adambr2

Well, this is fun.

I believe the Orioles pay a pro-rated portion of league minimum when they sign him to a deal, which would be a pretty paltry amount, less than $100,000. So my understanding is that the Brewers save that amount but owe everything else, including the buyout. You don't see guys just straight-up released in MLB very often because the entire contract is guaranteed, there is no savings like there is when a guy in the NFL gets released. Basically, when you release a guy in MLB, you're saying (much more nicely than this), you're such a liability that we would rather pay you the same amount to sit at home than play for our team. Painful when it comes to that. Between Suppan and Wolf I think we had about $15M in "dead" money.

Well the Brewers have a judgment to make for 2013, small sample size or not. And the thread is called "Impressions of Jean Segura" not "Do you think Jean Segura is going to be a great player in the future or will he be a sucky disappointment?" I think all he was saying is that it's hard to get an impression of Jean Segura based on one month of MLB at-bats. The Brewers, as you mentioned, will have to make a judgment for 2013. I would be fine with bringing Gonzalez back for another year if his ACL is fully healed, and starting Segura in AAA. I wouldn't feel like Bianchi is enough of an upgrade over Segura next year to go with him. If we're not going to pursue a SS in free agency, I'd rather just go with Segura and live with the growing pains.

Adam, just cause you gave up on this season in April (or was it March?), doesn't mean we all did. In late July I was advocating keeping Greinke, trying to play to our potential, and hoping for a hot streak in August like last year when we only made the playoffs because we won something like 27 of 32. We're now at 11 of 13 and hoping to keep it going. Is 21-8 possible? It is the way we are playing and would give us 86 wins. Having said that, I fully understand (and appreciate) the Greinke trade. But if we went back to Weeks' injury last year, how many expected us to leapfrog several teams, practically go undefeated in August, and run away with the division? I'm holding out hope for the season. Two weeks ago I put $5 on the Brewers to win the World Series, and I'm holding out hope that I can cash that in for $2505. Please, you can stop with the holier than thou attitude already. You started a thread on July 1st suggesting trades for K-Rod, Gomez, Kottaras, Wolf, and Morgan. Of course I was not advocating keeping Greinke in July, and if you were, you were in the vast, vast minority. Yes I had given up on 2012 at that point, and I'm pretty certain that 90% of fans were in that boat, we were buried in the standings. I was one of the first to point out with the late run that there was still hope yet. We're all here because we're Brewer fans, and just because you might have wanted to hold onto Greinke in July, does not make you any better of a fan. I'm getting a little tired of your condescending remarks every time you address a post of mine. Unless you would like to direct me to a post where I was giving up on the season "in April" or anywhere thereabouts, I'm going to ask you kindly again, as I've done in the past, to knock it off.

They cannot have anything less than 3 of 4 in Miami, one of the worst teams in the league. They can't continue to count on St Louis continuing to play badly -- that's not the only team they have to pass. I'm sure if they went into St. Louis down only 5 games, they'd be pretty fired up. But keep in mind, even on the chance that they swept St Louis, someone else would probably take over the lead position by then. Dodgers are within half a game now, Pirates 1.5. They have 29 games left and will probably need at least 22 or more wins to get in. There won't be any backing in. I get really mad about the loss to the Cubs a few days ago, talking about this stuff. But even if nothing comes out of all this, it won't be a total loss, at least it will help them ride out with high attendance. I can't see a ton of fans in the stands at this time if year if they're 20 under .500 by now.

Whether or not they somehow get back in this, no one should fault Melvin for trading Greinke. 90% of us felt at the time like it had to be done with where we were at and nothing that has happened since then changes that. No one can honestly say in hindsight that they felt that the season was still going to turn around, nor do we know if keeping Greinke would have made any difference for us or not.

This guy is now very quietly sitting on a 3.85 ERA as a starter for us. Like Fiers, it's not a ridiculously small sample size anymore -- actually, if you include last year, Marco has over 200 innings for us now, almost all as a starter, with a cumulative ERA of 3.95. That's middle of the rotation quality at worst. So, is he getting by on smoke and mirrors, or is he really a possible middle of the rotation guy going forward for us? If so, that would be huge. Nothing like finding multiple cheap solutions for your rotation internally to keep you from having to go out and overpaying for a middle of the rotation FA.

I'm pretty sure there is precedent for teams overcoming a 7.5 game deficit in one month, but we're pretty much gutting the rotation this month. Going to be hard to stay competitive if we're shutting down Fiers, Rogers, and maybe Estrada. On the other hand, who would've thought that Mike Fiers, Mark Rogers, and Marco Estrada would be in our rotation in August and carrying respective ERA's of 2.85, 3.92, and 3.85? Probably the best thing that has come out of this season is that we now know we definitely have hope for our future rotation, something which was a major cause for concern heading into this year with certain thoughts of how we would go on without Greinke, Marcum, and Wolf after this year.

It's hard to believe, but if K-Rod had not blown that 11-9 lead in the 9th the other day, we would be 6.5 out of the last wild card right now. Of course, this season is chock-full of "what-ifs".

I highly doubt that was RR's call. The same thing was said last year about Morgan bunting on his own rather than RR making those calls, and I don't understand the argument. He is the manager -- his bench coach and players are accountable to him, are they not? I can't think of a situation where bunting with 2 strikes with a position player is ever acceptable, and even if that wasn't called directly by him, I do think it's a result of the culture that he's established.

So Ron, we're even having our position players bunt with 2 strikes now? Awesome.

This just in -- our bullpen still sucks. Roenicke is infuriating. Of all the times with the game on the line in the 9th that a single intentional walk would help us and the runner on 3rd is the only one that matters and he doesn't do it, he's more than happy to do it in THIS situation.

You suck, Marcum.

Great start to audition day, Marcum.

would love this to happen! we need a one playoff game to determine who plays in the one playoff game to go onto the first round of the playoffs It would be a pretty crazy scenario. Technically there would be teams that would need to win 3 straight games just to advance to the actual "playoffs". With a 3 way tie for the second Wild Card, they would designate the teams "A", "B", and "C". B plays at A, and then the winner hosts C. So teams A and B would need to win the initial game, and then the final tiebreaking game, and THEN the game against the 1st wild card before they even reached a playoff series.

I would actually love a 3 way tie for the 2nd Wild Card, seeing as how Bud Selig and MLB did absolutely nothing to prepare for such a scenario.

If it's of any hope to anyone, we did have a 27-5 stretch last season.

They are the 16th largest market but because some cities have more than 1 team, they're 20th out of 30 overall. The average metro size for an MLB team is around 5M and the Twin Cities is somewhere between 3-4M. It also depends on how you define market size. Is it just population? Area? Does average attendance/television viewing area come into consideration? Milwaukee isn't a large market, but the Brewers are really just as much Wisconsin's team, and certainly a large base of the viewing audience comes from outside Milwaukee. This is probably a subjective argument anyway, I just certainly don't consider the Twins to be anything more than mid/small market.

Minneapolis-St.Paul is not a small market. ownership stinginess <> small market. It is the 20th size market out of 30 teams. Its not KC but its much closer to being a small market than a large one.

or not. Well, yes and no. Mauer is a $15M a year type player making $23M a year for the next 6 years into his mid-30's, for a small market club. I would have to think if someone wanted to pick that contract up, the Twins would pack his bags for him.

I'm going to take this a step further, and this may be crazy talk but I'm going to throw it out as a hypothetical anyway. We are currently 8.5 games behind the Cardinals. We have 3 games against them left, so best case scenario we could make it 5.5. We would need at least 2 of 3 against the Cardinals, preferably a sweep. Of course, we still have to beat out the Dodgers (or Giants) and Pirates. We still have 6 games left against the Pirates though, so we can pretty much control our outcome against them. The Dodgers and Giants are still battling it out for the division, though, so I'm going to count on the loser of the Giants/Dodgers winning 85 games (lets face it, we'd need some luck in this scenario, too). So to match that, we would have to finish 23-10. Unlikely, but not out of this world impossible. Things would have to start going right -- law of averages catches up to the bullpen, and Fiers, Gallardo, and Marcum all pitch like aces, with the lineup still scoring runs. Looking at the schedule, is there a possible road to 23? Let's look at it in chunks...next 4 include one more against the Cubs and a 3 game home series against the Pirates. Need 3 of 4. 4 in Miami, need 3 of 4. Next is the tough one -- need 2 of 3 in St. Louis. Then a 6 game home series against the Braves and Mets. Tough, but it's at home -- need to go 4-2. Next is the brutal 10 game road trip against the Pirates, Nationals, and Reds. A 6-4 stretch, if, again, we're playing well, isn't unrealistic. Finally we finish up with a 6 game homestand against the Astros and Padres -- need to take advantage of this and finish 5-1. This would put us at 85-77. We can pretty much control our outcome against Pittsburgh ourselves. Besides that, we would need 2 of these 4 to falter enough to only win 85 -- either the Braves (unlikely), or Cardinals (unlikely, but not impossible), and one of the Giants or Dodgers (possible). Hey, I know it's probably a pipe dream, but I bet the Cardinals fans were by no means thinking playoffs in late August last year. Besides, it's nice to at least hold out hope while it still exists. I do realize that all of this is really, really, unlikely.

I'm not as hot on Hart defensively at 1B as I used to be. It seems like he screws up every double play opportunity he sees. And really, Ron....Fiers has been dealing tonight. I feel really awesome about your decision to pull him at 85 pitches for Manny Parra. I hope it works out, though.

I wouldn't be bothered if he is back next year, either, mainly because he's a 0-3 which means we can bring him back for the minimum salary and don't have to mess around with going out and finding another Cesar Izturis. Ransom is half the price of what "Izzy" was, and can do the same thing -- play every infield position respectably. That's good enough for me for a utility infielder. The excessive strikeouts don't bother me any more than it bothered me seeing Izturis hit a soft tapper to second every AB. When Izturis came up in situations where a runner was on first, he grounded into double plays more times than he got a hit. Strikeouts are outs. Maybe they feel a little worse emotionally to us, but I'm not sure that they really statistically are. Plus, 46% is an abnormality. His career MLB rate is less than 20% of plate appearances, so even if you figure on 20-25% going forward, that's still high, but it's tolerable.

Randy Wolf finished with a 29-32 record with a 4.37 ERA as a Brewer. While that isn't a Suppanesque disaster, that's the kind of production that you would like to get from your 0-6 guys like Estrada at minimal cost. I would rather invest $20M a year in an ace rather than 2 starters with that kind of production. Gallardo contract looks pretty good now. While I agree that the Wolf contract was pretty much "market value" overall for what he produced, that doesn't make it a good value for us. If nothing else it just goes to show you the overall cost and franchise burden of being unable to develop your own starting pitching, a problem we hopefully won't have going forward.

Randy can take solace in the fact that the Brewers have undoubtedly ruined many other birthdays this summer before his.