MNBrew

Who else is Roenicke supposed to be playing that he's not? The entire starting OF is hitting well over .300, so Schafer won't get major PT unless there's an injury. Every other hitter on the roster is either a C or an IF, and beyond Ramirez & Segura, they're all getting PT -- including Bianchi -- and it doesn't matter because they're not doing well enough at all. There are 13 pitchers on the roster since Lalli was sent down. The other players on the roster are Weeks, Yuni B., Gonzalez, Bianchi, Lucroy, & Maldonado. The results they're getting for the most part make you want them not to play . . . Which brings me back to the original question, who else is Roenicke supposed to be playing but to whom he's not giving enough of a chance?

There sure as heck is a plan for 2014 & 2015. There are so many on this site that assume the lack of publicized front office discussions means there is no plan. The problem here is that the Brewers, like most teams that haven't been dwelling in the toilet, don't sit around and publicize their plan for the next two years. Do the Yankees do it? No. Red Sox or Rangers or Giants or Dodgers or Cardinals? No. Unless a team's in the business of having to sell hope -- not like some of us feel now, but like they so obviously had to when there was very little good on the major league roster like 8-10 years ago -- they don't spend time dwelling publicly on any year but the present. Obviously the Brewers are in a tough stretch right now. But they ought to be a team that's appreciably better than what they're doing on the field right now. If this team does even a halfway better job of living up to what it's capable of doing, they'd have a chance at contending. When that's the situation, usually the last thing you need to be doing is tearing the current team down -- thus destroying all hope except for the average hard-core fans on boards like this one -- and propping what you expect to be up to 1-2-3 years hence. The challenge for any GM is to balance the current play, needs, & potential of the current team with both the business side of the equation and the team's baseball & finances in the future -- and manage to wisely position the team for the best possible scenarios through the course of staying ahead of the situation. . . . It just becomes oh-so-easy to think that tearing it all down is the right move and that the team obviously has no plan. But as someone said earlier, no plan has any guarantees, nor do any prospects. Furthermore, there's no guarantee that trading the guys many are targeting would actually yield the quality prospects everyone seems to assume they would -- OR that those prospects would develop. But if they went all-in with that approach, I'd still say there's a far greater chance of ending up like the Royals than the few who actually get over the hump & contend.

The report isn't saying they want Mark Kotsay. They supposedly want someone who can play the positions & fill the roles Kotsay did in 2011. I don't know who they'd be after, but I see the logic in terms of wanting that type of player. Yuni B & Gonzalez aren't OF/corner IF types. They're middle IFs who are having to spend more time playing at the corners right now.

But there are parents who lost sons to suicide who insist that steroid use contributed to those deaths. People go into Roid Rage. Their brains are in an altered state to create that. Nobody ever went into a chemically altered state from throwing a doctored baseball. You're arguing points on the evils of steroids -- views with which I concur -- but then are implying that Roid Rage and chemically altered states are essentially a different level of cheating, and therefore that chemically altered state is more wrong or against the rules or the spirit of the game than doctoring the ball is. There's obviously a lapse of time between eras, but the question of cheating & morality isn't necessarily any different. Apply the same logic to the cocaine, amphetamines, etc. that plenty of current HOFers took . . . Why, then, don't those players & circumstances merit the same levels of moral scrutiny? Illegal drugs such as these have done and continue to do more harm to individuals and our society -- and on a much wider scale -- than steroids, and those drugs which are stimulants have some of the same effects as steroids. My point is that cheating is cheating. It seems highly selective and contradictory that many HOFers look down at suspected or proven steroid users as cheaters . . . but don't make any fuss at all about a long-known cheater WHO WAS CAUGHT CHEATING IN A GAME (Gaylord Perry) standing among them, not to mention any of the previous generations' cocaine, amphetamine, & greenie users.

When things are going decently in spite of 2 of our 3 top run-producers out, I can't see why we'd even remotely consider trading one of our best pitchers. The only true justification for considering such a move would be having MLB-ready & essentially multiple sure-thing replacements on hand, which we don't -- at least not yet. Time seems to show that the Brewers will only ever get as far as their pitching will take 'em. That, to me, makes Hart, Weeks, Gomez, or even Ramirez far more plausible trade candidates -- and I personally don't want to see any of 'em gone (at least not yet) -- than any promising pitchers, especially the most productive ones.

I'm with TLB on this. Sometimes "playing your way out of it" works. But now is yet another time it seems so obvious that Rickie needs a break, however brief -- a sort of mental sorbet (palate cleansing), as it were -- to hopefully jump-start the process of "getting right." It just seems to me that "playing your way through it" can be as useless & unproductive as "trying really hard to relax" -- where all you need to do it relax, but you can't actually relax when you're trying so hard non-stop.

JimH5, you're invoking a moral standard & applying it inequitably. Whether it was the ball or the individual that was altered, cheating to gain a competitive advantage is cheating to gain a competitive advantage, period. If the notion of cheating to gain competitive advantage is the criteria used against McGwire, Sosa, Clemens, etc., then the "how" doesn't matter and it should be universally applied. If it's not, then this media-driven backlash against steroid users -- proven or alleged, or players unjustly presumed guilty simply because of when they played -- is a grievous & shameful double standard. Greenies & amphetamines were illegally obtained and used to gain competitive advantage "back in the day" just as steroids/HGH/etc. have been recently -- altering the individual, not the ball -- and again, not that they improved play directly, but they sure did enable an accelerated recovery time -- THE SAME & ONLY PURPOSE STEROIDS HAVE BEEN PROVEN TO SERVE. If taking those then wasn't cheating in terms of the rules of baseball at the time, then that's the same as EVERYONE who used steriods prior to baseball outlawing them, regardless of how they were acquired. I think cheating is wrong. But what we're seeing nowadays amounts to selective judgements & self-righteous moralizing by the media &, by extension, members of the BBWAA. That the "character" clause is invoked or referenced now so often when it wasn't before (other than instances of gambling on baseball, which is also addressed directly) creates an uneven playing field and ultimately does the whole HOF a disservice. To me, short of doing an exhaustive investigation on every single player in the HOF to come up with info on character, legal & illegal habits (shall we be revoking Eck, Molitor, & Stargell, & anyone else who did coke, an illegal drug & stimulant?), moral choices, etc., with the purposes of reconsidering the HOF-worthiness of everyone to include angles such as today's moral standards, pervasive media, & investigative reporting, I say the BBWAA needs to vote on players based on how they performed on the field, and then let the fans who follow the their team & the game, society in general (NOT the media), and time form the lens & basis for judgements. That's the only way to ensure consistency and, to me, ultimately, true credibility. (Clancy, thanks for bringing this up. I've been on a Perry-related rant ever since everyone starting claiming moral high ground re: steroid users. Congrats on getting published!)

Fiers hasn't done much good at all since the first time they put a ball in his hands in ST. If he's getting sent down, it's not with the intent to banish him, but for him to get on track -- to go "find his game" again -- because unlike Narveson at the moment and of course Rogers, he's at least healthy, which means they may well need to rely on him at another point this season, especially if Peralta & anyone who replaces Fiers in the MLB rotation struggle. He did well enough in MIL for long enough last year that it would be hard to imagine the Brewers just figuring he's done and no longer a potentially valuable asset.

Julio Machado, anyone?

Some don't. Suppan & Wolf -- the only 2 like that we've signed -- just happened to. That they happened to has no bearing on Lohse, & at the same time, tere's no guarantee Lohse will -- or won't. But you can't argue that Lohse made 3 (very much-needed) solid starts so far, and that's encouraging.

The bullpen was totally overhauled other than Axford. Everyone who stunk last year is gone. Henderson & Kintzler were fine & Axford was great for 4 out of 6 months last year. The new guys were quite successful last year. . . . So by what logic were we surely doomed to a crap bullpen again? On the original topic, I don't know that Kranitz truly has much to brag about on his resume, but I also don't think this is his fault. Was Mike Maddux suddenly inept when Gallardo struggled or Sheets kept breaking down on his watch? When Yo & others were great under Maddux & Suppan was putrid, was Maddux inconsistent? In the middle of a half-decent season, a stretch like this only gets most folks this antsy about this deep into it. When it happens to open the season, everything's magnified & multiplied exponentially. Pitchers have to pitch a no-hitter for the team to have a chance based on how the badly slumping offense is going. Heck, Aoki & Braun & Segura have been hitting like crazy 'til we hit the St. Louis Buzzsaw, but that didn't much matter b/c no one else was at all, so the pitchers feel like they have to be perfect & the hitters are "gripping the bat too tightly" and . . . this is clearly no one person's fault (and not Melvin's either, thank you those of you who feel like he's the root of all evil for this team). I still maintain that they're not nearly this bad of a team and I'd rather deal with a stretch like this now than later -- doesn't make is stink any less, but it's still how I feel about it.

I don't think they were approaching ST with the intent of determining if they could count on those guys -- not at all. The young-ish (since Narveson's not young but the others are) guys were the plan. Rogers ended up stinking badly, Narveson's not SP-ready (or even game-ready at the moment) and Fiers has yet to turn anything around from September since the start of ST, so they had to modify the plan. Failure to do that would've been sheer idiocy. It's nice they sold 4,500 or so individual tix the day they signed Lohse -- nice, but not major in the grand scheme of 3MM-ish tix -- but that will easily be negated by unsold tickets if the team stinks. Melvin's shown a zillion times over that he doesn't make moves for publicity's sake, just to try to improve the team. Some of his moves don't pan out, but his decade-plus in Milwaukee shows that his hits clearly & substantially outnumber his misses.

In the spirit of Monty57's turning negatives around.... As painful and not-ideal as it is to have this scary/ugly of a stretch at the beginning of a season, I'm a believer that most teams go through a stretch like this and I'd actually rather get it out of the way early because when it comes together & the team goes on a tear, it's more exciting to see them gain ground at a great pace after initially playing badly than it is to have a great initial stretch, only to then go through the demoralizing process of watching a momentum- & season-killing slow-motion blood-letting. (Sorry about the killer complex sentence. My English teachers from 30 years ago would be proud.)

It says something to me that they wanted Gonzalez back even after his injury & missing the last 3/4 of the year but showed no interest in Yuni at all until they had to dig around on the scrap pile to find a better alternative than Donnie Murphy. Once Green (hopefully sooner than later) and Hart return, Yuni & Gonzalez will be filling the same roles off the bench, and even if their offensive game is very similar, there's of course no comparison defensively, which logically would make Yuni the odd man out.

Monty, you seem convinced that the Lohse signing was a business move made primarily to placate the masses -- a reasoned yet very jaded take -- and I don't sense that you're open to seeing it any other way no matter the logic presented. On the contrary, I'm convinced it was a baseball move motivated by need (enough young banked-on pitchers not cutting it) ... and made possible by the unique circumstances of one of the top FA SPs dangling on the market for long enough (due to the draft pick compensation issue) to bring the price down to a justifiable level. Having one of the best offenses in all of MLB returning basically intact (esp. once Hart returns) would be wasted if a move wasn't made to boost the pitching . . . in other words, a repeat of the Macha years (very strong offenses & horrid pitching) was a very real possibility. And that would be a terribly foolish way to allow the team to go. Best of all, NO legit prospects were traded in any moves this whole winter until the pick was lost via the Lohse signing, so I really can't see the validity of any assertions that long-term plans were seriously compromised by any moves they made this winter. In the meantime, should enough young guys start performing -- whether in the rotation, OF, wherever -- suddenly we have enough depth to trade a proven player (i.e., big contract) so the young guy can become the everyday player, which is a very sound fiscal approach should the baseball side of it merit the move. The current 1B situation is simply a deal that required Melvin to "punt." It wasn't 'til a bit after the WBC that Green became injured, so it's not like there was a wealth of obviously good moves to be made -- no high quality players available for cheap. There was a reason they kept Morris & Halton in camp so long, and I very much believe that if, at the time, the Brewers felt one of those guys was the best 1B option through May, they would've added 'em to the Opening Day roster. If either of those guys swings the bat well enough to be considered "on track" and Yuni still stinks, it's both cheap & easy to release Yuni and purchase the contract of Halton or Morris. It's a 2-month (at least) problem and we're 8 games into the season -- hardly an irreconcilable situation!

Mixed messages? I respectfully disagree. What if they didn't adapt their approach & marketing pitch (re: their moves, esp. w/ respect to the savvy fans like those here on BF.net)? Then everyone & their brother would be going out of their minds screaming for them to adjust to their new reality. This website would about just about blow up! Think about it this way: They sure as heck didn't sign Gonzalez & Betancourt with the same mentality or intentions as signing Lohse, so for as much as I'm preferring your logic throughout this thread, Oxy, there were completely different factors at play: - Lohse was needed upper-end SP. Price needed to drop before he was an option. "Need" element became pronounced when Fiers kept pitching like he did in September, Rogers couldn't pitch like a MLB pitcher, and Narveson simply wasn't ready for rigorous rotation work. The "plan" some folks are claiming didn't exist or was terribly poorly conceived was based on Fiers, Rogers, & Peralta all pitching mostly very well over their time on the Brewers last year -- a solid & promising enough body of work to justify counting on them for this year's rotation (given that they didn't totally screw it up in ST, which Rogers in particular has done). . . . Within all of this is a good Melvin move I believe is going completely unrecognized, & that's keeping (for now) guys like Thornburg, Burgos, & Hellweg in AAA to continue their development, which would be a pretty shrewd big-picture approach IMO as opposed to rushing 'em to the bigs -- and here I'm talking in a baseball development sense, nothing to do w/ service time, arby clocks, or finances. - Gonzalez wasn't EVER intended as a flashy/splashy FA signing. He viewed as the "sage veteran role player" type who was eyed as the main middle IF reserve and offered a contract VERY early in FA with that in mind. It just took him 3 months to accept the offer b/c it took him that long to accept that no one else wanted him as their starter. If none of these injuries happened, Gonzalez would be on the team and merely filling in here & there with his Gold Glove defense and usually-nice-pop bat. . . . With a bench that would've been Maldonado, Green, Schaefer, & the 5th guy (Bianchi/Gindl/Davis/Lalli/whomever), Gonzalez would've been the ONLY proven veteran bench bat and would also be a nice veteran to back up & mentor core/stud young SS Segura. . . . Ultimately, signing Gonzalez never represented flawed logic or a diversion from the overall plan of going younger -- he was the one piece of veteran "roster balance." - Betancourt, once enough others are healthy, is likely a very "disposable" part. He's NOT part of "the plan." He's emergency/desperation fill-in help while 5 other IF including 2 starters and crisis Plans B & C (Hart & Ramirez, plus Gamel & Green) are out with injuries. Yuni B was simply a better option during a depth crisis than Bobby Crosby or Donnie Murphy. The worst thing about signing Yuni B. is that everyone on this board can recite every last flaw of his on a moment's notice before the guy might ever have a chance to do anything right. Back to one of the main points of this thread, however: Other than a dicey moment or maybe two, right now the roster composition isn't the problem. Plain & simple, at this point, the Brewers' pitching is what's killing 'em -- candidly honest & humble John Axford most glaringly!

My goodness! When the Athletics figured out they were a better team when versatile/athletic starting C Mike Heath could also start and play capably at 2B, 3B, 1B, and in the corner OF positions, was everyone calling for Sandy Alderson's & Tony LaRussa's heads? NO! They got lots of praise for having a versatile & athletic roster that gave them plenty of options. Now Melvin has zero concept of how to build a roster and again Ron Roenicke might as well be Bozo the Clown? 3/4 of the starting IF is out (Hart, Ramirez, Segura) as are 1-2-3 of the preferred reserves (Gamel, Green, & Bianchi), plus Braun was out for a few days. We need players who are capable of playing where we need 'em, and we have enough positional versatility to weather some of this storm, however un-ideal the options are for a few days in this stretch (which is ONLY a whopping 7 games!). Morris had a terrible ST and isn't hitting well at Nashville. If he came up and kept struggling as he's done all spring, some of you all would be berating Melvin & Roenicke for shattering his confidence in true Macha-esque fashion!

Splitter & Ennder, thanks for being reasonable voices in the midst of this knee-jerk & backlash-heavy thread. I echo your thinking: - We're missing not only our #1 (Hart) & #2 (Gamel) 1B, but also #3 (Green). Gonzalez, Maldonado, or even Yuni B for a couple games at 1B IS NOT the end of the world OR a sign that Melvin & Roenicke are mental midgets dooming the franchise to certain ruin. - The few days Braun was out, we were missing our top 3 power hitters & run producers. Plus Lucroy's hitting like he dropped a suitcase on both his hands. - John Axford wasn't good in ST and has put up these mind-boggling numbers so far: 1:1 Runs:Outs ratio; 1:2 HR:Outs ratio. Ouch! - Gallardo's doing an Axford or Randy Wolf impersonation re: decreasing velocity & being BP-type hittable. - Other than Lohse, no SPs did very well in their first turn at all. However.... - In spite of all the above, it was a mere 2-5 stretch with that 13-man staff which realistically at most could've/should've been a 4-3 opening record. 5-2 would've taken catching plenty of breaks. - Blake Lalli should be a half-decent stop-gap at 1B now that he's on his way (w/ Hart going to the 60-day -- why not Bianchi, I wonder, since he's nowhere near roster-ready). - Yuni B is VERY DFA-able once Green returns and Gonzalez can return to his intended role as top utility IF. - Thankfully, it's still UNBELIEVABLY early and I'd say there's a far greater likelihood that this bad opening run is more "outlier" than "norm" as the 6-month season plays out. If we're still playing like this in mid-May without any sustained improvement, then I'd say the concerns are more likely deep-rooted and cause for possible significant changes. But to scream "bloody murder" after 7 games and to again hear the non-stop Melvin/Roenicke bashing seems like quite the overreaction. To me, ultimately the bottom line is this: It won't matter who the heck is at 1B if the pitchers can't pitch like MLB pitchers no matter how many of 'em we actually have.

Are we really going to have 50+ games of this absurd negativity? Really? The Brewers didn't lose yesterday because of where Gonzalez was hitting in the lineup. If Gallardo pitches like that every time and they give up 8 runs in every loss, there are far bigger issues than where Alex Gonzalez bats. Ramirez played extremely good defense last year and now we know he's that much better suited to play 1B than Gonzalez? Doesn't playing 2 guys out of position rather than one create far more potential for trouble?

I'd be highly surprised if Khris Davis doesn't spend more than the requisite 20 days in AAA and therefore doesn't earn a full season of MLB service time. And should that occur, it's still no sooner than at the end of the 2019 season that he'd be FA-eligible. . . . To me, worrying now about him hitting FA after 2018 seems ludicrous. Could it be an issue? Of course. But if it does become one, it likely means he's getting enough MLB playing time to stay sharp and likely means he's producing well, which would likely be in role that's needed if not vital. . . . . And if he's THAT needed that it's worth letting his FA eligibility begin at the end of the 2018 season, I think I'd also rather have him contributing than some ham-and-egger who may only be the OF equivalent of Cesar Izturis, Cody Ransom, Izzy Alcantara, or Tim Pyznarski.

Once Green's healthy, assuming they don't option him to AAA, they'd have no need for Rivera & would then already have the guy to take Davis' or Lalli's roster spot (assuming one of them makes the final cut & that we'll start w/ a 13-man staff). Green can competently play 3 of 4 IF spots & not-crappily play 2 corner OF spots, which is more versatile than probably any other current/projected reserve.

Jericho, you should check that page more often. There are no "breaking news" revelations on that page because it's the same "Active Roster" they've had all spring. It started at 40 (the full 40-man at the outset of ST) and is now at 24 (the number of 40-man players still on the active roster). They are usually quite prompt at removing players who've been sent back to the minors, traded, or released -- and similarly prompt at adding guys who've signed (that page was updated as soon as Lohse & Betancourt each were officially signed). Khris Davis is listed simply because he's on the 40-man & hasn't been optioned (yet). In other words, it's a good page to tell you current roster, but it pretty much never tells what's going to happen, only what already has (or hasn't).

Logan, when Segura's clearly the team's best SS, and with Weeks & Ramirez flanking him at 2B & 3B, do you really think Roenicke's thinking that Betancourt's there to be used for regular PT at any of those 3 positions?

With a 13-man pitching staff, a multi-position guy (Lalli) makes more sense than a 1-(very occupied)-position guy (Davis). There's just that 40-man roster issue complicating things, which will already be a factor since the 13th pitcher likely will need a spot on the 40-man, too.

I'd agree that there's reason to justify those reservations, but what I don't get is people pointing to that trade as a symptom of or reason for the Brewers' allegedly poor farm system (not that you were one making that point here). . . . Lawrie's entering his 3rd (2nd full) big league season. That's well past being a prospect and a minor leaguer.