TheCrew07

How do you figure that? 1st and 2nd round picks below. 2009 Arnett, Davis, Heckathorn, Garfield, Walla - 2 HS 2008 Lawrie, Odorizzi, Frederickson, Lintz, Dykstra - 4 HS 2007 LaPorta (no 2nd) 2006 Jeffress, Brewer - 2 HS 2005 Braun (no 2nd) 2004 Rogers, Gallardo - 2 HS 2003 Weeks, Gwynn 2002 Fielder, Murray - 2 HS 2001 Jones, Hardy - 2 HS 2000 Krynzel (no 2nd) - HS Of our top prospects between AA and AAA, only 2 players (Lucroy and Gillespie) are college players. HS/DFE/Int players include Salome, Escobar, Braddock, and Cain. If memory serves me Gamel and Green were JuCo players. I might be wrong about Cain, I think he played JuCo but was still drafted out of high school. Either way he wasn't a college player. Objectively looking at the top 10 rounds it appears to me that the Brewers go after talent, regardless of HS or College. The stated philosophy from both Z and Seid has been to target impact talent and every pick since 2000 was an upside pick. Even Arnett isn't as polished as one might expect for a college arm, he still has significant room for growth. Melvin absolutely deserves indirect credit, he's assembled a fantastic staff of talent evaluators up and down the organization, from the minors to the majors. They scout very well all the way around, in that there's no doubt. However the area scouts and cross checkers are going to know more about the draft picks than Seid or Melvin, that's just the way it works. Seid and Melvin might see a kid once or twice, the area scout has seen the kid play upwards of 10 times. This isn't like the NFL draft where you can sit in a room and pour over film for weeks, like I said he gets out on the road and does his due diligence, but he's not an expert on the kids, and while he certainly offers input, he's even said on more than one occasion he doesn't make the final decisions on who's being drafted. Melvin has done many excellent things for the organization from overhauling the scouting, medical, and player development departments (though I'm not a big a fan of his boy Reid Nichols) to some excellent trades/nugget mining headlined by the Sexson deal which might be the best trade in the history of the franchise... but he's also had some stinkers. Off the top of my head extending Hall, Helms, Clark, and Turnbow didn't turn out so well, but all of those players except Hall were also retreads with limited success so there were warning signs. I've never been a fan of the Suppan signing, I've just grudinglly accepted it. I would have rather he tried to move for long-term rotation solution instead of a couple of rentals and/or hanging on to Hardy. In the end he got the franchise back to the post season which obviously meant a great deal to the fan base as a whole, and hopefully he'll be at the helm when the team wins a World Series. Ennder I have a feeling this is going to go the same way as Parra, I've said what I had to say, and I have no interest in getting inovled in another circular debate that goes nowhere with you.

Well it's not really their fault if it doesn't happen and likely won't happen until the rotation gets addressed long-term, the system just didn't produce enough top notch pitching to go along with the bats. In the end, at least in my opinion, it's just that simple, we never got enough pitching. We've been around the top 5 in runs scored the last 3 seasons, there's no shame in that, they did their part. It sort of stinks that they are pretty much all the same type of player at the plate, but there's no way to know that when you draft them. I'm alright graduating so many successful bats from the system in one wave though, what an accomplishment that was. We still have a shot to sign Weeks long-term if in fact he's turned it around, he should be cheapish given his injury history and production relative to his talent the last 3 seasons. With so many low OBP players I was always of the opinion that improving rotation and limiting the amount of runs scored seemed like the best way to even out the highs and lows with the offensive output. It is what it is though.

I think you're only looking at it surface deep... how many times have people said there's no star power in the second wave? This group of prospects has been overlooked from the start. Gamel a 2nd a tier prospect? That's laughable... Comparing Escobar to Braun and Fielder? Laughable.. he's an entirely different type of player, but has a realistic chance to be just as valuable. Cain is a 5 tool prospect, he's smooooth in the field, he has great upside. Green might not have great tools, but he's a very productive LH hitter that plays a position of need. I don't think coach32sm comparing Salome's upside to Pudge was all that far off, I have no idea if he's going to get there though... The point is, this wave is just as talented as the first all things considered. I've repeatedly said that we missed the window on the Hardy deal last off season and the best alternative for an in season deal (that I'm not in favor of) at this time is a type A rental. I don't buy that with Parra epic failing this is a playoff team. The team realistically needs 2 pitchers, needs to back off of Yo, and could use a bat as well. We don't have the prospect power for all of that. However, if DM is gonna make a deal, I'd rather get draft picks. Apparently I have a greater degree of patience than many people around here... with no off-season pitching acquisition of substance I was fine letting Parra develop and Yo getting his feet back under him to make a serious run in 2010. I called my shot on Looper, now the same people that wanted him now want to blow more prospects on a very small window of opportunity. We just aren't going to be able to buy all the time, it's simply not realistic to always take that position. Furthermore our window of opportunity doesn't close when we lose Hardy and Fielder, our line up down the road has the potential to be the most solid top to bottom as it's been since the early 80s, some around here just need to have a little faith.

I can't believe Helena is playing again with lightening hitting around the park... as I type this they finally go to rain delay. I wonder if it's something MT related, because I find it somewhat humorous that they have public service announcements about working safely all broadcast long. Common sense would seem to dictate that since ligtening=bad, they wouldn't put players at risk. edit. Are those work place safety commercials actually by an insurance company? I'm going to have to pay closer attention during the commericals.

I was just going to post about that... my goodness.

Nashville suspended due to rain. Huntsville loses. BC loses. I forgot to mention Rogers gave up his 2nd run on a WP, but he did strike out Josh Vitters which made me happy. WI wins, awesome line by Watten... 3H, 1R, 0ER, 0BB, 6K, 8IP. Meadows went 1, 2, 3 in the 9th with 2Ks of his own. Helena still tied, nice pitchers duel so far. Prince just got nabbed again on a first pitch steal... seriously young man, quit being so predictable. Actually Helena just gave up a run on a Dykstra error. AZ Brewers up 1-0 early, George and Walla with singles.

False. The Phillies had the 4th best team ERA in the NL last season at 3.88. The rotation had Hamels at 3.09, Moyer a 3.71, Blanton (only 13 starts after deadline trade) a 4.20, and Meyers a 4.55. Current Brewer rotation...minimum 10 starts... Gallardo 2.75, Suppan 4.60, Looper 4.78, Bush 5.67, Parra 7.52... we have 1 player with an ERA under their 4th best... I don't see the similarities there at all. Gallardo and Hamels are a wash, but after that the Phillies rotation was vastly superior. As is their offense. I could buy that except it doesn't only happen to Escobar, it happens to every single prospect in that group. Look no farther than the Gamel thread on the Major League forum for ample support of my opinion. Furthermore, someone isn't less of a prospect because he plays behind an established player who's made an All-Star team. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other, the issue at hand comes down to if it's better to let our players walk for draft picks or attempt to trade for prospects close enough to help the team in the near future. Hardy and Fielder are gone, it's only a matter of time, so again the issue is what represents the best value to the Brewers, production + draft picks, or replacement player + trade acquisition(s). The issue has never been as simple as Hardy vs Escobar or Fielder vs Gamel/Whomever... the issue is trying to figure out how to get the best possible value out of a player before he walks. Constantly comparing Escobar to Hardy is a disservice to the truth... if Hardy is gone he was traded, so the value of the trade pieces must be included in the coversation. It' not 1 for 1, it's a 2 for 1, or 3 for 1, with the 1 being Hardy.

Braddock should have been out of it.. West Tenn Top 7th * Guillermo Quiroz doubles (2) on a fly ball to left fielder Chuck Caufield. * Jimmy Mojica singles on a ground ball to pitcher Zach Braddock. Guillermo Quiroz to 3rd. * Ezequiel Carrera flies out to left fielder Chuck Caufield. * Greg Halman strikes out swinging. Jimmy Mojica steals (4) 2nd base. * Thomas Hubbard reaches on fielding error by left fielder Chuck Caufield. Guillermo Quiroz scores. Jimmy Mojica scores. Thomas Hubbard to 2nd. * Mike Wilson homers (1) on a fly ball to left center field. Thomas Hubbard scores. * Johan Limonta strikes out swinging

Nashville down 1-0 in 3rd, long rain delay slowed things down. Iribarren with 3B and Gillespie with a single so far. Huntsville getting rolled late, both Jones and Braddock gave up 4 runs. Jones didn't help his cause with BBs and HRs, Braddocks runs were all unearned. Braddock had no BBs and 2 more Ks. Hinton also gives up 2 runs, not a good night on the mound. Garciaparra with 2 more hits and Lucroy 0-2 with a BB so far. BC is also losing 4-1. Rogers didn't have his best outing giving up 2 runs in 3 innings, with 2 more BBs and 3Ks. Haydel and Brewer with 2 hits a piece, Brewer again at 3B. WI is winning 2-0 in the 6th. Fatse with 2 hits and Cain with the a fore mentioned single. Lawrie has walked 3 times. Watten has it going on, only 2H, 0BB, and 4K through 6IP. Odorizzi with a good 1st inning, and Browstein makes another excellent catch against the wall and gets an assist getting the runner trying to advance to 3B. 0-0 after 2 in Great Falls. edit. Forgot to mention Watten.

Boy I was on my game tonight, I was into the WI game and totally missed the first 3/4 of the pre-game audio in Helena, the guest was Mike Roberts. I'm very sorry. Steve if you read this you do have that in MP3 format by any chance that you could email to me?

WI had a big shift on for Hosmer, and Delaney made a real nice pick to make the play and gun him at first. I know some of us have been a bit disappointed that Lawrie hasn't dominated the league to this point. Hosmer's line is only .251/.349//368 for a .717 OPS. He has 15 doubles, 2 triples, and 3 home runs on the season. For those that may not know he was the 3rd Overall Selection in the 2008 Draft. For comparison's sake Lawrie's current line is .273/.346/.480 for a .826 OPS. Lawrie has 13 doubles, 5 triples, and 8 HR on the season.

The game apparently started at 6 PM and not 7, they are already in the 3rd inning. Unfortunately I didn't check as I was playing a computer game, no pre-game audio for this game either.

For WI Cain should have had a 2B in the first, but the ball died in the wet grass and didn't scoot to the corner so Cain got gunned at 2nd.

Chris didn't have any interviews tonight so I won't link the pre-game audio.

The T-Rats are facing the best prospect out of the AZL last season according to BA in Michael Montgomery, and the #4 prospect in KC's organization according to BA coming into the season. He's got an impressive line going so far this season, though he's walking a few too many as well.

No kidding... I was here, I had over 1000 posts under a different user name (Wytlaf Tacytus), but the focus was on their offensive prowess, not their defensive deficiencies. Weeks was making errors left and right in 2005 and the overwhelming majority wanted him called up anyway and Spivey traded. I'll just say it straight, the way I see it. People have become attached to our current core and nitpick anything they can find with this second crop trying to delay the inevitable... like it or not this first core of players wasn't signed long-term and is moving on. Gamel has hit every bit as well as Braun/Fielder/Weeks at AAA, he out hit Fielder and Weeks at AA, and yet in the last 2 days he's been referred to on this site as a second tier prospect? That's not based on anything factual other than personal bias. If one would even take 20 minutes to go over the trends in Escobar's career on any of the usual stat sites one could clearly see he's a player on the rise... if one would take 30 minutes more and read about the kid on the Minor League forum one could find out why he was so raw offensively to begin his career. He the best SS in MiLB, the best SS prospect in all of baseball, and he's trashed around here like he's some light hitting scrub who swings a newspaper at the baseball. He already has 23 doubles on the season, that's 1 less than he had all of last season. "He'll be alright when he develops gap power"... sorry folks, he's already there. "He doesn't walk enough"... how many players on this team do? He's improving and will continue to get better with age. "He won't hit as many HRs"... well you got me, he's not going to hit 20+ HR this season or next season so he sucks... I've been trying to make the point for well over a year that the discussion about what's best for the Brewers revolves around the current/future production of the MLB player + draft picks vs. the replacement player + parts returned from a trade. Every time Hardy being moved is discussed it's the same tired arguments from people who I don't feel adequately understand what some of us have been trying to say. Trading Hardy is as simple as this.... Hardy's value would be equal to Hardy's remaining 2008 production + 2009 production. In order for a trade to be better for the Brewers than Hardy being on the team the Escobar package just needs to have higher value than Hardy's total value. If we split the difference between Hardy's 2007 and 2008 WAR his yearly WAR is around 4.7. Half of that value for the remainder of this year is 2.35, then we add 4.7 war back and Hardy will be a 7.1 WAR player over the rest of his Brewer career. Obviously if he continues to tank his value goes down, nor do I think Hardy will be 4.7 WAR player this season but I'm trying to be as fair as possible. For the sake of argument I'll say that Escobar is will be half as valuable over the remainder of the Hardy's contract and I believe I'm erroring on the side of caution here. Escobar would be worth 3.5 WAR, so to be more valuable than Hardy's production the piece aquired in a trade would only have to be slightly better than Parra was last season (2.4 WAR) to make the trade a net gain for the Brewers. That 2.4 over a season and a half is obviously 3.6 WAR, which would exactly equal Hardy's value above. This is specifically why I've called for a trade to acquire talent of Parra's level or better. Escobar + 2.5 WAR pitcher is more valuable than Hardy alone. I routinely throw out a 3 war pitcher to again err on the side of caution. Parra has a .2 WAR this season, McClung -.6, Burns exactly 0... so essentially the current production in the rotation is neglible for the sake of this dicussion as all the pitchers we'd replace are performing at a replacement level. I realize I'm leaving off the draft picks we'd get from letting Hardy walk because the value of draft picks vs MLB production is basically impossbile to accurately debate. In the future I'm alright letting players walk for picks but at this moment in time I feel that top of the rotation talent is a more immediate need than infusing the lower levels of the system with more talent. As far as the Hardy/Escobar debate I'm not sure I can make it anymore simple than I did above. I highly doubt DM is going to find a long-term rotation solution during this season, so the best case for this season is probably keeping Hardy and trying to find a type A rental based on depth... If it's not Bedard then I'm not sure whom it would be, it has to be a team willing to take a deal centered around Salome/Lucroy + which eliminates Baltimore and Atlanta and 2 of the pitchers I'd like the Brewers to acquire. Who is this team going to beat in the playoffs with it's current rotation? How does adding a bat move the Brewers closer to the World Series? It's not so much about winning games, as it is winning games to what end? Look ahead to the playoffs, how do we get out of the first round with our current rotation? Heaven forbid something crazy happens to Yo again, then what? Is 1 bat going to make the difference for this team?

He left the game with an injury 2 nights ago, after throwing 1 pitch in the 3rd inning, no word on his status.

I stand corrected, thanks brewjihad!

Re: McGehee's defense. Total Zone had him as exactly average last year... -2 at home and +2 on the road. He was +1 in 2007 at AAA and 0 again at AA. He was +5 in 2006, and +16 in 2005. I heard BA say during the broadcast that he was an excellent defender and I was surprised by the comment as well.

I was under the impression he was just average, I'm not sure where I got that from though now that I think about it. Maybe it was something said during a ST broadcast? I can't quite put my finger on it.

Wasn't there a debate on BF.net about whether or not Braun was better than Soriano in LF? I seem to remember it and I seem to remember my mind being boggled.Well Braun isn't a good defender in LF either, but he's averagish, so he's better than Soriano. Last Saturday night he looked horrible out there, just about every ball SF hit at him turned him around, and there were a couple of times I wasn't sure he was going to get to it off the bat. Thank goodness he has plus speed. If he ever ends up in CF we're in trouble because he isn't getting any better reads off the bat in the OF than he did at 3B, he just has more time in the OF to use his natural gifts and recover.

Err? I didn't say Hardy was the most valuable Brewer, I tried to explain WAR to Hate those Rodents because it appeared to me as it did to you that the "relative to his position" argument had slipped past. I did however use WAR in my post, as I typically do when trying to compare trade values and what not because it's readily available and is a decent composite metric.

How many outs are we going to make between 2nd and 3rd this year? Amazing...

The question is actually, what don't you understand about the link? The link takes total production (offensive + defensive) into account, then looks at the average value for the position (all players at the position in the league), then the total production of a player like Hardy is compared to the league average (minus a percentage to arrive at "replacement level), to come up with a win value for each player. Was Braun more valuable than Hardy production wise in 2008? Absolutely. Was Braun worth more wins than Hardy was? No. This is because all LFs tend to be productive offensive players, in a WAR metric Braun isn't competing against Hardy or Cameron, he's competing against all of the other LFs in the league. Hardy is having his value calculated against all SS, Cameron against all CFs... and SS and CF tend to be very weak offensive positions. Does that make sense?

What does that have to do with his prospect status? If we're talking the actual production on the field then the drop off from the 2009 Hardy to the 2009 Escobar is much less than people thought it would originally be, and with a 3 WAR pitcher it's not even close. Escobar and the pitcher would blow Hardy and Parra's production away. I just don't think that getting a 3 WAR pitcher with some longevity in season is likely. It's really strange around here, with the first wave of prospects all we talked about was what they could do, with this second wave, and it doesn't matter if it's Gamel, Escobar, Green, Cain, Salome, or Lucroy... there's a rather vocal segment of the population that only wants to talk about what they don't do, and in some cases spread misinformation about them. For example where is Escobar's horrible season at the plate that so many predicted for him based on flawed BABIP regression analysis? Analysis that was continually spun back around even though many of us continually pointed out that we aren't able to apply sabermetric analysis to prospects in the same way as we would established MLB players. Ya he's not hitting HRs.. big deal and so what? He has double digit HR power now as he hit 9 in AA last season, and if he quits playing winter ball and gets his butt in the weight room he could develop more power. Will he? I have no idea.. but he's as exciting a prospect as we've had come through the system, his upside is much greater than that of Hardy. Escobar is truly a case of people only seeing what they want to see in a stat line without considering the immense physical talent a player also possesses. The simple truth is that Gamel and Escobar aren't going anywhere because no one is going to offer up a deal good enough to pry them away. It's continually been in print since the Sabathia trade last season and yet people are so unwilling to look even a couple of seasons ahead that there always suggestions to move our best prospects for Rental players. I've been around this site long enough that I remember people suggesting trades including every single one of our current core of players. Where would this team be without Braun, Gallardo, and Fielder? I'm a huge Hardy fan, he's the only current Brewer of which I have any memorabelia, but his days as a Brewer are numbered. It's also been reported multiple times that Hardy is unwilling to switch positions, that Hardy hasn't approached the team about a deal, and that the team hasn't approached Hardy about a deal either... as they say the writing is on the wall.