Fatter than Joey

I voted and it looks like BF.net is Tomosborning the competition. I just relocated to the southeast, and ATL is the closest MLB city to us -- so I will be taking my son to the ATL in 2011. My story will probably not be as interesting and newsworthy as yours though -- Good Luck!

Contenders yes. Favorites, no. This is exactly how I feel -- I didn't think we were going to seriously contend last year -- but I feel like we have improved this year, but at this point have too many flaws to be considered favorites.

I really don't agree with the sentence to be honest. This was my first reaction as well --- but then I realized that 2 other people besides Adenhart died as well, and another person had his spine separated from his skull. Pretty sad story, I guess the only good thing, is that it has closure now.

I did in considering this discussion, and there's no way adding Rogers & Parra comes close to the quality depth that Cincy has. I agree... I think Parra at this point is closer to BP depth than rotation depth.

Magic Man by Heart

Yea, there is a slight risk that Dunn will regress a little to quite a bit by year three or four of that contract I think overall, he will still have his power, and ability to take BBs throughout the life of this deal. I'm sorta glad to see Dunn over in the AL...

The Cubs probably lost their biggest fan today.

The thing is there aren't that many players in the history of the game who can year in and year out produce at that level much less while playing the middle infield I agree. I think Tulo is a pretty special player. I'll put the over/under on the number of 5+ WAR seasons Tulo produces during the length of the contract at 5. What side of the line does your money fall on? I think your number is fair, I would maybe got to 6, but not much higher -- In either case, if Tulo puts out five 5+ WAR seasons, he is likely to be worth his contract. I just can't help but think of Sizemore after 08... I'm not saying just because Sizemore imploded that Tulo will do the same, just trying to illustrate why handing out and extension to someone with four years of control remaining is a risky proposition. Sizemore is certainly a good illustration of the risk involved with long-term contracts, but it seems to me that your argument is a generic one against long-term deals in general. I certainly understand and definitely agree that the Rockies have assumed a lot of risk here, however there is also risk in waiting to act on extending Tulo as well. Nomar was basically done after age 30. Cal Ripken won a MVP at 30, Barry Larkin did at 31. If say Tulo only had a year or two left on his current contract, i could see the reason to be proactive and sign him long term If Tulo had only a year left on his contract, I would hope the Rockies would be pro-active to extend him http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif -- However, the Rockies would be then competing with every other team in MLB that desired a top defensive SS, capable of putting up a .900+ OPS. I can't imagine a scenario where the Rockies are able to go tit for tat with some of the big guns on the open market. I would imagine that if Tulo had 1 or 2 more years on his contract, extension talks with him, probably would have been as fruitful as they have been for the Brewers and Prince Fielder. Colorado likely could have waited another year or two before offering a huge extension like this and odds are he'd have still taken the extension. What is going to happen in a year or two that is going to change a team's mind? -- Do you think he is going to quit being a top defender, or lose his ability to hit 25 HRs a season in the course of a season or two? -- According to projections, if he tacks on 2 more .900+ seasons, he is only going to get way more expensive and be more likely to be enticed by teams like Chicago, NY or Boston... I think Tulo is what he is at this point in his career -- much like Prince Fielder or Ryan Braun, and you either like it or you don't. All that said, I do certainly agree that the Rockies are taking a huge risk, as would anyone offering this sort of contract -- I just think Tulo is one of the few players that it makes some sort of sense to offer it to.

Yep, it isn't the money its the timing. Why now? Tulowitzki probably projects to have another stellar defensive season while hitting at a ~.900 OPS clip -- That's probably going to drive up Tulo's pricetag -- I see three potentials reasons to get this deal done now. 1.) As Tulo accumulates more solid seasons he will get more expensive. 2.) At some point in time, Tulo may not want to resign with the Rockies and try to get more $$ from another team 3.) While the economy blows today, it may be prudent to be paying 2010 rates in 2015. At this point, the Rockies have seen Tulo play for 4 seasons -- Is it really that sensible to hold out to hedge bets against him falling off of a cliff at this point in his career? -- I think the Rockies want to build their franchise around a power-hitting, great fielding SS, just like the Twins are doing with Mauer. As for the injuries, a couple have been fluky but so were quite a few of Sheets injuries. He has been injured 3 times -- Once he lacerated his hat on a shattered bat, and another time his wrist was broken on a pitch. I think you are knowingly overstating Tulo's "injury history" for effect. I entirely agree that Sheets took a lot of heat for crazy injuries that were not his fault. Fluke injuries do not preclude future injuries They don't predict them either. Basically you have presented a generic argument against long-term contracts in a general sense. If I'm gonna spend 100 million plus I want as much data as possible available so I don't have to rely on flimsy assumptions. Waiting to accumulate more data comes at a cost as well. I think this thread does a great job fleshing out the risks involved for the Rockies in making this deal with Tulo, but isn't fair in the sense that there isn't enough discussion talking about the risk in watching Tulo accumulate more and more good seasons with no long-term deal in place. Your avatar is beyond fabulous.

Seems almost as necessary as the Howard extension. Tulowitzki is a power-hitting, gold-glove SS, and Howard is not -- they are not really fair players to compare. Good thing Tulo has no injury history to speak of. Tulo's injury history is a bit fluky -- In 2008, he suffered a quad tear. Later than year he cut his hand with a broken bat -- Last year he missed six weeks getting plunked on the wrist. Assuming that his quad is properly healed, I don't know why you would hold the other 2 injuries against him. There's no way Tulo would have gotten this on the FA market. From 2007-2010, Tulo has been a top 10 player in both offensive and defensive WAR -- He'd get paid by someone in a major fashion... Here is how his salary breaks down.... 2011 -- 5.5M 2012 -- 8.25M 2013 -- 10M 2014 -- 16M 2015 -- 20M 2016 -- 20M 2017 -- 20M 2018 -- 20M 2019 -- 20M 2020 -- 14M If Tulo hit the FA market today, He may not get 20M, but he'd certainly get 10M -- I think we can all agree to that -- I think he'd get pretty close to the 16M on today's market. He probably wouldn't get 20M, however, who knows where the market will be in 2015. There is bound to be some inflation by then, and I think that is what the Rockies are betting on. He's worth the money, but 10/158 is a big risk for a smaller market team. There is risk involved for the Rockies concerning Tulo regardless of the path they choose. Either they sign him to a mega-extension, or they wait a couple of years, and risk losing him to another team. There aren't a lot of players you sign to this sort of deal, but I suppose a power-hitting, superb fielding SS, would be one of those types of players. Corner OFs and 1bs, can be replaced, good hitting SS's are quite a bit harder. I guess I see this deal as a fair and reasonable deal for both parties. The Rockies have made a boatload of value off of Tulo up to this point, and will easily do so for the next 3-4 years. If the economy changes directions at all, it wouldn't be hard for Tulo to pay for himself in his 20M years as well. All that said, I certainly can understand people being scared of this sort of deal.

It's staggering to me that Marvin Miller isn't in the Hall. Agreed, Miller is long overdue. If Simmons make the HOF, do the Brewers retire his number? No. Don Sutton is in the HOF, and the Brewers never retired his number. Ted Simmons, while a solid solid player, didn't have the impact that Fingers did in Milwaukee. It's hard for me to imagine Steinbrenner not getting in as a so-recently-posthumous gesture. Steinbrenner needs to get in. Didn't Caldwell beat Guidry twice that season? Between Caldwell and Higuera, the Brewers had a patented Yankee killer on the staff for over a decade. I seem to remember another 'Mike' beating Guidry for his only other loss that season. Moose Haas was a great Yankee killer as well. The only three pitchers to beat Guidry in '78 were Caldwell, Mike Torrez, and Mike Willis. As I said, Blue should have been in the HOF, and would have had he been able to keep his nose clean (literally). This simply is not true -- Blue's drug problems surfaced when he was with the Royals in 1983. Now, he probably was using drugs well before that, but his legal problems happened well into the down-side of his career. Blue was never talked about as a HOFer in the mid-70's to early 80's before his legal problems. Blue's career simply wasn't good enough for the HOF, and there were so many good HOF starting pitches in the mid-late 70s, Blue gets rightfully placed on the back burner. By the way, where is Dick Allen? Dick Allen finished up his career well before most of these players -- I think Allen was done in 1976 -- all of the other players, played well into the 80s. I don't think Dawson and Rice were good selections. Agreed -- Tony Perez either. If I had to vote -- I'd probably vote for Miller, Steinbrenner, Simmons and Concepcion.

Maybe we could start a brewerfan taskforce. Dear Members of the Brewerfan taskforce: Last night, a man who identified himself as "Rambling Al" -- broke in my house armed, and stole my vintage Nintendo gaming system. To assist you with your effort to recover my possessions, I have provided you with a picture-grab from my security camera. http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/fat_gamer_kid(2).png Clearly this is a task that will require many able men, so I understand if you want to wait to get your manpower to a more appropriate level. No matter what you do -- avoid the keypad around his waist at all costs!

I think it is safe to say there are no guarantees. I think it is safe to assume that there WILL be injuries/missed starts to any starting rotation. Teams almost never get through a season with 5 starters, or even 6 for that matter.

Didn't Brenly have a couple of epicly unprofessional things to say about the Brewers during one of their series against the Cubs this season? He said that Cubs pitchers should drill Braun every chance they get.

No, MLB has a minority hiring process as well, but I'm not aware of the specifics. I have never heard of an explicit rule -- but I certainly could be not up to date.

Doesn't MLB have a process with rules in place for managerial hirings (for example, doesn't every team need to conduct one interview with a minority candidate)? That's the NFL. I would guess that the process would take more than 72 hours. Brenly mentioned in September, when he eliminated himself from the Cubs position that he was talking to other teams about their managerial vacancy -- the Brewers certainly could have been one of them.

I would be very surprised if Simmons was the pick. I wouldn't -- He is by all counts a smart baseball man, he is a "winner" and someone that could fire up the fanbase this off-season. I would have to think that there is some bad blood on both sides over how the Yost firing went down and his resignation. Reports are that he turned the job down then, so I highly doubt if he would come back to work for the same owner and GM two years later. My opinion of Simmons is that he is flat out a very smart guy. I think that if you have been involved in MLB for ~40 years, as a player, executive and coach you don't let "bad blood" get in your way of what you want. The reality for dudes seeking jobs at the MLB -- at any position as a player, executive or manager/coach -- is that at any given time there are probably only 5 to 6 openings that are going to be an option. If you limit your own options because of "bad blood", you probably are going to remain unemployed. Simmons may not have liked what happened to Yost -- but Simmons was a GM himself, (granted for a short time) and w/o looking at what happened in his tenure with Pittsburgh, I am guessing he dirtied his hands on more than one occasion -- I am guessing he isn't going to let things like Yost getting canned get in the way of his own career ambitions. I don't know exactly why Simmons rejected the job after Yost got what was coming to him, but perhaps he felt like becoming an interim manager wasn't going to look good on his resume. All this said, I don't necessarily endorse Simmons as my choice for the next Milwaukee manager -- but I'd certainly hope he was interviewed, and I would rather see Simmons than a guy like Brenly.

I do think he can improve his plate discipline...but it will take a manager that penalizes him when he loses focus at the plate and goes away from his game plan at the plate.....You can't keep running him out there and expect him to change. Gomez is what he is -- I don't think hiring the next manager should have anything to do with the hopes of improving Gomez.

We may have the fastest team in the NL and we did nothing to steal or even move runners. Including getting on base -- our speed demons didnt do a good job with the OBP.

Here is a picture.... http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/images/2004/09/18/slc2mpYC.jpg

Ever? Appier and Saberhagen both did it in the 80s...... No. In the last 17 years, which the original post talked about.

no one has guessed yet... HINT: He played for the Brewers.

Also -- 3 teams haven't had at least one 18 or more game winner. NYM, KCR, PIT

I know that most devalue the individual win these days, but at any rate that is truly one pathetic stat. Agreed. I did a search on BREF -- there have been 412 non-unique pitchers who have accumulated 15 or more wins in a season in the last 17 years.... The Pirates have only had one as well. Any guesses as to who that was? (without looking of course/)

You go to any website, and look at pitchers in the early part of the 20th century, and it's clear to see that the vast majority of the "toughguys" that threw 300-350 innings a year were done in 4-5 years. I don't think this is the case... I did a query on BREF and I looked at pitchers since 1947 that pitched 300+ innings. I used 1947-2010 since that was a choice on BREF, and I am not familiar with many pitchers at the "turn of the century". 77 Pitchers have accumulated 300+ IP since 1947 -- of those 77, 48 were seasons pitched by a HOFer. 26 were pitched by guys not in the HOF, but by pitchers that had long and largely successful careers -- guys like Wilbur Wood, Denny McClain, Bill Singer, Jim Kaat, Bert Blyleven, Claude Osteen, Vida Blue etc.... 3 pitchers jumped out at me as having shorter careers, Vern Bickford, Dave Goltz, and Randy Jones -- I don't know a lot about Bickford, Goltz won 20 games for the Twins in 77, threw over 300 innings, and had 2 solid seasons after that, got traded to the Dodgers and fizzled out. Randy Jones however, won 20 games for SD in 1975, threw 315 innings in 1976, won 22 and the Cy Young, and then blew out his arm, and was pretty much done pitching effectively by 1980. Randy Jones fits the description of the pitcher you outline above -- however, after looking at the actual stats, I would conclude that your overall premise is false -- granted I didn't look at the "turn of the century", again, because I am not very familiar with those pitchers -- but guys were throwing 300+ innings well into the 70s. All that said, I am not proposing we have Manny Parra throw 300+ innings for us next year -- but I can only find one, maybe 2 or 3, pitchers that pitched 300+ innings since 1947 that was out of baseball in 4-5 years.