TheCrew07

Ha, everyone knows I was into Trejo, ohh well. He was pretty athletic but his swing was looooong. I was still hopin though... good luck Edgar.

How does Villy fit well into that role? If converting back to a starter means hindering the development of a player like Chris Cody who's control type lefty then where exactly is the value in the move? Where is the net gain? This isn't the pitcher that was confident and successful in 2008, this is the pitcher that struggled mightily at times during 2009 who if he's sent down didn't pitch well enough to earn a bullpen spot out of Spring Training. Why is Villy a better option than a Butler, Rivas, Rogers, Bowman, Periard... whomever? Just about every starting pitcher we'll have between AA and AAA has more physical talent and why does Carlos' MLB experience make him a better option for 2 to 4 spot starts? Also, why does it have to be an "emergency"? Our young pitchers are inching closer every day, emergency to me means there no other viable alternatives from MLB to AA. An emergency spot start to me would be something unexpected, something along the lines of the SP for that day getting food posioning at lunch and the organization having no time to make a move prior to game time. Otherwise, why not fly in one of the youngsters? We'll have plenty of talented young arms to choose from as we move forward. From a pitching development standpoint, I love the idea of bringing up a young pitcher for just a couple of starts to get his feet wet and then sending him back. It's much easier to manage from a roster standpoint, no 40 man moves are necessary, the young pitcher gets some valuable experience, and it's easy enough to set things back the way were prior to an injury once the MLB pitcher is ready to return. In 2011 it gets even better, the entire AA starting rotation from this season will be in AAA or MLB and the AA rotation will be stacked again. There will be no reason to keep "depth" players around anymore. Villy isn't part of the future of the rotation, so shipping him off to Nashville to work as starting pitcher doesn't make sense, it's like what they did with Dillard last season when Dillard had no future in the rotation, it's a waste of time and a rotation slot at AAA. There's no room for him to work as a starting pitcher anywhere in the entire organization for that matter, let alone AAA. Butler pitched in AAA last season, if he continues to progress he'll be "ready" for a shot and Butler getting an injury call would be the natural progression of his career, much like if McGehee went down and Gamel came up. Would we consider that 3B scenario an emergency? So I guess I ask again looking ahead, where is Villy's future as starting pitcher with this organization? Keep in mind that I've always been on high on Villy because he just always got results, but if he's going to make it in Milwaukee, it's going to be as a reliever, especially going forward as the young pitchers push up towards MLB.

I'm not following you here... somehow a guy that can't win an outright BP spot is going to provide solid rotation depth now and in the future? How exactly? He's not good enough to win a bullpen job for goodness sake. He shouldn't be part of the future of the rotation, he shouldn't be considered depth for the rotation, and if he is we're in serious trouble. Rotation depth in the future will come from true prospects at AA and AAA, not from bullpen types. If Narveson ends up in the pen and eventually ends up in the rotation as an injury/ineffective replacement then our 7th option should be Butler from AAA. If we end up needing to go past him then I'd take whomever is currently performing the best between AAA and AA with a preference towards players already on the 40 man. I happen to like Villy, but he's right there with Suppan and Bush velocity wise, he's a RH control pitcher through and through and we'll have much more talented players coming down the pipeline. I'm looking to move away from that type of pitchability pitcher, not find ways to slot more into the rotation. I'll be absolutely livid if we have a prospect like Arnett tearing up AA and team would go with someone like Villy instead of just plucking Arnett and seeing how he fares. It's not about being rushed, it's about getting the most the team can out of it's injury replacements. I would much rather take a shot with talented prospect who's already on the 40 man and using options than revisit past experiments. The pitching between Huntsville and WI is our future in the rotation, and our youngsters are probably going to end up with most of the bullpen slots as well. The "future" is the young arms in the system, it's certainly not anyone out of the bullpen.

I know we've beaten to death the whole young player vs veteran player thing with Macha, but I'm struggling to understand why DM thought he was good choice in the first place, or why he tacked on that option for 2011. Macha is the first Brewer manager I"ve ever truly despised, he's just a horrible fit for a team that is always going to rely on young players to be successful. He just bungles everything, he tries to be sabermetric and takes it too far like completely eliminating the running game last season. He tries to do the right thing and play the most productive player while sitting our top prospect on the bench because he's in a zim-zam. If he's going to back Suppan, he damn well better back Narveson when he fights through 5IP without his best stuff. I find the whole quote trwi7 linked extremely frustrating.

I didn't have a problem with BB being some what on the hot seat this last season for football, and I think people have a legit argument about WI's play in the Tourney. It's great an all to have regular season success, but getting bounced in the first weekend is becoming a regular pattern for the Badgers and it needs to stop. I think Bo is an excellent coach but again it's pretty hard to be satisfied with the NCAA tournament performance on his watch. This year's team was pretty good when Hughes and Bohannon were useful, and pretty bad when they weren't, and I'm not talking just offensively.

Am I just missing Kentrail Davis in these box scores?

I'll give you that, but it's pretty clear that the Brewers have pushed the profitability line, so our owner's situation is irrelevant to the discussion and has been for some time. Nor do I see how the current ownership situation of the Twins is relevant, this signing is conveniently timed with the opening of a new stadium. The Brewers tried the same thing, only they set their sights lower and signed a player who wasn't any good to boot. Finally, I'd recommend people spend more time on Cots and see how MN has spent their money in comparison to Milwaukee. In fact, it would be educational to compare the spending pattern in Milwaukee against the other mid and small market teams. The issue has never been can the Brewers afford to sign to Fielder, the issue is should they given that DM hasn't exactly spent money in the most efficient manner since the team became competitive. In some ways I feel like he's actually been trying too hard, but the idea is difficult to explain so I'm just going to leave it at that.

Can someone please explain to me why the owner's net worth is relevant in any of these payroll discussions? What owner, in what sport is actually paying his player out of his own pocket? I've never understood the fascination with the "deep pockets" owner... it's meaningless. The only thing that matters is how much money the team and league generate to make payroll. Unfortunately in baseball the revenue generation is left almost exclusively to the individual teams, so the payroll is limited in a very real way by market size, and the not individual wealth of the owner.

I'm glad I turned off the game in the first half. That's all I have to say.

Hmm, so I guess Butler didn't do anything above AA in his career? Are we going to be down to our 9th pitcher in May? So we should keep Suppan and let a better pitcher go based solely on the idea that we need starting pitcher depth? I'm sorry but your arguments here are a tad absurd and you're missing the point I was making. We are past the point of having to keep depth around for depth's sake, not that I was ever keen on that concept anyway. We have legitimate starting pitcher depth that has reached the levels where the MLB team can reach down and pluck those young men They are already on the 40 man, they have already used options, there's no point in prodding the scrap heap or making moves based solely for depth anymore. We have quality talented depth for the first time in forever, hopefully it only gets better from here. I get the whole idea of Suppan going to the pen, I don't think it's a bad idea in theory, I just don't think it's going to happen. My gut feeling is that if Suppan stays, he's in the rotation. If Suppan is our 8th best starter and does end up in the pen, how many starts is he going to actually make this season? Are those 2-4 starts worth keeping him around for? Why not reach down and grab a Butler, or Rivas, or Rogers instead and save the roster spot for use elsewhere? The youngsters will be able to give you more innings because they are already stretched out and they at least have talent and room to grow. The 25 man roster should have the most productive 25 players in the organization on it, it's not a place to stash just in case type depth, that's what AAA is for. I really don't care who did what as a pitcher last season, this is a roster decision that should be made on talent in the short term and team controllable years in the long term. If my choices are Bush or Suppan based on team control, I'm keeping Bush. If my choices are Parra or Suppan based on performance, I'm taking Parra because I'm not ready to give up on his talent yet. I'd much rather have a Narveson or Braddock in the pen than a Stetter as well, I'm not a fan of situational lefties... give me relief pitchers than can go multiple innings and get hitters out from either side of the plate. Removing the LOOGY from the roster opens up another spot as well. If Narvy ends up in the rotation, then you call up Braddock to fill that role for as long as it takes. I don't see the reason for being hung up on guys solely because they have experience. I don't care where a guy ends up proving himself because eventually everyone has to sink or swim at the MLB level, I don't think it hurts anything to give talented youngsters a chance to come up and pitch a couple of games even though they haven't proven anything yet. In fact, I find this whole notion of "proving themselves" to be very superficial, basically what the poster is really saying when they use that phrase is that they don't think the prospect is a viable option. I'd rather challenge the young man and see what he's got and how he responds than waste roster space on a just in case player, success at AA is nice and all but as I said before ultimately everyone has to make it as an MLB player anyway. I'd give our truly talented prospects an early opportunity to sink or swim rather than aging veteran. Keeping Suppan around for the rotation if he proves to be our least effective starter is similar to keeping Hall around to play 3B just in case McGehee is ineffective or gets hurt when we already have Heether and Gamel who are capable and on the 40 man.

I think the issue is pretty simple, if keeping Suppan in any capacity means letting a better pitcher walk, then you let Suppan go. For me the issue comes down to Bush vs Suppan as they each only have a 1 year of team control left, I think Bush is the better pitcher of the 2, so that's why I'd make the decision to punt Suppan. I grow weary of the conversations about "depth". No one is paying their 5th starter or their long man in the pen over 12 million per year. I read all the same arguments last year when Green and Wright were acquired even though they were no better than what already had in the minors. Let's be realistic here, does a half a run of ERA really make a difference in the game? Are the Brewers going to win with a 5.5 ERA vs 6.0 ERA more regularly? I highly doubt it, in fact I think the team's record would be very similar with either pitcher on the mound. The difference between this year and last is simple, our projectable arms in the minors have advanced another level and are in position where we will have very capable pitching at both AAA and AA this season. We don't need our 8th or 9th pitchers to make 20 starts for the MLB team if we go down that far, we're only talking about 2-4 starts for those guys... a month's worth of starts, and any of those starters can give us that. Will it be above mythical replacement level? Who knows. But those players are our future, and I'd rather give them a shot and let them get their feet wet than waste a roster spot keeping Suppan around for depth. Every year it's the same empty argument against prospects... well they haven't proven anything yet so how can we count on them? How exactly do they get a chance to prove themselves if they are never given a shot? I'd much rather keep the focus on our talent and the future than concentrate on depth because someone has proven something in the past. A guy like Rivas or Butler might come up and fail at first, but then again he might come up and never go back down, we just don't know. I'd rather err on the side of talent when it comes to depth, especially for the limited number of innings we're talking about. We'll have plenty of pitchers between AA and AAA that have the added potential to miss bats and yet give us a similar GB/FB ratio to Suppan.

methinks you presume too much... I'm really looking forward to more Macha wisdom about this one, maybe he'll compare Suppan's runs to Parra's, or something.

I'm already there with you Mass, I really hope he starts at A+ even though he didn't get many A ABs in WI last year.

I'd say the exact opposite. It's a lack of drafting quality arms, arms pushed too far, and questionable training staff from the top on down. Things look better now, but they also looked pretty good in 2003. We'll see.

They played that game exactly like they played in the big ten tourney... I wasn't thinking positive thoughts much of the second half.

What a horrible, horrible, first day for the Big East... my goodness. Too bad Marquette, fought all the way to the end, what a good game.

I don't like this match up for Marquette at all. I didn't watch anywhere near as much basketball this winter as I normally do so I didn't know much about Washington, but after the first 2 minutes it was obvious this was a tough draw for Marquette.

I had not even considered that he hadn't been optioned, cripes. As far as injury diagnosis goes, I'm sorry for what you went through Nottso, shoulder problems are definitely the toughest in sports to diagnose because there is so much going on in the shoulder. However the fact that it took over a year for correct diagnosis is more a condemnation of the people providing your care than an any sort of accurate timetable for diagnosis and treatment. Unless you injured it years prior and just dealt with it and scar tissue/healing/time had made it much more difficult to look into the shoulder. An MRI is $400, it's chump change to a professional franchise, if they aren't sure get a damn MRI right away so they know what they are dealing with. Football teams do it, teams like Cleveland don't mess around and do it, why not the Brewers? If this was an isolated case I wouldn't have said anything because I know the difficult time our trainer has diagnosing injuries, some kids have so little toughness that it's nearly impossible to tell the severity of the injury. However this is a pattern going back years and to be fair Gamel claims he did tell the training staff about his injury in 2008. The organization has a very sketchy record as far as I'm concerned with players coming back too early, players pushing themselves too far, and questionable diagnosis and treatment. Just in the last couple of years Sheets, Weeks, Gallardo, Green, Dennis, Periard, Bush, Gamel, Bryson, Braddock, and Salome all have been mishandled. That's just a list off the top of my head, I'm sure I've overlooked someone. If an athlete is hurt to the point it affects their performance they shouldn't be allowed to compete, period. I'm not talking about strains, bumps, bruises, and the like, I'm talking not being able to hold or swing a bat, pitching with a known tear in the elbow, pitching with an unstable knee, knowing a player is hurt at the end of the season but hoping time/rest heal the injury before the next spring training like what happened with Green and Periard, there was no reason Jones should have had to endure both shoulder and TJ surgery, and I wonder if it was necessary for Rogers to have multiple surgeries or if a better surgeon or perhaps rehab program would have limited it to a single operation. My take on this is pretty simple. Just properly diagnose and treat the injury the first time, and do it in a timely manner.

This might be a blessing in disguise even though it sucks for Mat, I would hate for him to burn up more service time siting on the bench. I dislike that this happened in early March and it takes over 2 weeks to get any sort of definitive diagnosis on the problem.

I'm not sure how you can make that distinction, what are you basing "better" on? Upside? Years of Service? Cost? If I'm understanding you correctly Suppan is the best pitcher between Suppan, Parra, Bush, and Narveson because the Brewers are on the hook for his contract regardless but can cut Bush for minimal cost savings since he only has a year of team control left as well? There's more wrong with Suppan than his contract, his stuff is declining, the velocity differential between his 2 best pitches are virtually non existent, and he doesn't have the ability to miss bats anymore. There was a point last season when he had only gotten a single FB past a hitter for a swing and a miss, many of us commented on the BCB article over here at the time. His only redeeming quality is that he generally keeps balls on the ground. I have a hard time swallowing the argument that Suppan is one of our best 5 pitchers this season, nor am I willing to sacrifice any part of our future for him either. This is one decision that should be made solely based on talent if they are serious about winning, not about his contract, and certainly not about his veteran "knows how to go about his business" Macha speak. If Bush is better than Suppan, he should stay, I don't care about the contract implications, I really don't want the Brewers dumping more prospects at the deadline anyway. If Suppan is one of the 5 best, so be it, but he's clearly pitched the worst so far this spring and while I generally don't give a hoot about spring training stats, this was supposed to be an open competition for the final 2 rotation spots. The Brewers may keep Suppan around but it's clearly not about his results or his talent at this point, which to me means they'd be making a decision for all of the wrong reasons.

Battlekow already posted this in the MiLB forum.

Guadalcanal could easily be 3 full length movies, there is no way they can do the battle justice in the short time frame they have to cover it. I'm a history buff, or more to the point a war buff, but I've easily spent the majority of my time reading about WWII. I thought they did a fantastic job visually, the view of the dead Japanese soldiers on the sandbar matched what I had I remembered of black and white photos from my readings. It's early, but the one thing I thought they did better in Band of Bothers thus far was give scope to what we saw on the screen, not only through interviews but through their statements at the end of each episode. For example the battle of Alligator Creak was a massacre of epic proportions, nearly 800 Japanese soldiers died in 24 hours. I was waiting for a Band of Brothers like summary giving scope of the engagement, but it didn't happen. The unfortunate part of sticking with the Marine 1st Division is that there are so many other great stories that will go untold in the mini series like the Marine defense of Wake Island for example, but as I said Guadalcanal won't get covered in the detail it deserves from a Marine standpoint, let alone the Naval/Air battles around the island or the Army troops that contributed later in the campaign. The 1st Marines also took some other islands in the immediate vicinity and I doubt those stories will ever be told on screen even though they had to eliminate the defending Japanese garrisons to the last man. The series won't be perfect, it can't be, but it will become much more powerful as the battles progress towards Japan with the campaigns of Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. In the initial engagements the Marines didn't suffer many casualties, the series will quickly become more grim. Again each of those battles could have multiple movies made from multiple perspectives so I'm not expecting the series to be perfect as it were. I didn't like the The Thin Red Line at all, and I had read the book the movie was based on, though maybe that was my issue from the start, I had impossible expectations.

That's not really true at all. Evan Frederickson and Del Howell are both projectable lefties in the system. Dan Merklinger doesn't have the velocity of the first 2 players I mentioned but he pitched very well last season and is a legit starting pitcher prospect in his own right.

I believe with the updates to Rome's site you now have to be a Rome Insider to listen to archived audio, but I didn't go and look.

So does that mean by having an open competition in camp, what the team really meant was that they hoped Suppan pitched well enough to deserve a spot anyway? This is one decision the team should make entirely on talent, why would they retain Suppan to let younger more effective pitchers walk? I know Parra hasn't proven anything yet, but at least he has chance to improve, Suppan has been on slow stead decline for years, just because someone is a veteran who knows how to go about his business doesn't mean he's the best alternative in the short or long term for the franchise. Yost took a ton of crap for his yostisms about grittiness and battling, but he'd at least look at the talent and give that talent room to grow. Keeping Suppan around screams Macha to me, the decision having already been made for all of the wrong reasons... DM has at least proven willing to eat a contract with only a year remaining on it on the past. I just can't fathom the logic that slotting Suppan already is the best course of action. Yes it's spring training and generally no I don't care about ST statistics, but don't tell us this is an open competition and then anoint the player who has performed the worst thus far with a slot in the rotation.