adambr2

Another loss where we seemingly had the game in hand, then gave it away. And yet somehow, we're a team with a reputation for never being out of a game until the final out, battling til the end, etc. etc. That really couldn't be farther from the truth. We are horrible at coming back late no matter what the score is. I'm not saying the guys don't try, but if we're down 2 runs with an inning or two to play, you can pretty much stick a fork in us. Much to the contrary, it's our leads that are never safe late. Having supposedly one of the "best" closers, and a great setup man, you wouldn't think that'd be the case, Seriously, I've addressed this before, but do you know how awful the Brewers have been when trailing after 7 and 8 innings this year? I think we have 1 win this year when trailing after 8, and 2 or 3 when trailing after 7. Just off the top of my head, I can think of plenty for the opposition, today, the Cubs game in Arams walkoff, the other day against the Reds, the Rangers game, the day when the Braves came back to destroy our pen in the 8th, and that's just off the top of my head. Not going to make the playoffs like that. This team continues to find a way to lose every close game on the road. Sure, getting a 12-2 win on the road is exciting, but you completely squash that if you go ahead and let a team come back and beat you by 1 the next day. 10 run win, 1 run win, it's all worth the same. Oh,and don't bring Cordero back. It's easy to get the misconception that he's been one of the best this year because of how amazing he started, but he really hasn't been. He's downright awful on the road. He's been pretty bad ever since the Rangers game. He's a very average closer right now having blown 5 of 37. And now his ERA is up around 3.50. He's not an elite closer, regardless of what Yost says. He's not worth the large price tag that it would take to bring him back. Just let him go to FA and let someone else deal with the hassles next year.

I don't hate Ramirez (Aramis) as a person. I hate him as a baseball player, though. There isn't a guy I'd rather see up there less in baseball against us with the game on the line. Sheffield -- This guy is about the biggest pile I've ever seen in the public eye, and no, not just in baseball. That's about all that needs to be said. Sosa - Let's see. Plays himself off one of the real "good guys" in baseball throughout his big competition season with Big Mac. Then he blows up on a reporter who suggests that if he publicly took a steroid test, it would be great for baseball. Then one day, his bat shatters and cork sprays out onto the field. His muscles were juiced, and God knows how many AB's he took his juiced bat up to the plate, all the while he was hypocritically potraying himself as one of the real good guys in the game. And yet some people still think of him as one of baseball's great role models. Really baffles me.

I have a friend who lives in St. Louis and she wants me to come up there for the weekend games. So I'm trying to debate whether making the 7 hour drive is worthwhile. Would love to go, though, I've only ever been to 3 baseball stadiums, Miller, County, and Metrodome. One is gone, and the other one is a dump. So I guess you could say I appreciate Miller quite a bit.

I don't think there is really any way to even suggest that it is bad luck anymore. Maybe that's a small factor, but as much as the differential is after this month, (now +19 at home, -9 on the road, for a 28 differential). I won't even bother looking it up, because I know there isn't another team in baseball that can touch that kind of home vs. away differential. We are just plain bad on the road. We're not playing daunting competition. We lost 3 of 4 from the Reds, 3 of 4 from the Pirates, and 2 of 3 from the Nationals in our latest ventures. This is getting to be too much, to the point where we shouldn't be favored to win a series on the road against ANY team. 12-24 road record in our last 36, a .333 winning percentage. That's bad for a mediocre team. A contender just can't play like that on the road. I don't know what it is. Maybe we are that much more comfortable at home. Maybe we get really nervous on the road. Maybe some of our players just can't handle the pressure of playing in front of 30,000 people that want you to lose. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's some luck, too. But what I do now, is that it cannot, absolutely cannot continue if we are going to have a chance. It's not going to get easier on the road than the Reds, Nationals, and Pirates. It's just going to get harder. We said around the start of the season, that we could find a way into the playoffs if we could go around .500 on the road. We can still get in with a little bit worse than that, but not at this rate. We've got two months to figure out how to improve our road play at least up to respectability. If we don't, it's going to cost us our first trip to the postseason in 25 years. It's as simple as that.

Well, Cordero blew the save, we lost 3 of 4 to the Reds, and our road record dropped to an abysmal 20-29. Hours later, the Cubs didn't gain any ground on us. That's all I got.

The season is over. We have no chance. The Cubs are too good for us. Yeah, our 20-29 mark on the road sure looks division champion material to me.

Ballgame. This team just continues to find a way to piss games away. Let's stop clinging to the "We're in first place in late July!" thing. We're 32-36 since May 9th. 9 games under .500 on the road in spite of an extremely talented team. This kind of crap is not acceptable.

I'd agree with that. I mean, was anyone really surprised that we didn't come through there with less than 2 outs? We have some very good hitters on our team, but do we really have any CLUTCH hitters? I mean, someone you see up there with a runner on 3rd and just know he's going to come through?

True. We don't need the best lineup possible out there everyday, 5-7 days out of the year should be sufficient.

If we don't come back in this, our record since May 9th drops to 32-36. That's pathetic. I don't know how I, or anyone can really defend Ned or say he's done a good job with that kind of record over essentially the last half-season. We haven't had to deal with any more injury issues than any other contender. Melvin has graced Yost with an absolute great deal of talent in the rotation, bullpen, and lineup. If Yost has with a pitching staff that includes Gallardo and Sheets for most of the season, a pen with Cordero, Turnbow, Wise, and Villanueva, and a lineup with Hardy, Hart, Braun, and Fielder, with a good hitting catcher in Estrada, and he still can't take us to at least a wild card berth, he needs to go, because he's not going to take us there at all. This team should not fail to get to the playoffs this year. Not with the talent they have.

Hart has dropped all the way down to .280. Weeks down to .216. Hardy fallen all the way to .263 Graffy at .241. So, I guess Butch Wynegar might not be the reason that our offense sucked so bad last year?

No Prince today. Is it a rule that our lineup must suck in at least one way, every day?

We blew our chance in the 6th. We don't come back in games after the 7th.

I think we need to at least entertain the notion that Ned got completely bombed last night, and in his drunken stupor, decided it would be a good time to put the lineup card together. He woke up with a pounding headache in the morning, rushed out of the hotel, grabbed the lineup card, and got to the stadium. Then as he handed it to the umpire, the awful realization came over him that he didn't have a clue who was on it or where they were hitting.

Guys, we don't need the thread locked, if we don't like the discussion, no need to post here. If this is a troll, he will be snuff out eventually. If not, maybe he's just a young fan who really does believe it would be best to trade Braun with such a high value. I think it's an absolute insane idea, but if it's a legitimate belief, no need to censor it. Playing along with that, I'm not sure there is a player in baseball I'd let Braun go for. Maybe Verlander. Part of the major appeal of Braun, and what makes him so valuable, is the fact that he's cheap for the next 3 years. We get a player of extremely high caliber for a fraction of his market value. That's why Prince and Hardy are so valuable. Hart, too. Do you know how much these guys make? Several hundred thousand. Assuming Braun and Prince continue high production, they're probably worth over $10M in free agency. Getting major production out of the first 3 years of a players career is one of the key ways that a small market team can have a chance to succeed.

No, I don't see it as likely either. I would love to see it, though. But you're right, cost is definitely an issue. If they were to ask for Gallardo, we'd have to pass. It would pain me greatly to give up CV, Parra, or Inman. Inman I could make my peace with the most, since he's not going to be ready to help us anytime soon anyway. I'd try something like Inman, Vargas, Gwynn, and Mench for Tex and a throw-in low prospect. I'd do that in a heartbeat. The rotation after Sheets' return becomes 1) Sheets, 2) Gallardo, 3) Capuano, 4) Suppan, 5) Bush. That looks pretty good. Parra fills in for Sheets until his return. That offer still might not be enough. Tex is a stud. But it's not like they'd be getting ripped off, they'd be getting a future solid starting pitcher, a decent current starter, a Juan Pierre type outfield prospect, and a servicable outfielder. And if they want to deal him to somebody in the next week, they may have to lower their demands.

Okay, I agree completely. So I ask you this -- do you honestly believe that any initial struggles that Tex might have in LF would offset the .310 AVG, .410 OBP, 30 HR a year power that he'd bring to the offense? With his .940 OPS?(Perhaps even better batting around Braun and Prince) I agree, there might be some adjusting, certainly, and it's not ideal to do that in mid-season. But it's not like he's going to go out there and be a complete butcher, not like he's going to be misjudging routine pop-flys, juggling everything on the ground, and looking completely lost. We don't need him at SS. I just don't see him struggling so much in LF that all the offense production he brings is negated. Let me put it like this -- Ryan Braun currently has a .906 fielding percentage, at third base, a position where you're going to see a lot more chances for errors than LF. That's pretty damn awful. Does anybody know he has a .906 FP? Does anybody really care?

Yes he has. He's played 32 games in the outfield in his career. So it's not like he's ever been a mainstay there, but he had a heck of a lot more career starts in the OF than Hall had before this season. Corner OF spots are not as tough of a transition as CF. Tex is a good enough athlete to adjust. It may not be immediate, no, but neither was Hall's transition, and he's working out fine now. And how do you question the defensive skills of a 2 time gold glover? Granted that's at first base but he's absolutely demonstrated the versatility for the outfield. We all would have laughed at the beginning of this year if anyone would have told us that Graffy would be getting starts in LF, especially starting the season with 6 outfielders. But he has, and he's looked relatively comfortable out there. If we acquired Tex before the deadline, we're looking at probably 3 or 4 errors that he makes in LF between then and the end of the season. I can live with that. That's offset 10-fold by what he brings to the lineup, especially around a lineup as potent as ours.

I don't think you can just move a team to another league, the team has to give permission. So the Diamondbacks would have to agree to move to the A.L. I don't believe we were the first choice to move from the A.L. to N.L. when we moved. From what I recall, the Royals were the first choice, and they declined, so the league asked us, and we accepted.

Strawboss, I understand what you are saying, so let me use that to support my point here. You are right, there are probably 12 situations during the season where we think, "Cordero would have been PERFECT for that". A 1st and 2nd, nobody out jam in the 7th. A bases loaded, nobody out situation in the 8th. But we don't want to push Cordero's limits. We want him to retain his maximum possible effectiveness. So I'm advocating a more "outside the box" approach. For instance, let's look at a 3 run lead going into the 9th. It's considered a "save" situation. The majority of the time, a manager will use his closer for it. Now, how many innings does a closer use every year on this situation? This is probably more up Russ' territory, but for argument's sake, I'll assume 15 innings per year. But why? Any MLB pitcher worth a roster spot, given a 3 run lead with 3 outs to get, should be able to preserve that lead at least 14 out of 15 tries. You don't need to go with the same reliever every time in this situation. But you should be able to manage about 14 out of 15 successfully, without using your closer. That will be Cordero's effective rate if he doesn't blow another save in that situation the rest of the year. So, how much does it cost us every year, on average, if we don't use our closer to preserve a 3 run, 9th inning lead? 0-1 wins. That's it. That would free up Cordero for 15 innings a year for situations when the use of your closer is more crucial and appropriate, such as an extra innings sudden death situation, a 7th inning jam, or other crucial situation when he may be essential to pull off a win or keep the game from slipping away. Other than these "key" situations, I'd advocate using your closer for a 1 or 2 run lead in the 9th to preserve victory, when the margin for error is less. I know this isn't conventional thinking, but I really do think it makes a lot of sense. If anyone thinks this is flawed logic, feel free to explain.

If that's how it goes down, I'd rather just trade Gwynn for Otsuka and leave it at that. We then have one of the deepest pens in baseball, 2 elite setup men, and a shutdown closer. Menchkins is around .265 with 19 HR and 66 RBI. I'm cool with that. They're fine as long as they're both not starting on the same day. We don't need Dye. He likely peaked in 2006 and is declining. I don't think he's a .229 hitter like his stats show, but I don't see him getting a lot better.

Tex would make a much bigger impact than Gagne would ever have a chance to. Sounds like the Dodgers are very interested. I hope that doesn't happen. They may be our biggest competition if we make the playoffs, and that would make them better instantly. It really would, unlike when the ESPN announcers gushed about how much better the Cubs had just become when they announced the Jason Kendall trade.

I see that article also calls Parra a righthander. Shame, shame, Rosenthal.

I'll have to assume that this is hypothetical, since Otsuka is a Ranger. Anyway, this would probably depend to me on the severity of Otsuka's injury. When healthy, I consider Otsuka to be a slight upgrade from Turnbow, but not by a lot. I'm not thinking Gwynn has a future starting here in Milwaukee, so I wouldn't have a problem shipping him. Irrabean, either. So I guess it would depending on who the someone in AA was. Inman, no way. If it was some AA scrub, I'd probably at least take the chance, we get a chance to upgrade in the outfield if Dye comes around, and we come out slightly ahead in bullpen production. Floyd is just a throw in. We have better arms in the minors.

Eh, I'm not really all that interested. Dye's having a pretty bad year, he's not even an upgrade from Menchkins right now. I wouldn't bench Hall or Hart for him, either. He had a monster 2006, but I don't think we're likely to see a season like that out of him again, especially with him approaching his mid 30's. Not too keen on giving up Parra or Turnbow for him, especially when the pen has been the area we can most improve. I'll pass.