick.

Coming into the season we had Hart, Ramirez and Green for the two corner IF spots. By the 5th game of the season all three were injured. Green is already AAAA if you ask me so anyone else DM would have acquired for additional depth would be AAAA as well. The difference between YuniB and AlGon & any AAAA player is basically nil so I don't really see what the big deal is, personally. Would everything really be puppies and rainbows if Lyle Overbay were at first? I think we'd still be 1-4.

Sorry about that TooLive, totally misinterpreted that.

Not to mention accruing valuable service time. For a marginal player like Davis I'm not too concerned about gaming the system. If he were Jackie Bradley or Aaron Hicks I would agree, but he is 25 and projects as a second division regular at best. The whole board has been up in arms about all the service time Gamel accrued sitting on the bench early on and now it looks like he'll never even get to six years. I'd imagine Mat and his family are especially thankful for those big league checks he got while burning his precious service time.

If I were Khris Davis I think I'd rather sit on the big league bench and collect a big league paycheck (plus per diems which are certainly not insignificant) than play every day in Nashville and collect a AAA check.

With pitcher injury rates what they are I'd say if a guy has built up enough innings to pitch an entire season and looks ready to go out of the gate there's no reason to hold him down and try to game that extra year down the road. At some point in the next 6-7 years he will likely get hurt, so use the bullets while they're there.

Moving forward I would say we are in a good position with the OF (Braun/Gomez/Aoki/Schafer), C (Lucroy/Maldonado), and SS (Segura). 3B, 2B and 1B are fine for this year but after that it gets dicey. Ramirez is old, Weeks is getting to the age where 2B start to get hurt a lot more & he's already been hurt a lot, and while I'd prefer they don't resign Hart if he comes back and repeats last year's 125 wRC+ (107 was league average for 1B in 2012) I won't be too heartbroken if the money/years aren't crazy. That leaves the only questions in the near future at 2B/3B for the lineup and I personally don't believe in any of the internal options that are close to MLB ready at this point. Still, 6/8 of an above average lineup locked in for the next few years is a good position to be in. On the pitching side there are a lot more questions, but that is the story of the Milwaukee Brewers as long as most of us can remember. It's pretty much Gallardo and then crickets. While having cheap, internal options for the 4/5 spots is nice we are still lacking a true #1 at any level. The three ways you can get a #1 are to have legit prospects to trade for them (we used up all of ours on rentals so we don't anymore), spend big on them in FA (dream on), and pick early in the draft (we win too many games now to do that). Sure the Pirates have a great farm, but it's primarily because of Cole/Taillon who were #1 and #2 picks in their drafts. When we've had picks close to that high in the recent past and used them on arms we took the two highest upside/lowest probability guys in Rogers and Jeffress and it didn't work out. As much as I'd love for the Brewers to emulate the Rays model, and be able to take it to the next level even because we have the fan support they lack & don't play in the AL East, that is as much of a pipe dream as signing a true ace to that 6/150 contract. At the same time the run of baseball this team has had since Melvin took over, while far from perfect, is the best that I can remember in my 30 years of being a fan. We look far better on paper than either the A's or Orioles of last year who both played in more difficult divisions than we do and made the postseason. Anything can happen in baseball and I for one am curious to see what does.

Essentially each draft pick has a corresponding dollar amount. The better the pick the higher amount. Add up the total of each team's picks and that determines their bonus pool. Teams can exceed the bonus pool, but there are penalties for doing so. By losing the 17th pick the Brewers will lose a significant portion of their pool, but I wouldn't be surprised if a Boras guy projected to go higher mysteriously falls to us. Do you have to use the "bonus pool" money for draft picks? If so, then loosing a pick and loosing the money seems to be a wash (don't really need the money if you don't have the pick). The bonus pool money can be spent however you wish, the amounts aren't locked in with each pick. Last year I believe the 17th slot was allocated 2 million. Say (before signing Lohse obviously) the Brewers found someone willing to sign for 1 million in the first, they could then use the remaining 1 million towards later round picks to maybe sign high ceiling high school players that slipped due to strong college commitments or something like that.

Essentially each draft pick has a corresponding dollar amount. The better the pick the higher amount. Add up the total of each team's picks and that determines their bonus pool. Teams can exceed the bonus pool, but there are penalties for doing so. By losing the 17th pick the Brewers will lose a significant portion of their pool, but I wouldn't be surprised if a Boras guy projected to go higher mysteriously falls to us.

The main upside from the owner's point of view is that it will allow for greater control over the bonuses, which many of them feel have been getting out of control for some time.

Gomez flyball % 2007-10 : 38.6, 39.0, 35.4, 35.5 2011-12 : 43.8, 43.2 Gomez home run to flyball % 2007-10 : 5.9, 4.8, 3.7, 7.1 2011-12 : 11.4, 14.3 So he's hitting more flyballs with a higher percentage of them going out. If he continues this trend, which I think he will, he is essentially Mike Cameron without the walks.

The instructional with Lucroy was especially good. He talked about taking pride in his receiving ability and how he sets a low target so he can go up to get low pitches which results in more borderline strike calls, as opposed to catchers who set a higher target and have to therefore go down to get low pitches giving the umpire the impression the pitch was down out of the zone.

LaPorta, Salome now Gamel. Escobar, Brantley and LoCain better watch out as it's looking like there might be some kind of 2008 Huntsville Stars curse going around.

The Seattle Mariners have posted a team OBP below .300 for each of the past three seasons.

The WBC is pretty boring. I mean who would want to watch an infield of Jurickson Profar, Andrelton Simmons and Xander Bogaerts? BORING.

I'm not so sure. BJ Upton got a big deal this offseason after putting up a sub .300 OBP. Granted he has a history of putting up a higher mark and I'd probably project him around .320 which is like Gomez's 90th percentile projection but still, if Gomez puts up a big year in that 20 HR/40 SB kind of range I don't think he'll have a problem breaking 50 million given his defense and age.

Red Sox prospect Bryce Brentz accidentally shot himself in the leg while "cleaning his gun." Clearly he's never seen the Ice-T/Gary Busey/Rutger Hauer masterpiece Surviving the Game.

Therein lies the dilemma. You want to give the guys he has drafted time to develop. But at the same time given Milwaukee's market size and financial realities you can't really afford to let a guy helm 5 or 6 drafts and come away without anything more than role players and second division regulars, which unfortunately is where I feel like we're headed on our current track.

Well played. I knew after typing the "two balls, one hand" line I was lobbing a pretty big softball out there.

I started off practicing with two balls in one hand. Once you get good at that it's pretty easy to incorporate the third ball and second hand. I wouldn't recommend moving up to chainsaws too fast though...I'm only typing this with one arm.

This will be Bruce Seid's fifth draft at the helm. What are everybody's impressions thus far? I personally think it is too early to grade the guys from the last draft but based on results thus far I think you'd have to give his 1st round picks the following grades; Arnett (F), Covey (INC), Jungmann ©, Bradley (D). Granted there is more to a draft than the first round, as a guy like Mike Fiers has shown, and it's a lot easier picking in the first ten or so picks as Jack Z often had the luxury of doing as opposed to Bruce who hasn't gotten to pick higher than 12th, but even with that said I think the seat has to be getting a little hot.

Less than 250 of those are regular starting position players though, and obviously several of those were not in MLB over that entire three year period. If you add in Hart's 2009 season his average games per season goes down to 135 over the last 4 years. Regardless, I think there is legitimate concern injuries will hamper his future production and he could be a candidate for a steep drop-off in health and production. You're definitely right, eyeblack. I forgot to take out all the pitchers and bench players, but even still an average of 135 games a year is in the top 30% and right about where someone like Hart should be as a good not great player. Though I do agree with the larger point that with all factors taken into consideration the best idea is to let him play out this year and see what the market looks like next winter.

In regards to Corey Hart and his injury proneness, there are 30 teams in MLB each with 25 players on their active roster. So 750 players total. From 2010-2012 Hart's 424 games played rank him 62nd. Therefore, as it turns out, at almost anytime there are almost 700 "injury prone" players active on MLB rosters.