TheCrew07

Clearly we should hold onto him and every other bat possible so we can field the worst rotation possible for the next 10 years because Melvin makes all the right moves.

Our situation is hardly similar to Boston's, not in any way, semantics have nothing to do with it.. Asking what I would do in Milwaukee, having only 1 good pitcher, very limited resources, different expectations, different pressures to win, and so on... it doesn't matter what players you use the comparison just doesn't work, it's not relevant no matter how you spin it. Of course I don't trade Gallardo because we only have 1 top of the rotation starter. I see trading a young starting pitcher for a glorified rental position player a tremendous step down in value. However, if I'm Boston and I'm desperate I try to go after Fielder with prospects because Beckett has been pretty bad. If Beckett was performing at all I could see trading Buchholz for Prince depending how desperate they are, they can resign him, and the could still go after Lee in free agency if they wanted for 2011. Teams make trades all the time that I don't think make sense value wise. It's not as far fetched as you make it sound as they would have still had Lester, Lackey, Beckett, and Dice K... unfortunately for us Lackey and Dice K haven't been very good and Beckett has been pretty bad. Epstein has been pretty good with his money but his pitching situation could handcuff him for while if the older players continue to slide and they aren't even that old. Lackey and Beckett are only 30, and Dice K 29, I wouldn't have guessed Boston's pitching would be this bad outside of Lester and Buchholz.

Have the T-Rats won an extra inning game this season? I'm thinking they won one recently that I missed the end of... at any rate, the law of averages is working in their favor, heading to extras again. This record in 1 run game thing has to turn around at some point. edit. Chris just said they are 0-6 in extra innings, they are 2 outs from going 0-7.

Come on Dell finish it off, you've pitched so well... edit. Are you kidding me? A bunt single to bring home the tying run against Howell. Shenanigans TB! Shenanigans.

I'm really starting to like Kris Davis as well, he just homered again.

I love D'Vo's tools, I hope he figures out to how to hit consistently. There have been so many times already this season Chris thought the ball was in the gap and D'Vo manages to run it down anyway.

That's a horrible comparison. 1 player is way past his prime, the other is at the start of his prime.

No it's not, but as ryne100 pointed out, it would be a huge win for the big 10 network. Texas is football crazy, has a ton of population, what a huge geographic expansion it would be. The only down side, I absolutely hate Texas.

Chris just said they are going to wait an hour and see what happens with the weather, officially in a rain delay.

The T-Rats might get rained out yet again for a Televised game. It's not raining hard, but it's not letting up. Time Warner is a curse! edit. And let me add that it stinks I have Dish Network and can never watch the games.

2 heartbreakers in a row for the Cubs, whatever else happens this season they can't take this series away from us! haha woo! edit. actually 2 out of 3

haha that makes me feel much better about our fielding, I can't believe that they let that ball drop between them.

Hey, nice heads up base running by the big man, and a lucky drop at home for a run.

I always just assumed it was the former, and that's how Anderson pronounces it, isn't it? yep it is.

this has been bothering me. is it Loo croy or La croy? i had always heard it pronounced the latter?

Wow good thing Corey is so tall... yikes that was close.

Excellent analogy logan, put it better than I did.

I don't know why I put so much time into pitching, I'm just fascinated by the subject, and I read as much as I can about it. Whomever mentioned piggy backing, that's only for the A ball team as pitchers emerge from short season ball and don't have enough IP to go a full season. Piggy backing is strictly a mechanism to limit IP in a year. At A+ they've occasionally experimented with relievers starting and the starting pitchers finishing the game, but that's not piggy backing, That's a mechanism to get pitchers acclimated to pitching through the 9th inning. Why 24-25 years? Because as I said the average adult male is fully matured around that time... obviously some will mature more quickly or take longer to mature. The chance of injury is at it's lowest once the body reaches maturity then gradually begins to rise again with age becoming exponential by the early to mid 30s. As far as the actual pitch counts, I'm not sure that 100 is THE number for young pitchers, I don't think there is such a thing. I think it would vary by pitcher, even pitchers of the same age. It's very difficult subject to tackle, one which I would like the medical community to work on as opposed to statisticians number crunching, just get us some good ballpark numbers based on age so we can err on the side of caution. It might be 90... I don't think anyone really knows. This idea is based entirely on injury prevention, getting young pitchers to the majors healthy, then keeping them in the rotation. PAP (Pitcher Abuse Points) set the threshold at 100 for everyone, which is what is generally accepted, but I personally believe it is bunk. 130 pitches for older veteran pitchers is based more on the decline in production that follows a start of that many pitches and has been covered numerous times on numerous sites, If a pitcher is being regularly pushed over 130 I'm skeptical how long he will be able to stay healthy but pushing 130 here and there before an off day where the starters all get an extra day of rest before their next start doesn't bother me. I read the study on Baker previously, and I think it's flawed in the same way that all pitching studies are flawed, there's no context. The fatigue point is critical, and it's going to differ by start due to many factors... weather, opposing line up, how good the pitchers stuff is that day, etc. The point about fatigue is that every pitch past the point of fatigue carries exponential injury risk. Just to be clear, the injury is not a straight line graph, it's a very steep curve, it's exponential. For example if a pitcher reaches fatigue at 85 pitches, like Parra not being stretched out against St Louis the other day, by pitch 100 his performance is likely plummeting and his injury risk is sky rocketing with each successive pitch. It's not really about pitch velocity either, most pitchers can keep digging a little deeper to maintain their velocity, which is part of the problem. They put additional stress on their arms trying to maintain velocity the more tired they get. It's not the 3.5 pitches per start, it's the distribution of the those 3.5 pitches that make all the difference. I really like what the Brewers have begun doing. They have 3 levels of pitch counts in the minors... pitches in an inning, pitches in a game, and pitches in a season (total IP pitched). At first glance pitches in a inning may season a bit weird, but if you think about it, is pitching 7 innings that each last 15 pitches more fatiguing, or pitching a single inning of 40 pitches? When a pitcher is only going 15 pitches at a time there are periods of rest and recovery, pitching 40 straight pitches is incredibly taxing on the body. Generally speaking a young pitcher's workload should only increase 20 to 30 IP per season. These are approximations but what we typically see with high school pitchers is they are around 100+ coming out of A ball, 130ish out of A+, and 150ish out of AA and AA. (the season is shorter so they don't have the opportunity to work up to 180 IP). In some cases a guy is going to have to be pushed a bit if an injury sets him back, his progression is going to get messed up (Mark Rogers). So again, this isn't set in stone, but it is the guideline the organization has adopted recently.

It was if you dug a little deeper and looked at the link in the article.I read the original article as well, he used a prospects first 6 seasons as a baseline as far as I could tell, that was the whole point. Maybe I didn't develop the idea enough but why is less than 6 seasons a bust? I wouldn't personally take that to be a bust. My hunch was that he used 6 years as the average career is 5.6 years... but what's the median, mean, and mode? He doesn't attribute any of the variance to injury, just sample size, the study wasn't in depth at all. Justin Thompson wasn't a bust, he got injured. Mark Prior wasn't a bust, he got injured. Nick Neugabauer wasn't a bust, he was injured just as he was getting started... and so on. If he did mention injuries I didn't see it anywhere it in the article, but I was just skimming it from the fan graphs link and that was months ago. This isn't the first time that article was posted.

Each day I wake up looking for something to be positive about it. Yesterday I completely demoralized by the revelation that Salome was moving to the OF where he's just a guy, and Jeffress was moving to the pen for at least the rest of the season. Today I look at this post with Bush's splits against the Cubs.... *sigh* I don't know why I have to beat the cubs so badly, I just do.

The high number of pitchers is directly related to injury frequency, pitchers are much more likely to have career altering affects from injury. Certainly there are guys who just bust, but what isn't explained is how much production is considered a bust? Mark Prior was a fantastic pitcher when healthy but had a very short career, is he a bust? What about Rogers who's peers are already pitching in MLB, is he a bust because he lost 2 full seasons to injury? The numbers are certainly interesting, but they only represent a conclusion derived from how the author chooses to frame the study. His/her bust factor might be different than mine or yours. So getting back to the pitch count conversation, I think the pitch count is extremely important for young pitchers until their body finishes maturing, around age 24 or 25. Beyond the maturation point, I'm not as concerned about pitch counts, I'm probably looking at 130 as a max, unless of course some historically significant achievement is on the line. While certainly the pitchers bear some responsibility, if a guy isn't ready to be an efficient pitcher, is he going to magically overnight become more efficient? I don't think so, I think it's a process, and that certainly doesn't absolve Macha of his responsibility to protect the pitcher from himself, that's part of coaching. The problem here is that Macha has to win now and isn't necessarily concerned with extending Gallardo's career (which is my primary concern), so he's going to ride him as long as possible every time out. It was absolutely ridiculous that Yo was in the top 3 in the NL for total pitches thrown while pitching last season, he only pitched 24 innings the previous season. Long toss and bullpen sessions just don't replicate the stress of pitching in a game situation. Yo slowly got worse as the season progressed last year and I believe the root cause of that drop in production was Macha's use of him. As pissed as I was at Macha for Yo's workload, college coaches are borderline criminal in their abuse of the young arms, every draft we read about pitchers going over 150 pitches in a game, the Brewers drafted 2 of those guys this year. Last year Arnett had at least one start over 140 pitches for Indiana in addition to the avalanche of innings he pitched... Heckathorn on the other hand was monitored effectively by his college coaches, I'm not saying that's the sole difference in production this season, but I think it does have some bearing on the conversation. I think if you're a young pitcher you are much better off going right to professional baseball where your mechanics and workload will monitored. I also believe that high flame out rate for pitchers is a direct consequence of how they've been mishandled especially prior to age 24-25. I've seen enough of Macha to know that I don't want him managing young pitchers any more than I want Dusty Baker managing young pitchers. I was really saddened to see Wood, Prior, and Volquez (hopefully all of the setbacks are behind him now) all go down as a baseball fan. As a Brewer fan I'm somewhat relieved that we don't have to face those guys, but I don't think the game of baseball is better off losing all the arms that they have lost over the years.

Bah fight the power! Sarcasm Blue is the devil.

Matt LaPorta hit 3 Home Runs today.

ha, if Doug would manage that I'd give him a lifetime contract.

Oops. I missed that Kjeldgaard homered today for BC, my bad Brock.