TheCrew07

To you maybe, but somehow other teams like the Rays are consistently able to pickup young pieces that they need through trades. This comes down to 3 things. 1) A willingness to recycle roster before it becomes absolutely necessary to do so. 2) A willingness to rely on a couple of young players every year to make contributions. 3) Timing. I will agree that the kind of trades Monty is suggesting are phantom trades with Melvin as the GM, Melvin always waits to trade a guy until his value is at it's absolute lowest, even with Greinke. However around baseball 1 or 2 of those trades happen every year. Those trades aren't the norm, but they make a ton of sense from an organization building perspective. Then again, we've already been through this 100s of times going back to 2008... just because you refuse to open your mind to the possibilities being suggested doesn't mean those possibilities don't exist. There's no reason to make trades at the trade deadline if you can get better value for the same move prior to the season. The bottom line here is if a particular poster is willing to give up a win in the current season to pickup 7-8 extra in the future. In many cases, like with trading Greinke, you might not have to give up any wins now to be better in the future. Furthermore just because teams don't make the trades doesn't mean the idea is flawed or invalid. 10 years ago who was buying out FA years or putting options on contracts? I'd much rather have a GM who sets trends and is out in front of the market rather than a GM like Melvin who's ultra-conservative and follows the popular trend. For the most part Baseball is the only major sport where teams will willingly part with young/cost controlled talent and I'd rather take advantage of that fact than sit around and whine about about the state of the rotation, farm system, or whatever. Winning consistently is mostly about depth of talent, it's about the strength of your entire organization, not just your MLB team. While we've won here and there, the Brewers haven't consistently been above .500 since the our core positional talent was first together in 2006. I'm not really opposed to trading anyone if the price is right and we're getting equal value. SP > PP > RF... I'm not willing to trade a position player for a freaking reliever ever... or a starting pitcher for a reliever. Under the right circumstances I'll trade a starter for a position player (like with Greinke I wanted the best total package) but in general I'm looking to trade equal or up in value. The most valuable trade pieces we have are productive MLB players whom are replaceable, that's why I would have traded Fielder, Hardy, and Hart all before their final season in a Brewer's uniform. If you aren't winning a WS with them and/or they aren't signed long-term, then what's the point in keeping them if you can fill multiple holes elsewhere in the organization?

I hoped with the last agreement they would get something done, an international draft won't come soon enough for me. Maybe that will be the impetus to get the Brewers more involved in Latin America, lucking their way into an Aoki isn't going to happen very often.

Thanks for the update Ted-whatever ! Good to hear all is well. Don't be a stranger, drop in whenever you can.

That's too bad, I hope everything is okay my friend. Would anyone else like to step up and take a team?

We'd love to have you back this season, edited the lead with your team as BC.

Are you in from the get go this year? Has Ted been around at all since the AFL?

I completely disagree, I don't agree with spending money on 1 year wonders. Gomez isn't a top prospect who just broke out, he's an established MLB player with a terrible track record who had 1 good year. My first thought... Bill Hall part 2... a fantastic natural athlete who gets rewarded for 1 break out year but never really harnesses his talent. Gomez' best offensive season thus far was only a .768 OPS at age 26 and he hit 19 HRs but oddly he only hit 19 2Bs. Looking at stats over the years I've basically come to expect almost twice as many 2B as HR for a player in a season, especially for players with speed, I just don't trust Gomez' numbers at all. When Hall broke out at age 25 age he posted an .837 OPS and then followed that up at age 26 with a .899 OPS and I wasn't in favor of signing him long-term, I wanted to keep Hardy and trade Hall. I actually thought Hall was going to be a .800+ player and I'm not convinced that Gomez is legitimately a .700+ OPS player. If Gomez returns to a sub .700 OPS player this is a horrible contract, escalating salaries in MLB or not. I hope I'm wrong.

It's just about time for the Link Reports to start up again. I'll participate as well as posting division updates the same as I did for last season. Who else would like to participate? The more posters we have the better it goes for everyone as it is much easier to cover a single team rather than 2 or 3 for an entire season. MH will you be kicking off each day's thread like last season? Also if you are interested in participating and have a team preference please list it, I'm willing to fill in the gaps so I won't list a team. I'll edit and use the portion below to keep track of the poster and his/her role. Mass Hass - Kicking off each day's thread, backfilling articles, notes of interest, etc. TooLiveBrew - Nashville Minigoon - Huntsville Bkrause - BC TheCrew07 - Wisconsin, Division prospect updates. Homer - Early season pinch hitting Still looking for coverage and team volunteers!

The most simple and basic physics rule that everyone should know: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. -Sir Issac Netwon's 3rd Law of Physics Again, to claim anything related to the ball itself when MLB has denied the allegations one has to be able to isolate all of the other variables involved. That's the problem with so many of these statistical "studies"... applying scientific method or sound statistical thoery doesn't make a conclusion "true" when data is simply ignored... the statistical noise is just as important as the rest of the factors being measured because it has an effect on the outcome. From a physics standpoint the most important part of the HR equation is determining the relative speed of the bat and the ball when they strike, then the angle and other considerations will factor in. Since bat speed data isn't available for anyone and average pitching velocity data isn't avaible going back that far how can one definitively make any claims about the baseball? I remember thinking in the 80s that someone who threw around 90 MPH had a cannon for an arm, now in modern baseball that pitcher is just average. What about park effects? I think we'd all agree that Miller park plays different depending on how the stadium is configured for the game... roof open, roof closed but panels open, roof and panels closed. Were the old parks compared to the new and an adjusted HR rate taken into consideration for those studies? Finally how do you possibly account for the fact that on average athletes continue to get bigger and stronger as time goes on and normalize the data across all generations? Historically baseball hasn't been big on athletic development but in modern times you have all different levels... some organizations have been begun to push it, some are doing what they've always done, some are in the middle. As the athletes become stronger they will swing the bats with greater speed applying greater force to the baseball when it's hit. Until all of those variables can be isolated and accounted for it's simply improper to claim that HR rates were primarily affected by a different baseball. Wouldn't the easiest way to study it be by individual player who was a known user like a Giambi and see how his HR rates changed over the course of their career? Granted that would take much more work than abitrarily grabbing HR numbers from a given season and trying to make conclusions about anything, but the method would be more sound. Wouldn't that be the true measure, benchmarking the production increase of known users? You know players like Sosa and Bonds who's bodies changed dramatically and HR totals went up as they continued to age when their stats should have started falling off. That's how pretty everyone knew Bonds was cheating, players don't get more power past their peak. When I first found bf.net and sabermetrics I was fascinated because as an engineering major I had spent my time with Calculus, Physics, and Chemistry, I never actually had a stats class at any level of school. I took many sabermetric principles and applied them to my work evaluating the play of the football players I coached. However, it doesn't take much to see all of the potential holes in work like this. Once again applying scientific method doesn't make a result scieantific in nature or a fact. In truth all we have with any metric thrown around on these forums is a mathematicl or statistical hypothesis, but in some cases like with this HR study or PAP, if the initial assumptions aren't necessarily true that casts the entire work into doubt. The baseball itself may have changed, I won't say that it didn't, but the baseball isn't the primary reason Bonds broke the HR record, and that's the problem the purists have with PEDs in baseball. More so than any other sport the records are revered and venerated, as such tainted players who break the records of supposedly clean players are going to draw tremendous scrutiny. Everyone on this forum can tell anyone else what the HR record is, what 300 wins means as a pitcher, who the last player to hit .400 was and so on. Can anyone off the top of their head name the all time passing yardage or rushing yardage numbers from football? All time interceptions, receptions, or tackles? From a baseball perspective PEDs are viewed as a direct assualt on the legacy of the game by many people, that's the difference in the various sports. That's on us, the fans, the writers, the people who care about the game and how we choose to frame it. I don't know why I care so much about the numbers in baseball that I have them ingrained in my pschyce, I'd guess because I was raised that way by a father who loved the game. I would think that my experience would similar to others on this forum in that regard. For whatever reason the numbers in baseball have been and continue to be treated differently than the numbers from other sports, maybe because baseball has always been relatively easy to measure by comparison?

I couldn't sleep so I jumped on bf.net and now I wish I hadn't... Maybe in Texas where HS football coaches are just paid to coach and the pressure to win is so extreme they might look the other way, but what responsible adult would push steroids on kids or look the other way? You coach, that's just not how it works; you end up caring about the kids like they are family, you care about how they act, their grades, who they hang out with, who they are dating, you care about it all. Yes kids will take stuff, and they can get the idea the from any number of places, and in some cases parental support as well. However, as a football coach most of my adult life I've never even pushed supplements for kids because one thing tends to lead to another. As a society we seem to want things instantly and without much effort... that's where the steroids come in. It's a quicker path to the end result which requires less effort than doing it the right way. It's not instant gratification, but it is a much easier road. I pretty much like all Men's athletics equally, with the exception of Soccer, and that's mostly because it's sold as a "safe" sport but has one of the worst concussion rates of any sport known to men/women. I'm not into, "baseball is this", "football is that", and "basketball does whatever". The only truism I see is that somehow the notion that baseball players shouldn't lift weights still persists, depsite all the evidence to the contrary. Once again athletic lifting is much different that body building, power lifting, or beach muscles... it's about quick twitch explosive movements, core strength, and flexbility. Athletes will get "ripped" and get a nice "beach body" with a proper diet and work out regime, even high school kids. Heck I'm doing at 37 years old and I'm not taking any supplements at all. Athletes that lift athletically don't get "tight", and an athletic training program will only enhance a baseball players hitting, pitching, and fielding. The problem is that there's probably 100 ways to lift/work out wrong and only about 10 ways to do it right. I've mentioned a couple of times that I know some former NFL players, and while all of them talked about under the table gifts from boosters in college, only 1 was given steroids by a team. He played for 3 different organizaitons and only his last organization was dosing players, and that was in something like 1985. There's quite a bit not to like medically about the NFL, including cortizone shots which don't fix anything and allow an athlete to get back on the field, however this whining about MLB in comparison to the other sports has to stop. It's true that steroids/PEDs don't help a baseball player hit a ball, but they do help a position player hit the ball farther, or a pitcher throw the ball harder, and allow both sets to recover quicker from injuries. If that wasn't the case, no one would take them, and it's laughable that some people still believe the juiced ball theory that keeps getting posted here. I also know a former MLB pitcher, and he didn't want to talk much about PEDs the last time I saw him other than to say he didn't partake (which would be obvious given the player's physique), probably because there were all people around at the golf outing, but he did drop a wealth of knowledge about pitching. Baseball is the only sport that isn't capped, the top players earn nearly twice what the best players in the other leagues do, that's why there's so much incentive to cheat. The season is extremely long and grueling and contract dollars are determined by how hard you throw/how effective you are and how much power you can hit for. In football PEDs aren't going to help a QB read defenses better, and that's much more important than how much arm strength the guy has. There are certainly benefits to be gained in football by taking PEDs, but individual achievement is largely a function of team success. In baseball you can hit .245 and play shoddy defense if you're going hit for a .800 OPS and be a very rich man. It's an individual sport loosely surrounding by the team concept. In truth basebal created it's own problem as you have extremely underpaid, poorly nutritioned, sometimes poorly conditioned, and poorly rested athletes coming through the Minor Leagues, it shouldn't be surprising to anyone that PEDs started with Speed back in the day and have progressed. Speed was the easy solution to that general feeling of fatigue that so many players felt. Too many games, too much time on the road, terrible food spreads, sleeping on buses/trains (back in the day), there's just not much time to do anything but survive. The MLB/MiLB system isn't setup to build athletes, it was setup as a survival of the fittest trial, and for many organizations it still is that way.

Doug Melvin, he's ultimately responsible for everything. Why would my opinion suddenly change now?

For me it comes down to ceiling, and I don't think an organization has to be perfect drafting to develop pitching. I'm not opposed to high floor players like Jungmann or Fiers for example, but I'd rather not go "safe" for the sake of going safe with better talent on the board. I think the top of the 2011 draft is going to be a failure, especially with all of the pitching taken after Jungmann and Bradley whom are already better pitchers. I'd like a well rounded minor league system with all different types of ceilings, but that's not what I see when I look at our system. I see way too much potential to be average and not enough impact potential. I've been following TB closely since 2008 and a big part of the reason they've developed so much pitching is that that they draft so much high upside pitching. They've missed on a ton of guys, but they've also hit on a ton of guys through sheer volume. Granted they also trade for young pitching, but to acquire "stars" you always have to be willing to be wrong and miss on a guy. To me that's the difference between Z and Seid, Z was willing to swing on miss on guys. For example, Nelson isn't near the same level prospect as Gallardo or Hardy were. Gallardo and Hardy were high upside HS kids, Nelson a college starter who never really put it together and didn't dominate his level of competition and as such I've always found it very difficult to get on board with Nelson. Seid has taken players like Jungmann and Kentrail Davis while Z took players like Lawrie and Odorizzi in similar draft positions, just a tremendous difference between floors and ceilings in those picks. Don't get me wrong Z made some horrible 1st round picks but he also nailed a bunch of them as well. Z's staff wasn't any better at any evaluating pitching than Seid's has been, but we had more positional talent so we had more trade options available. I don't see any "bad luck" regarding Covey, his velocity was down, we knew it was down as every scouting report noted it, and we were debating what it meant. There were warning signs and I'm always suspicious of a loss of velocity because that means something negative is going on so I'm immediately thinking of injury or mechanical issues, though like everyone else I never considered a type 1 diagnosis. As far as missing on the first couple of picks, pitchers get hurt so I don't really hold Jones against Z, what I do hold against Z is the lack of impact pitching at every level of organization. I find it very easy to forgive a SD for a player that got hurt rather than a player who just never able to be effective. Simply put we didn't have enough guys so when Rogers and Jones got hurt we were left with Gallardo, we needed a greater quantity of potential impact arms. Seid hasn't exactly turned that problem around and he hasn't drafted the hitting either. From 2002 Z drafted in order: Fielder, Weeks, Rogers, Braun, Jeffress, LaPorta, Lawrie, Odorizzi, and Frederickson. All of those players were high upside picks and only 3 of them were college players and only 1 of them didn't make the bigs, Frederickson was never able to throw with the velocity he showed at MP or harness his command and washed out early. That's a pretty good record for 1st round draft picks. Seid's lone HS pitching pick discussed above, Dylan Covey, didn't have near the arm that either Rogers or Jeffress did when they were drafted. Seid's 1st rounders: Arnett, Davis, Heckathorn, Covey, Jungmann, Bradley, Coulter, Roache, and Haniger. Of those players from a pure stuff/velocity standpoint on draft day none were potential 1s. All of the rest of pitchers were #2's best case and I'd argue that Jungmann was a #3 on draft day and still is. Again I really liked the Coulter, Roache, and Taylor picks from last year's draft, but was that a change in philosophy or a 1 year abberation? I'm willing to give Seid 1 more draft, but the damage may have already been done, as the only high upside player from the 2009-2011 drafts who's performed well enough to discuss as a legitimate impact player is Thornburg.

His gritty veteran presence or some such... I didn't think you were being snarky, everyone in my little circle of friends groans every time he takes a shot and if by chance the ball actually finds it's way through the basket Ryan gets a cheer of a surprise out of us. I'm not sure how the Badgers are competing in the Big 10 starting 2 guys that from an athletic standpoint look like they should be D3 players.

I rode around on the trains quite a bit trying to finish off the moving challenges but I inevitably would end up near a quest and 'since I was in the area...' would always get back on task and start moving forward again. When I finished I think I only had like 15% of the challenges completed. You've already gambled more than I did.

I think Hamilton is easily one of the top 15 athletes in minor league baseball but because speed seems to very undervalued in modern baseball I'm not exactly sure where to project him as a prospect. He's never going to be a power guy and his best tool will degrade rapidly as he ages, he's not always going to be the fastest player in the game. On the right team in the right situation his abilities on the bases would allow his offense contribution to play up having a greater impact than the .700ish OPS I'd project him at. With his speed in the right situation he's a top 30 maybe even a top 20 guy. However if he's playing for a station to station type team then he's not going to have the impact that his athleticism would suggest, but he's still a top 50 guy regardless. Hamilton could be an extremely valuable player through his late 20s if used properly, but I wouldn't look to sign him past his arbitration years if I was CIN or a team that may ultimately land him through a trade.

TLB I'll be interested to hear your take on RDR as you progress, I'm the only person I know who played it all the way through. Taking Normandy in the original MOH is in my top 5 video game boards of all time and might be #1 over-all. There were 5-6 people in the room when we finally got off the beach and by the whooping coming from the apartment you would have thought we had won the super bowl or something similarly epic. COD's night drop (I know directly stolen from Band of Brothers) was just awesome at the time too with the tracers whipping by the plane and your character as you drop in, I'll always have a soft spot for the original games of each series.

I've been with COD since the first game which split off from MOH, it's funny how COD blew up and I'd wager few people know or care about the Medal of Honor games anymore. In fact, I was a admin on one of the biggest COD multi-player S&D servers on the net for a long time, 25 vs 25 in S&D was a blast. Until of course the wall hacks and auto aiming from Counterstrike made it's way over, then I spent all my time booting and banning idiots. That being said, I'm also done with COD, Black Ops 2 was the first COD I didn't buy and I didn't max prestige on MW3, I don't think I ever made it past 5th prestige after maxing in every other game. They've never updated the game play at all while other games are working hard to take cover into account and change the game play. It's just gotten very, very old, and the more the game became like Halo without the bunny hopping over the years the less I've liked it. I enjoyed Homefront for the game play progression and depth of different tactics available but all my of COD buddies hated it because "it's too hard to kill people". I'm actually back on the computer playing the Ghost Recon open beta here and there, I haven't beta'd a game since World of Warcraft phase III through the open, so it's been a long time since I've computer gamed. Other than a couple of role playing games I've just been using my console to rent and watch movies for the last year or so. I was surprised to find that people are already modding/cheating in GRO, is it really that hard to build a client that can't be hacked or modded? GRO does have potential, it's been fun when I've logged in, but if people are already cheating in open beta what's the final going to be like? That's the big problem with FPS, too many people would rather cheat than be good, it's just easier to cheat than work at it. I've yet to play one where people didn't mod since Counter Strike, but I've always found the fast paced nature of the gaming addictive... I long for the simpler times of Wolf 3D, Doom, or Quake... making your own maps and just playing straight up with friends at a LAN party. No having to capture movies/screenshots of people flying through the air or any of that other crap to get rid of the cheaters. I'm going to pick-up Crysis 3 later today to see the franchise through on single player, I've never played the Crysis multiplayer.

Did you even read his entire well thought out post? He's talking about cycling talent to sustain our competitive edge which by the way there's no having it both ways when you are the Brewers. You can't trade for short term solutions and spend money foolishly in FA yet sustain success if you don't have the talent on the farm. This pattern has been so obvious I really do have a hard time believing people don't see Melvin for what he really is. I hate to say this but it's probably selfishness... "I want to win win next year so Melvin should do everything he can to ensure it"... and when Melvin does what he does patching the roster people think he's some all-star when he's arguably the worst GM in our division. That kind of thinking only works in a micro view of the MLB team, it's a losing strategy in any kind of macro view because there isn't enough talent to keep moving forward and improving the team. You can justify anything you want if you narrow the view far enough... pick whatever window you want... Braun's prime, Hart and Weeks prior to FA, etc, and then yes you can justify every move Melvin has made within said framework. However when you start looking long-term none of it makes sense, not even trading for Sabathia in 2008. What good was a 1 and done in the playoffs to waste 2009 and 2010 with horrible rotations when the entire original core was hitting their peak all at the same time? Maybe we make a different kind of move in 2008 and don't make the playoffs then, but then we make the playoffs every year since, maybe we even win a WS. What kind of move you ask? Ohh I don't know, maybe going after Niemann and Buchholz when they were on the market doing prospect for prospect trades or centering a deal around Hardy who was playing very well and nearing the end of his deal since we had Escobar behind him as a couple of examples. The thing is, all of this has already been posted literally dozens of times by any number of posters and yet we're still back here flaming anyone that criticizes management for the short term approach they've taken to organization building. What good are draft picks when they are wasted? This has also been pointed out numerous times by various posters but the Brewers scouting department has been decimated, they lost the 5 scouts/crosscheckers they had when they draft Hardy/Fielder/Braun/Weeks/Hart, my goodness just look at the Brewer drafts since Z has left, they've been awful. We aren't drafting in the top 10 anymore, we aren't getting Braun or Weeks, we're drafting low enough in the first round we need to develop the player. What player have they drafted recently who's been ready for MLB in 3 years or less? The MLB draft should not ever be used to try and plug MLB holes, it's not like the NFL draft where a guy can have an immediate impact. That's the point here people, we don't have the talent to replace the talent we are losing, so the idea being discussed is how to acquire that talent. We haven't been drafting it, we haven't been signing it out of Latin America, we can't afford it in FA, so if we don't trade for it how are we possibly going to acquire it? It's the exact same thing I've been beating to death about pitching... if you aren't developing young impact pitching, and you can't afford impact starting pitching in FA, then you damn well better trade for it or your organization is stuck in neutral. Yes we made the playoffs twice...hooray... meanwhile since our core came up in 2006 the Cards have won 2 WS, managed to continually put a competitive roster together, and yet have a really good farm system. They've worked us every single way we can be worked and while they had good fortune in 2006 with Suppan pitching the best stretch of his career overall STL has proved to be a stronger franchise, we aren't in their class at all. Sure we had their number for a couple of years but what did that net us? The worst part is that I hate STL with a passion, almost as much as I hate the Cubs, it literally turns my stomach to point that out but it's the truth. I've had the same empty feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think about this stuff since 2008 when I realized that when Melvin/Ash were talking about trading hitting for pitching they meant making a move for a pitcher like Sabathia. The Brewers aren't a storied franchise in MLB, not like the Packers are in NFL, but I would like them to be. To get there we have to be able to sustain excellence over a long period of time and we need to win championships. All of that starts with being able to sustain an elite rotation, there's no such thing as "good enough", and you don't need someone to post a "study" full of holes to prove this to you. Look around at other successful small markets, how do they manage talent, who do they sign in FA, what kind of trades do they make? Then compare it to the Brewers and what Melvin has done and there's a wide gulf between them and us in just about every way. Staring in 2006 the Brewers have finished below .500 3 of the 7 years while ranking in runs: 14th in the NL in 2006 - 4th in the NL Central 5th in the NL in 2007 - 2nd in the NL Central 7th in the NL in 2008 - 2nd in the NL Central 3rd in the NL in 2009 - 3rd in the NL Central 4th in the NL in 2010 - 3rd in the NL Central 5th in the NL in 2011 - 1st in the NL Central 1st in the NL in 2012 - 3rd in the NL Central The same time frame, here's the pitching by ER: 2006 - 15th in the NL 2007 - 9th in the NL 2008 - 2nd in the NL 2009 - 15th in the NL 2010 - 14th in the NL 2011 - 7th in the NL 2012 - 13th in the NL That's Melvin's legacy, and not so coincidentally that's exactly what he built in TX as well. He's just not the right kind of GM for a team like Milwaukee, he's too conservative, he'd be better off in a larger market where he could buy impact pitching because he won't trade for it, and the Brewers haven't been developing it. It all comes down to pitching and that's why X (i miss him) and I started bagging on Melvin back in the day because we had all this awesome hitting talent and nothing on the pitching side to go with it. With our full complement of home grown hitters we were only in the top half of the NL twice from a pitching standpoint in all that time, that's terrible. People may not like me, or what I have to say, or think that I'm just a hater, but the numbers, trade history, and roster management over the years don't lie. I don't get any pleasure in bagging on Brewer's management, in fact I've actually quit watching the MLB games and I never used to miss a pitch. I check in a couple of times a night or I'll watch a game as long as a young player I'm interested in is playing, but I rarely watch an entire game anymore. Like I said I've had this sense in impending doom like it was all going to come crashing down for a long time going all the way back to 2008 when most of you were celebrating the playoff appearance. I just saw that whole deal a different way and probably continue to view the organization much differently than many people who only post on the major league side of the forums. You don't trade a productive a player just turn over the roster and that's not what Monty was suggesting, you trade them for a specific a reason targeting players that can help you sustain success over the long term. I would have traded Fielder for pitching at any point because he wasn't going to sign here long term, I would have traded Hardy for pitching, I'd trade Hart for any kind of impact player, I would have used our surplus MiLB talent to target young impact pitching instead of 2 CY winners, and I wouldn't have taken a quantity deal for Overbay. The dominoes didn't have to fall the way they did, it wasn't preordained by the baseball gods, it was just 1 man running the team the only way he knows how, and that's the other reason he has to go, because he's not adaptable/flexible, it takes him far too long to change course. I'm not saying you have to agree with my, or Monty, or any other poster who feels similarly point of view, but at least make an effort to understand that point of view before dropping snarky 1 line meaningless responses. I probably shouldn't say this but I don't agree with JB12 all that much but I do take the time to read what he writes because it's obvious he puts time and thought into his posts, we just tend to see issues from much different perspectives. If you're just skimming these long posts then it's probably best not to comment on them at all because you're obviously missing the point of what's being written.

Yes that's true Monty, but I was thinking of guys like Arcia and Roache who didn't even get to play professionally in 2012 when I was talking about break outs. If Roache is healthy we don't even get to pick him but if Arcia had blown up Helena like we expected him to prior to his injury I think he's top 100 guy. Can our pitchers bounce back? A guy like Bradley for example? I'm not sold on that at all, there is a very disturbing trend of Brewer college pitching draft picks losing significant velocity and all have been 1st or 2nd round picks... Arnett, Heckathorn, Adams, and Bradley off the top of my head, even some of the high school guys like Anundsen lost velocity, and none of the others regained their velocity so I'm not holding out much hope for Bradley. I will say that I would love for Bradley to turn it around because we need a LHSP who has some upside in the worst way but it just seems unlikely given the Brewer's history with this type player. All players are different so there's always hope, I just don't know how to quantify how much hope there really is. A break out pitching performance for me would someone like Pena finding his control, or Thornburg ceasing to give up piles of XBH, or Nelson dominating AA, or Hellweg laying waste to AAA, or Jungmann missing bats in AA... basically a player taking a significant step forward, and for most of our pitchers it's going to be about them finding more control. Jungmann would be the outlier there as he needs better secondary stuff to succeed at the upper levels.

Wouldn't it make sense to worry about Rogers' inning limit if he actually approaches it? As in how about we cross that bridge when we get there? I'm not sure how we adequately justify putting Rogers' arm in the pen given the disparity in talent between him and Narveson. If Rogers doesn't finish the season maybe Thornburg is ready by then, or Burgos, or someone else to pick up the last 5-6 starts. It doesn't have to be Narveson but it could be if he was in the pen. To me the innings limit thing doesn't carry much weight. I'd rather have 160 innings of a healthy and effective Mark Rogers than I would 180 innings of Narveson. We'll likely use more than 5 starting pitchers over the course of the year anyway so I don't understand trying to make a decision in Feb or Mar about someone's health or an inning limit in August. We have many more internal options for depth than ever before, depth wise we'll be fine. Putting Narveson in the rotation simply because he was there before or because he's LH is extremely short sighted in my opinion, but would be the RR/Melvin thing to do. Yes I understand we don't have a good LH starting pitcher anywhere in the system at this point so we're LH deficient as an organization but until Rogers proves inneffective I see very little reason why Narveson should ever slot in front of a more talented pitcher. If Mark fails by all means move him to the pen, but don't put him there just because he's not "proven" and may have an innings limit.

I'm not sure what a top 200 will prove when over 60% of the players on the top 100 won't reach their ceilings as players for various reasons. It's not entirely about draft position, the Pirates have missed with high draft picks as well, every team misses with high draft picks. You point out draft position, then players signed in Latin America that are making difference, but ignore the Latin players in your final analysis? Where's the biggest difference between the Brewers and the rest of the teams? The Latin players... I really like Thornburg but he's not in the same prospect class as Bundy, Fernandez, or Miller. No one is saying that BA's list is the prospect gospel, I would quibble about the placement of at least 20 guys on that list. However, to suggest that our system is "good" or compares favorably to the other teams in our division is laughable. It's easy to bag on the Cubs and Pirates because of where they've been picking, but STL has be drafting in a very similar position to Milwaukee and has smoked us, they've been better at the MLB level and the MiLB level, they've worked us bad. In fact the draft position argument is the same argument that was mentioned time and time again about TB... they built their team with high draft picks, so what? Well that wasn't really any more true than what the Brewers did, only Freidman had the foresight to target young pitching in trades and built their WS rotation via that route. I don't get dismissing teams who's talent pool is ascending just because of where they drafted when that's exactly how the Brewers were built initially. Draft position isn't everything and any way you slice it the Brewers haven't drafted well by comparison. There's no excusing it away, that's the reality of the situation. We have a system full of high floor players with very few performing high ceiling type prospects. Hopefully last year's positional draft picks hit the ground running and put up some big numbers so we have something to get excited about, but they have to perform above R ball before any of us should get really excited and for national pundits to notice. Players already in the system like Arcia putting up a monster season would help as well, as would Morris repeating last year's dominance at the plate. We simply have a ton of "ifs"... from our top pitchers finding enough control to stick as starters (it's unfortunate that basically every scouting report on our pitchers reads the same) to injured positional players with upside who didn't get to perform very long or not at all in 2012. If we get some nice breakout performances from pitchers/hitters with legitimate upside then we can start claiming some parity but if our guys simply hold their own then we're still where we were coming into last year's draft. Again, I really like the positional players taken early in that draft, though like Paul I'm not sure Haniger pick made much sense given the players taken before and after. The problem is that we're woefully thin on any potential impact pitching below AA through the DSL... I still find it hard to believe that we don't have single LHP with a big arm starting some place in the organization. We can bicker about the exact placement of specific prospects or the team on these lists but in the end the Brewers are clearly bottom 3rd as a farm system and that doesn't bode well for the future given the contracts we have expiring over the next couple of years. Especially when the Cubs and Cards can spend more than the Brewers and fill holes in ways the Brewers cannot. If we can get some of this young pitching to maximize potential by getting 2-3 #2s out of Peralta, Rogers, Hellweg, Thornburg, etc then we'll be okay at least in the short-term, but we still have long-term issues that need to be addressed. It's just not OK to have a single Brewer on the top 100 list every year and no one in the top 50. While it's certainly better than no Brewer prospects being on the list we're still losting ground as we need to be in the 3-5 range on the top 100 every year. If you think about it on average every team should have at least 3... we need to have the potential to replace the production we're going to be losing. As said earlier, we won't be able to replace 3-4 WAR players with 1-2 WAR players and stay competitive, that's a losing battle.

Sorry Doug but I don't see how a couple of million dollars saved on backups makes us more competitive. You're talking about the lowest paid players on the team regardless. If we want to talk about savings, not paying Wolf $8 mil to stink while paying Fiers $500K would have been significant cost savings that could have been used to improve the team elsewhere. Again I don't see the logic in resigning Hart when we literally have as many as 3 viable in house candidates for that spot. The idea shouldn't be to sign a guy to a 3 year deal, get 2 good years, then call the 3rd year a wash. Dead is money is simply that... misspent, and there's no excusing it away. If you're the Brewers trying to compete the Dodgers then there's no room for dead money anywhere on the payroll, not in deferred salary or otherwise. Every dollar spent needs to have a meaningful return paying towards in the current season. I think you adequately described the trap of FA and aging players, people will look at what a player did last year, assume good health, and expect a similar result, and it almost never happens that way. How many big time FA contracts turn out well? How many FA contracts have turned out well for the Brewers under Melvin? There's this myth that proven MLB players carry less risk than prospects and I've vehemently argued against that point. In truth it comes down to how people weigh risk... most people who favor veterans are looking purely at potential production and ignoring other factors like health, longevity, and cost. I think that when cost is taken into consideration veteran FAs are actually much more risky than unproven player, you're only 1 injury away from eating an entire contract like we did with Riske. In a money driven system doesn't cost relative to production have to be the primary risk factor weighed? What could possibly be more important than the production cost associated with any player? That's the angle that I'm coming from. For a long time we were upside down with our worst players making the most money but since that situation has reversed itself we face different yet somewhat similar problem in that now we're old and expensive, we've become top heavy again. I too like the idea of keeping a core, but Corey Hart isn't a core player, he's an above average replaceable piece.... Braun is a core player, Gallardo is a core player, Lucroy can a be a core player... Core players are signed to below market value contracts are still approaching or in their peak. Hart wouldn't sign an extension to buy out FA years, he made the choice, and he already got one FA contract out of Milwaukee. He's the type of player who's still productive and valuable, yet replaceable, who should be flipped for younger impact talent. Every productive player isn't a "core" player... Fielder was never a core player because he was never going to sign here long-term. Weeks isn't a core player because he's been hurt or ineffective too much of his career. McGehee should have never ever been considered, he didn't have the talent, thank goodness Casey saved Melvin from himself on that one. Furthermore the thing about core players is that their contracts tend to be extremely moveable if the player becomes replaceable, like a James Shields. That's going to be Gallardo at some point as he's not resigning here, his physical skills are declining, but he'll likely be a good pitcher for some years to come. I would flip for him for the Shields package 100 times out of 100 if we find ourselves in that kind of position. A core player is a player you build a team around, someone the team controls long-term. That's a special kind of player with special talent. If we're talking the Yankees, Angels, Dodgers, or similar large market team that can sign an impact FA for 7-10 years sure a 30 something like Sabathia can be a core player, but that's not the Brewers reality. There's no such thing as a core player if the player is signed to a 3-4 contract, hometown discount or not, there's too much risk in terms of the dollars, production, and health with too short of service time. Think about it this way, a core player is basically someone you don't need to have MiLB depth behind because you aren't looking to replace them anytime soon. Sure MiLB depth behind the player would be fantastic and is definitely a best case, but there's no hole on the MLB roster that we're going to be looking to fill anytime soon. To replace a player on a 3 year contract the replacement player basically has to already be in the system considering the Brewer's recent draft positions, we aren't picking college super studs in the first 5 picks anymore, we're picking players that need to be developed. That's the problem with short term solutions like Sabathia/Greinke/Marcum and fill in players like Wolf and Ramirez... the problem is really never solved... the hole is just temporarily patched for a couple of years and then it comes back around. If we don't cycle talent back on itself through trades then we're entirely dependent on what the system develops and FA, and the Brewers aren't able to outbid anyone for a marquee FA, haven't done well in Latin America (haven't done much of anything to be more precise), and haven't drafted well. Hence we lack flexibility of any kind: we don't have much talent to flip for anything, we have a maxed out payroll every year, and we don't have multiple options at any position but 1B, all because Melvin just plays the same patching game every year. It's whack-a-mole with roster spots over and over and over. Unfortunately I just don't think there's room for sentimental attachment to players anymore, it's not good business. If a player won't sign early with some option years, trade them or let them hit FA and move on to the next dude... Next Man Up! There's nothing fair about the compensation system or uneven resources between teams in MLB so the Brewers have to exploit the system in a different way than the media will regularly publicize. My 3 players were once Braun, Hardy, and Hart... the only Brewer memorabilia I own is JJ Hardy related and I wanted to trade him for pitching after 2008, I'd trade Hart now for any impact talent, and I'll probably be willing to trade Braun in 3-4 years for the right return. I'm not saying my point of view is the only way the Brewers can maintain success, but I do think it's the easiest path, which is why I've been consistently championing the same things for many years now.

We have aging and expensive talent at those positions, and what they did last year has nothing to do with what they do this year or into the future. That's the problem, if they go down what do we have to replace them with? Where's another player with Braun's power potential anywhere in the system? Can we really count on Ramirez to stay healthy and put up another career year each of the next 2 seasons? Who replaces him when he gets hurt or moves on? Weeks has never been able to stay healthy and Gennett doesn't have near the physical tools that Rickie possesses. Hart is replaceable at 1B as is Gomez in CF, and furthermore 1 good year doesn't make Gomez a top 5 talent. Where's another pitcher like Gallardo that we "know" is going to be a stud? You may not care about age, but I think you're way off track, because age eventually catches up with everyone. Some guys aren't able to stay healthy, some have their production decline rapidly, some have both problems, but age affects every player in one way or another, and it's extremely difficult to predict how and/or when, so it's just easier to move on. Let other teams overpay players for who they used to be...

There was far too much team building logic in the last 2 posts, we need to return talk of gritty veterness and the fact that's he a LH. We need more "proven veteran" cliches "and that" to have meaningful discussions about the rotation. If one of the young guys is just absolutely terrible in the spring and Narveson is lights out then maybe I could see penciling him in the rotation because he's been there before. However no pitchers above A ball offer the upside of Rogers and Peralta, I will admit that I'm unsure how long Rogers arm will hold together, but there has to be some reason behind the organization's use of him as a starter all these years. In fact I'm not willing to say that any of the inexperienced pitchers will pitch as well as they did for the big club last season, but when all of the players carry question marks I'd much rather take my shot with legitimate talent and see what the players can do, how they grow, and how they react to failure than recycle someone just because he was there before. Someone posted earlier, I think it was in this thread, about hoping that we'd get the to point where the 4/5 spots in the rotation were being used by talented yet unproven starting pitchers getting their feet wet, not retreads who never had that much "stuff" to begin with. That's exactly how I would love for the Brewer's rotation to be ultimately setup. I will agree that in the end the best result is all that matters, but how many guys get results that don't have at least 1 plus pitch? Every Starting Pitcher with average velocity who's overachieved his stuff had a very good out pitch, the rest of the "know's how to pitch" crew are successful as relievers, and there is no shame in that. I'm fine with Fiers because he's cheap and effective but at some point I'd like to slot enough legit talent in front of him that he gets pushed to the pen, and I feel the same way about Narveson and Estrada. I don't want those type of pitchers being our 2/3s... I want them in the bullpen, they can still cover rotation slots if we have an injury and no minor league pitcher is ready, but from a MLB talent standpoint those kind of guys are purely average and the idea shouldn't be to build around average. With Narvy, Estrada, and Fiers in the rotation that's 3 fringe average starters from a stuff standpoint, I'd rather we have 3 pitchers with more margin for error than that. I'm aware of how we got here, I've been moaning about young pitching longer than I care to admit, but if Milwaukee is ever going to get over the hump from a pitching standpoint, now is the time to make a move and see what we have. Next year Thornburg and Hellweg will likely be in contention for rotation slots and there's guys like Burgos, Nelson, and Jungmann behind them. We have enough averagish SP that can be moved to the pen, we aren't going to have rotation slots for everyone, but what we need is to come up with 2-3 impact pitchers out of this crop. If that happens Yo becomes somewhat expendable and can be cycled back around for some young impact pitching, I'd love a James Shields type deal, which is odd since Shield's contract has been my model pitching contract for quite some time. In no way do I want pitchers like Estrada, Fiers, and Narveson keeping more talented players from getting a shot and a chance to grow at the major league level. Again, average talent should never stand in the way of better talent, the idea should always be push to that average talent to the back of the rotation maybe all the bullpen. "Proven" is just a meaningless cliche, "proven" doesn't have anything to do which player is going to perform the best, there's too much grey area to make definitive claims either way. I'd much rather take shots with inexperienced and inexpensive players than the make the mistake of holding on to veterans 1 year too long. It's not easy to let players like Farve and Woodson go, but I think in the end the Packers are better off for it, and I'd rather Melvin operate in that manner, making value signings in FA and letting our players go maybe a year too early and keep cycling that talent back around rather than all this talk of "the window". I'd like to slam that window shut right on his head, it might knock some sense into him. The Brewers aren't an organization that's going to be able to sustain itself with veterans, and the sooner the organization as a whole accepts that fact and buys into the idea that even at the MLB level the coaches are going to have to be constantly developing talent, the better off the entire franchise is going is to be. Which in the end will lead to a better result on the field as well. Young players will have to be the life blood of this franchise and the organization is going to have to be willing to groom them while giving them the room to fail and grow at the MLB level if we're going to sustain any success over the long-term. It's not where you start, it's where you finish and I'll take season like Hardy's first out of player we bring up... it doesn't bother me if they struggle for a couple of months or half a season, once they start to ascend they become a different ball player and it's "game on". I've never understood why it's okay for a vet to slump for a month or more but if a rookie does that he's "overmatched" or whatever other derogatory term someone wants to use. Every player will have a different learning and all it takes for them to blossom is patience to ride it out. Certainly some players will never get it and will need to be replaced, but struggling for a couple of months should be the expectation for every rookie player, very few are going to come up and hit like Braun did, and think sometimes people forgot how long it took Fielder to get going his rookie season. Instant production should be a nice surprise rather than the expectation.

Cingrani is about 40 spots too low, I don't like going to the reliever card until a pitcher proves he isn't a starter at the MLB level. I understand that his walk rate doubled with the move to AA but it wasn't excessive and he posted a similar MLB walk rate last year. I still think there's room for improvement with him. I think Corcino was treated similarly and I see him with #2 upside as opposed to BA's #3, but maybe I just like Cincy's system more than I should. As for the Cards, it sure wouldn't suck to have Taveras, Martinez, and Rosenthal. I'm not super high on Wong, in fact I'd rather take Gennett over him at this point, but regardless, the Cards have a nice system. I found it somewhat interesting that Polanco from Pitt found himself on the outside of the top 50 by 1 spot, I figured he was lock for the low 40s. I was also surprised that Almora from the Cubs was as high as he was, but it's hard to argue with the success he's had out of the gate. Though I will say I think our own Taylor was more impressive prior to his injury, though he doesn't have the same upside as Almora does. It's depressing to have an aging MLB roster and the worst farm system in our division by any measure.