monty57

Everyone's calling for Kottaras... why not Rivera? He plays good defense and is decent offensively for a catcher. Plus, he has the "veteran presence" Roenicke wants. I think Kottaras should stay in AAA to work on his defense. If he can improve there, he will certainly be a good backup. Nieves should just be cut as there's no reason for him to be on a MLB roster and he's too old to improve.

Please lets NOT make this a thread about whether Prince is worth it or not. Let's just brainstorm ways to make a contract happen (just for discussion's sake). I'll play: -Fielder & Marcum get extensions -Hart gets traded for a good young SS who can take over for the next six years relatively cheaply. -Gamel takes over RF -Greinke gets traded for two young MLB-ready starters. Melvin couldn't get two young arms for Fielder, so I don't know how likely it would be to get them for Greinke, but I'm trying to make this work. -Some of our young pitchers actually beat the Brewers curse and make it to the major leagues We would have Prince, Weeks, {young SS}, McGehee/Green, Lucroy, Braun, Morgan/Gomez/Schafer, Gamel all signed (or "under control") long-term. That's every position on the field, so we're set there. Our bench should be able to be filled from within the system for the foreseeable future with the likes of Farris, Wilson, Gindl, Katin, Boggs, Kottaras/Maldanado. Likewise, our bullpen (other than Saito and Hawkins) are young, and we should be able to add pieces from the farm in the future. Next season, we would have a rotation of Yo, Marcum, Wolf, and some combination of Narveson, the young pitchers Greinke was traded for, and our current minor leaguers. Wolf leaves after 2012, and his spot is filled from within the system. I haven't figured what the price tags would be, so maybe this isn't feasible. I also don't know the likelihood of getting two young MLB ready pitchers for Greinke, but this is my best shot at making it work.

Katin would also be an answer to #5 above, but Melvin doesn't seem to know he exists.

I'd like Roenicke to realize that Loe can be pulled from a game before he gives up five runs. Roenicke seems more than willing to pull his starters (even when they're still pitching well), but is really hesitant to pull Loe. Maybe it's "man love" on certain relievers, maybe it's a belief the "Loe's my 8th inning guy, so he's staying in," or maybe it's something else, but as Briggs mentioned, Loe has lost a lot of games for us this year. A shorter hook would at least give us a chance to come back. We can't count on comebacks like last night. To answer the topic question: Yes, I would remove Loe from the 8th inning spot. If we're going to go with defined roles, Hawkins and Braddock should be the RH/LH setup guys, and Loe should be a middle reliever. Loe had a decent year last season, but prior to that he doesn't have much of a history of being that good. He shouldn't be counted on as a high leverege guy.

I was hoping to see either Komatsu or Schafer as Milwaukee's CF next year. But with the emergence of Nyjer Morgan and Gomez's super solid defense I am pretty certain that will be the same outfield combo next season. That was my thought exactly, and it will probably be the best for Logan. I hope he's able to stay healthy and be ready to take over full-time CF in Milwaukee around 2013.

Do any of those "advanced metrics" take throwing into account? Prince has had multiple bad throws to home this season, IIRC two of them allowed the winning run to cross home plate. Do those "advanced metrics" take the high throws which pull Prince off the base into account? In the last week alone, there have been at least two runners who were (called) safe because Prince had to jump for a ball which most 1B would have been able to get to without jumping. Do they take scooping into account? Prince has never been very good at this, and I believe a lot of the errors on the IF are a direct result of this. For his size, Prince does have decent mobility, and "advanced metrics" seem to be very high on a player's range, so I could see how he could have improved there, but all told he's not very good. The important thing for me, however, is that if we do indeed use the DH as a chance to rest Prince and Braun, we will likely see Mark Kotsay starting. I personally would rather they just call up Gamel to DH and maybe give him one game at 1B.

I agree, and would add... 1) If Roenicke "needs" the veteran backup and/or doesn't like Kottaras, Rivera would be a vast improvement over Nieves. I don't understand our management's love of Nieves... he's worthless. Bringing up Rivera would also allow Kottaras and Maldonado to share time at AAA. Kottaras to work on his defense and Maldonado his offense. I think given reps that either of these players could be good, cheap backup catchers in the future. 2) Unless we trade for Furcal/Reyes, Betancourt isn't going away, but I agree that Green should be brought up in place of either Wilson or Counsell. I doubt we'll see a platoon, but Green should definitely get starts at 3B, while the survivor of Wilson/Counsell should get more starts at SS, giving Betancourt more bench-time. Personally, I'd keep the younger Wilson, but I don't think folk hero / Milwaukee native Counsell will get cut. 3) Either Boggs or Katin would be an improvement over Kotsay, and neither are young prospects who you wouldn't want to "rot away" on the bench. A bench of Gomez/Morgan, Boggs, Wilson, Green, Rivera sure beats our current lot, but there seems to be a lot of "veteran love" in our management. There doesn't seem to be many other reasons for keeping Nieves, Counsell and Kotsay over guys who appear to be better options.

I agree with most of the sentiments of the post, but if he throws a 90 MPH fastball, I don't think he'd be limited to LF/1B. He should at least be able to play RF, and it wouldn't be out of the question for him to try 3B, which is similar to 1B, except you have to have an arm. I certainly hope they know something others don't, as it does seem that they could have picked him up later than they did.

With the state of our farm sytem, a high reward pitcher really could have made a difference if he panned out but wouldn't really hurt if he didn't. I disagree. Due in large part to failures of high risk / high reward pitchers, we need successes. We are in a position that we can't take as much risk as a team whose farm system is loaded with talent. It looks like we just got two guys who are fairly close to MLB ready (at least as far as draft picks go), and as sad as it is to say probably instantly become the top two pitching prospects in the system. Barring extensions, we're losing Marcum, Greinke and Wolf after next season. We need people who can step up in the next couple of years to fill out the rotation, or we are going to be signing those free agents Melvin has done so poorly on. Being college Juniors, I hope these two picks can help out in this regard.

Perfect Game's take: David Rawnsley: You should be thrilled! Quality ML starters are very hard to find, the Brewers just traded their entire farm system to acquire two of them. Then they go out and get 2 in the draft.

I'd like to see Rivera over Nieves, but Roenicke has a crush on Nieves. I think the "Call up Taylor Green" thread makes some sense. We don't need both Wilson & Counsell, and Green should be able to outhit either of them. I'd like to bring Green up and either cut Counsell or send Wilson to AAA (if that's possible without him clearing waivers). At some point, we're going to need some big pinch hits or if a starter were to go on the DL, that these are really the only options we would have to fill in. That's the worrysome thing. We really don't have anyone in the system who could step up at most positions. With the Wilson pick-up, at least we'd have an everyday SS if Yuni went down. Per the theme of the thread, we could easily replace any of our bench players if they get hurt. However, we'll have a hard time compensating for any other injuries. We were fortunate that Estrada picked up the slack when Grienke got hurt, but now Estrada's not stretched out, so we don't even have him to fall back on. I don't think it's a coincidence that our team started playing much better once everyone (Lucroy, Hart, Greinke) got healthy Maybe part of it is that we have star players at multiple positions, so they'd be hard to replace even if we did have a good farm system, but with our current set-up, we really have to hope & pray that we don't have any significant injuries to anyone on our roster going forward.

We kind of have a logjam of "meh" players on the left side of the field, but there are several reasons I could see Green being called up: -When Wheeler's back (? anyone know when), we will have two decent prospects (at least for our system) at 3B in Nashville, without a real SS prospect. It could be that we will send Wilson down to play SS everyday as AAA insurance, and bring Green up as the backup MLB 3B, letting Wheeler play 3B everyday in AAA, with Counsell as the backup MLB SS/2B. -If Counsell continues to stink (currently at .197 avg / .303 OBP / .212 SLG / .515 OPS), he could be let go, and this is possibly the reason Wilson was signed. The fact that Counsell's a folk hero and is guaranteed money makes me think he'll be here all season, but really, a .212 SLG?? I would have to think Green could outperform what Counsell's done this season, and if Wilson is the backup SS, we could use an upgrade for backup 3B. -As has already been outlined several times here, McGehee's underperformance (currently .238 avg / .297 OBP / .346 SLG / .643 OPS) could lead to Green being brought up to give Casey some time off. I doubt Casey goes to AAA, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. I certainly don't know what the best remedy is for McGehee, and I hope he is able to turn things around. That said, whatever the situation with McGehee, I would certainly prefer having Green on the MLB roster over one of Wilson or Counsell.

Yeah, when certain teams, which happen to be the big markets (aka big revenue markets for MLB), are able to nab top talent later in the draft, I don't see any changes coming.

We can't look at things in a vaccuum. If the CC trade was never made, we would have had LaPorta & Brantley in the system, which would have changed all subsequent moves. We may not have traded for Gomez if we saw Brantley as a legitimate CF prospect, or we may not have extended Hart if we saw Brantley as a corner OF. We would have had much more reason last season to trade Hart & Fielder for pitching, as we would have had legitimate prospects knocking on the door at AAA. Had we done that, we probably wouldn't have traded for Greinke and Marcum this offseason (maybe Marcum, but almost adduredly not Greinke). We may not have as good a team this season with Brantley in RF, LaPorta at 1B and whatever players we received for Prince & Corey, but we would certainly have a better minor league system for the future. Brantley is not and never was a CF prospect. He can play there if he has to but he is not a starting CF. Fielder was rumored at the deadline last year and there were no top of line pitchers rumored to be coming to Milwaukee for him. Hart was not netting more than a number 3/4 guy at best. If we trade Hart and Fielder for young pitching we would have pushed back 2 to 3 years our chances at competing. Right now we have one of the best top 3's in the NL for two years. I dont know how anyone can say we overpaid for Marcum or Greinke. Lawrie could be very good but Marcum has been terrific. Odorizzi is the only guy in the Greinke deal (maybe Cain) that I miss. Escobar cannot hit. Seriously, I would rather have Yo batting every day than him. Jeffress still walks almost a guy an inning. Cain might be solid player but he is definitely not a lock. Odorizzi is hard to lose but seriously we gave up a couple below average MLB players, a guy who could be solid, and very good pitching prospect who is still in A ball. Not sure how we overpaid for either. Oh, I really liked the Greinke and Marcum moves. I liked the CC deal as well. I was just saying that if the CC deal had not been done, all of the subsequent moves would have been different... we have no idea what moves may or may not have been made. Also, I didn't mean to single you out, as I was really responding to several posters. Your post just happened to be the one I quoted.

We can't look at things in a vaccuum. If the CC trade was never made, we would have had LaPorta & Brantley in the system, which would have changed all subsequent moves. We may not have traded for Gomez if we saw Brantley as a legitimate CF prospect, or we may not have extended Hart if we saw Brantley as a corner OF. We would have had much more reason last season to trade Hart & Fielder for pitching, as we would have had legitimate prospects knocking on the door at AAA. Had we done that, we probably wouldn't have traded for Greinke and Marcum this offseason (maybe Marcum, but almost adduredly not Greinke). We may not have as good a team this season with Brantley in RF, LaPorta at 1B and whatever players we received for Prince & Corey, but we would certainly have a better minor league system for the future.

It would take outbidding the Reds, who have a vastly superior minor league system. They are being touted as the lead candidates to land Reyes at this time. I doubt we can outbid them, but maybe we should throw our hat in the ring just to get them to raise the price.

He'd be a huge improvement on defense. When was the last time Counsell logged enough games at SS to justify saying that he would be a huge improvement? Yuni's problem is range... I doubt the 41-year-old Counsell has much more range than Yuni. Plus, that range would likely decrease if given regular starts, as 41-year-old bodies get tired. Yuni's not good, but Counsell might not be the improvement some hope for. The problem is that this isn't the first season that Betancourt just didn't hit, this is looking a lot like his 2009. Agreed. I hope he starts to improve to his normally "blah" hitting. I think Counsell should start a couple games a week. Putting them in a straight platoon, where Counsell would get regular starts could get ugly. Maybe not, maybe he's that rare specimen who never seems to age. Realistically, those players have all but dried up since the crackdown on PEDs, so relying on Counsell to play in 70% of the games going forward doesn't seem like a well-thought-out plan. playing Wilson full time would likely be an improvement. Unfortuantely, Melvin may have realized too late how bad Yuni can be, but he also realizes that playing Counsell even 1/2 time probably isn't an option. Therefore, drum roll please, we may start seeing more of Wilson, so we may be forced to see if the above-quoted statment is true.

Roenicke seems to make his decisions based on Spring Training, so Counsell's poor ST is probably the biggest reason he hasn't seen many starts. At this stage of his career, I doubt he'd be much of an improvement on defense over Yuni, but he probably wouldn't be worse. He hits LH and can still get on base, so he should get at least a start or two per week at SS. As for retiring, he's guaranteed his $1MM+ salary unless he retires. There's no way he retires before the season's over. Even if he's let go, we still have to pay him.

Why, why, why? Nieves is useless. What do they see in him that Rivera can't provide? He's even got the "veteran presence." Heck, he was a Yankee, so we can even say he "knows how to win." I'd bet that you could randomly pick five players from AAA and they would be able to outhit our bench. Other than Gomez/Morgan, they'd probably be able to outfield them too.

If another GM needed Boggs for their MLB team, they would have claimed him on waivers one of the three times he's been on them this year.Unless there's been an injury since then. Or, maybe another team's decided to give up on a player. There has to be a team with a 5th OF who they are ready to give up on. Really, if a guy like Boggs were to be released by another team, there would be a 20-page thread here on why we should ditch anyone on our bench to pick him up.

I'd guess Kotsay will be the backup corner OF, stealing starts away from Hart far too often (i.e. the "I don't want to play Corey nine innings every day" comment). He will also be the primary LH bat off the bench, and will probably get a PH opportunity nearly every day. I honestly think Gomez is the one in Roenicke's dog house, otherwise there's no way he'd be starting Kotsay in CF over him. It really wouldn't surprise me to see a lot of Morgan in CF as long as he stays healthy.

djoctagone, I'd guess that Boggs will stick around as long as it's his best option, but if another team calls his agent right now and says "We need someone for our MLB team," I'd bet that he'd be on the next plane out of Dodge. As far as Wilson, I understand picking him up, as we were in a situation where if Yuni got hurt we had no everyday SS, and would have been forced to play Counsell until his body broke down. I don't understand why he needs to be on the MLB team. If we want to play Counsell more, that's fine... it means that either Yuni, Casey or Rickie are on the bench. If someone gets hurt, then they (Yuni, Rickie or Casey) come in and Wilson is called up the next day. To me, this means that Counsell will be used for PH duty and late-game def replacement duty. I don't know that this makes up for the loss of production we'd get from having Wilson pinch hit instead of Boggs.

So either a third catcher with no apparent MLB value is more valueable than Boggs, or Melvin/Roenicke think that Rivera is a better RH bat then Boggs. It really doesn't make any sense to me... Nieves is useless, just stick a big fork in that experiment and let it die. Glad to see Morgan back, and hopefully that means Kotsay will purely be a LH bat off the bench, but some of the moves this year are very questionable. It's almost like we're trying to have the worst bench in baseball.

When talking about a straight sacrifice attempt, the fact that some managers choose base/state (2) after being in base/state (1) only serves to bring DOWN the average runs scored in 1. Okay, that makes sense. When taken in aggregate, there probably aren't enough "runner on 1b w/ 0 out" bunts to skew the stats in the way that I was referring, and it would not work (i.e. the runner doesn't score, so it's a negative on both) enough so the negatives would likely offset the positives. Thanks.

PEM, it's because once in a Little League game Roenicke saw Morgan strike out when he started against a RHP two days in a row.