monty57

This is what always confused me about the young Rickie Weeks. He would hit balls farther than anyone (out of Mets stadium, high off the buildings outside of Wrigley), but would end up with around 20 HR. Coupled with a low batting average, I just figured that he had an "all or nothing" swing, and that if he took a little off the swing he'd hit more HR and for a higher average.

Agree. I think they should have rested Ramirez more as well. I understand the desire to always play your best players, but Braun was hurt, Ramirez is old, and overusing relievers will lead to either fatigue or injury.

That was probably an innocent comment, and I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill, but does the Brewer management have a clue as to what direction they're headed? If we are to believe what Attanasio and Melvin are telling us, they haven't decided on what they're doing with their manager or coaches, they haven't even talked about the Ramirez option, they need to interview players to see if anyone gave up on the season, and now they haven't decided on Gallardo's option. I guess this is all part of the two paths they can take that is not a crossroads.

While I agree to some extent, the situations are different. Ramirez was drafted by the Pirates and traded away (along with Kenny Lofton) for the great Bobby Hill. He was a good player with the Cubs, but never seen as a key guy by the fans, who much preferred the higher profile guys like "We've got Wood", "Big Z" and "D Lee". Ramirez was kind of disliked, as he was seen as a guy who "never hit until the team was out of the playoff race." Weeks has certainly been a polarizing force among the fans, but he was probably the biggest name coming up among the wave of players who turned the franchise from a doormat to respectability. I wouldn't expect a stadium-to-stadium farewell tour, but it would be nice if in his last game he would make an appearance so the fans could stand and cheer. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, but it would have been a nice gesture and a bit of a positive note to an otherwise bad end to a season.

Agree. People are acting as if it's a no-brainer to throw a truckload of money at Ramirez. It's natural for players to slow down as they age, and Ramirez admitted to getting tired as this season went on. He's not the player he's been throughout his career... that's why most players in the history of baseball have retired by his age. I don't think the Brewers should spend 15-20% of their team payroll on him. However, other teams can see this as well, and recent history shows that teams are unwilling to give up the draft pick unless it's an elite player. For that reason, I think that if the Brewers offer the QO, they will probably be stuck with a fading Ramirez at around $15MM. I wouldn't do it, but if the Brewers think he's worth the money, they should exercise their side of the option. If they don't, then they shouldn't risk offering the QO. A smart move by Ramirez would probably be to decline his side of the option. If the Brewers offer the QO, he's kind of forced to accept, because he's not good enough for a team to give up their pick, so he'd end up sitting out until July before someone signs him. But, accepting QO would give him a raise over what he'd get under his current contract. If the Brewers don't offer the QO, he will probably be able to get a multi-year deal that will be less per year, but will guarantee him more than $14MM over the contract, assuring him that even if he fades away, he'll still get more money. Plus, AL teams will probably offer him more because they can DH him. The exception to this is if he somehow knows that the Brewers are declining their side of the option, in which case he should definitely exercise his half to get the $4MM buyout. This is probably why Melvin got a little upset when reporters started writing about what the Brewers were going to do.

sure, he hit .302 in the second half, in 47 of the 66 games, and only getting 125 at bats.. which is less than half of the AB of an every day player, so yeah, he did pretty well in the second half, getting select opportunities. The same could be said of Gennett, who didn't have to face the lefties because Rickie was there, but in his "select opportunities," he didn't even do "pretty well" in the second half. If both players were healthy all season, and both got 600 PAs (facing lefties and righties), I'd bet that Weeks would be far and away the better hitter. Gennett is pre-arby, so he has a lot more "bang for the buck," he's probably a better defender, and Weeks seems to be more injury prone. But, if they were both the same price and a team were looking for a second baseman for a year or two, Weeks could be the better choice. Since that's not the case, and Gennett is pre-arby with lots of team control, he's obviously our guy, but it's money and control that make that decision, not pure talent. The big problem with these players for the Brewers this year was that neither of them played any position other than second. I don't ever remember an MLB team having a platoon at 2B with players who only played that position. For this reason, I'm sure the Brewers tried to trade Weeks last offseason, but teams didn't want to take on his salary, and we really didn't have any better options for the roster spot, so we weren't going to eat salary to be rid of him. He'll get signed somewhere, and I hope that he can finally stay healthy and productive.

Picking up the option was a no-brainer. What to do now is the question. The fact that guys of this caliber cost $10-15MM on the open market, while superstars cost $20-25MM is the reason that the Brewers can't run their franchise in a way that relies on paying market rate for their "core." The goofy "price per win" numbers may say players like Gallardo are worth it, but the reality for the Brewers is that they had a record payroll this season, and $13MM would be around 12.5% of that record payroll. We need 25 players, and could only pay eight average-ish players "what they're worth" with our budget. Therefore, with contracts like this, in order to stay within budget we need to either: A) pay a lot of good players far less than they're worth, or B) pay a lot of below average players what they're worth I'd prefer option (A), so we need to stock up on good young prospects and do better in the draft in order to get good young players who are pre-arby/arby (when you can underpay for their services). Trading good, proven MLB players for prospects is a way to supplement the draft to greatly raise the odds that the farm will produce more players who fit into "option A," allowing us to pay market rate for the players who deserve it. Throw in that I don't think we have the ammunition to fill in all the holes to make next year a good team, and that all of our division rivals should be better next year than they were this year, and I believe we should trade one or both of Gallardo and Lohse in order to get some young, cheap talent back. I don't expect us to do this, but I wish we would.

Ramirez is not the player he once was, ending with an OPS around .750 and admitting that he was tired. He probably shouldn't be an everyday 3B going forward. It's very likely that age has caught up with Ramirez, and I hope the Brewers don't spend $14MM on him. That he could do as well as he did at his age is testament to his ability, but he is better served going to an AL team where he can get some rest at DH.

Well, there's admission that "win now" every year may not have been the best strategy, and that it has been done to maintain attendance. The "two paths" are either to continue to do what they've done for the last few seasons, or to "retool." He quickly said "not that we're ready to do that," so my guess is that they will continue to try to "win now." While I'm sure Attanasio is genuinely upset, I think there was a lot of PR to this whole thing. First, they can place the blame of the collapse on a couple of sacrificial lambs who will be let go, demoted, or traded. Second, by showing the fans how angry he is, he hopes to get the fans to continue to buy tickets, because they know that management "cares." They know ticket sales will drop, so to me this just looks scripted in hopes of losing as few ticket sales as possible. With that in mind, here's what I think happens: 1) Gomez will be traded. While I think this will be a good baseball move that will bring back some really good young talent this franchise sorely needs, after Attanasio's comments, the media and fans will place a lot of blame for the collapse on Gomez's "me first" approach. Really, even though he has "warts," he was one of the few players who had a pretty good season. 2) Ramirez will not be back. There will be a lot of talk about how he faded down the stretch and is too old to play 3B every day. That's probably true, and he will likely sign a two-year deal with an AL team. 3) Segura will be relegated to utility guy, who will back up SS and platoon with Gennett at 2B. If the team was truly worried about players "dogging it," who did they replace in the lineup? Segura, Reynolds and Davis. Davis had some injury issues, and Reynolds is gone anyway, so it seems Segura could be one of the guys they're concerned about. 4) They will make some "splash" moves to try to fill the holes, namely 1B, SS and 3B. The Gomez trade will fill one of these (hopefully with someone young), and it is possible they trade one of their SP, but I don't think they want to do that. There will be a "name player" signed in free agency, and I think they'll be in on names like Sandoval... Attanasio really wants to prove to "those 2.8 million fans" that they really should renew their season tickets. 5) We'll bring in a "Mark Kotsay" type guy to platoon with Davis in LF or be our everyday LF. I wouldn't be surprised to see Davis traded, as his arm is a big liability. Teams ran on him at will once they realized he couldn't throw anyone out, and while he can hit, his bat isn't good enough to make up for his defensive deficiencies. A move to an AL team is somewhere in his future, where he could make a good DH. 6) Roenicke will be fired. I don't think this will do much, but the team needs sacrificial lambs, and if it's not going to be the owner or GM, then who better than the manager? 7) Melvin is close to retirement anyways. I think he'll be here through next year, after which the team is going to need a major overhaul, which he'll watch from a beach somewhere enjoying his retirement. Attanasio probably retained him because of all of the changes that are needed in management throughout the entire organization. There is a good argument to be made that a new GM should fill it with his people, but Attanasio must have faith in Doug to put the right people in place before he leaves. This will probably cause some season ticket holders to renew their tickets, but I don't think it will make us a winner next year. Therefore, I think our rebuild will start next July when we trade away Gallardo, Lohse, Broxton and anyone else we can sell at the 2015 trade deadline.

Still again from a business perspective, how much more revenue could they have generated with Abreu? Some for sure, but enough to offset the cost? If they landed Abreau, they just wouldn't have signed Garza.

I think there is a very good chance that Ramirez is not back next year. We'll probably know by next week, as they are going to make a decision soon after the season's over. If he leaves, I wonder if the Brewers realize that they cannot plug all the holes this offseason, and rather than spending tens of millions trying, they instead let Clark play 1B and Rogers play 3B. Trade off Gallardo and Lohse, for some prospects, letting Fiers, Nelson, Thornburg, Smith, Jungmann, etc fill out the rotation behind Garza and Peralta, and play out next season with an eye toward the future. But, that's probably just a pipe dream. More likely, they'll sign Headley (who will be 31 next year) and LaRoche (who will be 35) to 3 yr/$45MM deals to man the corner IF positions.

There would have to be a clause in the contract, such as Boone's clause against playing basketball that allowed the Yankees to void his deal. If there were a clause in Braun's contract regarding PED usage, it would have already came out. Many players have been suspended for PED usage before Braun, so if there were a way out, teams would have already done it. To your next point, what good would "dragging Braun's name through the mud" do for the Brewers? The probable net outcome would be that more fans would be turned off, costing the team revenue. Plus, if they were using it as a way to blackmail Braun into signing a lesser contract, the union would probably have good grounds for getting whoever was behind the decision permanently banned from baseball.

I went through this around the time I learned that instead of trading Fielder and Hart, they were going to trade for Greinke and Marcum and extend Hart. At that point, I figured we'd better win it all this year and then blow things up, or else it was going to be a rough future. I've been stuck in the hazy realm of acceptance since then.

Anyhow, as I said ina previous post on this thread, I think it's worth exploring restructuring Braun's contract to make it more team friendly. That will never happen. It's a guaranteed deal, and if teams could get out of bad deals, they would. Braun will either need to retire and forego over $100 million (unlikely) or if they have insurance he'd need to get injured enough that he can't play and have insurance kick in. Most likely, the Brewers will pay Braun for the next 17 years. Braun's initial extension was a great deal... I love pre-arby extensions to star players. The second extension, while probably less than "market value" at the time of signing, was not horrible, but necessarily a good deal. Even if he stayed healthy and productive, it still paid him well beyond his peak years which is very dangerous. Then, even after he's retired, the Brewers will still have to pay him, which will mean a little less money that could go to improving the team that will then be on the field. Like Ramirez's deal, this was Melvin working a deal to help the team in the present at the expense of the future. I understand time value of money, but unless they're taking that extra money and gaining a positive dollar value return off of it until it is paid out when Braun is retired, I don't think it applies. What matters from a payroll perspective is how much money is available in any given season to pay the players. The money that would go to Braun will just go to someone else that season, and the deferred money that will go to Braun when he's retired will not be available to go to someone else then. Since that will likely be the case, then unless the player paid during Braun's career using the deferred money brings in a tangible positive return that is greater than the tangible negative return from utilizing payroll to pay a retired player, time value of money shouldn't be used as an argument for structuring deals this way. I can understand why Melvin and Attanasio jumped when Braun came to them with the extension idea. It was certainly a lot less risky than signing Sabathia or Fielder to the deals they signed, but it bore a lot of risk nonetheless, and at this point in time, it doesn't appear that it will turn out to be a good deal. Hopefully Braun will heal up and make it look better. I've always believed that this would be a Soriano-type deal, where Braun would get to a point where he was still a decent player, just not worth what he was being paid. However, I hoped it wouldn't happen early due to injury, and I certainly thought he would have "legendary face of franchise" status that would add value, and not the negative "cheater" status that now saddles him.

He was 2nd in MVP voting in 2012. Why would Braun take PEDs after the whole 2011 debacle, but not after his suspension? To be clear, my limited knowledge of the subject suggests that HGH helps players heal and stay on the field, but does not help other performance. Therefore, I think a healthy, PED-free Braun is indeed an elite hitter/Hall of Fame talent. I was just stating that many in "the baseball world" will view Braun as a cheater, and use the lower production (which I believe is due to the thumb injury) as "proof." If there is doubt as to his actual ability, in addition to doubts about his health, then it would be hard for the Brewers to trade him. Hopefully his thumb will heal and he will return to his old, productive self.

There are only 22 total players in all of the NL that have an .800 OPS or better. Per the mlb.com page, Braun has the 13th highest OPS (for the whole year) amongst all NL outfielders. So that means there are 32 outfielders that haven't hit as well as Braun this season that teams have trotted out there to start this season. Even with his last half swoon and baggage, I would bet that he would get more than a 1 year deal for $8M if he was on the market as a free agent. Yeah, even without feeling in his right thumb, he still outhits almost every other player in baseball. If his thumb can heal, I don't doubt that he will once again be an elite hitter, but it sounds like there is a good chance that the thumb will never be normal again. At his current production, he's not bad, he's just not worth nearly what he's due to be paid, and that discrepancy will worsen as he ages. If the thumb remains an issue, he will be our Alfonso Soriano, and like the Cubs, we will just have to overpay for the length of the contract, or maybe save a few million by trading him when the contract is nearly up and eating most of the remaining salary. To add salt to the wound, the injury occurred in conjunction with the suspension, so there will always be the question of whether or not he was ever elite, or if it was just PEDs.

I think you're discounting the moves made by the previous administration that got the team to such a low payroll and to stock the system for the future. There was no intention of winning. Bando was a horrible GM, and the hiring of Dean Taylor was the beginning of a complete rebuild which ultimately led to a period of some success. Eyes were opened that we needed to put money into draft picks, so guys like Nomar Garciaparra (5th round 1991) Alex Fernandez (1st round 1988) and Giambi (17th round 1989) didn't go unsigned. So, instead of signing another washed up free agent, we spent on draft picks like Fielder, Weeks, Braun, etc. That brought the MLB payroll down to ridiculous lows, and added a lot of talent to the system, which led to the period of success we didn't see during the many years where the entire focus was on the MLB roster. Having a low starting payroll and a lot of good pre-arby guys allowed for Attanasio to add a lot of talent through trades where we picked up salary (Carlos Lee) and free agency. That allowed the team to get a lot better very quickly (hence my perfect storm reference). Attanasio was great in finding new revenue streams, and attendance began growing both with Miller Park and when the PR machine started promoting the top prospects who were going to make the Brewers good again. However, once the payroll was maxed, and the good pre-arby guys started getting more expensive, this strategy hit a wall. Then they began trading away prospects (tomorrow) for short-term MLB players (today) and the draft strategy seemed to focus on finding "lower ceiling/higher floor" guys who could be rushed through the system to help out in the "window." From what he's said publicly, it seems to me that Melvin realized a couple of years ago that the window was closed, or at least closing rapidly, and the draft approach changed to looking for high upside guys, which is why we have some promise at the lower levels. However, Attanasio continues to circumvent Melvin and sign free agents to (for the Brewers) big money deals. Fans like this because of the perception of "going for it," but it has financially tied Melvin's hands and put way too much payroll in the hands of too few players on our roster. After now three straight "around-.500" years, we have a lot less talent than we had during the "window," and the next potential wave of impact talent on the farm is a few years out. Pondering over what could have happened is pure speculation, so the real question is what to do going forward. I don't think we will be very good next year, and a key point is Ramirez. I think he's aged out, so I hope we don't spend $14MM to see him fade into retirement. But, with him gone, we don't have a first baseman or a third baseman, and our far-and-away best player has a thumb injury that will potentially never heal, but we will pay him a lot of money for many more years. We do have some guys with potential in the low minors, so I think the best thing to do is to trade away some of the chips we still hold, namely Gomez, Gallardo, Lohse and Broxton, looking for prospects in return. Doing this, we would have a lineup something like this: Lucroy/Maldonado, Clark, Gennett, Segura, Rogers, Braun, Parra, Davis/Schafer and a rotation of Garza, Peralta, Nelson, Fiers, Thornburg/Smith/Jungmann. That lineup probably won't win much, but it's not completely devoid of talent. Plus, I don't think we're going to win anyhow. We get to see what some young guys can do, we add talent to the system (through the aforementioned trades and by getting a decent draft pick), and we free up a lot of money. Since some prospects flame out, by adding talent to the guys we already have, we should be able to find some good major leaguers in the not-too-distant future. It's a rebuild, but not as painful as we had to go through after the Bando years, and not as bad as it will be if we wait yet another year and lose guys like Lohse and Gallardo to free agency for nothing. To me, the prospects they could get now are worth more than one more year in a Brewer uniform.

Until baseball has revenue sharing and salary caps on par with football, I cannot expect the first part of this. A $100M payroll is nice, but ultimately they can't compete with teams with $240M payrolls. A $100M payroll has little to no margin for error and creates unrealistic expectations that it must be run perfectly. No baseball executive team can run a team perfectly, but a bigger payroll allows you to make more mistakes and still compete. This is why I think we need to run things differently. We can't compete through free agency. We need a constant supply of good, young talent playing for league minimum. When we delve into free agency, the guys we can get have some "warts," whether that be age, inconsistency, or just plain "why the heck did we get that guy?" Unfortunately, these guys still cost $10-15MM/year, which may not seem like a lot in today's baseball world, but they each account for around 10-20% of our annual payroll. That means that for each eight figure salary on the roster, we need multiple guys playing for around league minimum. The only way smaller market teams can hope to achieve sustainable success is to find a way to continually have a good portion of their roster made up of guys making league minimum (pre-arby) that are good MLB players. That's not easy, but it requires continually adding talent to the farm, most notably through the draft, international market, and trades. Some prospects will fail, which is why we need to have numbers to put the odds on our side. At one point, a decade or so ago, we had a perfect storm brewing. We had stripped down the MLB payroll and started putting a focus on the minors. That led to multiple high draft picks, and we hit on all of them, leading to a wave of prospects that would all be All Star caliber players. They hit the big leagues around the same time, so much of our roster was filled with pre-arby All Stars, and we had a lot of room to add salary because the previous regime had brought payroll to very low levels. We could have decided to continue on this strategy, and continually add more talent to the minors, or we could do everything possible to win while these All Star prospects were under team control before they left for free agency. We chose the latter. That is why we had some success over the recent past and also why things look like we might have to start over or remain lost in baseball purgatory. No one knows how things would have turned out if we had chosen "the road less traveled," but I wish we would have tried that path because it was pretty easy to see a dark future when we continually traded away "tomorrow" for "today."

I think the team is getting pretty close to the team it has been through much of it's history. A team with a few "name" players surrounded by less-than-stellar talent. With the addition of more playoff spots, teams like this can occasionally make the playoffs, but they aren't good teams. This year's team wasn't a playoff team... they're a .500-ish team that had a hot streak to start the season and was aided by their division rivals' rosters getting decimated by injuries. With this (and the aforementioned Wild Card spots), they were able to stay in the playoff race far longer than their overall talent would suggest. Had we made some different decisions over the past few years, we could be a decent team with a good future, but we decided to always play for "today" and worry about tomorrow when it comes. Well, "tomorrow" is here. It shouldn't have come to this, but here we are. Now, I think that reilly's plan he laid out on the previous page is the way to go. I don't think Attanasio will do it, but if we trade Gallardo, Lohse, Gomez and Broxton, we could add some young talent to the farm. We have some promising prospects in the low minors, and if we supplement that with some "Top 50" and "Top 100" guys, we could have a nice, solid core hitting the MLB level in a couple of years. During the wait, the MLB team will suffer, but it gives us a chance to let some young guys like Nelson, Davis, Fiers, Thornburg, Jungmann, Gennett and others play. I hoped it wouldn't come to a rebuild, and for the past couple of seasons have hoped and prayed we'd do some things to keep it from becoming a necessity, but I now think it's our best option. Unfortunately, I don't think it will happen. Instead, we'll sign another 30-something free agent to a multi-year, eight figure contract, and by the time we want to trade Gallardo and Lohse, they won't have much value. Gomez won't be traded because we never trade anyone of value until they're down to a couple of months on their contract. Not getting any value from our few remaining trade chips just makes it that much more difficult to believe that the next wave of prospects will be enough to get us where we want to be.

I really think Melvin and Roenicke are going to be gone this off-season, barring a miracle turn around. I think Roenicke's fate is tied to Melvin. If Melvin is retained, Roenicke probably will be, but if Melvin "retires," then I think you get rid of the manager and let the new GM pick his own guy. It's kind of a shame, because Melvin (to me) seems to have had his head on straight the past few seasons, but every year Attanasio goes against Melvin and blows the whole offseason budget on one "name" player. It would be pretty hard to fill a bunch of holes on the roster with no money, no minor league trade chips, and without the authority to trade a "name" MLB player. Regardless of who sits in the GM and manager seats, this franchise could be in for a long drought if Attanasio doesn't change his mindset on "baseball matters."

but the Brewers could compete with the Dodgers money That needs a big asterisk. They could potentially beat the Dodgers for one player if they decided to put all their eggs in that basket. However, the Dodgers could sign multiple players to monster contracts, whereas the Brewers need to average around $4MM/25-man roster spot, so if they signed someone to a $25MM/year deal, they would need have a lot of players under the $4MM mark. About 6 league minimum guys would make up the difference. Then you have Braun at $13MM, so there's another 2.5 league minimum guys needed. Three pitchers making around $36MM - there's the need for seven more league minimum guys. That would be Gallardo, Lohse, Garza, Braun and Hanley with 16 league minimum guys. Broxton, Lucroy and Gomez take up around $21MM of the remaining $16MM, putting them $5MM over budget, so sorry Parra, but you're cut. We will also owe Weeks and possibly Aramis Ramirez money if they're not on the team. So, all we need to do is find 16 league minimum guys and we'd only be $5-11MM over budget if we decided to get in a bidding war against a big money team for a player :-) I do agree that we will have some extra money with the contracts that are coming off the books. It is also possible that we could sign Hanley Ramirez, but not if we're competing with the Dodgers for him. If the Dodgers or another big money team really wants a player, the current financial disparity in baseball means that we are not in a position to get in a bidding war against them unless we really want to put ourselves in a bad position.

3.8 vs 3.64 may not seem like much, but if they were at league average, that would be around 900 more pitches the opposing pitchers would have needed to throw. That seems fairly substantial.

This year, yes, but in years past they've put some rather pathetic players on the field and somehow everything keeps coming up Cardinals. That probably has more to do with the way they're coached to play baseball (i.e. Duncan's philosophy that Lohse says turned him around) than it has to do with arguing balls and strikes. I do think that LaRussa was good at getting under the opposing team/manager's skin with things like bean-ball wars and arguing everything, but I don't think that is the key to them winning their titles. Just my opinion, but I think little things like taking a few more pitches and not running into outs go a long way in adding wins over the course of a season.

Briggs, I agree that Clark and/or Rogers could be our best choice for next year, I just don't want people to get too high an expectation for them. Just like Gennett and Davis last year, Clark is getting his opportunity to shine. Hopefully he continues to hit well, and gives the Brewers an inexpensive option for 1B next year. I think that he should have at least as good a chance of succeeding as some veteran cast-off. If he could post a mid-.700's OPS for league minimum, that would be a big upgrade over the past couple of seasons. Even with Broxton's extra salary, by losing Weeks, Estrada, Overbay, Reynolds and K-Rod, we should have plenty of money this offseason. If they trust Clark to man first, that's another position covered for league minimum. I don't know what they will do with the extra money in the offseason, but it's never a bad thing to have excess cash.

12 ML qualifying 1B have a lower OPS than that right now. I would love it if its true but I don't think that is a reasonable projection. On what basis don't you see that as a reasonable projection? He's not been an excessive strikeout guy in the minors, so an average in the .240-.250 range is not out of whack at all with anything close to a respectable BABIP especially since he figures to sit vs. most lefties.. One of his HR was to LF so, he's not purely a pull guy either so shouldn't be totally susceptible to infield shifts. Career wise, he's walked once every 10 PA. That may go down some vs. major league pitching but we're not talking Yuni here. A .300 or even slightly above .300 OBP should be within reach. He's hit with power going back to the low minors. That's fairly rare. 25 HR doesn't seem like much of a reach even if he's platooned. What the Brewers will need to decide is if they are willing to spend either in FA or in trade to get proven talent that should be able to exceed those type numbers, or if they can live with what Clark appears to be capable of. Not picking on Clark, but (based purely on OPS), that would make him roughly the 43rd best hitter in all of baseball this year - just ahead of Ryan Braun, and right behind Adrian Gonzales and Josh Donaldson. Not saying it couldn't happen, but I don't think it's overly likely. This sounds like the 'Scooter is no good, but maybe he can be average at league minimum...' That discussion w as a couple years ago. Well someone forgot to tell Scooter to not go above average. First, that's pretty much a strawman, because most people didn't say he was no go, but that he makes contact with little power and few walks, and that he would probably have to be platooned. Since he has to be platooned, he doesn't get as many PAs as most 2B (a position that is not usually platooned). He holds a .770 OPS right now, but if you give him another 200 or so PAs against lefties (currently .253 OPS vs lefties), he would be an average-ish offensive 2B. I'm happy with what both Gennett and Davis have done this year, but it's not far from what most projected. Gennett is a platoon player who hits for decent average (.294 right now) with limited power (9 HR, .445 SLG) and few walks (OBP .031 over AVG). That's in favorable match-ups, not facing many lefties. Meanwhile, Davis was looked at as a lower avg guy who hits home runs with below average defense and a weak arm. I thought he'd be in the mid-to-upper-.700s OPS, and could be an .800 OPS guy in his prime. Both players have pretty much lived up to expectations. Gennett is probably a little higher OPS than expected, but again he only has 39 ABs vs lefties (.253 OPS against) and had two really monster months (1.333 OPS in March and 1.139 OPS in June) which may or may not be repeated... at the very least it shows he's streaky for a contact hitter. Gennett and Davis are MLB players, and should be good guys to have around, especially when they're cheap. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Parra is our starting LF next season, with Davis the 4th OF (largely because third base coaches never have to worry about putting up the "stop" sign when Davis has the ball), and Gennett will continue to be platooned. And both of these guys are far more heralded than Clark, so people should keep their expectations reasonable for any of the three. Starting someone like Clark isn't a moment for celebration, it's just a moment to say thanks that at least we aren't spending millions for an over-the-hill guy who won't outproduce someone like Clark will at league minimum.