MNBrew

At this point, I fully agree that Cain up & Gomez to AAA makes sense for all the reasons stated by thablingster. But I disagree on the timing of firing Macha (and strongly disagree on the notion of firing Melvin altogether): If the team needs better leadership & managing from its manager, it needs to start right away. Changing the culture & approach of the team shouldn't wait. Honestly, I don't think they can afford to wait. Failing to start Capuano regularly seems totally stupid on Macha's part, too, especially considering Chris Narveson & his 6-ish ERA have proven beyond a doubt that they're a total hindrance to the team's chances of winning 3 out of his every 4 starts.

For years now, Gamel's been seen as being nearly as bad or worse of a defensive 3B than Braun was. Errors may hardly paint the full picture, but they're not to be fully ignored, either. Simply put, Gamel doesn't have killer range at 3B and is still an error-making machine. So I don't get how suddenly he's seen as being a far better defensive option at 3B than McGehee. I see Hart quite possibly being around for a few years (staying in RF), and Weeks even more so (staying at 2B). It's Fielder who seems most inevitably gone. To me, Gamel at 1B only makes sense and gives you the best chance for defensive infield success given the players we currently have.

I'm right with you. I'm exasperated. I do think the Crew has the talent to at least be close to contending (read: over .500, & possibly a good bit over it). I still don't think DM starts selling off everyone for A-ballers..... To me, the thing is that many of these current Brewers either have been on contenders or were with the Brewers when they were. The fact that too many players are underperforming, inconsistent, &/or regressing ultimately comes back to the manager. So in answer to your "what happens next?", I think one of the next steps HAS to involve Ken Macha being shown the door. The talent level hasn't declined under him (other than CC & Sheets leaving), and you could argue in some ways it should be even higher than it was thanks to young players developing/improving. But their inconsistency grows. They have the fastest team they've had since '92 but NEVER run. Their effort level remains high but the physical & mental mistake factors aren't improving & may be worsening. Etc.... What changed over the past couple years? Mainly & most obviously, it's the manager. Macha has to go. And Randolph needs to guide the ship. He gets how to manage a NL team. He's had proven success in spite of an utterly hair-brained front office. I like Sveum a lot, too. But I think Randolph has the experience to be able to turn this thing around. And I hope it happens right away.

A little earlier in the discussion, Looper was being put in the same classification as Suppan & Wolf. Looper of '09 = Davis of '10: late FA signing, one-year commitment, ~$5M. Looper wasn't an early FA-season signing at all. He had a respectable track record but probably wasn't going to be stellar. He wasn't super-cheap, but he was hardly a bank-breaker at $5M for ONE year + a pretty reasonable (i.e., non-painful) buyout. The Brewers didn't pursue him during November/December '08 like they did Suppan & Wolf in the off-seasons surrounding '08. And the contracts aren't remotely comparable. Sorry, but lumping Looper in the same problematic pile as Suppan and (I think only potentially at this point) Wolf really didn't sit well. . . . . . On a totally different edge of the discussion, for my 2¢, I think that... 1. the notion that Melvin's articulation of some of the Organizational Approach to Developing Pitching (or whatever the heck the title is) as being a desperation PR move is sheer nonsense; and that 2. the idea of acquiring Roy Halladay, for example, is the exact sort of move Melvin has to pursue. But on a prospects-loving fan website like BF.net, it doesn't surprise me to hear folks rip that like it's the ultimate in stupidity. Heck, it was a Sabathia-like move, but for an entire season. So why exactly is that stupid? The whole point Melvin was making on that note in McCalvy's article is that a trade seems to be one of the only ways the Brewers are going to land a stud pitcher like Halladay other than if they can develop those guys in their own system. So Melvin made a strong play. But the Brewers lost out on Halladay anyway. That leads to my next point... 3. Melvin's an excellent GM. No, I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid. So many are blasting him for not bringing in top-flight pitchers. What he was saying -- and what he's said all along -- is that those are the types of guys he DOES make plays for. But it's not a Utopian landscape and the odds are NOT in Milwaukee's favor to land such players most of the time for a variety of reasons -- which means that the failure of the Brewers to land those guys, realistically, is pretty much never the fault of the GM. On the trade side of the coin, unless you're advocating a total rebuild and take anything any other GM offers you for your proven ML talent, you have to insist on comparable value in return in any deal. That's exactly what Melvin has been aiming for. But IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO. If no other GM wants to give you comparable value, do you make a deal anyway just to say you did so? You do that and the other half of the BF.net (and other uber-informed-fan) population revolts because you gave away great assets for guys who may or may never develop, and in the meantime you end up fielding a 25-man roster, half of which, talent-wise, has no business being anywhere above AAA ball. We've lived through those years over the past decade and we need to keep those types of seasons as distant a memory as possible. 4. The analogy of the whack-a-mole approach is very appropriate, and much of what Melvin's point seems to be is that now the Brewers simply have a clearly articulated system in writing that can be easily followed throughout every level of the system. And the focuses & philosophies are based on what have made certain players and other organizations successful. Heck, there's so little out there in baseball that's truly new & revolutionary anymore. So the key to any prolonged success must lie in a sound approach with good coaches/teachers to implement a solid, sensible system with the talented pitchers you're trying to develop. If you have a good & clear blueprint, you're simply doing all you can to consistently reduce the failure rate. ....Especially w/ the recent & relative dearth of upper-level pitching talent in the system, only time will tell if Melvin & Co. have gotten it right. That said, the main thing to expect is that turning around the organization's success rate w/ developing quality pitchers is not an instantaneous thing.

I agree that Prince has been perfectly diplomatic about the whole situation. I also remember a comment he made back in Spring Training that he'd be quite happy remaining a Brewer for a long time. I think the guy's had to insulate himself against the possibility of being traded. And it was fairly obvious that the whole slant of the article was more "how would you feel if you got traded?" rather than anything about "would you like to stay in Milwaukee and how would you feel if that were the long-term scenario that plays out?" -- and to read anything more into it than that goes from fact to conjecture. Granted, the likelihood of the latter would seem to be not so great, but it's still a possibility. ...Even the whole thing about playing first base in 2012. He's not saying anything about the interim time because quite possibly until he hits free agency, he could well be a Brewer, and if that's the case, he knows for a fact he's playing first base through 2011. So he's not worried about that. It's when he would hit FA and have the chance to choose his team that one of his criteria clearly would be that he still be playing first base. The article doesn't dwell on his defensive position now through 2011, though, because more of its focus is on Prince either being a FA or being traded because he's seemingly bound to become a FA.

This will be an unpopular opinion in this thread, but the Brewers have squat for immediate OF help outside Cain, and I like Edmonds, so I think trading him would be dumb. Having watched Gomez an awful lot the previous 2 seasons in MN, and now following him in Milwaukee for Full Year #3 of his big league career, I can assure you that he hasn't "developed" one iota in the past two years. Yes, the guy's still loaded with talent. But he has just as much of a knuckleheaded approach at the plate now as he has the 2 previous seasons in MN. He'll come through periodically, but he still hits WAY too many fly balls, hacks away way too often, and generally takes dumb approaches at the plate WAY too often. Therefore, in my opinion, trading Edmonds only to have Gomez prove his knuckleheadedness on a full-time basis only hurts the Brewers in the short term and does nothing for the long term. If Gomez finally figures it out, then hallelujah! But I've seen enough over the last 3 years to believe he's not worth counting on to do so.

That's the exact sort of analysis we always used to describe Jose Valentin: gets to so many balls, but throws it all over creation. ....And Valentin's error count was always high enough that Jose Hernandez or Royce Clayton or Counsell or whoever followed him was a welcome relief because, even if he didn't get to as many balls, he tended to make the plays on the ones he did get to. Sorry, but I'll take that any day. McGehee may not be Jeff Cirillo, but he's not a lumbering idiot over at 3B, either (or the 3B version of what everyone accused Ray Durham of being at 2B at the end of '08). AND, since Gamel has yet to have any sustained success at the plate in the bigs, saying he has much better range as the defining point in an assertion that he's overall a better defender (really, is he? sorry, the metrics for fielding have improved from 15-20 years ago, but metrics don't fully do fielding justice because there's still such an "ought to" factor, which is inherently subjective, no matter how much they've tried to remove subjectivity from fielding metrics . . . but that's a whole 'nother discussion) when the other faults are so obvious just doesn't hold water for me.

He's tradable because he is a poor defender and we have a possible replacement in Mat Gamel. McGehee is fairly pedestrian, but like you said, has value because he's cheap and will have 4 years of control after this year. A team might also be interested in him as a 2B. Um, Mat Gamel may well be a worse-fielding 3B than Ryan Braun was. McGehee may not remind anyone of Brooks Robinson EXCEPT in comparison to Mat Gamel. (p.s. I like Gamel a lot overall, though, and hope he'll get himself on track so we have a viable 1B option if/when Prince gets traded.)

3 fast things: 1. Garza would be the caliber of pitcher I'd hope to get in return for Prince. There should be more than just Garza coming back in that deal, though. 2. Blackburn's terrible. He's a RH version of Manny Parra: batting practice waiting to happen. (Note: Neither is remotely close to their ceiling, but I think Parra's ceiling is much higher than Blackburn's.) 3. Blackburn signed a 4-year, $14M extension in early March with an $8M option (team, presumably) for 2014. Glad we're not stuck w/ that contract!!! Given #2 & #3, by comparison, it's much better to have Dave Bush than Nick Blackburn right now.

The Lee trade got them ~1.5 years of an All-Star-caliber closer. Cordero's hardly a marginal major league player. Mench, Nix, & Julian Cordero, yes. But not Francisco Cordero. Yes, there were no high-upside young players in the deal. But F. Cordero was, all in all, a godsend at that point in time!

It's a small point, but the Twins don't really have new ownership. Pohlad's family still runs the team. His sons were doing much of the leading the last several years of Carl's life. Also, their willingness to spend money, at least this year, correlates in part with their success at the gate last year (which tied to their success on the field) and the revenue streams that go with the first year of a great new ballpark this year. At the same time, the Twins' payroll has been gradually escalating with the experience levels & successes of Mauer & Morneau -- so you could pretty safely assert that the Twins are truly, legitimately, & shrewdly building around their two franchise cornerstones.

Not rare but unique: Carl Yastrzemski's last game at County Stadium (1983, I believe). Actually, I think I was at his last 2 games at CS. There may have been a rainout or a doubleheader involved, but those memories are more than a little fuzzy. Consulting my ticket stub archive would take more digging than it's worth.

Yes, but the team is out of it, and if he has any value he needs to be moved. All he's doing right now is playing horrible defense in CF and taking AB's away from Gomez.I agree w/ DoA totally. Gomez isn't playing in a way that deserves more PT. The guy, likable though he may be, and certainly worthy of his defensive reputation, is taking the identical, knuckleheaded approach at the plate this year as he did the last 2 years in MN. TH or someone posted recently that he just keeps thinking he can be a 20-HR hitter. But he can't get it through his head that he's NOT that kind of hitter, so he keeps taking a stupid approach at the plate and his .232 BA & .280-ish OBP are the typical result. Until he can get the right idea into his head, I'm sick of him helping kill the offense. There's also the whole matter of a guy w/ his speed only having 8 SBs so far in 9 attempts, but Macha's relentless non-use of the running game despite the best team speed we've had in years is another whole separate discussion.

Come on. Are condescending remarks like that really necessary? I did some research before I posted. And I don't think this constitutes throwing Davis under the bus, for goodness' sake: "Davis' stats are good, but he spent 6 years in the minors, which isn't the typical path of top-flight prospects. And I'M NOT SAYING HE WON'T BE A GOOD PITCHER. But to me he's not the same caliber of pitcher as Niemann or Price, so he alone, in my view, is not AT ALL what you go out hoping/expecting to settle on as a return for a guy who hit 46 HRs, 141 RBIs, and not far below .300 in his 25-year-old season last year . . . and who already had a 50-HR season in the bigs under his belt." Just because the Brewers liked Davis and were almost able to draft him 6 years ago doesn't add to his promise. His big league stats this year are Dave Bush-esque -- and it's mid-June. Yes, his 6 starts last year count for something. While the specifics of the stats vary, the promise showed by him then isn't really any different than that showed by Parra & Villanueva when they first came up & did rather well. Narveson was excellent as a starter last September, but the longer he's in the rotation this year, the less effective he's been. Davis could well fulfill his potential and live up to that potential #2 starter billing. Even now he'd likely represent at least a small upgrade over a couple spots in the Brewers' rotation. But he's not showing all that promise yet this year -- which is a much larger sample than last fall, by comparison -- let alone enough so for me to feel that he alone is a worthy return in exchange for Prince Fielder in a potential deal. If you disagree, that's fine. That's part of the fun of forums like this.

two things: 1. I didn't mean to suggest (post #132 in this thread) that the Brewers would get Price for Prince. I'm saying if I'm the GM, I start there knowing I'd likely end up with someone still very good but just not named David Price. 2. I don't live with my head in the sand, but I never heard about Davis before this year. For the past couple years I've been hearing about David Price. I've been hearing about Niemann since he was a top draft pick and one of that fleet of top-prospect pitchers at Rice University. Davis' stats are good, but he spent 6 years in the minors, which isn't the typical path of top-flight prospects. And I'M NOT SAYING HE WON'T BE A GOOD PITCHER. But to me he's not the same caliber of pitcher as Niemann or Price, so he alone, in my view, is not AT ALL what you go out hoping/expecting to settle on as a return for a guy who hit 46 HRs, 141 RBIs, and not far below .300 in his 25-year-old season last year . . . and who already had a 50-HR season in the bigs under his belt. Any GM with a clue is not going to enter trade talks with an asset like Prince expecting less than elite talent in return. That doesn't mean he expects Price. But if you don't start high, you might as well just give him away. . . . "Hi, Andrew Friedman, this is Doug Melvin. Fielder. Yup. How 'bout for Niemann & Davis and a top 5 prospect, or do you need me to sweeten it just a little, too? Oh, no, you won't go for that? Well, I suppose, Prince is really rather stocky with a body that has DH written all over its future. And yeah, in case you forgot, he's pretty lousy fielding over at first base. And his stats aren't very good this year, either. And his dad, when he lost it, he lost it quickly. But does he ever do a great bowling ball imitation w/ his teammates!. . . Yeah, okay, I guess you're right. . . . Alright, then, Sonnanstine and that 28-year-old career minor-league middle reliever you've got at AA should about do it. Let's sign & fax everything in the next 5 minutes so we can hold our press conferences in time to be home for dinner."

I see Davis as having potential, sure. But since when is this guy even in the same league talent- and results-wise as Price or Niemann? Davis alone for Fielder is absurd. Fielder is a an elite stud hitter, slow start notwithstanding. You trade a Prince Fielder, you start at Price or Niemann PLUS as the return or you're grossly undervaluing the best potential trade asset that we might actually consider moving (in other words, not Braun or Gallardo).

If I'm Doug Melvin, I aim for both those pitchers for Prince. If I'd have to sweeten the deal from the Brewers end, it shouldn't have to be too much. If the Rays gave up that much for Prince, they could & likely would also afford to find ways to keep him. So if I were Tampa in that hypothetical deal, I'd be looking at it in terms of keeping Prince for the long haul. If he gets too big or slow or whatever to field well enough, they still have a stud DH (and probably better defense at 1B, too).

Anybody remember the Robin Yount/Mike Young lineup card fiasco in I believe 1988? Mike Young's whole Brewers career was a fiasco. Decent promise & respectable results in Baltimore. Came to the Brewers & did absolutely nothing - practically literally! Two in-person odd Home Opener incidents come back to mind: 1. The year the umps came darn close to calling a forfeit when so many fans kept throwing giveaway-promo baseballs onto the field. So many idiots that day just kept on throwing 'em. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Sad thing is, too many of 'em probably thought they were cool for doing it, too. Knuckleheads. Anyway, after that lovely incident, the Brewers no longer gave away promotional items like that before the game, only afterward. 2. The year (1986? if so, senior skip day & the only day I ever skipped school -- but it wasn't a true skip because I had a legit note from my mom, but anyway...) Bobby Witt got pulled after 5 with a no-no going because he was walking the entire planet (no hits & 10 Ks, but already 2 runs on 8 walks). Edit: The Bobby Witt game was the 2nd home game of 1986 per baseball-almanac.com. I don't get that. Why would our school ever have made anything but the home opener senior skip day? Makes no sense.

Kirby Puckett's 6-for-6 day at County Stadium on 8/30/1987 Thanks, Hawing. I forgot about being there that day. Viola pitched great. Kirby stole a GS from Robin but it became a 2-run SF (not technically, but 2 runs did score on the play. I was at BOTH of Puckett's 6-hit games. The other was a day-game loss to Texas at the Metrodome. Everett Stull's 9 walks in 3.2 innings including 3 bases loaded walks I was there, too. I had that on my list but forgot it whilst typing the various better moments. I almost skipped rehearsal to go to what became Scott Erickson's no-no against the Brewers. Instead, I saw the 10-2 win the next night w/ about 5 or 6 HRs including 2 by my then-hero, Matt Mieske. The day the Brewers retired Molitor's number Yeah. Drove down from Mpls and got there late. Due to rain, I didn't miss much of the game. But I missed the ceremony.

Game 7, 1991 World Series made sure to get caught in the horn-honking celebratory traffic jam afterward -- just so I could say I did ("ecumenical" side note: I attended a 1st round playoff game in about 1991 when the North Stars & Blackhawks combined for over 200 penalty minutes. There was more time in the fracases than playing hockey at least one of the periods.)

all in-person: Paul Molitor hitting for the cycle AND stealing home in the same game (1991 in MN vs. Tapani) Ryne Sandberg hitting for the cycle at Wrigley Odell Jones' near-perfect game in Cleveland (1988 in Cleveland) 2 Brewers' defensive triple plays (the Home Opener one against the Cubs & the one in the DH against Toronto, game 1 of which was Woodard out-dueling Clemens in his ML debut; wasn't Cirillo &/or Vina in on both?) Gorman Thomas' last Brewer game prior to '83 trade Tom Brunansky's last Twins game in '88, right after which he was traded to St. Louis (found out over dinner w/ Johnny Goryl, then the Indians' 3B coach -- Snyder & Carter both hit grand slams in Cleveland's win over MN that night) Baltimore clinching the AL East in Milwaukee on a very cold Sunday in 1983 Bronswell Patrick's & Scott Karl's HRs at County Stadium Dave Valle's three-2B game in his Brewers debut (I think that's right) a Brewers win in St. Louis - really! - close game through 5 or 6, then tons of runs for both w/ Darren Jackson's grand slam ultimately helping make the difference

Well, now there's room on the 40-man for Riske to come off the 60-day DL and take Coffey's spot on the active roster: Jeff Suppan was released!!! Hallelujah!

Shoot, battlekow, you got me by 4 minutes. Long overdue. A good day in Brewer Nation.

What about a .245 BA, .343 OBP, & .783 OPS is glamorous, then? What Heether did last year was excellent. What he's done this year hasn't been so far except for some nice run production. But it wasn't power-hitter-type run production that got everyone around here excited about him. The nice thing is, we don't have to agree. I don't think mine was a superficial evaluation of Heether at all, but rather a self-evident description of the obvious. Look, I've made it clear that I like Heether as a ballplayer. I've been on record, I believe, of saying I'd hoped he would've made the team this year before Inglett was signed. But Heether's a career corner IF type who's realized in the past year or so that to have a future in the bigs, he's got to learn to play other positions. He may be serviceable at 2B & the OF, but only to the extent that Jeff Cirillo was. He didn't have a major track record as a utility player. I also don't see any redeeming qualities in Luis Cruz that merit having him on the 40-man at all, and I'd much rather have seen him go than Heether (though I understand why, I don't agree with him being the choice: It is true that Cruz is the only middle IF on the 40-man not currently in the bigs. If they needed to recall a middle IF, they could pull up Cruz w/o pulling a prospect up too far or starting a strong prospect's "service clock" unnecessarily early.) But that wasn't the discussion, so I didn't go there. My point was just that I could see why the Brewers might think they could sneak a 28-year-old career minor leaguer with so-so stats this year (again, not for his career, but definitely for this year) through waivers, even though there's another whole line of thought that makes the move make no sense at all.

Thanks, LouisEly, for bringing some sense into this thread. Per Haudricourt's blog: Also, the Brewers apparently tried to slip Nashville third baseman Adam Heether through waivers and he was claimed by Oakland. I guess the Brewers were trying to clear a 40-man roster spot for future moves and didn't think Heether, who socked two homers last night, would be claimed. In 50 games, he was batting .245 with nine homers and 28 RBI. Two important things stand out to me in TH's blog post that LouisEly thankfully gets at: 1. For what many of us have come to like about Heether, he wasn't getting it done this year at a rate that merited putting him higher on the depth chart than 4th after McGehee, Gamel, & Green. 2. Based on when Gamel went on the DL and on the fact that he's currently on a rehab assignment, it shouldn't be too long before they'll need to activate him from the 60-day, which means either placing him back on the 40-man & optioning him or trying, as they did with Heether, to sneak him through waivers. Gamel hit .393 rehabbing at AA and was getting bumped to AAA. There's no way he'd EVER get through waivers. Heether, swell guy that he is, was hitting .245 in AAA w/ a .343 OBP & a .783 OPS. TH's point has been blatantly missed by so many posters in this thread: With no-so-glamorous stats, the Brewers were trying to SLIP HIM THROUGH WAIVERS -- they tried it because they thought it could work. They weren't trying to waive him so they could get rid of him. To infer that they were waiving him to get rid of him is missing the boat BADLY. I like what Heether could be, but there's absolutely no guarantee that he'll ever amount to what Craig Counsell has proven very reliably to be. Yeah, I'd rather see him on the 40-man than Suppan. And I wish they'd never kept Suppan out of spring training because the clown never deserved to make the team. I can see why it's not an apples-to-oranges comparison. But at the same time, if the Brewers looked at it that it was apples-to-oranges, I don't find theirs to be a flawed logic, either. . . . And at the end of the day, no matter how much we want to see Suppan gone, if the owner still can't fathom spending $12.5M to watch Suppan do nothing -- releasing him, in other words -- it doesn't matter what the GM or anyone else wants to see happen.