TheCrew07

I think that was Mike Roberts, not Tyler Roberts.Yikes my bad, Mike was in school with boy Bowman. I totally forgot Tyler was in the system, cripes.

The Rays fired their GM after the 2005 season after 8 years at the helm so I guess they didn't even wait forever to decide something wasn't working. I guess for me this year is lost and next year most likely as well so that would put Melvin at 10 years without much to show. Maybe the team would be on the upswing then but really the pitching will still be pretty raw, guys like Odorizzi, Heckathorn, Bucci, (guys in A now) will just be breaking in as MLB pitcher probably on limited innings, even Jeffress is probably in this same boat given his time missed. Realistically, I think it is more like 3 to 4 years before the pitchers at A level are going to make big contributions.*I have now had 2 full replies eaten by Yuku on this topic, but I really want to respond to this TB idea* Why does the time prior to 2004 matter when discussing TB? Friedman was hired in 2004 as the Director of Baseball Development for the Rays, then promoted to GM in Nov 2005, do we hold everything that happened to in Milwaukee prior to 2003 against Melvin? In 2004 Freidman had a hand in acquiring Kazmir, then in 2006 he traded for Jackson, and in 2007 he traded for Garza. Where in Melvin's tenure as GM is there 1 similar trade, let alone 3? The 2008 TB team that went to the WS was built on the rotation, and that rotation had the 3 starters I previously mentioned, plus Sheilds (their version of Yo whom I wanted to trade Fielder for in 2008), and Sonnanstine (similar to Bush). Why could TB do it but Milwaukee didn't have the same opportunity? GMs didn't call Milwaukee? Where is this evidence that trading for pitching was nearly impossible and remains such? Freidman had 5 drafts prior to his first winning season in 2008, Doug Melvin similarly had 5 drafts prior to his first winning season. In those 5 seasons TB averaged 96.4 losses and Milwaukee 92.4, the difference being almost entirely that Melvin was immediately able to flip Sexson and upgrade several positions including the rotation while Friedman didn't have a similar opportunity. I also take issue with the idea that TB lost their way into being better than Milwaukee, in those 5 prior seasons TB drafted 1st (Price), 3rd (Longoria), 8th (Townsend), 4th (Niemann), and 1st (Young). Milwaukee drafted 16th (Jeffress), 5th (Braun), 5th (Rogers), 2nd (Weeks), and 7th (Fielder). TB missed badly with Townsend, flipped Young for Garza, and actually tried to trade Niemann at the 2008 deadline for a bat. Currently they were able to get 3/5 of their rotation, and Longoria who's very good and only getting better (.894 career OPS) and maybe a HOF caliber player out of their picks. The Brewers were able to get 2 players who have started their careers on a HOF type pace in Braun (.937 OPS) and Fielder (.924 OPS), a nice contributor who could still break out in Weeks, and absolutely nothing for the rotation, but Jeffress and Rogers are still both legit prospects. Even in the 1 year Milwaukee drafted significantly lower they still picked up Jeffress who has one of the best arms in all of professional baseball despite his personal issue. Where's the huge disparity in draft position or talent in from the drafts? Also, in the last 2 years the Brewers have had 4 more 1st round picks and 3 more 2nd round picks, yet TB still has a better farm system. The difference from where I'm sitting is entirely in the way the organizations were built, one organization made pitching a priority, 1 made made position players a priority. Friedman has actually gotten better results in a similar period of time reaching a WS, they've sustained their success better since breaking out, , and they in a better to compete in the future than the Brewers are. Friedman also has spent a minuscule $1 million per marginal win, the Brewers have spent well over $5, while Friedman doesn't have nearly the budget of Melvin, he's gotten significantly more bang for his buck. Friedman also started the trend of signing players early with Shields' wonderful contract prior to the 2008 season followed by Longoria's contract 3 months later. Friedman's glaring failure in FA was Burrell, Melvin's record in FA has been much worse, Cameron's 8.6 WAR saving Melvin from performing horribly in FA. When you take into consideration TB's focus on pitching, how much they spend per marginal win, and how innovative they were contract extensions, I think it's extremely obvious which GM understands where the true value currently lies and has been in baseball, and sadly it's not even close. I have no problem with the idea that Melvin did the best job he know's how to do, but that doesn't mean that he did best job possible or that he's the best option for the future.

Haha bah! He's been fine, I even posted his interview with Chris! Seeing as there was no difference between Chad James (drafted 18th overall) and Kevin James stuff wise, Kevin was from WI, he could hit, and still had room to grow into his frame and add velocity, the 9th round seemed like pretty excellent value for that pick. Lame TB (I say this in jest because everyone knows how much I admire the job TB has done) took him 2 picks after Pokorny and he signed with them, he definitely would have signed with his home town team. I'm alright with drafting relievers, but I'm not thrilled about the idea in the first 10 rounds. I would have happily taken James in the 9th and Pokorny in the 10th if he there, though admittedly I became a fan of Roberts when he was playing in Helena last summer. How many catchers can transition to CF without any practice?!

I think this argument has begun to become extremist on both sides. We don't need to trade every player performing well, of course not, it's silly to even argue that point. Likewise luck has absolutely nothing to do with this, the Brewers don't experience more pitching injuries than other organizations, our lack of success is not luck driven in anyway. We needed to trade high on 1 or 2 position players though, because we needed impact pitching. Whichever player(s) really isn't the issue, the issue that we have to give value to get value. How many people around are willing to part with any position player that's performing well? I would say the answer up until this season has been very, very few. Well if we weren't drafting enough impact pitching, developing enough impact pitching, and we aren't able to sign impact pitching in FA, how exactly do we acquire impact pitching if not through trades? It's one thing to draft enough impact arms and then it's an entirely different issue to get those arms through the system healthy and performing in MLB. I would really like someone to come up with a legit answer to that bolded question, because I've always felt the solution was fairly obvious. When I talked about moving Hall it was because Hardy was clearly the SS of the future, not because Hall was going to drop off into oblivion and become dead weight. The same can be said of any player I've advocated moving, they were valuable and I want valuable pitching in return. When people make the, "Well who should Doug have traded for pitching?" argument and I throw names out there... I'm not saying he should have traded all of those guys, I'm saying he should have traded 1 or 2 of them because positional production is easier to replace that pitching production. It's simply of list names and choose 1 or 2, not a statement of "he should have sold high on every single one of these players" type thing. If you don't want to trade MLB pieces then we're left with just strickly prospects, but if we need prospects for long term solutions then we had better quit spending them on rentals. I would also really like to know how Melvin was going to acquire impact pitching after the Sabathia trade without using a MLB player as a centerpiece of the trade? As far as Cappy is concerned, his K rate has dropped off significantly (yes we're talking in extremely small samples for both AAA and A+) since the jump up. I'd like to see him make 2-3 more starts in AAA and see how he does. He's extremely popular around here and rightly so, I even root very hard for the guy, but I just don't feel given his injury history that he's someone we can count on long term.

Overall I think Melvin has been much more willing to chase hard throwing relievers, throwing a bunch at the wall and seeing what sticks. I'm not sure why he prefers the lower ceiling control pitchers for the starting rotation, I liked his bullpen philosophy until he started spending significant money there. Axford - Was only pitching 89-91 when he was picked up. MiLB forum members will recall John crediting Lee Tunnell with fixing his delivery and adding 5 MPH to his FB over night, it was a big story last year. Nice depth pickup without the velocity regardless, kudos to Lee Tunnell for being the man and turning Axford's career around. McGehee - Classic Melvin nugget, his minor league career has been well documented here, and the organization even admitted they never expected him to be this good. I have no idea where his power surge is coming from, in watching him it's very difficult to believe he wasn't this good all along. A great steal from a rival organization makes this move even better. Kottaras - He's been exactly as advertised, a better offensive than defensive catcher. Estrada - Many people thought his release from the Nats was curious. As I said in a different thread I'm not sure he's the answer to anything yet, but I like that he works consistently in the low 90s. Definately a good find. Coffey - another good find, maybe excellent, it's not like Coffey was an unknown, and much like Estrada I'd be curious to see what other organizations submitted claims. Davis - Melvin knew him from the Texas organization, I wouldn't classify him as a find so much as familiar. I really liked Davis until I sat behind home plate for his 11 BB performance in his last season as a Brewer before the trade, after that I never trusted the guy and still don't. He was far and away better than what we had beyond Sheets though. I'm not sure if that's a credit to Davis or more of a commetary on how dire the pitching situation was in the past. Pods - An average player, nothing special, was an immediate upgrade for the Brewers though at the time and acquiring him allowed an even better upgrade to happen to Carlos Lee. I think this is high point of Melvin's tenure as GM. Clark - I always like Brady, McGehee reminds me quite a bit of Clark. Nothing special athletically, just work hard and get the job done. I have a soft spot for this kind of player, the guy who maximizes his performance relative to his talent. There is no greater compliment than to say that someone got the most out of their talent. Good job finding him, bad idea throwing money at him. Turnbow/Kolb - similar to many of Melvin's claims/signings of reliever... hard throwers that couldn't find the zone with their first organization but had that special FB, neither one lasted long, but each had their year in the sun. Good risk/reward moves for a team on the rise. Wise - I think he's typically the type of player who's going to float around. When he's on he's on his game he's above average, but when he has a bad season or the team has someone more talented he's easy to walk away from because his arm isn't anything special. I view him similarly to Davis, better than what we had, performed solidly, not a difference maker, just a solid upgrade and pickup.

Well Riske is back and pitching, though not exactly setting the world on fire but his rehab clock is ticking even though he's on the 60 day DL, he only gets a month until they have to decide what to do with him. Hawkins is still going to figure in the mix someplace. Suppan is still on the roster with that contract, as is Vargas. I'm not sure Estrada is an answer any place yet, but I am high on Axford and Braddock for obvious reasons. If one of them stays my guess is Axford, if 2 stay I would personally keep Braddock, but I can see an argument for keeping Estrada as the long man. The pen doesn't have a LOOGY anymore (not that I care about LOOGYs per my other posts on the subject) but my only reservation with keeping Braddock around is that Macha would consider using him as a such, when he's a good enough to pitcher to be able to do more than that. I'm into relievers that can give multiple innings, I think those reliever give a manager the most possible flexibility. I would be upset but I could see Riske coming back to the big club instead of getting released which would obviously bump one of the young guys back to AAA as well. I realize Melvin committed the multiple years to Hawkins but in my perfect world I would release Hawkins (once he's off the DL), Suppan, Vargas, and Riske just keep all of the younger pitchers. However it's easy for me to say that from where I'm sitting, especially considering how I currently view pitching and the organziation, when I never wanted to spend money on or acquire those players in the first place. I realize I'm incredibly biased on this topic, even if Hawkins hadn't given up a run all year I'd probably be willing to part ways with him, I disliked the signing that much. However I realize it's just not going to happen. Chances are that all of the veterans will still stay and the recent call-ups will head back down. As an aside. Axford really impressed me yesterday. None of his breaking stuff was working early in the inning, it was clear he didn't have his sharp slider and he was hanging everything. Somehow though he managed to get 2 outs with basically just his FB, then finally in those last 2 ABs he got a good slider for a called strike, then that slider for the strike out to end the game. I really like the high FB for a K, Sheets used it a ton in 2004, and I loved that Axford was climbing the ladder to get hitters to swing through rather than trying getting them to chase the slider out of the zone. I think there's a time and place for both, but for some reason I've always very fond of challenging hitters up and in, unfortunately it just doesn't seem to happen much anymore.

Some of the boys were singing this song in the locker room one day after practice and I was shocked. Also that song, "You belong with me" by whomever... she's a country singer but her name is escaping me that momemt... things certainly have changed. In fact I was goofing around with the boys and turned off the radio because a section of the room was singing along with her and when they turned it back on every player on that side of locker room was singing at the top of their lungs just to spite me, fun stuff. Every locker room I was ever in as a player had various incarnations of Rock, Metal, and Hip Hop, the music choices have definitely changed with the times.

Sorry I don't find the humor in Gallardo being in the top 3 pitchers for total pitches thrown in the NL all last season after throwing 24 innings total in 2008. Likewise I'm very irritated about Gamel's service time, nor do I think it's funny that Escobar gets benched each time he starts a mini slump while Weeks can slump for an entire month before getting sat down. Finally I certainly wasn't laughing when Parra was the last pitcher to be used most of April. Where's the consistency if Macha is basing his decisions solely on production? Shouldn't the rope be longer with prospects because there are going to be ups and downs rather than with established vets who should be expected to produce a fairly consistent level? I realize that Gamel, Escobar. and Parra may have maturity (not really the best word but I'm super tired, not that I have a great vocabulary to start with) issues to varying degrees, but it doesn't seem like there was a whole lot of mentoring going on either. I sincerely hope Zaun comes back in 15 days because Lucroy being up to start to every 5th day would be colossally stupid. As far as the bullpen philosophy has gone over the last 5 or 6 weeks, I don't think the young relievers have anything to worry about, a minimum of 3 relievers are pitching every game regardless how close the score is. The pen has been running out of pitchers even though they've been carrying an extra guy.

That's so dumb. It made sense with Riske because we're on the hook for his salary regardless, but why are we extending Gamel's service time just to delay a roster decision?

Moms...*sigh*

Seriously, that's what you take away from my 100s of posts on this topic? One last time, Melvin is ultimately responsible for this mess, he's the GM, it's his responsibly to plug the holes in the organization. No team, and I mean no team drafts perfectly, every scouting director is going to miss on a certain percentage of high draft picks, that's just the way it goes. We've been short on impact pitching talent forever and I'm getting really tired of the "we're unlucky" excuse. We aren't unlucky, we've never had enough healthy impact talent at any one time, and the truth is we simply suck at developing pitching.. Jack Z didn't draft enough pitching, but Melvin certainly didn't do anything to fill the void, which is why I think he's more culpable in this mess than Jack Z is. The stated philosophy many times in multiple interviews (Melvin, Jack Z, Gord Ash) was to trade hitting for pitching, but they only ever did it twice, once with Overbay for 3 low ceiling players, and once for a rental in Sabathia. Not once has he made a trade for a young, projectable, starting pitcher on the rise. Once again I'll go back to TB. They made building from the rotation up a priority, they traded for 3 extremely high pitchers while continuing to draft and develop their own pitching. No place in their recent history did they sit on their hands and sign mediocre FA pitchers, nor have they ever traded for the prototypical Melvin high floor/low ceiling pitcher. Once they had developed enough pitching internally they were able to flip Kazmir and Jackson away to plug holes elsewhere. Some day I hope the Brewers can assemble enough pitching to be in that same position, but it's not going to happen with Melvin at the helm unless the system comes through fantastically. Melvin is the one who keeps applying these woeful band-aid solution Free Agent pitchers to the rotation in the hopes of remaining competitive. He's also the one that keeps spending money on relief pitching which is the least valuable commodity in all of baseball. He's the big cheese, that means he has to shoulder the blame. When we lose a football game our head coach doesn't dump on all of us assistant coaches for not preparing our players properly, he owns the situation, even if one of us did screw up, and rightly so. That's exactly what I expect to hear out of Melvin. I'm tired of the excuses, every team loses pitching prospects to injury, the simple truth is that pitching hasn't been the number priority in Melvin's tenure as GM in Milwaukee. Just like it wasn't a priority for him Texas, which is why I don't expect to ever become a priority for him. Since pitching has never been a priority we ended up where we are today. Many people tried to point out that the rotation really wasn't significantly upgraded this off season and why, and now we're just supposed to believe that Melvin is unlucky? I'll say once again that anyone who truly believes that statement to be true isn't being objective about Melvin at all. There is an extremely obvious pattern going all the way back to Texas that he's been following. I've linked to his trade history on multiple occasions, I've given my take on every single trade he's ever made for the Brewers in great detail, I'm not honestly not sure what else there is to say, it's really very obvious to me. The pattern works great for turning around a franchise, upgrading from below average players to average players makes a huge difference in wins and losses. Unfortunately for him, when you swap out average players with more average players he's not really gaining any ground, and that's all he's done with the pitching in general. I'd even agree that thus far the swap from Sheets to Gallardo has been a downgrade, but in Yo's defense Sheets didn't take off until his 4th season either. Honestly after 2 years I'm tired of posting the exact same posts and fighting the same exact fights when the results are obvious and the evidence is overwhelming, Melvin's philosophy towards team building just doesn't work in a small market, he's not able to afford the pitching he needs to make it work. His best move for many posters here, acquiring Sabathia, would have failed miserably as well if not for the Mets letting the Brewers steal the WC. So while some are bemoaning how unlucky we are, I think we've been extremely fortunate to even have the 1 post season appearance we got with this first wave of talent. Finally, people want to talk about bad defense? I think Melvin's sidekick Reid Nichols has done a horrible job developing the minor league talent, look at how poor our young players are at the fundamentals of the game. That's no accident either...and it's not just the type players that Jack Z or Seid have drafted, it's bigger than that. For goodness sake no one even worked with Gamel daily until he got to AA, he had already been in the system for 3 full seasons with horrible results defensively... I agree the player is ultimately responsible for his performance, and I also realize the minor league coaches simply don't have enough hours in the day to give every player individual instruction, but there has to be a solution out there, the problem isn't going to simply fix itself by telling the players they have to care about their defense. If there isn't any accountability, in most cases there also won't be any meaningful improvement. Also, how it is acceptable to plan so poorly as to play a player out of position most of his MiLB career like what happened with Brantley? Those of you that don't follow the minors wouldn't know this but Mike was playing DH and 1B for years just to get ABs when everyone knew he profiled best as an OF. How does that make any sense from a development standpoint? Was he just supposed to pickup the OF as he went along? From where I'm sitting there's plenty of reasons to be upset with Melvin, but it right now it starts and ends with the pitching. Once that issue is resolved I'll worry about injury treatment and player development again, right now I have bigger fish to fry.

I didn't make it through the first and he created his own mess... and how does Dennis have 5 errors at 1B already? I was already irritated with the walk and the error, then I just shut off the game with the Dennis error. Burlington Top 1st Gerard Hall reaches on throwing error by pitcher Kyle Heckathorn. Deivy Batista singles on a line drive to center fielder D' Vontrey Richardson. Gerard Hall to 2nd. William Myers walks. Gerard Hall to 3rd. Deivy Batista to 2nd. Joey Lewis singles on a line drive to center fielder D' Vontrey Richardson. Gerard Hall scores. Deivy Batista to 3rd. William Myers to 2nd. Carlo Testa reaches on force attempt, throwing error by first baseman Chris Dennis. Deivy Batista scores. William Myers to 3rd. Joey Lewis to 2nd. Rene Oriental grounds into double play, shortstop Michael Marseco to second baseman Ryan Gennett to first baseman Chris Dennis. William Myers scores. Joey Lewis to 3rd. Carlo Testa out at 2nd. Jose Bonilla singles on a line drive to right fielder Erik Miller. Joey Lewis scores. Fernando Cruz grounds out to first baseman Chris Dennis.

His return to what? He's going to Nashville at some point regardless. Putting him on the 60 day DL retro to the first day of the season extends his MLB service time another 2 weeks. he could be off the DL next week. I'm not sure what we need Cruz for when they still have Heether, and if they need OF depth they can pull up Cain who's already on the 40 man. Call me crazy but I'm pretty pissed that we've lost a year of Gamel's service time already so he could get a grand total of 24 starts.

Dammit Parra, nibble your to 2 walks in the inning, at least make em earn it.

Basically all you guys want to do is extend Gamel's service time accumulation by forcing him to stay on the MLB DL longer. I don't want to pay for an extra day, he's already burned up too much service time hurt and and on the bench. Is 2-3 weeks going to matter? No not really, it's the principle of it.

*sigh* I understand, I just don't know why care about DFAing Cruz for example. What value does he have to the MLB team? If that move is inevitable, why not just take care of it right away?

Ya I get that, but what exactly is the point of that when they can DFA anyone they want in AAA?

Why would they put Gamel on the 60 DL? He's been playing since Wednesday.

Wow! I just noticed that on the replay. What a clown! LOL!! Is that better or worse than Bill Hall walking out of the box? edit. On a deep fly ball out.

All I was thinking about was that stupid overhang they did the feature on yesterday.

I don't believe in luck or blue font, I'm not being serious at all. Sorry for confusing you.

I was being facetious... I thought players were just lucky or unlucky.. or something.

I think we're owed a double play here... please. please. please.

damn these lucky hits.