TheCrew07

Gotcha, I think I saw he was 5' 11" someplace, maybe on the PG site, so I knew he was on the shorter side. Thanks for the response.

First I hope everyone who reads the forum realizes that I don't hold Law in much regard, simply put if he was that good as a talent evaluator he wouldn't be working for ESPN. However, I also don't think that anything he said about the system isn't true. I think he gets individual players wrong all the time, like saying Thornburg wasn't athletic, which isn't true, but he did do a decent job qualifying the system. I don't know that depth being weighed properly is the issue, I think the issue is that when you're best case for most of the players in your top 10 is "MLB regular" that means their best case is to be average. Well statistically how many players reach their best case or exceed expectations? For every fringy average velocity/stuff guy like Marcum there's 3-4 Manny Parra types... guys with legit stuff that couldn't get the job done. The odds of being successful without legitimate tools are even longer, what guy who put up good stats through his minor league career but didn't have at least one good pitch ever did anything for the Brewers? On the positional side of things, guys like Brady Clark and Casey McGehee should be good examples of why many of us don't get over excited when a player over achieves, they tend to crash back to earth very quickly. There's a difference between being able to appreciate players who maximize their talent and get the most out of what they are given and then being able to project a guy to have success against his peers. I can appreciate McGehee for what he is but I'd rather have a Longoria in the minors to replace him with. For example, I believe Khris Davis will hit MLB pitching and I admit that I may ultimately be proven wrong, but I also understand why talent evaluators aren't jumping all over themselves to pimp his virtue with the stats he's putting up. As a total package his tools are average at best, 2 are way below average, and he's limited defensively. Khris is an easy guy to root for because of his work ethic, production, and humble nature, but it's very difficult to sit here and project him to be anything more than an average MLB player for a couple of years. That's nothing to sneeze at, it's certainly more than I accomplished athletically but on a macro level it's also impossible to compete for anything meaningful if you're constantly replacing 4 WAR players with 2 WAR players. Either you need to replace some 2 WAR players with 4 WAR players at other positions or you're team is going to be steadily declining. Or put another way, what positional player above R+ could any of us legitimately claim will be a 4 WAR MLB player at their peak, knowing what we know today? I think Segura could get there if he sticks at SS and improves defensively, but he's not a prospect anymore. Certainly as Weeks and Hart age their production will decline, which is precisely why we shouldn't extend them again but please don't get caught up in the 2/4 WAR thing. I know those aren't precise figures as they can't be since we're talking about future production, I was just illustrating my point by using league average vs "good". I know we really might be talking about replacing a 3.1 WAR guy with 2.4 WAR guy, but my point still stands, we're losing ground. Losing Ground - that's the problem with the farm system as it stands now, we don't have enough impact talent to maintain what we have. I love the depth, I think any long time farm follower loves the depth, quality depth is extremely important, but not at the expense of legitimate impact talent, which we're sorely lacking.

I'm just curious as to how a HS senior gets pegged with my least favorite "closer" label? With that kind of arm isn't there hope he could develop secondary stuff? Is his control or delivery just that bad? Why the closer label for a kid so young?

I find much of this intriguing but this where I part company with many posters in this thread. The simple fact is that Braun failed a drug test and the "why" isn't public. MLB supported the sample collector and the lab, I don't see anything wrong with that. From the league's perspective a player failed his drug test and should be held accoutable, that's reasonable stance and I don't believe it came with malicious "out to get Braun" intent. Remove sports from the equation, if you are an employer and some of your employees take a drug test on the same day but only one of them fails, and then he/she points the finger at the sample collector how much credibility does your employee have? That's essentially the situation with Braun and that's why people are skeptical about him. In fact, I thought Braun was out of line to point the finger at the sample collector in the first place. If the process is flawed then attack the process, but don't attack the people doing the work. Essentially all he did was point the finger at someone else which to me is just a misdirection strategy. The process may have infact been flawed and it appears that it was since MLB pulled back and came up with a new testing plan, but that doesn't explain Braun's test results. The Chain of Custody process can be flawed but that doesn't mean in any way, shape, or form that Braun's sample was actually tampered with. I highly doubt there was anything going on with Bosch and in the end it's just more negative publicity for Braun. I don't think he'll ever get clear of the stigma until some sort of scientific explanation explains his high T level, but it seems that even if a scientific explanation is available that it will likely never be released. So it appears we'll always be in the dark arguing about this subject based on personal bias and having been badly burned by someone close to me in the past who I thought was trust worthy, I have a hard time taking anyone's word at face value. Personally I want factual evidence and in a case like this where there really isn't any hard evidence to come by it's very difficult for me to take definitive position either way. I am leaning towards the idea that Braun was taking something last year, not necessarily a classic PED, but something based purely on his comments. I've had plenty of kids and unfortunately parents/adults lie to me over the years and Braun's statements rubbed me the wrong way, it was like he was saying, "forget what I did and look over here". It doesn't matter if it's players, parents, customers, or co-workers, the verbage may change but for the most part it's essentially the same excuse every single time, it's anyone's fault but their own.

The whole angle of Bosch being initial leak is pretty intriguing, I must admit I've been thinking about it most of the day and the more I consider it, the harder it is to dismiss.

As I posted in the original thread last off-season I think this comes down to the same issue as any another other topic we debate on this forum. Unless there is irrefutable proof one way or another people are simply going to choose what they want to believe. Some will blindly defend Braun no matter what, some will assume guilt, some will sit on the fence and wait for more information. And truthfully if their is irrefutable proof like with Yuni B and his horrible defense a small portion of posters are still going to argue the contrary opinion for whatever reasons they choose. People are going to believe whatever they want to believe and act accordingly. I don't hold athletes on pedestals, my allegiance is only to the team, doesn't matter what sport. If Braun did cheat, he certainly wasn't the first Brewer to take PEDs, he's just the first high profile player in the organization to get caught. I like Braun as a player but it stops there for me, I don't care about his legacy or any of that other stuff. He's good enough that I'm willing to hold onto him until his mid 30s but at that point I'd jettison him like any other aging player. I don't care about being a Brewer for life, I don't know him as a person, and therefore I'm willing to treat him like any other asset. Being a HOF quality player doesn't mean he's in infallible or a great person, it just means he's a very good baseball player. I will say for the record that I believe the cheaters will always be ahead of the testers because that's where the big money is and if an athlete has enough money it's going to be extremely difficult for them to get caught by a drug test. I think the BALCO fiasco is the way most of those people are going to get caught... Someone talks to someone and the rest is history. I'm also not talking about buying Deca Durabolin or any other anabolic steroid like professional wrestlers do off a supplier or crooked doctor, we're talking synthetic drugs that are designed to boost performance and beat tests. I've heard the $500 number a couple of times regarding street prices for low end roids, the last was just a couple of weeks ago in fact, but professional athletes aren't taking that kind of drug anymore, that's mostly body builders and professional wrestlers. I do know a former NFL player who cycled with Deca in the early 80s (administered by the team doctor) but the major sports are way past that sort of thing now.

Isn't that the exact same order it was post Greinke trade? I don't remember what thread that was in...

Hmm, that's a nice write-up on Covey, I wouldn't have changed what I wrote on him in the draft forum, but here's hoping he makes the most of the opportunity in front of him.

Gonna jump around here some so I just quoted the whole thing at once. First, I absolutely despise how contracts/physicals work in baseball. A physical should happen immediately after the draft and prior to any contract negotiations, to me that's just basic common sense. How can you negotiate in good faith if you don't know the athlete is fully healthy? Families will overreact to a type 1 diabetes diagnosis, and I don't mean to downplay it's severity, but with modern medicine life does go on. I've coached kids who were diagnosed on the verge going to college to play sports and the reaction in every case has been a quick step back from everything, but then eventually the child and parents realize it's all about routine and things start moving forward again. Of course if you're diagnosed a week before you have to sign a professional contract you are going to walk away, there's just not enough time to process everything and start moving forward again. Second, Covey would have ended up being a bad pick where as Rondon was the right pick and didn't get signed. The Brewers are still struggling to identify high upside HS pitchers that will have any kind of MLB career. Z at least hit on Gallardo, Rogers (I hope), and Odorizzi. Granted they were too far apart and Rogers has been hurt way too much, but what does Seid have in his pocket from a pitching standpoint? Especially in the early rounds? I do like Thornburg but I don't like his mechanics so much, Nelson has always scared me, Bradley flopped out of the gate, and I despised the Jungmann pick. Sure there's some 2/3 potential in that group, and I'm pulling hard for Thornburg, but Nelson has always struggled with control, Bradley was pitching with Wolf type velocity as a mid 1st rounder, and Jungmann doesn't look to be anything special either. As TLB said, I want to like Seid, I always find his interviews in the booth and on radio to be informative and worthwhile. He seems like a very likeable dude, but from a pitching standpoint I don't like his draft philosophy at all. I will say I like a couple of last year's early round draft positional picks very much, but I would like some pitchers with high upside that we can get excited about and could maybe one day turn into stars. Drafting college pitchers to be 3s in the rotation with 1st round picks doesn't excite me at all and yes I do understand the value of any kind of MLB career vs no MLB career. I also understand that college players are much more likely to reach MLB. However, as I've often stated we won't get impact talent drafting college players in the middle to late part of the first round, impact players in that range tend to be HS players that pan out. I don't want to rehash literally dozens of posts on the subject, but I don't want to turn into Oakland or Toronto who drafted a bunch of high floor players which killed their farm systems and set them back on the MLB level as well. Finally, I find the Brewers lack of activity internationally to be appalling. The high bonus babies they signed were terrible so far with the exception of Peralta, and only singing a couple of players each year isn't going to get it done. It's much better to take a shot with 4-5 400K+ latin kids each year than blow $10 million on some aging middling pitcher. If even 1 of those kids pan out you save tremendously on the backend of the deal. I really don't understand why the Brewers are so obsessed with spending up front where everyone can see it. To compete long-term Milwaukee needs to be more savvy with their money than that. Spend more to develop young talent and it will pay off tremendously on the back side. I don't give a hoot about appeasing the fan base with signings like Ramirez that are as much about saying "see we are trying to win" as much as they are about production. I don't want the Brewers to spend money just to spend it, maxing the payroll every season is fiscally stupid. I do want them to spend wisely and draw as much value as possible out of each signing if they do play around in FA. I guess I look at it like this... for 1 year of Suppan the Brewers could have signed 5 of the biggest signing bonuses in Latin America, they could have plucked every "it" player down there. Maybe you land a Profar in 2009, or a Montero in 2006, or Sano in 2009... most of the best Latin signings seem to be right around where the Brewers top out in that 500K range, but I'd rather take a shot throwing 1st round money at some high upside prospect than I would spending high 7 figures for likes of Suppan, Wolf, Davis, Looper, etc. The veterans might help you win now, but they won't put your franchise over the top and I desperately want to win a World Series. However I also believe that you need at least 3 legitimate 2s in your rotation to do it. While I do like that Seid has focused more on pitching, I don't like the lack of upside through all levels of pitching in the minors. For example, we don't have a single LHSP with a big arm, not one at any level, how is that even possible? Looking around baseball just about every organization has 2 guys with the potential to be #1s if they work out, where's that in our system? The Cards have 3 players to be legitimately excited about, Cincy also has 3, Pit has 4 and 3 in the top 50, the Cubs added one of the best scouting directors in baseball, have drafted well recently as I really like Baez, and made a nice international signing in Soler. Every organization in our division has better impact talent higher in the system than we do and unfortunately that's an indictment of what Seid and Brewers have been doing with the farm system. The Brewers might have a better MLB team today, but what about 2 years from now? If Melvin doesn't cycle some more veterans into younger impact potential talent like with the Greinke trade I just don't see Milwaukee maintaining any kind of legitimate success. We're simply way too top heavy with players approaching or in their 30s making maximum coin, we need more even distribution of talent and pay relative to production and age, and if Seid isn't able to draft/sign young impact pitching then we better trade for it when we can.

When does it ever work out that nicely? Jungmann and Bradley were supposed to be MLB ready college pitchers and neither made it out of A ball last year. It's nearly impossible to predict any kind of career arc until a player completes a season of full season ball in the minors and even then it's extremely difficult to do. It's just not realistic to expect to be able to make the kind of determinations you suggest on draft day. I'd rather never draft a guy because he's MLB ready unless we're drafting in the top 5 picks in the draft. All things being equal take the better athlete, but since all things are never equal look for athleticism with work ethic. Also, I'd like to quit graduating prospects that are 27 years old as rookies to MLB, by the time they reach arbitration they are already statistically declining. The idea should be to get prospects up in the 22-24 year old range and hang onto them until their early 30s then let them walk. Players that come up later than that have had major injury issues, were maybe blocked for a couple of years, or aren't front line players...

BPA. If a Mike Trout is on the board you don't pass him up to arbitrarily take a pitcher, and everyone should know how much I value young starting pitching. We need some impact players and in a bad way. We took 2 mid rotation guys in Bradley and Jungmann 2 years ago with 2 top 15 picks and then took a high upside HS pitcher in the 2nd when they took Lopez. Jungmann isn't all that inspiring, he's been solid yet unspectacular, Bradley was terrible, and Lopez ended up all the way down in the DSL. Right now it's not looking we landed any impact players at the top of the 2011 draft, especially if both Jungmann and Bradley continue working where they did velocity wise last season. Lopez (I did like the pick BTW) has a projectable frame so could pick-up more velocity, but I'm having a really hard time getting past his demotion to the bottom rung of the organization. Of last year's first rounders Coulter is a project as a C but appears to have some nice upside with the bat, Roache is an unknown, Haniger did alright before getting hurt, but 2nd rounder Tyrone Taylor absolutely exploded onto the scene before he got hurt as well. I'm not sure I'd throw any of those guys into the "impact" category yet but if Taylor starts in WI he'll be well on his way. Now that I'm thinking about it that WI OF could be pretty intriguing with Roache, Haniger, and Taylor... assuming health and starting in A. I don't think Haniger is an impact player regardless, but Roache could be if he'll hit enough. I would think Coulter would spend another season in short season ball if they are serious about his development as a C, if not then maybe he starts moving quicker. If he's not a C I sure hope he can play 3B... some potential impact corner IF types would be nice. I would definitely agree with the premise that you can never have enough pitching but if the player isn't there we can't make chicken salad out of chicken bleep. The organization still hasn't done all that well identifying and drafting quality arms with upside, and I'd much rather have an impact bat than another Jungmann type college starter. A rotation of Gallardo and 4 #3 type pitchers isn't going win a championship. We could do it with 3 #2s, but I just don't think it's realistic to do it with less. I can appreciate high floor players but we already have an organization filled with those guys... that's most of our prospect list. We need some difference makers.

People really need to do more studying up on concussions before making broad statements about barbarism. Football is the most popular sport, but it's not the most concussion prone, last time I sat through a presentation (about 3 years ago) it wasn't even in the top 3. The difference is that in many other sports concussions have gone undiagnosed for years. At the time concussion rates per athlete: 1. Boxing (self explanatory) 2. Soccer (there's nothing safe about redirecting a ball traveling at over 60 MPH with your head) 3. Girls Basketball (I wasn't surprised by this having watched a ton of GBB over the years, my father and sister both coach it) 4. Football I'm a huge hockey fan, but I have to believe that if hockey wasn't such a tough guy sport it would outpace football easily. The helmets aren't as good as a football helmet and there's no cushioning feature to ice. Take Koskie's career ending concussion when he was playing for the Brewers... there's simply no way that was his first concussion, he was probably concussed multiple times playing hockey in his youth and never even knew it, in fact his situation screamed of a secondary concussion. Furthermore it's not getting a concussion that's necessarily the issue, it's what happens after the original. If you return to action too soon and get a secondary concussion the effects can be devastating. If you let yourself fully recover before returning to action you'll suffer no long term effects. In fact the majority of us older than say 35 have had multiple concussions, I've been knocked out 3 times in my life playing with friends, riding bike, etc. Getting knocked out is the same as getting a concussion. Maybe the most recent 2 generations haven't had as many concussions, but it's hard to get concussed when you're sitting on your couch playing video games. I don't even want to get into the culture of hysteria surrounding concussions such as parents, coworkers, and young athletes self diagnosing "concussions". For the most part family doctors are a waste of a time as well, the ole "no activity and come back and see me in 2 weeks if it's still a problem" is a crock, it's the standard "treatment" for any number of ailments. If you want the truth, you need to seek out people who know and are doing research, and the vast majority of them are in sports medicine. In case anyone is wondering, the simplest way to avoid concussions is to remain hydrated properly, recent studies have shown a link between dehydration and concussions. Let's not forget that training methods were so worthless that athletes back in the day were given salt pills, which actually dehydrated them further, and serious collisions were excused as "getting your bell wrung". We've come a long way since those times. So I guess to summarize I grow weary of the supposed inherent barbarism in football, lets revisit this discussion when headers are outlawed from soccer or when all young women have enough core/lower body strength to control their own bodies and not fall into one another playing basketball. Girls basketball has come amazingly far in the last 20 years, but there's also a reason why knee injuries and concussions are so prevalent in the sport. All sport carries varying degrees of different kind of risks but singling out football is an extreme disservice to the truth. Lou Gehrig's disease has been tied to concussions and he never even got to play college football. All it takes it being hit in the head by a pitch and then running into a wall in the OF a few days later and the brain my never recover. I cannot stress enough how important it is to be fully recovered from a concussion before participating in any sport again. Sometimes recovery is less than a week, sometimes it's a month, every person is different but the key is avoid a secondary concussions because they are devastating. All the football players which have been written about so much over the last couple of years all returned to a game multiple times after being concussed. They carry just as much responsibility as the team, team doctors, or the NFL. I never carried smelling salts with me unto the field... that's a personal choice. I made that mistake once as a young coach, I let a kid talk me out of taking him out of the game because he said he was fine, and then he got hit again 3 plays later and missed 5 weeks of his senior season. It was a close game and I didn't bother check his eyes, or test him, I just took his word for it, called the defense, and put him back in the game. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about him or how lucky we were that he only missed 5 games but football wasn't the reason he got a secondary concussion, I was the reason. I should have known better, even in the late 90s I was fully aware of the dangers of concussions, I knew the signs and simple sideline tests, but I was too caught up in the moment. That was over 10 years ago and sports medicine has come a long way since then, and it will continue to evolve as more information becomes available. I just the think the benefits of being an athlete far outweigh the risks for the average person and I'd rather not see any sports eliminated because they are "too dangerous". I'd rather people take a sensible approach to risk management and consider all of the facts, not just what's highly publicized.

Relative to what exactly? What closers make in FA? It's not fair to compare the Arby process to FA, more so it's fair to compare similar players at a similar juncture of the career. If he pitches like last year it's a horrible investment. I'm not suggesting they should have non-tendered him, this kind of money was inevitable, but I don't see much "bargain" in the signing. He got market value and there's no way that market values ever equals a bargain. From a value standpoint 5M for < 70 innings isn't all that intriguing, closer, setup man, or otherwise.

Because their content is generally fantastic, they just don't have enough staff to adequately cover every team so they have to rely on beat writers to get the goods directly from the organization. Their coverage of all aspects of the minor leagues and draft is second to none. I found in the past and still believe that of the national websites, BA has far and away the most accurate/even handed scouting reports on players. PG and MLB scouting reports tend to be very focused only on the positive aspects of a player and then at the other end of the spectrum gurus like Sickels tend to be fairly heavy handed. I do read every scouting report for every player that I come across regardless if it's a site/guru/journalist I respect or not, just like I read all of the features and blog posts on every prospect, but if I'm linking content for other posters to read I'm going to focus on the sites that I think deliver the most knowledge on a daily basis. On this forum in my opinion that's BA and MiLB.com, the vast majority of the other sites are just going to regurgitate information that they've already put out in the open. Occasionally fangraphs will get a team executive to drop some good quotes on players, but from the scouting side there isn't really anything new. In the end like anything else it comes down to personal perspective and choice. My personal choice was BA, I dropped subscriptions to sites like BP because I felt and still feel that advanced metrics never get into the how or why, there's so much about baseball that is extremely difficult to quantify that the discussion always seems to come back to luck and statistical noise, which is simply incredibly thin and narrow analysis from where I'm sitting. In a way it's kind of funny because I jumped on Sabermetrics thinking I'd find the answers I was looking for but then I ended up back here anyway trying to figure out the best way to develop/mature talent. There is a ton of value in sabermetrics but I've always felt the practical application leaves much to be desired. BABIP is a great example, if you think about it all BABIP does is tell you who's really hot or really cold, regression analysis isn't the cause, it's the effect. Very, very few players are going to hit .400 or .200 for a season, adaptation and correction are woven into the fabric of baseball. Regression doesn't bring a player out of slump or cause his hot streak to end, regression is just the symptom, the root cause lies elsewhere. The cause can be anything from a mechanical adjustment to whatever is going on in that particular player's head. Slumps and hot streaks may have the appearance of being random, but labeling them as such is a gross distortion of the truth which is vastly more complex than a player being lucky or not. There are dozens if not 100s of variables that go into every single pitch and play in a game, there's nothing unlucky about a pitch left up over the middle of the plate that gets hammered for an XBH or HR. However, if you look at a pitch distribution chart it may appear so, but what you're missing from a distribution chart is the intended location, the sequence of the pitches, what the pitcher and catcher were trying to do to the hitter, and what pitch and location the hitter was looking for. A hitter should kill a FB up over the middle of the plate if he's sitting FB or he shouldn't be in the Major leagues in the first place. Take it from the pitcher's point of view, why did he leave the pitch up? Did he short stride? Was his arm angle/slot off? Did he shorten up his follow through? Did he "aim" the pitch which tends to incorporate many of the previous questions? A pitcher missing his spot by a foot or more is no different than a QB missing a wide open receiver, there is a fundamental breakdown in his mechanics someplace on that particular pitch, but it's not random streak of bad luck, it's just a bad pitch. The root cause isn't random variance, it's definable and correctable. Since I believe that players and organizations control their own destiny, or simply put that I don't believe in "luck", I don't care all that much about prospect rankings, but I do care about my quest to find truth and my search for a way for the Brewers to remain competitive over the long haul. That's why I champion BA, because everyday during the baseball season I can learn something new over there about a player, team, or concept that I didn't know the day before. In the off-season the coverage isn't as furious as the pace during the season, but I'll drop in once a week to catch up and it's never a waste of my time. I know how FIP, WAR, and UZR are calculated and arguing about the minutia attached to any new metric in any of the families doesn't really interest me at all. I'm not looking to derive a better result or excuse away poor performance, I'm looking to maximize any particular player's skill set and and I'm looking to maximize our relative talent in comparison to other teams. That's why I study GMs/organizational direction and that's why I spend so much time reading about prospects. Metrics don't win games, players do, and there's no better site to study up and read about players than BA.

Well said JB12.

You mean other than Escobar and Peralta who have played for the Brewers in the last 3 years?

Well again TH isn't pulling this out of the air, he's getting his information directly from the organization, so it's more of an organizational ranking. Most of the best tools were spot on, at least on paper as far as I can tell not having the opportunity to watch them all play, so there's that. As much as I like Gagnon, I'm not sure he has the best control in the system, I would think that Burgos would be that guy. However, Gagnon was evolving his FB over the course of the season so maybe he was much better with the 4 seamer at the end, he's an interesting guy to watch. The guy I'm most interested in is Roache... if he puts those tools together and has a legit eye at the plate he could be the next Brewer super prospect of the top 20 variety.

Jungmann better explode next season if he's our #3 prospect and I'll leave it at that.

I agree. I just found it interesting because it illustrates just how often "top" prospects fail. It's a lot more often than people think. Actually I posted a ton of data about that very issue on the trade forum this summer, and those numbers are way off. Here's the post in the SS thread. Here's another post in the Greinke thread where I hit the subject again. I think most people who frequent this forum are educated on the numbers.

I don't think it's safe to assume just because he's playing that he's improving defensively. I have much more confidence in what would happen stateside with a MLB schedule than whatever daily schedule they have in any of the winter leagues. To me that's the same as making an assumption about minor leaguers improving just because they are playing, unfortunately it's not that simple.

The idea should never be to "rebuild" the idea should simply be to "reload" every year... As in we just need to break in a couple of rookies every year that will contribute and keep cycling talent through the organization. That cycle will constantly balance the payroll and keep the Brewers relevant talent wise for years to come. Braun has nothing to do with anything, that's like saying the Packers needed to do this and that when Favre was nearing the end of his tenure... you just do the best you can to sustain the organization long-term and forget about "windows". Talking about windows just frames the discussion in a rather empty manner because the "window" can be used to justify any number of poor personnel decisions that might look good on the surface but actually set the organization back years. The sport is really irrelevant, but I'll use another Packer/Farve example because most people will be familiar. Sherman spent all his time trying maximize Favre's "window" spending in FA and making "veteran" moves but how well did that ultimately serve the organization? I've beat this drum too many times to count, I could give a damn about the playoffs if we don't have the pitching to make a serious run. Squeaking in to get knocked out right away doesn't mean anything to me which is why I haven't been a fan of Melvin for years. I don't buy the "get in anything can happen" mantra that's repeated so often, the reality is that any team needs to find a way to win the pitching match-ups. Yes STL was fortunate one year to have Suppan get hot and pitch the best baseball of his career, but that's not the norm. Baseball is about pitching and when we weren't drafting or developing any of it Melvin needed to be more aggressive pursuing younger impact pitching via trade. The Brewer's reality is that it is extremely unlikely we'll win the bidding for any marquee FA pitching and middling FA pitching is a waste of time from the Brewer perspective, which left us with the trade route. Again, if you aren't developing pitching you'd better find a way to acquire meaningful talent from another means. If all you're doing is continually patching mid range and temporary solutions, the same problems will keep coming back around and never really get solved. Hopefully enough of our young pitching progresses that we finally get on top of the impact pitching situation and can focus elsewhere, we should have built around pitching from the start.

I'm not trying to diminish the accomplishment at all, but the winter leagues are roughly equivalent to AA. I'd much rather none of our players ever participated in the winter leagues and focused on strength & flexibility in the off-season while taking a mental break from baseball. It's nice that he hit so well, it's certainly better than not hitting at all, but it's also not any kind of indicator of future MLB success. He jumped right from AA to MLB, I think he performed exactly as he should have, starting slow and then getting comfortable by the end of the season. The book on him has always been that he could hit, the question with him is going to be if he fields well enough to be a MLB SS long-term. It certainly would be nice to replace Hardy/Escobar with another legitimate young MLB SS. Segura is definitely toolsy, and lord knows I like me some toolsy players, but we'll have to see how he progresses as a SS over the next year or so before we start claiming WOAH SOLVVD.

Actually the dislike for him has been rationally dicussed and beat into the ground so many times it's not even worth discussing.

How exactly is anything that happened with the Cubs prior to Epstein's arrival relevant to the discussion? That's like saying in 2001 the Brewers would never have a $50 mil payroll because the franchise had never demonstrated that capacity in the past. Anyone who frequents the minor league forum knows how much I hate to losing to STL and Chi at any level so I would love to just dismiss the Cubs like others have done in this thread, but I won't, because I don't feel it's the truth. I'll say what I said about TB and Texas prior to their rise, throw out win projections and historical production, then look take a good look at the direction the organization is heading. Not quick glance at the surface, look at their farm system, look at the moves the GM is making, look at the relative talent/age of the players on the roster, look at the SD and the talent he's bringing into the system, then make an informed critique of the situation. I'll say this, the Cubs front office structure makes a heck of a lot more sense from a development standpoint than does the Brewers, I wish we had the international focus that Theo has brought to the Cubs. Yes they made a terrible signing in Gerardo Concepcion, and yes Hayden Simpson was a bad pick, the 2 sides of the scouting deparment haven't been perfect. However every organization misses, including the Brewers, it's not about the misses as much as the tact the organization is taking. I would ask that people see the entire picture and try to remove as much prejudice/bias as possible before making claims either way. We'll see... it seems to me the Brewers managed to contend with Betancourt on the roster, and it would obviously be a stopgap move. I also think it's silly to for the Cubs to give up on a 22 year old Vitters after all of 109 PAs, regardless of how awful they were. Though I guess I'm not surprised the opinion exists given that both Gamel and Escobar were garbage based on small samples as well. I'm not saying the Cubs will contend next year, but they aren't anywhere near as far away as some are making it sound. I think they'll be around .500 next season, likely a tad under, which will be a nice bounce back for the fans and depending on what happens with their hitting they will have the disposable income to upgrade their roster if Epstein thinks it is time to hit the switch. Every team in the division is a threat, there isn't poor management in place for any team and I would argue that Melvin is far and away the most sort sighted of the GMs in the division. We don't need BA, BP, THT, fangraphs, or any other blog/website to tell us what's true or not, there's plenty of information freely available to form our own opinions and make those determinations ourselves. However, at some point a publication will cover the rejuvination of the Cubs, it will get linked here, and then an entirely different discussion will take place. I say again you don't have to develop pitching if you have the capacity to buy it, and the Cubs will have the disposable income to upgrade their pitching if their hitting pans out at all.

Agreed. That's why I find it odd that they are trying to stockpile pitching now. It's not like their trying to get young guys to build around. They had/have a hitting heavy system, most of their upper tier young hitters made their MLB debut last season, but they have little pitching on the horizon. I'm not sold on Vitters or Jackson but if those guys pan the Cubs will win quite a few games. They aren't a joke, they have one of the best Scouting Directors in baseball and GM who should learn from the end of his previous assignment. They have enough pitching now to make a run if their young hitters ascend next season. Actually I think that plugging the rotation with a bunch of mid tier guys makes sense for the Cubs, they will have to the resources to upgrade their pitching through FA if they want pending the development of their hitting. People were dismissing Pit and Cin in years past, but both of those clubs continue to ascend, and somehow the Cards always manage to stay relevant. Pit, Cin, and STL all have better/more top tier talent in their farm system than we do... we have a ton of depth but they have 3-4 players each who are legitimate top 100 prospects (most are top 50 in my opnion) and worth being extremely excited about. If people aren't worried now, they should be, I think the other 4 teams are doing exactly what they needed/should do to build/maintain contention. We desperately need our young pitching to ascend at the MLB level next season and then we need the young hitters from the last 2 drafts to make big performance jumps in the minors so our farm system continues to ascend... Otherwise we're losing ground.