monty57

Losing Berkman will hurt them, but Carpenter is hitting for an .845 OPS, and Matt Adams was destroying the ball in AAA (something like a .340 avg and 10 HR). The Cardinals have a lot of 30-somethings on their team, so they have extra injury and "regression" risks, but I wouldn't count them out for this season. Unlike the Brewers, the Cards have some good MLB-ready talent ready to step in, and knowing them, everyone who "steps in" will play like an All Star.

It's a pet peeve of mine, but these absolute, matter of fact statements Mine too, that's why statements like... They're NOT better. The Brewers are not and will not rebuild. ...just seem too "matter of fact" to me. To the Brewers' chances, the Brewers will need to go 73-48 the rest of the way to get to 90 wins, which is usually a bogey for the Wild Card. That's a .603 clip the rest of the season. With the extra Wild Card, it may not take 90 to get the Wild Card, but it's looking fairly unrealistic that the 2012 Brewers will be a Wild Card team. Therefore, their playoff hopes rest on their hopes of winning the division. One of St Louis and Cincinnati should go at least .500 the rest of the way. If that's all they do, we'd still need around 84 wins to take the division, which would mean we'd have to go 67-54 the rest of the way (a .554 clip). Therefore, our playoff hopes are pretty much down to our playing at a .600 clip the rest of the way or on our hoping that none of the four teams ahead of us in the standings will play much better than .500 ball the rest of the way. With the injuries we've sustained, either of these scenarios, while possible are beginning to seem unrealistic. So I'd ask if it make sense to start trading away some of the few good prospects we have in order to increase our odds this year? I think we still need to wait until July to get a clearer picture, but our chances are looking slim right now. Even adding a healthy Santana at trade deadline (where we'd get around 15 starts from him) wouldn't increase our chances that much if we're still down in the standings at the deadline, so I'd argue that giving up last year's first rounder wouldn't be a good move to help the 2012 Brewers. Plus, the extra $12MM we'd have to add to the payroll wouldn't be easy to swallow. Then you look at next year, when Santana will make $25.5MM. You've ridiculed me and others about our take on "the economics of baseball," but how on earth do you imagine that the Brewers will be able to pay Santana $25.5MM and pay Grienke over $20MM while still paying Weeks $11MM, Braun $9.5MM, Yo $8MM, Ramirez $10MM, Wolf a $1.5MM buyout, Aoki $1.25MM and Lucroy $0.85MM? Even if you're able to trade away Hart's $10.333MM deal, you're still looking at around $90MM for nine players with Morgan, Loe, Veras, Gomez, Parra, Kottaras, Axford, Narveson and Estrada all in their arbitration years. Trading for Santana would put a stake in the heart of the probably-already-dead idea of re-signing Grienke. You say the Mets are in a financial mess and I'd say the Brewers are not far from one. They'll get there much faster if they do things like trading away our few good prospects for $25.5MM veterans or "breaking the bank" to sign one pitcher on the mistaken belief that with him the Brewers are a World Series team, but without him they are a mess which should be blown up and scrapped. No player is worth risking the franchise over.

Gomez's defense spoils people to the point that when you watch others play CF, you think they're bad. It's kind of like watching Favre in the 1990's. You watch other teams play and wonder why the other QBs can't make the plays Favre did. He just does things others can't do. Relative to Gomez, Aoki looks slow defensively, but relative to the "average CF" I think he's good. Offesively, I think he's a good leadoff hitter, but for the Brewers he fits into Roenicke's role for a #2 hitter, who is there to "get the runner over." My guess is that right now Roenicke is trying to decide whether he wants to play Aoki or Ishikawa more. If he decides on Aoki, then Hart is going to be moved to full-time 1B, and Aoki will be the primary RF/#2 hitter, with Gomez/Morgan manning CF. At the very least, that would allow for us to see what we have in Aoki.

I was shooting for hyperbole, but I don't know what font color to use for that :-)

While I like this move, it does leave us with one LOOGY and two ROOGY's, meaning that we burn through the pen pretty quickly. I think Dillard's gotta go, and the best move would probably be to bring up Peralta as the #5 and move Estrada back to the 'pen.

I'd guess the new "vs LHP" lineup is Hart at 1B, Gomez in CF and Aoki in RF.

I expected Perez up even sooner. He might've made it out of Spring Training if he hadn't suffered a collapsed lung. LOOGY's aren't that necessary when you're down five runs every game, but hopefully they'll start playing better soon and Perez is a decent situational reliever.

This is going to be interesting, but I think that teams are still going to want to improve, and adding a piece like Grienke could be what wins a World Series. The Brewers wouldn't trade him for less than what they'd get in compensation at the end of the year, so in a case like Grienke, I think the buying team will just suck it up and make the trade to try to win it all, and not get picks at the end of the year. Take Texas for example. They've now lost two years in a row and I'm sure they'd like to win. If they thought trading Profar for Grienke would get them a World Series win this year, would not getting draft picks hold them back?

I'd be in the camp that says closers are very valuable to winning teams, when the "cost" of each win is significant, but not very valuable to losing teams. That said, I don't think that "selling" some pieces this year before we lose them to free agency will move us from the "winning" to the "losing" category. The "sells" would bring back talent which would help us next year, and would free up cash for us to upgrade areas of need. We'd still have our "core," and our young pitching would finally start reaching the MLB roster. What will move us from the "winning" to the "losing" category is trading prospects for short term fixes in order to increase our chances of winning this season and then seeing loads of talent hit free agency after the season with nothing in return.

Around six weeks ago I mentioned that I'd think about trading Weeks next offseason or the offseason after and I got my head bit off because he's so vital to the future of the team. Now a month-and-a-half later people are talking about putting him on waivers and hoping he's claimed for nothing. Weeks has had a bad start to the season, but that's extreme. He is one of our most talented players, and I'm still confident that if we let him play through this we will be able to trade him for something of value this offseason or next.

adambr, while I think this is a good thread topic, I think you're being a little too hard on the Brewer players. Weeks is one of the most talented 2B in the league, and his bad month isn't going to scare off trade suitors. Brandon Phillips just signed a big deal, making Weeks look relatively inexpensive, so even though he's struggled for a few weeks to start the season, he has a lot of trade value. However, I'd hold off on trading him until the offseason, or maybe even next offseason unless the return was really good. If someone bowls us over with an offer, I'd make the deal and put Green at 2B, but there's no rush to trade Rickie, who is probably necessary to our team if we want to have any hopes of being good next year. I would start our "who to trade" list with the guys we're going to lose at the end of the season. That would be Greinke, Marcum and K-Rod. All of them could bring back talent (again, I think you're selling K-Rod short, as he is a "proven closer," and they're highly sought after at trade deadline). If we are not going to extend Greinke or Marcum, then they should be traded if we're still out of it in early July. Each of them should be able to bring back at least one top prospect, and that alone could keep us competative going forward. K-Rod wouldn't bring as much, but we could get a decent prospect back, especially since teams like the Yankees are having injury concerns at closer. Then I'd look at Hart. He's a really good player, and he's only got a year left on his contract, so he's not a part of our "long-term" future. However with that extra year, he also has a lot of trade value, and could probably bring a top prospect back in return. Gindl is waiting in the wings, and if we're out of it Gindl + top prospect > Hart. Finally, I'd look at center field. We've got Schafer as our likely center fielder of the future, and we have Morgan and Gomez in arby. If we don't trade someone, we'll probably end up not offering arby and losing him anyways, so it seems like a no-brainer to shop Morgan. He's off to a slow start, but he had a good year last year, so he should be able to return a relief pitcher or decent prospect. It makes sense to hold onto Gomez because he's got some talent and is right-handed, while all of our other CF's are left-handed. I'm not sold that we can't compete without Greinke, so I think picking up some top young players/prospects to complement our "core" and the pitching prospects we have coming up could keep us competitive going forward.

I really don't want to see us trade away any of our good prospects, especially for a guy we'll only have for a short time. So, since the Mets are probably better than we are anyway, and they're looking for a SP since Pelfrey went down, how about we turn this around and trade them Greinke or Marcum for Zack Wheeler or Matt Harvey and Jordany Valdespin? We'd get a top pitching prospect and a much needed SS prospect, they improve their playoff chances this year.

I really think the person we should be looking at is Bourjos. We have three CF on the current roster, and MLB ready Schafer sitting in AAA. We badly need a SS and at the moment the only current SP we have returning for sure next year is Gallardo. I wouldn't be shopping for a CF if I were Melvin. My sights would be set on what I'm going to do at SS and SP in the near future.

Lucroy also would've been in AAA for half of last season (probably) had Gregg Zaun not gotten hurt and had him called up 6 weeks into 2010 straight from AA. Or, going off of Melvin's recent record, Lucroy would've been in AA all year 2010, then Melvin would've found another vet so Lucroy would've been in AAA all year 2011. Then Melvin would've found another vet and Lucroy would've repeated AAA in 2012. Whenever we would've been forced to bring Lucroy up or lose him to minor league free-agency, we'd have reluctantly let him play for the Brewers, but would probably have had a veteran as the starter, since we can never trust a rookie. That is, if we hadn't traded him for a mid-season upgrade during some "playoff push" to help us win 80 instead of 79 games.

I like the thought of Gallardo / Greinke at the top of the rotation for years to come, but I think it's being idealized a bit in that if we sign Greinke we are a World Series team, but without him we're bottom feeders. What realistically would be the difference (record-wise) if we signed Marcum to 3/$33MM vs Greinke for 6/$120? Since his surgery, Marcum has pitched 195.1 innings with a 3.64 ERA, 165K/43BB in 2010 and 200.2 innings with a 3.54 ERA 158K/57BB last season. In seven starts this season, he's got 44IP, 3.07 ERA and 39K/16BB. For his career, he's a 3.73 ERA pitcher. Greinke is a better pitcher, I get that, but it's not like there's that much difference between having Greinke and not Marcum vs having Marcum and not Greinke, all else remaining the same. I'd guess that over a season if they each pitched to their "norms," we might win an extra game or two with Greinke than we would with Marcum. Plus, with Marcum, we'd have a shorter-term deal (less risk) and have extra money to upgrade elsewhere. Maybe that extra win would be the difference between making the playoffs or not, but I don't think it's worth "breaking the bank" and potentially crippling the franchise over if he gets hurt or stinks. It's certainly not the difference between being a World Series contender vs breaking up the entire team and starting over.

This is definitely the downside to long term contracts even if they seem fairly reasonable at the time. It's Bill Hall all over again. I doubt this will be another Bill Hall situation, as Rickie has always been a good player and it was no surprise when he was a good MLB player, while Hall was never a really good player but surprisingly had some success at the MLB level. It's possible that Rickie has forgotten how to play, but I don't think it's likely. As to the long term contracts, I agree that they can bite you, but they're calculated risks the Brewers have to take. I much prefer locking up stud players while they're still in pre-arby, because those contracts never really get too expensive. When you wait until they're already a ways into their arbitration years, like we did with Rickie, we're basically paying market rate and not getting much of a discount. When they're free agent deals, like Ramirez, we're almost always going to "overpay," because by nature we have to be the highest bidder out there, so we're paying more than anyone else would for the player.

I don't think it has a lot to do with money. I agree with you that Greinke likely wants to play for a winner, but if someone blows the Brewers' offer away, like the Yankees did with CC and the Angels did with Pujols, then it will certainly have a lot to do with money. Plus the sad truth about baseball is that often the team with the most money also has the best chance of being a winner. WITH Greinke...again, I've thrown this out there a dozen times, but could you imagine the potential in 2 years? Greinke, Gallardo, Thornburg, Peralta, Bradley as your starting 5? I agree that would be nice, but it's not the only nice option. Imagine if we were to trade some of our "chips" for a great young SS, and some top young SPs who could step right into the rotation this season and be ready to shine in the coming years. I'm just throwing names out here, and it may or may not be realistic, but what if we have something like Yo, Marcum, {Eovaldi/Delgado-type}, Wolf, Peralta in the rotation next year with Lucroy, Gamel, Weeks, {Profar/Machado-type}, Ramirez, Braun, Schafer/Gomez/Aoki, Gindl in the field? There are a lot of ways to remain good. I just think the worst-case scenario this season is to trade prospects to "buy" this season, miss the playoffs and lose Greinke, Marcum, K-Rod and maybe Wolf to free agency when the season's over.

I was merely stating that the new inflows of money (from TV deals and other sources) have created a huge increase in price for free agents, particularly for top-tier talent. Therefore, a $100MM payroll won't buy as much talent as it would've bought a few years ago. I think the Brewers will be able to sustain a higher nominal payroll than in previous years, but the $ higher will likely be lower than the $ higher for some other teams, and that mixed with inflated salaries means their "real" payroll could be lower than the nominal number may have you believe. Our biggest hope was signing him when we had exclusive rights, and he had the worry of sustaining a long-term injury while he was under his current contract. I don't have an inside scoop, but from all reports Greinke seems to have decided to play to free agency, where there will be a lot of teams bidding on him. I could easily see him surpassing Cain's contract, as Cain signed prior to other teams having the ability to get involved to start a bidding war. Just like Pujols was swiped from the Cardinals, all it takes is one team with more money than the Brewers to really want Greinke and he'll be gone. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have him fronting the rotation for the next few seasons. A couple of months ago I thought it would happen, but when the two sides sat down at the table and he quickly walked away, I started to prepare myself for a future without Greinke. Now I'm just waiting to see if we're going to improve on the field, where we'll "go for it" before losing a lot of free agents and probably having to rebuild, or if we'll continue to falter to the point that we "sell," allowing us to get some really good young players to hopefully keep us good going forward. I'm not trying to be defeatist... I want them to win, but most of all I want what's best for the franchise as a whole, since I plan on watching the Brewers for many years to come. If they can afford to pay Greinke and put a winning team around him, then go for it, but if his price tag's too high, we will be better off building without him. If the latter holds true, then we could probably build quicker if we trade him for a good, young player or two who can step in and help us for the next five or six years.

Well, if they're talking about this season, if they have a pitching injury (or don't think someone is doing the job), and they don't want to hand their playoff hopes over to rookie Nate Eovaldi, I could see them making a play for a pitcher. However, I'd see them going after offense first: at outfield over the injured Rivera and aging Abreau, at 1B over Loney or at 3B over Uribe/Kennedy. They certainly could be a trading partner if they stay hot and the Brewers stay not. Assuming Greinke isn't going to extend, I'd trade him for Eovaldi if we're out of it a month from now. If they're talking about after the season, I think they'll make a big play to land Greinke or Hamels.

You call it defeatist, I call it reality. The Brewers can't compete to keep their own talent. Was it defeatist not to make a legitimate effort to re-sign Sabathia or Fielder? Because we both know a serious offer was not made in either case. It is defeatist to me. This team is currently fielding a payroll in the range of $100 million, a good chunk of which has been fueled by the attendance boom. There is no way that they are losing money either. If that's the case, and they are getting more TV money next year, there is no reason whatsoever that they should not be able to make a realistic offer to Greinke. I get the feeling that they have lowballed him thus far. Greinke is not going to get a contract in the Pujols/Fielder range. No one will give a pitcher more than 6 years. At most, he will get something like Cain got- maybe 20% or so more at the extreme, the Brewers can afford that. Bottom line, if the Brewers have two ace quality pitchers, they should be in the mix for the next several years. If they let Greinke walk and then resign Marcum for much cheaper, I'm not going to be sold the bill of goods that their PR machine churns out over the winter, because it's a profit maximizing move, not a solid baseball one. In that event, Attanasio had better get his bean counters out doing a marginal revenue analysis based on an attendance drop in the event of a 65 win season. The Brewers' extra TV money is rumored to be around an additional $20MM/year. Larger markets are also getting extra TV money to the tune of $130MM/year. What happens when everyone gets a sudden inflow of new money without a move in supply or demand (there are still the same players out there and each team still needs 25 of them to field a team) is that prices go up. Sometimes dramatically. This is why Fielder, Pujols, Votto, Cain, etc got their huge deals, and it is likely to continue for a while. If the prices move "x" and the Brewers increase in revenues is less than "x" because other teams' revenues went up at a much more rapid pace than the Brewers', then the Brewers will have less "real" money to spend relative to other teams. In other words, they may have a $100MM+ payroll, but it will buy less talent because the talent is much more expensive. The talent which is not getting more expensive is the pre-arby talent, which makes this talent much more valueable on a relative basis. The trend of extending pre-arby guys to "buy out" some free agent years can also work in the Brewers' favor. The problem is that we have been trading away or blocking our young talent recently, so we don't have a lot of pre-arby guys hanging around. Trading some of the guys we're losing anyway could be a way to increase our supply of what is rapidly becoming the most valueable commodity in baseball.

So a player who can probably throw a baseball 100 feet and hit a 1 foot x 1 foot target 99 times out of 100 doesn't have the accuracy to "miss" with the helmet from a few feet away? I find it hard to believe that it was an accident that it hit the ump.

I kind of look at the Greinke situation this way: Imagine you just got a 20% raise and decide that you want to spend that money on a piece of art you saw at an auction. However, when you get to the auction, you see Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg there, and they all want the same piece of art as you. It's great that you got a 20% raise, but you still have no chance of buying that piece of art when the billionaires start their bidding. If we were going to extend him, our chance would have been the moment we traded for him. He is now less than a season from free agency, he's seeing huge contracts being thrown around, and he's apparently willing to play out the season to free agency, when he will probably get a contract bigger than Cain's. If the Brewers say, "We're willing to offer 5 years / $116MM," someone like the Yankees will say "Okay, we'll do 6 years, $140MM." Greinke knows he'll be the only fish in the FA SP pond this offseason, and he knows he will make out like a bandit. I'd love to have Greinke and Gallardo as our #1/2 guys for the next few seasons, but the odds of it happening seem pretty slim. We can do like we did with Sabathia and sit around hoping that he'll choose us, leaving us scrambling for answers when he goes elsewhere, or (since he's already "walked away from the table") we can start working on "Plan B" now. If Marcum was being honest that he really would like to stay, I'd try to extend him 2-3 years, so at least we'd have Yo, Marcum and Wolf under control next year, with Narveson as a big question mark. If we're still down in the standings in a month, and Greinke hasn't had a big change of heart about extending with us, we could get a big haul back in trade for Greinke if he continues pitching the way he has so far this season.

Does MLB have to cite a reason for firing Das? I doubt they plan on citing a reason, which is where a good reporter would press them on it. Since most sports networks are more interested in finding a person who can come up with a cool saying and look good while reading a teleprompter then they are interested in finding someone who knows anything about reporting, I doubt anyone will press MLB on why they would fire Das. It certainly looks like they are only firing him because he disagreed with them, and that makes the whole system look pretty bad.

I like the idea of Lucroy getting a day off every five days. He wore down last year, and I think it was because he rarely got a full day off. Kottaras played when Wolf pitched, and as soon as Wolf came out Lucroy came into the game. That's tough duty. I'd rather have his rested, healthy bat in the lineup 80% of the time instead of his wore-down bat in the lineup 100% of the time.

Yes, this. Exactly. As far as I can tell, these "rumors" about the Brewers pursuing Josh Hamilton are all based on one purely speculative piece out of Dallas. Nothing more. ...and it's Hamilton's agents' job to push any rumors to try to build up the market to sign the biggest deal possible. The fact that there are always reports looking for any "scoop" they can find makes it pretty easy to make it look like there's a big market for a player, even if there really isn't, especially since teams can't discuss players on other teams during the season (i.e. the Brewers can't disucss if they're interested or not). If the Rangers don't extend Hamilton this season, next offseason will likely play out something like Pujols. A team (last year it was the Marlins) will show a lot of interest and create a "floor" for any other bidders. Then we'll hear a bunch of rumors of teams that are in or out of the bidding, and a big-money team will step in and sign him for something all the other teams will groan about. We'll then hear some analysis about how these deals rarely work out, and the same thing will happen next year.