anyone else seeing big changes ahead? Latest: Mark A says Melvin is going to be here a long time, Macha will not be fired Monday

[dlk9s]

I wish I was a pathetic at best business man.

[brains and braun]

I dislike Ken Macha for two reasons: not protecting players (in the media and on the field) and for his handling of our starting pitching. No way guys should be throwing as many pitches as they are. The bullpen is gassed? Get rid of Soup and Vargas, and get guys in there who can be optioned up and down. Leaving guys out for 120-130 isn't the answer, no matter what the bullpen looks like.

[homer]

Get rid of Soup and Vargas

-------------------

 

I think that's more on Melvin than Macha.

[PrinceFielderx1]

The Brewers were actually considering calling up Rivas according to Mccalvy?!? Only travel issues got in the way? Wow.. What does everybody think of this? Is Amaury Rivas ready?

[TheCrew07]

So you are admitting it isn't Melvin's fault we didn't draft any pitchers for our system then.

Seriously, that's what you take away from my 100s of posts on this topic?

 

One last time, Melvin is ultimately responsible for this mess, he's the GM, it's his responsibly to plug the holes in the organization. No team, and I mean no team drafts perfectly, every scouting director is going to miss on a certain percentage of high draft picks, that's just the way it goes. We've been short on impact pitching talent forever and I'm getting really tired of the "we're unlucky" excuse. We aren't unlucky, we've never had enough healthy impact talent at any one time, and the truth is we simply suck at developing pitching.. Jack Z didn't draft enough pitching, but Melvin certainly didn't do anything to fill the void, which is why I think he's more culpable in this mess than Jack Z is. The stated philosophy many times in multiple interviews (Melvin, Jack Z, Gord Ash) was to trade hitting for pitching, but they only ever did it twice, once with Overbay for 3 low ceiling players, and once for a rental in Sabathia. Not once has he made a trade for a young, projectable, starting pitcher on the rise.

 

Once again I'll go back to TB. They made building from the rotation up a priority, they traded for 3 extremely high pitchers while continuing to draft and develop their own pitching. No place in their recent history did they sit on their hands and sign mediocre FA pitchers, nor have they ever traded for the prototypical Melvin high floor/low ceiling pitcher. Once they had developed enough pitching internally they were able to flip Kazmir and Jackson away to plug holes elsewhere. Some day I hope the Brewers can assemble enough pitching to be in that same position, but it's not going to happen with Melvin at the helm unless the system comes through fantastically.

 

Melvin is the one who keeps applying these woeful band-aid solution Free Agent pitchers to the rotation in the hopes of remaining competitive. He's also the one that keeps spending money on relief pitching which is the least valuable commodity in all of baseball. He's the big cheese, that means he has to shoulder the blame. When we lose a football game our head coach doesn't dump on all of us assistant coaches for not preparing our players properly, he owns the situation, even if one of us did screw up, and rightly so. That's exactly what I expect to hear out of Melvin. I'm tired of the excuses, every team loses pitching prospects to injury, the simple truth is that pitching hasn't been the number priority in Melvin's tenure as GM in Milwaukee. Just like it wasn't a priority for him Texas, which is why I don't expect to ever become a priority for him. Since pitching has never been a priority we ended up where we are today.

 

Many people tried to point out that the rotation really wasn't significantly upgraded this off season and why, and now we're just supposed to believe that Melvin is unlucky? I'll say once again that anyone who truly believes that statement to be true isn't being objective about Melvin at all. There is an extremely obvious pattern going all the way back to Texas that he's been following. I've linked to his trade history on multiple occasions, I've given my take on every single trade he's ever made for the Brewers in great detail, I'm not honestly not sure what else there is to say, it's really very obvious to me. The pattern works great for turning around a franchise, upgrading from below average players to average players makes a huge difference in wins and losses. Unfortunately for him, when you swap out average players with more average players he's not really gaining any ground, and that's all he's done with the pitching in general. I'd even agree that thus far the swap from Sheets to Gallardo has been a downgrade, but in Yo's defense Sheets didn't take off until his 4th season either.

 

Honestly after 2 years I'm tired of posting the exact same posts and fighting the same exact fights when the results are obvious and the evidence is overwhelming, Melvin's philosophy towards team building just doesn't work in a small market, he's not able to afford the pitching he needs to make it work. His best move for many posters here, acquiring Sabathia, would have failed miserably as well if not for the Mets letting the Brewers steal the WC. So while some are bemoaning how unlucky we are, I think we've been extremely fortunate to even have the 1 post season appearance we got with this first wave of talent.

 

Finally, people want to talk about bad defense? I think Melvin's sidekick Reid Nichols

has done a horrible job developing the minor league talent, look at how

poor our young players are at the fundamentals of the game. That's no

accident either...and it's not just the type players that Jack Z or Seid

have drafted, it's bigger than that. For goodness sake no one even

worked with Gamel daily until he got to AA, he had already been in the

system for 3 full seasons with horrible results defensively... I

agree the player is ultimately responsible for his performance, and I

also realize the minor league coaches simply don't have enough hours in

the day to give every player individual instruction, but there has to

be a solution out there, the problem isn't going to simply fix itself

by telling the players they have to care about their defense. If there

isn't any accountability, in most cases there also won't be any

meaningful improvement. Also, how it is acceptable to plan so poorly

as to play a player out of position most of his MiLB career like what

happened with Brantley? Those of you that don't follow the minors

wouldn't know this but Mike was playing DH and 1B for years just to get

ABs when everyone knew he profiled best as an OF. How does that make

any sense from a development standpoint? Was he just supposed to

pickup the OF as he went along?

 

From where I'm sitting there's plenty of reasons to be upset with Melvin, but it right now it starts and ends with the pitching. Once that issue is resolved I'll worry about injury treatment and player development again, right now I have bigger fish to fry.

[Postseason2006]

I wish I was a pathetic at best business man.

Well, Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson own millions too does that make them smart?

 

[Invader3K]

Crew07, that's all well and fine. I think you've made reasoned arguments, even if I don't always agree with you. Everything considered at this point, I don't really see Melvin suddenly changing his stripes, so it may be best to resign yourself to future disappointment.

 

I think Attanasio probably doesn't want Fielder traded, even though the deafening silence from the extension negotiations would seem to indicate they won't work out a new contract. He may tell Melvin to hold onto Prince and try to make one more run with him at 1B in 2011. I don't see some miraculous trade for young pitching happening that many are pining for. We may just have to wait until guys like Rivas are up to help with the rotation in 2012 and beyond.

[monty57]

TheCrew07, "unlucky" is probably a bad choice of words, as I am a believer that while things do happen that are out of your control, for a large part you make your own luck. We have had a high percentage of failures at the minor league level and MLB pitchers getting worse after becoming Brewers.

 

At the MLB level, I think much of the poor pitching has to do with the pathetic defense we throw out there. I agree with your post about the mental aspect of the game, and how disheartening is it for our pitchers to go out knowing that they are going to make good pitches and the defense is going to screw up, putting the pitcher in a tough position? As a pitcher (especially a "soft-tossing, pitch to contact" type), it would probably make me nibble the corners more, leading to more walks, higher pitch counts, more big innings, etc. In other words, I think our bad defense has had a big effect on our MLB staff failing to live up to expectations over the past few years. If you have this bad of defense, you need strikeout pitchers, more than you would if you had a good defense. You are probably right that we really don't seem to put much into emphasizing defense at any level of our system.

 

To the credit of many on this board, I remember a lot of discussion on this when Suppan was signed. A lot of informed posters here said that Suppan would be significantly worse with the Brewers' poor defense than he was with the Cardinals' good defense. If it's a given that pitching is extremely important, and good defense can make your pitching significantly better, than why don't we emphasize defense more? We could very easily tell prospects that they won't progress through the system until they shore up their defense. Rather, we move players to other positions simply to get their bat to the next level. Now, it appears Melvin made one "defense-minded" move this offseason by acquiring Gomez, but Macha has sat him fairly often in favor of Edmonds' bigger bat. I won't go any further down this road other than to say that we need a coach that believes in the same philosophy as the organization.

 

At the minor league level I don't know why every pitcher in our system had seemed to fail for a depressingly long time. I think Peterson was brought in to address this. I have some (admittedly uninformed) concerns about his insistance on modifying everyone's pitching style, whether they've been successful or not. However, I really hope his methodology, when instituted early on in a pitcher's development, will lead to more of our draftees making through to major league success.

[BrewCrewForever]

If Attanasio wants to hold onto Prince and ends up not trading him now or before next season, I will be very ticked off. You will get peanuts for him if you wait till the deadline next season. You have to move now. Sure the casual fans might be upset with the trade of Fielder, but the fanatic's like us know they have to do it to turn this team into a contender again. Only way they can get pitching that will be ready this season or next season at the latest. We have nice young arms in the minors, but they probably won't be ready till 2012.

[hawing]

For better or worse, Mark A has to balance the wants of the casual fans with those of the "fanatics," since both groups contribute $upport to the franchise. Striking that balance is not a job I'd want.

[Ennder]

At the minor league level I don't know why every pitcher in our system had seemed to fail for a depressingly long time. I think Peterson was brought in to address this. I have some (admittedly uninformed) concerns about his insistance on modifying everyone's pitching style, whether they've been successful or not. However, I really hope his methodology, when instituted early on in a pitcher's development, will lead to more of our draftees making through to major league success

 

We have really drafted for hitting in general in the past. They decided to start the rebuild by drafting hitting heavy first. A big part of the problem is that we are still in rebuilding mode which people dont' seem to realize. Our first wave of good talent hasn't even reached the point where we are trading it yet which is where the 2nd phase of rebuilding an organization starts. Rebuilding an organization that is in as bad of shape as the Brewers were is more of a 10+ year project most of the time. You have to get a good group of prospects, get them to the big leagues, have them show success, draft good solid players while they are showing success and then trade some of them for more prospects. Only at that point have you really rebuilt the organization.

 

What Melvin does with Hardy, Hart, Braun, Fielder, Weeks, Gallardo is going to decide how good of a job he did imo. We took a huge blow to the organization last year when we did not get proper compensation for Sabathia or Sheets, that was a major step back for the process. Trading a lot of talent to get Sabathia and not even get true type A FA compensation is just painful. Another hit to the rebuild was that they also needed to rebuild the fan base so they brought up every one of these players about a half year to a year before they probably should have. We should have each of these guys except maybe Braun for 1 more season than we do so this alone probably set things back a full season.

 

We have had a number of starting pitchers that people thought might make a real impact at some point in the past few years. Inman who the team I think correctly decided was not going to be much of a major league pitcher but probably should have been used in trade for someone longer term. Jackson who just didn't pan out. Gallardo who has turned into an almost ace. Villanueva who has found success in the bullpen. Parra who suffered through multiple injuries and hasn't really been the same since. Jeffress who has had drug problems and Mark Rogers who has been hurt. Before those guys we had De La Rosa and Eveland who took until a very late age to find any success at the major league level. Where the Brewers have really failed is not getting RP from within. You don't need high end draft picks to develop RP, we should be seeing a steady diet of RP coming up through the system and not having to get them via FA very often.

 

People point at the Rays as an example but it is a poor one. The Rays were an expansion team who built themselves specifically around future youth and upside and basically started their 'rebuild' the year they were formed. There first winning season was in year 10 of their rebuild and their minor league system started from a better spot than the Brewers did. The current Rays are where we would hope the Brewers will be in like 2-4 years assuming they do a good job with things. I don't hold much faith that this is going to actually work out though because our minor league system is just decent right now and not great.

[PeaveyFury]

If Attanasio wants to hold onto Prince and ends up not trading him now or before next season, I will be very ticked off. You will get peanuts for him if you wait till the deadline next season.

 

I think it depends a lot on the year Prince ends up having. Obviously, 2010 hasn't been kind to Prince for the first two months, so if that continues, I think there can be a legit argument made for hanging onto him until next July to see where both the team is and if a better year to start next year would help increase his value.

[Invader3K]

We took a huge blow to the organization last year when we did not get proper compensation for Sabathia or Sheets, that was a major step back for the process.

 

And of course this wasn't Melvin's fault whatsoever. We got to the playoffs by doing things "the right way" and then the organization was promptly screwed over. It still infuriates me to think about how the Yankees pulled one over hugely at the expense of our team that off-season by signing both Sabathia and Teixeira. I think people need to remember how stacked against a team like the Brewers MLB's current economic and draft systems are.

[geddymd73]

Sheets wasn't signed last year. The proper compensation for that was nothing.

The economic or financial disparities between the Brewers and anyone else is simply a bad bottom feeder excuse. Poor management is the Brewers problem, especially now with bloated salaries. The Twins, Rays, Marlins, and Rockies are doing fine with small markets and pretty low payrolls.

[Invader3K]

I realize Sheets wasn't signed, but obviously no one foresaw that coming.

[RockCoCougars]

We took a huge blow to the organization last year when we did not get proper compensation for Sabathia or Sheets, that was a major step back for the process.

This isn't the NFL or NBA. First round picks- especially those out of the Top 3 generally mean squat in the short term of 3 years and less (and actually generally mean squat in the long run too). Guys like Braun, are the exception, not the rule. Losing Sabathia and not attempting to retain Sheets was the huge blow.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

No doubt Invader...the Sabathia comp was a real bad break and if a team like the Yankees has a few bad drafts they can just go pay up and sign a bunch of young Latin players to make up for it. At a minimum they need to fix the draft system.

edit: add: Not retaining Sheets? Like we needed another injured pitcher last year and another one this year with an ERA above 6? Give Melvin credit here for not biting. They had no chance to sign CC...a franchise like this can't afford a contract like that.

[Invader3K]

This isn't the NFL or NBA. First round picks- especially those out of the Top 3 generally mean squat in the short term of 3 years and less (and actually generally mean squat in the long run too). Guys like Braun, are the exception, not the rule. Losing Sabathia and not attempting to retain Sheets was the huge blow.

Yes, I get that first round picks don't make an immediate impact on the MLB roster, but there could have been a chance a guy we drafted last season could have been flipped, ala Laporta. Or at the very least cold have been ready to help in 2011 or 2012.

 

FWIW, I don't blame Melvin for not re-signing Sheets. Oakland took a big risk on him with his salary and given his injury history. Maybe it will work out, maybe not, but I don't blame Melvin on not taking that gamble.

[LouisEly]

Get rid of Soup

 

I think the only reason Soup is on the team is because he can go multiple innings out of the bullpen. As gassed as the bullpen is, they need guys who can go multiple innings much more so than one-inning guys, even if they are worse pitchers.

 

I'm pretty sure that Mark A. understands the concept of "sunk cost"; at this point I would think there would be some other reason than salary for keeping him. Loe is pitching pretty well at AAA so he could be at least replacement level/ML average and an upgrade over Soup for a minimal increase in cost.

 

Rogers still has a shot to be decent, I think everyone would trade

Rogers for Bailey in a heartbeat.

 

Well, not really. So far Bailey has been replacement level. Last year in 20 starts he had a WHIP of 1.47 and an ERA of 4.53, and this year through 8 starts while he has one shutout (against Pittsburgh) his overall numbers are 1.47 WHIP and an ERA of 5.21, which shows you how bad he's pitched in the other 7 games outside of the shutout. About the only benefit of Bailey over Rogers so far would have been not needing to sign Doug Davis - a benefit, but not a huge one.

[The Truth]

Even though we are apparently not going to see Macha fired tommorow (Monday) I think we'll still likely see a few significant changes, including maybe seeing Suppan and Vargas DFA'ed, maybe someone like Seth McClung signed, or someone brought up from the minors

[Invader3K]

I agree with the assessment on Suppan, Ely. I wish Macha would just let him eat as many innings as possible though. If he throws over 100 in a blowout, who cares at this point? If he gets hurt, he can be placed on the DL and get paid anyway.

 

I could see him getting DFAed later in the year if they feel Loe or Capuano are ready. At this point with the team's horrible record (.372%, 9.0 GB from the Reds), there isn't a big rush.

[LouisEly]

Good call on Caupano - I keep forgetting about him. Yeah, Cappy in a week (or less) can replace Suppan.

[RockCoCougars]

I agree with the assessment on Suppan, Ely. I wish Macha would just let him eat as many innings as possible though. If he throws over 100 in a blowout, who cares at this point? If he gets hurt, he can be placed on the DL and get paid anyway.

That's actually a good idea. They could have the 'Suppan rule' where if the team falls behind by more then 5 runs, Soup finishes the game. This rule is in effect until his arm falls off.

[jeffy]

[quote name=TheCrew07 wrote: His best move for many posters here, acquiring Sabathia, would have failed miserably as well if not for the Mets letting the Brewers steal the WC. [/b]

That move may have succeeded to a far greater extent had Sheets not gotten injured. In addition, had the team not had the disastrous period, that led to firing Yost, they would not have limped into the playoffs as they did and might have had more success. When Melvin made that move, it looked like it could have led to a WS as they had two very good starting pitchers.

[RockCoCougars]

Sounds like a coincidence that Yount is in town, but it does make you wonder.