How does a Brewers rotation of Adam Wainwright, Jered Weaver, Madison Bumgarner and Yovani Gallardo sound to you?

[3and2Fastball]

Yes, our lack of quality draft picks of pitchers has hurt our franchise very badly.

 

How does a rotation of Adam Wainwright, Jered Weaver, Madison Bumgarner and Yovanni Gallardo sound to you? Pretty amazing, huh? Well of course hindsight is 20/20 but it could've been possible:

 

In 1994 we drafted Antone Williamson when Nomar Garciaparra and Paul Konerko were available

 

In 1995 we drafted Geoff Jenkins when Roy Halladay was available!

 

In 1997 we drafted Kyle Peterson when Lance Berkman was available!!!!

 

In 1998 we drafted J. M. Gold when CC Sabathia & Brad Lidge were available!!!!

 

In 1999 we drafted Ben Sheets

 

In 2000 we picked David Krynzel over Chase Utley and Adam Wainwright

 

In 2001 we picked Mike Jones over Aaron Heilman

 

In 2002 we picked Prince Fielder

 

Drafting Weeks in 2003 was a pretty solid pick, even in retrospect. Who else should we have taken? Paul Maholm? Chad Cordero?

 

In 2004 we picked Mark Rogers when Jered Weaver was available. D'oh!!!

 

In 2005 we picked Ryan Braun

 

In 2006 we picked Jeremy Jeffress over Ian Kennedy, Daniel Bard, Bryan Morris

 

In 2007 we picked Matt LaPorta over Madison Bumgarner

 

In 2008 we picked Brett Lawrie. There would've been no need to trade Lawrie had we properly drafted pitching previous to that pick!

 

In 2010 we drafted Dylan Covey over Zach Lee, Jesse Biddle

[SoupTown]

My pain is picking a Maine fireballer in 2004 over a Texas fireballer. Only the Brewers could think Maine high school form was better than Texas high school form. I wonder if the Crew will be opening up acadamies in Greenland, Iceland, and Scotland. Would one call it the 'new' Moneyball?

[Patrick425]

My guess is you could look at a majority of other teams and come up with similar scenarios.

[Menace II Sobriety]

These coulda, woulda, shoulda posts are great in retrospect but they don't mean anything. You can go down a list and look at it but without knowing the true possibilities they are pointless. This same post is made every year or so on this board.

 

For starters the Brewers drafted Nomar in the 5th round in 2001 and failed to sign him. Why would they draft him again?

 

Jenkins while not an all time great anchored the team through several bleak years and was an all-star. If you could get that kind of production out of every first rounder you would be a great GM.

 

The funny thing is Braun was the third 3rd baseman taken at the fifth pick, and Fielder was a reach as well. Weeks was the consensus at #2. Rogers went exactly where he was slotted. It's hard to knock the Covey pick considering he had an illness that even he didn't know about.

 

 

The main thing that most people miss is that the Brewers were set up to secure the franchise one if not two blue chippers in the 2011 draft. They were set on Baez and Lindor, planned on getting one of them, dreamed of getting both of them. Unfortunately both of those guys had a lot of helium in the week leading up to the draft and they got neither of them. In turn they got two pitchers who were safer picks who fell.

 

Also Corey Hart was an 11th round pick. So every fan on every team could make a post about their 10th round selection in 2000 and how they missed out on a 2 time all star.

 

I didn't look up the stats but I think Coulter only had 41 AB's his senior year. That is as much of a risk pick as Rogers and could be a huge win where he was picked.

[Ennder]

My guess is you could look at a majority of other teams and come up with similar scenarios.

 

Not the majority, every single one of them. Prospects are a crapshoot.

 

Also a lot of great pitchers are a product of their park more than being great. Weaver would not be an ace if he had signed with Milwaukee. Weaver has a career 3.82 ERA on the road and has built his ace status almost completely on his park. He'd still be a good pitcher but he would be more Gallardo and less of a true ace.

 

The team has failed at drafting pitching to be sure but this kind of study is going to show every team as bad at drafting. That 2001 line is just laughable, yeah we really missed out on Aaron Heilman!

[torts]

Oh, this again

[RobDeer 45]

Sorry but this is really hard to take serious. You could do this for every team in every sport. Baseball is the hardest to draft, so I don't know what you expect.

[Oxy]

Yeah, there's two hall-of-fame caliber players in that list among a few other all-stars (and other all-stars not listed). I don't think anybody can complain about he Brewers drafts from 1997 to 2008, which were among the best in the league at drafting position players.

 

Starting in 2009 however....

[Ennder]

Yeah, there's two hall-of-fame caliber players in that list among a few other all-stars (and other all-stars not listed). I don't think anybody can complain about he Brewers drafts from 1997 to 2008, which were among the best in the league at drafting position players.

 

Starting in 2009 however....

 

 

Actually the last few drafts have been really solid considering how little we had to work with for top end picks. The 2009 draft looks to have 6 potential major league players in it. The 2010 has at least 2. It is too early to tell just how good or bad these are. We have a very deep minor league system right now, it is just deep in mediocrity but it is deep in prospects that should make the majors, they just aren't likely to be stars.

[GenoSeligPrieb]

I can complain! It's what I do.

 

As Ennder wrote, of course every team has multiple instances of draft regret. But I don't see Tampa regretting as much. St. Louis, unfortunately, doesn't, either. Arizona...San Francisco...Texas...Washington...the list goes on, where these talent evaluators aren't as responsible for so many broken-down high school arms, wasting draft class after draft class.

 

Since so few free agents want to come to Milwaukee, and trades require us to surrender prospects, you'd think our top priority would be to beef up our scouting and talent evaluators. The sad thing is, someone will answer that we ARE dedicating " x number of $ " to this already. But outside of those dark times when our last-place finishes yielded top picks (Braun, Fielder, Weeks), our draft guys don't seem able to make deft selections on late-1st rounders, and that's a huge problem

 

I'd like to see us target forward-thinking minds from Tampa, Texas, SF, etc. and overpay to bring their successful approaches to our front office, instead of guys responsible for picking all these banged-up teenagers who never make it.

[Ennder]

But I don't see Tampa regretting as much. St. Louis, unfortunately, doesn't, either. Arizona...San Francisco...Texas...Washington

 

The grass is always greener. Tampa has really struggled to draft impact hitting outside of Longoria, they are great at developing pitching it is more development than drafting. STL had a big gap in productive hitters from Pujols until this most recent class. Arizona is a team built largely around FA's right now. The Giants also have largely failed at drafting hitting with Posey being the big exception. Washington did get 2 once in a generation talents but again that was with #1 picks which we haven't had access to lately.

 

You want to know what most of those teams have in common. They keep their talent in the minors as long as they can. You do not want to start service time on a player until they are 100% ready or you plan on locking them up long term. The Cardinals rarely bring anyone up full time until they are age 24+

[homer]

But I don't see Tampa regretting as much. St. Louis, unfortunately, doesn't, either. Arizona...San Francisco...Texas...Washington

 

The grass is always greener. Tampa has really struggled to draft impact hitting outside of Longoria, they are great at developing pitching it is more development than drafting. STL had a big gap in productive hitters from Pujols until this most recent class. Arizona is a team built largely around FA's right now. The Giants also have largely failed at drafting hitting with Posey being the big exception. Washington did get 2 once in a generation talents but again that was with #1 picks which we haven't had access to lately.

 

You want to know what most of those teams have in common. They keep their talent in the minors as long as they can. You do not want to start service time on a player until they are 100% ready or you plan on locking them up long term. The Cardinals rarely bring anyone up full time until they are age 24+

 

 

I agree with you in principle but I also think Doug could do a better job turning the roster over. Tampa Bay does this with regularity - due to financial restrictions - and I think that helps them. Shields begat another set of prospects in Meyers and Odorizzi who will help the ballclub immensely for years to come. I wish Doug would go back to getting nuggets with every trade like he did in the early days. A guy like Randy Wolf could have gotten at least some future MLB bench fodder last off-season.

[Ennder]

I spoke to that in another thread homer but they don't trade these guys away until there is depth behind them. They traded Shields because they had a full rotation and they have Cobb and Archer coming. Every trade the Rays make is coming from a position of depth where talent is forcing its way into making the player expendable. You can blame the lack of depth on Melvin and it is probably fair but we just have not had depth where it made sense to trade players.

[GenoSeligPrieb]

I hear your counter-arguments, Ennder, and I have to admit, your points are pretty valid.

 

However, SF has turned these picks (plus, of course, some judicious trades and key FA signings) into 2 rings. The Nats DID benefit from similarly advantageous draft positions with 2 superstars. But their drafters were also responsible for Danny Espinosa (a 3rd rounder), Jordan Zimmermann (a 2nd rounder), Ian Desmond (3rd round), etc.

 

Tampa & Texas have built organizations where the talent keeps flowing, even as they sustain playoff teams nearly every season

 

You're right that development is also key.

 

Something must be wrong if we lose a Hart, a Ramirez, and the only corner infielder our minor leagues can feed us is a 30-year-old hack catcher like Blake Lalli.

[brwrsfan]

Well we HAVE other corner IF options, we just refuse to use them.

[Thurston Fluff]

Something must be wrong if we lose a Hart, a Ramirez, and the only corner infielder our minor leagues can feed us is a 30-year-old hack catcher like Blake Lalli.

 

Gamel, Green and Bianchi say hello. I doubt there is any team in the league capable of losing five infielders and not have to resort to the equivalent of a 30 year old backup catcher. The Brewers also have a pretty good possible replacement sitting in AAA if need be as well. I think he'd already be starting at first if Hart was gone all season.

[GenoSeligPrieb]

Yeah, but isn't Hunter Morris suddenly unable to hit the ball lately? In ST, he struggled mightily, which suggests his development has been blunted.

 

I also question why recently-decent relievers come to Milwaukee and suddenly become a pack of Obermuellers. Badenhop, Gonzalez, all caught the same virus when Axford started to cower in fright. Quarantine Axford! Keep him away from our new relievers! That, or keep Kranitz and Tunnell away from them

[Ennder]

Well the RP is because we target ERA instead of peripherals and because RP in general are just all over the place year to year unless they are elite.

 

As for CI we have a number of future major league at least backup options, we just aren't using them.

 

Taylor Green should be backup quality, he is hurt and we just don't use him.

Hunter Morris most likely is a future starting major league 1B.

Gamel is a starting 1B but has been hurt during his most important seasons and jerked around by Macha.

Halton possibly is going to be a major league 1B as well.

 

We have a ton of talent in the minors, we just don't grade well because it is league average or worse type talent instead of all star type talent.

[Oxy]

Well the RP is because we target ERA instead of peripherals and because RP in general are just all over the place year to year unless they are elite.

 

As for CI we have a number of future major league at least backup options, we just aren't using them.

 

Taylor Green should be backup quality, he is hurt and we just don't use him.

Hunter Morris most likely is a future starting major league 1B.

Gamel is a starting 1B but has been hurt during his most important seasons and jerked around by Macha.

Halton possibly is going to be a major league 1B as well.

 

We have a ton of talent in the minors, we just don't grade well because it is league average or worse type talent instead of all star type talent.

 

When the CEILING of a prospect is a bench player or just barely starting caliber MLBer, they are basically worthless. It is much more likely they will turn into a below replacement level player than be a contributor of any kind. Heck, Matt LaPorta's CEILING was a perennial 40 homer .600 SLG guy, and even he is now worthless. At the end of every spring training there are dozens of guys who could provide that kind of production for the league minimum.

 

I'm not exactly sure how having a bunch of guys like this translates into "tons of talent". It's possible that a late bloomer might develop into a very nice MLB player, but it doesn't happen all the often. If we are lucky, we might be able to get a season or two of a Casey McGehee or Brady Clark type of guy, but then we'll also have to endure it when the production falls back to their talent level.

 

EDIT: softened tone a bit.

[Thurston Fluff]

Yeah, but isn't Hunter Morris suddenly unable to hit the ball lately? In ST, he struggled mightily, which suggests his development has been blunted.

 

He may or may not pan out. The point is they had 4 legitimate possibilities beyond Hart and Ramirez which you seemed to forget about when saying the brewer lost two guys and had to resort to a 30 year old hack catcher. Sadly three of the four got hurt as well. No team overcomes that without a serious drop off.

 

When the CEILING of a prospect is a bench player or just barely starting caliber MLBer, they are basically worthless. It is much more likely they will turn into a below replacement level player than be a contributor of any kind.

 

Replacement level is the most abused term in baseball. If replacement level is what any old AAAA player can be expected to produce it should be virtually impossible to be below that level. I think sometimes people conflate replacement level with league average. League average is far more valuable than replacement level. Their ceiling may not be anything more than average but any legitimate prospect should be better than replacement level. Even if they are not league average they should still be better than replacement level. If a lot of players are below replacement level league wide I suggest we rethink what replacement level really is.

[Oxy]

 

Replacement level is the most abused term in baseball. If replacement level is what any old AAAA player can be expected to produce it should be virtually impossible to be below that level. I think sometimes people conflate replacement level with league average. League average is far more valuable than replacement level. Their ceiling may not be anything more than average but any legitimate prospect should be better than replacement level. Even if they are not league average they should still be better than replacement level. If a lot of players are below replacement level league wide I suggest we rethink what replacement level really is.

 

Below replacement level=washout of the league before you it free agency. This happens all the time, even to prospects whose ceilings are well above league average, let alone replacement level. When our minor league system is full of lots of guys whose ceiling projects somewhere between replacement level and league average, in actuality you are going to get a lot of guys who end up below replacement level. Alex Gonzalez and YuBet are basically replacement level players which is how we got them--and their production may very well be better than what could be achieved by a marginal prospect.

[TheCrew07]

I spoke to that in another thread homer but they don't trade these guys away until there is depth behind them. They traded Shields because they had a full rotation and they have Cobb and Archer coming. Every trade the Rays make is coming from a position of depth where talent is forcing its way into making the player expendable.

 

I'm not sure why you keep posting this misinformation.

 

Shields is the only homegrown player that TB has spun off.

 

TB built their pitching through trades, not through player development, and they didn't trade from a position of depth to acquire any of Garza, Jackson, or Kazmir.

 

TB trades veteran MLB players for prospects, looking for future long-term production.

 

Milwaukee trades prospects for short term veteran solutions, looking at short-term production.

 

If you want to be technical, both teams have traded from depth, as Milwaukee's positional depth made LaPorta and Brantley expendable. Depth isn't the central issue for either team, and hasn't been. Unless you want to talk about lacking pitching depth and how TB chose to address the situation vs Milwaukee's lack of pitching depth which to this point has not been resolved and in my opinion should have been Melvin's focus since day 1 on the job.

 

TB has been focused on building around long-term pitching solutions since Friedman took the helm, the Brewers have been playing whack-a-mole with roster holes since Melvin took the helm. The organizational philosophies of TB, PIT, SF, TX, or even STL are much different than what's going on here in WI. The Brewers have been and continue to operate on the exact opposite side of the coin than other competitive teams with a definable long-term strategy in place.

 

The rest is going to be a more drawn out analysis of that last paragraph:

 

It's not about depth, that's an oversimplification of very complex organization building issues, the issue is about maximizing the return from every asset within the organization. For example, I agree that locking up players early and buying out arbitration/FA years is a good idea, I've been championing it for a long time. However I vehemently argued against extending Axford and McGehee, in fact I wanted to flip both if possible, thank god they went year to year. Melvin has a taken a good concept for building a core player base and taken it to a bad place extending any player who's productive at the MLB level. Sometimes it will work out like with Lucroy and Braun, but for the most part it's been a rotten strategy... Helms, Clark, Hall, and I have serious concerns about Gomez for example.

 

Every GM is going to miss in Free Agency but Melvin's FA record is pretty terrible. I personally think FA is a trap where you end up paying a player more for what he's done in the past than what he's going to do in the future. Look at all of the dead money Melvin has spent in FA over the years and the total WAR accumulated for that money spent; Cameron is arguably his best signing of all those players, hopefully Lohse turns out as well. Regardless we are paying much more for marginal win that the league average.

 

Look objectively at every trade since the Sexson trade (which was about turning around a morbid MLB team since the farm system was loaded), where's any long-term impact pitching in any of those trades? Did he trade for equal value or move up in value like TB did to build their rotation? No, he's consistently taken players back with well defined floors, players who had a small likely hood of failure. Those are not bold moves, they are extremely conservative moves because they are all low risk, even trading for Marcum, Sabathia, and Greinke. All were low risk because the Brewers knew exactly what kind of performance they could expect from all 3 pitchers. Just because TH and other reporters call the moves "bold" in their stories doesn't make it so, none of Melvin's moves have carried much, if any risk. For example if the Brewers wouldn't have made the playoffs in 2008 everyone would have said, "at least he did something". Since they made the playoffs it's "we made the playoffs because of Sabathia". Either way the organization sells tickets and Melvin is the hero because he took action. Only a growing minority of posters opposed that trade on principle.

 

People are satisfied with the Greinke trade because we got Segura back, but so far we gave up 2 middle of the diamond performers, and one of the better pitching prospects in baseball for a year and half of Greinke and Segura. Would the Brewers have been better off long-term with Escobar at short, Cain in CF (who had already outplayed Gomez), and Odorizzi in the rotation with Peralta and Gallardo vs Segura at short and hoping for something out of Hellweg (I do believe he's at least a bullpen arm) and Pena? That's the difference in philosophy, in my personal life I invest in my future, I live below my means, and when it comes to the Brewers, I tend to take a similar approach, I'm looking to maximize assets with a long-term outlook.

 

I don't want to go back an rehash every Melvin trade, I've done that so many times it's not worth the time and effort to do it again. The evidence is pretty overwhelming, he's looking at the player's floor more than their ceiling and his marquees trade have all been for "sure things", all low risk. He's not bold, he's conservative, and he's never valued young pitching as much as he should. There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect was the mantra for many years in the early to mid part of 2000s, it was bogus then and it's bogus now. Young #2 pitchers have been and continue to be the best value in baseball, that should have been our trade focus, like it was for TB.

 

It's the same for the playoffs.. yes we made the playoffs twice with our positional talent, but was that the best we could do? Making the playoffs twice, winning the division once, and winning 1 playoff series? I would certainly hope that's not our ceiling as a franchise, but based on Melvin's entire history as a GM including his time in TX, it appears that his philosophy of "best production for the available cost" will limit us to that. Why? Because most of our holes have been due to never building any pitching depth, instead he spends money on pitchers in FA that best case have been slightly above average. If your rotation is average, your ceiling as a team is average, you aren't going to win a championship when you have to beat 3 teams who all have superior pitching to your own. That was the case in 2008 and again in 2011, we were out pitched and in some cases the other team played superior defense as well.

 

Maybe the most over-hyped Melvin attribute is his nugget mining when in fact all he does is continually bringing back players he already had a relationship with. He wasn't finding those guys (Kapler, Pods, Davis, etc), he's recycling them, just like he's doing with Yuni B right now. When looking objectively at Melvin's tenure what has he really done? He inherited Jack Z's entire staff (most of which are now gone), he inherited a ton of positional talent, but he knew he had no pitching and the best he could do for the rotation was to trade prospects for 4 for total years of 3 different proven MLB pitchers? To me that's an incredible waste, not just in resources by trading away assets for short-term solutions, but by failing to capitalize on all of the homegrown positional talent when we had it. 1 divisional crown and 1 playoff series win for all that talent? Just about any GM in baseball could have done that well with that much "free" talent any many would have gotten more back by simply just cycling the older talent out.

 

I would agree that this organization building stuff is all about depth, but Melvin doesn't build it like TB, STL, TX, or even SF. He spends his depth to temporarily patch up a hole until another leak springs, he's nothing like the best GMs in the game, he's wasteful, he's conservative, and he's not an organization builder. He's above average at patching the MLB roster from year to year and that's about it. The Brewers spend all their money on the back end of player development, the MLB roster, where everyone can see it like the large market teams. The best organizations are spending more on the front end where only us internet nerds who follow prospects see it to build up a talent base, building homegrown depth, and are saving money on the MLB roster. The better large market teams like Texas are maximizing the return spending on both ends, though spending wisely on the MLB roster, unlike the Yankees and Angels for example.

 

It's not about trading depth away, it's about building depth and cycling talent, and cycling talent is the key element that Melvin lacks as a GM. He's done it once and I actually really liked the second Greinke trade given the circumstances, I'm pretty high on Segura and Hellweg, but his hand was forced. He would have rather resigned Greinke than do anything else. If that had been the case now the difference would be Greinke instead of Lohse (who's pitched better than I had hoped, at least early) and some scrub to play SS in addition to the rest of our injuries, our positional roster would be more of a temporary disaster than it already is.

 

You can't predict when an injury will happen and that's why having a strong organization is more important than just having the best MLB roster possible. When you don't have depth 1 or 2 key injuries or under performing players and your season is sunk because you have no other options.

[homer]

I luv ya, dude, but the 500 word missives should be articles on the front page of the site.

[Crew2323]

I luv ya, dude, but the 500 word missives should be articles on the front page of the site.

 

It's actually 1,632 words, but who's counting. With that said, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I want to read his posts. But they're just too long.

[TooLiveBrew]

For starters the Brewers drafted Nomar in the 5th round in 2001 and failed to sign him. Why would they draft him again?

Simple typo, I know, but to keep others from being as confused as I was for a minute, that would be 1991.