TheCrew07

ha, BA and BS talking Badger football now, there really isn't much to say is there?

Hotties? Where? Like the hottie who held up her number for Braun? As soon as I posted they started showing us regular folk again, can't even get any consistency out of FSN... jerks.

Well it was reported as "fracture" which most of us equated as "broken", but a hairline fracture actually heals much faster as the entire bone doesn't have to fuse again. I wonder if there was some gamesmanship going on there?

Well at least FSN is dropping every hottie in the stadium onto the screen to keep my attention tonight.

ha, nice pitch to Upton... cause he stinks and you can groove FBs belt high middle in to him. Wolf has been surprisingly good over the last 20+ starts, but he's tough to watch when he's not locating. edit. Cripes, now the same pitch to Parra and another HR.

First, was it really necessary to take a shot at the Cubs? That was a pretty logical observation The Heartbreak Yid shared, and while it's not a popular view, that's been my biggest complaint towards from the start. He be much better off being the GM of a team with greater resources, and we'd have a greater chance at sustained success. Second, I'd rather exploit the market whenever possible and be a trend setting organization, rather than an organization that just goes with flow and operates "the way things have always been done". I really don't care about market size, though the realities of being in the league's smallest market should not ever be overlooked, there just isn't much value in free agency period. Starting pitchers cost too much per win, relief pitchers are even more expensive per win, which should limit the Brewers to positional stop gap type players on shorter contracts. The Brewers simply need their farm system much more so than the large market teams, and while I understand fans aspiring to have that same level of success, we aren't going to get there operating the way those teams do. Third, the Cubs farm system is much better than ours, their farm director helped turned things around in Tampa after drafting Carpenter and Halladay for Toronto, he's very good. Fourth, a saying about living in a glass house and throwing stones comes to mind. Melvin hasn't exactly been a wonderboy in free agency either, quite the opposite. Where's the superior talent evaluation from a Brewer perspective? What's so hard about trading for Marcum, Sabathia, and Greinke? The GMs I consider to be good small market GMs don't make any of those moves and never have in their tenure stewarding their teams. I'm not sure why Zambrano is on that list, after burning out Wood and Prior he was the best starting pitcher the organization had left, and that time the Cubs farm system was atrocious. Finally, where do you think the Brewers are if they don't make the playoffs this season with a maxed out payroll and a decimated farm system? What about 2009 and 2010? For all the talent on this team the results haven't been very good, in fact they've been far below my expectations. While the Brewers are currently enjoying a nice season, we're in no position to be lobbing insults at other organizations. I've been advocating a wider view of the organization and Melvin for years now. Few are willing to accept or even acknowledge the costs that have come with Melvin's signature trades and will excuse away all of his bad moves as bad luck. I think knowledgeable fans from other organizations have an easier time being objective, they aren't invested in the Brewers the way we are emotionally. All the little fluff and feel good pieces written by the national and local media won't change that, some fans feed off that stuff, personally I'm more interested in established an uninterrupted flow of talent to MLB. I'm into organization building, and there's simply no way anyone can come to the conclusion the organization is stronger today than it was Melvin took over. There is no doubt the MLB team is vastly superior, but we're not in a position to sustain that success, because the organization as a whole is incredibly weak.

Hyperbole? You may not agree, but it's hardly an outrageous claim, though I wasn't sure if he was being serious or not. The positions that Melvin has directly impacted: In the OF while acquiring Morgan was far and away Melvin's best move, but trading Hardy for Gomez stunk, plenty of people thought that was a horrible trade. Melvin signed Clark to a multi year deal to play CF, traded away Lee and Cruz for Mench, Nix, and Cordero effectively blocking a superior player in Hart and giving up a tremendous all around player in Cruz. We traded 2 MLB SS in 3 years are now stuck with Betancourt. A hot couple of weeks doesn't make Betancourt a good player and he's a pretty terrible defender by any measure this has previously been discussed in detail in other threads. Many of us warned that McGehee wouldn't hit like he did in 2009 ever again and Melvin nearly signed him to a horrible extension. His defense has gotten progressively worse and his bat is rapidly declining. Before him it was extending Hall to play 3rd/CF, whom many of us never believed in either. Hall was a very popular player around here and i was in the vast minority opinion wise, but that doesn't change the fact that his contract extension was a horrible flop. Before Hall it was extending Helms. Plenty of people have railed away on the bench and the bullpen, not going to rehash all of that here. Outside of Cameron and possibly Wolf, his moves in free agency have been pretty atrocious, mostly on the pitching side, also previously documented. While he did aquire Sabathia, Greinke, and Marcum via trade and not free agency, he paid very steep prices to do so. This is mostly a matter of opinion in the short term but it's been discussed enough that people should at least be able to accept a dissenting opinion on the subject as a legit counter point. It's hard to give him credit for being agressive in trading for 2 pitchers that won CY awards, most posters on this site would have happily made either trade, and all 3 players were extremely safe players given their MLB track records. There's very little short term risk in those moves. He also wasted resources acquiring pieces that weren't going to make the difference getting the team into the post season in Lopez and Linebrink. Had the Mets not collapsed in 2008 Sabathia wouldn't have even been enough, sometimes it seems like people forget that it looked for most of Sept like the Brewers were on the outside looking in. Again it's not trading players, it's moving assets for no tangible long term benefit that's the problem. He also traded Overbay who's still in the league for 2 players that aren't and 1 who's barely hanging on. The farm system is as weak now as it was in the late 90s/early 2000s since the system graduated the current MLB team and then Melvin traded anyone of value in the 2nd wave away for various short term solutions while his pick to replace Jack Z (whom he inherited) in Seid hasn't been able to replenish the talent well hardly at all. Also on the minor league side the team hasn't solved any of it's obvious developmental flaws at all under Nichols who came with Melvin. The system is still only producing 1 starting pitcher every 6 years, the players coming up from the minors are not defensively sound (a natural in Hardy is the only player that was), and the players are fundamentally weak in every aspect of the game. Manager wise we went from Yost, to Macha, to RR... I don't see a net gain in that chain of events either. While Melvin resigning would solve any of the team's current problems, I'd be alright with it as it would potentially make the organization stronger moving forward. As far as the topic itself, as others have said the best moves can be made entirely from within the organization itself. The simple truth is the organization has extremely limited depth so every spot that's unperforming and every injury is extremely costly and the situation magnified given the stakes. It's fair to say the vast majority of posters on the site think this should be a playoff team, especially in a weak division, so every mistake is going to get beat into the ground.

Why not just quote me since you're taking issue with me? Let's see how he performs before we go to the "premature" card, cortisone shots don't fix the problem, they mask the problem by artificially reducing the amount of swelling in the affected area, which temporarily reduces the pain. It's pretty similar to chiropractory in that the issues causing the discomfort are not permanently solved, only temporarily band-aided. If Mark has surgery this off-season then regardless of the results this season I think it's a bad move. I'd rather have him fully healed and ready to go for Feb since he'll be out of options than risk the alternatives. He has 16.2 pretty horrible innings thus far and I'm not sure what another 50-60 is going to prove regardless of quality if he still needs surgery. Either way he'll still be out of options having never pitched more than 130 innings in a single season.

You still haven't supported this opinion at all and I'm losing count how many times you posted it. Obvious issues with your post.... 1) Escobar outperformed Hardy in 2009, there should be no debate over this. 2) Escobar already has a WAR over 1 by every measure, baseball-ref WAR has him at 1.6. Simple math puts him at 2 to 2.5 WAR for a full season, a WAR of 2 is exactly the definition of average unless something has changed in the last couple of years. 3) Escobar has been hot for over month and has pushed every slash in his line up 40 points or so and is still ascending early in July, he's not anywhere near as bad as you paint him to be. You may not like him, but he's not garbage, he's still young, and still very talented. I'm sorry his learning curve has not met your expectations, but I would qualify your hatred of him as "absurd". 4) Yes a certain percentage of prospects will fail, pitchers failing more often than hitters, which is why you need more of them, not less of them. Once again using the idea that prospects are prone to fail doesn't prove that veteran players will provide better value. How many hits has Melvin had in free agency? Furthermore every single established MLB player was once a prospect, and I've been around long enough that I remember people who wanted to trade Braun, Weeks, Fielder, and Gallardo for established MLB talent. How would those deals have looked with the benefit of historical perspective? The simple truth is that a yearly influx of cheap/cost controlled talent is the only way to keep the Brewers competitive year in and year out. Prospects are the Brewer's lifeline, in the same way that they are the Packer's lifeline. Many of you have the logic completely backwards, wanting to avoid prospects all together, when the evidence from every angle actually suggests we need more of them. I would have thought that more people would have had their eyes opened to this concept given what happened with the super bowl champs, but I was mistaken, because it's mostly the same "buy, buy, buy" banter around this site. 5) Defensively with McGehee at 3B we needed a SS with Escobar's range in the same way that having Weeks helps lessen the impact of Fielder at 1B. It's never as simple as a player for player swap, there are always larger team and organizational issues to consider, which in my opinion tend to get overlooked unless the issues become completely obvious watching the games, and even then people will still argue in favor of players like Betancourt and McGehee for fear of the unknown. 6) Sure it would be nice to have Hardy in 2011... but did you want him as the every day SS in 2009 when Escobar outplayed him? What about in 2010 when he only played in 101 games and went .320/.394/.714 while not doing anything until July, slumping again in August, only to finish strong in Sept while earning $5.1 mil? I agree that it was Busch league to send Hardy down for the minimum amount of time required to get another year of service out of him. It wasn't JJ's fault the organization called him up immediately following his shoulder surgery and it certainly wasn't his fault he suffered that horrible ankle injury.

It's kind of funny that outside of the link reporters no one has been talking about him much when he's having the best season thus far of any T-Rat. I really like his positional versatility, though he hasn't played any 3B this year according baseball-ref. I'll put it like this... if he's limited to the OF down the road then I'm not so excited yet, if there's any chance he could be a 2B or 3B, I'm very intrigued. I don't know the answers to those questions, so like you I'm waiting to hear about his defense and long-term position, but his batting line pretty much speaks for itself.

Sometimes this team makes miscues that I get pissed at watching our HS team. A wild pitch allows a run to score and now an error moves runner all the way around to 3rd. edit. And now a soft liner to score another run. I'm still irritated about a FB that hits homeplate and skips through Lucroy, it's not very often you see a FB in the dirt.

Yea, I'm not sure I go to Braddock, his velocity was down to 90-91 again last outing. However, at some point you'd think the coaching staff would wake up and realize that Loe is essentially a ROOGY.

That's an odd historical reference. To be fair, France would just immediately surrender and the Spanish would end up fighting themselves.. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Can we stop going to the luck card now and just accept that Grienke tends to give up runs in bunches and has been very hittable in those situations? If you watched the game yesterday you might have noticed that the slider Greinke used to strike out Thome hung belt high right down the middle of the plate, it was a pretty bad pitch. For whatever reason Thome was looking for something else and didn't even take the bat off his shoulder... I've said before I've been surprised by the number of bad pitches he gets away with, the only logical explanation I can come up with is that he does a good job keeping hitters guessing. If anything, I think he's been fortunate to not give up more runs with how inconsistent his location is, especially with his FB.

Ha... Well that's that thing about being a pitcher, the different between a good outing and a bad outing is what... 5-8 pitches or so? Either you execute those pitches or you don't, and Zack is grooving more than 1 pitch per game... that's not close to accurare representation of his season.

What an excellent example of medical care provided by the training staff of both teams (I'm guessing both teams due to the nature of the delay). Given the nature of complications with that sort of shot to the head I love that they didn't mess around and took him in for scans right away just to be safe. There aren't many things in sports that scare me, but head injuries could impact the rest of someone's life if not treated properly.

Someday Yo will quit getting to so many full counts and quit walking inept hitters (including pitchers) and I will rejoice. Hooray for a CS! Nice throw Lucroy.

I hate to pile on Casey in this thread tonight, but he doesn't make the play that Valencia made to end the inning. It's getting old being jealous of other team's defense... especially when it's a player from the Twins who have been horrible defensively this season.

I have no idea how Del has a reasonable ERA with those peripherals, he was ascending for a while last season, not so much anymore. As he's left handed it would be nice if his game took a big jump upwards over these last 2 months.

If Casey is done... I'll be surprised. I expect(ed) him to lose it fast, as it seems that all players of limited ability who burst onto the scene have a short shelf life, but I would have guessed at more of a steep linear decline rather than the exponential decline we're seeing this season. I suppose in the end it doesn't matter how quickly it ends, as long as the team moves on at the appropriate time. I'm just glad Casey saved Melvin from another horrible contract. If he starts to hit again... great. If not, I'm cool with Green. He never was a good defender and never will be, I don't expect his D to magically improve with age. edit. he=McGehee

I think you missed the larger point that Arnett has been very hittable in his career which is why he gives up so many unearned runs in R ball, he never stops the bleeding. He gave up quite a few unearned runs in WI as well in addition to putting up an ERA over 6, he's too hittable. While we can certainly quibble over the results of one outing, the sheer number of unearned runs and the consistency of them in his starts is the real issue. We made excuses for him in the past... he wasn't using slider because of his college workload, etc. The simple truth is that for someone with a legit fastball and supposedly plus slider he doesn't miss enough bats. His BB and Hit rates mixed with a pedestrian K rate is a recipe for disaster outside of R ball.

Well Wickman was traded the day before his poster give away, but that was a different ownership group... Not that Bob had the following that Craig does, but he was actually a good player, where as Craig isn't so much outside of a specialized role.

On the bright side of things Nelson pitched far and away his best game of the season. edit. ...and in the "i don't know" category Arnett is still giving up a boatload of unearned runs... edit2. ... and on the dark side Pascual still isn't effective, I wonder why he got jumped to BC in the first place?...

Once again, how are the runs he's given up outside of his control? I can think of 3 earned runs that were on the defense so far this season, and 2 were the other night. That's the assumption of FIP... it's just a guess, an opinion, a hypothesis... it's not a fact. None of those metrics (which are just theories) can be proven in any way, yet they are treated as facts. The tale of Grienke is in his splits, not in FIP, or LOB%, BABIP, or anything else. He's given up runs in bunches for 9 months now (all of last year and this year). He's not unlucky, he's made bad pitches with runners in scoring position. There's no excusing away his splits or his SLG/OPS against, there's no luck in there, his gamelogs just don't bear that out at all. Greinke will improve because his talent is that good, he'll have to start locating effectively for an extended period of time at some point, not because he's been unlucky and his luck is neutralizing, but because all players make adjustments if they are going to have success. Look at his game logs last year and then make the claim he's been unlucky, or look at his game logs this year and claim he's been unlucky. The use of "luck" as a legitimate reason for success or failure is incredibly lazy analysis in my opinion. The answers to why, the cause, are in the game itself, in how the game is played, and not in any metric... especially when it comes to pitching. Greinke just hasn't pitched to his talent outside of 1 start this season, and outside of 2009 he hasn't done it consistently in his career. He's a much better player than how he's pitched, but his ERA is much more reflective of how he's actually pitched than his FIP or xFIP at this time, in fact it's not even close... and the difference highlight's the problems inherernt in most of the advanced metrics. Zack is very good, but he's not on the same level as Sabathia, Halladay, or Lincecum, the results over his 8 year career just don't measure up to those guys yet fans keep treating him like he is.

Wolf pulled the string nicely on that last pitch.