adambr2

I just don't see what good a longer leash would have done. Would they have been waiting for him to be just really bad instead of historically awful at 3rd? Its not like he was a defensive guru at 3rd in the minors and they pulled the plug on it after one bad season in MLB. He had 3 seasons in the minors where he was equally as bad at 3rd.

Looks like most of this thread should be in blue. Yikes.

Sure, just wouldn't expect much.

This might be the easiest perfect game ever thrown.

Why do I always hear about how awesome Maldy's defense is?

At what point does that happen? Assume two shortstops are involved in 673 chances over the course of a season. Shortstop A posts a .753 OPS and makes only 15 errors. Shortstop B posts a .950 OPS, but makes 50 errors. Which would you put out there every day? I'd find the extra 200 points of OPS very hard to pass up, even if there were 35 additional errors over the course of the season. As the primary third baseman for the Brewers in 2007, Braun's OPS was 1.004. In 2008, Bill Hall's OPS was .689. That sacrifice of offense - 315 points of OPS - meant the Brewers had only 17 errors from their primary third baseman, as opposed to Braun's 26 in 2007. A net reduction of 9 errors. I feel a little underwhelmed by that exchange. I think it's much more of a given that the Brewers could have made a deeper post-season run by keeping Braun at third, trading Hall (maybe getting CC Sabathia from Cleveland at the start of the season for Hall and LaPorta), and signing Milton Bradley as a free agent (Bradley posted a .999 OPS in 2008). In 2008 the Brewers replaced the Jenkins (.790 OPS in LF) and Braun (1.004 OPS at 3B) combo with Braun in LF (.888 OPS) and Hall (.689). They could have had Bradley (.999) and Braun (.888). I think it's obvious which combo would have been better. Kind of an entirely different argument to say 'Well I wish we could have kept Braun at 3rd to sign this hypothetical free agent who ended up being really awesome that year.' The Indians by the way were coming off a 96 win season. Why on earth would they have been interested in trading us CC for Hall and Laporta at that time? You're making hypothetical deals in retrospect to support the keep Braun at 3rd idea, ideas that either weren't realistic or only look good now in hindsight.

I agree. Rock was really over the top exaggerating. It wasn't a play that Segura was going to be only halfway to home when the throw got to home. He had a shot. A decent throw would have gotten him, but anything off the line and Segura likely makes it. It wouldn't have needed to make it to the backstop for him to score.

Dumb not to send him with 2 outs and Nelson coming up, I don't care what Rock says about him being out by 20 feet.. All it takes is a bad throw off the line. There's a better chance of that happening than Nelson driving him in.

If Braun's defense had simply been below average, and not historically abysmal, I'd agree with you. When you have a player whose defense is so awful that it single handedly turns him from an elite player into just a decent player, you really have no choice. Moving Braun from 3rd was a given.

Never been a part of a winning or losing program or what? It's very simple. Losing breeds losing. Winnings inspires winning. Anyone who's played athletics in their lifetime will tell you that. This organization needs to consistently win. Not make the playoffs every thirty years and rebuild. Screw that formula. This is an extreme oversimplification. It's not that simple. If it were, the Astros wouldn't be in 1st place and the Royals would have never dug out of their hole. Every organization would like to "consistently win". For most, it goes in cycles. Even the A's, who have pretty much been the model team for running a small market team, are going through a down cycle this year. We've been trying to consistently win for the last 8 years with the core we have. Also, winning 75-80 games isn't "winning" so I don't even know how that answers the original question. You can only go into a rebuild kicking and screaming for so long. If you're a bottom 5 team, your fans are going to lose interest and your attendance will drop. Doesn't pay to continue to trot out a full payroll of aging vets for a 70 win team rather than biting the bullet and trying to get younger.

I was the one who "shrugged you off," but I didn't mean to come across like that. Very simply, you can't just say a team had a horrendous start, and under .500 since so they're "not that bad." Yes they are. The record doesn't lie, and there are swings in every season. Could they have a 15-5 streak? Sure. But they're also likely to have another 5-15 streak. And I wouldn't say no one cares how they've been since April. People are still going to the games, still watching them on TV. I still watch most of the games. I don't think very many people WANT them to lose and get the #1 pick overall. But we can't control what they do, so I don't think there's anything wrong with saying there is an upside if they are the worst or 2nd worst team this year. No, I don't watch 150 games a year hoping they lose, that would be pretty depressing. Pretty much reflects my feelings exactly. Just like a really good start was the reason we were in first most of last season, you can't write off a bad start and say it's not indicative of the team. Really good teams have 18-21 stretches, and so do really bad teams. It doesn't mean they're an 18-21 team. They're a 23-38 team, which is indicative of their play this year. There's enough time left that they'll probably go on a good run, and there's enough time left where they'll probably have another 1-10 stretch at some point. All in all, playoff goals this year are no longer realistic. I think we all know they're not going 67-34 the rest of the way, which is what they would roughly need to do. They aren't going to play near-perfect ball for 101 games. I still root for the team every day and prefer they win but I certainly see the benefits in a top 5 pick next year.

It's not so much the difference between a top 3 and top 5 pick. It's more about not wanting this team to end up deciding to avoid the inevitable firesale and spending the next few years continuing to tread water. I'm not rooting for us to lose games, but let's say we can go on a nice little run in the second half and win 75-80 games. This helps us how exactly?

I'm sorry, but I'm fairly certain I'll be pushing up daisies when the first woman plays in MLB.

Melvin's contract was up and he had said he was going to retire after 2012. Coincidentally, he went "all in" in the offseason prior to 2011, trading the farm for two guys whose contracts were up after the 2012 season. He wanted to go out on top. Of course, he accepted an extension, and he recently stated that (paraphrasing from memory) the team had a window in 2011-2012 and has needed a rebuild, and the longer you wait, the longer the rebuild will need to be. Just my opinion, but I think Melvin has realized for a long time that we needed to change direction, and it's been a bit of a tug of war between him and Attanasio as to what needs to be done. Year after year, Melvin hints that we aren't going to make any big moves, only to be followed up by Attanasio signing a 30-something free agent. I agree with you that Melvin has seemed to be doing some things to try to help "the future." I disagree that Garza was a good signing. I put a chart up in another thread that we've all seen before. Once a player gets into his 30's, production is likely to fall, falling significantly after they're around 31-33. From the get-go, this contract (like Ramirez, Lohse, Wolf and all the other 30-something free agents) was very likely to have a lot of "dead money" in it, and the team is already trying to get someone to take the contract off their hands. They need to stop this trend of signing 30-something free agents to multi-year deals for eight figures a year. Free agency for the Brewers needs to be for complementary players, not for "name" guys who are supposed to play big roles but are signed to contracts that take them well past their prime. We've signed a number of these deals under Attanasio, and none of them has ended well. Most have ended with the fanbase wishing the guy was cut, and yet for some reason those same fans get excited when the next guy is signed. Well put. The trouble with these signings is that we have to essentially concede that the last year of it is going to be dead money. So we essentially paid 3/48 for Suppan and 2/30 for Wolf. Given that Lohse is carrying an ERA well north of 6 into June, he seems to be the latest to follow the trend and I have little doubt that Garza will end up in the same boat. You can argue all you want that Wolf was effective in his first 2 years and Lohse was as well, but when you're basically taking a year off the back end of each of these big pitching FA deals and writing it off as waste, that's not an efficient way of spending our limited FA money at all. These are short-sighted moves. 12.5M a year for Garza looks fine if you assume that he can perform at his career norms well into his 30s. In the real world, it rarely happens. Yet 4 times in the last decade we have either assumed that our FA pitcher would remain effective for his entire contract, or we have just been willing to accept the probability that we will have to eat the last year in order to plug a hole in the rotation right now. Neither possibility reflects highly on Melvin or Mark A or their long term planning.

FWIW I think we'll turn around somewhat this year and win about 65-70. With the moves that I hope we'll make this year and our net player losses next year, I'd guess low 60s next year if I had to make a prediction right now.

Maldonado is a very part time player with Lucroy healthy again. Even if he improves his OPS into the .650 range, it won't make much difference at all on our bottom line.

Assuming we make the moves that need to be made, 2016 will likely be a worse season than this one. If they try to accelerate the rebuild, they will only end up making it worse. I would not plan on putting a contending team back out on the field until at least 2018, and that is best case scenario. Don't shoot for 2017. Take your lumps and take your time with this, because it needs to be done right. I'd rather wait another year then tread water through mediocrity for another 5 because we tried to rebuild too quickly.. The biggest mistake we could make when drafting and trading away assets this year is valuing MLB-ready over upside.

#1 - Gomez is, far and away, better than the next best options we have to replace him both at the MLB level and in the minors. You want to see Logan Schafer play more instead of Gomez? #2 - Given the state of our franchise and the remainder left on Gomez' contract, he is, perhaps moreso than anyone else on the team, an ideal trade piece. I can't think of a worse idea to kill his trade value more than making a public spectacle of his baserunning mistakes and benching him.

Does it really matter? Its not like they would have turned it around and be a .500 team right now if they had kept RR. Part of the nature of the business. You can't just continue with a disaster without holding people accountable. I'm not a fan of making moves because "something needs to be done." Like a few years ago when they fired the bullpen coach because the relief corps sucked. That's bush league and it's a sign of a poorly run organization. I don't think RR was the problem. And if people need to be held accountable, when is Doug Melvin going to held accountable? Hopefully soon. I agree Melvin needs to be held accountable as well, but that's going to require some serious self-reflection on the part of Mark A as I think a lot of Melvin's moves are a reflection of Mark's ideas and philisophies. RR wasn't the 'problem ', but he was part of it. How often is the manager the sole problem? Was Yost really the problem in '08? Generally, if the team doesn't perform, at some point, the manager is held responsible. Fair or not, that's the way it goes in every organization. If that's bush league, every franchise is guilty of it at some point. Even if it changes nothing immediately, you do have to be held accountable to your fanbase. I realize you can't make moves in the interest of appeasing the masses, but you can't just sit back and do nothing forever, or you're going to give the impression of apathy and that's going to turn people away. RR was given 4+ years all the while responsible for the worst month in franchise history, the worst collapse in franchise history, and the worst start in franchise history. He was very fortunate to have his option picked up for next year and therefore secure himself a nice severeance after the massive collapse last year. They were plenty patient with him. It was probably his time to go after 2014 and not in May of this year.

Does it really matter? Its not like they would have turned it around and be a .500 team right now if they had kept RR. Part of the nature of the business. You can't just continue with a disaster without holding people accountable.

'Walked away' to me just means mentally checked out of the season this year. I think that describes a lot of us. It doesn't mean we don't still love the Brewers, but I can't blame anyone who would rather invest their time and money this summer in things other than this team.

Are we really this bad? I mean, I didn't expect playoffs this year, but I didn't expect to be re-living the early 2000s.

I really disagree with this. There was some truth to it in his first year (07 or 08?) when he was still growing accustomed to his role, but one of the things I like about him now is the exact right excitement he shows for the situation. He certainly gets excited when the game situation calls for it. I wouldn't care to hear him screaming in the next room when we hit a solo HR down 10-2. One of the things that made watching the Bucks beat the Bulls in Game 4 this year was hearing BA call it at the end, at least for me. If unrestrained excitement and energy is what you want, Sutton was definitely your man.

Yost was here for 6 years, Macha for 2, and Roenicke for 4+. That is not a constantly revolving door. It's not like Yost and Roenicke in particular weren't given long leashes.

Sweet job by Garza walking Bumgarner who of course comes around to score.