TheCrew07

Yep that's very handy, if they start adding some rates, WHIP, and so on I might never have to use baseball-reference again.

Bowman is pitching well through 5, only 1 ER allowed. I'm pleased that his BB rate is trending downward thus far in career, currently 3.2, and his K rate is back over 7 thus far this season. It's too bad he's given up 6 HR already, his ERA would be very respectable without the 6 HRs in 39 IP. I hope this is a just a blip on the radar, he only gave up 6 HR all of last season.

Wisconsin Timber Rattlers Pre Game Audio Chris interviews IF prospect Cutter Dykstra. They discuss the game winning hit last night, his position switch to 3rd base, and the difference between last season and this season for Cutter.

It's too bad Garfield didn't play last night, I would have been interested to hear what the scouts had to say about him.

Well dang, we might right out of pitchers with a fresh bullpen.

So is it wrong to ask if it was really necessary to use 5 pitchers today? Assuming of course we get a different pitcher in the 9th?

If he's really become that unglued mechanically, why doesn't Tunnell pull him out of the rotation and work with him back in EST? I know that Lee still has a ton of young pitchers to work with and evaluate besides Arnett, but the other starters with high amounts of money invested in them are pitching well, Arnett would seem to be priority #1 to be straightened out. Sometimes you need to take a step back to take 2 steps forward. With all of these young arms the Brewers could really use an extra roving instructor to get more individual instruction to guys like Arnett, Frederickson, Adams, Lintz, and Hall. I just don't see how the minor league coaches have enough time to give everyone as much attention as they require pitching or hitting wise. Being a minor league coach has to be a tough gig for the pay.. all those hopes and dreams of the players and not enough time to help fulfill them.

I think you mean IMPACT TALENT http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif I agree, BPA is almost always the best way to go, no matter the sport. I think it's even more prudent in MLB. Ha TLB! I want to clarify my opinion a bit. I think pitching is as important as anyone around, but I don't think you draft an arm just for the sake of drafting an arm if a better position player is on the board. I'd rather the organization not reach (Frederickson) just to select a position of need if you still have an impact bat like a Lawrie on the board. As far as drafting arms goes... I think with the Brewers drafting outside of the top 10 (though unfortunately we might be back in that position next year) they are always going to have to do their due dilligence with HS arms taking upside over polish to try and get impact talent to MLB. Most of the best College arms are going to be gone before the Brewers even have a chance to select them, so our focus is going to have to be on the HS pitching if we want that impact talent. If we slide back into the top 10 (I sincerely hope not) obviously the options will be much different. Inman was a good lesson for me, not that he was a 1st round pick but he's the kind of picther I have mind when I think about a polished HS pitcher. He had that averagish velocity without much projection left, the funky delivery that hides the ball well, but he located very well for a HS pitcher. Even though he's never had a significant injury he's still toiling away in AAA, progressing normally he would have only been a year behind Yo to MLB. He dominated the lower levels of the minors with his command, I was sure he was going to be a stud, but as the hitters have gotten better, he's gotten worse. I'm not saying polish is a bad thing, but I would make that my secondary concern with arm/stuff being the primary. The other reason I like BPA is that we also get a good mix of the pitchability guys into the system later in the draft as well, for example I think Fiers was excellent value for where he was drafted. Just like some of the high ceiling arms are going to fail, some of the pitchability guys are going to over achieve and become valuable pieces at MLB.

What? We do people keep posting this stuff. JDLR certainly was... but that was in 2003. I clearly stated between the Sexson trade and 2009... Villy and Jackson were/are pitchability guys, neither one of those guys ever threw any where near the mid 90s, in fact their average FB velocity was <90, which is extremely average. Cappellan waa acquired for Dan Kolb, a faltering closer who we were dumping, people consistently overrate how good Kolb was and what we wer getting back in Cappellan. He topped out at 93, had no control, and his secondary pitches weren't very good at all, and Atlanta knew it, I'm not sure how the Brewers didn't know it. I'm sorry but I'm actually laughing right now, Villy was acquired for Estrella and Franklin for goodness sake, no one ever considered him an upper tier pitching prospect. How exactly was drafting in pitching in 2008 going to help prior to 2012 or 13. We needed to trade for pitching while trying to develop it through the draft, not just hope that our draft picks would make it. When Jones, Rogers, and Parra all got hurt what did Melvin do to address the situation? Tell me, what did he do? Come on... built up the fan base? Because winning in general wouldn't do that regardless of how it's done? The only way for a small market team to remain competitive from year to year is the pitching. If you honestly believe the best way to build a small market organization is through the offense, then either you haven't put much thought into the economics of the game, or you're just blindly defending Melvin. That opinions strikes me as a justification rather than a well thought opinion. This situation right here is exactly what happens when pitching isn't a priority, it's been proven time and time again, Melvin has proven it himself in both Milwaukee and Texas. Philly had a great offense for years and didn't win anything until they got pitching, Texas and Detroit had great offenses in 2008 but didn't win anything, we had a great offense last year and didn't win, Colorado had a great offense for years and didn't win anything, etc, etc, etc. Go back as far you want looking at who wins in the post season, it's incredibly obvious what it takes. I think many people think that spending the most money we can to get the best player we can afford in FA is good value, when nothing could be further from the truth. FA pitching is the worst possible value in all of baseball, with spending on the bullpen being the absolute worst way to spend money. To compete with the big boys your pitching has to match up, they can buy FA impact pitching, we aren't able to afford anything more than Wolf or Suppan in FA and simply put those guys just don't match up. The Twins still haven't caught on to this, they always have just enough pitching, but never enough to truly compete for a WS. So being average here is the goal then? This where the difference lies, I look around baseball and I see teams doing more with less, I look at this team and we're better off with the youngsters than we are with the older players, we could have done much better with less. We can't win consistently because we're Milwaukee... Well I think that perspective is garbage. While we are the smallest market and need to stay within certain financial limitations, 80 million is plenty enough to compete every year if it's spent wisely. We had 2 HOF quality talents here at the same time and managed a single 1 and done in the playoffs... if that's the best we can do then why are we wasting our time as fans? Do we not realize how fortunate we've been to get 2 players of that offensive talent at the same time? I don't want an occasional shot at the post season, I want to compete every year. Some years the team will get hit hard by injuries and it won't be in the cards, but the rest of time why shouldn't we be able to compete? lcbj68c brought up an excellent point that was largely ignored. TB is paying less for their entire rotation (ERAs of 2.37, 2.41, 2.54, 2.99, 4.01) than we will have to pay Suppan this year with his buyout. Shouldn't that fact alone be convincing enough of what a poor job Melvin has done with the pitching? Why could Tampa do it but no one else? They have some super secret formula to success? Ohh wait I know... are we going to the luck card yet again? It's amazing how fortunate other teams are compared to Milwaukee. I mean my goodness it's all right there.. starting pitching > hitting > bullpen > closers. Why are closers the least valuable? Because they the most overpaid relative to their production. Yes let's take our best reliever, pitch him the least amount of innings, and only pitch him when the situation is dictated by certain arbitrary parameters. If you look at the deals Friedman made, he traded laterally for better upside or he traded up in value. When you look at the moves Melvin made, he tends to trade down in value. That's why we are where we are, it's not bad luck, it's a bad philosophy towards team building. I'm not sure what part of IMPACT PITCHING is so confusing. But sure, you're right and I'm wrong. How do you know Marcum couldn't have been had, we couldn't have gotten a different return for Lee, or we couldn't have done better for the franchise focusing our prospects elsewhere? How do you really know anything more than I do? Furthermore I use Marcum as a for instance, not a point of fact. I've clearly said multiple times that we only needed 1 or 2 impact arms acquired along the way and the situation would have been totally different for the MLB team. It didn't matter to me what deal or how it would have happened, the simple truth is that nothing has happened on the impact pitching front since 2003, not one move. I've listed all of the players I would have been willing to trade, the players I would be willing to trade, I highly doubt you feel the same way. Most of your defense of is based on the idea that if Melvin could have done better he would have done better, where's the proof of that anywhere in his history as a GM? Isn't Milwaukee in the exact same place today that Texas was when he was fired? Has he adapted his core philosophy at all over time? Didn't he just follow the exact same pattern with Wolf and Davis and he did with Suppan and Looper? Wasn't Hoffman a repeat of Gagne? Hawkins a repeat of Riske? I'm not talking about their ultimate production or injuries, I'm talking about best case scenario production and theory.... the value of spending so much money for so few potential wins. This doesn't take much work... look at the leader-boards to find the most productive relievers, go to fangraphs and find their WAR, then go to Cots and see how much money they make, then divide their salary by their total WAR. Then do the same thing for starting pitching, then the hitting, and then hopefully you'll understand what I've been talking about. Ultimately hitters are better value, but pitching wins championships which is why the focus has to start there, because the Brewers can't afford to buy impact pitching, and we've never had enough of it, so we either have to draft it or trade for it. My points haven't been refuted at all, they've been talked around and repeatedly argued sideways, I've been talking about value in trades and FA for years, and it's same tired replies every single time. If you don't think pitching was the answer then fine, give me a different plan that would have worked better, give me a different solution to the current problem, but don't try to convince me that this was the only the possible way the dominoes could fall, because that's a completely unrealistic notion. Melvin could have gone a different way with every single deal including Sabathia, fate didn't lead us down this path, Doug Melvin did.

The Dana Eveland I remember pitched consistently around 92 MPH. The current Eveland has a an average FB velocity of 88.1, no thank you. Honestly I'm still a little bit bitter about how both him and Hendrickson turned out, so I'm biased.

I think we stick with BPA and add as much impact talent as possible.

I think it's very difficult to change people's minds when they aren't really open to the concepts that are being dicussed in the first place. However, I think the greater points are being totally glossed over here. It takes a long time to address a pitching situation and Melvin hasn't even started yet. This is the reason so many of us are frustrated with Melvin, he's backed himself into the absolute worst possible position by the way he's manuevered through the organization's pitching issues. In fact, had different moves been made along the way we wouldn't have had to trade any position players that were performing well and everyone would be happy. Once again I'll used the The Rays as example because I've studied them so much I know all of the deals by heart. The Rays made their key trades in 2004, 2006, and 2007, then it all came together for them in 2008. Friedman didn't fix the situation over night, he didn't trade for rentals, he didn't take back high floor players as the center pieces of the deals, he took advantage of opportunities as they presented themselves. The Rays basically stole Kazmir, it wasn't a horrible trade in the context of the time, SLG/OBP were the most sought after commodities in this time, but it sure looks bad now as Zambrano fell off so bad. As Louis pointed they acquired Jackson for a closer, well I'm telling you right now I'll trade my stud closer for top of the rotation pitching talent 100 % of the time. Starting pitchers have infinitely more value than relievers, and yes that even applies to closers, Friedman understands that idea, and jumped on the opportunity. In a Brewer context, if the Tigers wanted to trade me Porcello or Scherzer for Braddock or Axford I do that deal in a heartbeat. Finally the Young for Garza trade, 2 players with significant upside, both needing a change of scenery, looked to be a good deal for both sides, slightly favoring MN because Young looked to be HOF special as he was flying through the minors. Just a solid trade from the start, pitching is more valuable than hitting, I do feel bad for MN in this case. The bottom line here is that every time TB had expendable assets they focused on acquiring impact pitching, can we at least agree on that point? Flip over that same concept and the Brewers have had similar opportunities spaced out over time to make key pitching acquisitions but haven't. Players like Hart/Hardy aside, Melvin had Overbay, Lee, and the players included in the Sabathia, Linebrink, and Lopez deals to move for starting pitching. He wasn't going to get an impact arm for a player like Kolb who had faltered and we were dumping, that just wasn't a realistic return for the value we were giving up. So Melvin has had the expendable resources on approx 4 different occassions to target starting pitching, 4 will be stretching it some breaking those prospects into 2 deals, so for the sake of argument lets just call it 3. So with those 3 opportunities Melvin netted exactly 1 starting pitcher for Milwaukee who last longer than a year, Dave Bush, who I really like as a pitcher, but had very limited upside. For Lee (leaving Cruz out of it) we got back Julian Cordero who never made it out of A ball, Franciso Cordero a closer (yay?), Kevin Mench and Laynce Nix (typical Melvin high floor players). Sabathia was great but was never going to be more than rental and as such he was never going to help bridge the gap to the youngsters in A ball. For Overbay we recieved 3 more players that all made a contribution (Jackson, Bush, Gross), but none of them were impact players (once again your typical high floor Melvin type acquisition). Even though I like Bush, I would have never targeted him personally, his K and BB rates just do nothing for me, his K rate had declined all the way under 7 by AAA, while Marcum's was up around 8 at the time of the trade at the same level. TB went projectable pitcher, projectable pitcher, projectable pitcher in their 3 opportunities, not a single established "Name" player in the bunch like so many ideas on the transaction forum are based upon. Melvin went closer/depth (Lee), rental pitcher (Sabathia), depth (Overbay), I don't really see how he seized the opportunity with the assets he had in place? In fact, instead of trading to build value like Friedman did in TB, he traded to reduced value twice picking up a closer and rental player. In fact if I throw in Linebrink he's traded down in value 3 times. In the end, this is the biggest issue I have with Melvin, he doesn't seem to truly understand where the value lies in baseball. He continues to focus on the position players while assembling a rotation that is "good enough" on paper, but it never quite works out that way when the games are played. He also continues to spend way too much money on the bullpen and starting pitching in FA for very little return. Value is the main concern here... not the idea that Melvin should have traded for a pitcher because we said he should. Sabathia was great, but what was his ultimate value to the franchise? A few more tickets sold which then became Looper, Wolf, and Davis? I'm not talking about the intangibles like getting the playoff monkey off our back or validating someone's fandom, I'm talking net effect between the lines. If the net effect of Sabathia was enough extra revenue to sign those 3 pitchers, which has ultimately led to a slide in the performance of the team, which will lead to a slide in ticket sales, which will lead to slide in payroll, and so on... how was that deal a positive for the franchise? Losing the narrow view of that trade based solely on the emotional response to a playoff appearnce, is the organization better off having made that deal? Backing away from the Sabathia situation and looking at Melvin's tenure as a whole, all we needed was to pick up 1 maybe 2 impact starters anywhere between the Sexson trade and 2009 and we would have been right there with STL last year and we'd right in the thick of the hunt again this year. I don't believe it's too much to ask that people widen their view and objectively look at the situation for what it is.

Every interview with Mark A. that the JS has done regarding financial situation has quotes from Mark A. about the payroll being about as high as they could go without losing money. He also said that the figures thrown around on the web are usually a little low, probably because they don't account for the coaches, scouts, or the Minor League program.

This has to be some sort of record for most shake offs by a starting pitcher in a single game.

Draft followers will remember C Max Stassi who was fairly hyped as a high school player last year and drafted by Oakland in the 4th signing for a 1st round bonus, which I seem to remember seeing it was something like 1.5 mil He sure has been on a horrible slide here his last 10 games, check out his line. Even with that slide his stats are still respectable given his age.

Chris just reported Odorizzi's last 3 pitches on the stadium gun as 93, 93, 94... with a mid 90s pitch count, that's pretty exciting.

Butler started the game for BC pitching 2.1 IP, 1H, 3BB, 1K, 1R. edit. Boxscore updated Meanwhile Fiers really struggled tonight.

This just isn't true at all... the only thing holding back the Cubs right now is a plethora of bad contracts, I think you need to take a closer look at their farm system.

I just deleted an entire post about each GM, and I'm too irritated to retype the entire thing. O'Dowd has completely changed the way he approaches team building, that's very rare that a GM changes his tact mid stream. The Rockies are well positioned as an organization for current and future success. They've made the playoffs twice in the last 3 years including a WS appearance. Cook, Smith, and Hammel has been pretty horrible to start the season and the Rockies are still 22-22. I'm not a fan of signing closers like he did with Fuentes, he's also been pretty bad to start the season. Jon Daniels started off horribly, especially trade wise. He definitely learned his lesson and always emphasized scouting and player development. He's gotten much better over time, the organization is already loaded with hitting at MLB, they have a ton of young pitching coming, they no longer have a single bad contract, and one of the best farm systems in the entire game. This organization is in position to take off like TB. I think you need to re-evaluate your position on Baltimore, you've done them a huge disservice. The organization continues to emphasize pitching, they are only struggling because the 3 youngsters in the rotation have pitched pretty horribly. Tillman and Arrieta are at AAA, they could have an entirely home grown rotation by next season. They have a very nice OF, a great catching prospect, and 2 good corner IF prospects in Bell and Snyder, and they continued to focus on pitching in this year's draft.

Yep Chris just talked about it at length.. edit. Scarpetta missed a bus last year as well?

I don't recall ever mentioning the Twins or Giants. I never liked the Teixeira deal for Atlanta from the start. What's an overpay? I thought Young for Garza was actually a better deal for MN at the time, I thought Young was a rare hitting talent, the next Griffey Jr. Did Cincy overpay to acquire to Volquez trading Hamilton away? Detroit certainly didn't overpay to acquire Jackson from TB. Where are the overpays for prospect pitching? Certainly teams give up too much for Sabathia, Lee, and Halladay... but those are all CY candidate pitching, when I have ever advocated trading a for a player like that? Acquiring pitching is certainly possible, but it's all about timing. I've never said Melvin could go and trade for pitching today just because he wants to, but he will have to give value to get value. In fact Melvin's position has only been weakened because once he acquired Sabathia and Sheets was no longer an option, everyone in the world knew the Brewers weren't going have enough pitching going forward. I would be willing to give up quite a bit to get the pitching... Hardy+, Hart+, Fielder, McGehee+... how many other posters on this site would do the same? Would Melvin? You'll never convince me that impact pitching has been a priority for Melvin, not in Milwaukee, not in Texas, there is nothing in his history as a GM to suggest that. For example, even though Chapman isn't ready yet, I would rather given him Davis' money than sign Davis. If my options are spending 5-7 million per year Looper/Davis/next random vet vs throwing 30 million for 5 years at Chapman.. I would have rather thrown that money at Chapman, at least he has the chance to be special. Granted it would have been a huge risk for Melvin, the kind of risks he doesn't take on players who aren't proven, but I think it would have been money better spent there then on declining, aging verteran version 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 as we progress forward. I'm surprised that people don't seem to understand how dire the situation has become in that we're hoping a 2 time TJ surgery pitcher can come back and bolster the rotation. I'm really into Cappy, after all he's a lefty, but I'm not sure how much can realistically be expected out of his elbow going forward. The projections on a 2nd TJ surgery are incredibly dire, just the like Brewers prospects in the division going forward. I have to get to work so I'm not going to go through all of the names again but STL, CIN, and CHC all have better rotations today, and all have more impact talent closer than Milwaukee for the future. In fact Cincy's worst pitcher to this point has been Homer Bailey, but Bailey has a higher GameScore this season than any pitcher in the Brewer's rotation, and he's also pitched a complete game shut out. What are we going to compete for with the 4th best rotation in the division? So again I ask, if Melvin won't aggressively pursue young pitching, what's going to change? How does he move the team forward without more pitching? Is improving the team defense going to save us? Is scoring more the runs the answer?

Based on what? Isn't the objective to win games? If you aren't winning with a guy, what's the difference if he's on the team or not? The team without McGehee wouldn't have had the same make up, it wouldn't be the same personnel, so how you can possibly call trading a McGehee "a terrible mistake" without knowing what the return would be? Was trading Josh Hamilton a terrible mistake because Volquez got hurt? What about trading Delmon Young? This is exactly what I've been posting about, every time we have a position player that performs at a high level very few are willing to trade him. The team's fortunes won't improve until the pitching does, how exactly do we acquire impact pitching without trading for it when we don't have enough of it? I'm willing to be convinced be otherwise but no one ever offers a solution, they just post what a terrible idea it is to trade player X without offering an alternative solution. We know what the problem is, how do we fix it?

Isn't that exactly what Melvin is? The only distinguishing characteristic Melvin has that makes him better than "just a guy" is his nugget mining. I think that nugget mining meant quite a bit more when we really stunk than right now when we are trying to get from average to good. The nugget mining is a very good trait to have, but his philosophies on pitching are holding this team back, which is a very bad trait to have. I think he'd better be off as a GM of a larger market team, a team that could compete in FA for impact pitching, doing it Melvin's way we'll never have enough pitching in Milwaukee... doing it his way in Texas he didn't have enough pitching, he never seems to have enough pitching., that's not bad luck, that's a trend. As far as Friedman goes, obviously I think he's the best GM in the game, but there are plenty of other people out there who aren't getting their due, there's no way that Melvin or Jack Z are better GMs than Dan O'Dowd or Jon Daniels for example. Walt Jocketty would be a top 10 GM if he hadn't hired the worst possible manager for young pitching, Andy McPhail is top 10 GM at this time, he's positioned Baltimore for future success. Will Mark A find someone better if he dumps Melvin? No idea, but I do know that if you do nothing, then you don't get any change. I guess if a maxed out payroll, declining attendance, and declining performance on the field are what you want, then there's no reason to change. If the best reason we have for keeping a guy is we might get someone worse... well how do we ever get ahead if we approach decisions in that manner? Aren't we truly talking about fear in that case? "Well this sucks but it could always be worse?" That's just not how I approach life, I'm very aggressive, if something isn't working I'm looking for a better way, if something is working I'm wondering if there's a better way, I'm never going to stand to still... so you're never going to me to convince me that inaction is the best possible course of action. I think making decisions based upon fear, or any emotion, is worst the possible way to make a decision. Decisions based on fear are based on emotion not objective analysis, similar to making decisions based on anger, which is why if I'm angry about a post, I usually let a thread sit for a couple of days before coming back to it. I think there's been quite of emotional analysis in regards to Melvin turning around the franchise, rather than objective analysis of his performance as a whole. Just like I think people let their emotional response to a playoff appearance cloud any objective analysis of the Sabathia trade, even if the playoff appearance meant the world to you it's still okay to admit making that limited Melvin's options moving foward. There has to be more than one person out there in a baseball front office that is willing to take a different approach and not just do things "the baseball way" because that's how they've always been done. I just won't believe that Friedman is the only innovator in the game, that he's the only GM willing to mix old school scouting with modern sabermetrics, that he's the only GM capable of determining how to efficiently spend money. I'm nobody, yet I can see the brilliance in what TB has done, surely there are others around baseball.

No Cline again tonight for BC, lame consecutive HBPs.

I'm not concerned by that at all, they already moved the date once and I just don't see Chris opting for FA at this point. I think Chris genuinely would like to be a Brewer again, he's never said it directly but that's my gut feeling from his various interviews (audio and print) over the last 2 seasons.