Matt Breen

Where's Jaye Chapman next year?

That's called a nightmare if you're Hobbs Johnson.

Well said.

I remember Harry Carey saying Andujar's name like he mouth was full of rocks and beer. I could just imagine the phlegm in the booth.

Yes it is. They are the ones who negotiate the contract. Making sure all the i's are dotted and the t's crosses is a major part of their job. They add all kinds of crazy things in them. AS far as them not supposed to be performance based I don't know where you are getting that from. Alex Rodriquez has incentives if he hits certain career milestones. A lot of players have all star bonuses in their contracts. If those aren't performance based I don't know what is. If Garza and his agent wanted to negotiate the clause to mean only lost playing time due to being on the DL then they should have clearly written it out to say that. SRB is correct in that contracts cannot be 'performance-based' - meaning you can't tie statistics to pay. You can't say in a contract 'if you hit 20 HR you get an extra $1M'. You can, however, have playing time bonuses linked to pay (games played, days on roster, starts, games finished, days not on the DL, etc.), as well as awards and honors (all star game appearances, silver slugger award, MVP votes, etc.). It might be a bit of a fine line between 'performance-based' and 'participation-based' bonuses, but there is a difference. As for A-Rod, he had three bonuses that were agreed upon that were considered 'historic events' - and thus not really performance bonuses (again, fine line). I believe one was passing Willie Mays in the HR list. The others I don't recall, but one is probably passing Barry Bonds on the all-time list. These bonuses - each $6M - had to be approved by MLB.

In addition to the reasonable strikeout rate (and obvious power), Santana has 8 walks already. That's a great sign.

A lot of Braun's improvement just seems like confidence. He looks like he's not afraid to hit the ball. Not an uncommon thing for someone with an injury. It's taken a little time to get back into his comfort zone, but now he's got that look to him that makes hitting so easy looking. Let's hope he can just stay healthy and keep hitting.

Moving Garza right now means cutting him or trading him for an equally bad contract. No one is going to give us anything - even minimal salary relief. He's been awful. If Matt was a free agent right now, it's hard to believe that anyone would give him more than a minor league contract. There's no reason to risk anything more than that. That makes his trade value nil. I think you just hold on to Garza, bring him to camp, and if he looks okay, put him in the rotation. Maybe he can rebound to is pre-2015 form, and he has some value by mid-season and we can dump him at that point if we want. We can probably afford to give him a long leash since we probably aren't going to be that good next year and he's not blocking anyone major (Cravy and Pena are probably the only guys at this point - other players in AA right now - Lopez and Wagner, will probably spend at least 1/2 year at AAA).

I was thinking they gave the award to a guy at a specific OF position - LF, CF, RF. It would seem to make more sense to do that, at least in my opinion.

To me this month is all about figuring out who is part of your future. If the club thinks Perez is the 3B, then play him. If the club wants to see Santana in CF, play him. And while I want a high draft pick, if we win while this is happening, I won't complain. I'll never get mad at guys for trying to win. Sure, deep down, I know that losing has its rewards with the higher draft pick, but it's nice seeing the players and team do well - even when it might cost us some draft slots. I'd be upset if we were running out Lohse in the rotation or something like that. That kind of thing is just a waste since he's obviously not part of our future. I remember a few years ago when Milwaukee was giving playing time to Yuni in September when we were out of the race. There was no point.

A quick rebuild is probably a rebuild to mediocrity like the last few years. Milwaukee has to develop a few young stars to build around, especially some top flight pitching. We just don't have that kind of talent right now. I'm not saying we need to take 5 or 6 years, but we can't delude ourselves that a few nice looking players puts us close to playoff contention - especially playoff contention on a regular basis.

Happy for Pena. He's a got a great arm, let's see if he can put it all together.

FSL is brutal. When I looked yesterday, no one who qualified had an OPS over .800. There are six guys who had 150+ ABs who had an OPS over .800 - but that's it. The top home run hitter has 14! It's like looking at MLB stats from 1910.

I keep thinking Wily Mo Pena when Santana comes to the plate. Ton of ability, but whether it all turns into something is another story.

Cooper's having a great week. 11-16 in his first four games, plus the first 5-hit game in Biloxi history. It'll be interesting seeing how he does at AA next year (assuming that's where he ends up).

In our situation, I'm not a big fan of signing guys with the hope of flipping them in season for some talent. If the guy gets hurt (or doesn't come back from his injury) or plays badly, you're still stuck paying the $6M or $8M or $10M or whatever you're paying him. And let's face it, if the guy is so desperate for a job that he signs with a bad team, he's probably not that good any how. I'd rather the team used the money in other ways. Perhaps extend our young talent now (Nelson or Peralta for example) - using some of the money as a signing bonus. Or do what the Braves did - take on $10M in salary (Arroyo) in exchange for a decent prospect (Toussaint). In the latter case, the Braves just essentially used their financial flexibility to add a good prospect - no risk. There's no promise that if you sign a guy like Span that he's going to fetch anything that great. It should be noted that adding a guy like Span now isn't my favorite thing. In other situations it would be a great move - such as if we thought we could content next year and needed to fill CF. But right now we aren't very good and won't be for a few years. Use the money is other ways to improve the franchise.

We aren't winning anything in 2015 or 2016 - now's the time to take some risks. It's not like we're displacing someone else. We have 40 man roster spots open, so just add him and evaluate him over the next month. If you don't like him at that time, let him go. No big loss. If you find something intriguing, bring him to camp next year and let him win the job. You can always cut the guy at any time. The alternative is trotting out Perez, Herrera and Dominguez. That's a pretty awful situation. I know some people believe one of those guys (or Segura or Rivera if you move them there) are potential answers at 3B, but I think that's wishful thinking on a massive scale. I am not saying Olt is going to succeed (I'd say odds are against him), but if the team has done their job they should know if they would want to give him a try or not. He showed some serious power at one point. None of the alternatives offers anything special like that - even if Olt offers more of a chance to be a bust.

I read that the Brewers minor league guys were very high on Davies. I'm guessing it comes from the fact he's a groundball type guy - which seems to be the kind of starter we are trying to develop. Nelson, Jungmann, Peralta - now Davies - are all guys who will induce a lot of groundballs. That seems to be the kind of pitcher the club thinks can succeed at Miller Park. Of course, more groundballs mean better defenders are desired.

Joey Votto is hitting .399 with a .576 OBP since the All-Star Break. He has an OPS over 1.000. Dude has done that three times in his career. I forget how amazing of a player he has been when he's avoided injuries.

Scooter with some nice glovework. Good to see him playing well of late.

I believe that's true. At least, that were the rumors. Maybe there was never really any truth to them.

You know, this is one of those questions that's often easy in hindsight, but it does make you ask about the team's approach with roster construction. My main argument for signing Greinke to an extension is that we had no one ready or able to take the reins as a top-of-the-order starter. We signed Lohse, who was good, but he's not Zach Greinke. The next year we added Garza - between those buys they averaged $23.5M a year. The big problem was we didn't have the $25M we needed in 2013 to sign Greinke - even if we had wanted. Lohse deferred $7M of his $11M salary, so it's not like we had all sorts of cash sitting around waiting to spend. To have fit Zach in, we would have to shed payroll - and we were playing guys like Yuni at 1B that year. In the end, if it's one answer or the other - it probably would have been better to keep Greinke over Garza and Lohse. We would have had to rely on Tyler Thornburg or some cheap FAs to fill out the rotation - but Greinke is worth more than Garza/Lohse/Segura. But if you can have third option, the best thing might have been to simply rebuild at that time. That's easy to say now since we didn't make the playoffs, but when you're trotting out guys like Yuni on a regular basis, that's a sign that your payroll is stretched thin, and you have no depth. I think it's pretty indicative of the way the Brewers have done - and can do - business. We can't keep many top tier players. You might pull off having one guy like that, but not two and three. If you do have two, you better be producing top rate prospects who are getting paid cheaply. Instead, for Milwaukee, we get the 2nd and 3rd tier free agents. Suppan, Lohse, Wolf, Garza. Nothing wrong with getting these players, but you're paying a lot for mediocrity. Guys like Greinke are premium talents - costing twice these guys. They offer bigger reward, but bigger risk (injury, long contracts, etc.). Again, I would say 'yes' to signing Greinke back in 2012, but that's only if the other option was what we ended up doing - adding guys like Garza and Lohse.

I told my wife last Friday, "Now's the time when the Crew goes on a tear and win 20 of the next 30 games." 3-1 since then!

I thought that if he could stay relatively healthy, Braun could put up an .850 OPS. He's at .852, so he's spot on. I never really expected him to go back to being a .900-950 OPS guy (I hoped he would, but I was trying to be realistic in my brain). Age and injuries simply are going to keep him from being the player he was at 28. If he can play at this level for a few years, I'd be pretty happy to have the guy as part of the team. Staying healthy is the key for him.

Bryce Harper will take that award wrapped up.