monty57

Even if Green is on the list which i fear more and more, the Mets have no reason to make a decision before the deadline of September 1st. In fact, it makes perfect sense to wait until the day they are required to make a decision. What is gained by deciding now instead of a month from now where their scouts get more time to watch all five players? And they get to keep the injury risk on the Brewers. If there are two players of equal value, unless you think the previous team is screwing something up in their training, or unless you are immediately going to place them on your MLB roster, you let them both continue to play for the previous team as long as you can. If one of them gets seriously injured in the next month+, you simply take the other player. I liked the K-Rod move, as picking up one of the best relievers in the game was seemingly the only thing that was going to get Roenicke to move Loe out of the "8th inning guy" role. However, that was when the PTBNL's were described as "one guy with some MLB experience, but not a major player" (i.e. McClendon, Dillard, DiFelice) and the other was "a mid-tier prospect who has a chance of someday making a MLB roster." Maybe I'm wrong, but I personally think Green is better than that. If he is on the list, and if there are other players of around equal value on the list, then I dislike the move, even though I think it helps this year's team quite a bit. We would have just given away what could potentially be a significant part of our future. Let's use WPA then. Win probability added. This takes game leverage situations into account. Season totals (now, this is hitting only, does not include horrible defense): McGeheee -1.53, Betancourt: -1.99, Loe -1.79. So, purely on their terrible hitting alone, McGehee and Betancourt have cost the Brewers twice as much as Loe. If I'm reading that correctly, it shows that Loe has cost the team more than McGehee and almost as much as Betancourt. I don't think anyone would argue that Loe has cost the team more than McGehee and Betancourt combined. If used correctly (as we saw in last night's game), Loe can be valueable to this team. The K-Rod deal forced Roenicke to move Loe out of the 8th inning role. He could have done it without the trade, and simply used Saito and Hawkins in the 8th inning. I know it sounds like I'm arguing both sides here. K-Rod makes this team better, and improves our chances of making the playoffs, but now I won't be comfortable about the trade until I see who we gave up. Shame on me for listening to Doug Melvin after the trade and taking him at his word.

As much as I can't stand the guy, Betancourt is not the main problem right now, it's McGehee. But that's sort of like saying "I'm stuck in a swamp and the alligators aren't as bad a problem as the piranhas." Both of the positions are problems, and both should be addressed. The reason I am more frustrated abouth 3B is that we have an easy in-house solution which we refuse to utilize, whereas we'll have to go outside of the organization to correct SS. I'll have mixed feelings if we trade for a 3B. On the positive side, we'll have erased a black hole, but on the negative side we will have given up something of value when we may not have had to. I will be very happy if we trade for a SS, as we will have erased a black hole which we couldn't have erased without giving up something of value. Melvin has seemingly made up his mind on the subject, so I guess I should just stop complaining, but man is this a case of bad roster management.

I'd rather just go for Carroll / Furcal straight up. They would be salary dumps, so probably could be had for mid-level prospects if we pick up all the salary. If you start putting together a package deal then you'll have to start looking at better prospects (or someone like Narveson) sent back. We have to do something about SS, so I agree with WTP that Melvin should focus all of his attention on that. The marginal improvement of adding Kuroda over Narveson is far less than the marginal improvement of any decent SS over Yuni. Throw in the fact that there are plenty of teams looking at SP help, and the price tag (in terms of prospects) would be out of the Brewers' range. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if the Yankees would agree to pay for the McCourt's divorce if they thought it would help them beat out the Sawx and win the World Series.

A guy who has a high OBP/low SLG is a better offensive threat than the guy with a low OBP/high SLG. I agree, but to bring it to this thread, we're talking about Yuni, who's "high SLG" is a .391 career average with a peak of .418 in 2007, and .371 this year. This goes along with his free-swining ways, which lead him to a career .294 OBP (.272 this season). If he played to his career norms (.270/.294/.391/.685) he would be very replaceable, but at least provide something. His .252/.272/.371/.643 along with his poor defense means Melvin should be on the phone 24/7 trying to replace him. Jamey Carroll (who has been rumored, and is being used in comparison by RockCo) is currently sitting at .288/.360/.355/.715, around his career norms of .277/.356/.349/.705. Carroll is just a better player than Yuni, and with the Dodgers' financial woes, could probably be had cheaply in trade if we'd agree to pay his salary. His OBP could make him either a leadoff batter, moving Hart to #2 where his power would be better served, at #2, moving the Morgan/Carroll platoon down (not because of Morgan, but because of Carroll), or down in the order. Wherever you put him, the lineup gets better. Of course I would rather have someone like Reyes, but that's probably not realistic and Carroll would be a significant upgrade for probably little cost in terms of prospects.

No team wins championships because they have a superior bottom of a roster. You win because you have the best pitching or best combination of star power in your lineup combined with solid pitching. I'd say teams win because they have the best team, with a little bit of "luck" sprinkled in. There are a million ways to create a roster, but no matter the makeup, when a significant amount of PAs (or IP) are given to bad players, it makes the team worse. Right now we have a bi-polar team, with a really good top of the lineup and a really bad bottom of the lineup and a really bad bench. The frustration with the 2011 Brewers is that it would be really easy to make a few quick fixes and make the team a lot better, but they're either not being done (Green for McGehee, dumping one of our bad SS's and replacing them with a real baseball player) or they're taking far too long (taking Loe out of the "8th inning guy" role). We should be in first place by a longshot, but instead, we're in third place behind the Cards & Pirates. If some sensibility doesn't spring up soon, we're likely to throw away a really good shot at the playoffs. Betancourt .643 OPS, bad defense McGehee .586 OPS, bad defense Kotsay .637 OPS, bad defense Counsell .454 OPS, .160 BA The only name on that list who couldn't instantly be replaced in-house is Betancourt, and since he has been highly regarded as one of the worst players in baseball for the last three years, Melvin has had a long time to research potential upgrades at SS. Not only are we giving starting positions to historically bad players, our bench is so bad that Roenicke is seriously limited. He can't give days off to guys like Weeks & Fielder or we don't have a chance of scoring runs, an injury to Braun means Mark Kotsay is the #3 hitter, and most of our pitchers are better hitters than our bench players.

Total: .225/.320/.405/.725 Yeah, that would've been worse than Hart during his flail-at-everything 2009 season. I'm glad we have Hart this season, and we'll probably have him next year unless Melvin & Co think Gindl is ready for everyday use next year (doubtful since we'll have another rookie starter in Gamel at 1B). With the OF talent we have coming up through the minors, and Braun signed long-term, I doubt Hart will play out his entire contract in Milwaukee. I'd guess Hart will be traded after next year, or mid-season next year if the team's out of it. However, looking at the Green/McGehee fiasco, Melvin may just let all the prospects sit in the minors and ride Hart out.

Yuni has been bad, Casey's been worse. Improving isn't an either / or proposition. Casey can easily be replaced in-house, Yuni can't. Simply bringing up Green and being on the buying end of a "salary dump" trade for a SS would significantly improve this team. Maybe if some GM's feel the same way about Yuni's "hot streak" as some of the posters here, they will accept Yuni back in trade. What team couldn't use a SS who can't play defense, can't hit for average, has no plate discipline and when he happens to get on base routinely runs into outs due to bad base running?

Green hasn't had "injuries", he's had one injury to his wrist, & is fully recovered now. In all of AAA, there are three players (Brett Lawrie is one) who are younger than Green with OPS rates better than his .942; his OPS is 16th-best overall. This is made all the more impressive imo since Green is just two seasons removed from the surgery to help repair a compression fracture in his wrist. I realize that you may assume Green's production at AAA is nothing special, but the reality is that it's actually quite impressive. That puts things in perspective pretty well. Just because AAA isn't the majors doesn't mean it's easy to post an OPS around .950. It takes a pretty special hitter to OPS over .900 at any level. Considering Green is still relatively young, playing in AAA for the first time, and apparently finally healthy from his wrist injury, I'm excited to see what the kid can do.

I really hope Green wasn't on the PTBNL list for the Mets. The Brewers said they put that list together "in about five minutes," and it was done this season, with McGehee not hitting and Green raking. Melvin couldn't have been dumb enough to put Green on that list, could he? I guess it would be dumb either way, either dumb for putting him on the list, or dumb for not promoting him if he's not on the list. As it stands right now, I really wanted Roenicke to keep Gallardo in to bat yesterday to lead off the inning (against a lefty) over anyone the Brewers had on the bench. Instead, McGehee pinch hit and to no one's surprise struck out. It's pretty sad that I'd rather have any of our SP except probably Marcum bat instead of our starting 3B.

High MiLB BABIPs don't tend to translate to the same level MLB BABIPs due to the lower quality defense in the minors as well as the lower infield quality in the minors. You're referring to everywhere outside of Milwuakee, right?

Almost any player would benefit from a platoon except, possibly, elite hitters like Braun and Fielder(.791OPS career vs LHP). I don't think it's quite as easy as it may at first look. Many players don't hit as well with limited PAs, so you can't just take someone's LH/RH splits and assume they'd be as productive if they only get limited PAs, especially for the RH part of the platoon. I think we could have brought up a couple AAA guys to platoon at a fraction of the cost of Hart and used the money somewhere else to improve the roster. I think that would've been way too much risk to take in a "go for it" year. Boggs was a complete journeyman we picked up for nothing, so basically we would've been replacing one of the decent players on our roster with said journeyman and a mid-tier 21-year-old prospect. I agree that we should at least be open to trading Hart this offseason, but if we had traded him last offseason (or not extended him), we surely would have looked for another LF in the FA market

I don't think Hart is overpaid. Actually, since the Werth contract, he's probably signed to a good deal. However, he is replaceable, and once the Brewers' brass feels that one of our minor leaguers is ready, Hart should have good trade value. It's reasonable to believe that he could have lost a step as he's gotten older, especially considering he's added qutie a bit of muscle weight. Some of the perception might be that were seeing him next to guys like Gomez and Morgan instead of Brady Clark and Geoff Jenkins.

It's kind of a lot of pressure for a rookie to be thrown into a pennant race. The counter arguement would be that it's a lot of pressure on our pitching staff knowing we have bad defense on the left half of the field, and knowing the black holes in our lineup will keep the team from scoring as many runs as we could. Just being in the majors is a lot of pressure. I doubt the pennant race part is going to add that much more. If a player can't take pressure, he probably shouldn't be considered much of a prospect. I don't put a ton of stock in AAA batting stats. Its true there are some great pitchers in AAA but you are also facing alot of Tim Dillard/Sean Green AAAA types there. Journeymen pitchers who aren't quite good enough to make an MLB roster but are organizational filler and backups "just in case". AA hitting stats are more telling and in AA Taylor Green hit .260 with a .773 OPS There's a good possibility that Green's down year was at least partially due to lingering wrist issues. There is certainly no reason to believe that he will immediately be a .900+ OPS guy in the majors, but with the way McGehee's played, it would be an upgrade if Green could hit like Jason Kendall (in his Brewers years) and play average defense.

So could somebody ask RR why we just brought up Carroll since he is a worse hitter then Gamel and might struggle up here as well? We needed someone who could play CF. When Gomez went down, it was either going to be Carroll or Boggs who got the call. In re-reading the post, you're probably being sarcastic, in which case I agree, Green should be called up along with Carroll. Gomez to DL and one of the bad SS's sent packing.

I thought Ned Yost was the only manager who would let a pitcher bat, and then pull him from the game before the next inning. With this year's bench and the pitchers' ability to hit, I understand keeping our pitchers in to hit, and would probably use pitchers to pinch hit fairly often.

I don't think backup outfielder is something this team needs to make a trade for. Agreed. We have plenty of OF in AAA who I would take a look at before trading for a backup OF: -Carroll (.825 OPS) and Boggs (.819 OPS) can play any OF postion -Gindl (.838 OPS) can play LF/RF -Katin (.938 OPS) - I believe he's still injured -Plus Gamel (.978 OPS) and even Almonte (.870 OPS) can play corner OF in a pinch. If none of these guys pan out, then we should look for a replacement. Otherwise, we should focus our attention on SS/3B.

You gotta make it worth it for the Cubs because they could just let him walk and collect the comp pick. Could the Cubs decline the option and still offer arbitration? I would think that by declining the option they would give up that right. If that's the case, and they could save $10MM or so, the price tag wouldn't be that high. If they're asking for one of our top prospects, then I'd pass on Aramis, go with Taylor Green and target a SS in trade. However, If he could be had for the right price (i.e. Brewers pay the salary and send a mid-level prospect), I would certainly like to see him in the Brewers' 2011 lineup. I could see Mark A looking at this sort of like the Carlos Lee/Posednik deal. If the player validates spending the money, he'll spend it. Ramirez probably fits that mold... at least if he doesn't have to pay $16MM next year.

So we're replacing Carlos Gomez with someone resembling Carlos Gomez.

Danzig and TLB said it well. I've really started to like having Gomez around, and he has helped the team quite a bit in the role he's played lately. He got hurt making a play few could make, and I hope he's able to get fully healed and help the Brewers in the future, whether it's the end of this season or next year. The "silver lining" is that we have some options at OF in AAA. Carroll's having a good season, and after reading And That's "strongest arm in the majors" post, I am truly excited to see him play.

Carroll's OBP would look nice in this lineup, and with the Dodgers' financial woes, you'd think he could be had cheap if we take on his salary. Then we get rid of two of our three bad SS's and bring up Green. All our problems are solved!

What they should have done was put Braun on the DL after he didn't get better after a week. Amen. From hearing him in interviews, it sounded to me like he was pushing himself so he could get a game in with the Brewers prior to the All Star game so that he could start the All Star game. With pulled muscles, the best cure is usually just resting them. Pushing them at all just aggrevates the injury and puts you back to square one. I sure hope this isn't a nagging injury all year which could have been avoided by an early DL stint. Chris Duffy, who was 29. And this was 2009, not 2007. Thank you. Maybe my mind was remembering him as young when really he just didn't have much MLB experience. The 37 PAs he got for Milwaukee that year signaled the end of a listless 791 PA career. If that was the case, we could just have Schroeder come sit in the dugout during the games. He'd be a better catching option than Wil Nieves.

Probably the problem is that what position player are you going to send down or DFA for Green. 2 weeks ago i would have said Kotsay but you need him for Braun insurance. Counsell is still a veteran leader, on a team with few, so you need him on your team regardless of his struggles. I don't think you can just drop McGehee as you have no idea what Green is going to do in the bigs, and to put a 24 year old kid in the middle of pennant race is going to be tough. Same thing goes for Yuni B. Right now we have three bad shortstops on the team in Betancourt, Wilson and Counsell. If any of those three were let go, the team wouldn't miss them. I would drop any of those three, and use Green & McGehee in a "soft platoon" until one of them shows that he deserves to be the everyday player. Remember that Green has also played 2B often in AAA, so he can be a "utility guy" in a pinch. monty, while you premise is right, i disagree with your take. When Weeks, Fielder, Braun etc were called up the brewers had no post season asperations and were building for the future. I think that all changed in 2007, when Melvin finally decided the team was good enough to make the playoffs. Most teams with that mindset will trade away prospects for 1 year rentals. I don't think it has anything to do with Brad Nelson. He was simply misused by the team because its almost impossible for a kid to come up to the bigs and only be a pinch hitter. You're probably right that Nelson probably just happened to be there at the time when Melvin was changing gears anyway, but that year we were going with a young bench and Nelson and another young player who's name escapes me started off slow. Both were replaced by veteran players and our bench has been made up of 65 year olds since then. As for the lineup, Lucroy looks like he's here to stay, but off the top of my head, the only other notable home-grown talents who have cracked the lineup were Escobar and Cain and both were traded away, as have most of our other prospects with any chance of making the big leagues. Every team has to occasionally rely on young, home-grown talent at various positions across the field. We may not have old players, but we have experienced players at basically every position but catcher. We can't forever be scared of bringing up guys like Green because they're rookies and they may pee their pants when they get on a MLB field. Sometimes rookies actually do well, and now seems like a good time to see if a rookie can take over for a struggling vet and help us in a pennant race.

This team was built on prospects hitting their way into the MLB lineup, but that trend seems to have subsided recently, and Melvin has been more inclined to trade his prospects for proven players. What's sad for me is that it seems to be Brad Nelson of all people who changed Melvin's thought process on rookies. Before Nelson, Melvin traded away vets in favor of good-hitting rookies. After Nelson went 0-21 or whatever, Melvin seems to have shifted gears and favored the "proven vet" over the minor leaguers. If Melvin was going to bring Green up, it seemed to be an obvious move a month or so ago. At this point, my guess is that Green will be involved in a trade to bring a rental player in to play 3B. I hope I'm wrong, as this may help us in the short term, but will probably hurt us long-term. If it does occur, I certainly hope it's not in a Ramirez trade, because I would hate watching Green play for the Cubs for the next six seasons. As for bringing Gamel up to play 3B, please no. I don't think I could handle watching games go down the drain as routine ground balls end up being thrown ten feet over Prince's head and into the stands. I don't understand why Gamel is ahead of Green on the Brewers' 3B depth chart after they already moved him off of third. Green was a minor league player of the year who got injured. He's now healthy and hitting as well as Gamel and can actually play 3B. There is no guarantee which of the two would hit better, especially over a couple of months, but there is a very good chance Green would outplay Gamel in the field. Bottom line is that I think bringing Green up would be the best move. My guess is that they will trade for a "proven" 3B. If that doesn't happen and Casey continues to falter, Gamel will be the guy who gets the call.

Fielder + Yuni + McGehee = 3.6 + (-0.5) + (-0.5) = 2.6 WAR thus far, so being conservative and doubling that = 5.2 replacement WAR needed for next year, spread among 3 players = 1.7 WAR/player at 3rd, SS and 1B. I would hope Gamel would provide at least 3 WAR on his own meaning it would not be very difficult to be just as good next year as we are this year.Well put. Someone mentioned earlier and I think it bears reapeating. It is a lot easier to upgrade a team with a number of star players and a couple black holes than it is to upgrade a team that is average across the board. Losing Fielder will hurt, but upgrading SS & 3B will help. Most of the rest of the roster will be back. Plus, the rest of the league will still be weak, especially if St Louis loses Pujols. It's post-2012 I'm concerned about, but a lot can happen between now & then. Extending some SP would be a nice start.

Perhaps I jumped the gun and we should be having this conversation after the season as we all know they aren't going to sell now. Now that is certainly a debateable topic with some merit. Much will come down to how this year goes (World Series, playoffs, miss playoffs), as any playoff games will add a lot of cash to the coffers, but this offseason is important to our future. Do we use some of the freed up cash to go for one of the big name SS's on the market (Reyes, Rollins, Furcal) and shoot for another "all in" year? Do we attempt to extend Marcum and/or Grienke? Or, do we look to trade Marcum, Greinke and/or Wolf and attempt a quick rebuild? Do we do a little of each (i.e. extend Marcum, sign a SS, trade Greinke for young pitchers)? After this year, we lose Fielder ($15.5MM - big loss, but hopefully cushioned somewhat with Gamel), Hawkins ($4MM), Saito ($1.75MM) and K-Rod (mostly paid by Mets) who are talented, but currently combine for a total of 34.1 innings pitched this season so they aren't key to our success and can be replaced, Kam Loe ($1.25MM) and guys like Betancourt ($4MM) and Counsell ($1.4MM) who will improve the team by leaving and Manny Parra ($1.2MM going into yr 2 arby). That's certainly not an insurmountable loss, and that's around $30MM in freed up cash (there will be $10MM+ in pay raises to offset that down to somewhere under $20MM in "free cash"). With some decent offseason roster management, we could still be a playoff team next year. The bigger concern will be after next year, when Marcum and Greinke could be gone and we probably won't have in-house replacements for them. "What should we do this offseason" isn't the topic of this thread, but it is a much more sensible discussion.