He's Baaaack! Vargas to MIL for Vinny Rottino

[tigerbrew]

No, I've never blast Yost for doing that.

[bigredrobbo]

I can remember a whole bunch of posts around this time last year criticizing Melvin for the CC trade and how LaPorta was too big of a chip to include in a deal for a 3 month rental. Then we get Wonder CC and all is forgotten again. This isn't the deal we were hoping for, but a 170-something post thread about essentially a warm body for nothing trade seems excessive to me. As much as Halladay to the Brewers sounds nice, I don't see him waiving his full no-trade clause to come here. Does anyone on this board?

 

I guess I have 2 questions. If Rottino wasn't a local boy would anyone care that a guy we already DFA'd was traded for a guy we already DFA'd? And if Gamel had knocked the snot out of the ball in his short spell in the bigs, would the same number of posters be clamoring for him to be included in blockbuster deals?

[JerseyJunkie]

We need to start drug-testing Doug Melvin

[Fatter than Joey]

If Rottino wasn't a local boy would anyone care that a guy we already DFA'd was traded for a guy we already DFA'd?

 

I don't think anybody cares that we gave up Rottino.

[brewdude15]

I've always been a Rottino fan...I kinda wish he would've been able to stay.

[PeaveyFury]

If Rottino wasn't a local boy would anyone care

 

Yeah, considering his overall struggles in the minors recently, I suspect if his hometown was Tacoma, WA he'd have been released a while ago.

[monty57]

The way I see it, if the Brewers' offense picks up, they could make the playoffs without any big moves being made. If the offense doesn't pick up, they will not make the playoffs even with a big move being made.

Monty, the June ERA for the Brewers was 5.37. With tonight's result I think July will be around 5.6. The Brewers have posted losing records in both months. To then conclude that the productivity of the offense is what will determine the team's destiny makes no sense.

 

Okay, let me clarify. I know the pitching is bad, but basically #'s 2-5 in the rotation have been almost interchangable. One outing they'll go six innings, giving up 2 runs and the next outing they'll give up 7. One pitcher, even if it's Halladay, won't fix that. He will help, but we'll still have bad pitching. The problem is that when we give up 4 runs, we only score 2. We only seem to score a lot of runs when we give up 10+.

 

Yes, our pitching is bad. Not surprisingly, the downfall really began around the time Bush got beaned in the arm and Parra struggled to throw strikes. Since Parra has come back, Suppan has gotten hurt. For some reason, Looper likes close games. If the offense only scores 3, he'll keep the other team down. If the offense scores a lot, he makes sure the opposing team gets back in the game. Unfortunately, he's the only pitcher our offense seems to score runs for.

So I ask, who does Halladay replace? It won't be Yo, but simply replacing one dead arm will still leave three question marks in the rotation at least until Bush and Suppan come back fully healthy. Now, that said, if our offense gets it together, we will win many of the games we've been losing. I don't have time now to go back through game logs, but we've surrendered a lot of 10+ run games, which will have a big negative effect on ERA, especially when you're only looking at two months data. Assume we lose those games, so take those numbers out, and we've got a lot of winnable games we lost simply due to the fact that we didn't score many runs.

I'm really a proponent of selling now, but as I said I understand why they didn't sell. I just think picking up Halladay would not have gotten them to the playoffs. Then, he'd become a free agent after the season (his contract allows him to do that), and we'd be a much, much worse team next year without much hope of getting better, as we would have traded away the pieces that will keep us in playoff contention for the next 6-8 years.

Even with this belief, I was still optimistic enough to believe that if somehow Hardy, Hart and Cameron all got hot, and Fielder, Braun, Lopez, Counsell and McGehee remained hot, they could sneak into the playoffs, even with the pitching staff occasionally giving up 10+ run outings. Then Hart went and got hurt, and it looks like we won't have Bush or Suppan back for a good part of August. Now we'll be stuck with Hall seeing significant playing time in RF to try to boost his trade value. I'm for this, as it's a move for next year, but you can't get half pregnant. If you're willing on carting out Hall and giving us another black hole in our offense, why not go all out and trade some of our FAs to be (Cameron, Hoffman, Counsell, Kendall) to try to land solid pieces for the future? In addition to "trying to boost Hall's value," we'd also be able to see if Gerut has enough in the tank to be our CF next season. Cameron and Hoffman could be Type A FA's, so we should be able to get good talent back, as the receiving team should get a early draft picks when they're gone.

[Invader3K]

Then, he'd become a free agent after the season (his contract allows him to do that)

 

False. He could ask to get traded after this season (if Toronto had traded him, which obviously they didn't), but he wouldn't be a free agent until after next season. However, seeing how he had a no trade clause to begin with, I doubt he would have approved a trade and then turned around and demanded another trade less than three months later.

 

All water under the bridge at this point anyway.