TheCrew07

I think you've missed the point. Generally when people are talking about HS talent they are looking for impact type players, and very few impact college players are taken past the 10th pick in the first round, I already went through and made a list of those players before last year's draft. That doesn't mean the Brewers shouldn't draft a variety of types of players, in fact I do believe in drafting players that are productive but not necessarily toolsy, I'm even down with relievers being taken later in the draft. However in a system very thin on impact talent, it's important to add as much as possible through the draft since Melvin doesn't trade for it, so early on in the draft I'm looking for impact players. Since the Brewers have been relatively successful at the MLB level we've been drafting mid to late 1st round, which is why HS players have been the focus for many, because they are most likely group to produce an impact player in from those draft positions. I'll use Jungmann as an example, when I watch him pitch, I see a #3 best case early in his career, but he's also likely to at least be #5. He's more likely to contribute at MLB vs a Lopez, but he's also less likely to be someone that will headline a staff. Jungmann could certainly tighten his secondary stuff and be that top of the rotation guy while Lopez could be the next Seth Lintz, While we never know how things will turn out on draft day, I liked the Lopez pick more than the Jungmann pick from an impact talent standpoint. Mostly the opinions on this topic will come down to personal preference, I'm coming from a more pragmatic place, we've traded nearly every potential impact player from the 2nd wave, we desperately need more high end talent in the system. I suppose I actually may come across as being idealistic, especially in regards to Melvin and the organization, but I'm actually trying to keep my philosophies pretty simple and straightforward... Build off of young pitching and fill the organization with as much impact talent as possible. Historically those have the 2 biggest weaknesses of the organization, we had a good run through the early 2000s, but the majority of those scouts and talent evaluators are gone and we were still woeful developing pitchers when we had them. I do like Seid and hope he's successful, well we need him to be successful, but I'm not into building a system full cookie cutter players who are league average at best with high floors and low ceilings because then you're building to be mediocre, and I desperately want to win the WS.

I'm pretty comfortable with where I personally rated Gennett in my p50. If he has a good year in AA he'll move up my list, he's one of those "wait and see" kind of players for me personally.

I've read that entire article numerous times, but it's entirely based on Power Factor, which is an interesting concept, but certainly not proven fact. I don't want to get into a debate about what steroid cycles will and won't do for an athlete, that information is available on numerous sites. I have not used steroids, however a good friend did cycle steroids while in the NFL in the mid 80s. No I will not share his name or the team, that's irrelevant to the discussion. We've talked at length about plateauing (which is the whole point of the cycle) and other side effects. The author of the linked article above obviously doesn't know much about weight training and he assumes that steroids only effect power, which certainly isn't the case. Again, that information is all out there... steroids can make you "quicker" by impacting the strength of the muscles that load the bat for a swing or a pitch, thus making you hit or throw the ball harder. Baseball is all about fast twitch muscle movement, the quicker and more powefully you can react, the better off you'll be. The article also largely ignores how difficult it can be to play baseball with even something as minor as a sore back. Injury recovery is everything in baseball because every part of the sport relies on fast twitch muscle movements, you can't build your way into a movement the same way you can in football, there's no time for that in baseball. Relative health will play a huge part in the numbers a player can put up over his career or a single season, see Griffey Jr vs Bonds... The article like all things Sabermetric has value, but also has plenty of holes. I have no doubt that ball effects will have a tremendous impact and MLB certainly capitalized on the home run chase which has been credited for bringing the masses back to the sport. However if you don't qualify and isolate the effect of a different ball, then how can you definitively measure power in either direction? This is why all metrics have holes because the true causes aren't isolated... most metrics and analysis are trying to come up variations in the effect without isolating the variables that cause the result. We end up discussing "noise" and "random variation" when there's really nothing random about a baseball game or sports in general. In truth, it's as a simple as no one has figured how out to mathematically qualify the events of a pitch or batted ball, we just spend most of our time discussing what happens when the ball is in play, not what happened to get there. That's why I talk all the time about pitch f/x and location, because that's what truly matters in baseball. Give me velocity, break, and intended vs actual location for the pitcher, and bat speed, angle, and location of the bat through the hitting zone for the batter and simple physics will tell you where the ball is going to go. You don't have to know the mental chess game, generally speaking you can tell if the hitter was fooled or not by the type of swing he makes. Finally as I stated earlier, just swinging bat if you're cycling steroids will improve your power, doing the repetitive movement will cause the affected muscles to get stronger just by repetition because it's easier to gain muscle when on a steroid cycle. MLB players use longer and heavier bats than most of any of us have used (maybe those of us that played in a college wood bat league have used similar). The bats require a significant amount of torque and force to swing, most players peak at certain bat speed precisely because the human body is prone to adjust and plateau physically. Steroids allow you to more easily break through those barriers and add bat speed. It's not about beach muscles and looking muscular, power lifting and body building have nothing to do with athletic movement or training. So much like my general view of sabermetrics, I find that anyone who's dismissive of the effects of PEDs in baseball based on what some lay person without direct knowledge of physiology, athletic training, steroids, or even a way to quantify the actually differing effects between baseballs is simply putting way too much stock in a single hypothesis that can't be proven either way. For professional athletes, and I do know my fair share personally, I'll say this... If it doesn't aid them or help them perform better then they simply aren't going to waste time with it, there's too much going on in their lives on and off the field to waste their time. More simply put, if they didn't help, players in all sports wouldn't have used steroids in the first place.

Thanks for the work you put into this!

I love the "if Melvin made these kind of moves" card because it's completely unprovable and unsupportable.... he doesn't make prospect trades, he doesn't even really ever trade for legit prospects. Which is exactly the problem that many people have with the man, he's all about proven talent, regardless of age and/or current effectiveness. People don't hate on Doug for the sake of hating on him, they hate on him because they have legitimate concerns about the sustainability of the franchise past this season. I'm not sure what else can literally be said, it's all been covered by numerous posts in a variety of posts in every forum on this board. It's pretty easy to understand why people like Melvin, but it's not all that difficult to understand the counterpoints either. In my opinion he's just a very average GM. He's not an innovator, he's not out in front of the market, he simply sticks to a set strategy and let's it run its course every year, then starts over again. He's done some very good things for the organization, the Brewers made an NLCS on his watch, but those positives don't wash away the baggage and the negatives that come along with him. This deal is hard to evaluate because Cashner is a wildcard for me, I don't have a firm opinion on him as a prospect or starting pitcher, he would be the Cubs version of Cody Scarpetta for me (though he throws harder than Cody). If Scarpetta would be traded for a potential impact bat I'd most likely be luke warm to the idea because I'm not sold he's a starting pitcher long term and position players carry more value than relievers. Actually, Cashner is probably a combination of Jeffress/Scarpetta, but I would feel similarly about that fictitious player. A not so young fireballer with a good 2nd pitch but no control and a bit of an injury history... how do you realistically project such a player without seeing them pitch every 5th day?

Steroids don't help hitters make contact, but they do help hit home runs. Steroids have plenty of benefits beyond injury recovery which is significant in itself. Take 1000 swings while on a roid cycle and you're going to hit the ball farther because you're going to gain muscle mass in all the right places which will allow you to generate more torque and thus more force through the hitting zone. The myth that steroids don't help hit homeruns has been perpetuated by people who really don't understand the drug and the sport of baseball. Bonds didn't hit as many homeruns at age 37 as he did at age 28 because he was aging was in reverse, and he certainly didn't hit 73 HRs in 664 PAs in his age 36 season because of an off season lifting program between his 34 HR age 34 season and then. Yes they don't help hitters make contact, but to suggest that adding more power doesn't turn doubles into HRs seems like wishful thinking to me.

For me this comes down to what Cashner's future will be... is he just a reliever? Are the Cubs selling high on someone they believe will have injury issues or will never reign in his control to maximize his potential? If Cashner becomes a reliever I think this is a better trade for the Cubs. If Cashner can master his control and moves into the top of the rotation, then San Deigo becomes the clear winner. Cashner was intriguing to follow, and I'm not sorry he's out of the division given his live arm but he's a shoulder injury guy now... and my gut feeling is the Cubs will not regret this trade, unless Rizzo falls flat on his face, which doesn't seem likely.

Rogers is tough one for me personally. Due to his injury history and suspension I just couldn't put him on my list, and I loved the pick, just I like I loved the Odorizzi pick. Partly because of their physical skills but mostly because I really liked what the picks represented... multisport athletes that didn't specialize. Specialization has been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time because I coached in a school with less than 600 kids where other coaches were pushing athletes to specialize when we (the football staff)always encouraged kids to play a sport in all 3 seasons if their family would allow it. Being a school of 600 competing against schools with enrollments over 1000 we just weren't going to be able to build strong programs for either gender if the kids were specializing, it made zero sense in every way. If people so choose I think Mark certainly deserves to be on prospect lists, I'm still pulling very hard for him, but there's just not much to be excited about given what transpired over the course of last season. Right now I'd be happy if he gave the MLB team some relief innings... and I was adamant he remain a starter as long as possible.

Here's a little bit more on the original study the blog I referenced was referring to. http://www.webmd.com/fitn...-prone-baseball-injuries I found the quote pretty interesting, I probably should have linked to this first since it fleshed out the data better but I just felt weird linking to webmd for some reason. Here's old story from last year talking about young pitchers that people might find interesting. http://www.sciencedaily.c...2011/02/110201083343.htm This struck home for me, I didn't have surgery, but I had thrown out my arm by the time I was a sophomore in high school and was just used in relief if at all moving forward. Generally speaking it's not a matter of "if" a pitcher will get injured, it's more a matter of "when". The guys who reach MLB have sometimes run the gauntlet injury free, but many of those guys have had surgery as well, and the list of prospect pitchers who flamed out due to injury is tremendous. Look at our young pitchers in MLB and the upper minors, these are just off the top of my head... Gallardo - ACL Axford - TJ Rogers - 2 shoulder injuries Rivas - TJ Peralta - TJ Parra - Shoulder and TJ Scarpetta - Finger Braddock - TJ and Ulnar Nerve Transposition The longer you pitch, the more likely you'll need some kind of surgery. Peavy and Schmidt should be a good study in risk for those who are proponents of signing older dominant pitchers. After Sabathia this forum mostly focused on trading for Peavy but who would want him now? The difficult part is that you'll never know... a very few gifted players will be mostly healthy their entire careers, most aren't that lucky. If you're the Brewers, can you ever afford to eat a year's worth of an 8 digit salary for no production? What about an essentially career ending injury where the pitcher comes back but is completely ineffective relative to his salary? I would simply answer no, maybe others are willing to accept that risk. Off the top of my head these are the top recent pitchers in the game so that have had TJ surgery, some recovered well, some not so much... Bedard Carpenter Gagne Hudson Josh Johnson Liriano Smoltz Strasburg Volquez Wainwright Wood of course our own guys in Marcum and Cappy (twice) have had the surgery. There's an interesting new shoulder surgery for SLAP tears that isn't getting much run in the press, it could do for the shoulder what TJ surgery has done for the elbow extending careers and effectiveness, it's called biceps tenodesis. However instead of a tendon repair, it's a tendon removal, and last I had read (after Shilling had it done when he retired) there was still much debate about it. A quick google search brought up similar articles from 2010 but nothing recent, as far as I know no pitcher has attempted a comeback after the surgery. At any rate, shoulder injuries scare me much more than does TJ surgery. A quick list of recent shoulder injuries off the top of my head... Peavy Bedard Webb Chris Young Santana Mulder Prior Carpenter (first surgery was a shoulder, I think 2 shoulder surgeries actually) Schmidt Glavin (ended his career which was basically over anyway) I talk quite a bit about the injury nexus, he's the original article from back when I first found Brewerfan and got into sabermetrics, tons and tons of good information in this article. http://www.baseballprospe...ticle.php?articleid=1658 Depending on which "study" you read, the curves will vary some post body maturation, some more linear than others, but the point to remember is that every year a player ages past 24-25 the risk of injury goes up and eventually becomes exponential (a steep curve). The original study places the odds of a catastrophic injury over 10% for every year a pitcher pitches, simple math will reveal that the odds are pretty long to make it through a pitching career unscathed. Mostly when I made the original statement I was thinking about all of the pitchers pitching professionally including the minor leagues. I had to go back and look for this article from THT, I didn't realize it was back from 2007. It was an analysis of HS pitchers taken early in the draft, here's the most relevant part. This wasn't an analysis directed at injury vs performance, just how many young HS pitchers even make it to MLB as effective starting pitchers, the majority of these failures are actually injury related but for the life of me I can't find that other more in depth analysis young pitching injuries anymore. Such a low percentage of pitchers make it, then so many of those will suffer a serious injury, it's kind of depressing when I allow myself to think about it. Yes I know I'm total pitching nerd, I guess mostly because of my own arm problems along the way and the very real need for the Brewers to develop their own impact pitching I have devoted a ton of personal time to reading up on pitching injuries, mechanics, training methods, and so on. On that note one organization to keep an eye on is the Rangers, they've made quite a bit of noise because of Ryan's statements about disregarding pitch counts but they are doing some very interesting things to build arm strength and prevent arm injuries including extreme long toss (up to 300 feet), specialized physical conditioning, and a return to having pitchers throw batting practice on off days. The Rangers have also done quite a bit of research on the recovery rates of pitchers from different surgical procedures. I don't remember where I read it but 86% of their TJ pitchers reached the same level of effectiveness prior to the injury while only about 50% of the shoulder surgeries reached that same level.

I'm not sure a jump in local tv contract revenue isn't accompanied by a reduction in the amount of revenue the Brewers receive from the league.

And where is the money going to come from? The Brewers are already over budget, Melvin has said as much. They have a payroll near or exceeding 100 million, is spending more money really the answer to any of the teams' remaining problems? You'd need to trade 2 existing large contracts just to make room for him, maybe 3. That ship has sailed...

I've never wanted a player to perform as well as I want Mat to so all this talk of signing more FA veteran fodder goes away, at least in regards to first base. Please Mat settle in and hit the crap out of the ball like you can. JB12 why are you using triple crown stats? His OBP is typically around 70 points higher than his BA and with 10 HR through the first half he'd be slugging around .450. So using your .255 average that would put him at a .775 OPS which is well above league average and pretty darn good for a hitter in his first full professional season. I'm not sure how the Brewers couldn't afford that kind of production from a young player... he could just as easily go .303/.368/.520 in the second half but you'd be looking to replace him after half a season? Yes he's never going to hit 50 HRs like Fielder did, but how many players will? I do not understand the obsession with veteran players around here (the transaction forum), maybe it's a fantasy baseball thing, but my goodness lets give the young players in the line-up more than 3 month window to succeed. Hardy wouldn't have made it through the first year the way people have treated Escobar and now Gamel, maybe not even Weeks. Is it because we got spoiled by Braun and Fielder who came after those guys and hit reasonably well right away? I do remember a nice ovation for a young and struggling Fielder at the start of one of his seasons, funny how things have changed.

There's been plenty of studies done on this subject and yes, the vast majority of major league pitchers will have a serious injury at some point. There is nothing ergonomic about throwing a baseball, even with perfect (and I use that term loosely for a variety of reasons) mechanics there is still vast potential for wear and tear/repetitive use injury to ligaments in the shoulder and elbow. Then throw in freak injuries like blowing out your ACL as in Yo's case, tearing a shoulder muscle as in Sheets' case, etc... because of the nature of the position pitchers carry significant injury risk. Here's a link to an article I stumbled across doing research for a different post, it's pretty short, more of post, but you'll get the gist. I'm quoting the most informative part of the article below. This is another reason why I personally like young impact pitching as opposed to veteran pitching, I'd much rather pay a young pitcher league minimum or a vastly reduced rate to be on the DL than someone making the market rate. In that sense Yo's knee bothered me much less than the litany of Sheets injuries. I know people will make the argument that a pitcher still earned his contract pitching X number of quality innings as was frequently brought up in regards to Sheets, but no player signs for that money expecting to miss significant time for injury. Finally, younger players don't get hurt nearly often on average, therefore not only are we maximizing contract value, we're maximizing the number of games they will play in per season as well. The downside of course is the learning curve and how long it takes a young player to peak, so you aren't sure what you're going to get production wise from season to season. If you google pitching injuries or pitching injury frequency there is a wealth of information online. Part of the problem, especially on the pitching side, is that MLB teams have no control over how much a young pitcher was abused through little league, babe ruth, high school, and possibly college before being drafted. Scouting departments have to weigh the risk of injury against the talent in just about every situation. In some cases people are claiming that specialization is only making the issue worse because kids are throwing all year round, there's a ton of good reading out there on the subject if people are so inclined.

I'm not so sure that's true my friend, all it takes 1 injury and you're on the hook for a contract you can't move and can't get out of. I know he hasn't suffered a major injury yet but all pitchers do at some point. The years and money would have to be perfect for the Brewers for me to jump on the resigning Greinke bandwagon. We're talking like 4 years and less than $14 mil per year, no way do I pay him 18 or 19 per hoping he repeats his CY season. I still think the Ramirez contract is horrible, I don't want the potential for another clunker contract on top that one.

I get what you're trying to do here, X prospect is rated higher than Y prospect so as such he's more valuable. It doesn't really work that way, the top 25-30 prospects are all around the same caliber. Occasionally there will someone that's head and shoulders above everyone else, but the order isn't as important as is being in the list itself. I linked back to when Gamel was the #34 prospect in a different thread and the players he was surrounded by are pretty much a who's who of good young baseball players in the league today. From experience I know it's incredibly hard to do a top 25-30 list for our system and get them in the right order, much less order the prospects appropriately for all of MLB. Take a look at the minor league forum and see how varied the lists are for the user power 50. Just because BA rates the list the way they do, doesn't definitively mean that a given prospect will carry more value than another, in most cases it's just not that simple. Futhermore Young wasn't a once in a generation talent like pretty much everyone thought Harper and Strasburg were for their respective positions, your comparison is extremely off the mark not only because of the talent you chose to utilize, but because it's based on a flawed premise from the start. I don't see how prospect for prospect deals are any more of a gamble than any other trade, no established talent is trading hands so that may make some people that don't like prospects uncomfortable, but it makes good sense from a value standpoint. As I've pointed out numerous times, all TB did was trade up value.... they cycled a prospect SP for an aging MLB SP, they cycled a prospect SP for a MLB closer, and they traded prospects for prospects. TB was clearly building around pitching, and rightly so, they traded up value and/or talent every single time, that's astute organization building. You can claim it was an unacceptable risk, but all trades carry a fair amount of risk, others may claim they got lucky, where they see luck I see skill and entirely different approach organization building. If you have fewer resources at your disposal than the teams you are competing against I'm not sure how you can remain competitive without taking an aggressive approach to organization and roster management? When you're starting from nothing more than an idea, what exactly do you have to lose? You're already the worst organization in the league, how much worse can it get? Their organization was incredibly thin on impact pitching in the time frame being discussed, much like the Brewers organization has always been thin on impact pitching. TB clearly built team around young pitching, they made a WS playing out of the toughest division in baseball, they've continued to cycle that pitching away for various needs as their system started to provide enough talent. This is a vastly different strategy than we had here in Milwaukee where everyone knew we had plenty of impact bats and were terribly thin on pitching throughout every level of the organization. In Milwaukee FAs were signed to plug holes long-term, there was no concerted effort to acquire young impact pitching to go with the impact hitting. This is another statement based on a flawed premise. Many people get caught up discussing what the prospects did or didn't do to determine who won the trade. For me it's always been about value given vs value received, I could care less what the prospects do in the future, I'm concerned with the ultimate value obtained by selling the prospects. Young could have became the MVP and my opinion wouldn't have changed... Friedman still accomplished exactly what he wanted to do building around young impact arms, they still would have made the WS, why would it matter to them what Young became? I feel bad for the Twins because of how the trade worked out, but I don't point to the trade as a good deal because someone got fleeced, I point to it as proof of a philosophy. Zambrano/Kazmir wasn't a great trade because the Mets got fleeced, it was a great trade because TB sold a decent pitcher at the perfect time and cycled back young impact pitching into their system. Finally, what's wrong with Garza topping out as a #2 pitcher as someone said earlier? Young #2 pitchers tend to be the value in baseball, I'll take a rotation full of them. I find the argument that he only topped out as a #2 absurd, that's exactly what we should want for all of young pitchers. Very few pitchers will take that leap to become like a Halladay, that's just not a realistic goal. However I'll take Gallardo, Cain, Saunders, Moore, Davis, Shields, and the like on my team any time. The problem I have with our farm system on the pitching side is that many of those guys project as #2's best case, we don't have any pitchers in the upper minors that I'd throw a #1 label onto, and as I said I have a real hard time projecting best case scenarios for the majority of prospects. That's true of the current market environment, but wasn't true of the market through the mid 2000s. How exactly is the premise that a package with a specific value is valid only for a certain trade that was made and nothing else? Where's the proof that it's bogus? Because you say so? You're very fond of arguing in favor of the players/organization, but you're making broad statements, but where's the substance of the argument? The Brewers have clearly operated in a different manner than that of building around pitching, Melvin has been very consistent across his 2 tenures as a GM in MLB. Melvin came into an organization 1 impact pitcher at MLB and a minor league system struggling to develop pitching to match to the hitters it was turning out. Pitching wasn't Z's strength, it wasn't his staff's strength, and we're still struggling to develop pitching in 2012, the problem I have is that Melvin basically rode out the situation until Yo arrived. In the example of the Sabathia trade, how do we know that LaPorta/Brantley wouldn't have been enough to snag Niemann who was on the block as TB was looking for a bat? After failing to land that extra stick for the stretch run they might have been interested in getting ready replacements for Crawford and Pena instead, they are a forward thinking organization, they traded Jackson that off-season if you recall for a decent corner OF prospect. How do we know we couldn't have traded have Hart for Cain as was the popular rumor? How do we know Buchholz couldn't have been had when he was on the block in 2009 as the Sox were trying to keep pace with the Yankees? How do know we couldn't have traded Hart for pitching anywhere along the line? Plenty of teams have shown interest in him through the years. Just because Melvin chooses to make certain trades isn't proof that other deals weren't out there for the taking, it's just simply proof of the way he prefers to operate. So again I ask, how do you really know what's bogus and what isn't? I'll share how I came to form my current opinions on organization building for those that are interested. The young hitting core had all finally arrived and were starting to be fairly productive, and we had 2 young starting pitchers in Yo and Parra coming up who I was excited about. I was very interested in the best way to sustain success and compete year in and year with teams that can out spend Milwaukee by 2 and 3 times. It's much harder to draft and develop players than it is to sign established MLB players to plug holes, so from of the start I was interested in maximizing value for the players that we developed, the best value trade wise, and the best values in the FA market. At the time 2007-2008 I sat down with a pen and notebook and then used then EPSN stats page, BA, MLB.com, MiLB.com, THT, Fangraphs, Cots, and articles pulled from various other sources and just started digging in. Well I quickly figured out that the one thing the vast majority of all WS champions had was superior pitching, this led to me thinking about how to acquire long-term pitching solutions since I knew we were never going to be able to compete for the marquee FA pitchers and the organization was still thin on impact starting pitching, so I was looking to get a base of young arms to MLB and go from there. Well I was doing all kinds of reading, sorting player stats, looking at salaries vs production, and I was looking at GM trade histories. Someone had posted an excel spreadsheet that was incredibly handy as it all of the trade histories for every current GM in baseball, I don't remember what site it was from but I started looking at trades for pitching. If I didn't know who a player was I did my research on his stats, his level of play, scouting reports, his contract, the entire works. I was looking at everyone from MLB to rookie ball, I actually looked at the top 30 prospects in every organization in baseball. I looked at when star players made their MLB debut, I was looking at everything, my scope was probably too broad. After about a week of doing this every night after work I had my base philosophies on FA, where the value in players ultimately lies (sp > position players > bp > cl), and had some ideas of where the Brewers should head. My personal epiphany was that the Brewers were on the wrong track, we didn't have enough pitching, hadn't focused on young impact pitching, so we were never going to be able to sustain success. I had been so happy that we had competent position players being graduated to MLB that I had completely missed the larger truth of this glaring problem with the organization. I had been a huge Melvin fanboy, in Doug I trusted because the MLB team was on the upswing, he seemed to be finding nuggets everywhere, but I hadn't been very objective about what he'd done and and how the future would turn out without more pitching. My opinion on DM swung 180 degrees in a heart beat. I knew I wanted young pitching, I knew I wanted to retain our young position players through their peak, however the 1 thing that was bugging me was that I couldn't come up with a solid way to retain players we developed through their peak years. At most the arbitration system would allow us to hold onto a player for 7 years, so any special talent we drafted out of high school like a Fielder would be walking right in the middle of his peak years if he came up at age 21 which is when many of the of the impact players debut in MLB. and then let them walk or cycle them back into more talent for the organization. I was on Cot's looking at the contracts of former pitching prospects that had been traded for, in this case I was working my way through the Garza and Jackson trades and I stumbled across James Shield's contract and thought it was brilliant, then I took a closer look at the entire organization and found exactly what I had been looking for. Here was an organization that I had regularly/routinely dismissed that was actually perfectly aligned to my new personal philosophy and had been working on that model for 4-5 years now. I was only there doing my due diligence on contracts, I vaguely knew who Shields was, I looked at his stats earlier, but I was shocked at what I was looking at. Obviously I started to look very closely at what was going on, TB was kind of all the rage at the time because of how many wins they were being projected for. Like everyone else I knew they had talent, how could they not drafting at the top of every draft class? Sooner or later they were destined for a good year in the sun weren't they? Only it wasn't that simple, they weren't built on 1st round draft picks, they were built on young pitching, and they had gotten there a much different way than I had expeted. Later in that season Longoria came up and was signed to another brilliant contract (at least I thought so) and I was hooked. Here was the organization that was operating the way I wanted the Brewers to operate and had solved the remaining puzzle for me in how to retain our impact talent through their peak years. The culmination of all my work eventually led this thread about long term rotation ideas and I've been yapping about locking up core talent early, cycling the rest through arbitration, and ultimate value ever since. It's never been about what we've given up for me, it's been about what we've gotten back. Not only in trades but in FA contracts as well. If the players we acquire don't have more than 3 years of service left with us we're essentially spinning our wheels, because the same holes will eventually always need to be refilled and it takes 3-4 years to develop enough excess depth to sell it away. It's how we've ended up with a fairly barren farm system, and I say that in an impact talent sense, we have nice quality depth in the system, but we won't get anywhere building to be average. That's why Oakland and Minnesota have won games in regular season but haven't won anything meaningful in the post season, they haven't been able to keep enough impact talent together to make a serious run. This is why I say if a player won't sign early then he's expendable if a good enough deal comes along, any player not signed to long-term contract isn't part of your core, he's just part of the cycle talent coming through your organization.

Yes and you're still not getting it, a couple of draft slots means nothing. The Brewers have actually been more successful in the 1st round than the Rays. They didn't build their team with better draft picks than everyone else was getting, that's a totally superficial dismissal of what actually happened. As I pointed out Weeks, Fielder, and Braun were all top 7 picks and 2 of those picks may end up being in the HOF. They were the first organization that figured out that young impact pitching is the most valuable commodity in baseball. They traded for Kazmir in 2004, Jackson in 2006, and Garza in 2007 and in 2008 they were in the WS which is something we haven't accomplished and we had a head start. It certainly didn't take Friedman 10 years to build a WS team, he was the director of baseball operations in 2004 and 2005, and after the 2005 season was promoted to his current position. It's entirely possible he wouldn't have taken the tact that he did if the Rays could afford more payroll, but he was smart enough to figure out what a small market needs to do to compete pitching wise when they can't afford the impact free agents. He also figured out the best way to retain his impact talent through their peak years was to lock them up right away buying out FA years with team friendly options on the back end, there's no messing around going to year to year in arbitration and having to pay market rates to retain players. Not only do you get players through their peak, you also buy wins at discounted rate, the only down side is the team has to pay more up front to save much more on the backend, and the team assumes all of the risk. Value wise it's an incredibly shrewd way to do business. As I said, there's been much more going on than simply drafting at the top of the draft, claiming such is a gross over simplification of the issues and an incredible disservice to the truth. Back to your regular scheduled programming.

I was going to edit but I'll throw this into a different post. The Brewers have actually had better success in the 1st round (under Z) than the Rays if you throw Lawrie and Odorizzi into the mix, I don't buy the draft position angle at all, especially given how TB got itself off the ground. Back to the Hart discussion...

That's the common claim about the Rays, they're good because they drafted so high. How is that different than the Brewers who drafted Braun, Fielder, and Weeks in the first 7 picks in the draft? They've had much better success after the first round than we have. Sure Longoria, Price, and Niemann were top 5 picks but what about everyone else? Jennings, Davis, Shields (16th), Hellickson, and Moore were fantastic draft picks. The Brewers could have taken any of those players before the Rays, every other team in baseball could have taken those players before the Rays... The simple truth is that TB has managed their talent better, managed the payroll better, and drafted and developed players better than the Brewers have. Freidman is far and away the best GM in the game and he has a very good scouting dept that keeps giving him additional resources to work with. My affinity for the Rays comes from a great appreciation for how different they've operated from even the other small market teams. The contract innovations were genius and the player moves (trades) incredibly savvy. Freidman hasn't been perfect, he's missed on Burrell, but every GM is going to miss on FAs here and there, which is part of the reason I view FA with a wary eye. I don't envy the league or the division the Rays play in but I sure do wish we had their pitching talent and GM.

I'm a huge college basketball fan and I could care less for the pro game. Didn't care that they were locked out, don't care now that they are playing again. I briefly got back into the NBA when Big Dog played for them as he was someone I may or may not have heckled in college and he turned out to be a pretty good guy. When the big 3 got to the conference finals and lost that was pretty much it for me as a Bucks fan. I watched a ton of NBA basketball when I was younger, I was a huge Lakers and Bucks fan through the 80s. I lost touch when I was in college and the Bulls were making their big run and watching now, the style of play just doesn't appeal to me. The NBA is full of amazing athletes that aren't very good basketball players, not compared to previous generations. As a basketball player and fan I prefer a more team orientated style than the isolation/break players down off the dribble style of the NBA. That's why I prefer the college game, I don't find myself marveling in the athleticism of the NBA, I find myself irritated by the way the game is officiated (especially traveling/continuation) and the offensive schemes. I played a ton of outdoor basketball in college and I really enjoyed playing in the elements and the more physical and loose nature of the play, and I do enjoy watching it occasion when I come across it on TV. However once the game actually counts I wanted the game officiated properly and I feel no different towards the NBA, the street/playground concepts are better left outside of organized basketball. I might be in the minority, but there has always been a distinction in mind between indoor and outdoor hoops, they are 2 different games, the outside game doesn't have anywhere near the same presence when playing outdoors.

Isn't that exactly my point about fan support? It doesn't really why you hold the tickets, you're still holding onto them and supporting the team. Many people in other markets would have just dropped them.

We need a new thread that isn't broken, lame Yuku.

I wouldn't say that Milwaukee represents Wisconsinites as a whole by any stretch. I come from a small town north of Green Bay and everyone I know and my entire family have always been huge fans of the Pack. The team was absolutely dreadful through the 80s and the stadium was still sold out, there wasn't a local blackout that I remember. How many other franchises could sustain the fan support with so little success from the Lombardi Era to the Holmgren Era? We never missed a game, as kids that's all we talked about on the play ground, etc. We were also always huge Badger fans, my family has held season tickets for almost 20 years. Once my parents had enough disposable income Badger tickets were the first thing on their list, and my father graduated from UWM and my mother from Carroll College, there's no alumni allegiance in our family. The Badgers were even worse than the Packers but Camp Randall was always half full. We lived far enough away and didn't have season tickets at that time so we listened to the games on the radio, every game of every season. I went to the U of M, we used take our HS football team over to the dome for Gopher games (haven't been to the outdoor stadium yet, we haven't made enough on our fundraisers to be able to take the kids the last 2 years) because they were more cost effective than trying to get 60 tickets to a Badger game, the place was never more than 1/4 full even in their best years. The only sold out games I've been to in the Metrodome were games against the Packers and Badgers where half the stadium was full of folks from WI. I agree that the people from MN are the biggest bunch of bandwagon turds I've ever been around, the only sport that was ever sold out was Gopher Hockey (which was a good time btw). It was always a big deal for me and friends if the Badgers were going to be on national TV, now we complain if a single Badger game in a season isn't on national TV. Much like the Badgers we only made it to one or 2 Brewer games a year and it was a huge deal for my family, but we listened to 90% on the radio. It didn't matter what kind of work we were doing around the stable, whatever time of year it was we the game on. I'll agree about Badger basketball, it was never on my radar until I moved back home from MN in 1997. I was primarily a football/hockey fan through my youth, I don't even remember Badger basketball games being on the radio? Realistically that was probably because my dad coached basketball and we were always at the games and practice (just like football), but unlike football season where Friday was HS, Saturday was college, and Sunday/Monday the NFL, in basketball season the Badgers were playing when we were playing. Hockey was the weekend sport and easier to follow... If we weren't participating in our sports or school, mom had us all messing around with stuff for the stable I don't know how my dad made it on 4 hours of sleep all those years. The games were the one thing that everyone would agree to listen to on the radio, especially as us kids got older and went our way musically. The vast majority of my friends were from farming families as well, who also listened to a ton of radio while in the tractor, milking cows, or whatever. It's probably the difference between going up in a more rural setting vs growing up in an urban environment. The Packers, Badgers, and Brewers always mattered to us, they were kind of our connection to the outside world.

My mistake, I believed the contract offer was made in his first year of arbitration but my google skills were lacking.

They didn't offer Prince a contract until 2008 or 2009, they didn't offer him one pre arbitration. They did the same thing with Hart. Looking at it from the Player's perspective, why not ride out 2 more years of arbitration and take the payday? Where's the incentive to take a deal unless you're really struggling financially? However if you are 4 or 5 years away from your payday then maybe the security of a long-term deal that buys out some FA years but guarantees financial stability in the case of severe injury is enticing. In that kind of contract the team is really accepting the majority of the risk for discount on the total dollar amount. We'll never know if the players would have accepted because the contracts weren't offered. Personally I was in the crowd that wanted the Brewers to offer a contract to Prince when he was in tax trouble, maybe he would have been insulted and took it like the team was trying to pile on. However, in dealing with my customers, people genuinely appreciate it if you can help them out when times are tough, it should be a win/win for both sides.

Speed is a function of applied force, it's simple physics... how much force is being applied to ground with each step. If a player is putting on weight without gaining muscle, he's going to get slower. If a player is gaining muscle mass but becoming less flexible he'll lose speed. Flexibility is such a key component because it allows for the application of extra force at the end range of athletic movements. The less flexible you are, the less force you'll be able to apply throughout an athletic movement... doesn't matter if it's throwing a ball, swinging a bat, or something as a simple as running. Also a player gains muscle mass(weight) in muscles that have nothing to do with speed (body building, beach muscles like bis and tris, etc), he'll get slower. Finally as players age, regardless of muscle to weight ratios, they will get slower. As far as I know no one has pegged the exact reason for the decline of the athlete as they age yet, prevailing wisdom suggests something neurological, but it may be just as simple as repeated use wearing the body down over time. The decline of the athlete isn't really a topic covered much at the clinics I attend, that's an issue that professional teams would be concerned with where as us lowly high school and college teams are simply looking to maximize athletic potential as the body matures. I'd be fascinated to read more on the subject of athletic decline if anyone comes across anything. I would like to believe that since hitting is mostly a core function that players working to develop power wouldn't be hurting their speed because you'll need many of the same muscles. I can tell you exactly what the Packers and Badgers are doing with their weight training because I've listened to their coaches and players talk and have personally watched what they do, but I have no idea what the Brewers are doing. I've witnessed the Brewers and T-Rats doing all of the good dynamic warm-ups during pregame, but I wouldn't venture a guess what the actual training regimes are given the heavy game schedule in baseball. Peak performance studies have suggested that players that were serious about lifting should have it completed prior to 10 AM on a game day for a 7 PM game or should wait till after the game. Obviously it's not a good idea for athletes participating in more grueling sports where hydration is critical to work hard on a game day, but it's been proven that lifting on a game day can improve athletic performance if the body is given enough time to recover.