TheCrew07

I'd venture a guess that most people that are fine losing Pena haven't seen him pitch and are just looking at his stats. He's absolutely filthy and his regression last year was one of the most disappointing aspects of the season for me personally. He may never put it together but I sincerely hope he doesn't get claimed by anyone, I hate to give up on his arm when we already had tons of below average SP depth in AAA. I don't see how Green is better depth than someone like Gulin or DiFelice who out pitched him by a wide margin in the same league? The only thing he has going for him is that he's still young, that's about it. He's never been dominant at any level of the minors and his peripherals aren't eye popping other than a nice K:BB ratio 2 years ago. I'm probably too high on Pena based on his pure stuff but if I had to pick between more mediocre at best SP depth and Pena, I'm keeping Pena.

I'm not sure how exactly Suppan's HR total can be justified by an injury plagued Sept when he gave up 8 in August (his best month), 6 in July, and 5 in April. Furthermore Suppan's month to month was never as erratic as this year from 2004-2007, in years past you could see clearly defined trends in his season and a measure of consistency, this year no trend and no consistency. The last time he was this erratic was 2003 and prior when more often than not he was just not good. It's easy to say he had an off year when looking at his numbers for just 2008, but when you look at the trends in his stats it would appear to me that his best seasons were 2004-2006, the apex of his career if you will, and he's starting to slide. He may very well put it back together, and put up a decent season. Earlier in his career he would follow a dismal season with a more productive season, but age and time aren't exactly on his side. Maybe he's a guy who's very defense dependent but in 2007 he gave up the lowest full season HR total of his career and still put up an ERA of 4.62. I know many of us don't exactly like ERA, but his ERA+ from 1999 on was 111, 103, 111, 96, 106, 103, 119, 108, 97, and 87. You'll get no argument from me that he was largely average to slightly above average most of his career but where else in his career do we see a 3 year slide from the previous season like 2006-2008? Again, for me personally it's not so much last season as it is the negative trend in his performance that worries me. His contract kind of stinks, though it was market value at the time and the Brewers had no other way to acquire SP but through FA, so I'm not going to hate on him because of his contract. I've used him as an example many times because there are people around here that would rather sign anybody than hold the status quo (the Brewers can afford 85 mil they better spend it all), and I don't think it makes sense going forward to pay players who are in the bottom third of the team's talent pool the most money as it limits flexibility. Suppan may very well put up another averagish season which would be great, I'm not going to root for him to fail, but his trend when combined with his age don't give me much reason to be optimistic, and I'm an optimist by nature.

Suppan was up and down all year, unless he was in injured in April, I don't think it's fair to keep giving him a pass due to injury.. If he was injured all year I stand corrected, but anyway you shake it out month by month he wasn't good. He had a decent August and May, the rest of the season was pretty much garbage. For the first time in years he didn't average 6 IP per start, his K/9 was as low as it was in 2003, and his HR rate exploded with him giving up the most HR since 2002. The only good news for his year was that his K/BB ratio continued to improve. While he was within an acceptable range of variance in all of those stats, the biggest flags for me personally are the boatload of HRs and the total amount of runs he gives up (unearned runs included). Since the Brewers acquired him he's back to giving up runs at a similar pace as he did in KC, when he was a 4.8ish ERA pitcher in the AL. Best case for Suppan as I see it is a 4.6ish ERA if he can keep the HRs in the low 20s, I'll be shocked if he pitches better and obviously it wouldn't surprise me if he's around 5ish again.

86-76

I actually disagree with Peavey's take on Looper/McClung the other way. At any rate, using the best 3 months of one of the top pitchers and top talents in all of MLB is hardly comparable to anything Looper will bring to the table. I've beaten the flaws in the projection systems to death over the years, certain people are probably very tired of me pointing out the flaws, but even I'll give that a 2-3 win projection for Sabathia was realistic. There was simply no way to know that Sabathia would pitch the best 3 months of his entire career after the Brewers acquired him. CC's performance was such that it only happens once or twice in a generation, he was that good. I'm not going to hold a realistic projection against Rluz, Peavey, or anyone else. If we're talking about a minor leaguer, I'm right there with you, I've argued that point repeatedly with Escobar, but for an established MLB player, 3 wins is a ton in 3 months. The fact he that was so much better than his projection is a testament to how brilliant he was, not how inept the projection was. Projections are just another tool to measure value, sometimes they get tossed around like they represent true talent when they obviously don't. In a case like this where people are tossing around opinions based off of projection systems, it's hardly worth getting bent out of shape over.

If Sabathia was worth LaPorta, Brantley, and a decent relief prospect in Bryson how is Peavy only worth Escobar + Rivas type? Multiple years of Peavy is worth at least 2 top tier prospects, probably 3, and 1 is going to be a pitcher. Escobar, Jeffress, and Green would probably be where SD would start. Again how does trading SP when we lack quality SP improve the team significantly? Especially going from Parra talent to Peavy talent... the only smaller jump on this team would be Yo to Peavy. Parra is very talented, why are we in such a hurry to dump him before we know exactly what we have? The idea shouldn't be to REPLACE starters at the front of the rotation, it should be to INSERT talent at the top of the rotation sliding everyone else down a slot. The idea should be to add more quality, not replace quality, no matter how good the pitcher is. Peavy would be great, but his contract gets pretty cumbersome in a hurry. In addition his elbow issues concern me some as does paying a single player more than 15% of the team's total available payroll. It would be a tough sell to explain how Peavy is worth more at 15+ mil than Parra is with a pre Arby and Arby salary. Again I'm value orientated, how is a much more expensive Peavy more value to the Brewers than Parra? Performance isn't only factor that needs to be considered, cost per win should certainly be a factor as well. Where is all this extra money going to come from? I'm willing to listen, I don't just see it... How does the team acquire Peavy and pay Hardy a market deal? In addition to Cameron coming off the books 1 of Hardy or Fielder would have to be moved to have the financial flexibility needed. I hate to go back to my chess analogy, but it's true, every move the team makes has a domino effect, Melvin has to be planned out 5 or 6 moves ahead to make a $85 million budget work. Roster management is not as simple as swapping out 1 player for another, and never has been for the Brewers, and likely never will be unless the economics of the game change.

I wouldn't mind a player like him in the sandwich round, an under the radar college type with some athleticism who can swing the bat. Though I guess he's not under the radar anymore, but i'm into lefties who can run it up there above 90

It's probably fair to say he's a mid 4 ERA type guy. He's had a nice career as a reliever, but he's on the wrong side of 30 and has only been a starter for 2 seasons.

I don't believe Looper will be that good for the Brewers, I certainly could be wrong, but the CHONE projection for him is right about what I would expect from him. His career numbers are not that great. He had a nice season last year, but I'm not going to base my opinion of him on last year, especially with an entirely different infield defense behind him.

<font size="2" face="arial,helvetica">[b] Health consequences associated with anabolic steroid abuse include:[/b] </font> In boys and men, reduced sperm production, shrinking of the testicles, impotence, difficulty or pain in urinating, baldness, and irreversible breast enlargement (gynecomastia). In girls and women, development of more masculine characteristics, such as decreased body fat and breast size, deepening of the voice, excessive growth of body hair, and loss of scalp hair, as well as clitoral enlargement. In adolescents of both sexes, premature termination of the adolescent growth spurt, so that for the rest of their lives, abusers remain shorter than they would have been without the drugs. In males and females of all ages, potentially fatal liver cysts and liver cancer; blood clotting, cholesterol changes, and hypertension, each of which can promote heart attack and stroke; and acne. Although not all scientists agree, some interpret available evidence to show that anabolic steroid abuse-particularly in high doses-promotes aggression that can manifest itself as fighting, physical and sexual abuse, armed robbery, and property crimes such as burglary and vandalism. Upon stopping anabolic steroids, some abusers experience symptoms of depressed mood, fatigue, restlessness, loss of appetite, insomnia, reduced sex drive, headache, muscle and joint pain, and the desire to take more anabolic steroids. In injectors, infections resulting from the use of shared needles or nonsterile equipment, including HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C, and infective endocarditis, a potentially fatal inflammation of the inner lining of the heart. Bacterial infections can develop at the injection site, causing pain and abscess.

Pending the money and years I might be pretty irritated with this deal as it means we aren't upgrading the rotation anytime soon. Looper is pretty similar to what we already have at 3-5 so he wouldn't really upgrade the rotation, just the depth. If it's a short contract and less than 6 mil per it wouldn't be so bad, but I'm still unhappy. I was worried Melvin would do this when he mentioned riding out Weeks, Hardy, and Fielder in Hawing's thread from the Capital Times article. I see this as the Brewers being locked into an average to slightly above average rotation while we wait on the young pitchers, I was hoping for something more bold/dynamic like trading for an impact pitching talent. I was hoping we'd upgrade the front of the rotation (no not Peavy), instead he spent money on depth...

Probably because Shawne Merriman tested positive and was somehow still elected to the Pro Bowl in the same year. Can you imagine the same scenario playing out in MLB? The difference being the all-star game is during the middle of the season, it could have happened in MLB depending on when the suspension occured, but generally speaking the NFL's policy and the all star game (pro bowl) being after the season lent itself to that scenario playing out. The NFL has since added a ruling that no player who tests positive for steroids may be voted to the pro bowl in the same year. As far as the Merriman test goes, I was skeptical of athletes like him that claimed their supplements were tainted until last year when an independent test found out that they were actually telling the truth. The scariest part for me was.. I don't see how baseball is being unfairly singled out here, management and the players have created this circus themselves. In the NFL even though I know for a fact that team doctors were administrating steriod cycles in the early 80s the league eventually took a stand and the players were accountable. NFL took it's publicity hit and moved on, but I think people were more lienent on the NFL because they were the first sports league to do Olympic style testing. MLB (both the owners and the player's union) dragged it's feet for years on this, long enough for the home run chase to reinvigorate enthusiam in the game. The public isn't going to be as sympathetic with MLB because on the whole we're much more educated on the subject than we were in the 80s, we see ownership turning a blind eye and players juicing because of profiteering, The HR record was the most hallowed record in sports, broken by those who cheated to get there, which also adds fuel to the fire. Finally, old ball players, while being somewhat hypocritical on the subject continue to rip on the current generation of players. Had the baseball players who got caught juicing just admitted to it the frenzy would have settled down long ago. Instead they lied to everyone including Congress (does an oath mean anything, did it ever?) and continue to lie about it to this day... which just keeps people talking about it, because sooner or later the truth will come out. Every time more hard evidence is found, the wirlwind just picks right back up, and we'll be in this cycle until circumstances change. As far as Canseco goes I have no problem with people hating on him. I have no love for Canseco, he's spilling his guts for profit, it's not like he came clean because he felt remorse. It's not like he was an honest employee who blew the whistle on corruption and lost his job, he was as guilty as the rest and tattled on his "friends" for money. He came clean because he was jaded and bitter as he felt he was blackballed at the end of his career. He profited from juicing during his career and he continues to profit from them in retirement.

I'm not sure why people think that football gets a free pass for it's issues? Steroids were in an issue in football long before baseball, the difference was that a high profile death and other happenings forced football to address the issue decades before baseball did. The players union in football doesn't carry near the clout that they do in baseball thus the testing policy has been largely effective. Obviously players will still cheat, but testing in football actually names the players in public, not only for roids but any banned substance. This was not the case initially with MLB. Steroid and drug use was a hot topic for a long time in relation to the NFL but over the last 20 years the talk has gone from illegal drug use in NFL to the thugish behavior of the players, hardly a week goes by without a player running a foul of the law. Steroids are still a very serious issue at the high school and college level as testing programs are very expensive and schools are having a hard enough time supporting all of the sports programs the way it is. It's been talked about, but I doubt anything gets done on the testing front unless the funding comes from an external source. It's somewhat disheartening that football and baseball continued to be compared against one another here in a disparaging manner. Other than being professional sports, there are very few similarities between the sports at all, and those who don't care for the NFL seem to have a little brother complex about the sport. I thoroughly enjoy MLB, NFL, college basketball/football, I'm not going to trash one for the others. I'm also a casual NHL and college hockey fan meaning that I follow what's happening but don't watch many games anymore. All sports have their issues college and pro, but to deny the obvious issues in MLB is a disservice to the truth. Baseball has some glaring issues that have needed to be addressed for some time, but change comes very slowly in baseball as evidence by them being the last league to implement any sort of meaningful testing procedure. Drugs have been prevalent in baseball going back to the 60s as well, I don't see the difference between roids and speed if they are both being used to give players an edge. Drug use continues to be news in baseball because of how it was handled and the biggest names in the sport in the last decade have been accused and/or caught, but few have owned up to it publicly. Farve is the last icon in football that I recall off the top of my head to be involved with drugs and it was his addiction to pain killers, but it wasn't a story for long because he owned up to it and the media moved on. Drug use will be a major story line in MLB until the players from this era are accountable for their actions, the high profile and guilty players have only made the situation worse by lying about it and refusing to be held accountable. The tragedy to me is a guy like Bonds... it isn't that he cheated to break the home run record, it's that he was a hall famer without the roids, it seems he just wanted the attention he thought he was due so got invovled with PEDS to accomplish his goal, and now refuses to be held accountable for his actions. Would thete still be a media circus around him if he'd just have come clean initially? I think it would have blown over long ago in his case...

I have a hard time getting excited about 2 less draft picks and 3 million more to spend on an average SP. At this point, if there's not a trade, I'd rather just sit tight and see how things shake out this season. We have lots of questions that need to be answered that will help determine the direction this team should go in the future.

I'm not surprised by this at all. Griffey broke down way too early in my opinion to be on roids. Roids not only add strength, but tremendously aid in recovery time as well. Griffey's big knock has been a lack of conditioning in his career, he hasn't ever been a gym rat and he's always gotten by on his talent. Had he worked harder and stayed healthy we'd be talking about him as the home run king instead of these other guys. I've always suspected Nolan Ryan as well, no one has that kind of arm that late in their career, no one. We'll probably never know, but he always seemed like a prime candidate to me. I used to hate on him during his Advil commercials... yea Nolan, it's Advil that get's you through the season...

And you do because PAP says so? You keep posting as if your opinion is a fact, when it's simply not. You have an opinion based on PAP, which isn't anymore true than the first time you posted it. There have been studies on young pitchers and how to develop young arms, but I haven't read any article or seen any presentation that would lead me to believe that with all things mechanical aside natural durability is the single biggest factor in determining when a pitcher will get injured. It's not a matter of IF, it's a matter of WHEN, that's why some of us have no use for PAP, it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. The body simply is not designed to make such violent and repetitive motions from an overhand position. Sheets' tear could be related to any number of factors outside of Yost over pitching him on 2 or 3 occasions in 3 months, and most certainly got worse post diagnosis. You continually blame Yost without knowledge of the full facts of what was said and done behind closed doors, and you continually ignore that Sheets himself was never happy about getting pulled out of a game. I never claimed the shoulder injury led to the elbow injury, but's as plausible as anything else. I was simply throwing out "what if" scenarios. You're looking at the end result and drawing a conclusion based on a metric without giving consideration to all of the other variables that could possibly be involved. You keep referencing his total innings pitched when he was injured well before the end of the season. Using you or I as a basis of comparison for pitching injuries doesn't make any sense as we never had his talent or had our strength built up to the point of being able to pitch 200 innings. You would have rather treated him like he was an up and coming arm building 20 innings in a season, that's just not realistic given the limitations the Brewers had in rotation talent, just like this year Yo isn't only going to pitch 140 innings if he's healthy. Yo will pitch as much as he's able to, regardless what you or I have to say about it. Last year Parra hit the wall/ran out of gas, but he didn't damage his arm again... and he's had arm issues in the past. I'm not going to throw the manager under the bus based on a metric I believe to be flawed, because I believe the team has a poor history when it comes to diagnosing and treating injuries, and Sheets himself has been injured every season since 2004. This goes way deeper than innings pitched in half a season and Yost.

Boo, I would have rather picked up Niemann who's out of options anyway.

All good young pitchers are ridden hard, it's not Yost, it's baseball. I think it's fair to blame Baker for Wood and Prior, but the Yost situation was different with Sheets. He was ridden pretty hard in 2004 but Ben's weird injuries following that season were not workload induced, and it's fair to say that conditioning may have been a factor, when injuries are non contact in nature there's always that possibility. This is classic revisionist history, how many people wanted Sheets pulled from those games in 2004 when he was racking up K's left and right and chasing team records? Lets be realistic here... there is no way that Yost did so much damage to Sheets before the all-star break in 2008 that he caused the tear is Ben's arm. Until a study proves that there's more to pitching injuries than pitching itself and natural stability, this is really speculation, regardless what PAP might have to say about who is abused and who isn't. Who's to say his arm wouldn't have broken down at X number of pitches regardless? Maybe having 3 injury riddled seasons actually allowed him to last as long he did, maybe the elbow would have broken down sooner. Maybe the muscle injury slightly altered his motion causing more stress on the joint and thus causing the tear... again we really don't know anything other than that it's a bad idea to pitch someone with a tear because it got worse. That's much more on the training staff than the manager, I get why people dislike Yost, but sometimes the venom is borderline irrational.

This is a perfect example of what I've been referring to and catching some flak for right here. Why does it take so long to determine a course of treatment for an injury at the professional level? This waiting game isn't uncommon for our prospects and MLB players, and I just don't get it. Some injuries will heal themselves over time, some don't and in my experience the line is pretty clearly defined. I understand the ramifications of surgery, not in only the cost, but in recovery time as well, but again it seems to me that Brewers drag their feet with the injuries, at all levels. It's probably just the high school football coach in me but I'd rather shut the player down immediately and take care of business so they are healthy and available for the other sports they participate in as soon as possible. It's served us well and seems to be the best interests of the athlete and his family. Getting back to Green they've now lost 5.5 months of recovery time which may negatively impact Taylor's 2009 season, I don't see how that's good for the organization or the player. At the MLB level an intelligent argument can certainly be made for gutting through an injury if your team is in the post season, but I don't see that same argument for prospects. If we can get definitive diagnosis and treatment at my level, I would expect better from a professional organization who's success relies entirely upon it's investment in it's players. Maybe I'm way off base and Agent39 will correct me as he's privy to the intimate details, but these scenarios really frustrate me.

As far as depth moves go, I could get behind Niemann. I'm not sure the Brewers would even have to trade much for him if it's approaching opening day. TB has no room for him with Price in the rotation, wanted to move him last year at the deadline for a bat, and he's out of options. A reverse Gross trade might work here, we throw them an A baller who gets results but isn't really projectable in return. Niemann was way too high of a pick just to let him walk as a FA for nothing. Then again the Brewers would have to stick him in the rotation right away or they'd be in the same boat wouldn't they?

"Htting the wall" was an innings thing that's pretty easy to project, especially with young pitchers. It's not so much the innings, as it is the pitches, because all innings are not created equal, but using innings gives a pretty good approximation. Most of us figured Parra would struggle because he hadn't pitched over 130 innings since 2003, and typically young SP are built up 20-30 innings at a time. It wasn't unreasonable to expect him to tire out at some point. Since he put 166 innings last season, I'm hoping he can put up 180+ this season and if Yo can do the same we're in good shape going forward. You may not like Parra, that's fine, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I still don't see how your trade makes sense from a talent stand point. Acquiring Peavy with Parra in the package gives us Peavy as a 1, Yo as a 2, then same quality behind it... the team hasn't gained all that much in terms of wins and only broke even in rotation depth. Unless you're suggesting that Parra 's talent is no better than McClung's? If the team doesn't make a move I'm alright with it, I believe the Brewers will be competitive regardless and coming out of 2009 we'll have a much better idea where the team needs to go. We'll have a better picture of where all of the kids are at and where they might fit in, what kind of pitchers Yo and Parra will be, and Hardy's contract situation.

As many others have said, how does trading 1 of our 2 best pitchers help us? The jump from Parra to Peavy isn't as great as the jump from McClung to Peavy. If we had a rotation like TB or LAA with young studs up and down we could make a deal like that but we have a 1/2 type in Yo, and 2/3 type in Parra, and then 3 4/5 types, the Brewers don't have the depth that they can afford to trade Parra. If you're going to trade for Peavy and you're Milwaukee you try to do it with prospects because it pushes McClung out of the rotation and gives you a very nice 1,2,3 punch. Then if the Brewers make the playoffs the team really only needs 1 of Yo or Parra to be healthy/effective to have a decent playoff rotation which is a pretty reasonable goal. Going forward assuming Yo and Parra make it through 2009 our rotation should be pretty solid. 2009 is a tough year to project because Parra broke down in 2008 and Yo lost most of the season on a freak injury for a pitcher, it's difficult to be certain what we have in those 2 guys. Even if the team does nothing in 2009 the Brewers will competitive and we'll have a much better understanding of what we have in Yo, Parra, Escobar, Salome, Gamel, Jeffress, Braddock, Cain, and Periard so we'll have a better idea of what the team needs are going forward. Trading Escobar also means that the Brewers have to lock in Hardy, or have a verbal agreement in place prior to moving Escobar. I don't see Escobar going anywhere unless Hardy is locked up long term.

I'm not sure exactly what the out of zone stat is good for in this case, because it ignores the situation. Down in the count chances are that Hall is going to K swinging at garbage, that's was a pretty fair statement in my opinion. I don't think one thing has all that much to do with the other, in theory a batter could take 3 pitches out of the zone in every AB and still K on the 4th, which is right about where Hall is. What we're really discussing here is plate discipline, and Billy has never had much, in his best season he had 162 SOs but he BB & SLG for career highs in 63 and 553, in every other season his K:BB ratio has been 1:3 or greater and for his career he SOs 1 time out of every 3.69 ABs. Looking at Billy's stats by year his BB and SLG trend together.. they rise and peak together, and they fall of together at about the same rate. Unfortunately the Brewers have quite a few of those types of hitters right now (poor SO ratios) but getting back to Hall his SLG was almost as bad in 2008 as it was in 2004, his worst year statistically in his career. There's no doubt Braun swings at a ton of crap, I wish he had Vlad's knack for turning those pitchers pitches into hits, he still gets his fair share, but some of his ABs are downright ugly. edit. I should add that I realize that the out of zone percentage is part of fangraphs view of plate discipline, but I feel that particular stat is misleading, I probably should have used "pitch selection" in place of "plate discipline"

Upon reading the thread title, Robin19's remark is close to my first thought. Will Tampa's apparent addiction to ex-Brewers put them over the top in 2009?My first thought was you clowns, you could have traded us for Fielder and instead you're signing Burrell and our castoff depth... My second thought was that at least ex Brewers get to fight the good fight against the rest of the AL East.

Geez he can't catch a break can he?