TheCrew07

And now Danks goes yard... all this with no Beckham was recently promoted, come on Mike, settle in and get through the inning. Edit. Interesting broadcasting note, Jones hadn't gone 7 innings in a game since 2003 until he did it twice this year with BC.

Jones just gave up a grand slam... Huntsville down 4-1 early.

Gindl dropped to 6th in the lineup, interesting.

How is it reasonable to proclaim that Parra will get better but pitchers of similar talent in Cueto and Volquez will get worse because they are lucky? Their individual lines may suggest some luck, but they both are young and have elite tools.

That made me chuckle, I was thinking the same thing listening to the game.

Most contracts will look good by the end of the deal as salaries for the top player in the game continue to escalate. The contract being good value on the open FA market and the contract being good value to the 2 Brewers are 2 separate ideas, and what's true of the former isn't necessarily true of the latter.

I don't see any deals being made during the season that involve any of the position players, those deals would have to happen in the off-season. It's really too bad we couldn't have done the suggested Fielder for Kotchman and Santana deal that bounced around on the forum last year... it would have to be a deal like that though where we picked up a Pitcher plus an average replacement and there's only 2 guys on the roster that carry enough value for a deal like that, and both are probably too close to FA for a trading partner to pull the trigger. As X said, we're much more likely to get prospects (which we need anyway as we have no one projectable above A+) but again, I think that would be an off season move as well. I don't see Hardy or Fielder getting moved prior to FA unless a team is willing to drastically overpay... Both are popular players and productive... Hart may get moved but how much value does he really carry if he doesn't adjust to that low and away curve/slider that's been causing him problems?

If they are sold on Jed Lowrie as the future then they wouldn't want Hardy long term. He's a nice little switch hitting SS.. though I think he's played around the diamond some if I recall, so I think he has more versatility than JJ and could be a utility player for them if they picked up JJ. He doesn't hit many HRs though and he's in his mid 20s already so I'm not sure he'll ever post an OPS like Hardy, but he sure does have his seasons where he smacks doubles all over the yard. I was just revisiting his minor league stats, he had a year with 47 2Bs! Cripes...

How were they to know he'd come up and hit the cover off the ball? It was very odd that he didn't start the season with WI, I know he has a pretty solid following from the MilLB regulars. An injury makes sense, the only thing that would make sense is most of the guys in the OF are older than him so they wanted to see what they had in those guys first, Dennis and Dykstra weren't competing for playing time at the same position... the only other remote possibility is that we're smarter than Nichols and his development staff, make your judgements there at your own risk. Any rate Dennis is still hitting too low in the order, and he'll skyrocket up the P50 in the next edition. Trejo needs regular ABs if he's ever going to figure it out, I'd rather they demote him to EST so he can get some work in if he's not going to play everyday, he's young enough he can play with Helena this season. WI has Delaney, Duran, and Sanchez who all can play 3B... Bowman did indeed end up with a pretty good line. I'm really hoping that 2 or 3 of the starters from A+ get bumped to AA which has a ripple effect moving some of the older arms at WI to BC, then some of the young kids like Odorizzi can come up and pitch for the T-Rats. I'm pretty impatient with him for some reason, I want me some Odorizzi, and I want it now. I like this Almonte kid as well, he was a pretty good find for the organization. Rivas got hosed by the offense and defense behind him, I wonder what was up in BC today, very few Ks out of pitchers that normally K a fair amount of hitters. Caleb's slump is reaching epic proportions, I'm sure 800 rain outs hasn't helped any of the players in BC. Schafer, Wilson, and Errecart all with 2 hits a piece, but not enough to plate a single run. Cody continues to be studly, Melilo with a pretty awesome day at the plate. Green and Lucroy could both go on a tear anytime now and I'd feel better about that AA team. Katin had 2 HRs... geez... Escobar with 2 hits, 1 being a 2B, he continues his climb. Salome with a hit and his average is right at .250, I'm going to call my shot and guess that he finishes up around .290, but I don't think his power numbers will look anything like last year's... I'll be honest, I don't like Dillard as a starter, that ship already sailed in my opinion. He is pitching better than Wright and Green, but I wasn't very high on either acquisition there either. That rotation isn't all that fun to follow for me personally.

Just checking with the MiLB games quickly. Bowman with a middling outing for WI, WI losing in the top of the 4th but the bottom of the order comes through and they've scored at least 1 run. (box score shows an RBI but the game log hasn't updated yet). Rivas was decent for BC giving up 2 unearned runs. Wilson with a 2 hit day, BC down 2-0 in the 8th. Cody doing what Cody does, Huntsville up 2-1 in the 6th. Dillard pitching well, Katin with another HR after a Heether walk, Nashville up 2-0 in the 3rd.

Suppan wasn't always the pitcher he is today... Furthermore my friend, he's walking over 4 batters per 9 in A+... to me that's a huge a red flag. Like I said I'm encouraged by his start and it appears he's gotten better as his confidence grows, I'm just not ready to hop on the bandwagon. He throws in the low 90s with a power sinker... I get it, but he's only striking out one more batter than he's walking on average, and he's a contact pitcher. If Escobar was 210 pounds and capable of hitting 25 HR this season it would be a more apt comparison as he'd be capable of hitting for power and just not doing it. Nothing draws my ire as much as pitchers with high BB rates, but generally I'll feel better about a guy with a high BB rate who also Ks a ton of hitters, Butler walks too many and strikes out too few for the number of walks he gives up. If he maintains his K rate and cuts his walks in half I'd go from interested in following him to intrigued by him. Again he's trending well, but after how bad he was last season I'm going to be cautiously optimistic about him. You may very well be 100% correct about him, I'm just not ready to jump into pool with you yet. People continually compare Escobar to Hardy instead of his peers... very few prospects stack up well any established MLB player, let alone an all-star, compare the prospect to his peers. If I compare Butler to his peers, he's the pitcher I personally like the 5th or 6th best on that entire staff at BC at this point in time. Braddock Rogers Jeffress Rivas Then some combination of Anundsen/Wooten/Butler/Mercedes following... but if Anundsen threw as hard as Butler he'd be right up there with Braddock.

I'm primarily concerned with his BB and K rates, and the ratio between them, currently he appears to be Suppan as a best case, which doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy for his future as he doesn't have any margin for error. I'd feel a whole lot better about him if his BB rate was down under 3 and his K:BB was 2:1. He's not going to have sustained success walking as many batters as he has. He's gotten better as the year went on, and if all his lines were like his AAA debut I'd be right there with you.

He would be in Milwaukee in late June if Hardy wasn't in front of him, top prospects do not spend time in AAA unless they are blocked by a truly better player. I know it's a popular notion around here is that 2 years of AAA will "fix" Escobar's bat but Escobar will probably plateau development wise instead of continually getting better at AAA, and he'll likely struggle initially at MLB regardless how many AAA ABs he gets. They will attack the hell out of his flaws until he makes adjustments, he'll get a little bit of that at AAA, but advanced scouting and better talent make a huge difference at MLB. There are plenty of examples of guys who keep getting bounced down to AAA to "get better" and while their AAA stats improve, their MLB stats when they get called back up are pretty similar because they've quit developing as players. If he develops more power it will be a slow process over time, he'll hit 1 or 2 a month until he fills out his frame, that's more an off season thing. He'll slug in the high .300s right now with the low .400s as a best case, so I'm not sure what people are referring to when they talk about his power, his a twig... but he's making much better contact as of late as the 2B have begun to spike. I'll take 9-10 HR and 25-30 2B out of him, if people are waiting for him to match Hardy's power numbers it's going to be a long wait. His one Major flaw is his BB rate, but he's on pace to equal or better his pace from AA at a higher level so he's continuing to improve, that's a slow process, and not something that's going to happen overnight. In the end the perception of Escobar is skewed by comparing him to Hardy, instead of the other SS prospects in the game. No he's not Hardy with the bat... but JJ wasn't the player he is now in his first 2 seasons either. He's continued to put on muscle and improve as he moves toward his peak. Hopefully Escobar will do the same, prospects are very rarely finished products when they reach MLB, he does't have to hit like Gamel to be knocking on the door, he just has to be ready for the next challenge, and there's a wide gulf between the 2 ideas.

They just played 8 games in 5 days, there was quite a bit of movement on the roster to make sure they had enough fresh arms to eat all of the innings up without having to use position players. I wasn't aware he was one of the players shuffled, but it would be a paper move only. Bucci was the only one to actually come up and pitch from extended spring training, but no one actually went down.

Yes, he's on a strict pitch count until the break at which time they will revisit his innings and maybe his placement if he keeps this up. I could see 3 or 4 of the BC arms getting bumped up this season.

Luetge has been more surprising to me personally, I thought he'd fair much better in the FSL. I expected Cain, Lucroy, and Green might struggle to start the season but would get better as the season progressed, I am shocked by Lucroy's lack of power... he hit 20HR last season after all... I'm not sure how well Butler's secondary numbers will translate, and this is the same guy that looked atrocious all last season. He's been encouraging, but I hope your beating home your point about Bulter's P50 placement and not realistically suggesting he's a AAA pitcher this season.

RyDogg I get your point and I even empathize with it, but Peavy is a too big a of risk for me personally. I made the point after the Sabathia offer went public that I would have rather signed Teixeira for that money and move Fielder. If it comes to spending big dollars, I'd rather they spend the money on a bat than an arm, FA big money arms scare me to death, call me a wuss, that's fine, but that's how I feel about them. Again the Brewers didn't sign Hammonds, they signed Looper (whom I didn't want). Hoffman (whom I was indifferent towards), and exercised Cam's option. They were able to plug 3 holes on the team for the cost of 1 player, and there's value in fielding an entire starting roster that doesn't have a single player of replacement level quality on it. They aren't going to get 7.7 or 7.9 WAR out of the players to equal Sabathia's level of production, but they won't get negative WAR out of any of the positions either (I would hope Looper gets back over 1 by the end of the season). The rotation is solid yet unspectacular in that there's no doubt, but the guys to target are high potential unproven arms around the league, not the established arms that much more costly to acquire both in terms of talent and dollar value.

I'm not offended, just give credit where credit is due. He is actually knocking on the door, our resident Sox fan wasn't mistaken, most organizations would love to have Hardy at MLB and Escobar at AAA, but for whatever reason people around continually piss on Escobar and it got old last November... If the Brewers were to move Hardy then Escobar would be a capable replacement and 804Sox made the exact point that many of us have been making... If the team wanted to move Hardy for MLB pitching we've missed our window, because going into his last season he's nothing but a glorified rental. The only way a deal like that would work is if it were like a sign and trade, where Hardy agrees to negotiate a long term deal before the trade is made. The same is true of Fielder... who's going to give up MLB pitching for a rental? I think Fielder makes perfect sense for LAA or the BoSox down the road, he's a crappy 1B and a premium offensive talent, but he's passable at 1B for interleague play or the World Series. Instead of making a bold move to improve the starting rotation with some quality young pitching this past off season it appears Melvin is going to ride out both players into FA. I'd still take prospect pitching back, I could list 10 names that I really like around the minors but the truth is those deals are highly unlikely and not even worth discussing in season. As long we're in the playoff picture none of the starting position players are getting moved. Penny isn't a good target for us, the idea should be to push our 3,4,5 down... not insert random talent into the back end of the rotation between what we have. Who would he pitch better than to justify giving up talent for him for a single season? Hardy is a good fit for the BoSox as well, he makes sense for them, but why should they give up a top of the rotation prospect when they could just sign him in FA?

Most players look like athletes when running... I've watched 300+ LB NFL lineman look very nimble on their feet in various drills, Sheets moved awkwardly off the mound, didn't matter if it was at the plate or running the bases... and running the bases would be a pretty liberal assessment of him out there. He's a very good pitcher, but injury prone, and a poor athlete by MLB standards. I'm not sure another sport where you wouldn't see fluid movement from athletes... maybe golfers if they tried to run? While some are certainly good athletes, I'm not sure that would be the case top to bottom. Standing in one spot to ply your trade isn't really what athletes do in general.

Its not that bad either... geez. His power number have been on the rise over the last month, he's making better contact, still stealing bases. He's doing well improving himself as a player. He tends to start a tad slow and gradually build himself up over the course of a season. So his MLEs stink, so what? If you can prove that he won't continue to improve once he's called up then fine. There are parts of his offensive game that he needs to work on because better pitchers will exploit those weaknesses, but once he solves AAA pitching his development will plateau until he sees regular MLB ABs. That was the case in Spring Training and early in the AAA season... MLEs are fine if we're trying to compare production in a single season, but they are pretty useless when discussing player development. Mass linked to a 5 minute pregame audio discussion about Escobar in yesterday's link report in the Minor League Forum, clearly the organization feels Escobar is extremely gifted which is no surprise, it's pretty obvious when you watch him. I'm just trying to separate out how of what Iorg had to say was organizational spin vs factual based opinion.

Sabathia had already been acquired and was being offered a FA contract, he was not my preferred pitcher but the Sabathia acquisition broke a playoff drought dating back to '82. There was value in that beyond his WAR, which was still oustanding, I have no problem conceding that point. I also stated if we won a WS with Peavy in the rotation I'd change my tune because that's my ultimate goal, that's really the only way I could justify the Peavy deal to myself. Since the cost of Sabathia for THIS season was dollars, Sabathia and Peavy do not compare at all in terms of cost, nor do they compare in terms of production on the field, Sabathia is far and away the better pitcher. You can grab any extreme example to make a point I guess, 3 Hammonds compared to Ramirez? How do we even adequately discuss something like that? The 3 players that are on the roster using Sabathia's 20 mil out performed Peavy last season, and have outperformed him so far this season. Are 3 Duffy's worth 1 Peavy? Of course not, but what's the point of such an extreme example?

Frederickson's first W since Apr 10th, his first start of the season.

Hmm, looks like things went haywire for the WI pitchers in the 8th.

I'm pretty sure you missed what I was saying, so let me say it a different, the positions I listed have expiring contracts or FA looming the next 3 years. Gamel is lock for a corner spot someplace, but is it 3B, LF, RF, or 1B? Braun will be the other corner outfielder so 1 OF spot is locked down. Every other position on the team is a potential hole in the next 3 seasons. I have no doubt that Salome/Lucroy, Cain, Escobar, Lawrie, and Green would be average or better players... but if you're an opposing GM, whom are you going to target? We have to give value to get value and Peavy will cost more than Sabathia did. I guess my whole problem with this idea stems from the fact that there really isn't a hole in the rotation right now, people would just like to upgrade it. My point about the finances wasn't that they couldn't afford Peavy, the risk factor here has been beat into the ground, it's fairly obvious if people will have an open mind. The point is that we have to find a way to pay the other 24 players on the roster each year. I previously ran down all of the contracts and a conservative estimate of the arby raises, going into next season there's about 14 million out there on a 90 million payroll and I didn't include a C or CL in that estimation. Various people have posted that they'd like Hardy, or Fielder to be retained in FA... okay... how do you pay either of them 10 million per season, let alone both of them, with Peavy's contract? Half the payroll would be tied into 3 players. As far as the Sabathia money goes, I still think that whole thing was a publicity move, they knew he wouldn't accept 5/100, it was a very shrewd move on the Brewer's part. In the unlikely event that he would have accepted the offer then Cameron, Looper, and Hoffman would not be on the roster... that's where Sabathia's 20 mil is. It's not like they had an extra 20 mil laying around on top of the current payroll to pay the man. I do think however that the Sabathia contract illustrates my point perfectly... would you rather have 1 great player or 3 average to good players for the same money? Is the combined WAR of the 3 greater than the WAR of the 1? I think in most cases it will be, the player has to be pretty special, some of those young pitchers I've argued for in the past have WARs over 5.0 but Peavy's WAR for 2008 was 45th overall and only 2.8, in 2007 it was 6.2, in 2006 it was 4.0. Sabathia was over 7 in '07 and '08, and over 5 in '06 so he would have been a better investment over that span than our 3 current players, Peavy not so much. I don't like paying relievers in general because they pitch so few innings it's hard for them to be worth more than 2 wins... but lets take 2007 which was Peavy's best season out of the last 3. Hoffman was worth 1.3, Cameron 2.2, and Looper 1.2 for a total of 4.7 so in 2007 he was clearly worth more than the 3. In 2008 though Cameron, Looper, and Hoffman combined for a 6.3 which blows Peavy's season out of the water, and so far in 2009 the 3 Brewers have combined for 2.8 and that's with Looper's -.1, Peavy thus far has been worth 1.7, and Sabathia 1.9... I realize Peavy won a CY just like Sabathia, but CC has been a better pitcher the last 3 years and it's not even close. You can trade out Parra for Peavy and get much more expensive for the rest of this season but next season what does the team do about CF and Looper's spot in the rotation? Swapping in Peavy for Parra and Looper puts the team right up against the 90 mil and they would still have a hole in the rotation, and no C or CL. If they keep Looper that pushes the payroll into the mid 90s, and I'm just not sure how far they can go. 2011 gets even more murky with players walking Fielder's last year of Arby and so on. We don't have a Yo in the system, a player I'm willing to say for sure will take a rotation spot in 2010 or 2011. We have some guys who I'm absolutely intrigued by, but they aren't on the same level as Yo was prospect wise. Could Cappy figure back into the mix? Who knows really? All I really know for sure is that acquiring Peavy severely limits payroll flexibility going forward and I wasn't willing to do that for Sabathia, and he's been as good as it gets pitching wise the last 2 seasons. My only argument against Sabathia was % of payroll tied into 1 player, I've been a huge fan of his for years. Peavy comes with a better contract early, but he's not as dominant and instead of just the cost of his contract like Sabathia, now there's the added cost of talent we're giving up to SD in the deal as well. That's the huge kicker for me, we'd getting a slightly better contract, for a drop in performance, plus we're giving up talent... I don't think Peavy to Sabathia is a valid comparison at all. It doesn't really matter who the prospects are going to SD, Sabathia would have been much more valuable to the Brewers than Peavy would be, and by a wide margin. Prospects are not valueless, the value is just difficult to project at the time of the trade, as is their potential value to the Brewers had they stayed in the system. As an FYI all WAR values are taken from Fangraphs, it was too much hyperlinking to link up all of the values, and I still need to cut some grass and catch the end of the Brewer game.

Mass it's okay to jinx the the opposing team, in fact I'd consider it good form!