TheCrew07

Listening to my first minor league game of the season, good to hear Chris again even though the T-Rats are losing. Lawrie is loving Vegas and the PCL, he's off to a very fast start.

The trade for Morgan might turn out to be Melvin's most economical move as GM of the Brewers, he's been fantastic thus far.

This is the first game I've gotten to watch since last Wednesday, I haven't even had a chance to listen to a minor league game at all this season. The pitching sure has been better lately as I'm catching up on the boxscores, apparently Wolf is tired of being the rotation stooge. I don't remember him pitching this well as Brewer, though I probably jinxed him now.

What are you using to play the audio? Windows Media Player on work my laptop sticks at buffering 2%, and my home computer with a variety of different audio programs also struggles with the audio from Nashville since last season. I even had to rebuild it at the end of the last summer and I'm having the same problems with the Nashville audio now as I did last year. edit. It appears that the excessive buffering is being caused by my router but only for specific sites, if I bypass my Cisco 871 router it works fine.

Well this is unexpected, 2-1 so far vs the ATL, and Ax settled in nicely.

Ax and Nieves aren't on the same page, it's like watching Lucroy catch Wolf.

Ax finally hit a spot, then bounces ball 4. Yikes.

that was one Casey's better defensive plays.

Has Braddock touched the mid 90s all season? I don't recall a FB over 93... he just had 3 in a row at 91. I just looked at fangraphs and his average was 93 last season, sitting at 91.5 this year. He's too young to lose that kind of velocity. I wouldn't be opposed to him pitching another inning here, he cruised through the 7th.

Is it acceptable to have a Suppanesque view of Estrada? If he gets us through 6 only giving up 4 runs we call it a win?

Wow, that was a no doubter, and I disagree Bill, that was thigh high right down the middle. Heyward should hit that pitch a mile.

I was just revisiting the Braves MiLB system... Minor didn't look comfortable tonight, but he's going to be pretty good, and the Braves have a ton of pitching talent on the way. I'm glad they are in the East... they look poised to make another long run.

i just lost a post... dang it. I hate the contact play with a passion... and no way Prince was safe. Good break there.

Well since no one else will say it, I will... Escobar was wasted... on the bench, he only started 134 games last season which is basically like playing a MiLB schedule. I personally believe that nothing is more important to a young player than building confidence, and that's why I thought Macha had to go. You can't play the "production" card on young players, they need to have room to fail, recover, and grow. Every time Escobar slumped at all he was sat down... I know from experience having played for a basketball coach that took us out if we missed a shot, you end up playing not to fail, instead of to succeed. In my case I passed up tons of open shots because I wanted to stay on the floor and wasn't going to risk mising a wide open 3. In baseball when the odds are stacked heavily against you to begin with, I don't know how you can succeed always worried about what's going to happen if you don't get a hit. Look at Sam Shields... he was up and down all season and in different parts of each game for that matter, but he managed to make some impact plays at key moments in certain playoff games for the Packers because they believed in his ability even though he was inconsistent. They had other options, they could have went back to a veteran like Harris which would have been the "safe" move, but they cut him and kept the younger more dynamic player. Escobar didn't look like the same player to me in 2010 as he did in 2009, he didn't have any kind of swagger about him. Yea yea I know it's not measurable, but I still believe that reading body language can tell you as much about what is going on as someone's stats do.

Unfortunately for him I didn't get home till 7:45 and missed them, but I saw that rereading the thread. However, we knew he could play defense, it's the fact that he won't change his offensive approach that is maddening, he certainly has the talent to be one of the top CFs in baseball, but he's quickly running out of time to be considered an every day player.

I admit that I was biased against Gomez from the start because I thought the trade was horrible, but he's done nothing since he's been in Milwaukee to force me to change my opinion of him. How can someone with his speed and natural gifts not be able to bunt efficiently? edit. my grammar stinks.

Gotta love a complete game on 111 pitches. Good for him, I wasn't counting on winning many games 1-0 this year.

That's the Gamel play that's always stuck in my mind too TLB... there's blame on both sides, but I don't think there's much doubt Gamel had the tools to be an excellent defensive 3B, and I stick by my assertion that he'll be an excellent 1B because he won't have to make many throws across the diamond. edit. As for the topic of the thread which I neglected to address, I've been willing to trade Fielder since 2008. I wanted to trade him straight up for Shields that summer and I've been open to the possibility of trading him ever since.

what happened to Heyward? My Gameday skipped right over him? Maybe I'll reload it. edit. Ahh I see now... pop out and a caught stealing.

As much as I like Chris, he made my point for me while disagreeing with me... When you have prospects, they should be coached up and play as much as possible to get better. I haven't seen many players get better just by watching. Sometimes it happens, but not enough that I'd ever hang my hat on it.

Garfield wasn't a very good defensive or offensive catcher last year, at least when I saw him play, he needs as many repititions as possible. For that matter, so does Roberts, we have enough non prospect catchers that Garfield could have bumped a step as I believe Roberts belongs in WI.

He hit 94 in Helena, I don't recall him hitting 94 last season, and I listened to just about every start he made.

I would debate that trading for Greinke was a great move on a number of levels that I won't go into here, I think one's opinion of the deal rests largely one's personal prejudices at this time. I don't think historical perspective will be kind to either deal Melvin made this offseason, but I hope to be proven wrong or I'll be exceedingly bitter by August. Regardless, making that trade doesn't make him great, it doesn't matter which side of the fence you sit on, the cost to aquire Greinke was very high and assured us of Gomez in CF and Betancourt at SS... we can all at least agree on that. Sure we swap Greinke for Davis or Bush if you prefer, but we also gave up Odorizzi. I don't think any of the GMs whom I consider to be "good" make that trade, and how much WAR did we give up to gain? I still believe WAR wise that in 2011 Cain+Escobar+Jeffress > Greinke-Bush(Davis)+Betancourt+Gomez and that's leaving out Odorizzi whom I believe is going to be a very solid #2 pitcher down the road health permitting, but won't impact KC's rotation in '11 or '12 (well maybe the tail end of '12). Gomez has enough service time that I no longer hold out any hope he'll improve, one can still hope that Escobar will get better as he matures towards his peak. Jeffress was the best pure arm in the system, Odorizzi was the best all around pitcher in the system, and Cain is already as good as Gomez defensively and a better hitter who will likely get better as he approaches his peak. Just because Melvin and Mark A. have said we're all in doesn't mean we'll win the division and doesn't mean the moves this off season were in the best interests of the franchise as a whole. Yes I've harped on pitching for as long as you all can remember, but I've also stuck to my guns on acquiring Sabathia/Greinke type players to plug holes, I still think those deals are a horrible way to cycle talent. The window to acquire pitching talent to go with this wave of hitting talent a reasonable cost was 2006-2008 and he made his move acquiring Sabathia for half a season. To me Melvin has been making moves out of desperation since he got here, he's only made a move when his hand has been forced. Yes, even Sexson, the Brewers were so bad they significantly upgraded mutiple roster spots by trading one player. Take Sabathia, if Yo doesn't blow out his knee (on another tag play which I just can't stand as there is nothing fundamental about that kind of play... I know, what great effort by Prince though...) I highly doubt Melvin makes that trade. He also seems to feel pressured to make a deadline deal even though the piece he's acquiring will have a minimal impact in the grand scheme, I'm thinking of trades like Linebrink and Lopez in this regard. Melvin has killed my enthusiam for the Brewers, while he's great at turning around a morbid franchise, he has no idea how to build and maintain success within a small market organization year in and year out. He'd do much better being the GM of a large market team where he would have the resources to build through FA with veteran players. I didn't renew my small ticket package because of him and I doubt I'll make down to more than 1 game this year, I have no interest in supporting the current regime.

Here's hoping Del Howell continues to improve and pitches his way out of WI by the break edit. 2 prospect catchers on 1 team is pretty dumb in my opinion.

Standing wise that's true, but as I pointed out before Wolf gave up 4 runs in the other thread, there is a monumental difference between being 1-2 vs the Reds and 0-3. At 1-2 if we win the next series we're even or up on them. At 0-3 we need to win 3 series in a row to get even or better without sweeping back at some point. We won't win the division playing under .500 against the teams we are directly competing with.