Oldcity

Unreal

The only time anything about him stood out to me was how bad his call of Rickie Weeks' home run yesterday was. Obviously I'll withhold any judgment for a while.

Mine too, actually. I had enough trouble with a U.S. Cellular dumbphone in Miller Park, and U.S. Cellular never has reception trouble.

So what about other providers? I don't have AT&T, and mine is pretty bad there at times.

Yeah, I had heard that speculation. I figured it would take more than a couple days even to go over the fine print of the contract or whatever, but maybe not.

Then the Brewers need to trade Greinke right now, if that's how you're looking at it. Otherwise, where are you going to get the talent you're talking about? They sure don't have a Greinke-level talent in the minors. If the Brewers move on from K-Rod, Morgan, Hart, Marcum, Wolf next year, that is a significant amount of money. Those are all solid players for sure, but they also appear to be replaceable by cost effective players in the Brewers' system: Gindl, Schafer, Peralta, Fiers, Kintzler, Thornburg, whomever. And they'll probably sign a free agent or two and a modest, shorter-term deal. The one deal that screws everything up is Ramirez, but they should still be able to stay competitive. Guys like K-Rod, Morgan, Wolf, even Marcum and Hart are replaceable. Guys like Greinke are not, at least not without more resources (money or high level prospects as trade bait) that the Brewers do not have. Excuse the analogy, but it makes me think of the fantasy baseball auction draft I had recently. Many teams were so concerned at the beginning with not overspending on players that all of a sudden toward the end of the draft, teams realized they had all this money but not the talent to spend it on. Mediocre players were then going for as much as the high level players from earlier in the draft. Don't you think those teams wished they could re-draft and spend more on the elite players? Elite starting pitchers have value that is extremely difficult to replace. Also... is there any way we can merge this thread with the Greinke one? I feel like they are essentially the same conversation at this point.

Aren't we getting a bit carried away to expect this by opening day? He just hired the agent today; isn't it likely that they're going to take more than a couple days to negotiate a $100 million deal? Not that I wouldn't want to give him a standing ovation when he's announced on Saturday, but still...

You do a good job of illustrating the large risk involved. Unfortunately, the Brewers have a limited number of ways of acquiring elite talent: drafting, trading, or extending a contract before free agency. The latter is the most expensive way, but it's still much cheaper than bidding for elite talent in free agency, which is not an option for them. If they want to remain a good team, they need a significant talent to replace Greinke. They won't find that in free agency, and they don't have the chips to trade that they did when they traded for Greinke. That leaves two options: re-sign Greinke, or take your shot by signing/trading for a few lesser players. The first option definitely more likely to work, so much so that the Brewers will likely spend more than they'd ever want to. Would you rather have Zack Greinke, or Shawn Marcum+Joe Blanton?

Awesome

I'm sure I used fangraphs when I made that list, which is where the discrepancy comes from. Still Warning Track Power, what's wrong with looking at 2008 and forward? Is either pitcher's performance in pre-2008 seasons all that relevant now?

I posted this in the other Greinke thread, but it's worth another look after this contract. Greinke WAR 2008: 4.9 2009: 9.3 2010: 5.1 2011: 3.9 (Would have been right around 5 again without the basketball injury) Total: 23.2 Weaver WAR 2008: 3.4 2009: 3.8 2010: 5.8 2011: 5.6 Total: 18.6 Verlander WAR 2008: 3.4 2009: 8.3 2010: 6.4 2011: 7.0 Total: 25.1 Hernandez WAR 2008: 3.7 2009: 6.8 2010: 6.2 2011: 5.5 Total: 22.2 And just for kicks and giggles, here are two more set to reach free agency with Greinke Cole Hamels WAR 2008: 4.4 2009: 3.6 2010: 3.7 2011: 4.9 Total: 16.6 Matt Cain WAR 2008: 3.7 2009: 3.3 2010: 3.7 2011: 5.2 Total: 15.9

Greinke has been better than Cain every year except last season. Would have likely been the same last year if not for Greinke's injury at the start of the year.

Greinke is better than Cain.

So would you rather sign a guy who's had injuries because he's "used up his share of injuries, so he's more likely to be healthy?" Health/durability is something of a skill. His health makes him a better bet than most pitchers to live up to that type of salary. $100 mil for 5 years is a fair deal for the Brewers. If he reaches free agency, I imagine he'll get more like 7 years/$150 million.

I'd be happy with anything under $100 million. Not sure if he'd do that, though.

Yeah... That sounds right.

Didn't see it, but I will be looking for highlights of craft crying the last two minutes of the game. Beautiful.

Honestly thought this was an April Fool's joke. Had to actually check to make sure it was legit. Exciting...

Bigredrobo, you'll have to let me know how the auction goes. We had our league set up on CBS' pay site, which I had heard was the absolute top of the line. I don't think we could have been more disappointed. There were a ton of league set up issues, and then we tried their draft software. I couldn't believe how basic it was. As my friend said, it looked like one of us designed it in a few hours. It didn't even let us rank our players by dollar value, which in an auction draft is incredibly inconvenient. We left, got our money back, added it to our winnings pool and moved to ESPN. Very disappointed by CBS, at least in their pre-draft setup.

The Nets just traded their pick for Gerald Wallace. It seems like there are many more stupid GMs in the NBA than other sports.

Why would he do that? Any time he had both of them in last year, Morgan slid over to right.

Except Nieves wasn't great defensively. I think people just assumed he was, because he was so awful offensively.

Nah, they changed all the rounds to best of 7 a few years ago. As if the NBA playoffs needed to last even longer.

Exactly. What a joke.

I don't see how the crybaby comment is so out of line. The Lucroy thing is just one thing. I've never seen a pitcher so routinely look visibly frustrated by balls and strikes calls. He walks off the mound before an umpire's call all the time, which shows up the ump. One time last year he hit a long foul ball and emphatically called for a replay. Of course, replay showed the ball was easily foul. Wolf has just always bugged me. The personal catcher thing adds to it for me, although obviously I don't know the details there.