Point Beer Is Best

A couple of issues that could arise. First, If you limit tandem starters to 3 or 4 innings max, what happens when they are in a groove? If a guy retires 9 of the first 10 batters he sees, are you really going to take the ball from him? You pretty much have to take him out to keep everyone on schedule, and then will be heavily criticized on the occasions when this backfires. Secondly, if you switch pitchers enough to the point where you could pinch hit for them each time (or do a double switch), you will burn through your bench in a hurry. Things will be pretty interesting when a game goes into extra innings and you have a starting pitcher on a rest day manning left field.

That's another interesting possibility. They may have a player in mind who's already on the Tigers roster, but if another player falls to Detroit in the Rule 5, Stearns could ask them to select him and send him over as the PTBNL. Unless there's a rule about a player actually needing to be on the roster at the time the original trade is agreed upon.

If the speculation is correct (PTBNL is on the Tigers 40 man), it's because the Brewers are trying to keep an extra spot on their own 40 man roster through the Rule 5 draft. In this scenario, the Brewers DO want the player to be on their 40 man, but not at this time. They will add him after the Rule 5 draft. What you're saying (PTBNL is NOT on the Tigers 40 man) would not really make sense. If the player isn't Rule 5 eligible, they would have just sent him over since that would have no 40 man roster implications. Like others have said, the most logical choices are the guys that the Tigers have recently added to their 40 man. If we're correct, they basically told the Tigers that they wanted that player, but they a) didn't want them on their own 40 man at this time and b) told the Tigers to put them on their 40 man roster to prevent them from being selected in the Rule 5 draft. That's why it makes the most sense to speculate that the PTBNL is on the Tigers 40 man roster, particularly the late adds.

I can get on board with the thought process behind a) Trade K-Rod for the best return, b) insert another reliever (be it Smith, Jeffress, whoever) that the regime may feel won't be around when the team is competitive again in order to increase their trade value and trade them as well. I think this is somewhat similar to what the Brewers did with Dan Kolb, Turnbow and Axford with varying degrees of success. Insert unproven closers (in these cases, three reclamation projects) and in the case of Kolb, traded him to Atlanta for one of their top pitching prospects (Jose Capellan) who just didn't pan out. You could argue they missed their opportunities with Turnbow (extended) & Axford (non-tendered, re-signed and eventually traded) as they both flamed out rather quickly after they had established significant trade value. However, in the case of Turnbow and Axford, the team wasn't clearly in a re-build mentality. This could be a way to "manufacture" trade value and maximize your assets, and is really about the only position that's even possible (closer).

So... who are we taking with the #1 pick in the 2017 amatuer draft?

Exactly. This trade was a win for both teams. It was nearly a forgone conclusion that Estrada was going to be non-tendered, so to get the production (and future trade value) we have in Lind was much better than cutting Estrada loose for nothing. And the Jays took a chance on Estrada and it worked out better than they could have hoped. Sometimes a trade has no loser.

I'm coming around to the idea of the teams being decided the way they currently are, but the seeding determined by overall record. You have the three best teams in one division, and you're going to just eliminate one of them off the bat, and then let the other one go into the divisional round with some of their pitching staff unavailable or fatigued? Not a good concept. But at least the current format gets those two WC teams to the dance, and not left at home watching lesser teams.

One idea that was proposed (and quickly shot down) was for a 3 game series, with the first two games being a double-header. That would add just one extra day into the playoff schedule (at most). I'm not sure why it was shot down, but it seems like a better set up than a one game showdown.

Any idea if he'll bring the architecture with him that built the "Redbird" and "Launching Pad" analytical databases used by St. Louis & Houston (with enhanced security measures, obviously)?

I would have to assume they are in the same page. That was probably the biggest question they asked the candidates: What is your plan to build the Brewers into a consistent contender?

I know, whenever a 30-something gets hired as a head coach or GM, I wonder what I've done with my life. I had the exact same thought cross my mind. Although I also wondered what I had done with my life when Britney Spears broke out in her teens, but in retrospect I think I came out ahead by the time we hit 30.

From Jon Heyman. H/t to MLBTraderumors. Well it appears that he checks all the boxes from what we know about the profile they're looking for and has a few other positives going for him: Young, analytical background, Ivy League educated, familar with the division (honing his craft in St. Louis), worked with small & mid-market teams, with the Brown & Harvard connections with the owner's family to boot. I'm not hating anything so far.

To me, it didn't have anything to do with his voice. I didn't hear it in real time, but was listening to the post-game and knew that Braun had hit a HR and it would be featured. When it was replayed, Uecker does his normal HR call... and then I was waiting for him to immediatly mention that this was a milestone HR. Instead, he casually goes into who the "big winner" is from the HR, and it seems like it took about 30 seconds before he mentions that this HR set a new franchise record. I just thought the order of those two things would be switched. Maybe he had honestly forgotten until someone alerted him to it. Otherwise it just seems odd that he wouldn't have mentioned that fact while Braun was still circling the bases.

I think if Davis gets dealt, it's very possible that Braun is moved back to LF and Santana plays RF. Reports seem to indicate the Santana's best OF position would be RF with his arm. I agree that if Santana takes over a starting position and it pushes Davis to a 4th OF, he loses a lot of his value. A 4th OF that can only play LF isn't very valuable. Davis can really only play LF and DH. The other alternatives have been discussed as well - moving either Braun or Santana to 1B, but who knows how realistic that is. Or maybe Santana sticks it out in CF for a year or two. There seems to be lots of options... but all of them have some warts.

I'm guessing you haven't gotten a case on it yet. They are VERY slick without one. I have the iPhone 6 plus with an Otterbox Defender (more protection than the Commuter series). That's probably not a preferred combination for most users, but I have pretty large hands so it works fine for me. Really the only complaint I have with that case is the plastic screen (helps keep it water/dust resistant). I don't have the issue with dirt/dust getting under the screen that others have mentioned, but the phone is less sensitive to swiping/touching than with a traditional screen protector. Sometimes I have to hit a button in an app a couple of times for it to register completely. It doesn't happen every time, but it happens enough for me to notice it. But not enough to discourage me from the case.

And of course a premier GM position opens up the same time there's an opening in Milwaukee. Let's just hope the candidate the Brewers are targeting doesn't also happen to be the person the Red Sox will be after as well.

I believe that firm is Korn-Ferry, and I had just read an article on HardballTalk last week that the same firm is also providing services to minority/female candidates to help prepare them for front office gigs. As a result, they may connect Attanasio with potential candidates that stand out to them who otherwise might go unnoticed.

This thread title is a mess. Normally you see something like "Santana & Hader for Davis?" or "What's a fair return for Khris Davis?" whereas this title made my head explode since it made me think that the Brewers had traded Santana and Hader for Baltimore's Chris Davis for some reason. Anyways, we're basically talking about the trade value of Kris Davis, which is already being discussed in the other thread.

And how do you know that Mike Girsch wouldn't be interested? Is he waiting for Brian Cashman to retire or something? And there is a HUGE difference in using a UWM/Harvard comparison to this situation. You're talking about a situation where you have thousands of potential job openings, whereas MLB only has 30 GM's and usually there are only one or two to choose from each offseason. I'd counter that example by using historical examples from the NFL (a much, much better comparison). How did the Packers lure Ron Wolf to the dumpster-fire that was the very early 90's Green Bay franchise? How did the hapless Seahawks lure a young, up & coming talent evaluator (John Schneider) to Seattle? Easily - there were job openings in an extremely exclusive club that almost anyone in the industry would jump at. Can you provide a link to that report? I'm just curious where it was reported that "most" young GM's consider Melvin a "dinosaur." I'm assuming you're projecting your beliefs onto a large group and speaking as though that's a factual statement... again. I'm not the first, nor probably the last, to ask you this question. Why do you bother coming here? It's brewerfan.net, not brewerhater.net If you're jaded about the organizational philosophy of the franchise (as many here are), why not come up with your thoughts on how they could better themselves (as many here do)? You seem content to just come here and poo-poo everything.

I don't agree with that at all. All teams have meddling owners to one degree or another. And frankly, none of us really knows how involved Mark A is or has been in baseball decisions, it's all speculation. Entrenched craptitude? New GM would be inheriting a top 10 farm system and a current scouting dept that has done quite well, based on early returns. Also, I don't think having Melvin there is a negative, especially if they're looking for a young candidate. They would view it as a plus to have Melvin around to lean on. Bottom line, unless you're already a GM somewhere, this is a step up for anyone else in baseball. Even if everything you said were true, anybody would want a GM job. Agreed on all points. Melvin definitely adds value from a "let me show you the ropes" standpoint. He has an incredible amount of experience, and can offer insight into the tendencies of other decision makers around the league which will be invaluable when discussing possible trade deals.

My wife and I started using Smartphones about 4 years ago. Our first models were the Motorola Droid X2. I liked it at first, but after about a year it really started slowing down, and started restarting on its own and would keep looping through the restart process. Each time it did that I had to remove the battery to stop the loop. Very annoying and frustrating. Also, those Droid phones had the hardest time staying connected to our WiFi in our house. I could never figure out what the issue was surrounding that, but it happened to both of our Droids. So our next phones were the iPhone 5s for me, and an iPhone 5c for my wife. We had no issues with those whatsoever. My only complaint is after about 2 years the battery on my phone became very weak and needed to be charged constantly, so two weeks ago I upgraded to the iPhone 6plus. In addition to the actual performance of the iPhone, the fact that we have a couple of iPads was an additional selling point since we could share pictures/music/apps. Also, a lot of video apps (flixster/Netflix/Nick Jr/PBS Kids/Disney Anywhere, etc) are now compatible with Google Chromecast ($35) which just plugs into an HDMI input on most TV's so that's something you might want to consider purchasing as well if you don't have a Roku player or a newer blu-ray player that may have internet connectivity. But that would be available for iOS or Android users. Edit: If you're not looking to spend a lot of money on a fairly recent model, I'm pretty sure most places you can get the iPhone 5c basically for free with a 2 year contract (i saw it for a penny at Cellcom in Green Bay), and the iPhone 5s now was all the way down to $99. The iPhone 6plus I got was still $299.

Where did you read this? I haven't seen any links to any stories yet, so I'm just curious.

That's essentially what 5.08(b) says - the only runners that matter are the guy on 3rd and the batter-runner. I don't think the fact that the security guard touched the ball matters at all since those two runners had already completed what was required under that rule, or at least that's how I would interpret it. Also - am I the only one who has a problem with clicking the "submit" button only to have the page refresh and lose your reply?

I think 5.08(b) was put into place to essentially replace 5.08(a) in these situations (bottom of the 9th or bottom of whatever extra inning is being placed). 5.08(b) makes it clear that only the only baserunners who matter are the runner at 3rd base and the batter-runner (if a force out hasn't been secured prior to those happening). That's why tagging 2nd and/or 3rd to get a "force out" don't apply in those situations, and the Reds lost the appeal by attempting the forceouts after the runner had scored and the batter-runner had touched first base. Regarding your other question: In this situation, 5.08(a) would still be in play. If the double play is executed prior to both a) the runner at 3rd crossing home plate and b) the batter-runner securing first base, the run doesn't count. In theory, I suppose it would be possible for your situation to play out, but how often is a batter-runner going to make it all the way to first base before the runner from first (with the benefit of leading off the base) is taken out on the double play? That's probably very, very unlikely unless the guy fell down.

In other words, he'd be interested in the role that Melvin will be moving to this offseason. Which basically rules him out as a Melvin replacement. Why? Pretty sure he would be thrilled to replace Melvin and be the GM. I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but if the quote from Nightengale has any basis in truth, Dombrowski would likely want to be in a senior executive role (like what Melvin is moving into) and probably not be interested in being the GM. It's like you didn't read what I had quoted.