TheCrew07

Heckathorn did pitch last season, but he did get hit around pretty good.

There is no way Cody and Jones are regressing to AA in favor Cappy, I highly doubt he's a starter in AAA. I don't get what the fascination is with him other than that he's a real good guy... his arm is nearly shot.

Actually it's been proven repeatedly that Melvin offers input but doesn't make draft day decisions. I hold Z and Melvin equally responsible for the pitching issues though, Melvin was in the position to ultimately rectify the situation (and still is), but Z didn't get enough high ceiling arms into the system. When you only have a couple of projectable arms, of course it will sink the franchise when the majority of those arms get hurt.

Clancy if you look around these forums you'll find that I don't hold the bullpen in much esteem. If he's our best reliever and he's being wasted as the closer it will just piss me off even more than him moving to bullpen already did. Closers just don't pitch enough innings or the highest leverage innings for me to give a squat about them in general... I did rate Aguilar highly on his ability to close last season mostly because I was hoping DM wouldn't heed the calls to spend money on closer, but I've since revised my opinion on closer prospects. I know others disagree, but I despise closers and the bullpen in general, and I'm not particularly fond developing players that have the potential to be starters as relievers either. In Braddock's case I understand why it was done and it's probably necessary, but it limits his upside as those 55-70 IP as a late reliever would have to be awfully special for his value to even approach the value of our 5th starter in my opinion. When the upper tier of relievers are only worth 1 to 2 WAR, I'm not just not going to be excited about their impact. Not that 1 or 2 wins isn't important, but as I've said elsewhere I'm looking to build a team from the starting pitching up.

I'll be the first to volunteer my list. 1. Escobar - My opinions of Escobar have been beat to death the last 2 years or so 2. Gamel - Ditto for Gamel 3. Lawrie - I loved his bat speed and athleticism when I saw him play, but I was hoping for better results, this is a ranking based mostly on potential. 4. Lucroy - Very solid all around prospect 5. Salome - I'm still into Angel's upside but it's time for him to put it all together and take the next step. He's also got to stay healthy. 6. Rivas - I know this looks like a fan boy pick, but he's the closest projectable pitcher we have to MLB and could have an impact in the near future. 7. Rogers - I'm trying to put the AFL aside because he's seemed to make strides control wise during the season but BBs are still an issue 8. Arnett - I didn't get the feeling from listening to Steve call the games or the audio interviews that Arnett is as advanced as he's been billed by some prospect sites. Tons of potential no doubt. 9. Cain - This season gave me pause but he's still our best 5 tool prospect at this time. 10. Green - Taylor got mired in the first extended slump of his career, I'm interested to see if he bounces back or if his prospect bubble has burst 11. Braddock - If he's a starter he's too low, if he's a reliever he doesn't belong in the top ten, I'm guessing he's a reliever. The health issues have been beat to death. 12. Davis - I'm not as high on this pick as I maybe should be, I don't like tweeners in general... is he athletic enough to play CF? If not will he hit enough to play a corner spot? 13. Schafer - Logan has impressed thus far in his short career, he still has some work to do offensively but he's surprised me. 14. Peralta - He was very up and down when I saw him pitch, dominant one inning, the wheels come off the next. I love his 2 best pitches though. 15. Odorizzi - I've liked him from the start and hope he keeps progressing 16. Gindl - Maybe I should flip flop him and Schafer, but I'm still firmly on the Caleb bandwagon. I really dislike how the reports we get on him from national publications seem to have such varied opinions, is he a questionable defender or not? 17. Bulter - Will start at AAA, did he finally figure it out last season or was it a fluke? He's too low if he's put it together as he's poised to impact the MLB team, he's this low mostly because I'm not sure how to read him as a prospect. 18. Scarpetta - Much like Peralta, up and down, walks way too many batters yet for me, but he's still one of our better young pitchers. 19. Richardson - In my opinion the most intriguing player taken in the last 3 drafts, the reports out of instructs have me pretty excited about him 20. Axford - If only every Brewer pitcher could add 5 MPH to his FB through mechanical adjustments. He needs to work on his command yet but it seems he has a nice future in the BP ahead of him. Players that just missed the cut... Heckathorn, Bucci, Anundsen,

Make the list however you want. Some of us will favor projectability, some production, some mix of both. Personally I like some guys because of what they could be, and some guys because of who they are, there aren't rules here other than the same basic qualifications used for the power 50.

You need to start hating the thought of the Brewers trading for Tim Lincecum! Yes I could reverse jinx myself! I know Morrow isn't sure a thing, very few young pitchers are, but he has "stuff". He might never be better than average on the whole, but I'd rather take my shots with players who have room to grow vs fading pitchers in their mid 30s. Some prefer the security of an established pitcher, I'm the opposite, I'm interested in raw talent and a dirty word on these forums in "makeup". I believe in the intangibles...and I think players like Morrow and Parra can move towards a Dave Bush mentality on the mound, but Bushy will never have their talent. Maybe Bush ends up a better starting pitcher than both, but he's all he's ever going to be, solid yet unspectacular. I'd prefer a couple of guys who have the potential to headline a rotation.

I would love to acquire a young pitcher like Morrow, which is exactly why it won't happen.

Ohh wow, there are so many, and so many I've heard. Parent/Student/Coach interactions are good for a couple of stories per year. This has to be 8 or 9 years ago already. I had a young man who came out for football for the first time in High School as a Senior. They gave him to me for the Dline, and I put him at D-End. He was nothing special, probably below average as an athlete for High School, weak, and slow.... not an outstanding combination (note that strength and speed are different from raw athletic ability). You try to teach to someone like that as much as you can but basically you're putting them on defense and just saying "go tackle the guy with the ball". He does alright in scrimmage and while he's someone who's not real popular with the school administration as he's sort of derelict, he didn't anything in football other than work his butt off, keep his mouth shut, and was actually a really good team mate. I didn't know his history of troublemaking until our lockin actually, but had I known I would have never guessed he'd work out even as well as he did. At any rate he did enough to work himself into the rotation on pure guts at DE and on the 3rd or 4th series of our first game he happens to be on the field for our punt return as I just keep whomever my DLine are out there for the return, unless I have a kid who really isn't able to move at all. So the young man goes unblocked and I start to get excited because he has a real shot to block the kick. Right at the last second the blocking back picks him off and blocks him, and the young man we'll call Chris gets up very slow and appears to be holding his hand. I'm up in the booth, mention on the radio that Chris took a good low shot and looked to hurt his hand, wrist, or thigh. We get into the locker room at halftime and Chris starts saying my name, and I explain to him that I'll get to him but I have to meet with the other coaches first and discuss 2nd half adjustments but I'd come find him when we are done. I eventually track him down after our meeting and he's off on his own behind the last row of lockers away from the rest team. I'm wondering what's going on and he procedes to pull down his pants. I have absolutely no idea where there is going at all and my mind starts racing, I'm shocked and don't know what to say. He then takes off his girdle and says, "Look at this!". As it turns out he took the blocking back's helmet right in the nards and his left testicle is so swelled up it's literally the size of a grapefruit, he was too embarrassed to tell anyone else. Why he picked me I still have no idea to do this day. It doesn't happen often but I was completely speechless, finally I managed to mutter "Put some ice on it". Then I immediately turned around and went to find the trainer to get him some proper medical assistance. How he made it to the sideline and then walked the 200 yards to the locker room I'll never know, he couldn't even put on his pants after the game so I ran to the 24 hour Walmart nearby and bought him some 2X sweat pants so he had something to wear. He ended up missing 4 weeks and fortunately in high school we don't have to worry about publishing an injury report. However to this day my "Put some ice on it!" has become a lengendary inside joke with the coach staff and football program as a whole. I coach with a pretty lively group and if I don't hear something about putting ice on any number of areas or rubbing dirt on something else at least once day it's not football season.

Effective yes, healthy no. He's never pitched more than a 100 innings in a season, regardless of why... relax a little bit.

TLB might be down with him but I still say boo.

Well I just finished the game on Hard with a Mage, I beat every single major encounter the first time, talk about trivializing the game... my goodness. I just cycled through my area effect spells, stuns, and knockdowns... the boss fights were incredibly easy, everything was easy. I see now why posters on so many forums thought the game was so easy, playing through with a melee character is a vastly different experience, and playing through as a melee I didn't fully appreciate the power of the spell casters.

Wow that would be a complex game but that's the way SWTOR is supposed to work, the MMO they are developing, TOR is supposed to have forks in the road in regards to the story and character development. In DA there are minor changes to the story based on different choices, but it's essentially the same. I'm playing through as the bad guy this time so I'm curious what happens, but in the end the main story elements will stay the same as you still need to end the blight I would think. Rolling a different char presents somewhat different quests as you progress through the game but the main story line does stay intact. As a warrior there were quests around the world I didn't get as a rogue, but the rogue got quests I hadn't experienced as a warrior and so on, and of course many of the other side quests were exactly the same.

I can't wait for ME2, though I'm already disappointed by 1 thing that was released in the trailers. Nothing gameplay wise as the game looks fantastic, it's just one of the story elements struck me as a "boo!" and I keep hoping it was just a dream sequence or alternate ending of some sort. The new companion characters look great though to go with the old guard and of course I want to see my character in Dragon Age armor! I'm eagerly awaiting the game to say the least. I played through DA as a warrior and a rogue so far, I didn't realize how much of the story I missed the first time, and it's a much quicker play through now that I'm skipping the dialog, as cool as voice over is, it certainly adds a significant amount of time to the gameplay as the dialog and cut scenes tend to be fairly long. The definitely add to the immersion factor of the game though, generally I don't "feel" anything when playing a video game but I was actually nervous during certain parts of the game. I do love the game though, and I'm hoping SWTOR carries through many of the same elements.

Are you measuring the offense by runs scored or OPS, because by OPS San Fran was the absolute worst team in the NL... Runs scored they were in the middle if I remember correctly.

I think having a large amount of money to spend can help cover up other issues in the organization but isn't necesssary to win. I've always been of the opinion that the best way to build a team is to start with the pitching staff, the position players, then the bullpen. That's my utopian way of doing it. I really don't think the Brewers are ever going to be able to compete player for player on the 25 man roster with the larger market teams, but I do think they can build a rotation that's just as good if not better. It all depends on what you personally believe in... if you believe that pitching > hitting, meaning that good pitching always beats good hitting, then instead of trying to compete with teams for 25 players, we really only need to focus on the rotation. The tangible benefits of a solid rotation extend to the bullpen, defense, the draft, and so on throughout the entire organization. I firmly believe that the pitching sets the bar for the team... if you have great pitching you have the potential to be a great team but if you're pitching is just average, you're going right around average to maybe good, but never a great team. In the playoffs you really only 3 pitchers, so you can get to the post season with a an average to below average staff on the whole, but it needs to be top heavy enough to be able to cut the garbage out like St. Louis did for their most recent championship. A rotation of 1 stud pitcher and 4 average pitchers will win games in the regular season, but I'm not sold it works in the post season. It's as simple as a pure numbers game, I'd rather focus on 5 good pitchers than 8 good position players. Pitching is power in baseball, without it and without payroll flexibility a team will always be on the outside looking in. As far as an example, I absolutely love what TB did to get to the World Series and they did it with a core of young pitching that the organization didn't develop. The rotation was Kazmir, Shields, Garza, Sonnanstine, and Jackson. Kazmir, Garza, and Jackson were all acquired via trade, and I absolutely love the contract that Shields is signed to and would like the Brewers to do a similar deal with Yo and every young stud pitcher that comes after him. In addition to that rotation they had players they had drafted and developed in Neimann, Price, and Davis all waiting in the wings, what a truly great position to be in as an organization. They over spent on Burrell a little bit trying to remain competitive in the division this last off season as the Yankees went on their spending spree but they got to the WS having a great rotation, money well spent on their best players, and a bunch of averagish position players to go with 2 super star position players in Longoria (who was a rookie) and Crawford. The Brewers have done a nice job developing bats, I think you always need a couple impact bats in the lineup, the more the merrier, but again I don't think you keep bats at the expense of building a rotation. I don't want or need to have an impact bat at every spot in the lineup, it would be nice to be sure, but again my focus is on the pitching staff. 2 impact bats with a buch of average to above players is fine with me. This is why I came down on the Hardy side of the fence in the Hall/Hardy debates and the Escobar side of the fence in the Hardy/Escobar debates even though Hardy was by far my favorite Brewer. I think anytime you have a replaceable player at a position and a hole in the rotation it's wise to attempt to form a package around that expendable player to acquire your missing rotation piece, I'm not a fan of quantity deals, I want quality coming back. Hopefully in the future we'll have enough pitching where this isn't an issue and we can be dealing an expendable pitcher to fill holes elsewhere. I'm aggressive by nature, which is mostly why I disagree with Melvin, he's conservative and takes the "standard" approach to roster management for lack of a better term. I really like how Tampa aggressively traded for talented pitchers while continuing to draft and develop pitchers in house, but again that just doesn't seem to be something DM is willing to do. It isn't necessary to field a complete lineup if you have pitching, and if you don't have pitching it really doesn't matter what you have for position players the team isn't going anywhere. San Fran was dead last in team OPS last season, but had the second best ERA in the NL, won 88 games, and finished 2nd in the WC race. The Phillies have a good offense every year but made their championship run when their pitching peaked, the same for Colorado, the same for Milwaukee in 2008... I guess the distinction here for me that is that I view offense as a means to butts in the seats, but isn't the best way to build a championship caliber team for a small market. As far as the bullpen goes, I could care less as I'm into minimizing their role from the start, I want my 5 best pitchers to pitch as many innings as is prudent (every pitcher and game will be different so it's too difficult to quantify any other way) and go from there. I think it's much easier to acquire bullpen players than starters, some failed starters make great relievers ala Gagne and as relief performance from year to year has a high degree of variance at it's core, I'm alright putting the BP on the backburner. I honestly believe that if an organization is focusing on pitching the surplus is going to carry over to the bullpen and the BP will take care of itself. I like Miwaukee's new found philosphy of using mid to late teen picks on players like Fiers and Wooten who don't have the great stuff, but command their pitches and know how to pitch from the start, we'll also add some relievers in that manner as well. What I absolutely don't want is to be spending a significant portion of a limited payroll on the bullpen, especially a closer. I'm fine giving a dominant reliever closer money if he's willing to pitch the highest leverage innings and approach 80-90 IP on the season, but even then they are getting near SP money for 1/2 the innings, there's just not as much value in relief pitchers. Nothing irks me as much as defined bullpen roles... even out the workload if possible and only use your best pitchers in the most significant situations, don't waste them because it's the 7th or 8th inning. I still maintain it's much easier to sign value in FA bats to plug holes than it is pitching, so if we're talking about Milwaukee signing players in FA I'd rather they went with position players, then starting pitching, and if absolutely neccessary a reliever. Put simply, it's difference between spending 10 million for Cameron vs Suppan, Cameron was by far the more productive player. As I'm into maximizing talent I would not sign FA pitchers and would spend my assets acquiring young pitching, not necessarily MLB ready pitching, but talent with significant upside, I don't see the Brewers ever competing for significant FA pitching talent, it's simply out of their price range, so signing any averagish FA pitcher to a market should be a last resort. As far as trading would go, I believe that rental player deals have their place, but they weren't the best possible fit to get the most production out of this core of position players. I'm not against rental deals in principle, more so the situation that Milwaukee was in/will be in until the rotation is settled to "my satisfaction" (I'm well aware this only my point of view). Doug needed to be thinking about replacing Sheets with a long term solution in 2008/prior, not just this off season or last off season. I can't help but wonder if acquiring Sabathia and sitting on Hardy actually shortened the window of opportunity down to a single year the way things are going and I'll always wonder what could have been. Was that 1 playoff appearance and a 1 and done series worth 2 or 3 potentially down the road? To many people it was, but I'm just unable to shake the feeling that we could have been even better in 2009 and going forward than we were in 2008 if things had fallen in a different manner. To be clear this is not about Hardy regressing last season, I barked about moving him as our most expendable asset all last year, it's about missed opportunities to a address a long term need.

Whenever I have to flush DNS it's because I'm switching from a static IP to DHCP and vice versa. In this case I would guess it could be that they migrated to a different public address range, but it would seem whatever changes Yuku made would be at the heart of the matter, not a particular ISP. I don't specialize in telecom/internet by any means so I'm unsure if providers are required to flush their DNS on a regular basis or not.

To each his own.

You played through the final battle on Hard without using the armies? Seriously? It probably took me 10 attempts to do the arch demon on hard as I didn't have the optimum group setup as I just used the ballistas exclusively when I beat it on normal. I was down to 8 of the 12 total mages by the end with every other force wiped completely out. With a similar group concept as I eventually had to use for Gaxkang and the High Dragon it would have went much better but I had too many melee characters and lost my best tank and all his gear to a decision right before the fight. I should have used Shale but it didn't occur to me until just now. edut, Or did you play through on hard during your second play through with the same character because I can see where having all those extra levels would be a great advantage.

So I should be happy because we ended up with the lesser of 2 evils? This is why I'm quickly losing faith in Melvin, on one hand the organization says they'll move prospects for pitching, on the other hand it never happens... Instead we continue to sign aging pitchers with declining skill sets and health to stop gap a rotation. Wolf is a notch up from the Suppan signing, but Garland would have been nearly the exact same thing. Apparently we aren't learning from history at all? As far what Melvin should have done, how far back do you want to go? Ohh I don't know how about not blow assets to acquire Lopez or Linebrink? How about selling high on one of our SS last off season liked I whined about? What about trading for Jackson when TB dumped him for a Corey Hart equivalent? What about the Overbay trade where we took quantity over quality? My opinion of the Sabathia deal is well known and I don't think I need to rehash it for the 50th time but I've always felt that was mistake in the long term. What about buying low on a guy like Kazmir? The team had limited assets and needed to spend them in the best possible way... and while I'll concede a difference of opinion in regards to the Sabathia trade, can we honestly say Melvin has spent his assets at both MLB and MiLB in the best possible way? There are literally dozens of possibilities of deals that could have happened, but after DM backed himself into a corner coming into this off season I don't think anyone is surprised he's signing FA pitching again. I'm not going to be very forgiving simply because DM did this to himself... while anyone is like to be better than we what we had, he's ultimately responsible for this mess and I'll not going to give him props for doing the obvious. This is the same garbage I've been posting about for the better part of 2 years now: a team like Milwaukee cannot afford to throw away assets on rental players because we end up spending too much for pitching through FA. We needed 3-4 years pitching starting in 2008 to go with the current core of hitters, not 4 years from now when the draft picks will be ready. Getting back to the topic at hand, in the end it doesn't matter if the pitcher got a market deal or not, the Brewers will never be able to acquire top flight pitching talent through FA. This about the overall talent level of the team, and these signings limit the upside of team in a very real way. I've stated it many times but I want to compete for a championship and I do not buy the notion that you just need to get to the playoffs to have a chance. What you need a solid team defensively, offensively, and 3 capable starters and then we realistically have a chance. Pitching > Hitting, every team in the playoffs will have a capable offense and the way the Brewers are currently constructed I don't seem them winning a 7 game series on offense. While I realize that getting to the playoffs is a goal, lately I'm left wondering to what to end? We can reach the post season with average or slightly above average starting pitching, but if we don't have a talented 1-3 to shorten the rotation to we aren't going anywhere. I would rather 3 #2 type starters at the top of the rotation than a 2, a 3, and then 3 5+ type pitchers. Signing players better than we had is all well and good, but I think looking at the situation that way is a pretty narrow analysis of the situation. I don't think there's any sort of long term vision for the team, it's just what many people around here do when talking about the roster: going year to year playing whack a mole with the holes in the team driven by the position players more so than the pitchers. DM is much more concerned about the lineup than he is about the pitching staff, unfortunately DM also finds good enough replacements that we remain competitive but the team will never truly be dominant, with Fielder and Braun or without them. At least if he failed miserably he might have to adjust his approach a little bit, this way he's having just enough success he can keep it going. If you are a small market team and you build your pitching staff through FA all you're really doing in the end is limiting your upside and flexibility. The players the Brewers can afford to sign for the rotation will have been established to be average or tick above, and on the downside of their careers. That means our rotation will always just be "okay" and we'll never get over the hump to great unless this next pitching wave supplies an entire homegrown and studly rotation, and best case scenario we're still 2-4 years from that possibility. I think hitters are vastly more productive for the dollar so I would have rather we traded for pitching and if need be sign a position player through FA to fill a hole. However that's exactly the opposite philosophy of DM, so I'll likely be frustrated with the front office for the remainder of his tenure here in Milwaukee. Wolf may be a good value, but I thought Looper was the best value on the market last off season as well (note that I argued against signing him as well. 3 or 4 years ago it was much easier to acquire pitching than it is today, Doug doesn't set the market trend like TB did, he just follows it. I think that fact that the only talented pitcher DM ever traded for while in Milwaukee was a player in his first deal, a player who's now pitching for the Rockies says it all about what should have been done over the years. JDLR wasn't a guy in A ball struggling to throw strikes, he was a guy in AAA struggling to locate his pitches. Personally I'd rather have the A ball pitcher because you have more time with him to find himself. So while DM went after talent, he went after the most boom or bust talent possible... a player nearly out of options with great stuff but control issues. He did the exact same thing with Capellan, but Cappy never had the stuff from day 1 that he was advertised as having. Apparently all he learned from those was that control pitchers are a safer bet and now we have a bunch of averagish velocity guys who can locate? This situation has been a long time in coming, we never had pitching to go along with the hitting we were developing. With Hardy behind Hall there was no reason not to move Hall, just like with Escobar behind Hardy, there was no reason not to move Hardy. Instead he let history repeat itself and bungled the situation with 2 tradable assests... in the end we are eating a year's worth of salary, get below replacement level production while they were here, and are left with a talented but very questionable young CF... meanwhile the rotation still stinks. Maybe that's my biggest issue with entire situation, I keep seeing the same patterns repeat themselves. Finally, people want to bring up how Milwaukee can do things because another team did, like the Colorado example in the sign Fielder long term thread. This exact scenario is precisely why those situations will never apply to Milwaukee. As long as DM is around we'll always have way too much of the payroll tied into our least best players on the 25 roster. We don't allow ourselves to have the flexibility of making the playoffs with a $54 million payroll, we seen to always have too much money invested in FA pitching. Spending can help with success, but it certainly doesn't guarantee success and I'm not to be happy with my GM because he's spending money. I'd he rather he acquire talent, and since we can't compete with the teams on either coast for FA talent, we need to make good personnel decisions at every step along away to maximize the talent pool for the MLB team. For example, I don't care how good Hoffman is or that he's a name player, remove the name and just look at salary vs production... is 50 IP in an entire season ever worth the kind of money closers gets on the FA market? Where is the value in spending money on the bullpen in comparison to the starting pitching or the position players? I think too often the discussion becomes about production in a player vs player sense when the situations are never that black and white. For example is Hawkins really a better option than Axford at this point in time when production and salary are both weighted equally

Obviously I don't like this at all. Instead of being creative and trying to work a trade, Melvin is targeting aging FAs to shore up the pitching... This was so predictable and the main reason I'm souring on Melvin, he wants to build around position players and spend money on FA pitching, and honestly it drives me freaking batty. I don't why I expected him to change, but I it would have been nice if he got away from this formula he keeps repeating and tried something different like a trade for a young pitcher. He won't think outside the box and just keeps repeating the same pattern with an eerily similar result. If you read around prospect sites you'll find many links and quotes coming out of the organization that they believe they can trade hitting for pitching if necessary... except they've only done it once and it was a for rental. I hate to keep beating a dead horse but this really irks me. If they are struggling to put a good package together for a pitcher then how about we quit moving assets in meaningless trades and focus on deals that will impact the true weak point of the organization. I know, I know we didn't give up anything to acquire anyone other than Sabathia, but maybe some of those nothings could have packaged with something for a legit pitcher. Mercedes has value, he's not a throw away relieve, Gillespie had value as a 4th OF, and so on... Wolf is a fine pitcher, but he's old, and in addition to declining skills his risk of injury goes up significantly each subsequent year, that's just what happens to us when we age.

Wow I like that trade for Detroit, AZ did alright, I'm not a fan of Kennedy at all, but I still really like Jackson. Don't care about the Yankee side of it at all as I'm much more interested in the pitchers who moved around.

Wow my boy Rivas pushed up past all pitchers not named Arnett or Braddock. Still a pitching light top 10, hopefully some of those guys in the teens explode next season and push their way up the list.

I keep seeing this posted but it's not necessarily true or that simple. McGehee would have been fine at 2nd, Gamel could have played 3rd, the trade was completely unnecessary given the state of the team. Furthermore, it's not about what we gave up to get him, it's the return beyond just his rental, and in the greater look at all of the expendable assets that Melvin has moved without addressing the gaping organizational hole that is the starting pitching? It's a rather large list of players for nothing tangible long term.

A certain amount of cynicism should be expected with every post, but the "know it all" ness gets extreme. There are people that have to comment multiple times in every single thread on the forum just like there are people who pick their spots. Which way is correct? Is it even worth debating? How could one side prove it's argument? Outside of a message board how do you respond when people attack your family and/or friends? What about at the bar? The situations wouldn't escalate like they do if people would use more tact and have some understanding about how they would react if the situation were reversed. It's unreasonable to attack players the way some people do around here and expect family members and friends to always take the high road and not lash out in retaliation. Too many times we the fans throw the first stones, let them bury themselves if need be like with Little Ben's dad, there's no reason for us as a community to pick fights unnecessarily. Way too many people treat their opinions as facts, which is the root cause of much of this. I still spend time on gaming forums and sometimes I'm waiting for the "fanboy" and "leave your mom's basement" flames to pop up, and sometimes the responses aren't very far away. Honestly I think some bias should be expected and tolerated from family and friends of players inside the organization, especially on the MiLB side.