monty57

A poor one Parra, McClendon, Dillard, and Perez will be your four headed sp for Tuesday. Wouldn't it just be easier / less painful to simply forfeit the game?

Correct me if I am wrong. 155 at bats might not be a good judging factor, but right now, it's what we have to work with. I don't live in the past. I would think you would want a "what can you do for me now" attitude in baseball. If you are horrible now, and horrible is a light term , but were decent in the past, that only gets you so far. By that logic, every offseason GM's have nothing with which to evaluate players. Everything they've done has been "in the past," and none are doing anything at the present time. Maybe everyone should play in the Dominican Winter Leagues so that GM's can get a good feel as to what the players will do the coming season. Weeks has a lot of talent, and his history shows that he knows how to hit. To the best of my knowledge, he is not injured in a manner which would cause this "slump," and he is not old enough that he should see a huge regression from last year to this year, so unless he forgot how to hit, his past history should lead us to believe that the odds are in his favor to break out of this slump. There isn't some set pattern with how a player breaks out, so showing what he did in April vs May really doesn't show anything. It is entirely possible that he will never hit well again, but I would bet against it. If that does happen, then the Brewers will have a big hurdle to overcome with his contract.

I'm just saying that over the next three years, somewhere around 20-30% of our entire payroll will be eaten up by Weeks and Ramirez, so the problem is only going to go away if they start hitting. I don't know what will get them to start hitting: keeping them in the line-up, sitting them for a few days, flying in their moms to cook them dinner, having them see a sports psychologist, taking them fishing with Uecker... whatever it takes, they need to start hitting or we are going to be a bad team for the next three years. I don't think it will happen, but if they both remain this bad we will long for the days of the Suppan and Hall contracts. As much as it hurts to watch them play right now, sitting them on the bench or putting them into a "permanent" platoon can't happen because of the contracts they signed and how much it would hurt us for the next few seasons. Personally, I'm willing to give up on this season if that's what it takes to get their heads screwed on straight for the next couple of seasons, or to have any possibility that they heat up enough that someone would trade for them in the offseason. I doubt anyone will bail us out of Ramirez's back-end-loaded deal, but Weeks' game has never been about batting average. He has enough power and plate discipline that he could go on a tear and get his OPS high enough to show he still has value, whether that's to us or to someone else in trade.

If he hasn't figured it out by Monday, then my leash is gone. You have to move on at some point. Something has to change. Weeks is being paid $11MM this season, $11MM in 2013 and $12MM in 2014, plus has an option (I'd assume with a buyout) for 2015. Ramirez is paid $6MM this season, $10MM in 2013 and $16MM in 2014 with a $4MM buyout in 2015. We are not "moving on" from either of these guys anytime soon. We are going to sink or swim with these guys. I think they will heat up and play better at some point, but if they don't, we will not be a good team for a few years. Braun is awesome, and some of the role players are actually playing pretty well, but when two of your key guys forget how to hit for an extended period, you're not going to score runs, and not going to win games.

In most seasons, the Brewers have some 30-year-old schmoe SP on the 40-man, but I don't see that this year. If the Brewers are worried about service-time issues prior to june, I guess they could bring up a reliever and start Parra on the 29th against the Dodgers, and then call up someone to start against the Pirates on Sunday, June 3. Also, Thornburg isn't on the 40-man, so he'd need to be added. Fiers, Peralta, Rogers and Scarpetta are on the 40-man.

That was just my opinion, and why I'm interested to hear yours. I'd probably try Peralta first, but I think there's a definite possibility Thornburg could leapfrog Peralta and be the one called up.

If the Brewers are still down in the standings by late June/early July, I think they have to at least make some calls to see what other teams would offer. The Brewers could get comp picks for Greinke after the season, and other teams could not, so if they are able to trade him for more value than the draft picks they would receive, then I would be all for it. To me, "more value than the picks" would have to include a top prospect in the upper minors or a high upside MLB player in their first or second year. I'd hope Melvin wouldn't trade him for a lesser talented guy with 2-3 years or "team control" remaining. The first calls I'd make would be to Taxes and Baltimore (assuming Baltimore is still leading the division) to see if Profar or Machado are available. Additionally, a team like Atlanta may be willing to trade some of their young starting pitching for someone like Greinke, Marcum or Hart. I don't know what the ultimate haul would be, but I'd hope that if we sell this season we end up with a long-term answer at SS and some MLB-ready pitching.

Estrada left today's game with a hip flexor. I have no idea how long that will keep him out, but I'd have to believe he's headed for the DL. My question to you is who would you use for the #5 starter? The most likely options would be Parra, who came in and pitched for Estrada after he left or one of our prospects (Peralta, Thornburg, Fiers). My vote would be for Peralta, even though he hasn't put up good numbers in AAA, as he seems the closest to "MLB ready." Secondarily, assuming the hip flexor will heal fairly quickly, what would you do when Estrada returns?

Actually Ishikawa is probably "this year's Kotsay." A guy whose history shows that he shouldn't be able to hit, so posters say shouldn't be on the roster, but he defies odds and actually does hit some, but posters continue saying he still shouldn't be playing because he shouldn't be hitting as well as he is. Now, if they start playing Hart at 1B and Ishikawa in the OF, then he will really be "this year's Kotsay," because he will also be playing in a defensive position which he is not capable of playing.

I think the bottom line is that this offense (and therefore this team) won't go anywhere until and unless Weeks and Ramirez start producing. They are both paid a decent amount of money and are under contract for a few more years, so they are going to play. My hope is resting on the fact that they both have enough history to show that they should turn things around. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.

3and2Fastball, if you are really intrigued by this (and have some spare time), you could do a "mock draft" for your "league" and see what you come up with. I'd think that there would be Hall of Fame guys sitting on teams' benches, so there probably wouldn't be room for guys like Loretta but until you actually put the rosters together you don't really know. As for me, I think Thurston put it pretty well. There aren't a lot of good players to remember from that period of Brewers history, and Loretta was an easy guy to cheer for. I'll always be a fan.

There were two lefties coming up, and lefties are hitting .423 against Dillard. Granted small sample, but he's not good against lefties. That's my biggest problem with how the bullpen is constructed. You have Loe & Dillard who shouldn't face lefties and Perez who shouldn't face righties. That makes bullpen management darn near impossible, so it makes it hard for me to put much blame on Roenicke for his bullpen moves (and I'm by no means a Roenicke apologist).

All solid points, but as bad as things look now, they would even be worse without Greinke. I look at this team and see a decimated underperforming offense, with pitching that has underperformed. I think that it's easier to fix a poor offense than it is to fix a poor pitching staff, especially when it doesn't appear that a Greinke-like trade would be advisable or even possible given the state of the farm system. It's too early now, but it's quickly becoming time to start thinking in the other direction. We don't have a farm system to do a "Greinke-like trade," but we could find a team who does have that farm system, and get them to do a Greinke trade so that we would then have more good, young players, with hopefully one of them being a top-quality young shortstop to combine with our good pitching prospects to help us build winning teams in future years. Turning some combo or Greinke, Marcum, K-Rod and Hart into a group of pre-arby guys/prospects who can help us out for the next six seasons is becoming more and more appealing to me. Maybe this would mean attendance would go down some next year (or maybe not if "spun" correctly), but with the increase in the amount of pre-arby guys we'd have, we could tolerate a drop in payroll. While there definitely is a correlation, it's not about how much money you spend, it's about how much talent you have on the roster. Turning some of our "trading chips" into quality young talent would do a lot to help us build winning teams in future years. Once Greinke walked away from the table, I think our chance of re-signing him became at-or-near zero, so it's probably time the Brewers decide what actions will bring about the best future without Greinke. Maybe selling this year would hurt attendance next year, or maybe "holding tight" and losing guys to free agency will hurt attendance next year. I don't know which would hurt attendance more, but expecting a drop-off in attendance after this season, I'd rather have $80MM guaranteed with a big group of talented pre-arby guys (from trading guys this season) surrounding our "core" instead of $100MM guaranteed with a couple of really high-priced guys but a few guys with minor-leage talent that will play for cheap. If it turns out the ticket sales stay high, we can always find a way to spend the money to upgrade if we feel the need, but if ticket sales fall, there aren't a lot of options to cut that $100MM in guaranteed contracts. Nor, as we're finding this year, is it easy to upgrade weaker positions when you're already over budget.

I don't believe we're going to be rebuilding anytime soon because that, IMO would take all the momentum that the Brewers have built up, similar to the Indians of the 90's(though we've never been that good) with their attendance figures and ours would drop a great deal. I think that barring a big turnaround this season, attendance is going to drop next year regardless of who the Brewers extend/sign. Attanasio and Melvin are understandably worried about the attendance dropping, but I hope they don't think they have a magic wand to manipulate attendance, because it is for a large part out of their control. Milwaukee/Wisconsin fans are pretty rabid and will show up for a lot of things, but we're getting pretty maxed out on attendance, so the only ways it could go are flat or down. And I don't think Mark A wants to or is willing to sit through 3-4 rebuilding seasons. I agree, but that could be one of those things that the longer you try to ward it off the worse it will be when it inevitably happens. Even though I think selling could be the right road to take, it may not be something Attanasio/Melvin are willing to do. I think the worst case scenario is to be "buyers" and then miss the playoffs, and I fear that this is the scenario we'll see. I think the time to rebuild was when we had two years left with Prince, and that's when I was calling for us to rebuild and that's when it made the most sense. I believe that Melvin tried to trade Fielder (and Hart) mid-way through that season and in the next offseason, but when he wasn't getting as much in return as he wanted, he extended Hart and then traded for Grienke and Marcum in a two-year "go for it all" gambit. Now that we're in year 2 of that gambit, we'll have to see if Melvin is willing to sell or if he will still be in "go for it all" mode. As for your salary commitments, I obviously expect the Mets to pay a significant amount of Santana's contract, I wouldn't bring back several of the players you cited, not that they'd be that expensive, and I think we'd have about 35-40 million more to fill out the roster. Obviously the Santana/Mets part is hypothetical, so having them pay a good part of the contract would certainly make it more palatable. However, that's an arguement against signing Grienke to a long-term deal... they rarely turn out well, and often the team ends up paying for a good portion of the player's contract after they've been traded away for little to nothing just to save some money. As to the other players cited, the ones with $ figures attached to them are guaranteed contracts, so we have to either pay them or trade them. The other names are just the guys who will be in arby. I agree we won't have all of them back, but we will need to fill those roles, so if they're not filled by the guys named, they will have to be filled by someone. If in this scenario Santana's contract were fully paid by the Mets, then I'd say you're probably right on the $35MM or so we'd have to fill out the roster. That may be a big "if," since he's owed $25.5MM next year. I think the Brewers payroll is going to be around 110 next season even if they don't bring back Greinke. My biggest fear is they spend their money on keeping wolf and giving Marcum a 5 year 70 million dollar deal or something equally ridiculous, or overpay for another pitcher who's clearly not worth the contract he's given. If we're going to max out, I'd rather do it for guys who are clearly worth the money they're given and then give the several guys capable of supplementing the roster a chance. Fiers, Maldonado, Schafer, Gindl, Gamel, Green, Thornburg(who if anyone caught the game last night Melvin said was capable of pitching in the big leagues right now, and you can "easily," go from AA to the Big Leagues..while then going on to talk about how he would prefer a stop at each level. In any event, he has plenty of time to make a stop in AAA before next season starts) as well as a number of other potential candidates. The payroll will probably be determined by projected attendance, and if we stay in the dumps this season, we'll probably have to move the figure down. I just worry about the amount of payroll which is committed long-term, as that is the money that can really bite you if revenue/attendance is less than expected. Taking a bath one year hurts, but getting stuck with long-term guaranteed contracts when revenue drops is what can lead to the Brewers having to salary dump their players. The thought of our giving Braun to another team for a couple of bad A-ballers in order to save a few million dollars makes me sad. I agree that we shouldn't overpay for someone like Marcum. If he'll sign a 2- or 3-year deal with an option, then go for it, but I wouldn't touch a five-year deal with him. I also agree that Thornburg will probably pitch in the majors next season. In addition to the Melvin interview you cited, Gord Ash mentioned last week that they were "fast-tracking" him. I also don't think you'd have any trouble moving Hart's contract. It's a one year 10 million dollar contract. Your wording there suggests it's a bad contract which I couldn't disagree with more. Sorry if my wording was bad. I was trying to say that even without Hart's $10MM we would be around $90MM in guaranteed contracts if we paid Santana and Grienke in addition to the other contracts on the books. I agree that Hart (with his contract) is very tradeable, and I think he is one of the guys we should really "shop" this year if we indeed decide to sell. Not that it really matters but if you google "Mark Attanasio Investment Banker" there are numerous references to him working in investment banking at Drexel Burnham Lambert. My bad. I didn't realize that he used to be an investment banker. Good catch.

It's not like they have a ton of non locked in pre arby/arby guys, and let's face it, the farm system is pretty barren at the high end. Which is exactly why it would be a death stroke to the franchise if Grienke was signed to a monster deal and then got hurt or just didn't pitch well. The Brewers would not have the pre-arby/inexpensive talent to put together any sort of decent team when they have a $25MM albatross around their neck. Even if he does continue to pitch well, not having any inexpensive/pre-arby talent makes fielding a winning team around Braun/Grienke seem unlikely. Actually, I think that the most likely scenario if the Brewers let Greinke walk, is that the team suffers, attendance drops and payroll is rolled back a bit. As to attendance, it can drop whether or not we have Grienke (or any monster deal) signed. I'd guess that the Brewers' play so far this season has a lot of season ticket holders doubting that they will re-up their season tickets next year. And that is with Grienke playing at a Hall of Fame level. Simply having Grienke on a team doesn't make them win... it didn't for the Royals and it isn't for the 2012 Brewers. Having a $25MM Grienke on the team may actually make them losers if that $25MM is 25% or more of the total payroll. Having a $25MM Grienke with a torn labrum isn't even something I like to think about. So, since attendance can drop with or without signing a monster contract, why not do it? Since we already have some big, long-term, guaranteed deals on the books, I don't think Grienke is feasible. If we have a large % of our payroll locked into big, long-term guaranteed contracts, an attendance (aka revenue) drop would send us far into the red, forcing us into fire sale where we'd get nothing in return in trade (salary dump). With a pretty weak farm, a fire sale would pretty much guarantee the Brewers to be one of the worst systems in baseball for a long time. Imagine if we got return back for our stars like we gave up to get K-Rod last year. Conversely, if we don't have a large % of our payroll locked into big, long-term, guaranteed contracts, we have flexibility if the attendance drops and we have a lower revenue stream, so that we aren't forced into salary dump trades. My first rule in business is that you should never put yourself in a position where something which is at least partially out of your control could force you into the red for an extended period (or put you out of business). Attendance is out of the Brewers' control. They can do some things to "nudge" it one way or the other, but they can't guarantee that they'll bring in 3MM fans/year. Anything can happen to cause attendance to drop, and therefore, the Brewers shouldn't guarantee contracts which could be unsustainable if we see an attendance drop. Let's use a simple example of a team with $100MM designated for payroll (after concessions, management costs, stadium fees, etc). Let's say that figure is based on selling out every game (attendance is maxed out). There is no way I'd ever get my guaranteed contracts anywhere near $100MM, because if I did, then any decrease in attendance would put me in the red with no way to get out. I'd only guarantee contracts up to what I would deem to be the "worst case" revenue stream. Since most of the variance in revenue comes from attendance, that would pretty much mean I'd base my long-term guarantee "ceiling" on the worst case attendance number. One thing about baseball is that if you have extra money, you can generally find a short-term fix to an answer (like K-Rod last year) by finding someone who needs to make a salary dump trade. However, it's really hard to get rid of bad long-term contracts, and they can hurt you for a long time.

This is a good point, but again I'd say that points more to Doug Melvin moreso than Roenicke. We really don't have a long relief guy right now. I agree that Loe shouldn't have been used like that in a blowout though I think Parra would be considered our "long guy," which is why I'd have kept him in to hit instead of batting Ishikawa with two out and no one on base. Pitchers hit in the NL all the time, so no reason Parra couldn't have batted and threw a couple more innings. Of course, I'm assuming that Parra could pitch four or five innings if needed. Maybe he can't. Either way, I agree that we need to make a bullpen change. I'd keep Perez as a LOOGY and get rid of Dillard the ROOGY, but I wouldn't be heartbroken seeing either of them go bye-bye, as long as he was replaced by someone with some talent who can pitch to RH and LH batters.

I'd add that we also need Grienke and Braun to continue producing at ridiculously good levels (even better than their "normal" great), Ishikawa, Loe, Gomez and Parra to continue to play better than their "norms" and Aoki to really be a .750+ OPS player. Overall, we've been pretty poor this season, which happens when you have three bad injuries and several key players hitting like third graders, but we have had some players doing really well. I'm sure guys like Weeks, Ramirez, etc will be better than they've shown so far this season, but I doubt Braun will end the season .050 OPS points higher than last year's MVP season, Greinke will only give up 1 run every three games, Ishikawa will be an .850 OPS guy, and so on. If Weeks, Ramirez and Gallardo heat up we will look a lot better. I just hope that happens sooner rather than later, and that their heating up won't coincide with Braun and Grienke cooling down. And, we need to play injury-free the rest of the season.

I think he's referring to their heavy losses in the Madoff scandal, not the fact that they have a high payroll. I would argue that the Brewers are far from a financial mess. Our attendance has been consistently strong over the past few years with increasing ticket prices, we've got a new TV and radio deal to add additional revenue, and we have an investment banker as our owner. I trust Mark to not put the organization in financial jeopardy. Yeah, I know the Mets' distress is partially due to the owners' dealings with Madoff, but it's also because they decided to go big into free agency and "break the bank" to sign players "they couldn't win without" which "was what they needed to do to make them World Series contenders" because "fans will stop coming if they didn't sign the big name players," and because "they had big revenue and were making money so they could afford it." These players included guys like Jason Bay, Johan Santana, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, K-Rod and so on. Now they're finally purging some of these contracts and getting through the mess caused by committing themselves to bad long-term deals to big-named players they "couldn't win without." The Brewers will easily get into a very similar mess if they continue to forego cheap, young talent from the farm in favor of expensive, aging talent from trade, free agency or extending current players when they're almost at free agency. Much of our revenue comes from having 3+ million fans attending games. That can change quickly whether we sign the big contracts or don't. However, if we don't have everything tied up in big, long-term contracts and revenues drop, we will be okay. If we do have everything tied up in big, long-term, guaranteed contracts and revenues drop, we will not be okay and we'll have to "fire sale" just to dump salary. We'll get nothing in return and without a strong farm system will take a long time before we're once again thinking about being good. By the way, I agree with you that Attanasio's finacial acumen is the only thing keeping me believing they know what they're doing financially, but he's not an investment banker. He is partial owner of TCW Investments, and "cut his teeth" valuating distressed debt (junk bonds). Unfortunately, most everyone who's ever owned a baseball team was successful in some business and that's how they were able to afford a team. That hasn't kept many owners from making boneheaded moves because they really want to win.

Yeah, this is why you take players out of the game to have things checked out. After the injury, he went back out and played, just like Gamel. When are teams going to realize that the end of the current game isn't as important as potentially destroying a player's career, and there are a lot of things a trainer can't figure out during an on-the-field exam?

What we know is that Grienke and the Brewers were "at the table" and when the Cain deal hit the two sides quickly "left the table." Whatever the exact details were, once they broke off talks I think the chance of Grienke remaining a Brewer beyond this season became very, very slim. Now I think the Brewers have to decide whether it's better to have Grienke pitch through the season, offer the one-year deal and take the comp picks or to trade him. Which choice is better will depend on how the team is playing and how much other teams would offer to get Grienke for a playoff run. I just hope that Melvin/Attanasio are at least willing to listen to other teams' offers.

Because of the bullpen makeup, I can't fault Roenicke too much, but I'd have probably just let Parra bat in the top of the inning with two outs. The odds of Ishikawa ending the game or starting a two-out rally weren't great, and you never know how long the game could go and Parra should've had a couple more innings in him. Once Parra was out, there really wasn't a good solution as to who should be used. I mentioned when Perez was brought up that having a LOOGY (Perez) and two ROOGY's (Loe, Dillard) would really limit the bullpen. In the 14th inning with a righty and two lefties coming up, I don't really want any of Perez, Loe or Dillard coming in for the whole inning, but I don't want to use Dillard for one batter and then Perez for the final two as that would only leave Loe to pitch the rest of the night. We need to get Dillard off the roster and bring up someone who can pitch to righties and lefties.

Maybe there's more to it than this, but it sounds like they wanted to bring up Bell because he's limiting his strikeouts, while Ransom and Roberts are striking out too much: Bell appeared in 79 Major League games with the Orioles from 2010-11, going 44-for-220 with three homers and 18 RBIs. The D-backs liked Bell in part because he was limiting his strikeouts and putting the ball in play. In 97 at-bats in Triple-A, Bell went down on strikes 17 times. Roberts and Ransom combined to strikeout 43 times in 171 at-bats. "We're looking for more contact. Hopefully he'll be able to provide that," If that is the only case, I'd take him over Izturis/Maysonet in a heartbeat.

Refresh my memory. Does a team that trades for a player in their last year of contract still get comp picks (A/B) if that player leaves via FA? Seems to me, I thought they changed this rule, if so, that would decrease what little value Wolf would have (as you knew you would get a type B comp pick before). I believe the new CBA states that you can only get compensatory draft picks if the player has been on your roster the entire season. I also believe that instead of offering arbitration, the team must offer a one-year deal equal to a set salary, which I believe will be around $12MM next year. Therefore, if we trade Grienke, Marcum or K-Rod the team which we traded them to would not get any draft picks. To your question on Wolf, he does have a team option for 2013, so the team who would trade for him would be able to retain him for another year if they exercised the option. He's a bit of a conendrum... if he pitches well enough for someone to want him, we'd probably be willing to exercise his option to have him around next year when we'll need starting pitchers. If he doesn't pitch well enough for us to want to exercise his option, no one will want to trade for him. It will be interesting to see how the trade deadline plays out this season. There is negative pressure in that the "buying" team will not get picks, but there will be upward pressure with the new Wild Card slot limiting supply (selling teams) while increasing demand (buying teams). It would make no sense for the Brewers to trade Grienke for less than the value of the comp picks they'd recieve, so if anyone wants his services, they will have to pony up and trade some good prospects for him. He's a difference-maker, so I'd bet that the Brewers could get good talent for him. The Brewers would probably be willing to offer Marcum a one-year/$12MM deal as well, so they probably wouldn't trade him for less than a top prospect. Meanwhile, someone like K-Rod isn't going to be offered a $12MM deal, so the Brewers will only get a decent return for him if there aren't many closers on the market and they can get a few teams who need a closer into a bidding war.

How about 5th? Because that's what's happening today. I'm pretty sure that Roenicke will go Hart, Aoki/Morgan, Braun, Ramirez at the top of the order for a while. Beyond that is anyone's guess. He likes "pop" from the leadoff guy and he likes a #2 hitter who "gets the runner over" via bunts and/or hitting to the right side of the field. Braun is set in stone, and Ramirez is "the cleanup hitter" which he said was #1 priority this past offseason, so he will be batting cleanup even if he's hitting .080 with seven home runs when September rolls around.

Now that would mean Hart would have to shuttle between RF and 1B which Roenicke seems to have problems with. But seriously, there has been tons of guys who've done just that in their careers successfully. Yeah, I kind of winced at Roenicke's insistance that Hart couldn't shift between first and right. Roenicke seems very set on structured roles for players. That's probably what some players like about him, but I don't think it has to be as set in stone as he makes it.