MNBrew

These things are transitory. Most of the #5 wearers have been solid team players or short-timers. Surhoff was excellent in that way and at least as productive a Brewer as Jenkins, albeit in different ways than Jenkins (Surhoff didn't usually bat #3-4-5 as a Brewer as Jenkins typically did, for instance). Generally Surhoff's career track trended more upward than Jenkins' has. Overall Surhoff was no less of a classic Brewer, only with less power than Jenkins. I remember when Gantner stepped down from his 1B Coach position years ago that he would still be a part-time coach, either in spring training or when the team's at home or something. So while Gantner's role isn't formal, the #17 is still sorta his, regardless how limited the usage is.

Buster Olney's just jumping the gun. With how fast Haudricourt is with his blog, between that & the Brewers' website, if it's not showing up as official in either place, then the deal's not done yet as far as I see it.

Aha. ESPN & USAToday have it wrong. They say he was just optioned. Checked the Brewers' site for verification. Can't get JSOnline to load for some weird reason. Choate may be of some value at some point. But he's missed half the season & we don't need the 40-man space for him right now. It's not like it's worth it for anyone else to claim him. I don't know that there would be any other immediate additions in the wind, but it can't hurt to have the open space.

Remembering Melvin's oft-quoted theory a few offseasons ago (prior to either the Sexson or Overbay trades), you get more for hitters in the offseason and more for pitching during the season. It should take a lot more than just Hughes to pry Sheets away. Sheets is a true #1, and #1-type starters don't just grow on trees. To me, it's worth paying to keep Sheets if he keeps this up. The Brewers have some flexibility and Sheets is quite fond of the team, not that that ensures anything. The dilemma, as always, remains his health.

I'm not suggesting it's a bad idea because truthfully I don't know enough about Loaiza and I don't want to take the 2 minutes it'd take to come up with the answers. That said... While there's something to be said for diligent scouting, the benefits of a change of scenery, and catching lightning in a bottle, whether individually or collectively, at some point the in-season dumpster diving starts to look pretty bad and the overall odds just wouldn't seem to be that great on first blush. Just a gut reaction laced with a philosophical slant. Maybe Loaiza would be worth it. Hard to be much worse than Dave Bush lately.

Thanks

For those of us without TV or radio coverage of the game, is Branyan indeed wearing #14?

Sorry for the last ramble. I finally connected all these dots. Many rag on the Sheffield trade. But it's still paying indirect dividends for the Crew over 15 years later: Sheffield got us Valentin, Bones, & Mieske (1992) Bones helped us get Wickman & Gerald Williams (1996) Wickman helped us get Richie Sexson (& Kane Davis, Paul Rigdon & yes, Marco Scutaro) (2000) Sexson helped us land Counsell 1.0, Moeller, Overbay, Spivey, de la Rosa, & Capuano (2003) From there, - Overbay helped us land Gross (who just turned into Butler), ZJack, & Bush (2005) - de la Rosa eventually got us Tony Graffanino (2006)

jaybird2001wi, the Sutton trade wasn't a waiver-wire deal. The trade deadline used to be August 31. This trade occurred the day before the non-waiver deadline. Overall, very nice list. The Vaughn trade I thought wasn't all bad at the time given that the Brewers wouldn't pay what he was asking. The Deer trade was nugget mining by Dalton and Deer got his chance to shine, just not one of my 10 best. He eventually earned his ticket out of town with a strike out at a rate that would make Jose Hernandez envious. A couple trades I really liked: 1996: Bob Wickman & Gerald Williams from the Yankees for Graeme Lloyd & Pat Listach. Lloyd was the only guy in 3 close '96 deadline deals that represented a real loss. Listach turned out to be injured and never did much in the majors after that. Steinbrenner got ticked about receiving damaged goods & demanded a refund, so the Brewers got the Yankees to accept Ricky Bones, who was nothing short of terrible by thereafter. Wickman was really solid and became the closer. Williams played Gold Glove caliber CF and was professional as could be at the plate until he lost his hitting stroke altogether the next year. Wickman also helped us get Sexson, whose trade is STILL paying dividends for the Brewers (and will do more so if Capuano ever comes back). That trade was highway robbery in the Brewers' favor. 1996: Kevin Seitzer was a solid hitter & class act for the Brewers who intended to retire at the end of the '96 season. Cleveland wanted his veteran bat & solid glove for their stretch drive. The Brewers could choose between Burnitz & Brian Giles. As it turns out, either would've proven a good choice. Seitzer dug the playoffs so much that he decided to come back in '97 but didn't finish in top form, which he would've done if he'd retired after '96. Burnitz did good things as a Brewer during a rough stretch of team history. 1997: Gerald Williams to Atlanta for Chad Fox. Fox turned out to be a stud in two different stretches for the Brewers before his TJ elbow caught up with him multiple times. Williams revived his career in Atlanta for a while but this one clearly tilts in Milwaukee's favor. Between those 3 deals plus the Vaughn trade, at least at that time Sal Bando looked darn smart getting TONS in return for 5 guys, only 1 of whom amounted to someone the Brewers would regret losing or could've avoided losing anytime soon. That Yankees trade was PURE GENIUS -- and maybe the only time that descriptor could ever be used about Bando. Better yet, it was the vaunted Yankees whom Bando fleeced!!! 1992: Darren Holmes from the Dodgers for C Bert Heffernan, who never panned out, got the Brewers a surprisingly strong reliever for a couple years who hung around the bigs or the fringes of the bigs for another decade after being a Rockies expansion draft pick. 1994: Dave Valle hit surprisingly well for the Crew (before getting hurt) after they acquired him from the Red Sox for Tom Brunansky, who basically played totally horribly as a Brewer. Another thing I like about the Vaughn trade: Bryce Florie helped us get Mike Myers from Detroit, and he did pretty darn well. Mike Myers got traded for Curtis Leskanic, who ended up being a good set-up guy & closer. Leskanic got us Wes Obermueller, who was a so-so-to-shaky pitcher but was a secret hitting weapon, esp. in tandem with Brooks Kieschnick. Obermueller turned into Dan Kolb 2.0, which never panned out great but was kinda like the Oglivie/Slaton deal when Slaton came back the next year as a FA (the Aguilera-to-Boston deal also comes to mind as another example) -- we got a top (at the time) Atlanta pitching prospect and got the guy we traded for him back. The chain ends there, but that Vaughn trade became a definite case of a deal that kept perpetuating positive returns. Another decent Brewers example of that is the Loretta trade: Got us Keith Ginter & Wayne Franklin. Ginter got us Nelson Cruz, who never panned out in Texas but was a good chip in the Lee deal to help us make that deal. Franklin eventually turned into Carlos Villanueva, which is highway robbery only mildly tainted overall by the past month's performance. That Sexson deal is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Still have Zach Jackson & Bush to show for the Overbay thread of that deal, plus this guy Butler who we got from Tampa for Gross.

Nate, you're right on. Vaughn wanted $5M/yr and was having the type of year where someone would easily give it to him. The Brewers were never going to be that team. He had 1-2 really good years after '96 but had more ho-hum years than good. Someone else made GREAT points about the Sheffield trade. Bones was quite a promising prospect. Valentin was a 50-error player with a good stick who evolved into something other than an All-Star SS, but he had lots of moments to go with lots of Ks. Mieske won his league MVP twice in a row in the minors & the Brewers hoped they had at the time in Mieske what Corey Hart turned into for them now after a similar minor-league resume. Most people at the time figured this was a pretty good haul for a super-talented, totally underperforming cancerous malcontent. There was no way they could keep Sheffield when, after ripping everyone else, he finally started trashing Selig, the one guy who always watched out for him, gave him his space, and defended him.

I'll try again... Given that trips to visit the minor league affiliates are a normal procedure, I have a hard time reading anything in the way of an ulterior motive into the visit. To be a successful GM, Melvin has to know good details about every team, player, & staff in the farm system, and first-hand viewing can reflect a whole lot more than words on paper at times. This visit seems to fall right in line with the usual purposes.

The DeFelice callup happened because all of a sudden Mitch Stetter can do nothing short of a great Derrick Turnbow impression and HAD TO BE sent down. The Jackson callup happenend because Riske got hurt and they needed a pitcher to take his place. These are just a couple examples of standard operating procedure -- just like Melvin periodically visiting all the farm clubs. There's nothing funny going on here. Normal stuff. I really think we shouldn't read too much into any of this. I hate how this team is playing, too: not to lose, rather than being bulldogs about winning. Braun hit the nail on the head. Most everyone's waiting for someone else to come through or lead, or hoping they don't screw up. This team needs killer instinct. That's surely why Boston has such a ridiculous home record. But at most positions, I can't really say that the Red Sox are significantly more talented than who the Crew has. Their guys are paid more, mainly 'cause they're older. Anyway... I question some of Yost's approach & effectiveness like everyone else. If it's July and he hasn't started pulling his team out of this mess, then the focus probably comes more squarely on the manager's office. I do agree with whomever said that there's not likely to be an '82-type magic bullet to be found in firing a manager to get to the Series.

TWR, I'm usually right with you on your posts (especially those pertaining to the subject of your username), but you missed a detail here. . . . Kendall never signed with the Cubs. He was traded from Oakland to Chicago for Michael Barrett.

That whole article is scary, but it's also extremely selective (granted, with a nice supply of gems to choose from). For example: They talk about Turnbow still closing games in July 2006 after citing his full-year stats. Turnbow stunk in '06, but he really only stunk starting in late June. There was that stretch of horrible games for nearly a month that foreshadowed this year and killed any hope of good stats for the year. But he started out very respectably in April, May, & June, making the All-Star team VERY justifiably. The one difference between Melvin and his predecessors is that Melvin is pretty proven at mining for nuggets. Dalton's later years, plus Bando and maybe also Taylor, those 3 guys did far more bottom-dredging than nugget mining. Any nuggets seemed to turn up more by sheer numbers and by accident than anything else. It really used to frost me that they'd keep signing guys for one year who'd have good years, then say they couldn't pay them, then sign someone else for the same money it would've taken to sign the guy they already had. The Brian Harper-Joe Oliver-etc. sequence was a textbook example of that. Scott Fletcher, Willie Randolph, the list goes on... That was in the early '90s pretty much up 'til the strike.

Kieschnick could hit homers from the pitcher's spot, too. McClung will only give 'em up, not hit one.

Control as a main physical/pitching issue? No doubt, Gopher74, but not the only one. The guy's only pitched several years in the minors with good success. By this point it should be obvious what he needed to do to be successful in tough situations. The fact that after years of training he'd lose his focus, composure, whatever, and not do what made him successful all along, what got him out of trouble, what stopped the bleeding, so to speak, doesn't speak well at all to his mental makeup. It wasn't just that he couldn't throw strikes. He couldn't get guys out. That's hardly just a control issue. My comment about "50 cent head" was intended merely as a figure of speech meaning "hasn't shown the mental makeup to be a major league pitcher." I'm not qualified to attest to anyone's IQ, nor would I violate data privacy if I were in a position to know anything about it anyway.

Gopher74, I'm entitled to my opinion as much as anyone else is to theirs. I assume that DLR is a good guy and a decent human being. What I saw when he was a Brewer was that he did not really come close to cutting it as a major league pitcher in spite of his high level of talent. He's not done anything since to change my opinion. The Royals are not stocked with exceptional pitching, yet they let him go for nothing. That says a lot. And the issue is neither talent nor "stuff." That seems pretty clear, then, where the issue lies. Again, you don't have to agree with me. That's just how I see it.

I was a big fan of Jorge's potential when he was here, too. As a pitcher, he never really got it together. The problem with his mentality, Gopher74, was very well-documented in DLR's comments and the comments of Yost & Maddux around the games when DLR pitched when he was here. Needing to "pull it together." Making any crucial "out" pitch. Abandoning his well-prepared game plan. These are all the sorts of things documented quite often throughout the Brewers part of his career, and as much so at the end as at the beginning. I'm at work and don't have time to dredge the JSOnline archives for these articles. But anyone who paid attention closely and read the daily articles carefully would recall two things about DLR: 1. Yost, Maddux, & Co. totally loved his arm & potential. 2. Those same guys eventually lost all faith in him because he kept making the same mistakes, didn't implement or come close to adequately executing the teaching of his coaches, and so often losing focus when all he ever had to do in the first place was just focus enough to let the talent take over -- all in such a way that the negatives grossly outweighed the positives and the Crew felt they were far better off without him. Fortunately, KC saw the talent and thought it was worth Tony Graffanino, which generally worked out well enough until his knee blew out. The bottom line is that when he should've been getting better, he only plateaued or got worse. He just couldn't get guys out. It wasn't physical. It was mental. The guy doesn't have it. His results in KC only corroborate the same evidence.

I said it all the time when he was here, and I say it again now. What DLR proved over and over again is why the Brewers shouldn't want him or try to wait for him now: Million-dollar arm, 50-cent head. A guy with that kind of stuff could/should dominate. DLR doesn't hasn't ever truly gotten *how to pitch* and his mental makeup is for the birds.

Colonel Potter said that once on M*A*S*H, too, but I couldn't tell you which came first. I wonder who Toronto might value more, Capuano, Bush for a return engagement, or Vargas.

I still can't help but wonder if some team doesn't get a little desperate at the end of ST (whether due to injuries or lack of sufficient talent) and take Gross/Vargas/cash package for a low-level prospect or two (a Garrison type). The Brewers are relieved of a couple roster crunches and still save a little money. - They could use the $$ to get Lofton if so desired (and available). Or not, just letting Gwynn & Kapler & maybe even Dillon pick up some more ABs, esp. whilst Cameron is out. - Not that Gross or Vargas HAVE to get dumped, but there are some obvious space crunches on the roster and this could be one possible solution. Just thinking out loud again.

JB12, I'm normally right with you, but I don't get this notion about Choate being a major-league pitcher just because he was (actually the very first) free agent signee. He signed a 2-way contract. He couldn't earn a call-up from the Twins last year, who kept calling horrible players up from their AAA team at Rochester. Choate only makes this team if 8 other pitchers ahead of him are hurt, and that's hardly enough to guarantee it.

The other thing is this: I think I remember hearing around Winter Warmup time that they definitely are continuing the Retro Fridays thing. While maybe they're not trumping it up so big, I think they'd be making a bigger deal about it if they hadn't decided to continue them. I've felt this way since long before those duds were unleashed again a few years ago......I've loved the Brewers since 1980 and have fond memories of that era. I love the MB logo. But I like the current duds much better and would only hope to see the MB logo appear in the current color scheme on an alternate home hat (a la the Twins) or as a permanent sleeve patch opposite the M/barley/Wisconsin patch. I'd already had way too much of the "living in the past" that became almost obnoxiously pervasive when they unveiled the '82 retro duds to the point where I vowed I would not ever buy that jersey -- and I love buying jerseys! I wish I could see some of Colbyjack's cool renderings from the pre-Retro Sunday announcement 2 years ago. Some of those were especially cool.

I actually saw the Brewers play the Twins up here on a Turn Back the Clock night when the Crew wore the Pilots uniforms. First game I took my wife to, which puts that back around 2000. Why do I think I remember Alex Diaz in CF? I think the Brewers won, too, but someone will probably point out all my references (year, Diaz, win) to be off the mark. Anyway, I was there....

"white"? um. Unless Quevedo came from a native american tribe, I think some sensitivity training is in order. Sensitivity training? Wow. Race certainly can be referenced in a neutral or non-controversial way. Ruben Quevedo is Venezuelan and has darker skin than Bonser. Bonser is caucasian, for which "white" is frequently substituted (ironic, especially since it's often considered non-PC to use "black" but the use of "white" is rarely questioned). Anyway, race was not used in any derogatory way. The negativity in the reference is to Quevedo's playing weight and conditioning, not his skin color. The skin color is used to make a parallel. Fondy could've said Bonser looked like a right-handed Terry Forster or David Wells, but neither or those are as Brewers-relevant as Quevedo. The Twins often had trainer-types running WITH Bonser in the 2nd half last year because of how out-of-shape he had become, and he wasn't in good shape in the first place when he reported to spring training! Responding to your earlier post, too, Dr.Wood, I watched Bonser pitch a lot last year and the fact is that he was not very good at all. He only pitched a half-season in the bigs the year before, and even then he was only really strong for about two months of that time. Two months of solid pitching, most of a year and two months being below average to just plain lousy. (Sounds like a pitching version of Marc Newfield.) Bonser does have a spot that's mostly his to lose, but only because the Twins have relatively little veteran starting pitching depth. Some of Bonser's numbers aren't all bad, and he could be a very solid ML starter. But Boof just wasn't very good at all last year.