TheCrew07

Well said TLB

Except for his first season when the team basically accused him of faking an injury to keep earning an MLB paycheck? Yes young players are risky from a production standpoint but that's not a reason not to give them a chance, especially if they are ready. There's just as much risk in FA signings though for some reason certain people continue to ignore that point.

I saw him play 1 game against T-Rats and he was easily the most impressive player I've witnessed play \in person at that level. Everything he did stood out compared to his peers, it was that obvious... He squared up everything he made contact with, made all the plays in the field he should and some that most CFs don't make, and created havoc on the bases. Granted that was A ball, but few hitters show that kind of bat control at that age. I was thrilled when he got promoted because he was basically beating the T-Rats by himself and I was sick of hearing Chris call his name. I watched him play twice this year and he's still darn impressive. He's built like an NFL safety, and true to form he made very solid contact in both games. I think BABIP is the most overrated and misused modern metric so I'll just say that he had a great season, I believe he's capable of repeating it, and I look forward to following the rest of his career.

I wouldn't ever claim that all of the young pitchers are going to work out wonderfully, but the reality is that they do have to be given a chance to prove themselves either way. They can't sit perpetually in AAA because the team eventually runs out of option years for them. At some point the Brewers will need to be willing to take a possible production hit and give them an extended shot and I stress possible production hit because FA signings are just as risky from a value perspective. I get that a large portion of posters would rather go with "proven" talent, but what exactly have the Brewers been able to buy in Free Agency? What difference maker have the Brewers signed in FA who was productive for the duration of his contract? If FA was such an easy fix, then every team that can spend money would win every year. For the most part FA is bad joke, it's players getting paid for what they have done in the past, rather than what they will do in the future. Since the contracts are garuanteed in baseball isn't extremely difficult to get out from under a bad contract, especially in regards to pitching. You might be able to unload a guy to a desperate team but you're still going to have to eat a significant portion of his contract to do so. That's not good value nor is it good business regardless of how often it happens around baseball. There's always more than 1 way to get home and as such we don't need to sign a FA pitcher because it doesn't make sense to slot some averagish starting pitcher in front of more talented and younger players. The young players may fail, but our FA acquisitions have failed just as often, and for the first time in my lifetime we actually have some legitimate starting pitching depth in the organization. I'd much rather run out Peralta, Rogers, and Fiers for a season to see what they have than send any of them back to AAA (which isn't possible in Rogers' case). We'd still have a pretty decent AAA rotation behind the MLB guys with Thornburg and Burgos leading the way, we'd have legitimate options (yes I know "unproven") for the first time ever. This situation is exciting to me and signing some mid tier retread doesn't solidify the rotation, however that player would further limit the ceiling of the rotation. If you load up the rotation with guys who are my opinion 3s best case as in Estrada, Narveson, random FA pitcher, and Fiers the Brewers will win regular season games but how would that rotation match up against the better teams in baseball in the post sesaon? With that many pitchers of the same talent level you're basically limiting yourself to being league average, or hoping to be league average. I'd much rather continually be pushing that kind talent towards the #5 spot in the rotation looking to slot higher ceiling arms in front those guys. The idea shouldn't be for a talent like Estrada to be the #3, it should be for him to a #5 or in the bullpen, that's when we'll have a strong rotation, when Estrada level talent doesn't fit anywhere but the pen. I'd settle for a rotation of 3 #2s and 2 3#s but I'm not looking for a rotation of 1 #2 and 4 #3/4/5 type pitchers depending on what you believe. If we're ever going to get to a place where our rotation matches up well with the best rotations in the game then we simply have to quit looking at FA as kind of answer because the Brewers cannot afford to buy impact pitching in FA. Furthermore it's terrible roster construction to be be paying your #5 pitcher >=$8 million per season. The Brewers have enough other needs that to continually be trotting out some veteran pitcher making considerable money for the backend of the rotation makes no sense. Teams that have bigger margins can play that sort of game with their starters but Milwaukee isn't in that kind of position. If the best talent available isn't an option, then FA really shouldn't be an option, and other options should be pursued.

My feeling is that Rivera will be promoted but not necessarily because he earned it. He's making very small strides offensively and while there is potential/tools to be excited about he certainly hasn't had any kind of epiphany at the plate. The problem is that if you stall Yadial in WI, then you have to jump Rodriguez past him who had a decent season for Helena, but a college player putting up a .735 OPS in Rookie ball isn't all that exciting. Would it ultimately matter if Alfredo would flame out in A+? I don't know, and I'm not sure it matters which player between Rodriquez and Rivera is in A or A+. In the end we're all still hoping that Rivera figures out some plate discipline and quits flailing away at breaking pitches out of the zone because if he won't hit then he's simply not a prospect regardless of his tool set. From a SS prospect perspective I'd like to see Ortega repeating AZ and Arcia in Helena, with the DSL kids repeating down there as well.

I'll agree that Sanchez is "younger" than a typical Melvin target, but he's not "young" and this isn't an issue of semantics. He's already on the downside of career and while he will likely maintain his his career line for a while, he's neither young or inexpensive. As far as FA goes Sanchez is a reasonable target and for the right contract I'd take him, but when was the last time a FA pitcher who regularly puts up 200 innings and a sub 4 ERA got less than 4 years? He won his arbitration case this year to get his $8 mil and with a strong run through the playoffs he might get as much as $15 mil/year depending on who's interested if salaries continue to escalate like they did last season. I could see Sanchez getting a 4 year $50-$60 mil contract in which case I'd pass.

I really don't see Scarpetta making the team out of spring training coming off TJ surgery. His BB/9 was high before the surgery and typically it takes a while to get command back after TJ surgery. Someone might take a flier on him in the rule 5 but I doubt it, I've just never been a very big fan of him as a pitcher. However, he and his family do a ton of community work which is very admirable.

Queue the "unproven" argument and the usual assortment of posts on both sides.

I have a real hard time giving Japanese players with at least 6 years professional experience "rookie of the year" honors when they get their first shot at MLB. Generally they are players already in their prime or on the downside of their prime. While they essentially played AA-AAA all those years from a quality standpoint the atmosphere was pretty intense and much different from our upper minor leagues. For example Yu Darvish already had 6.5 years of experience in Japan and he's only 25, Aoki had 7+ and is 30 years old. While Japanese players do have a relatively high flame out rate, off the top of my head it's about the same as the top prospect flame out rates in general. I don't know maybe it's just the age thing, but I'm firmly against Japanese players being eligible for the ROY honor.

I'm not one to make excuses for players and I don't think the tired angle is as much a reason as it is an excuse. We aren't talking about a 21 or 22 year old pitcher here, we're talking about 27 year old who should be entering his prime. I'm into Fiers, I always have been, but I think both sides are grasping at straws here because there are simply too many variables in play to make definitive statements about him. It's certainly not his fault he was bounced between relief and starting in the minors, but he's also certainly not the pitcher who pitched to a sub 2 ERA through July either. Mike is off to a fine start to his career and next year will shed some definitive light on what we have. I do think it's unrealistic to expect a pitcher with his raw stuff to be a top of rotation guy, but again I also think that pitchers with + command have a legitimate chance to exceed expectations. His stuff firmly puts him in that 4/5 range but he could very well be a 3 or even a 2 in a given year with his intangibles/command. He's very good value as a pitcher regardless of his ultimate production as a starter but I wouldn't be surprised at all if he was bumped from the rotation by someone more talented before his arbitration years are up.

His 4 seam was there, his 2 seam was regularly 88 in the college WS

Mayo continues to be the only person outside of the Brewers organization who's really championed Jungmann's stuff at all, other people/publications have repeated his scouting report but those that have watched Jungmann pitch have pretty much all said the same thing. A disappointing situation to say the least. The top of 2011 draft #12 Jungmann, #15 Bradley, #70 Lopez is starting to look like the top of the 2009 draft #26 Arnett, #39 Ke Davis, #47 Heckathorn, #73 Walla. While he was far and away the best performer from the top of the 2011 class hopefully Jungmann finds some bite for his breaking stuff and Bradley/Lopez turn the corner, because right now it's fairly difficult to be excited/optimistic about the top of that class. 2009 Draft Class 2011 Draft Class It's looking like the Brewers are going to do better with the lower round picks from each draft as there are plenty of guys picked later who are performing well and/or have some exciting tools. Khris Davis and Hiram Burgos are 2009 draftees who will probably start next year in AAA and that 2011 class has a whole slew of players who are interesting starting with Gagnon.

So ever since I got my driver's license when driving at night overhead street lights and business signs (the left on all night kind) turn off as I'm driving underneath or driving by. So for the better part of the last 20 years this has been happening... I mention it now because it happened to me 3 times in the 25 miles it took me to get home after the Packer game tonight. Does this regularly happen to anyone else or am I bucking some freakishly high random probability rate to continue have this happen to me?

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say about Hardy and Escobar? Escobar was clearly ready, he started slow and finished strong in AAA and hit when he came up to MLB. Hardy was going into his last season on an expiring contract, he wasn't going to be retained. I'm all about organizational depth but the organization had already put the screws to Hardy to nab an extra year of service time the way it was. The Hardy/Escobar fiasco wasn't really about depth, it was about poor planning as Melvin ended up in a situation where he traded 2 MLB SS in 3 years for pieces of greater need, perceived or otherwise. There's no way to do as complicated a situation as the status of the rotation, MLB team, or farm in couple of sentences, nor do I want to sidetrack the thread with that kind of discussion. That being said I think casting the SS situation over last 4 seasons as an organizational depth issue is a poor characterization of the situation as a whole. There was cascade of moves which came prior getting us to this point as an organization, dozens of dominoes had fallen to get us to the point we had no pitching to go with the offense. I just don't think it's accurate to cherry pick 2 players out of that entire chain and play the organizational depth card when we had organizational depth at the time Hardy was traded. 2013 would be Green's 3rd go of AAA, what's he going to learn the 3rd time through that he didn't learn the 1st or 2nd time? Green doesn't seem to have any more of a role than Farris does with this organization, both players would be better served looking to latch onto a MLB roster with a different organization. I'd much rather have the positional flexibility of Bianchi than Green (who's not a quality backup 2B) or Farris (who can only legitimately backup 2B) regardless of handedness or power potential. Let Green and Farris go which is also in their best career interests, move Gennett up AAA, and sign a depth corner IF for the AAA roster.

A business across the street and 2 buildings away is burning, so far they've had at least 6 different engine companies arrive plus other rescue vehicles and police. I was at a customer this morning and just returned to the office. When I exited the highway I was concerned the company I work for was on fire. I have mixed feelings, relieved that everyone I personally know and our place of work was not burning or in any danger but I'm concerned for the people that worked for the other company given the nature of the response. I actually had a hard time getting into the office as 3 of the 4 streets in the area have been blocked off. The people that are parking on the street and in various parking lots around the area to watch the fire need to go find something else to do. Gawkers are the devil.

I was just thinking, does every player who contributed for the T-Rats get a ring or just the final roster that made the playoff run?

I wasn't trying to compare Sheets and Peralta, they are completely different pitchers. I was trying to point out that the vast majority of starting pitchers need 3 quality pitches, the only 2 very successful starting pitchers in the last 15 or so years that had just 2 pitches were Sheets and Johnson, and both secondary pitches were ++ type to go along with very good command. I was using Sheets as example solely because he was a 2 pitch starting pitcher that even the most casual Brewer fan would know. Peralta had neither the command nor the stuff to get by on just 2 pitches which is why so many prospect gurus pegged him as a reliever. He's come so far, but he still has quite a bit to prove. I didn't mean to sidetrack the discussion with Sheets at all, I was just trying to quickly explain to those that may not be familiar with the concept as to why having 3 pitches is so important for a starting pitcher.

I share the contrary opinion, he's definitely talking up Peralta. Wily has always had plenty of warts including spotty location, a max effort delivery, and lack of a 3rd pitch. His slider was never on the same level as Sheets' curve, so he was always going to need a 3rd pitch. He was never polished or dominant enough to be the top prospect in baseball, I wouldn't even put him in the top 50. To logan's point about him marginalized, I don't think so there either, he didn't break out until last season, then flopped to start 2012 in AAA. He's shown just enough over the years to keep the prospect followers around here hopeful, but not enough to be on the top prospect lists from all baseball. There are lots of pitchers around the minor leagues that throw hard and have decent stuff but aren't going to be top prospects, in fact most organizations have a couple of those guys. We actually have 5-6 of those guys now which is nice compared to being soft tosser central in the past, but they aren't going to be in on any prospect guru's top 20 pitchers in baseball, and rightfully so. It's really tough to place boom or bust prospects that high on a list, and that's the category where Peralta has been for much of his career and current prospects like Pena, Hellweg, Rogers, and Scarpetta are now. It's nice that all of these "unproven" pitchers are coming up and pitching well, I'm a pretty happy camper right about now. I have my concerns about all of our young pitchers, mostly that they'll ever throw enough strikes and be efficient enough pitchers to get us 7 innings on a somewhat regular basis, but they will be fun to follow and root for.

1 strike away, come on boys!

Nice wrap-up post Ted-whatever!

Most men are physically mature by age 24.

Unfortunately with a backloaded contract it's not that simple. It would be nice if we could average out the dollars and make it $12 mil per year but we can't because he'd be movable with a $12 mil contract if he underperformed but he's not with $20 million in total compensation (with the mutual option & buyout) with $6 mil of the original $16 million in salary deferred. We're basically stuck hoping that he's able to perform at a high level for the next 2 seasons. He carries significant risk and for some reason I find deferred money contracts extremely irritating. Hopefully he's healthy for the duration of the contract and if so it seems unlikely he falls off a cliff, but all it would take is 1 bad slide and he's needing shoulder surgery again. We don't have a legit 3B prospect close to MLB ready anyway, so it's not like there's a pressing need to move him now, but I would have liked to get out from under that 3rd year at the trade deadline for a reasonable prospect package. To be honest, I was hoping for Olt in return for Greinke though I didn't think Texas would be willing to part with him which would have landed another excellent corner IF prospect. However Texas is doing to Olt what the Brewers did with Gamel, and not so surprisingly getting a similar result. Once again most FA contracts haven't ended all that well or been productive for the duration of the contract for Melvin in his tenure with the Brewers, or for the Brewers in general. People will excuse away Wolf's contract because his first 2 years were excellent, but the 3rd year was basically $9.5 million of dead money, $11 mil with the buyout which is a complete waste. Sooner or later one of these guys will pan out for the duration of the contract but I would have rather not taken a chance with such a backloaded deal on player in his mid 30s. Honestly if we can't afford a player straight up, I'd rather just move on rather than do the deferred money thing or backload the deal, especially since those contracts are typically going to guys who are normally going be in their early to mid 30s. He's certainly been productive and outplayed his contract in his first season, but that's pretty easy to do given how little he made this year. However, I'm unwilling to project him to stay healthy and effective next year or the year after. Similarly, there's no way I'd project Braun to be relatively healthy for the duration of his deal, he'll likely suffer a major injury and miss significant time at some point, and I would expect it to happen through this same time frame we have Ramirez signed for. It has nothing to do with Ramirez or Braun personally, it's just the nature of the majority of aging athletes. However, if Ramirez does stay healthy it wouldn't surprise me if the the Brewers pick up his option for 2015 as well and roll the dice for one more season.

Well that was a stinker with poor defense, hitting, and 2 big HRs allowed. Now it's a best of 3 in Fort Wayne... boo.

I'm not sure it's fair to qualify all of Sheets' injuries as freak occurrences. Given how things worked it seems that one injury led to the next and so on. I think sometimes people underestimate how easy it is for anyone to develop compensation injuries, athletes or not. I don't think it's a stretch to link all of the pitching related injuries together for Sheets. The same thing happened with Mike Jones... one injury snowballed into 3 different surgeries, those things happen. Compensation injuries are one of the primary reasons I don't want baseball players returning before they are near 100%. Baseball is periods of extreme inactivity sandwiched around furious bursts of quick twitch muscle activity, it's much different than the other major sports. I'd rather players spend an extra week or 2 to get completely healthy instead of coming back and getting re-injured in the same place, getting a compensation injury someplace else, or under performing like Weeks after his wrist surgery.

I apologize in advance, this got extremely long as I ended up covering the bullpen from every angle that came to mind. Louis I think you might be rolling a bunch of different concepts into one idea, I just don’t think it’s that simple. For example, from an organization building standpoint the bullpen is irrelevant if your starting pitching isn’t good enough. I cringe every single time someone on the forum suggests converting a young starting pitcher to reliever simply to bolster the bullpen when good, young starting pitching is so hard to come by. Let the young men fail as starters before converting them to relief, at the very least they get more development time as starters than they do as relievers. I’ve said it many times but I think in terms of championship baseball value goes starting pitching > position players > bullpen. Yes the Cards have won 2 championships with suspect pitching, the first time they shortened the rotation and Suppan had the best stretch of his career, last year they had a multitude of hot relievers that they could run out to cover more than half the innings if necessary. A strategy like that only works in the postseason because there are so many off days, over the course of a season that kind of workload is going to wear a bullpen out. It was a very unique and creative strategy, but how many multiple inning relievers do the Brewers actually have? Which leads me to bullpen construction… I’ve been arguing against LOOGY and especially ROOGY concepts forever. If you have a bullpen constructed entirely of 1 inning and specialist type relievers, you have no flexibility. In addition the more rigid structure you have in innings 7-9 the less flexibility you have. There’s been a quite a bit of talk about high leverage situations over the years, but how does a situation become high leverage in the first place? I would say its most easily predicted when the meat of the order is coming through late in the game, but generally speaking any situation that produces runs against obviously becomes high leverage. In this case of this year’s Brewers, when every reliever stinks, where can you go if you need to get an out? K-Rod’s WHIP has spiked significantly the last 2 years, he’s been putting more runners on base than in the past, and while his ultimate result last year was pretty darn good, watching the games his methodology didn’t inspire much confidence. He’s nothing more than a name at this point with a climbing BB rate and as such his LOB% has dropped to career low 67.7%. Will he get better in the future? Possibly, I think he could pitch to a mid 3 ERA again, but if he were prospect I would shoot holes in his mechanics and his averagish velocity for a RHP wouldn’t inspire much confidence in me. Axford, I think his problems are mostly arm slot and pitch selection related. His curve just isn’t a swing and miss type of curve, it’s a “I was caught looking for something else” type of pitch. I have no idea why he’s gotten away from his slider, I’m generally not a big slider guy as I perferred the change to the slider in terms of arm health, but I liked Axford’s. Dropping the slider percentage worked for him in 2011 but hasn’t been as effective in 2012. The rest of the guys, does it really matter? I like Loe if he’s used properly, but again he’s a ROOGY with limited effectiveness, Veras throws hard but can’t locate, Parra is Parra, and so on. In terms of the bullpen’s value to the team, obviously any player who is not performing will hurt the team, but again I think the bullpen’s role largely hinges on the starting pitching. The fewer innings your starters will give you, the greater the roll the bullpen has to play. As such, all of our young pitchers are like Yo, high pitch count guys who get through 5-6 innings and get pulled because they are up against their pitch limit. As such I would like to see more relievers that can go multiple innings, no team is going to move away from closers until 1 team does it and has success, so I’m not even going to discuss that position, but I think the Brewers are in desperate need of more flexibility out there given what our starting pitchers are. It’s not that those relief innings are less valuable, every single inning in a game matters, and the stronger the organization is from a depth standpoint, the more options the team has to replace underperforming players regardless of position. However individually it’s difficult to justify paying a guy like starting pitcher to pitch 55-85 innings a season given the volatile nature of relievers in general. Again it’s not that those innings aren’t important, it’s just that all relievers by the nature of their position carry limited value. So while it’s important that any player on the roster be an effective and reliable contributor I still think that if you have a GM who’s going to overvalue a reliever like Axford who explodes in his late 20s and will give a player of greater relative value in a SP or position player, that’s a deal our GM should jump on every single time. It’s not so much about replacing those innings as it is about building a stronger organization. If a player is overvalued by a particular GM and offers a good enough package, I’d have a hard saying so no to trading any reliever or aging player. I’m always looking to get younger and cycle talent back around. The Brewers backed themselves into a place with very little wiggle room because they had no options… a maxed out payroll and no depth behind the major league talent means there isn’t much Melvin or RR can do in season. Last year every move Melvin made was golden, the team was healthy most of the year, and Melvin took advantage of some rare situations in which quality MLB players were basically being given away. Last year the lack of depth turned out not to be an issue because Hawkins and Saito came back to plug the holes and K-Rod was effective after he was acquired. This year due to payroll constraints, no gift trades out there, and a lack of depth there just weren’t any options. For the most part developing bullpen arms is directly tied to developing starting pitching… if you don’t have legitimate starting pitching in the minors then you aren’t going to have many legitimate relief options either because most relievers are failed starting pitchers who’s stuff plays up in shorter stints. In short and to summarize I would say that bullpen’s importance is directly relative to the starting pitching and while every inning in every game counts, the bullpen should be the last piece of the team to come together. It’s much more difficult to field a top notch starting rotation and quality run producing line-up than it is to build a bullpen. As the Brewers have been woeful at developing pitching for most of my lifetime and the relative cost of pitching in FA, the state of the Brewer’s bullpen shouldn’t be a surprise because we’ve constantly been prodding the scrap heap for relievers since Melvin has arrived. He’s just better at it than any other GM we’ve had, it’s certainly not a situation unique to Melvin’s tenure, he just hasn’t been able to remedy any pitching situation long-term to this point. The next few years should be interesting as we might be able to get away from FA and field a mostly homegrown and consistent pitching staff from the rotation to the bullpen for the first time. If not then I think things will continue largely as have with hit or miss pitching performances in any given season.