DougJones43

You had the right to vote no as a tax payer, once the decision was made, you had no more rights I disagree. If public money was given to an organization under the pre-tense that the organization would spend the money and handle their business in a certain way, then it should be within your rights as a taxpayer that the organization does what they promised to with the money. Maybe it's more of an ethical right than a legal one, but it still exists IMO. The whole point of funding the stadium was to increase revenue, and in turn use that extra money to try and make the team better (which is a positive for the city and the state). The Pirates haven't followed through on their end of the bargain, and I think that's a very poor display of ethical behavior and it violates the public's trust. Would the Brewers have kept him 3 years ago? Just because the Brewers are good now, doesn't make the pre-Attanasio Brewers a good business model to follow. What trade the Pirates made has come close to the same level of production? None, but that might partially be the fault of a lack of spending. You're not going to be able to get a very good return when other teams KNOW for a fact you're not going to pay the player to stay. Look at the Aramis Ramirez deal. The Pirates had to trade Kenny Lofton and Aramis Ramirez, and in return they were only able to get Jose freaking Hernandez. Now, you blame the GM for that, and paint him as imcompetent. I think the GM was handcuffed by the ownerships lack of financial commitment, and he was forced to trade Ramirez for garbage because garbage was all he could get in return. Again, look at the Brewers 3 years ago, even 4 and 5 years ago, they were always sellers. To me, the Pirates are exactly where the Brewers were in 2001, 2002... Technically, the Pirates are in a significantly larger market, so they should have an edge over the Brewers in revenue. And again, just because an inordinate amount of Jack Z's picks have turned out great, and we are finally showing signs of success in 2007, that doesn't mean that the 2001-2002 Brewers were a well-run franchise. In fact, I'd say they were a disaster. Nobody should aim to be 5-7 years away from being competetive. Nope it doesn't, but spending money doesn't automatically make you a winner, spending it wisely does. Did I say somewhere that the Pirates should start unwisely spending money? I've tried to be as clear as possible in stating that's not what I think. You can spend a lot more than $38M in a year, without necessarily "wasting" it. Well since I have to spell it out for you... You take small sentence fragments and break them out in a quote, usually out of context. Instead of cherry picking, why not quote the entire paragraph or message that you are responding to I'm sorry you feel that what I'm doing is cherry picking. I usually try to pick out one entire idea at a time, and then respond to them one by one. I'm not sure how else to do it, short of quoting entire messages, which I don't think the moderators like very much. I don't disagree that there comes a time when you will need to spend money to win. However, if you aren't ever in contention, what good does spending that money do? You have to start somewhere. What if, in 2005, the Brewers decided that since they weren't in contention that it wasn't worth it to sign Ben Sheets to a $38.5M deal? What if, instead of taking on Cordero's salary last year, we decided that since we were out of contention, we should just dump Lee's salary and not pay to acquire any major league talent in return? What if, after 2005, we decided not to give Turnbow a $6.5M deal, because we weren't in contention right then? Letting all of those guys go just to save some money would have really hurt us right now. Spending money now can help improve a team now, and in the longterm. Just because some teams spend money foolishly, doesn't mean it's always the wrong thing to do.

I'd much rather see the first round become a best-of-7 series.

I have an exciting announcement. I found out that if you google "reak of pork" this thread is at the top of the list!

Taking one snipit out of the context of the post hardly does it justice. Yeah, but that one snipit was what I quoted, and chose to point out as absurd. Am I not allowed to think only a certain part of a post is absurd? What rights do we really have as fans? When the fans are also the taxpayers, and promises are made to secure financing from taxpayers, I think those people have a lot of rights. Yep, because Sheets and Jenkins didn't come through the system, and weren't signed before this year? Turnbow was picked up off the scrap heap, and Cordero was aquired via trade and is relatively in expensive I don't see how it makes any difference how they were acquired, or when they signed their contract. The point is we were willing to spend the money and we are paying them right now. We're also paying Bill Hall more than we have to right now in order to buy out a year of his free agency. Spending money helps, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. By the way, "inexpensive" Francisco Cordero is the 4th highest paid Brewer on the active roster, and would be the highest paid player on the Pirates. After all Jeffery Hammonds made the Brewers a contender! One example from 2001 obviously proves that spending money is worthless! Well since you're into breaking out posts I don't have any idea what you're getting at with this, but whatever...

http://www.nndb.com/people/903/000025828/kattan1.jpg http://mcraeclan.com/Graeme/Language/DerekZoolanderBlueSteel.jpg

It's absurd to post that an opinion is absurd... "Support your team and shut up" isn't an opinion. Not to mention some seriously poor trades along the way, at least in my opinion. Many of those trades were made for financial reasons. the Brewers finally spent money, so now they are winning... it's laughable if you really think about it. Really? Is it laughable to think this team wouldn't be as good without Ben Sheets, Geoff Jenkins, Jeff Suppan, Derrick Turnbow, and Francisco Cordero? Because if we spent money the way the Pirates currently do, none of those guys would probably be on the team right now. So like they should spend on money on free agents like Milwaukee has to build back into success? Did you even read my post? I never said they should go out and sign a bunch of overpriced free agents. But they'd be a much better team if they would have at least attempted to keep some of their more talented players around. You're making a huge jump from "they need to spend more than $38M per year to be competetive" to "they should spend tons of money on free agents!" Obviously, developing young talent is the cornerstone to building a good franchise, but you still need to spend some money along the way as well.

I've got it on now in the bottom of the 3rd. We'll see if there's any activity. Well, allegedly the television stations have been instructed to pretend nothing is happening, so even if the walkout does occur you probably won't be able to notice on TV. In my mind, the actual walkout doesn't really matter anymore. The Pirates organization has already had attention drawn to the matter, and the front office had to answer questions to SI about it. The damage has already been done with the negative attention this whole thing has caused. I enjoy seeing this kind of accountability take place. With the Brewers, a change needed to take place at the top before the penny pinching stopped. Some public pressure (and an embarassing audit of the team's finances) needed to be applied before this finally happened. Maybe some of the people of Pittsburgh can contribute to forcing change in their own city with their own team.

It's a shame fans that do not understand the success cycle The normal "success cycle" isn't supposed to include 15 straight losing seasons. think their problems will be solved by throwing money at a few mediocre FA's I don't think that's what most people would want. They could certainly spend more than $38M. And who said they have to go after mediocre FA's? They haven't even made an effort to keep their own guys. Somebody earlier in this thread gave the laundry list of their own homegrown guys they've gotten rid of during fire sales. A $38M payroll is pathetic, even for a "small" market team. Support your team and shut up. If you want to prove your a bandwagoneer, support this foolishness. That's absurd. Those fans have supported the team, and have spent money for the team and the stadium based on promises that the Pirates would, in turn, spend the money necessary to be competetive.

Im pretty sure its 90 AB's Wow. That's a lot less than I expected.

<span style="text-decoration:underline">Brewers Run Differential</span> June 13th 0 June 30th +50

Is Corey Hart still eligible? He only played in in 87 games with 237 AB's last year. I have no idea what the cutoff is.

OMG, we're screwed!!! Just kidding. Sunday, May 13th: No Braun Sunday, July 1st: Lots of Braun

As bad as Grace has been today, that Juan Pierre bobblehead day at Wrigley crack was gold.

Kevin Mench is a terrible outfielder. And a terrible hitter.

YEAH!!! Destroying the Cubs in front of their own stupid fans makes me so happy, I can't really even describe it.

Wow. Ballsy pitch by Sheets.

Okay. That's enough runs for the Cubs for today. No more please.

Wow. Gotta love a bad impression of an impression...of a deceased person. That lineup thing by Dempster was pretty ridiculous.

Another thing. rluzinski's avatar, please get rid of it I'm begging you! You're only encouraging him... http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

Mench really seems like he's making a very conscious attempt to change his approach at the plate. Hopefully, it pays off and he begins to return to his Texas Ranger form.

Screw the Cubs. I hope we beat them 15-0 today and take ALL of the wind out of their sails.

Awesome. Couldn't ask for a better and quicker way to bounce back and set the tone after yesterday's tough loss. Now keep after 'em!

If you really wanted to stick it to the owners, wouldn't a better way be to not show up from the beginning? That is also a good, longterm way to force a change, but I think the point witht the walkout is to do something that will draw attention to the dissatisfaction in a more quick and direct way. Think of it more as a publicity stunt, done by the fans. Given the fact that there is a Sports Illustrated article about the scheduled walkout, I'd say the plan is working. There probably wouldn't be an SI article about low season-attendance figures in Pittsburgh.

I'm proud of their fans for organizing something to make a statement. I agree. If they actually pull it off, it should garner a lot of attention and be very embarassing for the entire front office. And the whole gesture seems to carry a lot more weight since it's going to be something intelligent and civilized (as opposed to booing, yelling, cursing, throwing stuff on the field, etc.). It wasn't long ago that it seemed like the Brewers organization was going to be in need of something like this. We are very fortunate that Mark Attanasio bought the team when he did. edit: Brian, where did you come up with those payroll numbers? It looks like you're giving the Pirates too much credit, and the Brewers not enough. Here is how ESPN lists the 2007 team salaries: Milwaukee Brewers $71,986,500 Pittsburgh Pirates $38,604,500

My brain is incapable of understanding that this loss is technically not much worse than any other loss, because my brain hates the Cubs. I hate losing to the Cubs so much that I want to puke all over myself. I don't care if it's an over-reaction. Over-reacting is part of the fun of being a sports fan.