82brewcrew82

Woodruff? To be fair to Guerra, he has performed better than Woodruff in ST so far. As such he deserves the rotation spot more. I think I'd feel a little better with Suter/Guerra filing the last two spots. Cobb/Guerra in the last two spots would be better with Suter in the swing man role.

I hate to beat the dead horse...but ever heard of something called Spring Training? He's in a few different threads with the basic theme of "Thames sucks". Just ignore.

I was out there this week and frankly was appalled at Thames jogging instead of running. Whether it's a conscious decision on his part to preserve his legs, the fact is he simply isn't running faster than a jog is alarming. If it is a conscious decision to preserve his legs, then his leg issues must be pretty severe. He hit a ball up the middle the other day against the White Sox that ended up being fielded after about 10 bounces in medium center field by the 2B who threw him out easily. In another AB, he ball got by the catcher on a third strike and again he jogged down to first, only making it because the catcher slipped trying to pick up the ball at the screen and dropped it. If choosing the roster was based on spring performance, Choi sure looks like the better option at 1B, knowing that won't happen because of Thames' contract. Also I've been hammered for mentioning Santana's K rate this year. He's fanned 19 times in 34 AB's. Last spring he fanned 20 times in 60 AB's so that's pretty significant regression. Regarding Thames, I'll take his proven numbers last year over a few dozen Choi at-bats. Choi looked atrocious last year in his MLB time. So bad that his team felt compelled to replace him with Garrett Cooper. As for Santana, his average is still ok, so I'm not worried. I still wish he weren't on the team, though. He is the definition of a Doug Melvin player. I've gotten so sick of watching these high strikeout guys over the years, but I think we are kind of Stockholm Syndromed into accepting that approach after watching it for so long. He defies the direction the team is going with Cain and Yelich coming to town. I mean, it would be unheard of for a guy to perform one way in spring and another in the regular season! Anyway, I don't give a flip about spring training numbers. Don't care about Thames "jogging" either. There is enough veteran leadership on this team to handle it if he's just being lazy. If "jogging" during spring training helps save him some bullets for the regular season and the team is ok with it, then I am to.

Ditto. +1. There is only one reason we play the game. My answer might be a little different if we ever won one... but we haven't. I've followed the Brewers since '87 and we have only had a few good seasons in those years. I can take another 9 years of bad baseball for one WS victory. Easy choice. Yeah, I don't know what the point of being consistently competitive would be if winning the series was ruled out.

I believe the Brewers have their own valuation tools and methodologies. That wasn't my point. My point was that every other team has theirs to. The problem is the Brewers have tools and methodologies that lead to Milone being in the rotation and signing of pitchers on extended streaks of poor performance. I don't think that will have anyone banging down the door for an in depth expose on the Brewers methodologies. Having said that, the acknowledgement that we are dealing with pigs (or unpolished pebbles if you will) is certainly an agreeable point and I am all for any measure that would mitigate any one of these dirty pebbles not starting games. If that means working a four man rotation for as long as possible, so be it. Of course if you had five starters you had faith in you wouldn't be worried about manipulating starts which gets to the point as much as anything. These are not high upside flyers whose lack of success disguises a depth of talent.

Because it isn’t really magic, or alchemy, or transmutation. Nobody is turning lead into gold. It is about “finding diamonds in the rough” or the “island of misfit toys” or whatever cliche is most apt. One cannot just throw a dart at the waiver wire, find any old schmuck, wave a computer algorithm at him, and poof, he’s Collin McHugh. The Brewers are undoubtedly looking for particular pitchers with very specific underlying technical flaws and metrics that could conceivably fit with their overall organizational approach. I happen to find the fact that they intentionally chose these pitchers with that strategy in mind makes me want to give them the benefit of the doubt. By mid-May, perhaps they’ve fallen on their face, or maybe they’ve given us some useful turns in the rotation but the league has figured them out. In that case, Woodruff and maybe even Burnes are only a phone call away. I don’t see any reason to be too agitated, at least until we see some actual results. Are you implying that the Brewers are deploying a technique or philosophy that hasn't been identified until now (Are these the same metrics and technical flaws that had Milone in the rotation last year?)? If you aren't, then you have basically described what every team in the leagues does unless you're also implying that every other team uses a dart board (they don't). Sure, we can point to a few pebbles of sand like McHugh, but those pebbles are buried on the vast beach of FA signings and waiver wire claims that never panned out. Your last paragraph is probably the most salient. Let's let these guys prove they suck even though we know their most recent track record says they do.....and I'm perfectly fine with that. Sure, maybe they get lucky but the odds of that happening are poor. What I don't buy are all the posts trying to put lipstick on a pig and telling me it ain't ugly.

Yes, but I would assume that can be accomplished by putting Nelson on the 60-day DL. Forgot about that. Drake just needs to be DFAd! .....or that.

Yes, but I would assume that can be accomplished by putting Nelson on the 60-day DL. .....or letting Aguilar go.

I unequivocally believe number 3 is the answer but I also reject that this as an either/or argument. If they have a magic wand that can fix Miley or Gallardo of Guerra or anyone, why does that magic wand not work on a guy like Cobb? If they can turn Miley into Cobb why can't they turn Cobb into a TOR and if you can turn Cobb into a TOR, why wouldn't you pay the discounted price to do so? I think they had a plan that involved moving Santana. If they really thought Miley was the guy, they would have signed him sooner and not after they had already come to the conclusion that getting what they wanted for Santana wasn't going to happen. It's the same reason we didn't hear about Braun moving to first until late in the off season. They misread the market like everyone else. Kudos on them for not overreacting and doing something really dumb. None of that takes away form the gaping wound that is the starting rotation.

Thank you for digging that up and I'll admit it sounds a tad more optimistic than i remembered but still plenty of reason for caution.

I remember that as more like it was more likely that he could come back from the type of shoulder injury he had than the more common type and that there wasn't really enough data on injures like this on pitchers to make the judgement one way or the other. I remember it being an encouraging report but not nearly as strong as what you're stating. Even he does come back 100%, we may not see that until next year. Who knows. I just don't think it's the smart play to count on him coming back this year as exactly what he was last year. That seems like a set up for failure.

Until he is pitching he is gone and so is his production. No one here knows how long that is going to be and you are correct in that we don't know what we get when he does come back. You can hope for the best but the prudent move is to prepare for the worst. I'm not at all sold on the back end of the rotation being at all improved much less "much" improved. Chacin is in prove it mode for me and I'm not at all sold that Suter and Miley are going to be large improvements. Woodruff looks to be tagged for AAA.

Why do people think the pitching success last year didn't include Nelson? Chacin isn't replacing that. Chacins career numbers very similar to Nelson. Were you talking up Nelson before he had his great season last year? I’d bet not. We’ll see what Johnson does with him. He’s had some pretty successful seasons. Irrelevant. Whether or not you believe in Nelson going forward, he produced the season he did and that contributed to a top ten pitching staff. To maintain that his production, at the level he performed at last year, needs to be replaced. I don't see anything about Chacin (inclduding his horrid splits) that suggests he can do that. And yes, I was very much a Nelson supporter even when the vast majority of folks wanted to just cut him last spring.

Why do people think the pitching success last year didn't include Nelson? Chacin isn't replacing that.

Isnt this the same for about 90% of the teams in the MLB? We have some minor success last season and pretend that this is going to change over night. It’s a very good reason as to why I’m good to wait and see how the season and some of our younger arms do before we go too deep into free agents that we don’t recover for 10 years. No, I don't think you can say that about 90% of the teams and the ones that are true contenders are certainly not in that position. The success came overnight, whey can't it revert overnight?

My problem with the idea of Miley is it's a page straight out of the mid-2000s Brewers handbook of "sign a bunch of junk, and start the best of them." That's how we got the likes of Victor Santos, Wes Obermueller and Wayne Franklin in those intrepid rotations. I guess I incorrectly thought that the new regime was going to focus on developing in-house pitching, and give them chances to produce. There is simply nothing that Brent Suter and Brandon Woodruff have left to prove at AAA to warrant a guy like Miley getting a spot over them. The fact that they didn't make a move other than Chacin to strengthen the pitching staff tells me that they are not in "go for it" mode, so I guess that's another reason I don't understand why they wouldn't roll with Suter and Woodruff, as those guys stand a much better chance of being part of the team when it is going for it than Miley does. I would have been more enthused about Yo, but that's my heart talking, not my head. I'm a sucker for nostalgia. The thing is, in those years, the problem was that the Brewers were filling out 3+ spots in the rotation with those kinds of guys. As long as it's only 1 spot, and the leash isn't too long, I'm not going to get too uptight about it. I disagree with the premise that we aren't filling 3 rotation spots with that kid of interchangeable talent. For the life of me I don't know why Chacin is being inked in as a definite upgrade. I think that situation has bust potential written all over it. Miley is just plain horrible. Suter I very much like in a swing role, but I think he has some serious issues as a permanent rotation member.

So would I. But Miley didn't put up a 3.78. It isn't like the starts where he got shelled don't count. The problem with putting a guy in your rotation that you know is going to get rocked every 3rd or 4th time out is that there is not much room for the other times when your other starters get rocked. Every starter has bad games. That's a ton of pressure on the bullpen to pick up the innings for a guy that's going to get shelled that much. That would also be more palatable if the top of the rotation was a bit stronger.

I challenge you to find someone with higher hopes for Williams than me but I don't think that would scare me off of Holland. If they are going to run with the rotation as it stands, they are going to need as many good arms in the pen as they can find.

You're correct but it also calls in to question just how much he is going to play there.

For a team that missed the playoffs by one game last year, those 7 starts where he got shelled would seem to me like they might be a big deal. I agree. The line is razor thin for this team so up and down performance isn't comforting. Not to mention he wasn't very good the year before either.

That is an excellent summation. One could argue that Anderson is a regression candidate just to stir up the cornflakes. However, I think Anderson and Davies have a strong (and longer) track record to base some optimism off ofhttp://forum.brewerfan.net/posting.php?mode=quote&f=66&p=1092262. I'm kind of confused as to why Chacin is inked in as an upgrade. There are legit reasons for concern there. Edit: I'm lazy but I'd be interested in the home/road splits for Chacin last year.

Garza wasn't bad the first half. I don't know what Suter or Woodruff are right now. Maybe they are better, but neither has started a full season so that is an assumption at this point. I'm pretty convinced Miley/Gallardo/Guerra and others are......not good. That is based on past performance, not a hope that they will be better. Being wrong here would be really cool.

I would put the chances of you being wrong on Miley at about 1%. Even with my most Brewer-colored goggles, I see no scenario where he doesn't suck. I hated that signing when it happened, and nothing has changed. Is it wrong that I kind of get mad every time he has a decent spring training outing? So where is this upgrade over Garza and others from last year? I just don't see the rotation as not having lost ground.

Jimmy Nelson says hi from his rehab suite. I'm not buying the new guys as being a big enough improvement to cancel the loss of Nelson. There are a whole lot of regression candidates so maybe catcher and infield stayed the same, maybe not. I think 92 wins is very aggressive.

I agree that the Cobb stuff went way overboard and you're absolutely correct on that point. However, you are going to have to trade the same assets mid season that no one wants to trade now. What is the difference? I put no credence in spring numbers.........at all. I have a tad bit of faith in Suter and absolutely none in Miley. It would be so awesome if I'm wrong.