How many of the Brewers personnel decisions has Attanasio been behind?

[HiAndTight]

Now, not in the mid 2000s.

I don't think the value of talented young pitchers was lost on teams in the "mid" 2000's.

 

It's easy to say that we should have just traded "someone" for "something better" and then signed someone to replace the someone we traded. And that we should look for players like Derek Holldand who don't rank among their teams top 10 prospects, but who turn out to be really good. It's even easier to say it AFTER they end up being pretty good.

[HiAndTight]

The Brewers payroll used to be just under 36 million, and now it is 90 million. With room to go up according to Mark A himself.

 

Not sure where you got this information from but Mark A. was saying they would probably lose money this year and the payroll was maxed out.

He also said they would likely lose money after the Sabathia trade, and they finished with about 10 million in revenues IIRC according to Forbes.

 

He also said they were budgeted for somewhere in the 90's this year, and they're in the upper 80's right now, so I don't think we're in as much danger of losing money as some would have you believe.

 

Of course this is mostly conjecture since the closest we come to seeing the Brewers books is the Forbes report done each year.

[TheCrew07]

It's even easier to say it AFTER they end up being pretty good.

I've been saying pretty much the exact same thing for years, the names change, but the idea doesn't. My opinions are hardly revisionist in nature, people were telling me how wrong I was then, and now I basically get labeled with the revisionist history card. I don't care if people disagree with me as long as they make an effort to understand what I'm saying, but at least be courteous enough to acknowledge that I've been beating the same drum forever. As far as Derek Holland goes, that was another "for instance", I didn't think he was attainable at this time last year, and still think Texas would be better of with him and Feliz in the rotation. The point was that he's a very similar prospect to our own Amaury Rivas, a young man with plenty of talent, who gets good results, but no one was talking about because he's not a "name" prospect. I'll post about players whom I believe may be attainable in the transaction forum, but lately I've mostly even quit doing that as many people don't care and only want to discuss "proven" MLB talent, which I'm personally not interested in acquiring. I'm very tired of arguing the obvious, I'll do it on occassion, but mostly it's pointless endeavor.

 

Finally, young pitching was much easier to acquire when OBP/SLG was all the rage, but now it appears that pitching is so overvalued that there is opportunity coming back around on the position player side of things. However, I'm not sure Milwaukee would be in a position to exploit the market like TB did in the last draft as we still need pitching first and foremost. Until we develop enough pitching (as I don't think Melvin will trade for it) we're always going to be playing catch up.

 

 

[HiAndTight]

TheCrew07 wrote:

Finally, young pitching was much easier to acquire when OBP/SLG was all the rage, but now it appears that pitching is so overvalued that there is opportunity coming back around on the position player side of things. However, I'm not sure Milwaukee would be in a position to exploit the market like TB did in the last draft as we still need pitching first and foremost. Until we develop enough pitching (as I don't think Melvin will trade for it) we're always going to be playing catch up.

 

For the second part of this, we'll just agree to disagree. I don't think the elite young arms were that much easier to acquire 3-4 years ago than they are now. So I don't put any validity into that.

 

As for getting good pitchers who aren't highly ranked, it's such a vague and general statement that again, it's easy to say. It doesn't always work.

 

How about Zach Jackson? He sounds like that type of pitcher. Not an elite arm, but well respected. Didn't work out great there for instance.

 

Finally, I sure as heck haven't seen people refusing to talk about players who aren't "proven", ie, prospects on here. I don't get where that comes from. In fact, I routinely see prospects who are not yet "proven" talked about or discussed in possible trades.

 

You're basically saying, "if we could just get good pitching that nobody knows is really good yet, and if we could get them cheap, we could really turn around this thing". Well...of course. You also assume everyone uses BA Handbook to rank their prospects, so that you can go and ask the Rangers for their #11 and they'll be willing to deal him when they may have him at #2.

[DougJones43]

How about Zach Jackson? He sounds like that type of pitcher. Not an elite arm, but well respected. Didn't work out great there for instance.

How many years ago was that?

 

It would be a lot easier to give Melvin a break if he had obtained any well-regarded young arms during the past half decade and they just all failed to work out for one reason or another. That hasn't been the case. His solution has been instead to sign or trade for guys like Suppan, Vargas, Looper, Davis, etc -- in an ongoing attempt to put a band-aid on our pitching problems. It hasn't worked.

[HiAndTight]

How about Zach Jackson? He sounds like that type of pitcher. Not an elite arm, but well respected. Didn't work out great there for instance.

How many years ago was that?

 

It would be a lot easier to give Melvin a break if he had obtained any well-regarded young arms during the past half decade and they just all failed to work out for one reason or another. That hasn't been the case. His solution has been instead to sign or trade for guys like Suppan, Vargas, Looper, Davis, etc -- in an ongoing attempt to put a band-aid on our pitching problems. It hasn't worked.

My point is, it's not a plan of action to say we should try to go out and get good pitchers that most people don't think are really good pitchers and just hope they become good pitchers.

 

That's essentially what's being said here. That Crew07 has always wanted Melvin to go out and trade for pitchers that were outside of the top 10, but who were actually much better. Yeah, it's obviously a good idea to try and find good values, I also think Melvin has been trying to. But you have to be willing to give something up first of all, and second, I don't see this dramatic difference that Crew07 see's when he mentions that a couple years ago "OBP and SLG was all the rage", and goes on to mention that young pitching wasn't as tough to trade for as it is now. The only differences are the big market teams have begun to hold onto their prospects much tighter and that started more than a couple years ago. That started with Theo building his player development empire nearly a decade ago, and Cashman and company following suit.

 

I'm not saying don't blame Melvin, what I am saying is blaming Melvin for just not trading for undervalued prospects at this time when they were apparently readily available is a little illogical to me, and I think that is revisionist. I'm not saying you didn't want to trade for good young pitchers, I'm saying it's not as easy as it's being suggested, 2006 or 2010.

 

And by the way, I don't think Doug Davis would fall into the list of errors by Doug Melvin.

 

As for the subject of the post, of course there isn't evidence and as such, people will always point to the lack of concrete evidence to be absolve Mark A of any blame, but I do think based on the circumstantial evidence, it's fairly obvious he had a large hand in Suppan and Gagne. I also believe he's had a hand in holding onto Prince and not trading him based off many of the comments he's made regarding his desire to re-sign him.

 

I guess the difference for me is this doesn't diminish what he's done for this organization. When he came here had you told me we'd be at 65 million dollars by now I'd have gladly taken it. He's risked losing money by going after CC, he's aggressively tried to bring a winner to Milwaukee and he came along at a perfect time to take this organization to the next level. Nobody's comparing him to Wendy Selig-Prieb because they believe he was behind the Suppan signing.

[WestSideWillie]

quote, I give that five stars! Also, FYI, Prince, Yo, and Corey were all drafted pre-new ownership, along

with the others.....Brauny and CC were Mark's tenure and five stars on both. He made some comment on TV

something like "he had friends who scouted our first pick in LA area?" I did not get the entire comment....any help?

Thanks