Donovan: Brewers have had second worst offseason

[Ennder]

Hall was better than Hart in CF last season statistically and he looked better out there in the second half to be honest. I really don't expect him to be part of the problem. The problem with the defense is going to be the infield, Weeks and Braun.

 

Also can we just drop the Hall to 3B stuff, they aren't going to do it for player relation reasons. This isn't a video game and sometimes what the player wants does come into play. Hall was also a below average 3B when he did play there, he was good at SS but he had issues at 3B so it is not like he is a proven commodity there to begin with.

 

Until the financial equity in MLB changes I think all our "exciting" additions are going to be contained to every June.

 

Brewers have a mid range payroll now so blame finances isn't really gonna work anymore. Yeah they need to do a little more work on the revenue sharing etc but the majority of teams were still in the playoff hunt the last month of the season. Baseball's structure is one where big market teams pay more per win share than smaller markets so it is more even than it looks. The bottom 3 or 4 teams and top 3 or 4 teams are still out of hand but they are working on fixing it.

 

If you look at playoff teams here are their payroll ranks from last season.

 

NYY - 1

BOS - 2

ANA - 4

CLE - 23

 

CHN - 8

ARI - 26

PHI - 13

COL - 25

 

With SDP - 24 elimitated in a playoff and MIL - 19 being eliminated with 2 games to play.

[lukevan]

I don't think there's any way that we haven't improved this offseason. If somehow our new bullpen/starters can blow fewer than 16 3-run leads, we'll be better, even with Braun still at 3B and Gross/Dillon in LF. With a new 3B (.340 OBP) and Braun playing average defense in LF (likely one trade/FA acquisition will accomplish this), this team should be the favorite in the Central heading into 2008.

 

I think Brewer Boredom is just getting to a few of us.

[Invader3K]

I think overall it's addition by subtraction. The Kendall/Estrada thing is a wash, with Kendall maybe being an improvement because of intangibles. I think the bullpen will be better than last year...guys like Gagne just have too much to prove to have a bad year. Also, pay roll wise, a platoon of Gross/Dillon could potentially offer similar production to Jenkins at a more affordable price tag.

 

I still would love to see them add a proven "big bat", though, either at LF or 3B...I've been calling for that ever since Carlos Lee left the team. I still have to believe Melvin has one more acquisition or trade in the works...it's just gotten frustrating since we haven't heard any substantive rumors in quite a while now.

[Fear The Chorizo]

having all the starting pitchers that the Brewers currently have on their roster is both good and bad - good that they have depth, bad that they have no roster flexibility and will risk losing some of them for nothing in return. Right now there are very few players on the 40 man roster that would clear waivers should they be sent back to AAA - my point being that aside from Parra and the few young arms who haven't reached the majors yet, there really aren't any young pitchers that we'd even want to send back to the minors. The pitchers that are in limbo are some of the veteran arms that currently don't have a spot in the rotation/bullpen. If Melvin isn't able to work out a trade that includes some of their surplus pitching before spring training ends, they'll risk losing control of those players by waiver claims. That could mean losing a Vargas, Mota, Choate, Cappy, McClung, Bush (unless some of them have minor league options remaining) and getting nothing but the cost of the waiver claim in return. The issue the Brewers have with their 40 man is that almost all of the young, pre-arby players on it are established major leaguers, and the veterans on it don't have minor league options and are good enough for teams to claim them off waivers, but not good enough for teams to trade for them with equal value coming back to Milwaukee.

 

I still point back to the unfortunate timing of Sheets' injury last July as the reason Milwaukee currently has so many marginal starting pitchers - if he stays healthy, Vargas would have been dealt by the trade deadline, and Gallardo could have been called up to take his rotation spot. Because Sheets got injured, and because Capuano was in the midst of suckage(he was on the DL at about the same time in his defense, too), the Brewers couldn't risk trading one of their healthy starters away at the time. Melvin always said that you get more value in trading pitching during the season, and more value in trading position players in the offseason.

[Tbadder]

I think "wash" is exactly the right term for what the Brewers have done. It's all a wash. Their two biggest problems have yet to be addressed, but there's plenty of time. Neither has to be addressed until the All-Star break unless someone in the division starts to run away with it.

 

I think they overpaid for Gagne, but I didn't mind Cordero leaving--the money he got was going to hurt the Crew long term anyway. Plus, and I don't think anyone has pointed this out yet, Gagne has more upside than Cordero. Sure, I doubt he'll reach that upside, but if he does, you've got one valuable player on your hands to keep, trade, or get draft choices for.

 

The improvement has to be the young guys then. Weeks is ready to explode, so the slight backsliding I see for Hart, Fielder, and Braun shouldn't hurt us at all. Hall is a better CF than 3B for sure, and he's better than Hart in CF (that just makes me cringe), so a 3B has to be the way to go. Patience my friends, Rolen can be had unless the new GM wants to alienate LaRussa.

 

After the dust clears at 3B the Brewers will have to do something about their SP. 6 inning pitchers will not make them a competitive team. They've got to get some 7 inning guys, and right now only Gallardo and Sheets strike me as those kinds of pitchers. And since Sheets will go down with another injury, the starters could go critical mass again. In fact, without an upgrade in the SP department, I'd guess it is far more likely that next season follows last season's scenario--SP burns out BP, Brewers slide, Cubs win.

 

And maybe that's why Melvin is holding on to so many starting pitchers. Vargas, Parra, Bush, Capuano--he may need all of them to go 3 or 4 innings in RELIEF on a consistent basis, something we wouldn't get from Mota, Torres, or Riske.

[Ennder]

Just to nitpick a little Bush has averaged 6.04 Ip per start over his career. Capuano is at 5.95 for his career. Sheets at 6.47 which is nice. Suppan 6.11. The average in the NL last year was 5.73, 5.82 in 2006 and 6.00 in 2005. Vargas is at 5.38 and certainly would be considered a drain.

 

I wouldn't expect the rotation to burn out a bullpen anymore than most other rotations, especially if Gallardo sits in that 6.50 range that Sheets is at.

[TooLiveBrew]

Gallardo & Villanueva having healthy 2008s can really, really help this bullpen. If we can get 175+ IP from each guy, that's going to help us have a nice upgrade from our SP in 2007.

[Thurston Fluff]

Also can we just drop the Hall to 3B stuff, they aren't going to do it for player relation reasons. This isn't a video game and sometimes what the player wants does come into play.

This is an excellent point. Melvin mentioned it would be bordering on unfair to ask Hall to move for the third consecutive season. Even if Hall was willing to do it for the sake of the team having a reputation of doing things that unfairly hampers a players career it is not something a team wants.

I'd like to see the team upgrade it's defense but some of it will happen naturally. As odd as it may seen Weeks really hasn't logged that many professional innings in fact Prince has more professional innings than Weeks. Since he's been in the majors he has shown improvement. Braun should improve at third though I'd be happier if he didn't get the chance. Hall will be fine in center. I think Kendall is more athletic than Estrada so he should be able to block pitches better and generally improve the defense behind the plate. I think setting the offense aside the biggest improvement at catcher is the fact that Estrada has a reputation for calling a bad game. Everytime you hear baseball people talk about catchers their biggest concern is how they handle a pitching staff. Offense is usually secondary to that concern. So in that respect I think the catcher situation is lightyears ahead of last season.

As far as the bullpen goes it doesn't surprise me that national writers would look at one big sexy move as being a bigger improvement than many little ones. For the Brewers I'm happier with a complete overhaul than I would have been with one big addition. The pen was dysfunctional the way it was setup. We had guys like Wise who couldn't go back to back days in middle relief role. Crappy end of the pen guys who had to take on roles they simply weren't good enough to be in. Our proverbail workhorse reliever was a rookie in his first season as a reliever who wasn't really ready for that role. In general the pen simply didn't have enough viable pitchers which lead to odd workloads for those who were capable. I'm happier with a bullpen full of usefull but unspectacular pitchers than I would be with three great ones and nobody else.

[homer]

Even if the off season is a wash (which is not something I agree with), the natural progression of the youngsters still makes this team better than it was last year. Maybe all the Brewers had to do was hold pat an make lateral moves? Sometimes you can try and fix what ain't broken.

[logan82]

Brewers have a mid range payroll now so blame finances isn't really gonna work anymore.

I wasn't blaming the finances. I was pointing out that we really shouldn't expect to see us making huge signings or trades in the off-season. Our most exciting pickups are going to still be draft picks for the foreseeable future.

[logan82]

II still would love to see them add a proven "big bat", though, either at LF or 3B...I've been calling for that ever since Carlos Lee left the team.

If you mean high OBP guy when you say "big bat" I agree. If you mean a guy who will hit a lot of homers I disagree. We hit more HR last year than any team in the MLB. I couldn't care less about HR in a guy we aquire if he can carry a high OBP.

[Thurston Fluff]

Even if the off season is a wash (which is not something I agree with), the natural progression of the youngsters still makes this team better than it was last year. Maybe all the Brewers had to do was hold pat an make lateral moves? Sometimes you can try and fix what ain't broken.

 

totally true. Sometimes these guys get so caught up in the weakness of a team that didn't get addressed they forget to consider the reason for the weakness. For the Brewers age was partially the culprit. Another was relative inexperience at the position played. Hall, Braun and Villy all fit that category and can reasonably be expected to do better this year. In the areas that were weak simply due to lack of talent I think they did ok. Breaking it down there are very few spots where they regressed significantly.

Coco > Gagne but not so much greater. Granted he sucked in Boston but CoCo wasn't exactly a road warrior. If you weigh his road numbers the same way people weigh Gagne's time in Boston it doesn't look so drastically differant.

Riske = Linebrink

Kendall > Estrada

Mota > Spurling

Torres > Wise

 

Overall it looks to me they may have lost some of the eliteness when they lost Coco but they gained some ground in overall ability in the pen.

[Tbadder]

Just to nitpick a little Bush has averaged 6.04 Ip per start over his career. Capuano is at 5.95 for his career. Sheets at 6.47 which is nice. Suppan 6.11. The average in the NL last year was 5.73, 5.82 in 2006 and 6.00 in 2005. Vargas is at 5.38 and certainly would be considered a drain.

 

I wouldn't expect the rotation to burn out a bullpen anymore than most other rotations, especially if Gallardo sits in that 6.50 range that Sheets is at.

 

Excellent point. Thanks for the info. I might do take backs, but I still believe our starters have to get to the 7th inning on a consistent basis. I dunno the exact reason why our bullpen seemed so overused. Does Yost get them up too often? Why don't we see longer stints from fewer pitchers, giving more days off in between? As a kid I seem to remember it wasn't that unusual for a reliever to go three innings and then take two days off.

[TooLiveBrew]

Riske = Linebrink

 

At worst, this is the case. Riske is a very good bet to be better than Linebrink was for us last season.

 

Overall it looks to me they may have lost some of the eliteness when they lost Coco but they gained some ground in overall ability in the pen.

Right - the bullpen as a whole is very much improved from 2007, even though the closer 'position' has been likely downgraded slightly. But that's ok, since 'CP' is arguably the most overrated position & worst use of your best RP.

[Ennder]

Well last year our average was 5.76 so you are correct that it wasn't the greatest. Part of the problem was the team defense, if you buy into the -48 defense rating for the Brewers it means we missed 48 plays an average team would make(not counting errors even). That means at least 48 more batters faced, assume 65% of those go to starters so 31 extra outs needed by the starters some of those leading to even more runners etc, that would put us up around 5.9-6.0 or so.

 

Moving Vargas to the bullpen and improving the defense would go a long way towards improving that situation.

[valpocrewsader]

Hall was better than Hart in CF last season statistically and he looked better out there in the second half to be honest.

I honestly think you could spend all day trying to explain it to me and I still wouldn't have any ability whatsoever to grasp the concept that Hall was better than Hart in CF last year. I mean, I can't even remember Hart having a bad defensive inning at CF in 2007 yet there were days where Scotty Smalls Hall was racking up three bad innings in a game. Whatever stats you're referring to must be geniusly insightful or, frankly, in my opinion, have some kind of major flaw to them. Just from watching the team from game 1 to game 162, in my opinion, Hart played the CF position adequately while Hall handled everything but lazy flyballs quite poorly all the way to season's end.

 

Maybe this deserves its own thread as it really seems like there are some folks who think Hall was historically bad at CF and didn't really improve much while others think he did just fine and showed good improvement. We all watched the same games, what gives? And for my own well-being, it'd be nice to get to the bottom of why Hall's CF defense made me want to hurt living things while others are so cool with him....

[TooLiveBrew]

Is there room for all 3 of Cappy, Bush, & Vargas (if Vargas is in the 'pen) on the 25-man? A quick count there puts us at a 13-man staff, and that's assuming Stetter, Pena, McClung, Dillard, and Choate are not on the 25-man. I guess my preliminary answer to my own question is, 'no.'

 

Could we see a deal involving Vargas + Cappy/Bush? That's quite a bit of SP to be able to offer - at least as a starting point for any deal. I'd have to imagine both Stetter & Pena have very real chances to make the bullpen out of ST. Would that make both Turnbow's & Mota's seats proverbially up for grabs?

 

And for my own well-being, it'd be nice to get to the bottom of why Hall's CF defense made me want to hurt living things while others are so cool with him....

Because he went from being as bad as you're remembering, to slightly below average by the end of the season - his first ever in the OF. He'll be roughly average next year defensively, with the offensive upside few CFs can offer.

[Ennder]

Hall showed outstanding range late in the season getting to some balls that Hart would have had no chance at. That pretty much is what brought him back statistically. Hall was pretty miserable in the first half sitting at like -8.5 but he was a good CF in the second half. Hart was just consistently below average.

[jason21nl]

Hall showed outstanding range late in the season getting to some balls that Hart would have had no chance at. That pretty much is what brought him back statistically. Hall was pretty miserable in the first half sitting at like -8.5 but he was a good CF in the second half. Hart was just consistently below average.

How can the fastest guy on the team not get to balls that Hall could get to?

 

[Thurston Fluff]

I dunno the exact reason why our bullpen seemed so overused. Does Yost get them up too often?

 

I don't think any particular guy in the bullpen was overused all that much. Not if you look at how many inning they logged is any indication. Overall it was used more than it should have been as Ennder showed but there were plenty of guys around the league who performed better with both more innings and appearnaces than our most used guy. That's why I'm happy they went out and got some guys who are capable of logging both more innings and appearances without breaking down.

 

At worst, this is the case. Riske is a very good bet to be better than Linebrink was for us last season.

 

I agree he's probably better but in an effort to be as objective as possible I rated them as equal. In truth both of them have been very good over a period of several years so in fairness I set aside his less than stellar performance with the Brewers last year. I could see Linebrink being his usual very good self next year.

[elbobbo82]

How can the fastest guy on the team not get to balls that Hall could get to?

 

I guess it's just a matter of him getting a better jump on the ball, although with Hart's extra experience out there it does seem strange that that would be the case

[RobertR]

In terms of overall value, I think it's hard to make a case that 6 months of Riske isn't significantly better than 2 months of Linebrink and whoever else was thrown in for that setup role. At worst it's a wash.

 

It's a little silly to be handing out offseason grades in early January. The Swisher trade alone should indicate that there's much more that's likely to happen.

 

Robert

[RobertR]

How can the fastest guy on the team not get to balls that Hall could get to?

 

 

Heck, I'm still wondering why Hardy, who won a team footrace in camp, can't steal bases at a decent percentage. I just find that puzzling.

 

Robert

[TooLiveBrew]

I agree he's probably better but in an effort to be as objective as possible I rated them as equal.

 

That's a good approach - I just think it'd be surprising (& disappointing) if Riske didn't outperform Linebrink's tenure here.

[Ennder]

How can the fastest guy on the team not get to balls that Hall could get to?

 

He is the fastest guy with head down running in a straight line. That doesn't mean he is the fastest guy running at an angle, judging where the ball is going to land and trying to track the ball at the same time. Juan Pierre is fast but he still doesnt' have great range, Jim Edmonds has never been fast but made a lot of plays in his career that faster guys couldn't, the two don't always equal each other.

 

We are also talking a small sample in CF for Hall and a really small sample in CF for Hart so there is no way to come to a final conclusion yet. Neither has even shown a full season in CF and I'd want to see at least 2 years before I judged them properly.