adambr2

What is so exciting about what Thames and Shaw are doing, is that they're doing it on the road. There's no reason to think there guys won't mash at Miller Park too especially being lefties.

I really do think Villar is getting close. He seems to be seeing it ok and making good contact, just not having any luck right now.

Not one that is probably going to win a series. Playoff rotations generally have only 3-4 starters, so one or two of those would probably head to the pen. Guerra and Hader I would guess would be our best bets in the playoffs. Maybe Woodruff if he emerged as hoped. Then just take your pick from whoever has emerged from the rest.

Phillips just hit a salami, he has been coming along nicely. If he's hitting like this in July there's no longer any need for Nieuwenhuis and it's time to see Phillips get his feet wet up here.

Not expecting to win this one, but man would it be sweet to steal it, win the series and head back home at 9-7.

I think any team thinking that they're a player or two away is a mistake. It sounds like what our mentality always was in the post-2007 Melvin era. Things happen, guys get injured or underperform, others surprise in a good way. Stick with the plan. Doesn't mean you can't think it, of course, just don't let it change your plan.

Seems basically as expected except Franklin for Braun. I guess I would have preferred Aguilar at 1st and Thames in LF if Braun was going to get a day off, but oh well.

I'm not ready to say we are getting close to being good as I think it's still just too early in the season to separate what is fluke from what is real right now. But if it does end up being true I think the rest of your post is right on.

Basically correct. I think steroids are worse than other things guys are taking, but I don't know enough about them to say for sure. As I mentioned, I already think people are doing it anyways(throughout all sports), so it just isn't a big deal to me. I mean, look at other sports, guys get busted and you barely hear a peep about it. I mean, Von Miller got caught and the guy is still doing nationwide commercials and stuff. No one cares, but if it happens in baseball then suddenly it's a massive ordeal, and if someone doesn't care about it they are sugar coating it. I think Braun is probably still taking something, and no, I don't have any data to back that up. Just my opinion. That's a pretty good point about Von Miller. Miller even conspired with the collector to try to cheat the test and got caught, and no one even cares and his NFL image is barely scratched. Yet in MLB, 4 years later opposing fans still act like Braun is a convicted felon every time he comes to bat.

Well we are going to need to make a move in the next couple days anyway. Maybe Milone is going to come down with a 'sore arm' after the game today.

The irony was you falling off your high horse. Garza will get $180,000 annual pension. Sad thing is a lot of these guys will be in desperate need of this by the time they collect on it.

The irony was you falling off your high horse. Ok!

I'm pretty sure the Brewers kept Andy Wilkins longer than they would have, had he not been so close to getting 52 (?) days of service time, the minimum needed for a partial MLB pension. I'm not saying you're wrong but I don't understand why if that's actually the case that they wouldn't have just optioned him down when they wanted to and then called him back up in September to hit his mark, when it didn't affect the 25 man. He was pretty bad and they never did call him back up when rosters expanded.

From what was said at the time they just wanted an extra bench bat. It cost Davies money and service time. It did help Andy Wilkins, who did make the 43 days up total to get a minimum pension. Wilkins still needed about a month's worth of service at the time he was called up to get it. I really don't think the plan was ever to keep Wilkins on the 25 man for a month to get him his pension -- there are loads of AAAA players I'm sure they would like to help out every year if they really care about that, and it would be much easier to do in September. If you want to option or outright a guy and you realize he is at 41 or 42 games, I can see them waiting a game or two as a courtesy, but I doubt it goes much beyond that.

I'd rather just wait until Milone's arm figuratively falls off in that situation, but I would guess Marinez having not pitched in 4 days could probably go 3 innings.

Couldn't find a worse 60 game stretch for him last year, but he did have a 6 for 52 stretch.

Why? Does he get a gold rolex for the occasion? Can't imagine we'd make roster decisions based on service time milestones. Hmm, talk about condescending. No gold watch, but he becomes fully invested in his pension from the MLB at 10 years. So I could see a MLB team doing that for a player, sure. This coming from the guy who is constantly telling me he was just joking and to lighten up, oh the irony. Dacbrewers, I do apologize if it came off that way, it wasn't intended to be. More just my annoyance at the idea of keeping Garza a day longer than we have to, if he isn't productive when he comes back up, along with a lame attempt at humor on my part. Seriously though, I didn't know that, good to know. As shown when he optioned Davies last year, Stearns is pretty much all business. Can't see him really caring about what is probably the difference between a player's $97K annual pension and $100K annual pension. Who knows, though .

Why? Does he get a gold rolex for the occasion? Can't imagine we'd make roster decisions based on service time milestones.

Don't remember when it was, I think Barker was still doing the show, but I saw a dude bid 69 dollars one time.

1 - Cespedes has 6 HR and a 1.038 OPS so he's doing pretty good. 2 - Braun has OPS'ed over .900 once in the last 4 seasons coming into this year, so while he's been good, saying he produces .900 OPS with regularity is inaccurate. 3 - Citing season stats 15 games into a season to determine trade value is still silly. 4 - Beltran was a rental when he was traded in 2011 for Wheeler, with no future commitment, not 4 years and $76M worth of commitment. Apples and oranges. 5 - Dillon Tate was available for Beltran last year because he plummeted on every prospect list around and was basically a reclamation project prospect. 6 - You can beat the dead horse all you want but it remains obvious that if Braun was worth a Urias or Bellinger, he would have started 2017 as a Dodger. Value is market driven. It does not matter how awesome we think Braun is. Stearns can send out a Braun career highlight reel to every GM and a PowerPoint presentation on the failure of top prospects and a list of every player making more than Braun and producing less. It still doesn't matter. Braun's trade value is whatever the top offer is that a team he is willing to go to will give us for him. It is not whatever we think it ought to be because he can mash. I am certainly not advocating giving Braun away just to trade him, and I'm completely understanding of keeping him if we don't get an offer that we feel is at least in the ballpark of fair value. But value is driven by so many other factors other than just 'is the guy a good hitter. ' I've already mentioned the contract and age, but the no-trade clause is another big one. There's a very small handful of teams that Braun is willing to be traded to, and of those teams, there's even less that are in a situation where they're motivated to even make such a deal. All in all, you probably have 2 teams, the Dodgers and Giants, that are even part of the discussion. It's a completely incomparable situation to shopping a younger guy in the off-season who has no trade barriers and a much larger potential marker, like Thornburg or Segura. You don't want to sell Braun short of course, but you also have to be realistic in your expectations if you're serious about getting a deal done. We're not sitting in a position of enough leverage to be able to demand a guy like Urias, and the Dodgers are just as much aware of that fact as we are.

It was more the rationalization of saying "Well everybody does it or blah blah blah" to make one feel better about Braun. If other players do it I don't know that really makes Ryan Braun a better person. I cheer for Braun too, but I am not going to rationalize and make myself think Braun didn't do anything wrong with his PED fiasco. Everyone can move on, but don't try to sugar coat the past. At no time in my post did I refer to Braun, yet you inferred that's what I was thinking. I told you I wasnt, and yet again you inferred incorrectly. I'm not sugar coating anything. I just don't care about PEDs period. I'll say it again. I cheer for the name on the front, not the back. Please don't assume you know what I'm thinking. You've been wrong twice here. So if you don't care about PEDs, you'd just as soon let them do whatever, at least put everyone on equal ground, basically pre-2000s again? That seems dangerous to me. I don't get the emotional reaction to PED use that some do, and there are times I do think the witch hunt is over the top, but I wouldn't want my kid playing a sport where PED use was indirectly encouraged through lack of punishment. That just seems like a breeding ground for every player to put whatever substance in their body they can find to try to stay ahead of the next person.

To me, at first glance right now, Villar seems to be hanging in there at the plate for the most part, getting close, but just kind of unlucky right now. I'm not overly worried about his bat, and there hasn't been much chatter about his glove lately, which is a good thing. Broxton looks totally lost to me. I still believe in him and his glove in center makes up for a lot, but right now to me he doesn't look like he has a clue at the plate.

Again, 15 games. We did not go from a rebuilding team to a contender over the course of 15 games.

Come on now let's be serious. Our bullpen is not good, the offense is not as good as something, and the starters have mostly played over their head. No thanks. Not to mention a demand for Urias+ for Braun would probably be the last time that the Dodgers took a phone call from Stearns.

Right now it feels like Thames and Braun are going to finish 1 and 2 in MVP voting, Wily Peralta will win Cy Young and Broxton and Villar will be DFA by July. But none of that is likely.