paul253

If it takes anything more than a midlevel prospect I wouldnt do it. I'd give up Gwynn and a minor leaguer, but not Cain or Gillespie. If Giles was going to be around for more than a year or was 3 years younger, then yes, but Cain for a year of Giles is too much.

A catcher with an .800 OPS is very good. Catching also takes much more of a toll on your body. An everyday third basemen plays a lot more often. Plus I realize you don't necessarily play people at positions of need, but when you are 4 deep at one position (Lucroy, Salome, Palmisano, Fryer) and zero deep at other positions, why add someone to the one position when he is just as capable of playing the other. Plus an .800 2nd basemen is also very good. I dont like the idea of playing one position 3 days a week and another position the other 3...i think wherever you play you need to stay there so you can focus on it.

A catcher with an .800 OPS is very good. Catching also takes much more of a toll on your body. An everyday third basemen plays a lot more often. Plus I realize you don't necessarily play people at positions of need, but when you are 4 deep at one position (Lucroy, Salome, Palmisano, Fryer) and zero deep at other positions, why add someone to the one position when he is just as capable of playing the other. Plus an .800 2nd basemen is also very good. I dont like the idea of playing one position 3 days a week and another position the other 3...i think wherever you play you need to stay there so you can focus on it.

Can someone explain why the Brewers are going to play Lawrie at catcher? I know you can never have too much catching, but you have a top prospect at AAA and a top prospect at AA. How is his value any higher there than it would be at 3rd or 2nd where he can play more often? Plus, once Gamel moves either one of those positions will have a quicker path to the majors.

Can someone explain why the Brewers are going to play Lawrie at catcher? I know you can never have too much catching, but you have a top prospect at AAA and a top prospect at AA. How is his value any higher there than it would be at 3rd or 2nd where he can play more often? Plus, once Gamel moves either one of those positions will have a quicker path to the majors.

Did they win last night? I was watching the rerun on Public TV and fell asleep when they were up 2-0

Dont forget Sean Marshall, he has value, is mlb ready and is cheap. If the Cubs were to offer up Pie, Marshall and Golden Boy, that wouldnt be too far off from what the Brewers gave the Indians for Sabathia. If the Cubs offered up a couple of mid range A guys as well with potential, its a pretty nice deal for the Padres. They get a great defender in CF, a potential ace starter, and a very reliable #4 type of starter and prospects for Peavy. I wouldnt call that robbery at all. Are you kidding me? Marshall, Pie and Samar-however the hell you spell it? Pie is nothing....Marshall.....i wouldnt call him a top of the rotation guy. And the other guy is a reliever. SD can get way more for Peavy than that. If thats the best Chicago can offer, I'm not too concerned. Of course they got Ramirez, Lee and Harden for basically nothing, so you never know. Maybe he read your Milwaukee rant on the political board. Maybe....I betcha he'd get pissed trying to get from the east side to the west side at rush hour too!

Has Gamel ever played first base before? I hesitate to hand a guy a position hes never played before with only about a week of experience at AAA and a few major league at bats.

I dont understand why Peavy wouldnt want to come to Milwaukee. Yes, its Milwaukee, but its not like its Walla Walla Washington. From a purely baseball standpoint we play in a beautiful park, have great loyal fans, and have set the team up to be one ace away from competing for the next several years.

I dont see the need to overpay, either with a trade or free agent money, for a closer. Torres is back and he did a fine job, until September of course, but he will do the job. I think they need to make CV the 8th inning guy, and maybe sign an FA or two to compliment Riske, Stetter/Shouse and possibly Dillard (I feel like I'm forgetting someone) That being said, if you can get a Huston Street for a reasonable (not top 10 prospect) I say go for it.

Who do you think will command more money...Burnett or Sheets? As much as I hate the idea of signing an injury plagued pitcher, especially for 5 years, the lack of starting pitching prospects in the minors and the obvious need this year has me real concerned. I think we should make a run at one of the two since Sabathia and now Peavy seem unlikely.

As for the predictive value of a ball in play, nobody here is comparing strike outs to hits. They're comparing them to outs Right, but I'm saying that if instread of striking out 100 times, surely if you put the ball in play half of those times you'd be getting more hits. So while you comparing these, you are assuming that if they put the ball in play all of them would be outs, which I dont think would be the case. I think some of them would turn into hits or errors, which would increase the run margin.

I agree.....from what I saw of him in Milwaukee, which was a small sample admittedly, i wouldnt say he is worse defensively. I don't know....I just didnt cringe and cross my fingers every time a ground ball was hit his like way like I did with Weeks. I wouldnt mind seeing him back, but he is limited to 2nd base and so is Weeks. If you can find an every day 3rd basemen to allow Hall to play supersub, thats fine I guess.

The statistical truth, borne out by over a century of evidence is that OPS, OBP*1.6 + SLG%, or OxS (pick your favorite) tell you how many runs a team will score. Style points matter not at all, and a player with a .800 OPS and 160 k's will create more runs than a guy with a .740 OPS who "does the little things" and strikes out only 40 times. Cam's an above average offensive centerfielder, warts and all, who plays superior defense. He had a crappy September, but if you can find me a guy who doesn't have a bad month a year, I'll show you a hall of famer. Like I said, the strikeout thing is not the only, or the main, issue. Last season I was completely against strikeout players. What I realized afterwards is that the strikeout itself doesnt bother me, its how and when they strikeout. If you swing and miss at a fastball right down the middle, so be it. But when you constantly, constantly strikeout by swinging at pitches a foot or two out of the strikezone that gets frustrating. That, however, is a problem i have with the team in general, not Cameron itself. As far as 100 k's meaning one negative run, or whatever that stat is. I dont see how you can make that statistic. If you have a guy on third with one out, how can you possibly predict where the hitter would make an out if he didnt strikeout. How can you predict someone would groundout to the shortstop as opposed to the second basemen? Also, how can you assume that if put the ball in play 100 more times that a few of those wouldnt fall for a hit, or that an infielder wouldnt bobble the ball? And let's say instead of striking out with the bases empty and two outs, you get a hit. How can you predict what the rest of the team will do behind you and how many runs you'll score?

Although I dont think he's worth $10 million, my biggest concern is with what he brings to the table. Don't get me wrong, he's a solid player. But we have enough players than already do what he can do. Its just like in every other sport....in football, you cant just have speed receivers that run the deep rout every time, because who are you going to throw to on 3rd and 6? You need a big possession type guy that can go over the middle. In Hockey, you cant have 6 offenseive minded defensemen because when you're up 5-4 with a minute left, you dont need to score a goal, you need someone who can defend. In basketball....haha....well....look at the debacle that Team USA was up until this year. And in baseball, you cant stack a lineup with power hitting right handers who strikeout a lot. You need someone who can get on base ahead of those guys and someone who can draw some of the pitchers attention. What we had last year completely shut down and the season turned darn near embarrassing. We were lucky the Mets choked again otherwise we wouldnt have been in the playoffs. Although a trade is possible, I dont see them trading Fielder because he's right now the only lefty in the lineup, and you'd need a young firstbasemen in return. I dont see them trading Hart because outfield was weak enough for them to exercise Cameron, so they'd just create another outfield hole. Weeks is worthless in a trade, and Hardy is risky because you'd have to count on Escobar. I dont see that much offensive turnover, and i think its a mistake.

Considering that you really can't count on Edmonds for much more than 110 games, I think you can call him an "inferior hitter" to Cameron. Or perhaps, "less productive" when you account for projected playing time. And that's assuming a) Edmonds doesn't retire, b) Edmonds has much left at age 39, and c) the Brewers could beat out everyone else for him in the first place. Edmonds looked done in 2007 and the first part of this year, so there are definite warning signs. How can you claim him playing 110 games makes him an inferior hitter? One has nothing to do with the other. And looking at the numbers, how can you claim that Cameron had a better year offensively than Edmonds did? There seems to be a lot of pro Cameron bias here. Edmonds was just a possibility i threw out, I wasnt basing my entire off season plan around him.

The offense last year was 7th in the NL - slightly above average. But only one guy improved over 2007 - Hardy. Fielder, Weeks, Hall, Hart and even Braun - had worse years hitting in 2008. All these guys are approaching was should be their prime years - and there is real potential for all of them to improve. Is there a hole at 3B? Yes. But a lot of our guys can do better - and having Cameron a full year should help too. We'd have a chance to hit 230 HR like in 2007 instead of 198 like last year. Until September, when the offense took a nosedive. It may be that they choked because of the situation, but how scary would it be that the league finally learned how to pitch to them?

Well that a valid point, but I was just responding to the "inferior hitter" comment. He is not inferior offensively to Cameron As far as what he projects to be, I dont like to rely on computers to tell me what he's supposed to do. He had a good year this year and very well may have the same kind of year next year. I wouldnt have had a problem with Gwynn or Kapler playing twice a week to keep Edmonds fresh. But its all a moot point now because Cameron is back. I just want to go on record as saying I think its a bad move that wont improve the offense. If its a part of a bigger plan, then fine, but as it stands now, I dont like it.

The offense had warts, but you don't "fix it" by removing Cameron and inserting an inferior hitter just because maybe the new guy will strike out How is he an inferior hitter? Last year he had a higher average, and higher OBP, a MUCH higher slugging percentage (even if you include his numbers in SD), and the only 5 fewer HR's in less ABs. This has nothing to do with strikeouts, but Edmonds had fewer of those too. You dont fix the offense by trotting out the exact same offense and hoping it gets better.

Who would have been playing CF or 3B last year if not for the signing of Cameron? Gwynn? Gross? Compared to the alternatives, there probably would be a lot of people that would have been happy with signing Cameron. We're not talking about last year. I didnt have a problem with the signing last year because he filled a need. Who'd have known Hall would stink it up so much? The graph shows that his OBP was below the "good" mark each of the past 2 years and 4 out of the last 5, possibly 6 out of the last 7 (its kind of hard to see with such a small distance covering 100 points). If you look at a guy like Edmonds, who I think you could get for less than $10 million, his OBP was much better last year (.369), and that included a terrible 90abs in San Diego. Throughout his career which is roughly equivalent to Cameron's in terms of length and ABs, he has an OBP 37 points higher. Plus he hits lefty. So while Cameron may be, say, average with OBP, why settle for "average" when the possibilities to improve are out there? Plus, you add a lefthanded bat while the defense drops, but like I said, I wouldnt call Edmonds a liability out there. I'm not arguing against trading Hall or Hart....but lets not forget that Corey Hart wasnt that bad until September. He was the only player to not recover from his September slump, and he was obviously pressing, so his numbers took a nosedive. His '07 season shows that he is at least capable of putting up a good OBP\. And Hall would be more valuable as a super sub again then for anything you could get for him out of a trade. Like I said, what we are going to end up with is same offense with worse pitching? How is this going to improve our team?

If by "people", you mean you & aka Pete, then yes you're right. But I would be very happy to add Cameron at a 1 yr./$10M deal Glad to be lumped in with the rest of the anti Cameron people right away with my first post of the thread...thanks. I am not going to go through 10 pages of material, but like I said, how is Cameron going to improve the offense? You cant bring everyone back and just hope the offense gets better. He is what he is....a low OBP, low contact, high strikeout hitter with good power and superb defense. But when the problem is low OBP, a lot of strikeouts and relying too much on the homerun ball, how exactly is bringing in a low OBP high strikeout power hitter going to fix things? Like i said, I havent read the majority of the thread, but we need to look at what he brings to the team, not the individual player he is. He'd be a lot more valuable on a team that needs power and someone to drive in runs. We dont need someone to hit homeruns, we need someone to get on base. I'm sorry, an OBP of .331 is not going to make things better. Plus, he is not worth $10 million. No way is he worth $10 million, even in todays game. I'm not anti Cameron. I just dont think he is the type of player our offense needs. I'm sorry if you disagree with me.

Count me as disappointed. Its not that i think Cameron is a bad player, but when you look at the weaknesses of the offense last season, Cameron was the epidomy of them. Yes, he'll hit a lot of homeruns. But homeruns were not the problem last year. He is a right handed, low contact, strikeout hitter with power. Let's face it, if Cameron werent on the team last year, and we signed him to a one year 10 million dollar deal this offseason, people would be like "what the heck? How is he going to fix the offense?" I liked the idea of signing Edmonds to a one year $5 million deal. While his defense isnt what it once was, he is far from a liability out there. He is a left handed hitter and he'll get you 25 homeruns with a higher OBP and fewer K's. You can put Gwynn or Kapler in there twice a week to keep Edmonds fresh. Plus with that $5 million you save you can sign a solid reliever. I think this is a bad move and its one less position you have available to find a high OBP guy. What we're going to have next year is the same offense with worse pitching.

I dont know what his contract looks like, but it'd be a tough call. I think it depends on your depth for this year. As bad as Suppan is, he stays healthy at least. But if we have more than Bush, McClung and Capuano then I'd say go for it. Willis' upside if much higher than Suppans.

I wouldnt go as far as to say he's going to be a closer. While his control still isnt where it needs to be, he did make improvements this year. Beside, if he cant throw strikes closer is the last place you want him. If there was anyway we could get Peavy without trading Parra, Gallardo or Jeffress, even if it means 3 of your best position player prospects, i'd be estatic.

I think its a risk, but if its available you have to take it. It'd be one thing if we had some decent pitching prospects coming up in the next year or two, but we dont. Only Jeffress will be close to a #1, and he still has a long way to go with his control. Peavy has been a really good pitcher for a long time. I like consistancy. The Brewers are not going to be a major player in the FA market with pitching. We dont need another Suppan type .500 pitcher with a 4.5 ERA. We need someone who will win us 15-20 games.