TheCrew07

If the team is willing to give up Heckathorn, Thornburg, and Davis then maybe. I believe Thornburg is now a year past his signing date and eligible to be traded.

Hall's K rate is so bad he just can't have any kind of an out pitch at all, so his success is a tad mystifying. Does his FB have good run and/or sink to it? Does he mix his pitches well? Could you tell what he was throwing pitch wise?

I remember buzz on the major league forums about signing/trading for Kawakami and now our AA team rocked him.

Pitcher: Thornburg Hitter: Kjelgaard

As Melvin doesn't draft or develop anyone, I agree that I have zero faith in him. It was Z's and now Seid's job to draft talent and was Nichol's job to develop it, though it appears now that Tunnell may be pulling the strings with the pitchers. How can you possibly claim Greinke has been unlucky? The defense hurt him in his first start and his last, and even then the defense had nothing to do with everything that happened in the 2nd inning. The only way I can see people claiming he's been unlucky is if they don't watch the games and only look at metrics like FIP which ignore the actual result and calculate the ERA based on peripherals. People claimed he was unlucky last year because of his LOB%... but there's nothing unlucky about grooving FBs and hanging sliders. His SLG/OPS against is .474/.776 according to ESPN.com, which is higher than the league average for hitters, and his splits with multiple runners on base or in scoring position are horrible. Watching the games, he's not giving up bleeders, they are ball getting hit hard... he just gives up runs in bunches and has actually pitched worse in the tougher situations. It may just be a sample size thing as there is no denying his physical talent, but I've watched all of his starts except the game against the Rays and from where I'm sitting he's just made bad pitches in tough situations. How is any player consistently unlucky for 1.5 years? He must have the worst luck in the history game... or maybe he was just really lucky in 2009? Luck.... good, bad, or otherwise has nothing to do with Zack giving up runs in bunches all season.

So Taylor Green would hurt the team simply because he's a rookie? Where does this notion that the team won't be successful with younger players come from? Escobar was actually better in 2009 than he was in 2010...Braun, Hart, and Fielder were good from the start. Weeks is maybe the one position people could make argument against as a rookie, but that's because his defense was so awful that his bat couldn't make up for it. Look at the rosters of many of the WS teams over the last 4 years, almost all of them got serious contributions from a rookie or two. I have a hard time accepting the notion that rookie players will hurt the team, plenty of unheralded rookies help teams win every year. Quite a few of us on the minor league forum were really high on Green until the Brewers botched his wrist injury. This is the first season since that injury in which he's hitting like he did earlier in his career. Just looking at the stats I'd say Taylor a similar fielder/thrower to McGehee, but with better range. And That's scouting report was that he was better than McGehee all the way around defensively, so he'll be an upgrade in the field regardless. If Casey is having issues with his marriage I feel for him, but that's not justification for keeping him in the 5 hole until tonight or reason against a platoon with Green.

Wow, I thought that was a double off Gamel's bat, instead it's a DP.

I think it's a certainty he's in R ball next season.

as the saying goes Latin players don't walk off the island... I'd hope the walks will go up as matures and progresses up the system.

I'm not sure why Nottso is getting any flak, he was on the mark with forum policy. If wasn't him it would have been someone else.

I agree with this... I only watched him through 3 ABs tonight, but his approach was much different than the last time he was up.

Pitching WAR isn't calculated off of ERA, but I believe it's calculated off of xFIP, which is why Greinke's WAR is so high even though he hasn't been very consistent thus far. edit. Others beat me to it, should have read the entire thread before posting.

That's a very plausible explanation, though I honestly hope not, it's one of the reasons they rushed Weeks and Jungmann has plenty to work on from what I've seen so I'd rather not see another prospect pushed. I know squat about Bradley other than this scouting reports and feature articles in the draft forum.

Gamel has seen good pitches to hit early in all 3 ABs. He looks different than the last time we saw him on this level where it seemed like he was always waiting for the perfect pitch with the bat on his shoulder. It's only 3 ABs, but he's been aggressive and hit the ball hard 3 times in a row. Pitch selection isn't really about taking pitches, it's about looking for pitches in your hitting zones and making good contact. I actually despise it when our hitters let a get me over fastball right down the middle go past them in early in ABs. The difference we see between our line-up and the Sox or Yankees is that those line-ups are veteran heavy and typically only swing at good pitches to hit, like this Teixeira HR... dang it. At any rate, they tend to make you throw them strikes and hit them hard if you miss.

If Arcia plays his way out of R ball in one season, he could realistically spend a year at every level and still be in AAA by 21, that's crazy.

encouraging ABs by Lucroy and Gamel tonight.

When he misses with his FB, he misses up and over the heart of the plate. He spotted a couple nicely on the corners in the first, not so much here in the 2nd. He'll hang some sliders up in the zone over the middle of the plate as well from time to time. I wish I could have seen him pitch last week against the Rays. I think he just gets sloppy for whatever reason which is why he tends to give up runs in bunches, he might have a bit of Crazy-Z in him when things don't go his way. The first inning was definitely on the defense, but the 2nd was all on Zach. That pitch to Swisher for the home run was a thigh high 93 MPH FB on the outer half, that's a pretty good pitch to hit from a hitter's point of view and as such was crushed.

Geez what horrible defense to start the game. McGehee pulls a Prince going for the unecessary tag and Morgan looking more like what I would expect out of Kotsay in CF.

I hope Chris covers this in his post game... was that one of those little league/babe ruth/high school moves where the runner on 1st steals second and then the runner on 3rd steals home? Was it a legit steal of home? Did the T-Rats just botch the play somehow. As an aside, I'm having a heck of time loading the site and responding, I've been to trying to post since Sessile first put the 2nd inning up.

Well first off, you clearly haven't bothered to read the entirety of those long posts about organization building that you're referring to, as I've been talking about building around young pitching and signing bats through FA to plug holes. Essentially the exact opposite tact that this organization has taken, while it's exactly what the Rays have done. I've talked about locking up players prior to arby and buying FA years and wins below market value, something the Rays really initiated and finally Melvin has caught on to. My beloved Rays cycle talent back around on itself, as do many small markets, and all GMs that I consider to be good categories. They cycle proven talent into more impact talent, they don't cycle the other way paying high costs for proven talent hoping for draft picks on the back end. That's how the large market teams with greater resources operate, although the Rays had a boatload of picks in this year's draft as well. I am, generally without exception, looking to get younger and more dynamic at MLB, build a solid organization with a regular flow of impact talent, and I do abhor signing these older players who tend to spend significant portions of time on the DL or being ineffective. Wolf's general success over the past year doesn't prove me wrong, he's clearly the been the exception in Melvin's tenure. Taking shots at me, the Rays, and stating the obvious in that all farm systems have holes doesn't prove your point, or anything about Furcal for that matter. This isn't *#@$%+ created by the farm system and scouting department, quite the contrary actually. 2 years is an incredibly long time for someone in their mid 30s, we'd be on the hook for 2.5 years of him. Josh Prince is probably your best hope of an internal SS panning out in the next 2 years, but I'm personally not sold on him. We already traded an All-Star SS and a top 30 prospect SS in the last 3 years and trading for pitching this off season, I'm not sure how we trade for a young SS, they have value like starting pitchers. I don't have any problem with a FA SS, Furcal just hasn't been healthy in years having to plan to replace at least 20% of his starts with replacement level production is poor planning. If Furcal is plan A, then you also need a solid plan B to replace the starts he won't make. His last full season OPS was .711 which is a tremendous upgrade over Betancourt but isn't exactly exciting. With Furcal's health issues we could still be looking at a low .600s OPS out of that position on the whole, with a possible defensive upgrade. I don't mean to suggest a defensive improvement wouldn't have significant value, I'm suggesting that Furcal by himself doesn't solve the problem if he doesn't play enough to push the position past replacement level production on the whole. While the position would be upgrade over Betancourt, reallistically it may still underperform the league average and a be a weakness, even with Furcal if he's on the DL. If that's the case, regardless of the cost, has the problem really been solved? That's basically the same tact Melvin took year after year with the pitching. As for Wolf... Wolf was horrible for a half a season, and good for about a total of a 1 season. I believe my exact comments were something along the lines that it wouldn't surprise me if Wolf was the worst pitcher on the staff talent wise by the time his contract is up. I didn't count on emptying the farm system for Greinke and Marcum, but he's only 1 slot away from that position right now. He's worked out well to this point, but if you want me to say that the signing was a good move, I won't at this time, we're only halfway through his contract and we're still paying him all that money to be our #4 pitcher, which wasn't the intent when he was signed. I will say he's worked out better than I expected. People said the same things about Saito... but how much value does a player provide on the DL? Surely a cheaper contract is better than a more expensive contract, but again it's not good business to have to count on replacing at least 20% of a position's production in a year due to health. I already made my case above regarding this point. Once again you're posting opinions that I really don't have and certainly have never shared. I've clearly been in favor of trading redundant talent, I like the idea of trading prospects economically for a MLB piece like Morgan for example, but I'm not in favor cycling talent the way Melvin has in the Greinke or Sabathia deals, or giving up significant impact talent for a guy who I wanted to acquire in 2005 in Marcum. He has built a house of cards, a couple of injuries and we're done. Everything has broken the Brewer's way so far, but we're only halfway through the season, what happened to Prince Albert could easily happen to Braun, Fielder, or any of our pitchers... injuries are 1 thing in sports that is mostly a fuction of luck/circumstance for players under a certain age. You're sure I'd want to trade for a young SS? With what? Ahh, I get it, I haven't been realistic regarding these all these trades that Melvin has made and the costs on the backend. Silly me. I'd play your game but I honestly haven't even bothered to look as prospect SSs who might be available. The majority of my time over the last 4 years has been spent evaluating young pitching, getting ahead of the curve pitching wise has been my obsession. I've resigned myself to the fact that Melvin isn't going to change and I've just been beating my head against wall, and I have no interest in persuing position players through trade. I know we're all in, and I just don't care, I have a hard time getting excited about the organization unless I'm actually watching the MLB team play. I'm just unable to get past the notion that this success likely means Melvin will be extended, but I don't think retaining Melvin is in the best long-term interests of the organization. He inherited Jack Z, made his run on Z's players, and hasn't been able to replenish the talent as Z's successor hasn't gotten the job done. I do like Seid, and he's trying to correct Z's one major flaw in developing starting pitching, but he hasn't done much better and now the system doesn't have a stable of impact hitters either. As such, I've put about 1/10 of the effort into this baseball season as I normally would, to be honest I probably let Mass and Sessile down on the Minor League side as I'm not contributing over there, I've done no research on the NL, no prospect research at all, and any thread I post in I usually let sit for a week so I don't get caught up in any back and forth conversations. Given the state of the Dodgers Melvin might be able to pry Furcal away for a C prospect, I'm not sure we even have a B prospect in the upper minors (Gamel doesn't qualify as a prospect anymore and Kris Davis is still in A+), but I doubt we'd get any salary relief, nor do I view him as a viable solution going forward. Would you trade someone like Green to get Furcal knowing McGehee's struggles this season? Of the players most frequently mentioned in this thread, Reyes is going to require impact talent to acquire, Hardy is going to require impact talent to acquire, and Furcal has only played in 17 games this season for a team in severe distress. As we don't have impact talent to trade outside of Thornburg, just on talent alone I believe Hardy and Reyes are not realistic targets. Furcal could be, but again how can you definitively claim he'd even be healthy enough to be on the post season roster if the Brewers get there? That's not an even odds proposition, I'd guess it's much more likely that he's not available. A post Betancourt stop gap solution would likely seem to come from someplace else. Here's a list of potential SS FAs for the 2012 season from COTS, I didn't research if any contracts were extended or options picked up: Yuniesky Betancourt MIL * Ronny Cedeno PIT Adam Everett CLE Rafael Furcal LAD Alex Gonzalez ATL J.J. Hardy BAL Cesar Izturis BAL John McDonald TOR Augie Ojeda ARI Jose Reyes NYM Nick Punto STL Edgar Renteria CIN Jose Reyes NYM Jimmy Rollins PHI Ramon Santiago DET Marco Scutaro BOS * Jack Wilson SEA As signing a Hardy or Reyes doesn't seem likely given the Brewers payroll situation, I don't really have a favorite from that list. I could go look around the AAA clubs and see what's out there, but I think any SS move Melvin would potentially make would be underwhelming at the time, even Furcal. SS is a tremendous hole in the organization at this time as we have some intriguing players in the various levels of Rookie ball, but in A ball or higher it's basically just Josh Prince. Melvin knew what he was getting into when he included Escboar in the Greinke trade.

Ross had a tough 1st inning, mostly self induced. Tampa Top of the 1st Abraham Almonte walks. Walter Ibarra singles on a ground ball to right fielder Kentrail Davis. Abraham Almonte to 3rd. With Melky Mesa batting, Walter Ibarra steals (8) 2nd base. Melky Mesa strikes out swinging. With Zoilo Almonte batting, wild pitch by Austin Ross, Abraham Almonte scores. Walter Ibarra to 3rd. Zoilo Almonte out on a sacrifice fly to center fielder D' Vontrey Richardson. Walter Ibarra scores. Kyle Roller called out on strikes.

At least in Parra's case isn't that the age old argument between Talent and Results? He needed to be given room to fail, however I do agree with the Looper/Davis comparison, his talent was certainly on par with those guys.

Yea but Betancourt is a type B? How? McGehee and Betancourt are right next to each other on the list. Casey McGehee Milwaukee B 68.3673469387755 3B Yuniesky Betancourt Milwaukee B 60.248447204969 SS

Why not just let Toby answer the question instead of stating the obvious? He posted on twitter where he doesn't have room to elaborate, and I read the statement as he didn't have an out pitch period.

His change isn't an out pitch? edit. Or am I reading too much into that tweet?