monty57

But they'd go away too if they got Gonzales. Which is why I'm rooting hard for San Diego to stay in first place, or at least in the playoff hunt. If Boston's in third place behind Tampa and the Yankees, and Gonzales is off the market, they could make a push for Fielder. You also left off Tampa, who could really use Fielder and then flip him in the offseason and Baltimore and Texas, who have been brought up a number of times. I agree that he's not playing like a $25MM player so far this year. I think the contract talks (Boras saying he's asking for $200MM) has to be getting to him some, but he'll come around. However, this does validate why the Brewers can't commit that much money to one player. They can't win with Prince and some talent around him, so they certainly couldn't win with Prince and less talent around him. Prince is just one person. If he's asking more than the Brewers can afford without hampering the team, then he has to be traded. I think trading him soon will net them the best return. Melvin should do the opposite of what he did with CC... make the trade a month or so prior to trade deadline so the receiving team will have him longer and therefore will give up more for him.

I bet Prince makes more money than Halladay or Lee. If he's worth more money in a contract, why wouldn't he be worth more return in a trade?

I don't see the need to rush him. Although he's in AA now, he isn't exactly putting up all star caliber numbers. He needs at the very least a full season in AA, and might possibly need to repeat it. Otherwise I think he'd definitely need a year in Nashville. Personally I'd rather extend Weeks, trade Fielder and Hart and move Lawrie to either right field or first base (with Mat Gamel taking the other spot). If Gamel is put at first, then I could see an OF of Braun, Gomez, Cain next year, with guys like Gindl and Schafer getting closer and closer to ready. If Gamel is put in RF to take advantage of his strong arm, we would probably sign a one-year rental veteran who should be able to put up decent numbers at 1B while Lawrie continues in the minors. We should have plenty of money next year to sign a bat for RF/1B if necessary. No need to bring Lawrie up until he's ready. Our rental also walked without compensation but then again many of us argued that probably be the case from the get go. Man I hated/still despise that Lopez trade, we were going nowhere. Gillespie was one of the guys I always followed through the minors. I attended the Cubs/Arizona game on Friday, and was able to cheer him on. I'd rather have him than Hart right now, and he could help us for five more years. Apparently, going 80-82 last year instead of 78-84 was worth Gillespie and everything we could have netted in trade.

Yep, Braddock will be called up and Vargas will be DFA'd (as opposed to Suppan), and Macha will give Braddock about 1 IP / week to "get him adjusted to MLB life." When he can't throw strikes due to lack of use (which I refer to as "Getting Macha'd") fans will start to boo him every time he toes the rubber. Macha would really be in a zim zam if his two catchers were Kottaras and Lucroy, as there wouldn't be a veteran to play over them, so I don't know what would happen. I'd guess that since Kottaras caught a knuckleballer last year in Boston that he would be considered the better defender and therefore the obvious choice to start 80% of the games. Unused to limited playing time, Lucroy will naturally not perform well at the plate, leading to a demotion as Salome will be tearing up AAA, and Macha will do the same thing to Salome. Next offseason, baseball reporters across the country will report how overhyped Milwaukee's farm system is, as our two young catchers and most advanced pitching prospect all failed at the MLB level the same way former prospect Mat Gamel failed the year before. Getting demoralized... I guess I can say I started getting demoralized about this season when Macha was given another year as manager. I tried to go into this season with an open mind, but this poor start hasn't helped. I'm really starting to see a brighter future for the Brewers by doing some house cleaning this year and building from a good, young, strong core next year. To do this, we need to let our prospects get a lot of playing time this year, and I don't see Macha letting that happen. What will likely happen is the Brewers will go on a winning binge and get back up around .500. They'll hover there for much of the year, and rather than selling some players off and playing our youngsters, Melvin will make a couple of meaningless trades selling some decent young talent for a stopgap hole-filler. Counsell and Edmonds and the "stopgap hole-filler" will start everyday as Escobar and Gomez continue to have growing pains. Parra will remain in the bullpen, so one our biggest hopes for a rotation upgrade next year will be relegated to "8th inning guy," and Suppan will be called back to the rotation in case of any injury. Next year, we'll hear "we don't want to go in with a bunch of rookies with no MLB experience, so we're signing {Insert avg veteran player's name here} to play {insert position} while {insert top prospect's name here} gets more seasoning in the minors." Sorry for all the negativity. I'm usually pretty optimistic, but I have a bad feeling for the short and now even the longer term future for this team. If things don't turn around quickly, I hope Melvin starts calling potential trade partners for Fielder, and if we do go into a "rebuild" mode, I don't want Macha to be the guy manning the ship, as it will be filled with a lot of young players, and TheCrew's signature (Macha's clubhouse... where prospect's go to die) pretty much defines what I think about that.

Nate, I probably wasn't overly clear in the last part of the statement when I said "Some holes will be filled by players we receive in the trades, and some holes will be filled by giving minor leaguers a chance in the pros." What I meant was that players like Gamel, Braddock, Cain, Axford, Heether, etc won't get a chance to play for the Brewers this year unless we trade some players who are on the roster this year, but aren't likely to be part of the future. For example, if we trade Hart, we can bring up one of our young RFs (or move Gamel there) to give them some MLB experience and see what we have. That is also very true for some of the young starting pitchers. If we trade Bush/Davis we can see if some of the guys who are performing well in the minors can come up and get MLB hitters out. I wouldn't guess that we'd get a lot of MLB-ready talent back in any trade other than Fielder, and that's fine. If we could get any return for the likes of Counsell, Zaun or Vargas, I'd be thrilled. Rather, the move would be to open a spot to get Heether (if Counsell traded), Lucroy (Zaun) or Axford/Braddock (Vargas) some MLB reps. There's a chance that Bush and Davis could bring back some decent talent, as I'm sure some playoff hopeful team would like to get help in the rotation. Logan, I agree there's little chance we'd trade Weeks... I'm on the opposite side of that trade, as I'm for extending him. Of course, if someone came in with an unbelievable deal, Melvin would have to entertain the thought, but that probably won't happen.

That's kind of my mindset when I started this thread. To me, a start like we're having makes it much more likely that we sell this season. As Menace II Society mentioned, we didn't offer anyone arby, so we didn't even get draft picks for Cameron, Lopez or anyone, so to me it's kind of like getting kicked twice... once when we didn't trade anyone last year and again when we watched everyone go without getting any extra picks. My guess is that this will happen again with players like Hoffman and Hart if they aren't dealt this season. We will have a lot of talent returning next year, so it would be nice to fill in some of the holes (pitching and possibly 1B/RF) by trading away players who will not be part of our future. Some holes will be filled by players we receive in the trades, and some holes will be filled by giving minor leaguers a chance in the pros.

I know it's too early to think about this, but I read the thread about trading for Oswalt, and I thought I'd throw the other side out there. I'm still upset that we didn't trade away players like Cameron, Hoffman, Looper, Counsell, Kendall, etc last season as we could have received some value, especially from Cameron and Hoffman. If we are in a similar situation this season, we will have a lot of players we could deal to add to our "core" so that we could remain competitive for the future. Of course, everyone is potentially tradeable, but here are the likely players I see from our current MLB team: Fielder, Bush, Davis, Zaun, Edmonds, Hoffman, Hart. Basically, this is a list of the players who will be free agents next year plus Fielder and Hart. Next year's team should return a rotation led by Yo and Wolf, Davis has a team option and Narveson and Parra are under team control. Lucroy, Salome and Kottaras should fill in catcher, so we will return everyone in the field excep potentially 1B (if Fielder's traded) and the OF with the loss of Edmonds, Gerut and possibly Hart (if they don't want to pay $6-7MM for the RH part of a platoon). If we don't pick things up, I could very well see Melvin play the opposite side of what he did with the Sabathia trade, which would be to trade Fielder a month or so prior to the trade deadline to maximize his value. I think a team like Tampa could find this appealing, as he would greatly help them this year, and they'd be able to flip him this offseason. They have extra pitching, so hopefully we could find a match. I could also see Bush having a lot of value this year, as there will be plenty of teams looking to bolster their rotation. Davis could also fall into this category, and his team option could make him more valueable in a trade (of course, Melvin may want him back next year, taking him off the market). Hoffman could bring some talent back if he can find his change-up control and make people forget this horrid start. Zaun would be more of a dump if Lucroy forces his way into the majors, so I wouldn't expect much from trading him. I doubt anyone will give much for Hart, as he won't get a chance here to put up any numbers. If Edmonds stays healthy and productive, someone would give us something for him. Again, it's too early to think like this, but getting shut out 3 out of 4 games versus San Diego depressed me, and I think this is an important year for our future. We either sign Fielder and build around him, or trade him and build from there. Therefore, how we start this season could have a big effect on our future. Since we've gotton off to a cold start, I think it's more likely that we do a drastic, but quick "rebuild" this season. Fielder has been discussed a lot, but I also wanted to throw Bush and Davis in there. Trading them could bring back talent from a team needing pitching, and it could also open up room for some of our young pitchers to pitch in the MLB in "games that don't matter," so we'll know what we have going into next year. That would also hold true with Lucroy and maybe one or two of our young OFs. I guess I'll ask first what it would take for you to be a seller (i.e. would you sell if we were around .500, would we need to be God-awful bad or would you never be a seller). Also, what would be your priorities during this season? Who do you think are likeliest to be traded and what will we target?

I think Prince is very likely to be traded. I also think it's very likely that Hart will not be back next season, as he'd be assured a raise through arby. If we have RF & 1B open, I don't think it'd be a good idea to trade away one of our productive bats, especially for prospects... we still need to field an MLB team next year. If Gamel and McGehee are both ready to play next year, I'm sure we'll find a place for them to co-exist. I feel that McGehee is a good guy to go year-to-year with on his contract, as I believe he'll be in his early 30's before he hits free agency. No need to extend him, he'll stay relatively inexpensinve, and he does have some "Bill Hall risk" about him. Once guys like Lawrie and Green force our hand, we could trade McGehee, but I think it's too soon and we'll need him in 2011.

It was hard enough making it through the game. My hat's off to you for staying for the postgame interview.

Well, the one bright spot about this series is that if San Diego can stay in first place, they won't look to trade Gonzalez, taking a big bat off the market when the Brewers are shopping Prince. Other than that, I can't see much good about scoring two runs in a four-game series.

My goodness, someone doesn't like the statistical analysis of baseball. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif Let's set the record straight: Sabermetrics attempts to estimate the dollar value of performance by each player. Closers are asked to perform in higher leverage situations and sabermetrics adjusts for that. A run saved by a closer is worth more than a run saved by the the long relief guy. I think everyone agrees with that. The disagreement comes with estimating how much more that run saved is worth. It appears that the average GM places more value on 9th innning performance than current analytical analysis does. So, it's not "dumb to put money in the bullpen," it's just not advised to put MORE money in the bullpen than is justified. With Hoffman, though, the problem wasn't just with overestimating leverage, it was also (IMO) overestimating his true ability. If Melvin was expecting another sub 3.0 ERA from Hoffman, he was problably expecting too much. I won't pretend that Hoffman is an easy guy to project though, so there's a lot of room for disagreement. Well put. I actually like the statistical analysis of baseball. What gets me are posts such as "strikeouts don't matter," "ERA is a useless stat," "bunting is always a terrible idea," or "closers are useless." I guess my push is more into not having an absolute belief in anything, as nothing is always the case, and quotes like those above take analysis that leans one way and try to make a theory into an absolute truth that the theory isn't even claiming. The "SABR gods" statement I made comes from the absolute nature of these believers, and isn't aimed at (most of) the people putting the theories together. For example, the statisticians who did all the work on the negative effect of strikeouts, and how it's not as bad as perceived would probably agree that a strikeout is worse than a fly out when there's a runner on third with no outs. The "SABR gods" simply state "Strikeouts don't matter." On topic, while we've been great at drafting and grooming hitters, we have been horrific with pitchers. We've gone on and on about starters, but what gets forgotten is that we only have one decent bullpen arm (Villy) on the roster who was home grown. When you have to build your entire bullpen through free agency, it's going to get expensive. The fact that most of our losses this season are from bullpen blowups shows just how valueable this facet of the game is, and it's even more valueable when we don't have starters who can consistantly go more than 5-6 innings, so pen (in aggregate) has to pick up around 30-40% of the total innings pitched. Since we have been seemingly incapable of developing decent arms of our own, I guess I'd rather overspend to get decent pitchers rather than "go cheap" with the likes of Joe Winklesas. That said, I agree Hoffman was way overpaid. Pre-2009, San Diego was going to pay him $4MM and he was going to take it, so I'm sure we could have signed him cheaper than we did this season. Therefore, I'll agree that Melvin overpays for late inning guys. In fact, I'll agree with your whole post {except for the part about me not liking statisical analysis :-)}. What I won't agree with are posts along the lines of "spending money on closers/bullpen is a waste of money." Like all other positions, it just needs to be spent wisely. Hopefully, with Stetter, Dillard, Braddock, etc, we'll have a cheap bullpen soon. Of course, I don't know how Macha would handle a pen with 3 or 4 young arms in it, but I've already went on long enough.

It would certainly be nice to have a right handed bat on the bench. We already had numerous times this year where the opposing manager brings in a lefty to face the bottom of the order, knowing Macha only has lefties on the bench to pinch hit for the pitcher. I hope Edmonds' injury isn't serious, but my first thought was "at least this will give Gerut a few ABs."

But if the position is "overhyped," how has it cost us so many wins already this year? None of our starting pitchers have cost us as much as Hoffman has this year. I think it's very important to grow your own bullpen from the farm to keep it cheap (like many other positions on the field), but if you can't do that, as the Brewers haven't been able to do, then you have to pay for free agents. As I just mentioned in another thread, I wanted Hoffman traded last season, as he would've brought back a nice haul. Melvin obviously overpaid him this season, as I believe he was willing to sign for $4MM last year to stay in San Diego, so he likely would have signed for less, but that said, I think his single-handedly destroying the Brewers' season shows it is an important position.

Good post, John. That's why I, along with many others on this site, were screaming to trade Hoffman, Cameron and others at last year's deadline. Someone would've paid well for Hoffman with the season he was having. It is depressing at how few bullpen arms we've been able to bring up through the system, even for the middle reliever role. If you can't grow them yourself, you are going to have to put a lot of money into the bullpen by signing free agents. Braddock will be a great guy to have around for the next five years or so... imagine that, a good, young, cheap arm for the pen. Assuming he stays relatively healthy, we'll probably get a good haul for him in trade before he starts demanding an eight figure salary. After writing that, it's sad that before he even throws a MLB ptich, I'm already thinking about trading him in five years :-(

Funny, I'd think one person single-handedly costing the team 4 or 5 wins over the course of 20 games would seem to show that his position is pretty important. Sure, it's looking like a mistake to have paid Hoffman the money this year, but there are mistake contracts all over baseball for every position on the field. How many of those mistakes have already cost their team as many wins as our closer has cost us? I know the SABR gods have "proven" how dumb it is to put money into the bullpen, but doesn't our current situation show that it's pretty important to have a good pitcher in the 9th inning?

When is the last time folks in Milwaukee felt this good about the Bucks and this bad about the Brewers at the same time? Circa Glenn Robinson, Sam Cassell, Ray Allen contrasted with Wendy Selig-Prieb

But to keep using him they have to be able to take him out mid-inning if he is not effective. I feel the same way. It's obvious to everyone that Hoffman isn't himself right now. I know you can't burn your bullpen by always having someone warming up, but leaving Hoffman in to finish innings no matter what just seems silly. In yesterday's game, we could probably have gotten out of the inning in better shape than down 8-3 if Macha had brought someone else in tied 3-3 with runners on base. That said, Macha's in a tough position right now. I'm not normally one to defend Macha, but what is he supposed to do now? Hoffman is as close to "bigger than the game" as it comes. If Macha moves him to middle relief and he doesn't get 600 saves, Macha looks like a jerk, and if he keeps throwing him out there and he personally kills the Brewers' season, Macha looks like an idiot. Which choice is less bad? Normally, I'd say "whatever is best for the team," which right now looks like it would be moving Hoffman to middle relief, but that would almost assuredly put Macha's name in the history books in a very bad light. Tough call.

I had this same feeling, but if the team were demoralized, they wouldn't be scoring the way they are. I think fans tend to have more emotional highs and lows than the players. The sad thing for me is that this current stretch of horrible late relief is wasting some good baseball by most of the team. Players have ups & downs, and things tend to even out, but Hoffman (or whoever our closer ends up being if this keeps up) will not be perfect for the rest of the year, so he's probably already cost us a win or two off of our final tally for the season. That could be the difference in making the playoffs or not. Of course, for this year's Brewers team, early wins or losses could be even more important, as it may make the difference as to whether we're buyers or sellers at trade deadline. But I digress, as I don't want to turn this into another Fielder thread :-)

I "watched" the game on Gameday this afternoon, and all of his changeups seemed to be in the dirt. I DVR'd the game, but didn't have the stomach to watch it. Was he really that far off with his changeups? If it's simply a matter of changeup control, then it could be fixed. I hope he's willing to take on a lesser role for a while until he gets things right. As someone earlier said, we have a thin margin to make the playoffs, and we've already "turned a lot of wins into losses" this season.

I kind of look at the Howard deal in the same light as the Cubs' Soriano deal. Although Soriano has fallen off faster than might have been expected, it is hard to believe the Cubs really expected him to be a superstar when he's 38 or 39 years old. I agree with MJLiverock on the premise that for the Phillies, the deal makes more sense than it might for other teams. The Phillies have a World Series caliber team put together, and keeping Howard around a few more years may mean an extra ring or two. They might not get a World Series team together again for fifty years, so for them it's worth it to go for it now, even if it means paying a 37-year-old lump of lard $25MM for no production in six years. The Brewers are not in the same situation. They are much, much better than they were five or six years ago, but they probably aren't considered World Series caliber right now. Thankfully, they have a good farm, and their peak years could well be ahead of them if they play their cards right. I'd love to keep Fielder around and build around him, but signing him for 5-8 years will mean that a lot of other good players will have to be allowed to walk when they start to get expensive, and that's probably not the best way to maximize the Brewers' chance of winning a World Series. Prince/Boras are pricing them out of Milwaukee. As a Brewers fan, it's not fun to have to come to that realization, but I think it's important that we realize it. We've extended Braun cheaply, and Gallardo fairly cheaply. We can possibly extend Weeks to a contract that will not financially strap us. Guys like Escobar, Lawrie and the cream of our up-an-coming pitchers can be extended when the time comes. Plus, we should be able to get a good player or two in return for Prince in trade. That can allow us to be a good team for a long, long time. If we strap ourselves to one monster contract, it is unlikely we will be able to hold on to all of the ancilliary players, and we will have a very bad team if Prince should happen to get hurt and miss a good portion of a season or three. Plus, and we all hate to think this, but there is a chance that Prince fails. I'm all for extending young guys and assuming some risk in return for price certainty and a few more years of a start player, but there's a big difference in the risk we took on Braun and the risk we'd take on a deal for Prince at the price he's asking. Although it would appear that Prince seems likely to be very good for the next five years, that doesn't come with a guarantee. When you weigh the potential upside/downside of holding him versus the potential upside/downside of trading him, it seems to me that for the price he's asking, trading him bears a lot less risk and the potential upside lost pales in comparison to the extra risk involved.

I love the big guy but if he wants 5/$125, no thanks. I have to agree, and I think "he wants 5/$125" is too low. Boras/Prince seem to want 8/$200. Maybe Prince is worth this on the open market, as it's quite possible some team with lots of money will pay up. However, the Brewers cannot fall into that trap. Not only would a contract like this bring the risk of Fielder getting injured, but also would include the risk of our minor leaguers getting hurt or not panning out. Signing Prince (or anyone) to a contract this big would mean that our minor leaguers would need to pan out big time. If we continually add 1 or 2 players a year from our farm who can play at an average to above average MLB level, then we could feasibly have a contract like this on the books. If we have a couple of years without this "cheap player" infusion, we would be in trouble. As good a job as the Brewers have done developing players lately, I don't think it's realistic to believe that we'll have enough good, cheap complimentary players for the term of the contract. I have been a proponant of signing a four-year deal, as we have a lot of money coming off the books after this season and should be able to pay Prince for a few years. Any contract that gets 5+ years would lead to us losing too many other players in order to hold on to Prince. There is the possibility of trading him after a couple of years, but that's assuming the Brewers will be able to trade him. What if he's hurt or underperforming. He could still be putting up 30 HR a year, but that wouldn't be enough for someone to trade for him with a $25MM/year price tag. In other words, we could very well be stuck with a really high priced player while players like Escobar, Lawrie, Gallardo, etc have to be traded or allowed to walk. It probably wouldn't be doomsday, but it could lead to an extended period of mediocrity. The comments from Boras, and now this Howard deal have caused me to move from the "sign Prince" camp to the "stop banging our heads against the wall trying to deal with someone who doesn't want to deal" camp. We should trade Prince when we get best value for him, and look at extensions for our high talent young players who are interested in singing, such as Weeks, and in the not-too-distant future Escobar, Lucroy, Lawrie, etc.

In other words, it's just possible this inequity is working itself out I think you're correct in your scenario, which means the inequity is working itself out among small and mid-market teams, but the "Yankees, Red Sox, Angels and a handful of others" still get all the Hall of Fame players.

But if you look at the list of salaries that Logan listed, second basemen don't get "hue paydays." Rickie has not had a career that would allow for him to get a contract like Chase Utley. Cano's career OPS is somewhere around .050 higher than Weels'. Brian Roberts signed his contract around the time the Brewers signed Suppan... salaries have come down since then. He's really looking at $6-7MM/year max, given his career numbers and injury history, which is what I was assuming in my contract projections. Remember that Weeks is getting $2.75MM this season and will have another year of arby, which will be based off of this year's salary, before he hits free agency. The Brewers should not be expected to give him FA money for next season, since it's an arby year, not a FA year. It is feasible that Weeks will sign for some sort of discount (not huge, since he's close to FA) in order to get the security of knowing that if he gets hurt, he will get paid. He could seriously hamper his career earnings if what happened last year happens again to him next season and no one is willing to sign him for a decent price after missing an entire year. Or, he could get a career ending injury tomorrow, in which case the Brewers would cut ties with him and he wouldn't make a dollar next season. For the rest of this year and next, the Brewers are the only team that can sign him long-term, so they definitely have some leverage. Not as much as they will if they offer a contract to someone in their arby years, but some.

Lockouts and strikes are not going to make fans happier about the game. Uber-rich owners fighting against an uber-rich union and mulit-million dollar players is not going to ingratiate "Joe six pack." Rather, that person is going to say "I can spend my $100 on {fill in the blank with any of a number of recreational activities}." Eventually, most if not all of the fans return but it could take a long time and cost all of baseball millions of dollars. The only way a lockout will happen is if the owners start to lose money, and that's not the way things are trending. With baseball's popularity soaring, the owners also have a vested interest in making sure a strike doesn't happen, so talks of a salary cap probably won't get very far.

Joepepsi, don't you understand? It's Macha logic. Just like the fact that having played in the league for multiple years automatically makes you much better than someone younger :-)