monty57

What we need to address is a pitcher for this season. The one idea that I hate, but can't get out of my head is dealing Corey Hart seeing as how ready Matt LaPorta and Mat Gamel appear to be. Hell, you could bring them up and platoon them right now, and I have to believe that you're not going to see much of a drop off offensively from those two based on how they're killing it in AA. I'd say Hardy would be the odd man out right now, as his replacements are also ready, and he's not as good as Hart. If another pitcher goes down for any length of time, we really don't have another starting pitching option, so we may have to do something drastic. As far as signing Sheets long term, I don't think it's likely to happen (although I'd love to see it). I'm with the crowd that doesn't see how Gallardo going down changes the stance on Sheets, unless somehow Gallardo would come back as a lesser pitcher, which shouldn't happen with this injury.

Most Cub fans I know would much rather drive north to Miller than south to whatever the Sox are calling their stadium this year. I'd guess there'd be several fatalities if they played 81 games at US Cellular. If the Brewers were able to keep parking revenue and just enough of the tickets / concessions to pay expenses, they'd bring in a boatload of money. They'd likely be able to add at least $10MM to payroll, not to mention the added revenue to the city. As for madjeff's point above, it would be easier to fit the Brewers/Cubs into one stadium than the Cubs/Sox, as they play 20 or so games against each other during the course of the year.

Mark A. accumulated his fairly vast net worth through managing highly complex financial transactions. I think he can figure out how to manage a MLB budget. I stopped worrying too much about the $ values being thrown around after Mark took over.

Good point twobrewers, but I think the biggest chance this has of coming back to bite us on the rump is if Braun or Hart miss significant PT. Gross is probably a better hitter than Gwynn, and he is not a bad corner OF (he's just not a good CF). Now, if Braun or Hart gets hurt, we will platoon Gwynn with Kapler and/or Dillon. In my opinion, Gwynn's defensive superiority makes him a better backup option for CF, but not as a corner OF. A Kapler/Gwynn platoon for 2 or 3 months could very well be enough to keep us out of the playoffs. That said, I think this trade has a good chance of paying off, as I've mentioned earlier in this thread. However, it is not without some risk. On that note, how is Brad Nelson playing? He finally seems to be hitting again. Could he possibly be brought up to fill a corner OF platoon role, or is he not a good enough OF to cut it?

What's more important, K rate or K/BB ratio? Butler's K rate may be lower than some would like, but he has over a 2:1 K:BB ratio, and he is a sinkerball pitcher with an outstanding 2.59 GO/AO ratio. Sounds like he may be a guy with pretty good command and a dominant sinker. Put a decent defense behind this guy and he could be good. Of course, it is A ball, and he is 23.

For a sinkerballer comp, I checked Webb and he was over 9 per 9 in A ball. Is that really fair? I mean, Webb is potentially the best pitcher in baseball. If Butler turns into a 4/5 starter or a good BP arm, I think this will turn out to be a good trade. Someone sees something in him to pick him with a high 2nd round pick, and to rank him #16 in Tampa's system. I am sad to see Gabe go. It was nice to see someone on the Brewers take walks, but as has been said, Gabe seems to play best when given extended PT, and that's not likely to happen with the Brewers. I hope he sees a lot of action in Tampa and makes the most of it.

There is no way Parra will throw for 200 innings this year even if he's in the rotation the whole year (which he won't be). He has been and will be on strict pitch counts. I wouldn't worry about that at all. The reason that the Brewers' bullpen fell apart last year was overuse, and that trend is continuing this year. If the starters can't go more than 5-6 innings a night, it's going to be a long season. The BP has been great so far, but they will wear down with this kind of overuse. If the Brewers had 2 or 3 guys that consistently pitched into the 7th inning, I would be fine with having a guy in the rotation on a strict pitch count. Maybe Sheets will be healthy and Yo will pitch late into games consistently. If not, then I'd rather see Parra and his strict pitch counts sent to AAA then see the BP go through what it went through last year.

Well, I guess technically Yo Gallardo is a minor league starter until tomorrow... I hear he's pretty good. Seriously, I think this lack of AAA depth is a major reason the odd man out among Bush, Villy and Parra needs to stay stretched out. There's a distinct possibility that Villy or Parra gets sent to AAA just so he can be ready if/when a starter is needed. I'd hate to rely on Weaver unless he's really tearing up AAA.

Dusty doesn't seem to like to take any blame, which is one thing I think managers need to do to take the pressure off the players. My most notable example was when the Cubs were tanking (I believe it was '04), he put all of the blame on Sosa, turning all of Chicago against Sosa, but saving Dusty's job for a year. The big complaints I remember were "He refuses to bat anywhere but #3 in the order even though at this point he should bat 5th," and "He plays his radio too loud in the clubhouse, distracting the rest of the team." Dusty's last two seasons with the Cubs kind of reminded me of Ray Rhodes with the Packers or Jerry Royster with the Brewers. The players, not the manager, were controlling the team. Rhodes had too much class to whine to the media when he couldn't control his team. Dusty apparently did not. My guess is that Dusty likes veterans because he feels they "know how to handle themselves." He doesn't seem to be one who can instill discipline when necessary. Now that I think of it, wasn't he the manager of the Giants during the whole Kent/Bonds fiasco? I'd guess he'll do okay with the Reds as long as Griffey's there, as he's a good guy an enough of a legend that no one will get out of hand, kind of like the Michael Jordan effect on Dennis Rodman. it also doesn't seem that the Reds have any malcontents on their team, although I don't know enough about them to make that call.

rluz, I think you've hit everything pretty well on the head thus far. There has been a large increase in revenue, both in year-on-year comps and in new revenue streams such as the internet. From your findings, it appears that even with the increase in salaries, the owners are getting a larger share of the pot, so it's likely their gross margins and Return on Investment are higher. The question you posed seems to be the right question for the future. Salaries will continue to rise as long as revenues continue to rise, but how long can revenues continue to rise? Only so many seats and parking spots can be sold. Can prices for these seats and parking spots continue to rise? Is there high growth expectation in concessions and merchandise sales? I don't know, but I think the biggest increase in revenues for the next few years will be the internet. MLB gets 100% of revenue from the internet, and I believe it is shared equally among all of the teams. Since people such as Jobs and Gates have said that in the future all of your television viewing will stem from the internet, I could see a future where all of your baseball viewing will come from MLBtv.com, and it will stream from your computer to your TV. If this truly happens, revenues will greatly increase, and it will be spread evenly to all teams, eliminating much of the advantage big market teams now share. As far as inflation, the sharpest increase I can remember for baseball salaries was in the 90's, during a period of near 2% CPI, when many economists were saying that we'd permanently cured high inflation. Also, recessions aren't necessarily deflationary (see the 1970's and out current economic situation). However, recessions can lower the salaries of players, as fans who lost their jobs probably won't fill the seats or buy jerseys, lowering team revenue and therefore player salaries. Therefore, I can't believe much of a correlation exists between salary and CPI, but rather (as you pointed out), the correlation is between player salaries and team (or more accurately MLB) revenues. I think it's important to note that it seems to be the smaller-market teams that are doing this (Colorado and Tampa anyways, Arizona isn't really a low-payroll team but they're not New York, Boston, Chicago either). Really, it's a kind of insurance against "baseball inflation," which bigger market teams don't have to worry as much about. As far as "why do it now?" I think the answer is that the earlier you do it, the less the arby years cost. Teams and players are trading who has the dollars for who has the risk. It's sort of like buying life insurance when you're 20. The rate is unbelieveably low compared to buying it when you're 50. Endaround's right, the contracts still need to be priced right, as the team is assuming a lot of risk. I'd guess that an average of less than $3MM/year for a top talent should be pretty risk free, as it will be insured if Longoria gets injured. The real risk is in his bombing as a player, and I'd guess that in 6-7 years even pre-arby players will be making over $1MM/year, so this contract doesn't appear to add much risk at all for the team. Longoria does guarantee that he'll make $17MM even if he gets permanently injured tomorrow, which is why he's willing to sign. All the posters who have mentioned that you need to know what player you've got before signing a long-term contract like this are correct as well. I'd only take on this risk for a star player. I guess Tampa feels that they've seen enough to be willing to take the risk that Longoria is a star player. If Braun would sign this same contract, I'd jump at it if I were the Brewers. Prince obviously wouldn't touch this contract, as he'll make at least half the contract's value next year.

When the booed Ueck last year, grrrr.... He's actually done it for about three years. After the first year, he was getting death threats (classy Cub fans). Then, he changed it to "I'll root, root, root for the Brewers, and you do the same for the Cubs."

So... maybe he will carry a 1.212 OPS all season.

I don't see Villy moving from the starting rotation, so I think the two options when Yo returns are either: 1) Moving Bush to the long-man in the pen and losing McClung (I don't believe he can be sent to AAA without clearing waivers) 2) Sending Parra to AAA where he can continue on as a starter while limiting his innings. I'd have to say that Option #1 is more likely at this point in time. I just hope he's given a decent amount of work from the pen, as in the past Ned has used the long man sparingly. Bush would be our first choice when someone gets injured, so I'd hate for him not to be "stretched out" when he's back in the rotation.

As brewcrew00 noted, he didn't want to pitch from the 'pen, and he didn't accept Milwaukee's offer to send him to AAA, iirc. Vargas basically said, 'If I'm not in your MLB starting rotation, let me go so I can have a shot at someone else's.' I hadn't heard this, but if it's true, it irks me. If he "forced" the issue by refusing to pitch from the pen, then he shouldn't have received his $885,000 buyout. As far as the Weaver signing, I think it's a good move for AAA insurance. First, I don't see him in Milwaukee unless (a) at least two starters get hurt and (b) he's outpitching the rest of the AAA guys. Second, if his problems truly were drug-related (as some here are insinuating), then maybe if he's cleaned himself up he can live up to some of the promise he showed when he was young, a la Josh Hamilton.

I would have to assume the buyout would be at least several hundred thousand. I agree with jackalope; maybe if a team actually doesn't pay Helms a high salary, they will use him correctly. He does hit lefties pretty well.

I don't hate Gross, he is just absolutely not a center fielder. It's like putting Prince at SS... okay, maybe not that bad but it is hard to watch. Throw in his 2-for-18 start and it's even worse. Gross should be the backup corner OF when Ryan and Corey need a day off. If (knock on wood) one of them gets hurt, then I wouldn't mind seeing a Kapler / Gross platoon, but keep Gross out of CF.

You mean busting right out of Shea! This is exactly what I was referring to earlier. How can someone that can hit the ball completely out of a park (in addition the the shot today, his HR at Chicago hit the buildings across the street) not hit 30+ HR / year? I think Rickie is valuable. I think he should be (and still could be) a superstar.

I, too, expected a lot more of Weeks. The #2 overall pick should do more offensively than "just get on base," and should be better in the field. I wonder how he can hit mammoth home runs, but can't consistantly hit for power. However, if he is able to become a consistant .400 OBP 15 HR guy at the leadoff spot, he does have a lot of value to a team, especially a team made up of a bunch of low-OBP sluggers like the Brewers. Granted, this isn't the value most of us dreamed Rickie would provide, but he should have a productive Major League career, which is better than a lot of former-first-round-picks can say.

I've been an advocate of signing Prince long-term for a long time now, but I think we may have missed our window. I think the key is to do it while there's still one or two pre-arby years remaining to keep the contract much cheaper. This does add a lot of risk to the team, so it should only be done with superstar players. I'm now moving to the camp that feels Prince will go year-to-year- I still hope he'll sign to give us an extra year or two of him, but I'm beginning to doubt it. Therefore, I'd love to see Braun signed long-term, but only if it buys out 1-2 years of free agency. I don't see any reason to do it otherwise. Working in the Brewers' favor is that Braun has seemed almost giddy at the thought of signing a Tulo-type deal, so I think it's pretty likely that it will be done. Another likely suspect is Corey Hart, who I believe has the same agent as Young. At this point, he won't get near the monster numbes of Fielder or Braun, but if we wait until he's a 30-30 guy, he'll demand a lot. He may not be a superstar, so I wouldn't look at a 6-7 year deal like they'll likely do with Braun, but he seems to have enough "tools" (speed, base-running ability, plate discipline, power, defense) that he's not likely to be a bust if we sign him to a 4 year deal. Weeks...maybe, but while he's definitely shown signs, he's never quite lived up to his potential. He could blossom and be great, but he may have too much risk to sign long-term. Hardy has a replacement-in-waiting sitting in AA in Escobar, so I don't see him getting signed long-term. I'd say the next big signings would then be Yovanni (for sure) and probably Parra.

Melvin was on Brewers 360 this morning. He basically said they didn't want to test Gwynn out in the cold, rainy weather, only to have him reinjure the hammy. This way, he'll only be out another eight days. As for Gallardo, Melvin said he wasn't going to be activated unless necessitated by rain. If they have a double-header due to rain, then he'll probably be activated. Otherwise, he said he would pitch one more game in AAA. They also had a sound-bite from Gwynn, who said he totally understands the move. He's "not the type of guy who's going to hit the ball out of the park, he needs to play with his legs." He said he needs to be 100% to help the team and it wouldn't be fair to everyone else if he's out there playing at 80%. As far as my own opinion, I feel bad for Tony, in that this 25 day period was a great place to show what he can do. As far as pitching, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see McClung traded or DFA'd soon, moving Bush to the 'pen as a "true" long-man and making a place for Gallardo. I think the Brewers are waiting out the weather (rain delays / postponed games) to determine how the pitching order will work out. No sense adding Gallardo to the 25-man until necessary, and the want to keep him on schedule, even if it means another AAA start.

Actually, on every play other than a strikeout or walk, someone saves a run (or at least a baserunner) with his glove simply by catching the ball. But you're probably stating "saves a run per game over an average player" which I still think would be a hard stat to figure. There's a lot of physics on top of the stats, as you have to detemine velocity, trajectory, etc, combining that with things like the fielder's position (which in many cases is determined by the pitcher and pitch being thrown as much as by who's at the plate). Then, you'd have to figure out just what an "average" defensive player could do given the exact same parameters. This leads to the common practice of "ceteris paribus" or "all other things remain the same," which is commonly used for projection models, but isn't fully practical in reality. I'm not really brushed up on any of the various "defensive matrixes" commonly utilized, but it seems farily impractical that you could actually put any kind of absolute number on something like that, although it seems the SABR guys are now getting into the absolute category in their discussions (read articles on this site about Braun's defensive inefficiencies to see what I mean). For someone who knows this stuff, do the matrixes get as complicated as "ball hit at x trajectory with x degree pitch traveling x feet/second landing x feet from home while fielder was positioned in x position with x player on the mound and x player at the plate while x pitch was thrown"? Or, is it more like "was the liner to left caught or not"? That said, Lee is a tremendous defender. I've seen him make plays (on batted balls) that I have never seen other first basemen make, and he seems to make fielding look easy. I know that's subjective, but it's the best I've got. 20 errors seems fairly reasonable. That's about one play every eight games that he makes that someone else doesn't. Boy, I bet the Cubs wish they'd of had him when they had Dunston... there would have been a lot less balls that made it into the stands.

As for why the particular concern in this thread was never directed at Krynzel, it's very simple -- nobody ever handed Krynzel the starting CF job. If the Brewers had ever done that, a lot of us (even those of us who cut Krynzel a lot of slack) would have said the same things we're saying about Gwynn: He hasn't earned it; he isn't good enough. But no one is handing Gwynn a starting job. The primary roles of a fourth or fifth OF are to pinch hit, pinch run and fill in for the starter when necessary. It's now necessary... All Gwynn is doing is filling in for a starter who can't play. The main reason we lost out to the Cubs last year was our defense, and there was obviously a push to improve our defense this offseason. Gwynn is a solid defender. The alternative is moving Hart to CF, decreasing your CF defense, and putting Gross in RF, decreasing your RF defense. Add in Braun, who now has 1 game of ML experience in LF, and you'd be looking at a pretty weak defensive OF. I agree that Gross is better offensively than Gwynn, but I'm sure it's the defense that made Melvin, Yost and Co. make the decision to start Gwynn. Knock on wood, but I'd guess that if Hart or Braun miss some time, it will be Gross and not Gwynn who is subbed in for them. On a different topic, Stevo, where on earth did you get the projections that the offense with Gross would average 5.211 runs per game while the offense with Gwynn would average 4.672 runs? That's 87.318 additional runs over a whole season. I'd be hard pressed to believe that Fielder would add 87 more runs per season than Dillon... that's a lot of additional offense. To put in in perspective, the Milwuakee Brewers as a team last year scored 801 runs, or 4.94 per game. Since everyone else in the lineup would be the same, would the addition of Gabe Gross really increase our offensive production by that much? Something has to be off with those numbers. Gabe's better than Gwynn offensively, but he's not a young Barry Bonds.

It makes me smile a bit that this discussion is about which of our two 1.000+ OPS guys should bat 3rd and which should bat 4th. It's not so long ago that our lineup was ?/?/?/Sexson/?/?/?/?/Pitcher.

As far as I'm concerned, they can stick a cell tower in center field if it means we get to keep Prince and Braun long term.

Or there are a lot of owners/GMs that don't know what they're doing. And yet somehow these idiots are billionaires while the geniuses of the world spend their time ripping them at firejoemorgan.com for how little they know and how incompetent they are at doing their job. Sorry, not trying to be harsh, but there are multiple ways to win, as has been proven year after year as different teams use different styles to win. I agree that OBP is extremely important, but I understand what he means when he says that some players are so obsessed with taking a walk that they won't swing. I don't think anyone is an advocate for swinging at everything (except maybe Vlad Guerrero and Johnny Estrada), but there are a lot of players that will take a fastball down the middle every first pitch because they're told not to swing at the first pitch.