monty57

And with regard to a lack of offense Kottaras has a career .229/.313 OBP. Kotsay last year had a .270/.330 line. Kotsay obviously has a little more slugging potential, but not much. In his minor league career, Kottaras posted a .273 avg / .370 OBP / .450 SLG / .820 OPS in 2,043 ABs, and in sporatic play in the majors, he has posted a .229 avg / .313 OBP / .434 SLG / .747 OPS in only 433 ABs spread over 5 years (including 2012). With more regular playing time, it's not beyond reason to believe his numbers could be even better. It's hard to sit for four days and then try to hit on the one day you play. For point of reference, even with sporadic playing time, the numbers he's posted put him somewhere in the Matt Wieters (.266/.322/.422/.754) range offensively. And finally, Kottaras in either the OF or at 3rd base is a terrible idea in my opinion. Ryan Braun was a SS at one of the best college teams in the nation and couldn't handle 3rd bse. Now we're going to move a catcher, a guy who's never played 3rd over there? No, not move him there. I suggested giving him some reps to see if he had any aptitude there so he could fill in in a pinch (like last night) at the end of a game if he's used as a pinch hitter. If he shows any kind of aptitude, he could increase his value to the team through increased versatility. If he shows a lot of aptitude, then he would be a great player to have. This worked pretty well for Detroit with Brandon Inge, who showed he had a lot of aptitude for 3B and ended up moving there full time until this year's Fielder/Cabrera experiment. Just because Braun was a horrid defender doesn't mean no one else should attempt to play a position. He's pretty awful behind the plate Isn't that more reason to see if he could play passable defense elsewhere to improve his value? I don't particularly care for him backing up 1st as I'd rather have Hart do that as I think Aoki+Hart in RF and 1B is better than Hart+Kottaras at RF and 1B. That's fine. It still doesn't justify having Ishikawa on the roster as a backup 1B. If Kottaras can fill in at 1B in a pinch (even moreso if he could hold his own at any other positions as well), it makes it even more crazy that we're wasting a spot on Ishikawa when we could have a more useful player on the roster.

I'd like the Brewers to see if he has any aptitude at corner OF and 3B. If he could be a utility guy who could play C, 1B, 3B, OF, then he would be very valuable to a team. Even if he proves he couldn't play any corner OF or 3B, I'd use Kottaras as the backup 1B, and dump Ishikawa for someone more useful to the team. To the question, I'm sure there are teams looking at what George is doing with his bat, and I'm sure they're looking for tape on him defensively. If a catcher can hit 20+ HR, many would look past some bad defense.

Yes, and that fact alone shows why the topic of this thread really matters. The way the roster is made up means that Izturis will get far too many PAs this season, and it means that we are not adequately backed up at important positions. We're a couple of weeks into the season and Izturis already has started close to half our games and we've seen a situation where Roenicke almost had to let Aramis Ramirez play shortstop!! I don't know the MLB rules for paternity leave, but couldn't we have brought up another player while Gonzalez was out? Wouldn't it have made sense to bring Maysonet up for a week or so? Does he have options to bring him up and send him back down?

So that's why he was in the Gold Glove discussions :-)

That's why I tried to protect myself in the initial post by saying my moves assumed the players were healthy and productive this season :-) If Gamel sucks this year, I certainly wouldn't want to extend him. Of course, if Greinke posts a 9.50 ERA or blows out his shoulder, I probably wouldn't offer him arbitration and if Morgan hits .200 and gets suspended for attacking a fan he probably won't be tradeable and we'll just cut ties with him. Any discussion about what moves we should make next offseason has to come with a big disclaimer of "we don't know what this season will bring."

We have the money. There isn't any question about that anymore. You've mentioned that a couple of times, and I hope you're right, but saying it's so doesn't make it true. I certainly still have questions as to whether we can pay Braun and Greinke over $40MM/year between the two of them while still trying to field a competitive team around them.

...as they managed to convert a lot of balls into outs that other teams weren't able to get to... If it's true that the Brewers were able to convert more balls in play into outs than other teams, it was because of the extreme overshifts that RR employed I've wondered on the new defensive stats on how they account for players essentially playing out of position. When Braun came in and played infield a couple of games last year when they needed to defend against a grounder late in games (leaving two OF), if he caught a pop-up on the mound, would his range be seen as immese, as he's the left fielder catching a ball on the pitcher's mound? Same with the teams that put the 3B on the other side of second for the left-hander shift (leaving the SS in his normal position). If the 3B fields a grounder is he seen as a player with tremendous range? The Brewers' defense was bad last year, and is not going to be good this year. Gonzalez should be a significant upgrade over Yuni, but Ramirez is bad, and Gamel looks like he still has quite a bit to learn. They are only upgrades due to the terrible defensive players they're replacing (and I'm still not sold that Ramirez will be an upgrade, even over McGehee). Weeks worked from terrible to decent in his career, but now he's got a bum ankle and is aging, so I don't expect better than average defense from him. But none of this is really news. For a national writer to say that the Brewers are going to be bad because of their defense must not have watched the Brewers last year.

I agree that the things like the bad starting pitching and others have been the reason we've had the start we've had. However, I'm not too concerned over the first couple of weeks of the season. Over the course of the year, Greinke, Weeks, Ramirez, Gallardo, Axford, etc will play like to players they are. Unfortunately, so will Ishikawa. While the former players should all have good numbers at the end of the season, Ishikawa's inclusion on the 25-man roster remains a mystery only solved by Roenicke's quote that he reminds him of Kotsay. We needed a versatile player who could play multiple positions and we needed a RH bat. Ishikawa provides neither. I believe you are correct on Hairston. If I recall correctly, Hairston was interested in coming back to Milwaukee, but Melvin wouldn't go multiple years, and said something to the effect of "we won't pay $3MM for a bench player this year." The multiple year thing is the reason Barmes went to Pittsburgh. He wanted to come to Milwaukee, but didn't want to decline Pittsburgh's two-year offer and Milwaukee wanted to wait on something (Prince, K-Rod, Ramirez, I can't remember) before committing two years on players like Barmes or Hairston. Not long after this, Melvin decided to go on a spending spree and push the payroll to $102MM. I, too would have liked to see some sort of Green/Hairston combo at 3B instead of Ramirez. Not so much for this season, but definitely for the next couple of years as Ramirez regresses.

I am not so sure I would want to do that. Depends on the money but we have Gamel through 2016 which is his age 31 season. I wouldn't want to pay much for his age 32-33 years. I think he is a good player who may age well but I wouldn't look at a long term contract for him yet. That's a good point. I guess I was thinking that he has one pre-arby year left and could probably be signed for a pretty inexpensive deal, something like Lucroy's 5 years, $11MM deal with an option for a 6th year. Gamel's getting older and would probably like the "guaranteed set for life" deal, it wouldn't hurt the franchise too much if he falters, and the low price tag would make him tradeable should the need arise. If we wait until he's a year or two into arbitration, then we risk him demanding a lot more money, while there's not that much risk, as it's likely that veteran bench players will be making that much money in five years. In general, I'm more interested in doing these type of deals to people the front office decides are core pieces of the future than I am in specifically giving one to one particular player. If they decide to go year-to-year with Gamel because they want to lock up guys like Peralta, Thornberg, Jungman, Bradley, etc, then I'm fine with that. We could miss on four of these deals for the same cost of missing on one Suppan deal (not adjusting for inflation...it's probably more like five). In an ideal world, every year we'd have a prospect or two forcing their way onto the team. We'd lock up the "core" ones so that we'd have 7-8 of their best years, and we'd let the "non-core" ones go year-to-year, trading players when necessary and letting others play to free agency and getting draft picks. We'd only use free agency to fill in the gaps around our young, relatively inexpensive core. Very rarely (in the case of a probable Hall of Famer like Braun) would we "break the bank" for a huge deal. Maybe that's not realistic in the real world, but it appeared to be the path we were pursuing until a few years ago, when we decided we were all in, all the time, and now we're discussing whether we should blow up the team for a complete rebuild.

Is this the quickest a manager has ever lost a team? I think he's in a race with Ozzie in Miami. Valentine has a former league MVP and team leader questioning him, while Ozzie has people marching in the streets. Maybe sometimes it's better to not hire a manager because he has a "name."

If Greinke is not extended after this season (note that all of these assume healthy, productive seasons from the players discussed): -Of course we offer Greinke arby (or whatever you call it now) to net us an additional first rounder. -I would offer arby to Marcum. If he accepts, we have him for one year, which is ideal for easing our young pitchers into the rotation. If he declines we'd get an extra first rounder. -I would exercise Wolf's option. As with Marcum above, having Wolf for one year will give us a quality SP and allow us to ease our youngsters into the rotation. -I would look to trade Hart. He is a good player, but will only have one year left on his contract. A team looking to contend would likely offer us a decent return for him, and at some point we need to get something in return for one of our players rather than letting all of them walk in free agency. HiandTight's initial post discussed getting a young SS in a deal for Hart, and I think that would be ideal, as we would trade one year of an All Star RF for 5-6 years of a young SS, a position we lack in the minors. -I would trade Morgan, as we will still have Gomez, Aoki and Schafer for CF. Morgan should net some return, we'll save a few million and he's redundant on our roster. -If a ridiculous offer came in for Weeks, I would trade him and let Green/Gennett play 2B. I think the more likely scenario is for Weeks to stay at least until after next season, but if the value you get in return is greater than his value, then you make the trade. -I don't think Ramirez will be very tradeable after this season, as he'll be owed 2 years/$30MM. He's getting old and probably shouldn't be playing 3B now. Green may be a better option now, likely will be a better option next year, and almost assuredly will be a better option in two years, but I think Ramirez will be our 3B through the contract. If we have a bunch of extra money next offseason and use $10MM or so to allow us to get something back in return for Ramirez, I'm all for it, but I doubt it'll happen. -I would look at extending Gamel while he's still in pre-arby years, buying out 1-2 years of free agency. I would continue this in future years as the young pitchers enter their MLB careers. I like the concept of building around a "core," but I think it's important to realize that the core evolves. It can't be the same guys forever. As some of the core players age, leave for free agency, or get traded when their "control years" are coming to an end, we need to have other pre-arby guys become members of the evolving core. We could see this evolution move from a core centered around hitters (Braun, Fielder, Weeks, Hart) to a core centered around pitchers. Also, the core can be bigger if we do more team-friendly deals in players' pre-arby years rather than market-priced deals to guys nearing free agency. If we continue to get 7-8 years out of our young players (or lock them up and trade them when they've got a year or two left), we can build a sustainably good team. Our farm system has some depth, but not a lot of players who project as star players, especially on the hitting side. Getting more talent in the system is necessary for continued success. This can be through the draft, or it could be from trading off MLB players who are either replaceable or nearing the end of their contract. I don't think a complete rebuild is in order, but we do need to get away from the process of over-reliance on aging veterans and lack of faith in young players.

I'm not worried about Ramirez this year. He's always been a slow starter, and averages jump dramatically at this point in the season. Barring injury, it's reasonable to believe that he'll be fine offensively this year. It's year 2 and even moreso year 3 where he could very well not live up to his paycheck. I'd have rather stayed away from Ramirez and just played Green, but Ramirez should be good this season. As far as the bullpen, I don't understand why we need two ROOGY's in Loe and Dillard. I'd have rather let Dillard walk and keep de la Cruz, who had better stuff and could pitch multiple innings if need be. However, the problem in the early goings of this year has been that our starters haven't pitched well, so we have used the bad bullpen pitchers too often, and the good bullpen pitchers not often enough. When our starters get things straightened out, we should have a good 7-8-9 combination in the bullpen. Ishikawa is a waste of a spot and is only on the roster because he reminds Roenicke of Kotsay. We'd be better off with a more versatile player, so Izturis would simply be the backup SS. I've said before that I don't see a need for three CF on the team. When we found out Braun was going to be on the team, we should've shopped Morgan and found a RH-hitting corner OF for the bench. All this said, we have a good team this year with as much or more talent than any other team in the division. Melvin has built this team to succeed last year and this year, so I'd expect us to win quite a few games this season. It's after this year where I have concerns, and my question will come if we do continue to falter through the first few months of the season. If we're around .500 in late June, and a couple of teams are pulling away, will Melvin decide to trade away some of the talent we're going to lose after the season (Greinke, Marcum, Wolf, K-Rod) or will he blame things on us not having a LOOGY or a good bat off the bench, and trade away prospects for a futile attempt at success in the second of our two "all in" years?

Can anyone think of some recent comps for Marcum? (i.e. starters of his caliber who have signed FA deals) The FA trend this offseason seemed to be to pay over-the-top prices for elite talent while mid-tier talent couldn't find a job and ended up settling for less than expected, but I can't think of any FA starting pitchers off the top of my head who would correlate with Marcum. I wouldn't do a four year deal with Marcum, but a reasonably priced 2-3 year deal (maybe with options) could easily be better long-term for the Brewers than signing Greinke to a very expensive long-term deal. I like the concept of Gallardo/Greinke at the top of the rotation, but hate the thought of $20+MM going to the guy on the bench with his shoulder in a sling while we pick up half our team off the scrap heap because we can't afford to pay for Major League talent to surround all of our high-priced vets.

THe worry here though is that we might have to wait for these new extensions to "go bad" before we can make a good deal again. I think the best deals recently have been the ones done when the player still has some pre-arby time left and which buy out the arby years and 1-2 years of free agency (like the original Braun deal). We just did this with Lucroy, and could lock up Gamel soon if he proves himself at the MLB level. In my opinion these, much more than the deals done near the end of the arby period or big name free agent deals, are the ones that allow small/mid-market teams to remain competitive. Signing Greinke to a Cain-type deal may feel good, but future deals of 4 year, $12MM with team options to make it 6 year $27MM (like Leubke just signed with the Padres) to guys like Peralta, Jungman, Bradley, Thornberg, etc will be more sensible and probably more effective long-term. They'll keep our rotation good, and since the salary is never too high, they will allow for us to trade the player if a younger, cheaper guy allows us that luxury. The Reds just did what a lot of people do. They heard they were getting money and they spent it before they ever saw it. It may work for them for a while, but how many 36-year-old second baseman or 40-year-old 1B have earned high eight-figure salaries?

I won't really be surprised if Grienke isn't extended, as I've said before that I didn't know how they'd afford it, and the Cain deal might have priced Greinke out of Milwaukee's budget. If he isn't re-signed, I think they'll look at extending Marcum, but will shoot for a 2 or 3 year extension with team options. I can't see them giving him a four-year deal. This would allow them to bring Peralta up next year, then one of Thornberg/Jungman/Bradley to replace Wolf in 2014 and then have enough pitching to replace Marcum (and Narveson?) in 2015 and beyond. Or, if the team tanks over the next couple of months, I could see them trading any or all of Greinke, Marcum, Wolf, K-Rod, Hart, Morgan in an effort to get some near-MLB-ready talent to fit in around the "core" for next year.

The Red Sox have stated that they're willing to spend money, even above the luxury tax, to improve their pitching. They were rumored to have been looking into Oswalt, only to be discouraged by "an unnamed NL executive," so they are probably looking to find a starter and possibly move Bard back to the pen, but if they can't find a fit, K-Rod could be a possibility. However, Melvin & co have to be looking at Bailey, Storen, Madsen, etc and thinking "Boy, aren't we lucky that if Axford gets hurt we have K-Rod to fall back on." Therefore, I doubt K-Rod gets traded unless we fall out of the playoff picture.

Excellent post. The Marlins can't take away Guillen's right to free speech, but they can certainly take away his job if his free speech is giving the organization a black eye. Without this suspension (and possibly even with it), the Marlins would lose a lot of their fan-base before the foundation of their new stadium even settles. The suspension is a PR move trying to wipe the egg off their face and retain their fans. If the fans don't buy into it, Ozzie will be gone, and could have a hard time finding another job in the MLB.

That's a really quick lesson in how inflation works. Institute more money into a system without changing the underlying supply and demand, and the prices go up across the board. Do you want to give Ben Bernanke a call? This does make sense, and hopefully will help the Brewers get through the next few years without having to make moves they don't want to make. I still hope more and more of the TV revenue starts to be done nationally, as that would be the best way MLB could even payroll for everyone without having to institute a salary cap that no one will ever agree on. As far as both of these deals go for the Reds, they're certainly trying to win over the next few years, as they will be anchored by big contracts to old players by the time these deals are up. If you wouldn't trade for Soriano or Helton, then you probably should think twice about signing a contract which will pay a guy huge money into their late 30's or early 40's. One thing that seems constant in baseball is that teams like to disregard the future in order to open a window to win when they think they have the chance.

Living in Illinois, I've seen a lot of Ramirez's play over the years. He got to be okay with the glove (he was horrid early in his career), but has always had an erratic arm. If he didn't have D Lee and his long frame and good defense at 1B, he would have had a lot of errors in his career. The only way Ramirez at this point in his career could be considered adequate defensively is in relation to Casey McGehee. Ramirez's value this season will come from his bat. However, we did upgrade significantly at SS, and it is very nice to see someone with range playing there. Yuni had an accurate arm and turned the double play well, but his range was putrid. We'll have to give Gamel some time to see how he plays at 1B, but his comp (Fielder) was such a bad defender that I'd guess we'll get a big defensive upgrade there.

Yup, that was what the "Odds of a monster deal" thing was about, as in the odds may not be as great as one might think because of that (and because some teams don't want him for that reason). Whatever. While it'd be nice to think that this would lead to Greinke signing for a little less than I expect, I can't imagine how Melvin would use "people don't like you" in his negotiations.

ESPN Insider has a story titled "Rumors: Odds of big deal for Greinke" linked to their front page. I'm not an insider, so I can't read it.

Here's another to add to the list. MLBtraderumors reported that Seattle tried to trade Pineda to Toronto for Lawrie, but Toronto wouldn't do it. Had we traded Lawrie for a player like Pineda, we probably still would've won the division last year, and would be better into the future. I don't know if there was a deal like this out there last year, but I'd bet there was. If we're trading Lawrie, I would've preferred six years of a young, Pineda-type pitcher over two years of Marcum. But, since we're apparently only interested in "win now" Melvin chose two years of proven good over six years of potentially great.

If any of Weeks, Gonzalez, Ramiirez are hurt for a significant amount of time I won't lament not having Conrad around. They will be in trouble regardless of what wet noodle bat they plug in. If Weeks or Ramirez are hurt, I would expect Green would be called up to play regularly in their stead.

I posted this in the "transactions" forum on outfielders, but since many don't probably read that forum, I'll repost here, as I think it fits: From 3/26/12 article on the Brewers' site: Pestano is a right-handed pitcher, but Aoki has also shown a knack for hitting left-handers. He homered Sunday off Dodgers ace and reigning National League Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw in a 10-pitch at-bat. "This guy could end up being our 'right-handed hitter' on the bench, which sounds weird," Roenicke said. This is why Ishikawa made the team. Roenicke intends on Aoki being the team's primary "RH bat off the bench" (even though he's left handed) and Ishikawa being the team's primary "LH bat off the bench." I'd bet Ishikawa will be the backup corner OF vs RH (which is dumb because defense matters, but I'll bet it happens) and Aoki will only play OF when Gamel sits and Hart plays 1B vs LHP. This makes more sense to Roenicke than using Conrad, who destroys LHP, as the RH bat off the bench, and using Aoki, who plays excellent defense, as a corner OF. Aoki's ability to hit LHP and RHP would make him a good option to occasionally rest Hart & Braun, but he'll pretty much rot on the bench while Ishikawa learns OF on the fly in MLB games.

If we were looking at a team without playoff aspirations, maybe you could convince me of such a move, but I want to win again this year. This is why it won't happen, but it doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen. Melvin has built this team to win last year and this year, and I doubt he does anything that would in any way jeopardize the chance of winning this year, even if it would greatly increase the chance of the team winning in future years. Once again I'll say it... I really hope the Brewers win the World Series this year.