And That

That rendition of the national anthem gets an 8.5 on the pain scale. Not a good way to begin the baseball year.

In order: hoffy scoop Katuluu bjames big reed EDR Hendrickson's dad EDR may move up the list if he mails me the PBR Light. Is it a 40?

Digital Rights Management - basically stuff encoded into the music files that can make it only playable on certain devices, or only playable a certain number of times, or only playable by the person who downloads it, etc. Here's the wikipedia entry - generally it's better to have a file that is DRM free. If it's DRM free, you can do whatever you want with it. It'll work with any music-playing software that plays mp3s, you can own multiple copies of it, and on and on. I mostly use iTunes, but have used eMusic in the past for more indie/obscure jazz stuff.

Here's the link to the BA article.

Given that he reneged on his minor league contract agreement, and will be pitching in the WBC, I don't think too many teams will be interested in his services until closer to the end of spring training.

This article from December doesn't mention that the contract is non-guaranteed, so AFAIK the Brewers would be on the hook for whatever percentage of his salary they'd owe him at the time of his release.

Here's the rotation order for spring training... and beyond? RHP Jeff Suppan RHP Yovani Gallardo LHP Manny Parra RHP Braden Looper RHP Dave Bush While Macha said that this isn't necessarily the rotation going in to the year, I hope at the very least that Bush isn't the 5th starter, because I don't think he's the best guy of the five to skip regularly. If Suppan is the opening day pitcher, I can only fathom the reaction.

Julio has a non-guaranteed contract and Coffey is out of options, so if neither makes the Brewers' roster retaining both of them would be unlikely. Coffey might slip through waivers and end up being outrighted to Nashville, but I doubt Julio would stay around.

I am a hipster and I do not twitter.

I'm on page 41... Jaime, I'll let you know when I get to page 50.

I guess I never realized Dave Bush was Mose. http://media.jsonline.com/images/224*400/Brewers_-spt_-lynn_-12%285%29.jpg

From this TH blog: "Even Eric has to go out there and pitch and make the club. It could work two ways. If Gagne goes out and pitches real well, we could say, 'Hey, there's enough experience in the bullpen that would could carry a Rule 5 draft pick.' "If Eric doesn't pitch well, maybe we need to get another experienced pitcher and we can't keep (Morlan). It could work either way." Looks like Melvin is linking Gagne to Morlan. In that I'd like to think Gagne is better than either Julio or Coffey and in that I'd like to keep Morlan around, I hope Eric pitches well in spring and makes the roster. Stetter and Swindle are pretty much equal to me, so it doesn't matter who makes it IMO. The other one will be in AAA in case.

I read that, too, I forget where. It's very rare the IRS will let you do this - IRAs are one of the few examples. But it'll be good for the people that can do it.

I see you have Evan Frederickson listed as a middle reliever. Do you see him solely as a relief prospect currently? No, I still see him as a starting prospect, but as a guy who may not be as consistent as the other guys in the rotation/piggyback spots. If he has a good spring and shows some ability to locate with velocity, Frederickson could easily be an every fifth day guy in Appleton. That whole staff should be pretty fluid and undefined with its rolls anyway, so even the guy I put in as their closer, Nick Tyson, will probably end up starting again at some point. So many of those guys are going to be inning limited, they'll have to regularly switch roles around a little. I hope Frederickson is closer to the mid-90's guy he showed himself at his pre-draft workout, and not the mid-80's guy who pitched last season. If he can keep that velocity up, he'll be given every chance to succeed. Any chance the kids drafted last year such as Odorizzi or Lintz start at Wisconsin? I know Lintz had some issues, but Odorizzi seemed solid in limited action last year. Odorizzi definitely has a shot, especially with a good camp... if Appleton had one more roster spot, I would have put him there on the projection. He has good maturity and the odds of him seeing Appleton without ever seeing Helena are pretty good. Lintz is more of a longer shot - he's still more of a work in progress and growing into his body. High school guys like Blake Billings and Stosh Wawrzasek might have better shots than Lintz. Trey Watten, Rico Salmon, Dan Meadows and Adam Arnold would also seem to have better shots.

If you arbitrarily take away "hot streaks" from any player, their offensive production is going to drop. Fortunately, you can't remove hot streaks from the statistical record and Mike Cameron was one of the top handful of CFers in the game last year - Fangraphs pegged his value at $18.5 mil last year and that was with him missing the first 25 games. He's a darn good guy to have in CF. I wish his OBP were a little higher, but plenty of teams have CFers with worse. As to whether Milwaukee should be paying him $10 mil - who else would they put there? In-house options are limited to Gwynn and Hart. Gwynn is terrible at the plate and the defensive dropoff from Cameron to either is staggering. Trading for someone would have involved some sort of indeterminate cost. They might have been able to get a good deal on a solid replacement, but who knows? I'm not impressed or unimpressed with Melvin's moves this offseason. Losing Pena on waivers was stupid, but other than unknown moves that could have happened but didn't (like Cameron to the Yankees), I can't recall anything else I disliked. The bullpen looks a lot more solid than last year, I think Lamb/Hall will be fine at third base and if Hart can bounce back and Prince can play better defense, we're as good or better than we were last year at this point. I'm just a little worried about the rotation, though the Looper signing went some way to assuage that. I'll give him a B- if Gagne makes the roster, C+ if he sucks.

Why hasn't Cruz signed an incentive-laden minor league deal (a la Gagne)? I don't know if the current CBA allows for this, but in the past, minor league contracts wouldn't cause the signing team to lose a draft pick. Ben, unless this all took place after the June draft, this doesn't solve the problem. The minor league contract wouldn't cost the team a pick. But assuming that Cruz would make the major league roster at the end of spring training (or at some point before June), he'd need a major league contract then and ergo, the signing team would still be out a pick.

He already cleared waivers, was assigned to Nashville, and invited back to big league camp.

See and I'm waiting for them to thwart a terrorist plot in Omro. Winter, summer, doesn't matter.

These are all my projections, except that my 9 month old loves Shawn Zarraga so she made me put him on there.

Actually, there was a blurb in the Minneapolis paper the other day about how Koskie was healthy and looking to play baseball again. Were Hall out longer, the Brewers might think about bringing Koskie in for a look.

Lamb and Counsell both bat left-handed, they wouldn't platoon. This is good news... for Casey McGehee.

I first took a stab at '09 roster projections in this November '08 Farm Hops article, and I thought it was time to take another run. We have a lot more information now and have full rosters going in to spring training. I'm posting the Brewers' roster projection as well, but that's more for a basis of AAA/AA rosters than anything I want to focus this discussion on. Here are some points about the following roster guesses: Mark Rogers and Chris Capuano are not listed on any of the rosters because I don't know that they'll be healthy to start out the season. If they were healthy, they'd start at Brevard and Nashville respectively. Taylor Green will miss the first month or so of the season with a wrist injury, but once he gets back he'll be Huntsville's starting third baseman. I don't think that Brad Nelson or Hernan Iribarren will make the team, they are out of options and might be traded while they are on waivers. That's why they are not listed. Nelson is eligible to become a free agent if he clears waivers after removal from the 40-man roster. If Iribarren clears waivers, he'll likely be assigned to Nashville. If Iribarren beats out Tony Gwynn for a roster spot, Gwynn is out of options and would have to be put on waivers and removed from the 40-man roster. If he clears waivers, which I think is a likelyhood, he would be assigned to Nashville. I don't think the Brewers will keep Todd Coffey or Jorge Julio and almost certainly not both if everyone stays healthy. If they keep one or both and everyone else is healthy, it will probably be at the expense of Eduardo Morlan. I think the Rays will take him back if he doesn't make the Brewers' roster. The Brewers are very thin in OF depth in the upper minors. The Brewers have a ton of pitchers competing for very few open spots. Sam Narron, Mark Holliman, Richie Gardner, Brian Reith, Ryan Houston, Mike Burns, Steve Bray, Juan Sandoval, John Axford, Josh Wahpepah, Derrick Ellison, Reed Dickert and Wes Etheridge were not unintentionally discluded. Injuries will allow a few of these guys to make rosters, but a number of them (or others I have making rosters) will be cut. Beside Taylor Green, J.R. Hopf and Yohannis Perez are the only position players above rookie ball without a roster spot in the projection. An injury or two at Brevard or above would get them roster spots. Here is (sorry for the image files... I don't feel like typing all this out at the moment): http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/4a51584190dd95258b74291380bc5500ba259e6.jpg http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/6121544995d994202e9375341234f36aaa01410.jpg http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/95f35d9b406c9af4d1af98a3231ae5a5248e25e.jpg http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/56e25f545c9abd6492729b42e3abac1c23136eb.jpg http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/d4b1534c91d3902ccee67e072af3e51e154cc7b.jpg

As long as Suppan is contributing positively - and the evidence Ennder just posted makes the case that he is, albeit not by much - I don't see any way the Brewers will cut Suppan and eat the rest of the contract. While the Brewers will be paying him more than he's worth, and it is a sunk cost unless they can unload him... if you're paying him, you might as well try to get some value out of it even if it's not optimal value. I suppose if it's obvious he's spent at the end of '09 and into February '10, they may eat the $14.5 mil left they'll owe him at the end of next year's spring training. But not before.

Topic about this already started here. This is also a reminder to keep thread titles un-mysterious - mentioning license plates in the title would be a good idea in a thread about license plates.

I assume the $5.4M of salaries unlikely to be paid represents the people sent to the minors that will not make $400K. Confirm? Yes, but it's a rough guess. What represents the $6.75M of salaries likely to be paid this year other than Gagne? September callup pay? Incentives? - you mentioned Looper and I see you put Hoffman's total pay assuming incentives earned already. I estimated $2.5 mil for contracts for call-ups and new contracts, which is probably on the high side when combined with the contracts unlikely to be paid. The rest of it is Gagne and Looper's incentives. I put Hoffman's incentives in with his salary, but they shouldn't be there. I just work on this as I get a few moments here and there. This season I'm going to try and see how closely I get what the Brewers actually spend on players, as opposed to just a snapshot of the team salary at any given moment. Anywho, back to Corey Hart.