vacin8r

Im confused. I understand the arguments many have made in an effort to try to balance payroll in baseball. The thought being that if every team is on a level playing field, you need to make smart baseball decisions in order to succeed. I have not seen a single intelligent argument for the other side. I see people saying that the Yankees are the Yankees and they deserve the best talent. I see people saying how the Yankees have the best fans. I see people saying how the Yankees give other teams money so whatever they do should be OK. These are all dumb arguments. I assume beaseball doesnt have salary equality because the teams that want it most cannot defeat a powerful players union and/or the big market owners that feel that without virtual all star teams they wouldnt survive in their markets. I also assume baseball does not want a situation like the New York Knicks where a team is terrible in its biggest market. Maybe they also feel that by creating this us vs them mentality it automatically creates greater interest in the product, an Us vs Them mentality so to speak. No one ever tries to make these arguments though. It is always the same. The Yankees share revenue. They operate within the rules of the game. Suck it up. Can the Brewers afford Fielder? Sure we can. The problem is that if a team like the Brewers spend $20mm+ on one player and he gets hurt, they go from a $80-90mm payroll that has a chance to be competative to a $60mm team with no shot. If ARod got hurt, the Yankees still have Tex, CC, Jeter, Granderson, etc. The argument the small markets make isnt that they CANNOT afford stars, it is that they have 0 room for error if they wish to remain competative. I challenge any one of these sports writers who take the yankees side to a competition. We play fantasy baseball every year for $1000 entry fee. It functions as any league does, except I get the 1st 5 picks, and then the draft goes on as a normal snake draft until the end where I sacrifice my picks in the last 4 rounds. It is likely that I do not win every year. But I will profit more than everyone else im sure. If they are OK with that, I have no problem with them taking the Yankees side. Rant over for know... Im sure Ill come up with more points that tick me off later:)

Next salvo from Mark A needs to be: I bet you a million dollars you couldnt win a world series with a payroll under 125million.

There is nothing wrong with wanting offensive output from your catcher. Especially after a couple years of watching Kendall. The problem is that roster construction does not exist in a vaccuum. What exactly do you propose the Brewers should have done to improve the position? Salome and Lucroy are knocking on the door to the big leagues and between the two of them, one should be a legit major league catcher with offensive skills. I dont remember there being any top 10 catcher available through FA and even if they were they would require a long term big money deal rendering our prospects useless. I suppose maybe the best bet could have been outbidding for Shoppach on the trade market, overpaying for Bengie Molina, or maybe getting Texas to trade one their 2 catchers. I just look at the fact that experts have lauded the signing of Zaun because 1)we got him for a 1 year deal where other mediocre catchers including Kendall got 2 year deals, and 2) Zaun was the best of the next tier of catchers at OBP a skill the Brewers wanted to improve this off season. That was my opinion a week ago and 2 games wont change that.

Apparently Levine is often described as this kind of guy. If he ever feels attacked in any way, he responds with vicious verbal confrontations. I think if Mark A is smart, he should keep going after him. CBAs dont last forever and it seems there are more have nots in baseball these days than haves, especially in the wake of current economic conditions. If you can get the yankees to keep going out in the media and basically saying, yes, we rule all of you, but its all within the rules, so suck it up and spend the pennies we give you and try to stay in business, it will breed more contempt among the have nots toward the haves. Then when its time to negotiate a new CBA the 60% of have not owners wont ratify it without a huge increase of revenue sharing, or some type of salary capping, not to mention fixing free agent compensation and the draft. It doesnt take a genius to see what competative balance does to help the NFL. Just keep angering people by quoting the rulebook, thats a great plan when the people you are angering are those who have the ability to change the rulebook.

What about games played together... one of their trio is a closer, and another is a catcher. Despite all of Mollys injuries, it wouldnt suprise me if the yanks total is only around 70% of ours.

While its easy to point a finger at the greedy players, the fact that the owners have been convicted of collusion in the past lends itself to this kind of thing. I wonder how much of the similar contracts thing has to do with how media has changed however. I can go on 100 websites now and have a pretty good idea of whats being offered for whom and make offers accordingly. The owners however really need to use Matt Holliday as exhibit A in their case. It seemed apparent to everyone other than the GM of the Cardinals that no one in baseball had offered him a contract even close to what they gave him and that screams either a lack of collusion, or a lack of one team not paying attention... or both.

Just a heads up on what I saw about the mozz "sticks" and the ravioli from saturdays exhibition game. I went to the pizza stand in the loge level 3rd base side which was one of the stands that had them. These will not last long. They cook one order at a time in this wierd frying machine. the cheese sticks(which really are small nuggets and I tried and were kinda tasteless) take around a mnute and a half, the ravioli(which i didnt try) was like 2 and a half minutes. Because of these items, the stand that sold them was extremely slow even with only four people in line. Maybe if they add a couple more machines per stand(as this one had only a single fryer) it would be better, but I cant imagine what wait time will be like opening day.

I remember a post a long time ago on the statistical analysis page about trying to come up with a be-all-end-all statistic for leadoff hitters. I dont remember anyone really agreeing on everything but we all know that we want a guy who gets on base, has enough speed to score more than the average runner when given opportunities as well as take free bases when available, and enough smarts to not lose the ability to score by getting picked off, caught stealing, or staying at a base when he has the definate ability to advance. The runs dont seem to matter as much because they are such a large product of the guys hitting after him. The batting average isnt as important because in the NL you are often batting after the pitcher and sometimes the catcher(or i guess any suck hitter you want to plug in the 8th spot if you have a catcher who can hit/run) before him, so RBIs and advancing runners isnt as big of a deal. I feel like Weeks does a pretty good job on most of these criteria. The knocks on him seem to be that his defense isnt all that good, especially on turning the double play which is fair, and his low batting average, which I dont see as important as the casual fan does. It may also be that when we drafted Weeks, and through his years in the minors, we thought we were getting a legitamte all-star who would put up .300/.380/.500 lines and its hard for many to live up to that kind of hype. It is also tough to get certain sterotypes beaten out of our skulls. Growing up watching baseball, thanks in part to Ricky Henderson, stolen bases came to be associated with success as a leadoff hitter. So I, as many other people, got it in my head a little as far as what a prototypical leadoff hitter is. That is why some would have been thrilled to get Dave Roberts or Juan Pierre a couple seasons ago. Anyone still wish either of them had been signed? How about trading for a guy like Michael Bourn? OBP has replaced stolen bases as the stat by many to view leadoff success, but it doesnt help that various media outlets still use a lot of the old criteria. I guess I do feel it as simple as many have said. I know Braun will hit well including many home runs. I know Fielder will hit well with many home runs. I know JJ and Corey will hit OK with some home runs. Id like someone on base when all this stuff happens so OBP is all I really look at. Stealing 2nd before a 2-run jack job doesnt mean a whole hell of a lot to me. Id probably also like to see a good analysis comparing leadoff guys on teams that score a lot with a lot of home runs vs. leadoff guys on teams that score a lot without a lot of home runs as I am guessing the speed and stolen base type guys factor in a lot more statistically on a small ball team than one where you know 2-5 in the order can knock him in from any base.

Apparently (and you have to trust Wikipedia which seems to be how I remembered things), there were three grievances filed. The 1st 2 had to do with teams agreeing to not offer contracts to free agents, the third had to do with the information bank. The first case awarded the players $10.5M and gave 7 players back their free agent status. The 2nd case awarded the players $38M and again at least six players were re-granted free agency. The 3rd case (to which I refered in my previous post) awarded the players $64.5M plus damages due to lost salaries and bonuses. An agreement ended up being reached where the owners paid the players $280M to settle all three cases. reference link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_collusion -Don

Im a little confused as to what even constitutes collusion in the baseball market. The way I understand the case of collusion from several years ago is that the owners had an information bank of the offers they were giving to players so the agents couldnt lie to an owner about an offer from another team. With the information networks out there for the public, a lot of the information in this type of bank is readily available to fans and GMs alike. Is it collusion if when Boras leaks out a story through SI or whoever that the Brewers are interested in Oliver Perez and Melvin states publicly that its just not true? How is that very different than the information bank from a few years ago. If, as long as the reports are in the public eye, you can legally report offers, and having this information available to owners and GMs is beneficial too them, cant they use the media to skirt the collusion issue to begin with? I guess I should have been a labor lawyer if I was meant to understand such things. -Don (edited for a typo)

This topic gets revisited every year or so, but I thought Id throw out a new thread for it. feel free to dig through the archives and merge if ya want. Basically my question is if you were to make a Brewers audio CD, what all would you put on it? I have the standard stuff like come see whats brewin, turnin up the heat, some uecker audio clips, the osmosis giuntronic song, the brewer version of terry cashmans talkin brewers, even the crappy brew crew boogaloo(thank you to pepsi and their pepsi stuff promotion allowing me to get bad music from amazon for free). What other stuff do you guys have? I was considering all the songs they use to come back from commercials during a broadcast even though they arent "Brewer songs". I know they use werewolves of london, ccr's up around the bend, hangin around, and others. does anyone have a full list? thanx in advance for any help. -Don

Too bad you didnt have the usher from our section. He was running people for pretty much no reason at all. For the most part the cubs and brewer fans in my area werent too bad, a couple people with a little too much liquid courage, but nothing too serious. Then at one point a group of guys above us all were standing chanting "lets go brewers" and the usher yells up for them to sit down. They are like, "its a brewer game, why do we need to sit down?" the ushers reply: "sit down now, or else, if everyone were standing thats one thing, but they arent". So then the guy next to me stands up and yells "Im standing". The usher tells him to come with him. Hes like "are you serious?" So the usher goes and gets like 4 cops to escort him away. his buddy tries to argue with the usher. He gets tossed. A guy above us makes a comment about it. He gets tossed. That guys giurlfriend complains, he threatens to throw her out too, but she leaves on her own. the jerk of an usher on his power trip the rest of the game just keep staring at other people who said stuff waiting for a reason to throw them out. He also makes a kid in a 102.1 fm radio station t-shirt turn it inside out because the "rock fist" on it is offensive. every time anyone near us stands up he makes the motion to sit down, even though multiple times he lets people in the area in front of us stand. I understand that brewer-cub games can get out of control, but this guy took away from the fan experience just for the sake of his own ego. I plan on writing the brewers about this guy in the hopes nothing like this happens again. If I ever saw anything like this again, I would have to seriously reconsider if Miller Park is a place for me to spend my entertainment dollar. -Don

well it looks like ned has at least decided on the middle of the order: http://milwaukee.brewers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080310&content_id=2417751&vkey=spt2008news&fext=.jsp&c_id=mil im sure its just because neds stat guy has said that putting prince in the 3 hole should cost him stats thereby making it easier to resign in a few years. -don

Of course Bud gets credit for arbitration. I completely disagree with his lifetime suspension of shoeless joe however. A .957 OPS in the series should count for something.. In the previous posters defense, Bud does look like Bowie Kuhn in a not at all sort of way. -Don

Do I expect the players in arby to get what I listed? Absolutely not. I posted those amounts because I am sure they don't get more than that. McClung is listed that high because he will be in arby and its tough to predict what players will get. Again, this is much more than I expect in order to make sure I don't go over the target amount. Just like players making the minimum should get less than $500K. Any money that is less than that posted can go right in the sheets/prince/braun/jj/yo/whoever resigning fund(as well as signing bonuses for all those picks). As far as the trade with Tampa, you may be right that they wouldnt take just Vargas and Nelson for Gomes, but it probably isnt far off. Supposedly they threw his name out there at the deadline looking for any starting pitching they could get(look at their 3-5 in the rotation, it's scary). To them, he is little more than a platoon DH as their entire starting 8 will be set for a long time if only Baldelli can stay healthy. I know we are frustrated by many of Vargas' starts, but he does have a fair amount of trade value. What I don't know is if Nelson is enough of a throw in to even it up. Maybe we throw in some other guy who they crave more, but all we have to do is replace a oft-backup DH. -Don