Doug Melvin - Senior Level Executive

[The stache]

I didn't say anything disingenuous if you actually had read what i said

 

"Simply to much for a baseball GM to do along with running a big league club, which is why scouting directors in baseball are so incredibly important. Make a bad hire as happened with Seid and the impact to a farm system can be devastating. It was arguably the biggest mistake Melvin made in his whole tenure as GM and it not only badly hurt the team, it hurt him as a general manager when the minor league talent pipeline mostly dried up."

 

As you should have seen, i said that hiring Seid was arguably the biggest mistake Melvin made in his whole tenure as GM. That hire did serious damage to the farm system as Seid made to many mistakes in the draft compared to good picks.

 

I haven't given it too much thought, but I don't think you'll get any disagreement from me. Seid was given his position in 2008. When it became clear that the decision was not working out, what was done? Nothing.

 

I don't wish to speak ill of a man that has passed away. I've never heard a negative word about him as a person. But it is clear to me, to you, and more than a few other Brewer fans, I'm sure, that he should have been removed from his position some time ago. When that was not done, who should receive the blame?

 

Doug Melvin might be the nicest man on the face of Earth. I don't know. But as a GM, he has failed. I'm sorry, guys. I'm never going to sugar coat it. He has had plenty...plenty of time to completely shape this franchise. And we're terrible.

 

The longer you let a cancer fester, the more devastating it becomes. Each day that we delay the necessary action to remove Doug Melvin and his appointees is that much longer the franchise, and Brewers fans everywhere, will have to suffer.

[The stache]

 

The problem with the Brewers has not been Melvin's inability to get good OBP players. The problem with the Brewers has been drafting and evaluating pitching. This has been a problem since Jack Z got here and has been a problem since he has left.

 

Bingo. Pitching, and to a somewhat lesser extent, a lack of sound defense, has sunk this team. But this shouldn't have been a surprise. He'd been the GM in Texas, and did the same thing. The Rangers could hit the ball as well as any other team in baseball. But their pitching and defense was terrible (maybe slightly better than ours). At least the Rangers had Ivan Rodriguez.

[Thurston Fluff]

I think some of the criticism of pitching, while fair, is outdated. A team that could realistically field an entirely homegrown starting rotation if they wanted to cannot be all that bad at drafting them. They used to be terrible at it but have done a much better job of developing pitching in the past several years. While they may not have hit on an ace yet they sure have hit on some good mid rotation pitchers. A couple upper rotation ones as well.

[logan82]

It's not about just having pitching. It's about elite pitching. Same with position players. We need to produce elite talent internally. Elite talent is what separates and average team from a good team.

[Thurston Fluff]

But he has found elite talent. Jonathan Lucroy and Carlos Gomez are two of the very best at their positions. Braun is back to being one of the best RF in the game. Isn't that elite enough? Exactly how many is one team supposed to be able to develop at a time? How many teams actually draft and develop elite talent on both sides of the ball at the same time? You only have so many picks and other teams get to pick some too. Look at the Cubs. They did very well drafting and developing elite offensive talent. Yet they didn't have much pitching coming up with it. So little in fact they had to buy their ace. What would the Cubs future look like if they had to trade three of their prospects to get the level of pitcher they just bought in FA? Is the fact we cannot buy our ace and had to trade for one supposed to show Melvin isn't as good as Epstein? Of is it simply the situations are not the same? Which once again goes back to why it would be wise to keep him on in some capacity. he already knows the limitations of this club. While he may not have the answer as to how to succeed year in and year out I think he is probably closer than anyone we can find to get us there.

 

Just to update Arcia has been named Baseball America's 8th best prospect. If that isn't elite talent I am not sure what is.

[JJHardy7]

He got the Brewers Weeks, Hardy, Hart, Fielder, Braun, Gallardo, Odorizzi, Cain, Sheets, Brantley, Lucroy and Lawrie in the draft. That's probably close to as good as it gets.

 

How much would our payroll be if we had the active players above with the Brewers still? We'd need a bit more pitching, but it would be manageable, right?

 

I think the bigger issue with the Brewers will be the owner. I think this may be setup as Herb Kohl 2.0 or a sale of the Brewers unless someone can convince Mark a complete rebuild is needed we'll be doing the same stupid things. Free agency the past few years has really hurt this franchise. Instead of signing stop gap guys (I was and still am all for going for it the year with Grenke & Co), save that money for years where you have the talent to go for it. The Garza signing still makes me sick...

[markedman5]

Tom H says it isn't likely to be Montgomery......http://www.jsonline.com/sports/brewers/is-transition-to-new-brewers-gm-underway-b99535310z1-313998381.html

[Thurston Fluff]

I didn't get the reasoning behind that. I seriously doubt Mark is going to hold his current job against his chances of a promotion if he is worthy of it. What does it matter what role he is in now or how far along in it he is? If he's the best he's the best. Stagnating a guy's career is not the way to attract talent to the organization. Not to mention makes him available for another organization who wants him as GM. Then you have to start over anyway and lose the most qualified GM for your franchise. The only prerequisite should be if he is the most qualified GM for this franchise.

[MrTPlush]

I didn't get the reasoning behind that. I seriously doubt Mark is going to hold his current job against his chances of a promotion if he is worthy of it. What does it matter what role he is in now or how far along in it he is? If he's the best he's the best. Stagnating a guy's career is not the way to attract talent to the organization. Not to mention makes him available for another organization who wants him as GM. Then you have to start over anyway and lose the most qualified GM for your franchise. The only prerequisite should be if he is the most qualified GM for this franchise.

 

I got the understanding they want him running the drafting/development. I also took the part of him being early into his job as a hint they don't think he is ready to be a GM. So probably not the best option.

[gregmag]

Note the language that Tom H used about the Montgomery scenario: "aren't expected to." Always beware the passive voice, guys. That quote provides no actual information.

 

People keep making the Mark A - Kohl comparison, and I agree that's how Mark A has been. But he's smart, and smart people learn from experience. I can see the logic of trying to compete every year given the team's situation from '08 on, even if I don't fully agree with it. But last year was a world-historic collapse, and the start of this year confirmed what a thin margin we were working on. My hope is that Mark A gets the need to rebuild now. We'll see.

[trwi7]

I got the understanding they want him running the drafting/development. I also took the part of him being early into his job as a hint they don't think he is ready to be a GM. So probably not the best option.

 

That's the sense I got too. They know they need quality amateur scouting to bring them the players that will make them contenders again and they know Montgomery is really good at it so they'd like to keep him there.

[3and2Fastball]

Tom H says it isn't likely to be Montgomery......http://www.jsonline.com/sports/brewers/is-transition-to-new-brewers-gm-underway-b99535310z1-313998381.html

 

 

From the above linked article: "Attanasio's son Mike, an MIT graduate, has been involved in the Brewers' evolving analytics department, providing a hint the club will follow that trend."

 

That is, sincerely, the most encouraging thing I've read about the Brewers this season.

[xisxisxis]

From the above linked article: "Attanasio's son Mike, an MIT graduate, has been involved in the Brewers' evolving analytics department, providing a hint the club will follow that trend."

 

That is, sincerely, the most encouraging thing I've read about the Brewers this season.

 

So what's encouraging? The fact that Attanasio's son is involved or that the brewers actually have an analytics department?

 

If Mike has helped his dad so far, I think we need 2 less Attanasio's involved with the Brewers and how is the analytics department "evolving"? Is it evolving like the green mass on the top of my 3 month old sour cream is evolving? Is it going from single cell to multicellular organisms like Doug Melvin? Or has it evolved into a thinking, communicating, multicellular organism that learns from it's mistakes and the mistakes of others?

 

I really like the MIT grads who can get full time jobs in companies where their relatives don't own a piece of the pie..... Not so much those that use nepotism to get their gig....

[Thurston Fluff]

So what's encouraging? The fact that Attanasio's son is involved or that the brewers actually have an analytics department?

 

Actually Melvin has always used analytics. As far as Attanasio's son being involved I am always leery that. Hard to imagine it was an earned role or he was simply the best man available. But who knows? Maybe it will work out as well as Sal Bando hiring his kid to coach third base or Bud Selig hiring his daughter and son in law to run things.

[FVBrewerFan]

The issue has been drafting and developing major league talent- especially pitching. Analytics won't help you figure out whether an 18 year old OF is a better pick than a 23 year old college pitcher. Well, ok, analytics can help marginally.

[3and2Fastball]

Meant to say that I'm happy to see the Brewers heading into a direction that much involves analytics and sabermetrics. If Doug Melvin has been using a lot of analytics, he sure fooled me.

 

The free-swingin' Brewers of the Melvin era are pretty much the antithesis of the Sabermetric Money Ball trend

[Thurston Fluff]

I think it is easy to confuse the use of traditional scouting in combination with more modern analytics as not being a sabre oriented team. There is nothing wrong with incorporating both. In fact I would argue it is the best system.

The wave of pitching we've seen coming up lately is far better than anything we have seen in pretty much our entire history. Certainly since the 80's. It has it's genesis in that sort of mold. Melvin did a comprehensive study into why he failed to develop pitching for so long. He set about evaluating successful pitchers for key similarities. He based success on numbers. He also looked at health issues. He broke down pitching mechanics, body type and workload to find out what patterns he could find in the data to set up a new way of finding and developing pitchers. The end result was the body stress analysis and an organization wide implementation of a set system to find a particular type of pitcher and have them pitch a particular way based on the results of that study. The final touches of that came when they hired Rick Peterson as pitching coach. Obviously to do that you have to look at pitchers mechanics (scouting) along with results (sabre.) That could not be accomplished by just using one or the other.

[bball123h]

I think it is easy to confuse the use of traditional scouting in combination with more modern analytics as not being a sabre oriented team. There is nothing wrong with incorporating both. In fact I would argue it is the best system.

 

I think this is dead on. You still need both, working in concert, to really succeed. On the amateur side, let your analytics staff find potential diamonds in the rough (based on your incoming HS/College data), and then pass those potential diamonds down to your scouts. This is a great method to clean up later in the draft on players other teams may not have even scouted (assuming your analytics are solid).

[JohnBriggs12]

So what's encouraging? The fact that Attanasio's son is involved or that the brewers actually have an analytics department?

 

Actually Melvin has always used analytics. As far as Attanasio's son being involved I am always leery that. Hard to imagine it was an earned role or he was simply the best man available. But who knows? Maybe it will work out as well as Sal Bando hiring his kid to coach third base or Bud Selig hiring his daughter and son in law to run things.

 

Chris Bando is Sal's kid brother, not his kid and played 9 seasons in the major leagues. They are 12 years apart in age, so understandable.

[jerichoholicninja]

The issue has been drafting and developing major league talent- especially pitching. Analytics won't help you figure out whether an 18 year old OF is a better pick than a 23 year old college pitcher. Well, ok, analytics can help marginally.

 

Exactly. They've done pretty well on the Major League level acquiring the right talent, aging expensive pitchers and pointless washed up veterans aside. What the organization needs now is a guy to get the farm system back on track and removing Montgomery from that role after less than a year seems like a bad idea.

[Thurston Fluff]

Whether it is his son or brother the point still remains giving family members a job usually doesn't work very well. I could see helping them get a job in baseball. I'm even ok with giving them a low level job to get their career's started. I just think it is better not to have them in the same organization in any meaningful role. Too many issues outside of anyone's control to think it can work even if they are good at the job. Let alone if they are not.

[jerichoholicninja]

The article said "involved in." I agree hiring family isn't always the best move but it's not like he's the head guy or developed the department, from what I can tell. He could just as well be doing data entry or only on retainer so Mark can call him and ask him to explain some of this new fangled techno-babble to him.

[Thurston Fluff]

If he is being mentioned in an article about revamping the operation and who the new GM might be I think it is unlikely he is being considered for a nothing job. That assumes of course that he is actually being considered for a role at all and not just a bit of speculation on the reporter's part.

[jerichoholicninja]

If he is being mentioned in an article about revamping the operation and who the new GM might be I think it is unlikely he is being considered for a nothing job. That assumes of course that he is actually being considered for a role at all and not just a bit of speculation on the reporter's part.

 

It was probably mentioned because it was of some human interest. No one cares if Joe Schmoe Smarty Pants from MIT is being considered for a job in the Brewers analytics department but if it's the owner's son then that's something a reporter is almost certainly going to put in the story.

[ewitkows]

Was listening to inside pitch today on XM. Jim Bowden (ex GM) is the host and was talking about how deals go down when he was a GM and now. He mentioned that 2 gm's were dinosaurs and don't respond to texts and want to do every deal on the phone, while all the younger guys want to email and text. The 2 dinosaurs Doug Melvin and Walt Jocketty