monty57

This isn't true. They accept revenue sharing money. They can't do what they want with it. That is part of the collective bargaining process with the union. But they didn't pay themselves with revenue sharing money, they paid themselves with operating revenue. The salary was more than the revenue sharing money, so all of that money went for the purpose it was meant for. If you look at it any other way (i.e. the revenue money is the last money spent), then no owner whose team accepts revenue sharing would ever be able to take any money out of the team which is indeed silly. Rather than try to engage in an intelligent discussion, you ask a question including words I didn't use, asking if that that was my position. The Pirates spent all of their revenue sharing money plus much of the operating revenues on "improving the team." After that, they still had some of the operating revenue left over (profit). You are saying that they cannot take any of that money out for themselves, because that money also has to go to "improving the team." My question was "Is your arguement that owners are greedy if they take a penny out of the organization, because every last dime should go to the players?" After reading your posts, your position seems to be that any owner whose team receives revenue sharing can never take any money out of the team, even if the team is profitable, because all of the profit has to go to "improving the team." How is that different from the question I asked? They spent some of the revenue sharing money on the team. Not all of it. No, they spent all of the revenue sharing money. What they didn't spend all of is the operating revenue. Of the operating revenues, most of that appears to have stayed with the team, as the owners only took money out one year to reimburse themselves for taxes they would not have incurred had they not held ownership in the team. As owners of a business, they are in no way guaranteed to be compensated enough to pay for their taxes. That's an obligation they have when they own a business. If they aren't happy with that, or can't bear the burden, they should sell their stake. There is never a lack of suitors for people wanting to own a baseball team. To me, these guys appear (at least monetarily) to be doing all they can to help the team. It's clear that this is your opinion, but it obviously false. They aren't doing all they can to help the team. They are paying themselves money that was intended for the team. Well, yes, they could drain all of their personal wealth, but I think that paying millions of dollars out of their own pocket while leaving profits in the team's bank accounts is doing quite a bit for the team. You may believe my opinion to be false, but please don't act as if your opinion is more than your opinion. They didn't pay themselves with money that was intended for the team. They paid the team with money that was intended for them. If you want to target the Marlins who are rumored to have spent less on payroll than they received from revenue sharing, then your argument may hold water. The Pirates don't appear to have done that. Therefore, the profits completely belong to the owners, who chose to leave most of their money with the Pirates and assume the majority of the tax revenues out of their own pockets.

All I can say is that it will be an interesting off-season. Depending on how things shake out, if it looks like someone like Rivas or Rogers is going to be the #5, I wouldn't mind seeing Capuano start the season as #5 with Rivas/Rogers starting in AAA for a few starts, replacing Capuano a month or so into the season. That may keep Rivas/Rogers on regular starts and get them more experience against more advanced hitters before debuting in the majors. Capuano is also a good guy as long reliever/spot starter, but I'd like to see him get more than 3-4 outings / month. However, if I were Capuano, and I had a chance to go somewhere that I would be in consideration for a full-time rotation spot, I'd have to take that over a long man role.

To the first point, you are upset that the owners took any money out (even if it was only to pay the taxes) when the team made a profit. That's their money, and they can do what they want with it. You are arguing that it should all go to "improving the team" (i.e. somehow end up going to someone other than the owners). Your second statement "there's a problem" seems to insinuate that if an owner's team accepts revenue sharing, they cannot under any circumstance take any money from the partnership. That kind of validates why I don't think my statement was overly silly. To the second point, how do you distinguish between the money they received from ongoing operations and the money they received from revenue sharing? Their team payroll is much more than they received in revenue sharing, so they did spend the revenue sharing on "improving the team." Of the operating revenues, most of that appears to have stayed with the team, as the owners only took money out one year to reimburse themselves for taxes they would not have incurred had they not held ownership in the team. The remainder of the years, the owners apparently shouldered the burden of these taxes out of their own (non-Pirates related) pockets. So it appears to me that you are upset that the owners decided in one year that they would allow some of the team's excess revenue to pay a tax liability incurred solely because of the team, when every other year, the owners took the money out of their own pocket to pay for it. To me, these guys appear (at least monetarily) to be doing all they can to help the team. I understand that owners of any business bear the yeoman's share of the risks, which is why they should receive most of the benefit when things pay off. These guys are bearing the financial burden, and have not taken much out for personal gain. I'm sure this isn't purely atruistic... they realize that they will benefit most if the team becomes better on the field, and the best way to do that is to sacrifice some personally now, but it seems far-fetched to believe that there is a problem with what they're doing.

So, the players need to get paid no matter what, but the owners are not allowed to ever get paid, even if it is simply to reimburse them for expenses they would not have had if they were not owners? Is your arguement that owners are greedy if they take a penny out of the organization, because every last dime should go to the players?

How many right-handed relief pitchers does one team need? Assuming one or two lefties in the pen, with a 12 man rotation, they need 5 or 6. With a 13 man rotation they need 6 or 7. McClung, Turnbow, Torres, Gagne, Riske sounds about right in line with a 12-man rotation, assuming they had two lefties. Again, if they could have produced anything from their farm, they wouldn't have needed to sign & trade for so many players. Thankfully, they learned from their mistake and it was around this time that they started drafting lots and lots of pitchers every year, so we now have quite a few arms coming up through the system.

The government has every right to ask for the financial records before giving the team money for the stadium, and the team can decide if they want to give the records or not. However, I've never heard of a government caring about the profits/losses of the team when it comes to giving them money for a stadium. They generally cave when the team says they have other suitors. If the government gives the team money without demanding financial records, the public should blame the government, not the team. Or, they should blame themselves for screaming to the local government that they don't want the team to leave, so the government then caves. However, none of this is about fraud, corruption or anything else. The Pirates did nothing wrong criminally, ethically, morally or in any other way. The only person who could be sued out of this is the person who leaked the information, and I hope he is caught. The paper will not suffer any consequences even though I think they should. The bigger story is if other teams' records are truly being leaked as someone in an earlier post mentioned. If this is the case, then it would seem that there is a good chance that someone is behind this who is bribing team employees to leak the reports. If the players union or someone else is doing this, it really is a story.

Well put MJ. I used the term crime in a generic fashion while discussing ethical behavior. The true infraction is breach of contract and breach of fiduciary responsibility. The likely penalty would be a serious fine (potentially well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars), job loss, and if the person in question were an attorney or accountant, they would likely be unable to work in said field ever again (disbarment). The point was that the paper was condoning this unethical behavior for their own financial benefit (to sell more papers). The Pirates are a privately held company, and therefore their financials are private. They did not commit any criminal or unethical acts, and therefore when the information was submitted to the paper, they should have acted ethically, which would have been to report the perpetrator to the authorities. They should not have printed the ill-gotten information.

i don't see it as an ethical problem for newspapers to report this at all. plus that would really limit reporting if they can only publish information that's already available to the public. i'm really happy about all this, but then i'm in favour of a shared system to begin with. i'm hoping the additional information will help to cause more of a stir with fans to put something in place. I never said the paper should only report what is already available to the public, but they shouldn't report private information which is criminally obtained unless there is a very valid reason for doing so (i.e. finding out a greater crime has occurred). Let's use a different example. Suppose someone breaks into your house and steals your financial information. They give it to the newspaper, and instead of having the thief arrested, the paper decides to publish your financial information, suddenly making private information which no one has a right to know very public. Ethics in reporting is extremely vague, and a large part of that is people are happy when they find out something private about someone else, and are only upset when it's their own private information which is aired.

While interesting, I think it's a shame that the media finds it necessary to report the financials of a private organization just because someone criminally "leaks" the reports to them. Where are ethics in journalism? The Pirates did nothing wrong. Whoever had the reports was under contractractual fiduciary responsibiliy not to give these reports to anyone. Therefore, the media is encouraging a criminal act simply for their own financial gain (sell more papers/advertising). What they should have done (as is what's going on with the Disney employee at this time) is to report that a Pirates employee was trying to perform a criminal act. Again, if someone was leaking that the Pirates were cheating on their taxes, or doing something else illegal, then go with the story. This is an invasion of privacy and the paper is essentially harboring a fugitive under the guise of "protecting a source" for no ethical reason. If it is true that this is becoming pandemic, and other teams' financials are being leaked, then I think it's pretty safe to assume that some money is exchanging hands somewhere to get this private information. That's the real story, but I don't hold much hope that anyone will ever look into that.

He should have been good for us too, but he got hurt instead. That sucks, but what can you do? That'san important point. Riske was a good middle reliever who got hurt as soon as he became a Brewer. He tried to pitch through it for a while, leading to really bad numbers in his first season, then he went under the knife. The argument against the signing seems more like a general rule for all middle relievers, and not specifically against Riske. It seems to be more of a "we shouldn't have signed Riske because he is a middle reliever, and you should never sign a middle reliever to a three-year deal." I guess that's fine, but if that is your strategy, make sure you don't complain when a scrapheap pickup pitches poorly. No complaints that "we need someone other than Joe Winklesas or we'll never be a playoff team." We needed Riske because our scrapheap pickups and pitching wasteland in the minors weren't doing a good enough job. When we signed Riske, we had a lineup full of pre-arby guys that were giving us strong hopes for the playoffs, but we needed bullpen help. The extra revenue streams and sold out stadiums were allowing for higher payrolls while still maintaining a profit. Sure, we could've went out and found the next Axford, but it also could've been the next Winklesas. I've talked about weighing risk before, but Melvin figured that Riske was a pretty safe bet to be a solid bullpen arm that would help us make the playoffs. He was signed for what, $13MM over three years? At the time, that's what a decent SP made in one year, so if you are looking at $/inning, you should probably get your 180 or so innings over those three years. He got hurt. If you believe what he says, it's at least partially the Brewers' fault he got hurt. If he hadn't gotten hurt, and had pitched well for three years, would the same people who are saying "never sign a reliever" still be complaining about the contract?

I've thought all along that since Weeks' name was never mentioned when everyone was talking about trading Hart and Fielder that it was because the Brewers wanted to extend him. Now that he's picked his agent, I hope something can get worked out.

Also, Edmonds got most of the PAs in CF this season, and it's doubtful that Cain will match his offensive production for the season. Cain should add value on defense, but this is about offense. While (as I said earlier), I think we'll have a decent offense next year, there are a lot of reasons for concern. Just because someone's a rookie doesn't mean they'll automatically be better next year. Hart is a big question mark, and since All-Star break he's hitting for a .770 OPS. That could just be randomness over a one month period, or it could be that his history of being extremely hot or extremely cold will continue. If we move from Prince to Gamel and Hart hits a .770 OPS next year, we're in some trouble, especially if Escobar and Lucroy don't add .100+ points to their OPS (no small task). We are a top offense this year because Weeks, Hart and McGehee are having very good years, and Prince and Braun are so good that even though they're having "down" years, they're still better than most. We were also getting good production from Zaun before he got hurt and Edmonds before he was traded. I hope that Escobar and Lucroy are able to add .100 points to their OPS next year, but I don't think we can count on it. I hope Cain continues hitting over .350, but I doubt it will happen. I hope Weeks and Hart improve or maintain their career years they're having and I hope McGehee continues to play above all expectations. It could happen, but I think there is reason to believe that our offense could slip, possibly considerably, next year. We're losing an anchor and replacing him with a question mark. With only one player who's capable of a .900+ OPS (Braun), we are already basing our offense on a number of "ifs."

If I'm reading ESPN's 2010 stats correctly, Braun batting #3 ahead of Fielder: .933 OPS in 328 AB Braun batting #4 behind Fielder: .658 OPS in 136 AB I know somebody, somewhere "proved" that protection is a myth, but I think Prince will be missed more than some give him credit for. I really hope Gamel steps up to the plate (I know, bad metaphore) and performs if given the chance. Personally, I think the Hart extension could come back to hurt us. I'd rather have seen him traded for pitching, Gamel take RF, and make a push for someone like Dunn or Konerko to fill the Fielder void. Over the next 3-4 years, I'd guess that Gamel will replicate or exceed what Hart will do, but neither will come close to Fielder's offensive production. We are going to need to see vast improvements by Escobar (.645 OPS) and Lucroy (.668 OPS). Cain will need to continue to hit the way he is (.836 OPS) in order to replace the .843 OPS Jim Edmonds gave us this year. Braun's improvement will need to at least offset the regression we're likely to see from Hart (Braun is currently .082 OPS points below his career, while Hart is currently .070 above his). McGehee and Weeks will need to continue their solid offense for the whole season. We'll lose some offense when our pitchers come back to reality and start hitting like pitchers. And finally, someone (Gamel) will have to try to replace the "awful" .886 OPS production we're getting from Fielder, much of which is derived from a .405 OBP because pitchers refuse to throw to him due to his unbelieveable power. Even in his down year, Prince in 9th in MLB 1B in OPS, ahead of the likes of Ryan Howard and Mark Teixeira. I love ya' Mat, good luck with the task at hand, but you're being set up for failure. If we really improve our pitching (i.e. trade Fielder for someone who can be a #2ish starter and sign someone like Vazquez or trade for a top line starter), then I think we'd have a shot at the playoffs in 2011, even with the reduced offense. However, I'm guessing that if we go with what we have and plop Gamel in to replace Fielder, we'll have a pretty big dropoff in offensive production next year. Thankfully, we're dropping from a high level, so we should still have at least an average offense, and probably a little better than average. Unfortunately, a slightly above average offense mixed with below average pitching and poor defense doesn't scream playoffs to me. In other words, if we're going cheap on offense, we need to spend big on pitching. Whether that's making a run at someone like Cilff Lee or trading for a salary dump top of the rotation starter (any other Dan Haren's out there?), we need to make some big splashes in the rotation if we don't want to have a pretty forgetful year in 2011.

On Brewers 360 this morning, Macha made it sound like Capuano would be getting some starts. Reading between the lines, it sounded like he was hinting that Cappy may replace Manny in the rotation.

I asked that question earlier in this thread, and the answer I got from X was: "Gomez would have a split contract, and wouldn't earn his major league salary if he wasn't on the major league team." I know pre-arby guys get sent up & down often and make less in the minors. I know MLB free agent contracts are guaranteed even if you release the player or send them to the minors. I was/am unsure about contracts agreed to during the arbitration years. I hope we can pay him minor league pay and start him in Nashville next year. If we have to pay him around $1.5MM, I don't know what to do with him.

I'd guess the back-to-back 3 inning outings by Gallardo and Narveson in the previous two days had something to do with why Macha left Parra out there. I'm not a Macha fan, but someone in our rotation has to get out of the fourth inning every now and then.

I've been a proponent of giving Parra starts all season to see what we have in him. Unfortunately, what we've seen hasn't been good. I hope Melvin explores the possibilty of trading Parra in the offseason. I don't expect much, but some team may take a flier on him due to his upside (a la Jorge de la Rosa). For 2011, we won't need three lefties in the bullpen, and I'd rather our good, young relievers get innings. I don't want to see what we did this year (hoarding bad SP in the bullpen) happen again next year. If Narveson is used correctly, I think he could be an effective reliever, as he has been good at getting lefties out. He could make a good LOOGY, allowing Braddock to be a LH setup man, as he can get anyone out. Plus, he could be used as a long man when needed, so we wouldn't feel the need to carry a 13-man rotation just so Capuano can get three outings/month. As far as next year, I expect Fielder to bring an arm in trade to go along with Yo & Wolf in the rotation. The other two spots are really up in the air, and I think there's a good chance we'll have to go the FA route to fill at least one of these spots (I'm still hoping for Javier Vazquez). Then I hope one of the guys in the minors steps up and grabs hold of the 5th spot. A rotation of Yo, Vazquez, Wolf, {Player from Fielder trade}, Narveson/Rogers/Rivas/Jeffress wouldn't be great, but it would be an improvement over this year and a decent bridge until our higher-upside young arms are ready.

I hope Melvin doesn't base his future decisions on whether couple of veteran signings didn't pan out or a couple of prospects did. The reason Melvin shouldn't spend a lot of money on the bullpen in the near future is that they should have a number of good arms coming up from the minors, allowing them to stay young, cheap and good for quite a while. Of the three, I'll take good. Having young, cheap and good is just added benefit. The fact that we utterly failed in developing any pitching (rotation or bullpen) is what made the signings of players like Riske necessary. Thankfully it appears Melvin & Company have been working on correcting that for the past several years, and we're finally seeing the fruits of that labor. It will be a nice day when the only guys making over $1MM in our bullpen are guys we've brought up through our system who have performed well enough to merit the pay raise in arbitration.

Exactly. The Brewers can keep him in the minor leagues for 2011 and 2012 making minor league money when he could be making millions and pushing off his potential for free agency for another two years. That would seriously limit the amount of money he would make over his career. The Brewers need to tell him the only way he'll get back to the majors is to change his approach at the plate. If he refuses to change, he stays in the minors until he's out of options and the Brewers let him go after the 2012 season. If he puts some effort into doing what the team is asking of him and starts to build a respectable OBP, he will either be brought up to the Brewers or he would become tradeable.

I'm all for playing him in AAA next year. However, I believe he'd still need to be offered arby after the season, meaning he'd still make over $1MM whether he was in Milwaukee or Nashvillle. Am I right on this?

I agree with Briggs. I'd also add that being brought up to the majors at a young age could lead to a sense of entitlement, which could explain why he's seemingly been unwilling to change his approach. If that is the case, an extended stay in AAA could be a wake up call for him. It's good to see the Brewers are at least attempting to take a stand in telling Gomez he either changes his approach or he doesn't play in the majors. It's all up to Gomez now.

If he retires, he loses the money the Brewers owe him, so that's probably not likely to happen. He could sit the whole year on the DL if he's injured, but won't retire.

There's no way the Brewers will be going after any of those 3 first baseman. Either Gamel or Hart will be taking over 1b when we trade Fielder.Small sample alert, but the .722 OPS Hart has been hitting since the All Star game (.670 in August) is oddly reminiscent of 2008. If we simply go status quo on offense and assume that we can replace Fielder with Gamel and all will be well, I think we'll be disappointed in our offense next year. Our pitching will arguably be better if we get someone for Prince in a trade, but a slightly better rotation mixed with a worse offense and equal defense will not add up to even a decent year next year.

I definitely think these guys show that there's a lot of hope for the future. In addition to being good players, the group you mentioned (I'd include Rivas and Gamel as others who will help in 2011), are also cheap. In 2011, we should have pre-arby players at C, SS, 3B, CF, most of our bullpen, probably at least one SP (Narveson, Rivas, Rogers) and some of our bench. As the years progress, we should be able to continually add young guys, most notably to the starting rotation. This extra money should allow us to fill in other spots with FA/salary-dump trade players and allow us to offer "Braun-type" extensions to the core of this group of young players. Trade Prince for a SP and some prospects, sign Dunn to a 3 year deal and Vazquez to a 1-2 year deal. Go into the season with Yo, Vazquez, {Guy traded for Prince}, Wolf, Narveson/Rivas/Parra/Rogers with a lineup of Lucroy, Dunn, Weeks, Escobar, McGehee/Gamel, Braun, Cain, Hart, and I think we'd have a decent team. All this is made possible due to the decision by Taylor (and continued by Melvin) to rebuild our team from the farm up. I believe it's Ennder who says the rebuilding process is a long one, and we've just finished phase 1 with the first group. We've extended Braun, Hart and Yo, and are probably going to trade Prince this offseason to add more young talent. Now it's time for the next group of prospects to shine and keep us relevant for the foreseeable future. We're not in a short term window. The window was opened when the first group arrived and now we just need to act sensibly to keep the window open for a long time.

I agree. It makes no sense wasting an option when they can simply send down the 13th pitcher until September call-ups. They may never need to use the second option, but why waste it in a situation like this? At least this shows that there is a chance he would start next year in AAA. If he takes the hint and changes his mindset/approach at the plate, he could still be a very valueable commodity.