TheCrew07

I was searching for Ronald Johnson and this thread came up in the list, I had forgotten about him until Dhonks' post in today's link report. It was the first time I read the entire thread and there were questions and comments I should have responded to over the winter, but I honestly only visited brewerfan.net 3 or 4 times over the winter and never came back to this thread until March, and even then just posted on the one comment, so I apologize. I will say this, I've suggested plenty of trades over the years and after 2009 there didn't seem to be any point to it as Melvin and I are idealogically opposed. As for being condescending when I suggested most people weren't capable of discussing prospects because they didn't have the knowledge, I was speaking to the MLB/Trade forums, and I still believe that sentiment to be true. This site has thousands of members but the number of posters which participate in the minor league forum is in the vast minority. Given the backwards movement of both Rivas and Rogers, Peralta's up and down season, the emergence of Thornburg, Kris Davis' continued dominance, and the draft being complete, how do people feel about this now? For me Rivas and Rogers have been offset somewhat by the success of Thornburg and Davis, while Heckathorn keeps advancing and Fiers is back starting. I'm still not sure what to make of Fiers, the results as a starter have been fanstastic though. I wasn't thrilled by the draft, which could possibly be a good thing given I've liked our recent drafts and they haven't turned out all that well. My overall opinion hasn't changed much, the players advancing being basically offset by players regressing. Green's comeback is probably my biggest story on the season, I had written him off expecting he would never be the same player after his injury, what a pleasant development he's been given McGehee's struggles.

Obviously, but then why say anything? Why not just leave it at, "We've been disappointed by his progress." Why even open the door to speculation? What's the objective? Wasn't Ash the one who questioned Mike Jones commitment/toughness suggesting that he wasn't willing to pitch through pain? Regardless who said it, I bought it at the time, but when Mike continued to fight so hard to get to Milwaukee it really made me question the organizational spin we get. Ash says something like that, but coming into season the Helena coaching staff is pimpin Arnett and Walla as players to watch? Arnett's work ethic was never questioned in college, he was praised for it being a 2 sport guy, and he had every reason to be motivated to work hard given his lack of success. I'm not saying Ash wasn't telling the truth, I just don't like the hinting around, I'm a very direct dude.

He owns Ax. Ax has given up two HR's all season and both are to Ax. He's quicker than Ali who could flip a switch and be in bed before the light went out.

Well that was crushed.

I guess that HR didn't jump start McGehee, 4 pretty weak PAs.

The simple way to solve all this draft nonsense without doing anything else is to just make players declare for the draft like they do in the NBA. If you want to sit out a year? Fine... but you have play independent ball, no going back to college... Obviously that doesn't fix the flawed compensation system or any of that other stuff, but it simplifies the entire draft process. If you don't like where you are drafted? Just like in every sport that's just too bad, go out and prove those organizations that passed on you that they were wrong, just like Aaron Rodgers. There would be none of this signability crap, no wasting draft picks hoping a high school kid would sign, and so on.

For a guy who played at the highest level, there's quite a bit about baseball that Bill neglects

Rickie hits more tape measure shots than any Brewer I remember, my goodness does he hit rockets.

I really didn't want to beat this drum again, but what exactly are we wasting Gamel's service time for as he sits on the bench? He's the most misused player in the recent history of this franchise, they've literally gotten no return out of his year + service time. Wasted service time pinch hitting, then an injury, now pinch hitting again... Horrible value.

I don't think Melvin is intentionally bucking the trend, he's just always favored SLG, it's not some genious going against the flow kind of movement. I don't want to rehash all of Melvin's moves that brought us to this point, I'll simply say the dominos didn't have to fall this way and leave it at that.

Maybe, but he normally makes a couple of trips a year to watch the kids play.

Not all the time, but he was hitting 99 in Helena.

Walla is improving discipline wise, hopefully he starts putting on a power display as his body matures.

Comments like this are frustrating, there's no context. He wasn't ready how? He didn't work on strength on conditioning? Or he showed up and hurt his shoulder which was discouraging? Or maybe he was just getting hit around again prior to the injury? All of the aforementioned?

I'm sure for many people the WAR concept is immediately troubling because because the replacement player isn't always 2 wins below average. It's a concept that I also have trouble with which is why I never liked VORP at all. I use WAR because it's one of the few metrics that's relative easy for anyone to understand and is all encompassing. The problem I think is that some people are willing to treat the numbers as absolute, when they certainly aren't, there is an error factor. Is a .6 player really better than a .4? Or a 3.5 better than 3? It's much easier to make comparisons against players who are obviously far apart... for example, and just so I don't have to go do reasearch as I've already looked, Escobar is over 1 and Betancourt almost -1. Escobar has clearly been the better player this year. I think situations like Greinke don't help the cause either, the disparity pushes people to mistrust derived statistics. Historically the FIP and ERA will be fairly close, Greinke just happens to be an extreme case and is the poster child for the problems inherent in that kind of backwards calculation. There's just no way Greinke has been our most valuable pitcher so far this season. Generally speaking I don't like derived metrics at all, but I think WAR has it's uses given the proper context.

Braun 6 HR on the road, 10 at home. Fielder 8 HR on the road, 14 at home. Weeks 8 HR on the road, 7 at home. Hart 2 HR on the road, 8 at home. Lucroy 2 HR on the road, 5 at home. McGehee 1 HR on the road, 4 at home. I realize many people think that home/road splits are completely random, but the Brewers are certainly doing their best to make it look like Miller Park is hitter friendly.

Well apparently Gamel threatening McGehee's playing time is the cure for everything that ails him... worked in 2009 and worked today!

Well that's the problem with the pitchfx data, it's not sortable and every game just ends up looking the same, nor is there any context. What would be extremely interesting (and I'm sure teams have access to this sort of thing) would be to look at batted ball result by location for each pitcher and be able to look at ABs in a sequential manner. We'll get there at some point, but the tools we as fans have access to just haven't progressed far enough yet. At any rate, when Carlos Zambrano was younger it was easy to get in his head and force the blow-up innings. It didn't take much to get him to go off the air, and error by his teammates, a spat with the umpire, whatever the cause in that particular game. He pitched horribly when he was angry, he's just the most obvious example that comes to mind. Parra would be another, for all his physical gifts he's not successful, I don't think his problems were physical in nature. In this case I don't believe Greinke's problems are mental, but in MLB where everyone is a supreme talent (relative to you or I), most of the separation is going to come from whatever is going on in their head. Plenty of the best athletes fail in every sport, just like plenty of the lesser talented players succeed. Depending on who you listen to and what you choose to believe, 20% of our success is physical talent/natural gifts/etc and 80% is mental. So while I may not believe his issues are mental in nature, I'm not willing to dismiss the idea either.

I'm as shocked that you refuse to acknowledge how easy it is to read body language, we've had at least 4 courses on it at work over the last 10 years to work better with customers. Furthermore anyone who teaches or coaches and is any good at it naturally and quickly learns to read body language because in many cases it gives a more accurate picture than the what the student or athlete will tell you for a variety of reasons. It's not voodoo, it's not some mystical power, it's a skill, like any other learned over time. I appreciate how heavily you lean towards statistics, but it's very difficult to have a meaningful conversation about sports when you're so dismissive about the nuances in the game. Like the difference between just throwing a ball to a spot or trying to aim it in there. The former is what every athlete should do, the latter is a mental issue that manifests itself physically with poor results; loss of velocity, inconsistent location, etc. Any pitcher in baseball or softball will immediately understand, any quaterback in football will immediately understand, but if you haven't experienced it personally and aren't open to other possibilities than random variance or luck, I'm not sure how you'll ever understand. It's the difference between watching what someone is doing and actually understanding what it takes to accomplish the task. What's your explanation for Greinke's blow-up innings? He's certainly not giving up dribblers all over the diamond, balls are getting smoked. I've been saying since his 3rd start that his FB location is inconsistent and he's been hanging his slider quite a bit when I've watched him pitch.

Ack my bad, yes I meant Gindl, thanks for the correction. You really like him as a 1B instead of an OF? You've mentioned it a couple of times now...

I can't help but wonder if all of this is being held up by having Katin, Carroll, and Boggs in AAA. With those 3 in Nashville there is no room for anyone in AA to move up, so there's no room for Davis to move up. The solution seems obvious, promote one of Boggs and Carroll to MLB and create room for prospects to move at their own pace. I understand the need to stash MLB depth at AAA, but that depth shouldn't come at the expense of prospect development.

I'm asking because I'm curious, not because I'm being hateful. If you ignore Nelson's draft position to remove some bias, and then just evaluate him on his scouting reports, checked his college career on baseball cube, and then looked at his pro career... Would you be inspired? The first thing that jumped out for me was that he didn't dominate his level of competitionin college, then I don't like mixed bags on the scouting reports. Saying he can hit the mid 90s and then telling me his comparable pitcher is Jeff Suppan, well those 2 things just don't add up. Suppan was a control pitcher, he never had a big fastball, and at least when I became familiar with him he really didn't have an out pitch, he mixed a bunch of averagish pitches and made it work. So basically how I took Colby's comments + the scouting reports was that Nelson was a control pitcher with a good sinker, and possibly a plus slider to go with it. His rate stats aren't very good at all, his K rate is under 7 as a college pitcher in A ball, his walk rate is over 4, and his hit rate is over 9. He's just been uninspiring to this point, and he still needs a 3rd pitch. I have very similar hesitations with Jungmann, another guy who doesn't seem to have nearly the control he was billed as having or a plus secondary offering, and in my opinion he needs a significant adjustment to his mechanics, specifically his lower half. The difference, at least in my mind, is that Jungmann was dominant through most of his college career. I'll also be keeping a suspicious eye on Bradley (if Jungmann and Bradley sign), his college numbers are enough to give me pause. Which reminds me, I really wish Lopez would sign and report to Arizona.

It's too bad, I really liked that pick on draft day.

I was a huge Hart fan when he was in the minors and first came up, but he's slowly lost me over time.

Parra got turned around horribly yet made the play... we've seen a LF do that before haven't we?