TheCrew07

Bingo!

this made made me laugh, well done sir. It's nice to see Estrada pitching well.

I don't have a good explanation as to why but for some reason I like Davey Johnson, must be my prospect side shining through.

Thank goodness for BC, 1 organizational win on the books at least

We he figures that part out we'll have a pretty studly pitcher on our hands.

I see what you're saying but again the difference there was Butler stagnated in A+ due to ineffectiveness not injury. Josh should have been in AA to start the 2009 season and AAA to start this season. Peralta hasn't been pushed hard since TJ surgery either, he's on the exact same career path as Rivas, only he started at 17 like Escobar. Mark Rogers was handled very cautiously last season, is he less of a prospect because he's 24 as well? Who's the better pitcher today between Rivas and Rogers? Odorizzi another favorite of mine spent 2 years in rookie ball, though I think he's better off for it. The Brewers haven't really pushed pitchers in Melvin's tenure as GM, and certainly none of the Latin players, pitchers or otherwise. Paul, the point is Dave Bush's stuff and peripherals are what projected him in that 4/5 range, his FB never broke 90 and he doesn't have a signature pitch. Rivas hits 95, has a devastating change, and has gotten better at every level, he doesn't project as a #4. He may ultimately be a #4, but he's very similar velocity wise to Yo, I think Rivas' floor is a 4/5 but his ceiling is a 2/3.

A note on Chapman he's either been really good or really bad so far in AAA. In his 2 bad starts he's given up 14 ER, in the other 5 starts, 4 ER. He's been easy to follow because every time he starts he's a headline on MiLB.com, just like Strasburg.

Gallardo didn't have TJ surgery in rookie ball. Age is more an issue with a college players in my opinion, but in the case of a Parra or Rivas I really don't feel the age knock is appropriate. He's advanced 1 level at a time coming off of surgery, and now he's just a phone call away. Escobar also had 6 seasons in the minors, he just started 2 years sooner and didn't lose a year to injury. Other than injury, Rivas' performances in R ball certainly didn't warrant 2 return trips, I don't think that was really on him, it was beyond his control as his stint in Helena during 2006 proved he was ready to move up to A ball. How different would his career path look if he had hit A ball on schedule in 2007?

that DP was a nice break.

This Rolen AB is Yo in a nutshell, up in the count 0-2, misses badly twice, close once.. full count... foul off a couple of pitchers and all of a sudden the pitch count for the inning is blown.

How exactly does Rivas profile similarly to Dave Bush which is what you are saying? Rivas throws significantly harder, has more movement on his FB, and has a dynamite change. How is a 4-5 starter his ceiling? That might be all he does in his first season, but he's an ascending player. I don't like the fact his BB rate spiked early this season and K rate declined so far in AA, but he's obviously working on something because he's inducing a ton of ground balls, so I'm interested to see where he ultimately ends up. So far though his starts are skewed by his horrible game on May 6 where he didn't K anyone, walked 4, and gave up 10 hits in 4.1 IP. In every other start he's K'd at least 4 batters... The farther we get away from that start where he couldn't find the zone, the better his peripheral numbers will look. Even with that horrible start his WHIP is only 1.19, there's plenty of reason to be excited about Rivas. As for the rest, because they added Rogers to the 40 man last year when they didn't have to (in my opinion) he'll only have 1 remaining option for 2011, so he's going to be pushed. Every pitch he throws has been described as a plus pitch, he'll be a top of the rotation starter if he quits walking people, a bottom of the rotation starter if he doesn't. Jeffress... well his ceiling is as high as anyone the Brewers have ever drafted, where he ends up, I really don't know and don't feel comfortable predicting his career path. Butler's ceiling is probably that of a #3, his velocity is better than average, he's a ground ball pitcher who gives up quite a few hits, but if he can continue to make progress with his BB rate he could be a solid #3. Anundsen to me is farther away than any of the other players, he's like a Chris Cody, he's going to have to continually prove himself since he has below average velocity as a RHP, he seems much more likely to be a bullpen guy than a starter. Fiers has such stellar command that he could be a player from BC who's fast tracked. He has average velocity and seems to top out in the 3 range. Peralta has one of the better arms in the system, a slider that could be devastating, and an improving change, but I see him advancing 1 level at a time. Scarpetta has average velocity for a starter and his CB is unhittable when he's on. I didn't see him throw his change much but his top end strikes me as a #3 (his BB rate scares me), he's also using his second option year this season (though he has 2 remaining, he had 4 instead of the usual 3). That's 3 pitchers in that 2-3 range if things work out well. The most interesting situations for me personally are all at WI. The Brewers really won't be able to run the tandem system at A+, they'll need whomever ends up there to start stretching their IP limit per season, and while a couple of guys could jump to AA, that means that some very capable/interesting pitchers may be forced to repeat A ball, like a Del Howell. I think Odorizzi's top end is a solid 2, Krestalude has average velocity but could be a nice 3/4 as a ceiling, Bucci apparently throws a little harder than Krestalude but I still think he's in that 3/4 range. I really Lasker, yes it's partly his name, but he's very solid when he doesn't hurt himself and he can swing the bat as well, his pre draft scouting put his ceiling in that 2/3 range, I haven't read an updated scouting report since so I'm looking forward to seeing him pitch. Del Howell is raw, raw, raw... but he's a LHP that can reach the mid 90s, I don't even want to venture a guess where he ends up. Heckathorn is another guy who's tough to project, he's a 1 pitch pitcher now, he's made some nice progress with his slider, he throws hard enough working 94-95 that if he adds a 3rd pitch he could be something special, or he could just be a bullpen guy. Finally Arnett, who's ceiling is probably a 1, while extremely frustrating to this point in his career has been making incremental gains in his last 3 starts, but I don't he's as advanced as a pitcher as the younger pitchers on that staff like Odorizzi, Krestalude, and Bucci, he doesn't seem to have much pitchability yet. I intentionally skipped over some pitchers that could make an impact like Periard, Bowman, Watten, and Merklinger as prospects. Not to mention we still have the suspended Adams and ineffective Lintz from that 2008 draft. All in All I'd be thrilled to run out a rotation of all 2s and 3s, instead a 2, a 3, and 3 5s like seems to be the case most years since I started following the Brewers. I'd love to add some more impact pitching depth to the AA rotation to go along with Rivas and Rogers, but I'm not sure that pipe dream is realistic given Melvin's history as a GM. Even if we don't add talent I'm pretty satisfied with the depth of the system, we will just have much less margin for error. Personally I think Parra will make or break the next couple of years. If he finds his groove then between Yo, Parra, Wolf, Rivas, Rogers, Narveson, and Butler we should be able to compete every night plus have solid depth behind. If Parra fails then we need some lower ceiling players like Narvy, Estrada, Loe, and Butler to really step their game up, and that probably puts more organizational pressure on Rivas and Rogers to succeed sooner rather than later.

I'm not the one who's hung up on an arbitrary data set as proof of anything. I asked a simple question, when does a bad start become a bad season? Your answer, years... Great. I guess there's no point in discussing anything then. Simple math with tell you that it is highly unlikely his ERA will recover to his career average this season. You may want to argue semantics about what bad means, but when I use the word "bad" in the context of a player with an established track record I'm saying he's worse than his career average. Davis will be bad this year, Hoffman will be bad this year. That doesn't mean they won't be able to improve and offer a meaningful contribution to the team throughout the rest of the season, it means there is simply no way they will recover statistically this seasib on the whole, even if they make tremendous strides with their month to month splits going forward, sometimes the whole is just too deep. You're so hung up on "luck" as a legitimate reason for consistent failure that you aren't able to see the forest for the trees. Furthermore sometimes the small sample is the point of conversation. Saying Davis has been bad so far this year is completely proper, no one bad lucks their way to an ERA over 7.5 in 7 full starts. If you want to talk about luck over a 2 or 3 start span I'll listen, once we start a talking a quarter of the season "luck" is less of a factor, not that it was much of a factor to begin with... for every bleeder or dying quail there's a rocket hit right at someone. What's more likely, that Davis has been unlucky or that he just hasn't been able to hit his spots consistently enough?

Are you serious? You have to ask? Take your pick: Suppan or Vargas. Personally, I'd toss off both. Another possible move would be to move Butler to the 60 man DL though I don't know the status of his return. It's possible he's expected back sooner. There should be no issues with the 40 man. Not only do they have candidates to remove now, they likely will have more in coming weeks (Riske). Riske has 3 more weeks to show he deserves to be back or he'll be gone. That's a pretty uninformed opinion considering it's been plastered in multiple locations over the last couple of days that both Gamel and Butler would be starting their rehad assignments in BC this week. Not to mention it's in today's Link Report that McCalvey is reporting Josh Butler is today's starter (it was originally posted as Tuesday). Ya, ya, I get you think nothing of Parra and while you have your reasons, to suggest that he has no business being in the rotation is laughable. Parra isn't a finished product, it's way to early to claim he's all he's going to be, stretched out or not. I've been as disappointed in him as anyone, I too question his toughness, but he's got the best arm of anyone on the MLB rotster at this time, and the Parra question needs to be definitively answered one way or the other. I would have had in him the rotation all year and I would leave him in the rotation the rest of the year, I'm as much about developing young players as I am about winning games. At least if you wanted an AAA pitcher I'd say go with Estrada since he's already on the 40 man. We may all want Suppan DFA'd and I never wanted Vargas back, but it's just not going to happen at this point in the season. As much as I want impact pitching and as miserable as I've been watching this garbage, we're still only 1 hot streak away from being .500.

FYI I haven't been slacking, I might have missed an interview here or there, but Chris hasn't had many player related interviews in the last 10 days or so.

Ha, the T-Rats won a game both days I couldn't listen to the audio in the last week. Perhaps I'm a jinx and will just time record the pre game shows for a while. Fatse's BA is all the way down to .238, Dennis has dropped all the way to .264, too bad for 2 guys I like to follow.

Rivas consistently works 92-93 and hits 95.

Thats where I would start if I was MelvinUmm yes that's too much to ask, there's no way we're getting David Price or Wade Davis at this point in time. Maybe they'd be willing to deal Jeff Niemann again, but that seems unlikely given how well he's blossomed after finally getting his MLB chance, not to mention how well their home grown 4 plus Garza have pitched. Why do we need an established MLB arm for this season anyway? We have more starting pitchers than rotation slots now. I'm not going to argue the performance angle because I really don't see Davis or Bush pitching out of the bull pen, but I'm willing to acknowledge that a very good case could be made for bumping one of those guys. However I still think that Minor League talent makes the most sense. Yea we'll likely miss on one of the guys, but I'd rather hit on a guy with significant talent than do another MLB talent quantity trade like Overbay deal. I'm not saying those deals don't have value, but we need impact pitching, as much as we can get, and that probably means trading for prospects if we're trading an MLB piece.

That's such a statistical slant on the situation though. I'm not talking about establishing a career trend, I'm talking about establishing a season of ineptitude. When does a bad start truly become a bad season? We had people around here claiming JJ would still pull out of it in August last year, but even if he would have he still would have a had a poor season by his own standards. I'm sure there would have been comparisons to the league average SS and everything that goes with it (see justification of Suppan as a 5th starter), but the reality would have been that JJ had played at a lever far below the bar he had previously set for that one season on the whole. At some point, it has to be proper to call a spade a spade. Why is the question always... "if you think pitcher X is going to have ERA Y all season...". That's not really the point. He doesn't have the talent to pitch down to a 2.0 ERA for a significant amount of time to even out the garbage. We're 6 weeks in, he'd have to be phenomenal from this point forward to get back to last year's numbers, which means it's unlikely to happen. If every starting pitcher just pitches to career norms from this point forward then great, but that really doesn't help any of them dig themselves or the team out of the hole they've put themselves in when were basically an 81 win team (give or take) coming into the season. How many of our starting pitchers are realistically capable of putting up extended streaks of very good starts to even out the very bad? Maybe Gallardo and Wolf? The rest of the guys have to be pretty consistent to get their numbers, but they've just been consistently bad as a pitching staff to this point. As far as Gallardo goes, there's plenty to complain about, and he's one of my boys. It's not nit picking, he's plateaued, he's not ascending anymore, he's still using way too many pitches because he ends up in so many 3 ball counts. I never claimed he was ready to be an ace, and while he's gotten very good results generally speaking in the innings he's pitched he's still leaving 3 or 4 innings for the bullpen every start, which is something you'd expect more from your 5th starter than your 1st. I don't see how it's reasonable to ignore the cumulative effect of leaving so many innings out there for the bullpen in every start from every pitcher. I realize it's very difficult to quantify statistically, but shouldn't we be able to agree that the pitchers in the bull pen are typically the least best pitchers on the staff? With that idea in mind shouldn't we be looking to minimize their innings instead of maximizing their opportunities like has been the case the last 2 seasons? I firmly believe at some point Yo is going to take another step forward and figure out how to work later into games, but what if it doesn't happen this year? Is that just more "bad luck"?

I saw this on the bottom line at my brother's place earlier tonight and was shocked. Even though I didn't want him signed on the personal side of things he's already been through so much with cancer that I hope in the end this is nothing serious for him. Get well DD.

When does a bad stretch become poor performance? June 1? July 1? Game 162? This talk is eerily similar to the Hardy talk from last year... he's just unlucky, he'll turn it around, and so on. I made my point about the rotation very thoroughly when the rotation was "addressed" this off season. It doesn't matter who we have in the bullpen because the starters are leaving too many innings for the bullpen to pitch. When our best pitcher struggles to get through 6 IP because of a high pitch count, we have no hope of bullpen relief, there is isn't a starter in the rotation capable of giving the pen an occasional night off. Yes Wolf and Davis are statistically better (or should be) than the spots the are replacing, but that was only half the battle. Maybe after the last 2 seasons people around will start to lean more towards quality than quantity... trading out 3rd, 4th, and 5th starters is just treading water, we aren't gaining ground doing that and we won't gain ground doing that.

? He worked out with the Minor Leaguers all spring and he's been pitching in EST this whole time.

With Fiers' 11K today his K:BB ratio is nearly 4:1, I wonder who they bump from the rotation when Jeffress is ready? Merklinger got bumped for Cappy, he and Watten both have 4 starts thus far.

I haven't been very impressed with Lofgren, he's still walking too many while striking out too few for me, in fact his K rate has gotten worse every year and currently sits below 6.0. I like all of my starting pitchers to be 7+... he has a good enough arm to be a pretty good pitcher but his trending doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy for him. He might be better off in a relief role.

That's because they've already had surgery... Braddock, Peralta, Rivas, Rogers.

Nashville up 1-0. Bowman got rocked and didn't last 3 IP, Huntsville down 6-0 in the 3rd. BC up 3-1 in the 3rd.