monty57

I don't think anyone is disputing he's done a better job that his predecesors. The question is, can he get this team to the next level? And maybe the question should be can anyone get this team to the next level? He has built up the farm system to a point that almost guarantees this team will be competitive. But to get from competitive to World Series Chanps he needs to do better than one Gallardo every 10 years. Slice and dice it however you wish. Trades, FA, draft... he simply hasn't built a top shelf pitching staff. And let me be cleear, I know that isn't easy in Milwaukee by any means. It also wasn't easy for Ron Wolf to build a winner in Green Bay after 20+ years of suckiness. Different sports, sure, but the analogy holds some merit. Very simply, the job needs to get done. Doesn't matter if luck is involved, outsmarting every other GM...whatever it takes. GM is a zero-sum game. Either you win or you don't. What I was trying to show in the latter part of the post was to show that he had nothing to trade early in his tenure to get those "high upside arms." The first step was to build a good system top to bottom not only so that you can promote players to your MLB team, but also so that you have trading chips. When you've got no chips, you can't trade. It was pretty amazing that they got so good so quickly and I think it's spoiled some fans somewhat into believing that we should be even better than we have been. We now have a good franchise with some chips to trade in when it looks like they have a shot at winning. I think the biggest thing that can derail it, and my one big worry about Melvin, is the refusal to "sell" when it doesn't look like they have a chance. It's early, but this year is shaping up to look like a "sell" year, which doesn't mean our franchise is a failure, but rather that we're taking steps to be even better in the future.

I wasn't saying anything about a fielding metric... just that Weeks is not a good fielder. The first part of my response was just that some here have said Rickie is one of our better defensive players due to how good he was last year, but say it's too early to say if he's regressed. Neither sample is big enough to judge him. He is much better at a lot of aspects of defense than he was, and he will probably continue to improve so I don't want to see him moved. He's not so bad that he kills our chances of winning (like Braun at 3B or Adam Dunn in LF), but if a "metric" says he's one of the best in the game I'll just have to assume that metric is flawed. He has a hard time judging bounces so they eat him up.

This year's sample size is as big as last year's sample size. Weeks has a lot of balls hit at him that "miss his glove," so he doesn't get an error, but should make. He's gotten better, but that's coming from a pretty low point. He seems better at the plays he has to range for, but is bad at high hops, which he kind of ducks his head away from. Randolph has definitely been a good mentor to him, and has really helped him slow the game down and cured his oddly erratic arm. I don't think he needs to be moved off of second, but he's not a good defender. On that hig hop note, who is the coach that tells the Brewers to "get your eyes to the level of the ball?" I'd never heard that until Bill said a year or two ago that one of the coaches teaches it. It really seems to cause some awkward looking mis-plays and doesn't put the fielder in a very good position to throw to first.

Or, you could say that when he came here he had nothing and he's built it into something. When you have nothing to trade, it's hard to trade for something of value. He (and Jack Z) decided to use a lot of top draft picks on hitters, and they have turned out very well. He (and Jack Z) decided to use some top draft picks on pitchers (promising arms that lit up the radar) and they have not turned out well at all. He seems to realize that there is little pitching depth, and therefore feels that it is important to have durable pitchers rather than high-upside guys who are either injury risks or have a high flame out potential. Kind of a "make sure you can pay the bills before you go to the casino." Now, Looper and Suppan have been relatively durable, but have performed below what could have been expected (definitely Looper, maybe Suppan was expected to implode) and now it seems Davis has fallen off a cliff performance-wise from where he has been the past couple of years, although I'm not ready to give up on him. He seemed to learn from Suppan that even "less risk" pickups still have risk, so he's limited his risk further by going with one-year deals for these stopgap solutions. He could have went a different way and drafted a lot more pitching early on, and we have no way of knowing how that would've paid off. We do know that the hitters he drafted did pay off, and we could debate the potentials of what could've happened if we drafted Player X without ever coming to a conclusion. Had he chosen a different Blue Jays pitcher (if he had the choice) when he traded Overbay, we would have had even less starting pitching over the past few seasons. With the little depth we've had, I'm sure glad we got Dave Bush rather than someone who had Tommy John surgery or someone who's spent most of his time in the bullpen. There may have been some other opportunities to get a player, but they have been relatively scarce. Now that Melvin has built the team from a wasteland to a system with some available talent, and there are some good arms coming up through the system, I'd guess he'll be somewhat more comfortable taking a risk. Thanks to Melvin, we now have a team with talent all over the field. Thanks to Melvin, we have a minor league system with talent that will supplement our major league roster and some that will be able to be used in trade. We should have Yo, Wolf, Narveson and Parra (possibly Davis as well) on the roster next year. If we get someone in a Fielder trade, or if it looks like some of our minor leaguers are ready to make the step, then we will finally have starting pitching depth. Then, Melvin will be able to swing for the fences on a high risk/high reward starter.

The criticism is not acquiring high end pitching. Melvin didnt draft Sheets so he doesnt get much credit for signing him. Melvin has chosen to take the easy way out in regards to pitching, the low ceiling guys with no upside. As for McGowan I wouldnt be criticizing Melvin if he had traded for McGowan because that would have shown that he tried to trade for top end talent. I never blame Melvin for injuries I instead chose to focus on his lack of aggressiveness in acquiring high end power arms. So you'd rather Melvin gamble and lose rather than not gamble at all. Personally, I'd rather he only gamble with "house money." In other words, when we have a decent rotation and some depth, then we can take a risk on someone who will be all or nothing. Whether you want to blame injuries, bad drafts or something else, we have been seriously thin on rotation depth recently. Therefore, I would rather Melvin play it safe for the time being. For example, Melvin could have went after Bedard instead of Davis. If we already had depth, Bedard could be the better target due to his high upside. Since we had no depth, Davis was the better choice due to his success and durability in recent years. We should have some pitching depth in the near future, so I could see Melvin going after some riskier players.

The Sine Waves would be perfect, but it would appeal to the same crowd who laughs at the "C:/DOS C:/DOS/RUN RUN/DOS/RUN" shirts and would be lost on the mass audience. Maybe that would be perfect, as less than 10% of the population can understand what's going on with this Brewers team. How about Team Car Wreck: I don't want to watch, but I can't turn away.

I think you have to evaluate who was available and in the context of that time frame. Marcum had less service time than Bush at the time of the trade, but he topped out around 91 MPH where Bush was 89, he was 2 years younger and had pitched himself all the way to AAA, the only thing Bush had over Marcum was more MLB experience. Obviously I think you know me well enough to know that I would have preferred Marcum because his stuff was a tick better on all his pitches, his K and BB rates were better, and he was the younger pitcher of the 2. Can I say for sure that Marcum would have been available, well obviously not. However given the context of that time frame, what was the difference between Bush and Marcum in a GM's eye other than MLB experience? Similar pitches, similar velocity, similar mound presence, both would ultimately be pitchability guys... I think Melvin definitely chose MLB experience over slightly better potential upside, and I think he further demonstrated that notion with Jackson and Gross, 2 high floor/low ceiling type players. Also recall that Overbay wasn't the only piece Milwaukee sent Toronto's way, we also sent our own pitchability type starting pitcher in Ty Taubenheim. I would have been happier at the time with Overbay for Marcum straight up than I am with the original deal, even with the benefit of hind sight considering Marcum lost a year with TJ surgery. For an organization that lacked impact pitching at every level, I think taking the highest possible upside should be the preferred route. I may be nitpicking on what's really a good post, but it is possible that Melvin and his scouts saw somthing in Marcum's delivery that would be likely to lead to arm injuries. It should be obvious to anyone that 91 MPH is faster than 89 MPH and strikeouts and walks have been used in scouting pitchers since the game began, so I'm sure they looked at it. Maybe you're right, and Melvin simply said "I'll take the worse pitcher because he's played in the majors," but that doesn't seem real likely. There had to be something more than that, and a delivery that could lead to arm injuries could be a major reason a GM would opt for someone who is obviously inferior in some pretty basic but important stats. Melvin has shown a proclivity for pitchers who are durable. He did it with Suppan, Looper and Davis. These moves were done not simply to get a "high floor/low ceiling" guy, but to have someone who was likely to give you 30 starts a year. When you have had as many pitching injuries as Melvin has seen during his tenure, I can understand why he'd like to get some durable (if unspectacular) pitchers in the rotation. As unspectacular and sometimes frustrating as Bush has been, he has been a mainstay in our rotation, which cannot be said of some of our more promising arms, many of which may never see MLB. I would like to see more promising arms added, and as you have stated many times, they can be obtained, it's just not easy. We really have two shots this year (in addition to our own farm): we can trade Fielder, and we can pick up someone in arbitration who is pricing themselves out of a smaller market. I guess a third option is to use the vast amount of money coming off the books to sign the top FA pitcher on the maket (Lee?), but that's probably too risky unless he'd sign a 3-year deal.

A fair offer? Not for Prince. When he's almost for sure gonna get 5/125 or even 4/100 out of someone, 6/109 is nothing. Not before 2012 he isn't, unless he gets traded and extended. He won't get $20-25MM in arby next year. I don't expect him to accept the offer, but if you assume he gets something like $14MM next year in arby, it's bascially a 5 year $95MM extension, or $19MM/year. If he keeps up the torrid pace he's currently on, he'll have 25-30 HR this year, and limit his ability to ask for more than $20MM/year. Or, he could get injured next season, limiting his haul. But, again, he'll turn it down and the Brewers will trade him away.

I agree that it's a fair offer which Prince/Boras will almost certainly turn down. That will give Melvin the public support to trade Fielder and he'll be gone before Opening Day 2011. Get us young pitching Doug!! P.S. Prince would be on the other side of 30 at the end of that deal, so I hope that would be the maximum length the Brewers would offer for the off chance that Prince accepts it.

I realize its not easy to acquire young power arms but it does happen, unfortunately Melvin is too busy chasing the Doug Davis' of the world in free agency. To get that power arm Melvin would have to sacrifice a bat at peak value instead of waiting until its too late in the case of Hardy and Hart. Can Melvin really be excpected to have predicted the dramatic falls of Hardy and Hart? Would Hardy's trade value have really fallen that much if he had put up another solid year last year? I know GMs are supposed to have some ability to "predict the future," but Melvin has had a lot of players who seem to perform out of a normal standard deviation. If Davis were pitching like he has in the recent past, no one would complain that we signed him. If Looper hadn't given up a historic number of HR, same story. Riske was an iron man until he signed and suffered a three-year-long injury. Hoffman was unhittable last season and can't get an out this year. Hall and Hart fell from superstar to chump overnight. Only one of our top pitching prospects in the past ten years has panned out. I know the GM is ultimately responsible for the strength of the organization, but Melvin has definitely had his share of bad luck. Thankfully, he seems to have learned a lesson from the Suppan signing, and now is signing one-year-with-team-option contracts on pitchers like Looper and Davis until the young pitching makes it to the majors. He has also seemed to learn from the Hall mistake and Hart near-mistake and is only offering extensions to players like Braun and Yo. He's also drafting pitching early and often over the past few years, so the injuries have taught him to amass as many young pitchers as possible. I've been negative an inordinate amount of time lately, but I'm still positive on the future of the franchise. I hope they're not too stubborn to "sell" this year, which will make the team even stronger for the future.

Good point bklyn, but unfortunately I don't see it happening unless someone gets hurt. That is another reason for selling this year. If Bush and/or Davis were traded, Parra and possibly someone from the minors would get some much needed MLB starts.

Agreed on the extensions. I just hope the Brewers' brass makes a decision on Fielder soon, so we can get Rickie extended now and potentially work on others this offseason. We'd better not spend $40MM on FAs unless we're getting two CC Sabbathia-type pitchers on 2-4 year deals :-)

I agree there will be big changes, but if we had a Stud #1 to go with Yo and Wolf at the top of our rotation, we'd be in the playoffs this year, so I don't want to see the team blown up. -Macha should be gone, and he probably should have been gone prior to this season -I hope Melvin's back. He's turned the team around and I think has done pretty well given his budget and where the organization was when he got here. Plus, I don't have faith that we'd get someone better in a replacement. -Fielder will be gone as Boras won't negotiate in good faith. I hope he's traded when he gets the most return, which in my mind would be a month before trade deadline this season (similar to CC Sabathia deal but on the other side) if we're out of it, or at the latest this offseason. -If we're out of it, in addition to Fielder, a lot of our team could be dealt (Zaun, Hart, Edmonds, Gerut, Bush, Davis, Hoffman, Vargas, etc.) while still holding onto the core part of our team (Braun, Weeks, McGehee, Escobar, Gomez, Yo, Wolf, etc.). This would bolster our farm and free up salary, while allowing our "MLB-ready" minor leaguers to get some PT before next year. -I hope Parra doesn't get traded, as he is one of the few SPs we have who has #1/2 stuff. If he were on another team, we'd hear cries that he is exactly the type player we should target. -Finally, we should have over $40MM in free cash after this season. This will go a long ways in extending core players and upgrading holes in the roster (SP, 1B, RF) through trades or FA. I guess other than Prince, we will see much of our core around for a while. I just hope we're able to upgrade the players around our core enough to get us back to the playoffs. Finding a way to get a #1/2 pitcher to complement Yo would be a good start, but that may be easier said than done, even with a trading chip like Prince Fielder.

That's around what I was thinking Strawboss. We ought to be able to find a RF/1B who can hit 25-30 HR on the FA market pretty cheap, lessening the dropoff from losing Fielder. Then, we look for a team with a SP who is somewhat expensive (maybe a former FA with 1-2 years left, maybe someone in arbitration on a low budget team like Florida or Tampa) and see if we can get the pitcher for little in return as long as we eat the salary, like Javier Vazquez from Atlanta this past offseason, or Harden to the Cubs the year before. By the time that pitcher's off our books in a year or two, more of our minor league pitchers would be ready. I don't want to cripple ourselves by signing a long-term big money deal to a free agent, but we should have excess money for the next couple of years. Where we are now, we can add a few players and turn into a good team. Where we were six or seven years ago, we needed to rebuild the entire system. Ridding ourselves of a lot of bad contracts should allow us to add talent where needed, while filling in good players from the minors.

If anything, I think Doug has failed to read where the market's going, which is what I think was the main point of "Moneyball." Load up on what others are ignoring and sell them when others want them. It wasn't that long ago that people felt paying top dollar for players who only played 20% of the games was crazy. Now starting pitchers are gold. Pre-arby guys never had as much value as they have today, and in the past the thought that a minor leaguer had more value than an MVP-caliber major leaguer was unfathomable. We've got a lot of what are currently not the hot commodities (big, slugging hitters) and not a lot of the current hot commodities (fielding, OBP, young starting pitchers). Because we were so bad a few years ago, we had a run of top draft picks. Had he chosen to draft pitchers instead of hitters, we would probably have more value in the current market. Apparently (according to many here), we'd be hard pressed to get a stud AA pitcher for one of the best hitters in the game (Fielder), while Lincecum could bring back tons of talent. If that truly is where the market is today, then Melvin's biggest mistake was drafting what was hot at the time, and not predicting what was going to be hot when the time came to trade. We will never be able to get the "hot commodities" in free agency, so we have to draft them. That being the case, shouldn't Melvin's free agent targets be what is selling low right now? The last couple of years, players like Felipe Lopez and Adam Dunn (good bats, weak defense) have been looking for a team late into the offseason. Older pitchers have settled for one year deals, so I'm fine with the "band-aid approach" on them as long as we're drafting pitchers and developing them in our system. Again, we started with extremely little talent in our entire organization, so we are going to have some holes to patch. Hopefully, we'll have SP coming up from the system soon, and we'll still have talented position players around them. If anything, Melvin's mistake was jumping on Wolf too quickly and thereby overpaying, but if he hadn't jumped quickly, there's a good chance he would have went elsewhere. Even though Davis is pitching poorly, I can't fault Melvin for signing a pitcher with a good MLB track record to a one-year $8MM contract with a team option. If he pitches well, that contract will look like a steal. In addition to getting a decent return for Prince, what I hope Melvin capitalizes on this next offseason is picking up a salary dump pitcher. I don't know who will be out there, but the Brewers will have plenty of free cash, and it would be nice to trade virtually nothing to a team trying to rid themselves of a higher-priced SP who is under contract for a year or two. It irks me that the Cubs always end up getting these players, and it may be a way for the Brewers to get a good arm at a contract they won't be tied to for 4-5 years. People who think we should trade people like counsell and hart now, what do you think you will get? A bag of balls and few bats? You wouldn't get a ton of talent for players like Hart, Vargas, Counsell, Zaun, etc, but you could potentially get a young player with some upside, salary relief and open up spots for players who will be part of our future. Even if they only get salary relief and the chance to get players like Cain and Lucroy some MLB playing time, it'd probably be worth it. However, I'd guess that a playoff bound team would give something for these guys. Take Counsell... he plays all over the field and he's a decent pinch hitter. He gets on base at a decent clip and he has a lot of playoff experience. I'd think Bush, Davis and Hoffman could draw more attention and return in trade, assuming Davis and Hoffman turn it around. There will definitely be teams looking for pitching, and would be willing to give up some minor league talent for them. I'm not expecting Top 50 talent back, but they'd bring back something if they're playing well.

For the most part, I agree with your sentiment, but I think everything needs to be put into perspective. Not that long ago, we were a horrible organization, top to bottom. Probably the worst organization in the league when you look at talent at all levels. In a relatively short period, we have moved from worst organization in the league to above average at every level. As long as we stick to our guns, we can move to perennial playoff contender. The "first wave" was talented, but it was a group of 4 or 5 players, not 25 players. I think right now we need to pick our moments. When we are a playoff caliber team, we should trade some MiLB pieces to go for the playoffs, but for that to work successfully, we have to be willing to sell MLB pieces to restock when we are not a playoff team. I was upset last year when we didn't sell, as we could have brought in talent from the likes of Cameron that could have helped us now and in the future. I'd also like to have Gillespie rather than the few months we got of Lopez. It's too early this season to consider us "sellers," but I think with Prince we need to make our decision soon, and I'm moving further and further into the camp of sell off this year to field a pretty strong team next year and into the future. Building a system like the Twins requires a long-term strategy, which I think Terry Ryan pulled off very well. The Brewers are on track, as they have a pretty good MiLB system and a solid core of players to build around. If they keep locking up their stars when they're young (keeping them 7-8 years instead of 5-6), filling in the ranks with good talent from the minors and restocking the system not only with good drafts, but also by selling some MLB players when the team isn't going to make a legitimate shot at the playoffs, then we can be a good team for a long time. No one without a $150MM+ salary can expect playoffs every year, but we should at least be in contention. This year, we have Fielder, Bush, Davis, Edmonds, Zaun, Hoffman, Counsell, Coffey, Vargas and Hart who could be traded as they probably don't play into the future of the franchise (assuming Prince won't sign). Some of these players could bring back high level talent, and some could bring back low-level MiLB players with upside to stock the system. Next season, we should still have a solid core with around $50MM to spend on upgrades, and some good players (notably pitchers) coming up from the minors. I don't think we're "stuck in neutral." Rather, it takes a long time to go from terrible to very good, and we're probably right on the verge of getting there. Hopefully they don't do either of your "biggest fears," which could knock us into neutral, or even reverse.

MLB players can be tested for "Drugs of Abuse" only if there is just cause to do so. That's kind of funny... I'm sure the union wouldn't see getting caught repeatedly over the past few years to be "just cause," and I'm sure the teams wouldn't push it. Funketown, I heard (read it somewhere, no source) that the Brewers were making a statement to him (and others) by not protecting him. Kind of a "we're not going to let our players do this sort of thing."

I'm with SoCal. Edmonds was fine until his back flared up. We needed to bring up another OF with Gomez and Edmonds hurt. Stern had a great spring and I think he was close to making the team out of ST if Edmonds had "shown his age," and he's been productive at AAA when not injured. That said, he's not a top talent, so he is a player who we could afford to lose when the team is healthy. No need to waste an option and service time on a top prospect. Braun is every day in LF, Gerut/Edmonds will play CF and Stern/Hart in RF with Inglett possibly getting a couple starts. I hope Gomez isn't seriously hurt, but at the same time I hope Gerut is able to make the most of his opportunity. I'm still a believer that given playing time he could be a productive player. Now, if this goes on for an extended period and Edmonds' back is still giving him problems, then the story may change, and he may need to be let go. I hope that's not the case, as I think someone would trade for Edmonds if he's having a somewhat productive season.

Agreed, but there is a popular belief that the "window closes" when Fielder is gone, and we'll need several years of rebuilding to become playoff caliber. I believe that we will still be a good team if we can get something in return for Prince and use the tens of millions we'll have freed up after this season to fill in the few holes we'll have. With a few upgrades, particularly in the starting rotation, we could be better next year after Prince is traded than we are this year. Nothing against Prince, as you said his absence will be felt, but we could be better next year (nad for the foreseeable future) than this year if Melvin plays the cards right.

Nice. The guy gets away from our pitching coach and feels better.I'd guess that's why historically some players love Peterson and some hate him. He really believes in what he preaches, and seems to think he can & should "correct" everyone, even those that are pitching well. I think that's sort of like a hitting coach telling Jeff Bagwell not to hit from that goofy crouched position; sure it's not "textbook," but if he's doing well with something, let him stick with it. Try to correct the guys who have the stuff, but can't seem to be successful, like Parra.

And guess what, all of this offense is coming with Fielder sitting at a .768 OPS. He's a great player, but I think we'd be able to field a competitive team if he were traded/not offered a dibilitating $200MM contract.

I thought this would come after reading the article where Hawkins said he felt alright, but was throwing 90-91 instead of 95-96. Glad to have Stetter back up, so he can be Loogy with Parra getting multiple inning outings. Hopefully Hawkins can rest his arm and come back strong, and hopefully Suppan will be release when Hawkins is ready to come back.

The Brewer relievers haven't been bad... Hoffman and Hawkins have. Hawkins is now on the DL to rest his arm, and hopefully Hoffman will regain his control, which would seem likely, but not a sure thing. I didn't like the Brewers messing with Dillard last season by making him a starter in AAA after he was a fairly solid bullpen arm at the MLB level the previous year. I hope he's able to regain his form and once again become a decent bullpen option for the Brewers. A lot of pitchers find that they can't cut it as starters at higher levels, but make good relievers... that's where most relievers come from. Good to see Stetter back with the Crew. Hopefully when Hawkins has his velocity back he'll replace Suppan, and we'll have a good bullpen going forward.

To start with, our SP need to go 7-8 innings occasionally. That would go a long way to making the pen better. It's hard for 3-4 relievers/night to be perfect, so the likelihood of someone blowing up goes up substantially when the starter only goes 5 or 6 innings. Hoffman has been discussed in great detail, and I hope he's able to find his control. There was an article on milwaukeebrewers.com after the grand slam loss at LA where Hawkins didn't know what was going on. It sounds like he's lost about 6 MPH off his fastball, but his arm doesn't hurt. Whether it takes a DL trip for some rest what, I hope he finds that lost velocity. Having the 8th & 9th inning guys lose games is demoralizing. I did question the Hawkins signing this offseason, as it seems to have done little but force a useful pitcher in Stetter to AAA (at least as long as they feel they have to keep Suppan on the roster). The good thing is we finally have some relievers coming up through the system, so hopefully our bullpen will be much cheaper in the coming years. For now, I see two things we could do: DL Hawkins to rest his arm and see if he can find his velocity or dump Suppan and bring up someone who can be a more valuable part of the bullpen.

I'd guess it's because they have Fielder, Weeks and McGehee in the infield and Braun and Hart in the outfield. I don't think Zaun is known for his defense either.