Casey McGehee to Philly for Juan Ramirez+?

[endaround]

The Philies need some type of offense quickly to make up for their losses and McGehee would likely be the best bat out there for 2nd or 3rd right now. I understand the chance of this happening is slim, but woudl this seem workable to anyone else?

[NievesNoNO]

Yes, I like the idea. McGehee and Hart would seem to have solid trade value right now. As soon as the Brewers admit they're not contending this year the better off they'll be. Injuries to contending teams are huge opportuniteis for the Brewers. I like McGehee but he's replaceable and we need to give Gamel a legit opportunity. Almost an ideal fit for both sides.

[TooLiveBrew]

I got curious about Ramirez (who, confusingly, also goes by J.C. Ramirez), so here's a scouting report from a Philly sports blog. They ranked him as the Phillies' 9th-best prospect heading into this season

Of the 3 prospects the Phillies received for Lee, Ramirez is probably the biggest question mark, putting up numbers that aren’t indicative of the stuff he has. However, he’s only 21, and has several years to develop in the minors and perhaps a change of scenery will help him reach that potential.

...

 

Ramirez has a live arm, with a fastball that ranges from 91-96mph and usually operates around 93-94mph. His 2nd pitch is a slider (77-80 mph) with above average movement but below average control. Getting control of his breaking pitches is going to be the key to his future success. He also throws an average change-up but tends to favor the slider.

 

He has somewhat of a long delivery, and some scouts think that if he can’t develop his change-up as a 3rd pitch, his future might be in the bullpen. The Phillies obviously see him as a starter with a lot of upside, but he has some work to do to get there.

 

Ramirez reminds me of a less-accomplished Carlos Carrasco. He absolutely has the arm and stuff to be successful in the league (the very stingy Keith Law labeled him with #2 starter potential before 2009, the same label he’s given Drabek)

...

 

[Phillies GM] Amaro has said that Ramirez will start the year in AA Reading, a very challenging assignment for a 21-year old pitcher. I fully expect him to struggle in his first season there as he tries to tweak his control against some of the best hitters in the minor leagues. 2011 will probably be the make or break year for Ramriez, after he has had a full season at AA, and a full season under the Phillies pitching coaches. If he succeeds, I imagine he would make his way up to AAA, and be a rotation candidate as early as 2012. If he doesn’t succeed, a bullpen move is likely, with a similar arrival time in the majors.

He actually started the year with A+ Clearwater, and posted very good peripherals (7.7 K/9, 2.4 BB/9, 3.21 K/BB) even though his ERA was a touch above 4.00. He's struggled in his three starts since joining Reading, but clearly the Phillies are high on this kid.

[TheCrew07]

He's a bit of a project but it's not a bad deal, I'm not all that enthralled with a K rate below 8 from a pitcher with that kind of arm in A+, but he's got all the tools. If he maxes out as a 2 that's alright by me, I'd take an entire rotation of 2s.

 

My only hesitation would be the Brewers haven't had much luck reigning in pitchers in the minors who lacked control prior to Lee Tunnell and Rick Peterson. He could reasonably pitch all next season in AA as well and he's not struggling any worse than Perez who I'm really high on, he's got plenty of time to figure it out.

 

All things considered I'd make this trade.

[TooLiveBrew]

My only hesitation would be the Brewers haven't had much luck reigning in pitchers in the minors who lacked control prior to Lee Tunnell and Rick Peterson.

 

Wouldn't those two be a reason to feel confident in this trade?

[TheCrew07]

Well Peterson won't impact the minors this season and I'm not sure how much contact he'd have with the minor league kids, but it would stand to reason he'd work with our top prospects at some point.

 

I like what Tunnell has done thus far (Axford for one), but he's already got his hands full with guys like Arnett, Rogers, Frederickson, Manzanillo, Scarpetta, Bucci, and Jeffress. I think we're already past the point where 1 guy has enough time for all these prospects... players aren't necessarily going to automatically improve given more innings to pitch. Sometimes I think people expect our players in the minors just to get better because they are playing, I just don't think it's that simple. If they continue to do the same things wrong, they will continue to have the same results, regardless how many pitches or ABs they get.

[RockCoCougars]

McGehee is one of the best bargains in baseball right now, so I wouldn't be inclined to deal him for an unproven talent. I'd rather wait until the offseason when a team tyring to cut payroll may want to deal a proven arm. McGehee could be a very appealing piece in that situation. Obviously, everything hinges on what happens with both Weeks and Gamel as well.

[TheCrew07]

so I wouldn't be inclined to deal him for an unproven talent.

I think this is the biggest disconnect on these boards, this whole notion of proven talent. We can't afford to dump the pitching prospects to acquire a proven top of the rotation starter, we just don't have enough ammunition to get a deal done. Even if we did I don't think it would be a wise move given the cost of acquiring said pitcher and the cost of keeping said pitcher. I'd much rather target prospects, hoard as many possible, and hopefully someday end up in the position TB finds itself in, having cheap top of the line replacements waiting for the rotation giving them true roster flexibility because they aren't making decisions solely based on cost.,

 

Our salvation as an organization lies in "unproven" prospect talent and not trading for established talent.

 

Consider me skeptical of the notion that Melvin will find a better deal for impact talent trading position players in the off season. He may get more MLB ready talent, high floor/low ceiling type players, but I'm not interested in making quantity deals anymore, not that I ever was in the first place.

[TooLiveBrew]

I think we're already past the point where 1 guy has enough time for all these prospects

 

I think it's naive to assume he's the only guy working with the young arms in the first place. Tunnel might be making the bigger calls in terms of who's ready to advance, etc., or who are the priority arms, but overall I'd guess he's not the only guy to work with young pitchers. I honestly don't see how Peterson won't impact the MiLB players, when the Brewers pretty explicitly added him to work with the MiLB guys as well. If that message is true, I fully expect Peterson to have a good impact with the MiLB arms.

[TheCrew07]

It's not naive, it's an observation. Each MiLB pitching coach is responsible for every pitcher on his staff and only the starters get side bullpen sessions. I'll take Chris Hook as an example, how much time for individual instruction on the mound does he get in season with his prospects? Did Frederickson make tremendous strides last season? Did Arnett this season? Is the problem physcial, mechanical, or mental? Del Howell has made good progress so far this season, but where did his issues lie? What are the easiest issues for a pitching coach to address in season? Hell, I know from experience sometimes it just helps to have a different set of eyes with a slightly different perspective. Is Chris Hook a bad coach? No, and I don't mean to suggest that. When I do mean to suggest is that the system isn't really setup to promote individual instruction with each player.

 

I think it's naive to assume that 3 MiLB coaches per team a couple of roving instructors have enough time to get all of their players enough individual instruction/attention on a consistent enough basis to keep the ball moving in the proper direction. The minors are about development, but it appears that development is more trial by fire than "here's what you're doing wrong and we'll work on these issues to fix it". Certainly all of the coaches are giving as much time "Mr Fix it advice" as they can, everyone wants the prospects to succeed, intent isn't the issue. Time for individual instruction is the issue, not only with the pitchers but with the position players as well. Studies have shown it takes 10s of 1000s of repetitions to learn a different muscle memory, is it any wonder why our poor fielding position players don't make much progress? If you listen to Jeff Isom from the T-Rats in the audio archives from this season he discusses skipping batting practice to work on fielding because the T-Rats have been so bad defensively... there just isn't time for everything so he has to trade off one thing for the other.

 

As far as Peterson goes, I doubt he'll spend significant time with every true pitching prospect we have. He might watch video and coach through the other coaches, but in training camp he'll be consumed with the pitchers on the big league staff and if the reports from last off season were accurate he didn't have much contact with any of the pitchers out of season. Again it's an issue of time, there's only one of him and his focus should be on the MLB camp, there just won't be enough hours for him to work with every pitcher in the system.

 

Think about it this way... if he spent 20 minutes with each pitcher each day, he'd only get time for 24 different pitchers in a day in an 8 hour day, which means he'd roughly get to each pitcher twice a week... that's just if they worked in the bullpen and practiced for 8 hours a day which they don't. I would guess a typical bullpen takes 30-45 minutes outside of the fielding, bunting, long toss, and all of the other drills the pitchers do every day. I'm guessing a more realistic number would be 4-5 pitchers per day... how many days would it take Peterson to get back around to the start and hit up each pitcher a second time if he was working with the entire organization? It's just not feasible to expect him to have a meaningful impact with every young arm given the current structure.

 

If they changed the structure and brought in 8-10 pitchers for a couple of weeks during the off season to give them some 1 on 1 then I could see him having an impact, sort of like a mini camp for each different level prospects R-MLB. The youngsters would be able to take what they learned and incorporate it into their off season programs. However, I don't see MLB going to "mini camps" anytime soon. Minor leaguers do have instructs in October but that's not really the same thing as I'm suggesting.

 

My main point here is that I don't think many posters truly appreciate how little time there actually is for 1 on 1 individual instruction in the minor leagues.

[TooLiveBrew]

PM response sent, in the hopes this thread can get back on target http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif