Zack Greinke close to hiring an agent.....

[TheCrew07]

I don't exactly understand the motivation for the new FA compensation rule. Why does they player need to be with a team all year? Are they trying to lessen the excitement of the trade deadline?

 

I'm alright with the changes as I don't trust Melvin not to buy a player every year, just say no to rental players.

[3and2Fastball]

.... it'd almost make up for losing Lawrie(almost, still think he's Ryan Braun with the defensive chops at 3rd).

 

When is that gonna start? (Lawrie hitting as well as Braun). Granted, Lawrie is still younger than Braun was in Braun's rookie year, and it is still a small sample of just 300 at-bats, but so far Lawrie isn't anywhere close to Braun as a hitter.

 

We'll see, he's definitely got potential...

[HiAndTight]

.... it'd almost make up for losing Lawrie(almost, still think he's Ryan Braun with the defensive chops at 3rd).

 

When is that gonna start? (Lawrie hitting as well as Braun). Granted, Lawrie is still younger than Braun was in Braun's rookie year, and it is still a small sample of just 300 at-bats, but so far Lawrie isn't anywhere close to Braun as a hitter.

 

We'll see, he's definitely got potential...

 

 

Seriously?

 

I think he's shown plenty of signs of it already.

 

But lets look at the evidence and why he just might not have quite the same opening season that Braun did.

 

1-Lawrie grew up in Canada and was a prep player when he went pro.

2-Braun grew up in SoCal and went to play at Miami.

Ie, one played year round and the other played in a very shortened window and against much less competition.

3-Brett Lawrie at 21 years old played in AAA put up a line of .353/.415/.661/1.076 and .293/.373/.580 .953

4-Ryan Braun at age 22 played a HiA and AA and put up a combined line of .289/.357/.514/.871

5-Lawrie's rookie year, a quarter of a season put up an OPS+ of 151 at the age of 21.

6-Braun put up an OPS+ of 154 his rookie year at the age of 23.

 

So when will he do it? I don't have a crystal ball, and I did say a Ryan Braun type hitter. .300 hitter, I think he might have a higher walk rate, but I believe he will be a 30 HR type player and is certainly capable of stealing bases like Braun.

 

But lets say he's "only," a Longoria type hitter. With his defense at 3rd, the position I've said on here and other message boards he should be playing since he came up, I don't think it's a stretch to suggest his value could be equal to that of Ryan Braun's.

 

And Braun has a nice head start on the greatest hitter to play for the Brewers, a historic start to his career and a regular MVP candidate.

 

So again, when? I don't know exactly. But I think there's a whole lotta evidence out there that he will at some point become a hitter comparable to Ryan Braun. It's funny, nobody would question it if you said the same about Harper, but Lawrie's far more proven than Harper, and a whole lot of people have compared the two as the next set of superstars coming up.

 

 

I'd also add my point isn't in the slightest to diminish Braun, but to articulate just what we gave away when we traded a #3 pitcher for a player who could very well be a more valuable player than Ryan Braun.

[HiAndTight]

I don't exactly understand the motivation for the new FA compensation rule. Why does they player need to be with a team all year? Are they trying to lessen the excitement of the trade deadline?

 

I'm alright with the changes as I don't trust Melvin not to buy a player every year, just say no to rental players.

 

 

I don't think Melvin's really done too bad with rentals.

 

Which rental do you take issue with?

K-Rod last year was brilliant.

CC obviously.

Linebrink didn't work out, but we lost a very good loogy who's been a little up and down, but very good when used as a loogy, but the main guy in that deal was traded at the perfect time(Inman), at the height of his value, and at the time, we were competing and Linebrink looked to solidify a team that was leading the division and was lacking a good SU man. Didn't work out great either way, but we did get comp picks. And I don't put it on Melvin they didn't pan out(though they did lead to Morgan IIRC).

We traded for Lopez twice, once it worked out great and we gave up a player who's done nothing. That's when Weeks got hurt. And the last time we took a flier on him and again gave up a player with very little value.

 

 

Who am I missing? Where has Melvin really dropped the ball on mid-season rentals? He twice gave up top prospects, one time that top prospect was, as many suspected a low ceiling guy who still hasn't done anything 4 years later, and the other was for a guy who pitched on 3 days rest several times, got us into the playoffs and again, was for guys who haven't had a significant impact on the teams they've been traded to.

 

Marcum wasn't a rental, otherwise I'd cite that as a terrible trade, but it was for 2 years and not mid-season.

 

 

So I don't understand the argument you're making.

[3and2Fastball]

 

1-Lawrie grew up in Canada and was a prep player when he went pro.

2-Braun grew up in SoCal and went to play at Miami.

Ie, one played year round and the other played in a very shortened window and against much less competition.

3-Brett Lawrie at 21 years old played in AAA put up a line of .353/.415/.661/1.076 and .293/.373/.580 .953

4-Ryan Braun at age 22 played a HiA and AA and put up a combined line of .289/.357/.514/.871

5-Lawrie's rookie year, a quarter of a season put up an OPS+ of 151 at the age of 21.

6-Braun put up an OPS+ of 154 his rookie year at the age of 23.

.

 

Brett Lawrie's OPS+ right now is 84, that is below replacement level. His career OPS+ is at 117. You cannot really point to a 1/4 of a season as statistical proof of anything which means that this year for Lawrie doesn't prove much either....yet. However we can look at the half a season of Lawrie's MLB career and see that as nothing close to Ryan Braun's talent and production

 

That said, Braun has never put up a quarter of a season anywhere close to what Lawrie has done this year. 3 HR's in 40 games? A .312 OBP? Those are the kind of numbers Braun never puts up for a 40 game period

 

The only response to that is Lawrie is still young and that may be the case

 

As to their Minor League Stats: Lawrie put up those AAA numbers in a bandbox in Vegas where balls fly out at ridiculous paces. Lawrie's AA stats at Huntsville were worse than Braun's, a .856 OPS to a .797 OPS (and yes Lawrie was younger).

 

We'll see how Lawrie develops, or doesn't. I think Braun is an elite hitter and Lawrie just...isn't

 

Braun's career slugging % is 12th All-Time right now. He is just below Rogers Hornsby and Joe DiMaggio and ahead of Mays, Musial & Mantle. And Braun's Slugging % this season of .630 is an improvement over his career average! Do you really believe Lawrie has that type of potential? I don't

[HiAndTight]

 

1-Lawrie grew up in Canada and was a prep player when he went pro.

2-Braun grew up in SoCal and went to play at Miami.

Ie, one played year round and the other played in a very shortened window and against much less competition.

3-Brett Lawrie at 21 years old played in AAA put up a line of .353/.415/.661/1.076 and .293/.373/.580 .953

4-Ryan Braun at age 22 played a HiA and AA and put up a combined line of .289/.357/.514/.871

5-Lawrie's rookie year, a quarter of a season put up an OPS+ of 151 at the age of 21.

6-Braun put up an OPS+ of 154 his rookie year at the age of 23.

.

 

Brett Lawrie's OPS+ right now is 84, that is below replacement level. His career OPS+ is at 117. You cannot really point to a 1/4 of a season as statistical proof of anything which means that this year for Lawrie doesn't prove much either....yet. However we can look at the half a season of Lawrie's MLB career and see that as nothing close to Ryan Braun's talent and production

 

That said, Braun has never put up a quarter of a season anywhere close to what Lawrie has done this year. 3 HR's in 40 games? A .312 OBP? Those are the kind of numbers Braun never puts up for a 40 game period

 

The only response to that is Lawrie is still young and that may be the case

 

As to their Minor League Stats: Lawrie put up those AAA numbers in a bandbox in Vegas where balls fly out at ridiculous paces. Lawrie's AA stats at Huntsville were worse than Braun's, a .856 OPS to a .797 OPS (and yes Lawrie was younger).

 

We'll see how Lawrie develops, or doesn't. I think Braun is an elite hitter and Lawrie just...isn't

 

Braun's career slugging % is 12th All-Time right now. He is just below Rogers Hornsby and Joe DiMaggio and ahead of Mays, Musial & Mantle. And Braun's Slugging % this season of .630 is an improvement over his career average! Do you really believe Lawrie has that type of potential? I don't

 

 

 

Wasn't it Sickel who stated that Lawrie has the potential upside of Hornsby?

 

And you just seem to gloss over the age difference. Lawrie's at the big league level while Braun was still in HiA and AA ball. That's....pretty significant.

 

And yes, I do think he has that upside. As do the several scouts who have compared him to Bryce Harper...but more proven.

I see a lot of denial about Lawrie from Brewers fans IMO because it's a lot easier trade to swallow if he doesn't end up being the savant that most everyone expects him to be at this point.

 

 

Anyway, I listed SEVERAL reasons as to why I believe there are indicators that Lawrie will be on Braun's level offensively and you tried rather hard to make excuses. So Lawrie played at a offensive park in AAA. He did it at the same age Braun was in college.

 

From Stark:

 

We could keep spitting out these glowing testimonials for another hour or six. But it's time to address the most significant difference between Brett Lawrie and, say, Bryce Harper.

 

Harper, you see, still lives in the land of could-be's and should-be's. Lawrie, on the other hand, already has about a month and a half of been-there, done-it in the big leagues on his personal page at baseball-reference.com. And what he did in that month and a half has gotten way too little attention.

 

 

 

Let me end with your ranking of Ryan Braun historically. You're ranking him among historical greats who played through their down years and Braun's sitting in his prime which lacks in sincerity IMO. Or however you'd like to articulate it. And we can't argue small sample sizes continually and say, "well look at what Lawrie(again, 22, the age Braun was in A ball)is doing compared to Braun's .630 SLG(in the midst of his prime year and a quarter of a season in).

 

Bottom line, I expect Lawrie's WAR and Braun's WAR to be at least equal through each players prime year and I think it's very likely Lawrie's is higher. And I say that appreciating and not needing an education on how great Braun is.

[TheCrew07]

[quote="HiAndTight"

I don't think Melvin's really done too bad with rentals.

 

Which rental do you take issue with?

 

So I don't understand the argument you're making.

 

I've literally covered this dozens of times in previous posts but here it is again. It doesn't matter who the player traded for is, it's the idea that a short term solution is the correct or proper solution for what ails a team. We went from an organization with no MLB talent and stocked farm system to an organization with MLB and a barren farm system.

 

The last 2 drafts have somewhat corrected that problem, but you can't continually trade away prospects for short term value and sustain anything. My problem with rental players is the short return on investment. If would have ever gotten to the point where we had a good MLB team with a hole here or there caused by injury and a stocked minor league system my tune would have changed. However all Melvin has done is continually band-aid the roster without actually addressing any holes long-term, well until we signed Ramirez to that backloaded albatross of a contract, but that wasn't a positive development from where I'm sitting.

 

It's not about what the players we've traded have done, they had a specific value at the time they were traded. The majority of trade analysis you'll see on this forum is the player traded vs the player have performed like this, so we won the trade. It's not that simple, trading for Sabathia directly led to the crappy rotations in 2009 and 2010, the hole we had in the rotation 2008 still existed even with Gallardo coming back because we lost Sheets and Sabathia. It wasn't ever actually addressed, it was just temporarily patched. I would have rather bundled that prospect value from any number of trades into a trade for younger, long-term solutions rather than selling 2-4 prospects for a quick fixes here and there. The market in baseball has it's shifts and through that 2005-2009 time frame there were many teams chasing offense, over time the market has slowly shifted back towards pitching as teams have recognized how far the Rays and Giants went on basically just their pitching.

 

I'd like the Brewers to be where the Rays and Rangers are, very good MLB teams with loaded farm systems. It's certainly possible to have it both ways and it's not prospect hoarding or whatever other negative term people have thrown around on this forum over the years, it's fundamentally sound organization building. I still think prospect for prospect deals are the best way to cheaply acquire young impact talent, but those deals have become few and far between, and they aren't in Melvin's wheelhouse anyway. In fact, most of the strategies I would like the organization to employ aren't in Melvin's wheelhouse, he's just not a good long-term planner, he doesn't trade for the type of talent I'd like to acquire, he doesn't seem to have any kind of affinity for prospect talent, and he's too willing to spend money on what I would consider to be the wrong types of players. What I mean is that his track record in FA is pretty abysmal outside of the contracts he signed with our homegrown talent.

 

Looper, Davis, Gagne, Helms, Hall, McGehee, Clark, Suppan, Hoffman, and Hawkins all either stunk, got injured, or both. The only saving grace in that bunch was McGehee thinking he was better than he was and turning down the contract. I could probably even throw Saito in that bunch has only pitched about half the season and wasn't a very flexible reilever. The Cameron and Wolf signings were pretty decent, but the rest... yikes.

 

From all those trades for rental players, outside of Sabathia (and it took some great fortune in 2008 anyway) which player pushed us into the post season? K-Rod's 29 innings were the difference last year? What value did Linebrink actually bring? Or Lopez? Where's any tangible long-term benefit to the organization as whole from any of the rental players including Sabathia that we've acquired. Sure those that only care about what happens to the team in the finite window of a current MLB season will like the move, but outside of that narrow scope, there's literally nothing tangible on the field. One could maybe argue some benefits such as renewed vigor from the fanbase, additional ticket sales, and so on, but those are concepts that are very difficult to adequately qualify for us without the actual numbers readily available. I working almost exclusively from depth of organizational talent perspective, rental player deals have netted us basically nothing, the draft picks haven't even worked out even with a good season of Morgan coming out of one. In truth we spent those assets to band-aid a problem only to have it come back around and continue to be a problem in the following seasons.

 

Melvin's best trades have been the salary dump or change of scenery moves where he didn't have to give up much to acquire a piece and even then, like K-Rod's case, his contribution wasn't ever going to be enough to push us over the top. Lawrie for Marcum was an overpay in terms of talent if not in production, as was giving up all we did for only 2 years of Greinke if he's not resigned. How does it make sense to continually acquire CFs when we have greater needs elsewhere?

 

Our competitive window isn't defined by the contract length of players on the MLB roster, it's defined by our depth of talent as an organization, and that's where the disconnect comes between me and those people I regularly debate with on this forum comes from. They tend to view ideas from a purely MLB perspective, sometimes from the perspective of a single MLB season, and I'm looking to build the deepest organization possible and don't care about taking a small step back at MLB in one season if it gives me a better chance to win for the following 3. There is no "all in" for me, I won't say ever, but certainly not since 2006, I've always been looking to acquire solutions that we'd control for at least 3 seasons, anything less is just a temporary patch.

[KCBrewerfan34]

Crew, I think you have to be able to determine when to "go for it" and when not to. By trading for Greinke and Marcum that basically got us within 2 games of the World Series (miracle by St. Louis to even be in the playoffs). I don't see how as a GM you can look back at that and say I'm going to pass on those deals. While I agree having a great farm system is key, prospects are also very unreliable, who's to say those players in the Greinke deal will ever amount to much. The Sabathia deal was a home run (Brantley & LaPorta). While I reading your diatribe I thought here's a guy stuck in the small market mentality (like many on the board). If competitive, the Brewers can carry a $100 million payroll. If they put a bad product and don't spend then you'll see attandance moving back towards 2 million. The one I would love to have back is the Marcum deal, we would have Lawrie at 3B and we wouldn't have the Ramirez situation (im hopeful he will get hot like he seems to do). One could argue without Marcum we don't make the playoffs, so thats life of a GM you have to look at alot of things and make alot of judgements but to just approach things one way would really be shortsighted and not serving your team the way it should be served. With that all being said I'm glad you're not our GM

[TURBO]

I would make that Sabathia trade 100 times over.

[RockCoCougars]

I don't see how anyone can second guess the Sabathia trade. Melvin basically stole him for an ordinary singles hitting OF, a busted power prospect and a noodle-armed pitcher.

[DHonks]

I think lawrence has a Sheffield-like career of being praised for talent/success, then wearing out his welcome and performing poorly only to have a revival in the next city. Then the cycle will repeat itself all over again as he'll burn bridges throughout the game

[endaround]

The chance Lawrie has anywhere near the career Sheffield had is very slim. Right now the hope should be a Jason Heyward type rebound.

[KCBrewerfan34]

Did I see someone say Lawrie is going to be better than braun LOL (that was worth a chuckle).

[Invader3K]

I don't see how anyone can second guess the Sabathia trade. Melvin basically stole him for an ordinary singles hitting OF, a busted power prospect and a noodle-armed pitcher.

 

The minor league system would look a lot better if we had gotten the comp picks we theoretically should have for Sabathia and Sheets, but that is not Melvins fault.

 

Crew wants the Brewers to be run like the Rays, and it's not going to happen. I would say our long term future is much brighter than theirs anyway.

[3and2Fastball]

The chance Lawrie has anywhere near the career Sheffield had is very slim.

 

Depends on how good Lawrie's Steroid Dealer is and how good the masking agents are....

 

I apologize, I couldn't resist. And no, I'm not accusing Lawrie of using steroids, just taking a shot at Sheffield the juicer

[Invader3K]

Is Lawrie pretty good at air mailing throws over the first baseman?

[theavrock]

Dude is OPS'ing less than .700 right now. I highly doubt Lawrie ends with a career OPS less than .700 but Braun had an OPS over 1.000 over his first 500 AB's.

 

Maybe we should hold off on the comparisons to Braun.

[Hammer]

Where did the Zack Greinke agent talk go? That is way more pressing than Lawrie vs Braun IMO....

[danzig6767]

I don't see how anyone can second guess the Sabathia trade. Melvin basically stole him for an ordinary singles hitting OF, a busted power prospect and a noodle-armed pitcher.

 

The minor league system would look a lot better if we had gotten the comp picks we theoretically should have for Sabathia and Sheets, but that is not Melvins fault.

 

Crew wants the Brewers to be run like the Rays, and it's not going to happen. I would say our long term future is much brighter than theirs anyway.

 

It can't be forgotten either that Doug Melvin has a boss, he's not owner and GM like Jerry Jones with the Cowboys.

 

We have no idea how much influence Attanasio has on the direction Doug takes from year to year. Listening to him in interviews, he clearly loves seeing 3 million fans each year and isn't shy about being aggressive to potentially win in the present from year to year.

 

Granted, i don't get the sense that Attanasio is a really meddling type of sports owner as some are, but i don't think it's some Packers type of situation either where Ted Thompson pretty much doesn't have anyone from ownership asking about his plans from year to year.

[HiAndTight]

[quote name="HiAndTight"

I don't think Melvin's really done too bad with rentals.

 

Which rental do you take issue with?

 

So I don't understand the argument you're making.

 

I've literally covered this dozens of times in previous posts but here it is again. It doesn't matter who the player traded for is' date=' it's the idea that a short term solution is the correct or proper solution for what ails a team. We went from an organization with no MLB talent and stocked farm system to an organization with MLB and a barren farm system.

 

The last 2 drafts have somewhat corrected that problem, but you can't continually trade away prospects for short term value and sustain anything. My problem with rental players is the short return on investment. If would have ever gotten to the point where we had a good MLB team with a hole here or there caused by injury and a stocked minor league system my tune would have changed. However all Melvin has done is continually band-aid the roster without actually addressing any holes long-term, well until we signed Ramirez to that backloaded albatross of a contract, but that wasn't a positive development from where I'm sitting.

 

It's not about what the players we've traded have done, they had a specific value at the time they were traded. The majority of trade analysis you'll see on this forum is the player traded vs the player have performed like this, so we won the trade. It's not that simple, trading for Sabathia directly led to the crappy rotations in 2009 and 2010, the hole we had in the rotation 2008 still existed even with Gallardo coming back because we lost Sheets and Sabathia. It wasn't ever actually addressed, it was just temporarily patched. I would have rather bundled that prospect value from any number of trades into a trade for younger, long-term solutions rather than selling 2-4 prospects for a quick fixes here and there. The market in baseball has it's shifts and through that 2005-2009 time frame there were many teams chasing offense, over time the market has slowly shifted back towards pitching as teams have recognized how far the Rays and Giants went on basically just their pitching.

 

I'd like the Brewers to be where the Rays and Rangers are, very good MLB teams with loaded farm systems. It's certainly possible to have it both ways and it's not prospect hoarding or whatever other negative term people have thrown around on this forum over the years, it's fundamentally sound organization building. I still think prospect for prospect deals are the best way to cheaply acquire young impact talent, but those deals have become few and far between, and they aren't in Melvin's wheelhouse anyway. In fact, most of the strategies I would like the organization to employ aren't in Melvin's wheelhouse, he's just not a good long-term planner, he doesn't trade for the type of talent I'd like to acquire, he doesn't seem to have any kind of affinity for prospect talent, and he's too willing to spend money on what I would consider to be the wrong types of players. What I mean is that his track record in FA is pretty abysmal outside of the contracts he signed with our homegrown talent.

 

Looper, Davis, Gagne, Helms, Hall, McGehee, Clark, Suppan, Hoffman, and Hawkins all either stunk, got injured, or both. The only saving grace in that bunch was McGehee thinking he was better than he was and turning down the contract. I could probably even throw Saito in that bunch has only pitched about half the season and wasn't a very flexible reilever. The Cameron and Wolf signings were pretty decent, but the rest... yikes.

 

From all those trades for rental players, outside of Sabathia (and it took some great fortune in 2008 anyway) which player pushed us into the post season? K-Rod's 29 innings were the difference last year? What value did Linebrink actually bring? Or Lopez? Where's any tangible long-term benefit to the organization as whole from any of the rental players including Sabathia that we've acquired. Sure those that only care about what happens to the team in the finite window of a current MLB season will like the move, but outside of that narrow scope, there's literally nothing tangible on the field. One could maybe argue some benefits such as renewed vigor from the fanbase, additional ticket sales, and so on, but those are concepts that are very difficult to adequately qualify for us without the actual numbers readily available. I working almost exclusively from depth of organizational talent perspective, rental player deals have netted us basically nothing, the draft picks haven't even worked out even with a good season of Morgan coming out of one. In truth we spent those assets to band-aid a problem only to have it come back around and continue to be a problem in the following seasons.

 

Melvin's best trades have been the salary dump or change of scenery moves where he didn't have to give up much to acquire a piece and even then, like K-Rod's case, his contribution wasn't ever going to be enough to push us over the top. Lawrie for Marcum was an overpay in terms of talent if not in production, as was giving up all we did for only 2 years of Greinke if he's not resigned. How does it make sense to continually acquire CFs when we have greater needs elsewhere?

 

Our competitive window isn't defined by the contract length of players on the MLB roster, it's defined by our depth of talent as an organization, and that's where the disconnect comes between me and those people I regularly debate with on this forum comes from. They tend to view ideas from a purely MLB perspective, sometimes from the perspective of a single MLB season, and I'm looking to build the deepest organization possible and don't care about taking a small step back at MLB in one season if it gives me a better chance to win for the following 3. There is no "all in" for me, I won't say ever, but certainly not since 2006, I've always been looking to acquire solutions that we'd control for at least 3 seasons, anything less is just a temporary patch.[/quote]

 

 

Well, first of all, I don't read everyone of your posts, so forgive me that I haven't read previous rants on how everything the Brewers do is wrong. I mean...I've certainly read plenty. I've read how you knew how bad of a pick Jimmy Nelson was when you cited Jungman as another example of a terrible pick based on your analysis(which I'm not quite certain how many games it was that you scouted him).

 

Anyway....

So you want to be like the Rangers(who can spend with just about anyone now) or the Rays who are the model franchise in all of MLB in terms of developing from within, but also have roughly half the money to spend that we do.

 

 

Your criteria of who "pushed," us into the playoffs is an insincere one as it's not possible to answer. Did Morgan, one of those players you'er referring to "push," us into the 2nd round?

 

You barely touched on my actual questions other than saying you'd rather have long term solutions rather than short term. I'm quite certain Melvin feels the same way, and on MLB2012 or whatever game there is, you can certainly do that, however long terms solutions cost a lot more money. You didn't like Jerry Hairston Jr. last year for almost nothing, or K-Rod, or Lopez who hit .300+ with us the first time he was here and was a very good addition, all of whom cost almost nothing.

 

The vast majority of the players we've traded away have proven they wouldn't have made our farm system like the Rangers or the Rays. We've traded away exactly one elite prospect, and I stated initially I agreed with you.

 

But this post didn't answer my question, it just went into a extraordinarily long rant about how you don't want to make short term trades, trading away middling prospects the vast majority of the time for players who fit a particular need. And really it was just complaining in general about the Brewers and their entire organization.

 

 

And you're not really along in wanting a good Major League team, AND this great budding farm system, which as you stated has been remedied the last couple years to a great degree. So it was depleted in order to acquire two pitchers who have had a great deal of success and led to us winning 96 games and a playoff series last year for the first time since 1982, and put us in a position this year to be successful. Things obviously haven't worked out, partially due to injuries to our starting SS, 1B, 2 starting pitchers, as well as others.

 

But I don't know how that means you make this absolute decision that you don't acquire short term solutions to problems.

 

And by the way, I'm curious how you'd go about finding these long term solutions at these positions AND have a elite farm system? You want long term solutions, you're going to have to give up MORE of your farm system.

 

 

So, what it comes down to is you're upset about the trades the Brewers have made, and you support your argument by asking which player along pushed us into the playoffs.

 

You then go on to talk about how you want an elite farm system, yet ignore the fact that, again, the vast majority of the players we've traded away for the short term fixes have been players who would be virtually irrelevant to the team now.

 

The players we have traded away who'd make a dent in our system now, Lawrie(whom I agreed with) wasn't a short term fix, it was two full years. Escobar, Odorizzi, Cain and Jeffress for Greinke. Both players we'll likely recoup some of the losses from.

 

Not to mention we've recouped some of the losses from other players.

 

So if you're going to admonish Melvin for "rentals," a reason other than, I want to be like the Rangers or Rays and we need long term fixes isn't exactly a valid answer IMO. It's just incredibly negative...which is a overwhelming trend I see.

 

Hey, I'd love to have a great farm system and at the same time have long term solutions along the big league level, but I think given what he's started with, and what has likely been some meddling by the owner such as the Suppan signing and possibly the Ramirez signing, Melvin's done a pretty damn good job given his resources of doing both of what you're talking about. I think we've got a farm system that's rapidly ascending, and should get better with what's bound to be more players entering into it in the next couple years with Marcum, K-Rod, Greinke, and others leaving, presumably leaving behind at least a few prospects and or picks.

[HiAndTight]

I would make that Sabathia trade 100 times over.

 

I would actually say that's the one area(well, two with Lawrie) that I agree with him on is the Sabathia trade. I was pretty vocal at the time about preferring to trade for Greinke for much less as KC had him on the trade market before re-signing him to that 4 year 38 million dollar contract(or after, I just know he was controlled for a while).

 

I also agree that the Lawrie trade was a terrible one.

 

But the chance of either type of trade happening this year is next to nill, so saying you don't want Melvin to trade for a "rental," playler doesn't make sense to me. The fact is the type of rental player he'd be looking for is a Jarry Hairston type rental player, a utility guy, a Clint Barmes if he gets it together...etc..etc...

Maybe we should hold off on the comparisons to Braun.

 

And why is that? For what reason? He's been compared to Rogers Hornsby by(again I believe it was Sickels who said he had that type of ceiling). He's been compared to Harper and Trout.

 

He's certainly surpassed Braun's minor league career when you consider age and where each player came from.

 

Now you add in the fact that one plays below average left field, and the other has a very good chance to be a very good 3rd basemen and has been thus far(which to me was always the logical position to play him).

 

And as for the "hope for a Heyward like rebound," why don't we wait until he has a Heyward like downfall first, THEN lets again keep in mind HE'S in the big leagues right now and Braun was in HiA and AA at the same age.

 

So yeah, I think that Lawrie playing good defense at 3rd base and his incredible tools with the bat most certainly give him the chance to be as valuable a player as Braun if not more so.

 

I understand Brewers fans though who want to compare him to Sheffield...which is ridiculous as Sheff tanked to get out of Milwaukee and nobody has EVER accused Lawrie of being immature.

 

I feel like this is the same as when I said 3 years ago we'd be around 95 million last yaer, 100+ this year and at 110 next year in payroll and was met with the same mocking. That's cool. I'm going out on a limb here and I think the Lawrie stuff is overblown. I'll remind the poster who made the roid comment that Bruan's actually the guy who tested positive. Though I realize it was sarcasm.

 

I think Brewers fans understandably don't want to acknowledge how impressive Lawrie has been thus far as it makes the trade even worse. I get how great Braun is. Love the guy, think it's a pretty fair be he ends up the best Brewer of all time.

 

And yet Lawrie's playing great defense right now, struggling to hit, and he's still put up a 1.3 WAR to Braun's 2.6 despite the fact that...AGAIN, Lawrie's 22, the age...again...Braun was when he was in A+ and AA.

 

So yes, I think it's entirely possible given his defensive ability and his potential with the bat, that he could end up with peak years better than Ryan Braun.

 

The next few posts will undoubtedly tell me how crazy I am, but I believe the next few years will prove me right. Only time will tell.

 

 

Still, I agree with most of you regarding TCO7's comments...or most of them.

[crewcrazy]

This thread's gone so far off the rails, it can't be saved. If you want to keep the Lawrie stuff going, feel free to start a new topic. Same goes for the Greinke contract talk.