Ben Sheets to A's - 1 year, $10 million plus incentives

[TheCrew07]

You're still ignoring that one of the main reasons Suppan was signed was due to the injuries to Sheets, Ohka, and others. They DID need an "innings eater," and unfortunately the reality is that Suppan was the best available at the time.

 

I wish people would quit comparing Wolf to Suppan. They are completely different pitchers, and people more articulate than myself have written articles outlining why that is the case.

To your first point, I'm not ignoring anything. They "didn't" need an innings eater then, just like they didn't innings eater now. Yes there is quite a bit to be said about a healthy pitcher who gives you 34 starts, but Melvin is simply buying the best pitcher he can afford. I don't need to be told the player's virtues, anyone can pull up any number of sites and see a player's stats. I'm concerned about age, the type of the stuff the player has, and so on. Just because you agree with both signings doesn't mean those of us that argue against these midling FA acquisitions are wrong. There's always more than one way to get from A to B and I find it unfortunate that Melvin hasn't explored more permanent solutions through trades. I have the same answer to your first point that I always do in this situation, the options only look limited because you're limiting the possibilities.

 

I say again the dominos did not have to fall this way in DM's tenure as GM, his reluctance to trade for meaningful pitching has limited his options. This outcome was predictable only because DM has established a familiar pattern of behavior, he wants to patch a rotation, not build one like Toronto or TB have done. True flexibility is dependent on options, when our options are limited to FA and spending significant money to acquire mediocrity, the team becomes limited both in talent and payroll flexibility. A team should be able to acquire MLB pieces from the farn system, trades, and FA... well we had no pitchers ready in the system, then we didn't trade for any, so that just left FA as Melvin's one way to upgrade the rotation. Talented pitchers get traded every year, and outside of a rental player deals those pieces don't end up in Milwaukee. I would have rather traded for Kazmir last season than sign Wolf.... we simply didn't have to keep every single position player to remain competitive. I understand that Kazmir would cost more the next couple of years, but at least he has significant talent, and it wouldn't have cost much in prospects to get him at the time. I would much rather take the risk of Kazmir returning to form because he has the ability to push Yo down a spot in the rotation when he's right, then spend money on trading out players at the bottom of the rotation. Going into 2009 I would have traded for Neimann or Jackson, whichever TB was going to move, the off season before that Cain was available for hitting, I wanted to move Hardy for pitching when he was valuable, I was willing to Fielder in the right deal for pitching, and we don't even know who else teams were discussing that could have been had for a reasonable price.

 

To your second point I quoted, you need to get past the Suppan vs Wolf comparison, no one is comparing them as pitchers, we're comparing the pattern.... and it's the exact same pattern as before. Rotation is horrible, Wolf is the best FA pitcher the Brewers can afford, they court and sign him to a long term contract. However being the best FA pitcher the Brewers can afford means he's is his mid 30s and is average to above average, so while he's maybe even "good", he's nothing special and his skills are declining. Looking ahead to the end of the deal, 3 years down the road, he's now in his late 30s with even less margin for error stuff wise, he's still the highest paid pitcher on the staff, and we're hoping he has 1 more solid year left in him.

 

Every single young pitcher we have in the rotation now or arriving by 2012-2013 has more talent than Wolf... every single one. Will they master the pitchability side of pitching? I have no idea and no way of knowing (though I do feel very good about Yo), so I have no way to predict how successful they will ultimately be. I do know that Yo, Parra, Butler, Rogers, Rivas, Peralta, Scarpetta, Arnett, Frederickson, Jeffress, and Odorizzi all have more talent, they all have more juice in their arms. As such it wouldn't surprise me at all if in 2012 Wolf is our #5 pitcher, who also happens to be our most expensive pitcher. It could actually happen by 2011 if the Brewers have some good fortune. Butler, Rivas, and Rogers could all be in the rotation to stay by 2011 and Parra could find his groove. Where was does Wolf go then? The bullpen? That would be great, spending SP money on middle relief.... We only need 2 of the 3 to make it for Wolf to be the #5 already in 2011... assuming success in AA Rivas actually has enough IP the last 2 years he could jump right into the rotation as an injury replacement and never go back and 2011 will be Rogers last option year. Of course the flip side is also true, all those youngsters could fail, and I realize we could play the "what if" game all day but that isn't my intention. My point is that any FA pitcher the Brewers can afford actually ends up hurting the team's flexibility on the back end of his contract. The team really isn't in a position to be able to just turn a guy loose and eat his contract, he's way too expensive to be long man out of the pen, so he ends up taking away an opportunity from a younger, cheaper, and more talented player simply because of his contract. I'll also add we're talking about a contract chewing up dollars that can't be better utilized on a different solution... like a productive position player.

 

While the #1 thing any pitcher needs to do is stay healthy, I think trying to put together a rotation using FAs and basing your decisions largely on IP leads to a very predictable outcome, and if Wolf isn't our worst starting pitcher going into 2012 I'll actually be disappointed as we need this pitching wave to be successful in the worst way. If only to protect Melvin from himself. The idea shouldn't be to swap out #4 and #5 for slightly better pitchers, in my opinion the idea should be to target pitchers in that #2ish range, pushing your #3 down to your #5... and so on... that's when we'll have true pitching depth as an organization.

[Thurston Fluff]

It's easy to Monday morning quarterback an injury.

 

Sheets history showed enough to know he wasn't a good risk. He was coming off a couple injury filled season's and had a lot of wear and tear on his arm by that time. Someone had a chart with all the pitchers injury risk assessment and Sheets was very high in the risk category.

 

 

I kind of compare it to 20 years ago when Higuera was re signed, and went down with the injury soon after. I can't call that a bad signing.

 

I didn't either but look at how much that hurt the team. He wasn't coming off several injury plagued season's Sheets was. while signing one player wiht no injuries may just be bad luck singing one who had a hisitroy of both abuse and injury it wouldn't have been bad luck. It would have been bad planning.

 

 

Going further, a team like the Brewers needs to pull out all the stops to keep their own stars, because they aren't getting them from another team. All they will get is slightly above average players like Wolf who have to be convinced to come to the Brewers in the form of extra cash.

 

I Disagree. You have to pullout all your stops to develop stars but when they get risky and or expensive it doesn't matter if they are your own players or not. They cost the same money either way. sheets certainly wouldn't have been cheaper to us over the length of his contract just because he was homegrown. He would be the same 15 or so million in lost resources as any injured player would have been.

 

By the way, in my view, Sheets could have thrown nary a pitch last season and would have hurt the team less than Suppan pitching to his 'career norms' after throwing out his worst 6 starts.

 

A couple more starts by Smith wouldn't have been better than Suppan. It also would have meant no Looper because Sheets would have made about as much than those two combined.

[Ennder]

By the way, in my view, Sheets could have thrown nary a pitch last season and would have hurt the team less than Suppan pitching to his 'career norms' after throwing out his worst 6 starts

 

You only have to throw out 1 start to get him to his career norms. Suppan is the true definition of an innings eater though, he has basically no value other than to take up innings because you have nobody else to do it. Unfortunately we are just giving him a lot of money to do it.

and if Wolf isn't our worst starting pitcher going into 2012 I'll actually be disappointed as we need this pitching wave to be successful in the worst way

 

You are most likely going to be disappointed. Wolf's 'true talent' level is in the 4.00-4.25 range and he isn't so old that you should think it will slip much by 2012, certainly no more than to 4.50. We aren't likely to have 4 home grown guys with more talent than that by 2012. The whole notion that Wolf and Suppan are similar is wrong in the first place. If you look at the underlying stats it was pretty clear that Suppan was a 4.50+ ERA pitcher when we signed him, in fact I'd have guessed his true talent at around 4.70 when we signed him and given age regression would have predicted a talent level of 5.00 ERA or so by the end of it, pretty much exactly what hasa happened.. These pitchers really are not comperable at all. The Suppan deal was pretty terrible, the Wolf deal is probably too much money but it isn't a disaster unless he gets hurt right away.

[rluzinski]

I hate how people look at the Suppan signing in a vacuum, and use that as a reason that Sheets isn't on the team at this point. Maybe if Sheets hadn't gotten hurt in both '05 and 06, the Brewers wouldn't have felt the need to sign Suppan in the first place. If Sheets was mad about Suppan making more money, he should look in the mirror to see who is partly to blame for that one. Yes, in retrospect, it would be nice if the Brewers had never signed Suppan, but at the time it was a needed move.

You thought the signing was good at the time, great. Just lease don't insult those who were against the signing by pretending the signing obviously looked good at the time. These boards were roughly split 50%/50% on the signing and the debate was very polarized. A lot of us were repulsed by Melvin's "Big game pitcher" rhetoric.

[monty57]

You thought the signing was good at the time, great. Just lease don't insult those who were against the signing by pretending the signing obviously looked good at the time. These boards were roughly split 50%/50% on the signing and the debate was very polarized. A lot of us were repulsed by Melvin's "Big game pitcher" rhetoric.

 

But iirc, that was more the length of the deal than the fact that we needed at least one pitcher that could, with some reasonable degree of certainty, eat up some innings. No one thought he was a great pitcher, just a decent one who could eat innings. We had a decent team in 2006, and it imploded when Sheets and Ohka went down. We threw pitcher after pitcher out there until finally Villenueva had some degree of success as a fill-in. I doubt we would've had much debate if it had been a 2 year deal.

 

This has turned into a Suppan thread instead of a Sheets thread, but going on my previous paragraph, I would guess that 2006 was a big reason why we didn't sign Sheets to a big extension when he wanted one. As good as he was when healthy, he was too big of an injury risk for the Brewers to sign to the monsterous contract he would have demanded at that time. With hindsight, we can now see that we already would have lost at least one full season to injury. Somehow, that has turned this into an anti-Suppan thread.

 

I applaud Melvin for not crippling the franchise by extending Sheets when Sheets was rumored to have wanted an extension. If that makes him mad at us now, so be it.

[logan82]

People keep talking about how Suppan hurt the team the last couple years, but he was still better than most of the fill ins we have had when pitchers have gotten hurt. Yeah the dollars were and are way to high, but he is still useful.

 

Giving Sheets a long term deal would have been a bad idea, but at the time he would have gotten it, he didn't really have any injuries that would point to long term problems or decline in performance. Most of his injuries are unrelated and other than the shoulder and forearm injuries really shouldn't hurt his pitching long term. I hate to say it but he has been injury prone. He could still go on to have a very good career from this point forward with few or no injuries. At least nothing worse than an average pitcher. A lot of that probably depends on how he gets used or abused this year. If he tries to come back and pitch 200 innings in 2010, I think that would be a huge mistake.

[Invader3K]

You thought the signing was good at the time, great. Just lease don't insult those who were against the signing by pretending the signing obviously looked good at the time. These boards were roughly split 50%/50% on the signing and the debate was very polarized. A lot of us were repulsed by Melvin's "Big game pitcher" rhetoric.

Yes, I've never pretended I didn't like the signing at the time. I think I've even said things to the effect of, "Yes, I liked the signing at the time. In retrospect, we probably shouldn't have done it, but hindsight is 20/20," etc. I do think the signing may have had unquantifiable results, such as increased fan excitement, generating free agent interest in the franchise, etc. Do those necessarily mean we still should have done it? Probably not, but before signing Suppan the Brewers did not generally even land free agents of his caliber, or spend that kind of money, period.

 

You are right that the "big game pitcher" talk was rather silly, but any sports GM is going to put as positive a spin on any move as possible. I'm sure those comments were more geared towards hyping up the fan base than actual reasons for the signing.

[brewerjamie15]

Disappointed Sheets didn't have any loyalty to giving the Brewers a price break since imo he had not earned his salary due to so many missed starts. The team did quite a bit for him and he kinda screwed us over I think. I believe he is overpaid in Oakland, but the package is not him alone. I see this as most of you do, Ya get the use of Ben Sheets for a while and some nice players in trade for him. For Oakland's sake, I hope Sheets stays healthy. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a great year which seems to be the luck of Milwaukee.

I will say one thing though. I'm quite glad he's not in the NL Central.

[TheCrew07]

I have no problem with Melvin letting Sheets walk, I never wanted him signed to a contract extension, it was always my opinion that he let himself go a bit so his injuries were a result of age, conditioning, and just pitching. After Ben got hurt the second time i never viewed him as unlucky injury wise, I viewed him as a significant injury risk and was basically waiting for him to need one of the big 2 surgeries. Nor was I suggesting that the Brewers should have signed Sheets for 10 mil plus incentives, however if my choices were always limited to Sheets or Wolf/Hawkins, I'm taking Sheets every single time because there is simply no way anyone on this board will convince me that tying up money in the bullpen is fiscally responsible.

 

My problem with the organization hasn't changed, we basically swapped Yo for Sheets, and the rotation is in the same general shape going into 2010 as it was going into 2006. We just needed 1 more pitcher of significant talent to go with Yo and this crop of position players and it never got done. Melvin and I are about as far apart philosophically as 2 people can be, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon.

[kramnoj]

As such it wouldn't surprise me at all if in 2012 Wolf is our #5 pitcher, who also happens to be our most expensive pitcher.

 

I find it telling that you construct a scenario where we have 4 good young cost controlled pitchers in the rotation, and rather than be happy with that ideal scenario, you choose to rage, as you say. In 2012 the team should have pre-arby players at C, 3B, SS and will presumably have at least one if not two prearby players in the OF.

 

If the Brewers farm develops so well that Wolf is the #5 pitcher in 2012, that is a reason to celebrate, not rage. In that scenario, the Brewers may have more money than they can reasonably spend, because they will have so many players making so little money. If that were the case, I would hope that Fielder would have agreed to stay at a below market deal, because that 2012 team could be really fun to watch.