monty57

Agreed, JB. Florida has a hard time getting fans to come out to see the two MLB franchises they already have. They would probably support 5 or 6 more major college football teams, but not another baseball team.

Agreed, JB. Next season, Suppan and Bush are gone. We will still control Yo, Parra, Wolf and Davis if the option is excercised. We should be able to fill in that one rotation spot and have a decent 2011 staff. If more than one can compete for a MLB spot, then we don't excercise Davis' option, or we let Parra go if he's still not cutting it. We are hopefully almost through with having to sign FA pitchers, and that will be a good thing. One name you forgot to mention is Mike Jones. I think he has a good chance to be on the major league roster at some point this season. On Rogers, I would guess that he'll be on more of a "normal" rotation this year, and hopefully his arm's up to the task.

Thanks for the link, Ennder. It's nice to see all the RHP/LHP among the top prospects. There's a lot to be hopeful for. A few years ago, Jeremy "Cheech" Jeffress (I like that) would still have to be ranked one of our top pitchers. Now he's the 29th prospect (15th ranked pitcher) in the system. It will be very nice to see some homegrown (and cheap) talent in our rotation, so we can break the cycle of signing the Randy Wolfs and Doug Davises of the world. On topic, this article helps show why I think Prince could be signed to an extension. We'll have average/above average talent at most every position on the field. Therefore, using the money to sign three $6-8MM players would basically replace a good players with a slightly better players, which seems unnecessary. We seem to be at a stage where we could sign someone like Prince to a higher dollar contract for a few years. There is obviously risk, but he seems to carry less risk than other players may, at least while he's in his 20's. He seems pretty durable, and it seems unlikely he'll pull a Bill Hall and forget how to hit once the contract's signed. Mark A. is very good with numbers. If he thinks we can afford to sign Prince to a contract extension, I believe him.

I'd love to see a Gerut/Hart platoon, or at least "soft platoon," but my guess is Hart will get everyday PT and Gerut will get 3-5 ABs/week unless someone gets hurt. As far as Edmonds is concerned, I agree he's not our best option unless he's willing to play for cheap and accept a bench role.

Weeks' injuries have cost the team. They had to trade de la Rosa to acquire Graffanino (and they lost Cirillo due to Graffy accepting arby). They traded Gillespie to acquire Lopez. However, even with that, Weeks has still been able to play some, as has Hart, Hardy, and most of the other position prospects we spent high draft picks on. It really has been a testament to these players that most if not all of our high position draft picks have made it to the majors and have not had career-threatening injuries. However, on the pitching side it has been almost the exact opposite. Sure, pitchers do get injured and flame out, but usually not every single pitcher you draft. The Brewers under Jack Z probably used too few draft picks on pitchers, but the ones they did use have all been significantly injured. That isn't normal. If even one more of their pitchers had made it through the ranks, our rotation would be significantly better. However, that didn't happen, which causes management to have to react. It's not possible that he could've had excess first round pitchers and still have Fielder, Braun, Weeks, Hardy, etc. Does it suck that our rotation is hampered because our top draft picks got hurt? Yes, probably equal to the benefit we've received from all our top position players making it to the majors. You listed a number of injuries. If any of those had worked out things would be much different today, but your response is that Melvin should have just "addressed the issue" in some miracle way. Apparently Melvin isn't supposed to acquire depth, but he is supposed to have a ready-made answer when injury occurs. From what I read, you'd like to see a young, can't miss stud pitcher traded for using only expendable players and prospects (even if the trade doesn't exist), and if Melvin doesn't make that trade, he's an idiot. Forget all that he's done for this franchise, and the fact that we can all be proud to be Brewers fans for the first time in a generation, and forget that we actually have a good major league team, good AAA team, Great AA team, good high-A and A team. Melvin sucks and should be fired because he hasn't made a trade that never existed. I'm sorry for the rant. I have enjoyed reading your posts in the past, but recently you've been traveling into speculation and demonizing Melvin over things that may or may not have happened, while glossing over some good (wins, playoffs) and bad (injuries) things which actually have happened.

I think the best way I can put it is this... I think DM is interested in doing whatever it takes to put the best MLB team together for a single season where as I'm concerned with building the most solid organization possible. Do you honestly believe that the franchise as a whole, from Rookie ball through the majors, is not better today than it was before Melvin arrived? I think the pre-Melvin years were fraught with worrying about the majors, which is why we failed to sign Garciaparra, Giambi, etc. I've read a lot of your posts, and have agreed with many of the things you have said, but you seem to have made up your mind that Melvin is not a good GM, and now have yourself convinced that he has done (and continues to do) all wrong. From all the media coverage on the Hardy situation last year, I would have to believe that Melvin at least saw what the market was for him, and obviously didn't pull the trigger. I also have to believe that Melvin has tested the market on many of his other players, and has not found deals to his liking that would produce a young, stud pitcher, which happens to be the most valuable commodity in baseball at the moment. I think the Brewers / Melvin are thinking both for the long-term and for the short-term, as they must. We "sacrificed wins" a few years ago, when we tore down the major league team and built for the future with our drafts of Fielder, Weeks, etc. Now we have a MLB team that has a realistic shot of making the playoffs, with a farm system that will be capable of supplementing the major league team for the foreseeable future. In other words, we have become a good franchise (not just a good team). I don't think the two are comparable at all since Prince is an every day player. Prince would probably be using Texiera as a basis for his contract extension. If the Brewers don't want to match or beat that, I think Boras will advise him to wait it out since some team might. Then wouldn't Felix have used Sabathia's deal as a basis for his extension? Just heard Brian Anderson on "The D-List" this afternoon. Someone called and asked him about Prince. He insinuated that Melvin may already be working on an extension with Boras, but that Melvin and the Brewers are being tight lipped and absolutely will not get into "negotiating through the media" with Boras. He also said that Mark Attanasio is adamant about not trading Fielder and wants to keep him here. He said that Attanasio loves Prince. That's good to hear. Maybe nothing becomes of it, but it would be a real shame if the Brewers didn't at least make a reasonable attempt at retaining someone who could well be one of the best players to ever don a Brewers uniform.

As far as what Melvin could have done differently? Is that a question that seriously still needs to be asked? The answer depends how far back you want to go.... if were going back 2 weeks it's reasonable to assume this was the best he could do. If we're going back 6 years the possibilities are limitless. The dominoes absolutely did not have to fall this way, it wasn't set in stone by a higher power, this outcome was predictable only because of how Melvin has operated in the past. TheCrew07, would you be happier if Rogers and Jones (among others) would have lived up to their potential, but Braun and Fielder got hurt and never made it to the Majors. Then, we'd have a great pitching staff, but no offense, and likely would have been in roughly the same shape. Instead of "wasting" prospects to in a CC Sabathia trade, we probably would have "wasted" them in a Texiara deal that might have gotten us to the playoffs for a one-and-done deal. While it may be fun to speculate, it is impossible to go back and say what could have been done that would have made a difference. There are far too many variables in place, and one move that is or isn't made would have countless future possibilities. Maybe we pulled a Prince Fielder for young pitcher trade four years ago, as many here were calling for. Where would we be now? No one knows. Maybe we'd be better, but likely we'd be worse. What if we'd have traded Hardy before last season for a better player? Maybe he'd have had a great season for the team he was traded to instead of a miserable season on Milwaukee. No way to tell. As for the reality of the present, we have a rotation with one possible ace (Gallardo), one high ceiling guy we hope puts it all together (Parra), two solid lefties without "blow you away stuff" (Wolf, Davis) and two unspectacular righties either of which will probably be among the best fifth starters in baseball (Bush, Suppan). We also have finally built a modicum of depth at the AAA level, which has been seriously lacking for some time, and we have some really, really good pitchers in the minors, finally getting to the level where they could help as soon as this year, with much more help coming in 2011 and beyond. Will we have a top 5 rotation? Probably not. But we should have a middle-of-the-road rotation, which when added to a better than average lineup, and what should be a pretty decent defense, could at least keep us in the playoff hunt. I don't know what you could ask of Melvin and his staff. Even $100MM+ payroll teams cannot put together a team year in and year out that is a "Playoffs aren't good enough, it's World Series or bust" caliber team. I'm with you, I want the rotation to be better. However, when you think back to the "could have beens," try to remember the events that have happened to the pitchers like Rogers, Jones and even Jeffress, who should be manning the top spots in our rotation along with Gallardo. And also remember that we had a pathetic team from the low minors to the majors not too long ago, and now we have a very respectable franchise that should remain competitive for at least as long as Mark A is rational enough to keep Doug Melvin as his GM, and doesn't do something rash simply because we missed the playoffs in 2009.

Yes, I'd much rather have the excitement of buying tickets for Ben Sheets only to realize he has a hangnail and isn't pitching. Maybe we could've signed Sheets and Bedard, so we'd be able to feel that excitement out of two of our rotation spots. I also like the excitement of watching Dave Bush pitch wonderfully for a few innings, knowing that he's going to blow up and post a 3-walk, 5-run inning. Looper was pretty exciting, as the Brewers scored 7+ runds a game for him, but he still managed to keep the game close. Parra's pretty exciting, as we don't know if we'll get the confident Parra who can mow down hitters with ease or the Parra who looks lost and can't throw anything other than a meatball over the middle of the plate. Other exciting pitchers we've seen like Jorge de la Rosa, Derrick Turnbow and Jose Capellan really made my heart beat fast... all for the wrong reasons. I like pitchers who do their job and get through games while giving their team a reasonable chance of winning. Those that do this with blazing fastballs and high K rates are really expensive as FAs and very rarely traded by their teams. Generally, for a team like the Brewers to have these players on their team, they need to bring them up through their system, and it really appears that is what they are doing. Maybe a little late in coming, but coming none the less. Until then, I am glad that Melvin is signing players that should be able to give the Brewers a reasonable chance to win most of the times they toe the mound, whether they "excite" a particular fan or not.

Thanks for that, Russ. Remembering that signing a good pitcher replaces the worst pitcher in the rotation, I now think that our rotation is at least good enough to keep us in the playoff hunt. The last line of the quote is important, as we now have added depth for the injuries that are bound to happen. The loser of the Parra/Bush/Suppan tryout for the 4 & 5 spots will still get plenty of starts this season filling in for injuries as our 6th starter. Then, Narveson and a hopefully recovered Capuano can fight for the 7th and 8th starter spots, Burns is still there if needed for a spot start, it will be interesting to see where Jones ends up, and it's likely we'll sign Mulder who hopefully could be able to step in late in the season. Plus, all of our young starters will be a year closer to being Major League ready. It's much more reasonable to believe that someone could make the jump this year from AA to the Majors than it was last year from A to the Majors. Maybe Capuano and Mulder won't be able to contribute to the team this year, but I still think we should have more pitching depth than we have since the last time Davis pitched as a Brewer. Plus, the option on the contract means that we can have Davis in 2011 as well, when we will lose Suppan and Bush, allowing us to only need to bring up one of our youngsters rather than having two rookies in the Opening Day rotation, but we won't be on the hook for him if he gets injured or seriously regresses. All in all, I'm very happy with this signing.

Just one more thing I didn't like about Macha last year. As soon as Hart got hurt, we should've played Gerut everyday to see what we had in him. Instead, we played Cat, who everyone knew had no future with the team. Personally, I'm glad Gerut's signed. He's got a lot of talent and given PT I think he's got at least as much chance of regaining his .800+ OPS form as Hart.

I fully agree that I don't want to see Parra in the bullpen. The reason that I think Parra should go to AAA with Suppan in the rotation if we get another, better starter, is that if Suppan is in the pen, he will not be ready to start if someone gets injured this season. Therefore, we would be putting our hopes on Narveson, Burns, Capuano or Mulder, and they all have big question marks surrounding them. In other words, we do not have enough Major League ready starters in our organization to have any of them moved to the bullpen... even Suppan. Also, I don't care what stats are used for Parra. The fact is that he has great "stuff," but lost his confidence this year to the extent that he could (or would) not throw strikes. It makes sense that BABIP would go up if the only thing you throw for a strike is a meatball down the middle of the plate. I have no idea what his mindset will be coming in to this year, but I think he definitely has something more to prove at AAA. He needs to prove to himself and Brewers' management that he will be able to get into and out of tough situations without cracking.

Since our biggest hole coming into the season is SP depth, I think it would be a mistake to put one of our few Major League-ready starters into the bullpen. I believe Parra has an option left (I may be wrong), so I would bet that if we add another SP that is better than Bush, Parra, Suppan, then we will see Parra go to AAA so that the team can make sure Parra's head's on straight, and he can remain stretched out. Suppan would remain in the rotation, not simply because of what he's being paid, but because we need starting pitching depth. Having him be the "long man" in the pen getting sporadic work and then expecting him to step in when someone is injured is a recipe for disaster. The difference between Bush, Parra and Suppan to start the season would likely be negligible. Someone will get hurt, and I'd rather have a fully stretched out Parra step in and pitch than a not-stretched-out Suppan. Of course, if we can't afford a Davis/Garland type pitcher, then we'll probably go with a strategy similar to last year's Chase Wright / NIck Green (was that the guy from the Angels' name?) pick ups and hope for better results.

I agree that that the collective talent of Cameron, Hoffman, Lopez, Counsell, & Kendall is worth something solid in return. That said, Melvin would've had to feel what the Brewers would've been getting was worth what they were giving up. Clearly that wasn't the case or deals probably would've happened. Melvin was adding at the deadline last year. Although I'm sure he answered the phone when it rang, I don't think he was looking at dumping players not named Bill Hall. (p.s. to the above: Remember many here thought Hardy or Hardy-plus was worth Buchholz or a solid young starter, but all the Brewers could get for him was Carlos Gomez.) I agree we often seriously over- or under-value our own players. I heard many times that Cameron was worth $18MM+ per year and early in his career there was a big debate here on whether we should trade Prince Fielder for Zack Duke. I disagree, in that trading 2 of those guys (since you say "a mix of...") for an AAA starter who might be a Dave Bush type would've met a huge outcry of disgust on this board, that the Brewers should've gotten a whole lot more in return for, say, a still-elite closer & either an upper-half CF or a .300-hitting versatile everyday infielder or .320 hitting starting 2B. You want more than ST roster fodder for your starters. As TLB said, I seriously hope Melvin isn't managing based on what the fans (casual or Brewerfan.net) think. I'd guess casual fans would be easier to placate with a trade than many on this board. Personally, I'd rather have 6 years of a Dave Bush caliber pitcher than 2 months of Cameron and Lopez, since it really appeared to me we weren't going anywhere anyways. In fact, we could really use another Major League-ready pitcher right now, so that when the real Dave Bush (or someone else) gets injured or falters, we'd have someone to call up. Plus, we'd have someone to replace Dave Bush and Suppan next year instead of going to free agency and paying $7-10MM/year to a different Dave Bush-caliber pitcher. The fact that Melvin probably knew that he wasn't going to offer anyone arbitration, so we didn't even get draft picks, would have driven me harder to make a trade. Instead of a "Dave Bush caliber" pitcher, we have nothing. We also had to pay the players for the remainder of the season, plus we added Weathers' salary. Had we sold, say Cameron and Lopez and not brought in Weathers, we would have saved $8-10MM. Some of that could have helped us get better for the future. By no means am I proposing we give up on seasons often, but last year screamed "sell" to me (and many others). It wasn't only the games back, but the fact that we were injured and playing horrible baseball at that point in time. Instead we mildly bought, eating a lot of Cincy's salary liability in Dave Weathers, when he wasn't going to add much more than we would've gotten by bringing up someone from AAA. The only possible reason I thought that might be a remotely good pick-up was if he was going to be part of this year's team, but instead we bought out of the contract, so the pick up hurt this year's salary as well. We were able to re-sign Hoffman and Counsell (we probably would have been able to re-sign Counsell even if we traded him). Other than that, we have nothing for the rest of the players that became free agents... not even draft picks. As Kenny Rogers said, you've got to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em. We should've folded 'em last year and we'd be in a better position now. Easy to say with hindsight being 20/20, but I (along with others) were screaming it last year.

I'm not suggesting they could've received a #1 starter, but a mix of Cameron, Hoffman, Lopez, Counsell and even Kendall (if a team really valued a veteran presense at catcher) should have at least been worth a AAA pitcher who could be a #4/5 starter for league minimum for a few years. We'll never know, so I guess it's not really worth talking much about, but I know that last year I really wanted them to trade some of those players. Now knowing that we ended up 80-82 and got nothing for Cameron or Lopez, and probably could've signed Counsell back even if we had traded him, I still wish we would have something in return for it, even if it's only an average starter or a reliever.

TLB, remember that Cameron and Hoffman were in that group as well. I'd bet at least some of the playoff hopefuls for last season could have found room for the best closer in the history of the game :-)

The urgency with Gallardo would be that the long term contract (a la Braun) is much cheaper if done while the player's still in pre-arby. Once you get to arby, then you're basically paying market price. However, the problem is whether you want to take a risk on signing a pitcher to a 6 year guaranteed deal, as you wouldn't do the deal unless you were able to buy out a couple of years of free agency. I'd guess we'll hear something about Prince soon (either he signs a long-term deal, or we hear he was offered one and didn't accept). I doubt they'll sign Gallardo to a "Braun-type" deal, fearing the risk. From a risk perspective, I understand it, but as a fan, I'd like to see him locked up too. Get Braun, Fielder and Gallardo as a core, and see if Escobar, Gamel, Lawrie, Lucroy, etc deserve "Braun-type" deals when they've got some PT under their belts. Let Weeks, Hart, Bush, etc play until they're free agents and their replacements are ready. Basically, draft well, lock up core players, trade or let others walk when they become expensive and we have ready replacements. Repeat as necessary.

I agree the Gallardo situation will need to be addressed soon as well. It's generally a more risky venture to sign a pitcher long-term, but we need pitching so bad, I'd like to see an offer made to Gallardo before he hits his arby years.

I think it's a good idea to find "cornerstone" players and lock them up. Prince is a special kind of player you just don't have a chance to have on your team very often, so I think we should make every effort to sign him. He probably fits into that Mo Vaughn/David Ortiz mold that could fall off a cliff after age 30, so I'd shoot for a 4-5 year deal. As you stated, we have players coming up that should make us average/above average at most other positions, so putting a core of Braun/Fielder in the middle of a lineup should allow us to have a good offense for years to come. I'd then try to sign our top young talent to Braun-type deals. This trend came about after Fielder was already in arby, so we missed out on it for him, but players that look like stars (possibly Lawrie, Lucory, Gamel, etc) could be extended out early on, making them relatively cheap and maintining price stability. Also, players like Lawrie wouldn't start to become expensive until around the time Fielder would be leaving. As we've found in the recent past, starting pitching gets really expensive if you have to buy it on the market. It seems we've stockpiled enough high-cieling arms in the minors that even with injuries and flame-outs, some of them have to become major league pitchers, enabling us to fill out our rotation relatively cheaply for the foreseeable future, probably beginning as soon as 2011. If we didn't have talent coming up, I'd be all for trading Fielder next off-season (or mid season this year). Since we should be able to fill the roster with good, young talent for the duration of the extension, I'm all for locking Fielder up for 4-5 more years, if at all possible.

This thread has a copule of tracks to it. On topic, I think the "flexibility" the Brewers are discussing includes the possibility of making a Davis/Garland type pick-up before Spring Training. As Ennder mentioned, Suppan would likely not be the odd man out if we sign someone. Parra or Bush would probably start in AAA or the 'pen, with Suppan as the fifth starter. I agree that you need some flexibility. If someone other than a pitcher goes down, we may need to sign a position player (a la Lopez last season). I hope they can sign a Davis/Garland and still have money to pick up a position player if needed mid-season. As far as last season, I'm with BrewerSuperCollector. I really wanted the Brewers to trade the free-agents-to-be for some starting pitching that could help them in the future. I think they could have sold it to the masses if they were able to get young starting pitching. People rip the "casual fans," but they're smart enough to understand that trading for young starting pitching is a good thing, and they are able to look beyond the current year. At the time, in addition to Weeks being injured, Hart had just gone down (iirc), the starting pitching was banged up and the relievers were blowing games due to fatigue. I mentioned in a thread at the time that it could have been sold as "we had a competitive team to start the season, and we tried competing by signing Lopez. Now we feel we are able to pick up players that will bolster our rotation for years to come by trading plyaers who are not going to be here next year."

I'd say the "Moneyball" method of (general) managing is to look at the market and see what is undervalued and what is overvalued. Use your overvalued pieces to accumulate more undervalued pieces. At the time it was written, OBP was being overlooked, so Beane capitalized by stocking up on high-OBP players. Right now, if I had to guess, I'd say young starting pitchers are the most overvalued players in baseball, while hitters, particularly hitters that are more SLG than OBP are undervalued. Defense is also highly valued right now, as Abreau and Dunn found out last year. I'd say Macha's failure to play the team's top prospect (Gamel) last year would be very un-Beane-like. Plus Macha originally said that teams shouldn't run if they're below 70% steal rate, but I think Beane would use a larger sample size than two or three games before making that determination. I could go on, but I promised myself I'd be nicer to Macha in my posts.

I agree that it's a tough hill for him to climb, and he's probably a long shot, but don't most TJ recipients take a full year to get their velocity back? And don't most regain all, if not more than all of their previous velocity? Of course, this may all be very skewed by this being his second procedure.

That's the problem. He's never had plate discipline, and people think he's good. When he was told / ordered to take more pitches, his walk rate went up, but he lost all his power. I hope he can put it together from here, but how often does someone with no discipline all of a sudden develop discipline this late in his career?

Another benefit would be that we'd have Damon for two years, giving us another year's bridge for our good young OFs in the minors. We have Hart for 2 more years. That may well not be a benefit. His walk rate was greatly improved last season, and he wound up being hampered by an incredibly fluky injury (emergency appendectomy). I think it's way too easy & early to just say, 'Pitchers have figured him out', when Corey actually showed signs of figuring opposing pitchers out in 2009 with his increased BB rate. He was told prior to the season to take more pitches in an attempt to stop him from swinging at every down & away slider. That led to a higher walk rate. However, it caused him to be tentative and therefore late on fastballs. This all but eliminated his power. He's said it and coaches have said it. Now, it looks like Macha is going to let him be more of a free swinger. I hope he'll be able to maintain some degree of plate discipline. If he can put it all together, he could be a good player again. He's never going to have enough plate discipline to be a good player if he doesn't have power, and if his power only arrives when he swings at everything, he'll be out of the league before he's 30... think September 2008, where Corey looked more lost than any player I've ever seen in the majors. I'm pretty sure Hart will be our RF for the next two years, so I really hope he's able to put it all together. However, I wouldn't go into the season expecting him to be an .800 OPS player.

Terrible relative to what? Hart is probably below average on reads, with good speed that helps him make up for it. Somehow, his arm seems to have regressed over the past couple seasons. All told, I'd say he's an average right fielder, and that's mostly due to speed. On offense, he's an enigma, but he's really starting to look like the pitchers figured him out and he's having a hard time getting in any type of rhythm. Endaround, I'm with you that the Brewers remaining money probably would be better spent elsewhere, but I think Damon's a significantly better player than Hart. If I had to guess, Hart will be allowed a little more freedom this year, to try to get back to his glory days. If he can get his power back with just a little bit of plate discipline, he'll be okay. As it stands, he's either a free-swinger who the pitchers have figured out, or someone who is behind every fastball, as he's trying to be more patient. I have to believe part of the reason the Brewers are trying to trade him is due to worry that he won't figure it out, and he won't even be worth the $4-5MM he'll make this year. As I said in another post, I hope they give Hart and Gerut starts in RF this year. Both have played well in the past, but neither has done enough recently to be handed a starting job.

For the money, Hart could be the better bet, but Damon's a better player. Hart's career OPS is .796, and he hasn't hit for .795 (Damon's road number) since his big year in 2007, when he hit .892 (and which skewed his lifetime number, getting it to .796). His past two seasons have been .759 and .753, which put him in the lower third of all MLB right fielders. He'll likely get $4-5MM this year. I hope Hart can bounce back, but I'd have to go into this season assuming around a .750-.760 OPS from Hart, hoping he proves me wrong. Then, the question is: Would an .800 or so OPS out of Damon be worth an additional $5MM or so over a .750 OPS from Hart. Another benefit would be that we'd have Damon for two years, giving us another year's bridge for our good young OFs in the minors. Given our current situation, I think any money we have left should go towards another starting pitcher. If we had more money to burn, and Damon would come to Milwaukee, I'd definitely offer him a contract and try to move Hart for salary relief.