RR Retained - Page 8

[coolhandluke121]

I resent this regime because they've had so many chances to build a great foundation, but instead they try to compete every year. If the results were a little better, I would be okay with it, but for all the talk about how the Brewers have been competitors in the Attanasio era, they're basically just a .500 team! That would be acceptable if they were building towards something, but instead it's just been a matter of keeping every decent veteran until he has no trade value left and then paying $10m per year to replace him with another one. It is exactly the Kohl model of being competitive and it sucks.

This I don't get at all. Where are these chances to built a great foundation that they passed on? The Lohse signing? That's the only one I can think of that actually cost this team a chance to build more.

It has to do with keeping every player past the optimal time. For those who don't remember, I actually wanted a total rebuild after the 2011 season. I felt too many things went perfectly for them that season and it would be really hard to duplicate. The last 3 seasons have proven this to be true. The once-scintillating prospect core of Hart, Weeks, Braun, Fielder, and Gallardo peaked in 2011. Guys like Marcum and Wolf had their last good season that year. Nyjer had his career year.

Going into the following year, I wanted to trade them all. Weeks and Hart had been showing warning signs of their inevitable decline. Marcum and Wolf even more so. But they all had solid trade value, and if they had traded them they could have restocked pretty quickly. Even when they didn't happen, I figured for sure they would trade more than just Greinke in 2012. You have to make a commitment to selling. Ramirez could have been the most valuable trade piece on the market, but they've kept him while his salary and injuries increase and his production decreases, just like Weeks and Hart. Braun was having a great year and proving the skeptics wrong, but a pragmatic gm recognizes the risk and isn't like a fan who goes into denial about the PED's. Trade him then and there.

Now it's guys like K-Rod, Gallardo, Lohse, and Garza giving them a chance to get something in a trade instead of hold onto them until reality sets in, but as usual they acted like fans instead of being objective about the likelihood that those guys continue to perform so well.

[jr lucosa]

With Melvin I'd be okay either way, if we decide to go in a new direction there's certainly enough years of collapsing and the farm system looking like crap to do so, but he's also made some good moves in his time here, I won't go crazy if he's given another year.

RRR has to go, he isn't good at managing the bullpen and is awful at setting lineups and playing situational baseball, I wouldn't be surprised if he's never looked at lefty/righty splits in his life, for hitters or pitchers.

Prime example last night starting Reynolds at 1st against a lefty, the guy is hitting .173 with an OPS well below .600 against lefties with 6 RBI on the year, he's about as automatic an out against lefties as there is, so it's no shock at all he went 0-for last night, yet he's still had over 100 PA's this year against LHP, the guy refuses to look at the stats, or knows them and just completely ignores them, and costs this team tons and tons of outs over the year(s) with his stupid lineups.

[WEFFPIM]

You want them to apply a video game style of general managing to this team. That's impossible. You're also operating, whether you want to admit to or not, under a severe amount of hindsight. Lastly, you're assuming teams were interesting in those players at the time you wanted them traded, or that the team didn't attempt to at all. You want this team to be the Marlins. That's exactly who you're describing.

And you wanted to trade those guys this deadline? The K-Rod, Gallardo, Lohse, Garza quadrant? THEY WERE IN FIRST PLACE FOR FIVE MONTHS.

There has long been this incessant desire on this board to constantly trade the major leaguers for minor leaguers, then trade those guys when they get to Milwaukee. Just constantly rebuild, seemingly because the city's basketball team never did. You cannot apply your thoughts on the Bucks to the Brewers. Two completely different worlds. You want to go this route? Watch the Padres and enjoy that endless cycle of suck.

And your PED/Braun comment is mindnumbing.

[coolhandluke121]

You want them to apply a video game style of general managing to this team. That's impossible. You're also operating, whether you want to admit to or not, under a severe amount of hindsight. Lastly, you're assuming teams were interesting in those players at the time you wanted them traded, or that the team didn't attempt to at all. You want this team to be the Marlins. That's exactly who you're describing.

And you wanted to trade those guys this deadline? The K-Rod, Gallardo, Lohse, Garza quadrant? THEY WERE IN FIRST PLACE FOR FIVE MONTHS.

There has long been this incessant desire on this board to constantly trade the major leaguers for minor leaguers, then trade those guys when they get to Milwaukee. Just constantly rebuild, seemingly because the city's basketball team never did. You cannot apply your thoughts on the Bucks to the Brewers. Two completely different worlds. You want to go this route? Watch the Padres and enjoy that endless cycle of suck.

And your PED/Braun comment is mindnumbing.

It is not hindsight. I said all these things long ago and took the heat. And yes, I did want to trade Gallardo and Lohse this deadline and I said so. When I said, people like you said I was crazy. When it turned out that it would have been a surprisingly good decision, people like you accuse me of hindsight.

And yes, I do want them to be kind of like the Marlins, but not completely so. That's a total crock. I don't advocate trading guys when they're in their primes unless they have shown some warning signs of a decline, and I'm not opposed to being buyers if you have a chance. This deadline, for example, I desperately wanted them to trade Gallardo and Lohse for asset management reasons, but also wanted them to try to trade for guys like Zobrist, Loney, Morneau, or even Price. You can be buyers and sellers at the same time. Just be a good asset manager. The dogma I follow is basically just market timing. Gallardo and Lohse were an opportunity to get good prospects for two #3 starters who were pitching like borderline #1's. Zobrist and Loney were a chance to get two guys that were such good fits that they would have more than offset the loss, and without costing much in a trade. And dumping guys like Marcum, Wolf, Hart, Weeks, Lohse, Gallardo, Ramirez, and Braun on other teams when you have reason to believe they're about to start sucking and when, because of less obvious issues like defense, speed, baserunning i.q., and/or instincts in the field, they were probably a little (or maybe even a lot) overrated in the first place, is not the same as dumping every veteran as soon as they get expensive and sucking forever.

I don't get what's wrong with my Braun comment either. Objective people who don't have a horse in the race knew he was probably guilty, and knew it would be a factor in projecting his future success. You'd have to be a very biased Brewer fan to think otherwise. I don't expect fans to be able to be objective in that instance, but I'd like my gm to be.

[WEFFPIM]

You can't do market timing on an individual basis. You have to understand the market you're working in. Trading Gallardo/Lohse at the deadline (while, again, in first place) then hoping to acquire Price or whomever to make up for that void never happens unless you're, again, in a video game. Can you find all the working partners to make something that convoluted happen? If the last deadline is any indication, not at all. If any deadlines have been any indication, not at all. It's so beyond wishful thinking to do what you're explaining. If it's as easy as how you're breaking it down, 30 teams in baseball would like to hire you as a GM.

You can't just start dumping guys "when you have reason to believe they're about to start sucking." There are so many other variables that you aren't factoring in. You're basing this on microeconomics and forgetting about macroeconomics. Baseball doesn't work like that, not at the major league level. Should the Brewers have traded Segura this offseason? He's been a mess this year, so in your ideal world, the Brewers would have seen this coming and done something about it. Managed the asset. Should they trade Gomez this offseason? How about Lucroy? MVP-caliber this year, both of them. Time to go?

And here's what's wrong with the Braun stuff... point to a lack of PED/HGH use as the sole reason of his decline in production this season? Prove that. It certainly could be a factor, as could a nagging wrist injury that has lingered all season or that back injury that occasionally flares up. Or maybe he's having a down year because he just is. But you can't prove, nor can anyone prove, that him being off whatever he was taking before is a direct cause to his decline this year. Why didn't the Cardinals deal Jhonny Peralta in the offseason? Why is Nelson Cruz having a good year in Baltimore? Why didn't they assume a slide was coming? What about Bartolo Colon?

You are describing a perfect general manager. One doesn't exist, and if you were put into that position, it wouldn't occur for you either. And despite you disagreeing with it, you are absolutely operating in hindsight.

[coolhandluke121]

I'm not saying they could have traded all of those guys or that it would work out perfect every time. I'm not saying they could have traded Lohse and then acquired Price. I used that as an example of how it's a gross oversimplification of my philosophy to say I just want to trade every veteran. I don't want to trade Gomez or Lucroy because they are excellent all-around players with no injuries of any long-term concern whatsoever, no contracts that escalate ridiculously, and no signs of passing their prime any time soon. Wolf, Hart, Weeks, Marcum, Ramirez, Gallardo, and Braun all had major warning signs. Optimism springs eternal, and teams are biased in favor of taking gambles on players like them. But the gamble on players of that ilk, despite their track records and reputations, is statistically not as smart as taking a gamble on prospects in my opinion. And in some of their cases, like with Hart's knee injury, Rickie's ridiculous prolonged slumps, Ramirez's age, and Braun's PED controversy, I have little doubt that gambling on prospects would have had a better risk:reward ratio. At the same time, like I said, many teams have visions of trophies dancing in their head and are willing to take a gamble on a guy like that, so I do think the market would have been there.

Again, I'm not saying it would work every time. I'm saying that there is a systemic bias in favor of overvaluing and overpaying guys who are approaching age 30 or have already passed it, and I would like the Brewers to take advantage of that bias more often rather than being one of the teams most guilty of it. They're constantly letting valuable trade assets wash up on shore during their tenure here, and if you never trade any of them then I think you have a systematic flaw in your philosophy. You don't have to trade all of them or have all the trades work out in order to do a hell of a lot better than they've done in that regard.

[raysbookclub]

It's frustrating because this team is probably, over the course of the season, either (A) 10 boneheaded fielding/base-running plays or (B) 10-20 boneheaded at-bats in clutch situations or (C) .025 AVG/.100 OPS of Ryan Braun improvement (to make this year closer to his career #s) away from being in the division lead or at least the wild card lead.

Obviously there isn't much you can do about C, but don't A and B fall under coaching (e.g., hitting coach, 3rd base coach, manager)?

[msiris]

It's frustrating because this team is probably, over the course of the season, either (A) 10 boneheaded fielding/base-running plays or (B) 10-20 boneheaded at-bats in clutch situations or (C) .025 AVG/.100 OPS of Ryan Braun improvement (to make this year closer to his career #s) away from being in the division lead or at least the wild card lead.

Obviously there isn't much you can do about C, but don't A and B fall under coaching (e.g., hitting coach, 3rd base coach, manager)?

A and B involves coaching since RR gives them that freedom. Moving on the the crack of the bat is something he wants them too do. He wants them too be agressive at the plate.

[El Duderino]

I resent this regime because they've had so many chances to build a great foundation, but instead they try to compete every year.

I have no problem with replacing Melvin, but i don't think the main agenda would change much of how the team is put together from year to year given Attanasio will still be the owner.

It should be clear to anyone who follows the team closely that Attanasio is very involved with all major free agent signings and the direction the team takes of trying to contend for a playoff berth each year. To think he'd hire a new GM with a belief system closer to what you have compared to his strikes me as highly highly unlikely. He's simply not a strip down and rebuild guy unless he feels his projected roster would have almost zero chance of contending for a playoff berth.

So while i think the odds are roughly 70-30 that Melvin will be back, even if he is replaced, i see Attanasio hiring a new GM who shares his vision for competing each year. That could potentially work out well if the new GM is smart and Seid's replacement does a better job.

[El Duderino]

I don't get what's wrong with my Braun comment either. Objective people who don't have a horse in the race knew he was probably guilty, and knew it would be a factor in projecting his future success. You'd have to be a very biased Brewer fan to think otherwise. I don't expect fans to be able to be objective in that instance, but I'd like my gm to be.

I always had serious doubts about Braun's PED denials. That said, i do believe his struggles this year are more injury related and thus his thumb issues concern me more going forward than him no longer using whatever he used.

You can never know for sure either way though. Nelson Cruz was caught up in the same PED scandal and yet he leads baseball in home runs this year. Melky Cabrera was also busted in that scandal and having another good year.

So while clearly Braun used PED's, when exactly he started, to what degree he used them, and just how much it boosted his past production is completely unknown. My guess is the thumb was a bigger issue this year, but i certainly could be wrong and instead it's more him no longer on juice of some kind. Maybe it's a combination of both. Reading though about how his thumb issues could linger the rest of his career given surgery options are limited, that's scary to hear. Sometimes an athlete can get a flukey injury which there just is no obvious remedy to fix it.

[coolhandluke121]

Personally I believe Braun used testosterone to recover from little aches and pains. I think that was a big part of his success. I think he naturally had high testosterone, and that's the "Braun advantage" that was referenced many times in the scandal. Samples were only tested if the testosterone level was much higher than a guy's baseline level. If a guys baseline level was high, then he might have been more likely to get away with supplementing it. But regardless of what you think of that, I know Braun is great and his 2012 season was no fluke. I think the fluke is him staying healthy. He's not built like Prince Fielder or Ryan Howard, and he's putting a lot torque on a small frame when he swings. I'm not surprised he's having problems. He's been asking a lot from a relatively small frame for a long time. And yes, this would extend all the way to his thumb, which probably isn't built to absorb that kind of force.

It's not just about Braun though. It's about them keeping every single player - every damn one - as he approaches 30 or more and starts to decline even as his salary starts going up.

[kid idioteque]

The problem with RR is his free swinging management. They all want to hit a homer at every at bat. I would like too keep Davis , but teach him how to work the count.

Much easier said than done.

Plate discipline is something most hitters either have or don't. Over time some hitters will improve their plate discipline to a degree, but usually not significantly. Gomez is a prime example. He's improved his walk rate a little each of the last three years and has a .354 OBP which would have seemed near impossible three years ago, but he'll always be more free swinger than patient, regardless who his manager or hitting coach is.

For as gifted of hitters as Braun and Ramirez have been their whole careers, neither have been really patient/high walk guys. Scooter had a terrible walk rate in the minors and Segura was also a hacker in the minors. On the flip side, for as poor as Reynolds hits for average, he's always walked a lot. Overbay is 5th in walks, just one walk behind Braun, even though he rarely starts.

I'm all for hiring a new manager and coaching staff, but i think you are being a bit naive if you think that would matter much in changing how those players treat plate discipline. Most hitters with good plate discipline had that approach before they ever reached the big leagues, their minor league stats showing this. Take Prince and Weeks for example, both walked a lot in the minors, then the majors.

It's long baffled me why so many hitters spend most or all of their career's swinging at lots of pitches outside the strike zone, even though it usually hurts their production, can hurt their earning power, and sometimes even cost them a job in the majors, yet they'll keep doing it.

Nope. The manager tells a player to stop swinging at the first pitch every time and the player stops swinging at the first pitch every time. It's pretty simple. Gomez did this for weeks at a time.

I've read some chatter recently about Roenicke currently, inexplicably being "in a low gear," which is really well put. He's not dynamic at all and doesn't have the baseball smarts to make up for his dull personality.

He needs to go, and although Melvin isn't awful, a change there would be great, too.

[WiscSports1]

I, for one, have never been a fan of RR. I felt the 2011 team was loaded and it had nothing to do with RR. I'm sick of all the fundamental mistakes and baserunning errors.

On the other hand, I feel like firing Melvin is a mistake. I think you can do a hell of a lot worse than him. And we have in the past. He brought this team back from the basement. He's never going to be a great GM, but this team isn't contending for a WS every year.

While DM does have a tendency for all hitting/no fielding players, that's largely a result of drafting. Jack Z was great at drafting hitters, but good God, outside of Yo, he couldn't find a pitcher to save his life. Not to mention, drafting Prince (terrible fielder), Braun (errors galore), Weeks (okay, but then terrible). Hardy was probably the best fielder we drafted.

I do think, however, that DM must change how he builds this team going forward. We can't continue going down this road of terrible fielding/power hitters. Developing pitching is also the biggest key going forward.

[El Duderino]

Personally I believe Braun used testosterone to recover from little aches and pains. I think that was a big part of his success. I think he naturally had high testosterone, and that's the "Braun advantage" that was referenced many times in the scandal. Samples were only tested if the testosterone level was much higher than a guy's baseline level. If a guys baseline level was high, then he might have been more likely to get away with supplementing it. But regardless of what you think of that, I know Braun is great and his 2012 season was no fluke. I think the fluke is him staying healthy. He's not built like Prince Fielder or Ryan Howard, and he's putting a lot torque on a small frame when he swings. I'm not surprised he's having problems. He's been asking a lot from a relatively small frame for a long time. And yes, this would extend all the way to his thumb, which probably isn't built to absorb that kind of force.

It's not just about Braun though. It's about them keeping every single player - every damn one - as he approaches 30 or more and starts to decline even as his salary starts going up.

I think the "Braun advantage" is he's simply a very talented hitter. That said, i'm sure PED's helped with his muscle strains. Not sure though how it impacts his biggest problem, the thumb.

As for the overall approach to team building, petition for a new owner because a new GM likely won't change how Attanasio views trying to contend for the playoffs each year and how he enjoys pursuing free agents personally. He's no Mark Murphy letting Ted Thompson do as he pleases.

[Kerb Hohl]

Braun was guilty but a good hitter. You're right about injury recovery, but look what Cruz, Peralta, and Melky Cabrera can do while healthy.

[humanrefutation]

I think that Melvin has done a decent job fielding a roster within the financial constraints imposed by Attanasio. I would ask him to beef up the analytics department and, with the passing of Seid, get a top notch scouting director.

If anyone falls, it will be Roenicke. That being said, I don't think he's a terrible manager. His in-game decisions are sometimes worrisome, but he seems to do a good job managing the personalities and clubhouse culture.

[ReasonablySober]

Baseball's next competitive advantage.

Thought that since we're on the subject this was worth reading.

Everything a front office or MLB GM does comes down to one mandate: gain a competitive edge over the other 29 teams. This has been explored from multiple angles since baseball’s inception. Most recently, the introduction of advanced metrics, from predictive stats to the monetary value of a win, has changed the way we analyze the game.

However, we are now more than a decade past the publication of Moneyball, and, to put it bluntly, the days of simply adding an analytical genius to the front office and expecting him to tip the scales are over. There’s simply too much information-sharing in today’s world for any club to gain a lasting structural informational edge over their competitors. Proprietary information is becoming harder and harder to come by. While there are certainly frontiers of data not yet fully explored, I believe the next real advantage will come not from which team can acquire the most information, but from which team can best put that information into practice. How efficiently and successfully information is shared with managers, coaches and players will equal wins now and going forward.

[El Duderino]

Baseball's next competitive advantage.

Thought that since we're on the subject this was worth reading.

Let’s look at a real time example.

Adam Jones is an elite-level talent and one of the game’s most exciting players. His 115 wRC+ suggests he’s an above-average hitter. But Jones is far from perfect; his walk rate is abysmal. Jones has drawn walks in just 3.1 percent of his plate appearances this season, second-lowest in all of baseball. It wasn’t always this way. In the minors and in his first few seasons in the majors, Jones walked twice as often as he does now. If he had simply maintained that walk rate, Jones would be one of the best players in baseball. Clearly, there is nothing inherent to his game that leads to a low walk percentage, so it stands to reason that there is an adjustment in a specific count or counts Jones could make. His overall offensive production would skyrocket to a level he’s never seen. Suppose that piece of data is discovered? How does an organization deliver the information? If successfully implemented, you might be able to turn Adam Jones into Mike Trout.

Professional athletes are übercompetitive by nature. They inherently want to outplay their counterparts. Riffing off this concept is a prudent management style. But we can guess that just walking up to Adam Jones with a spreadsheet and lists of numbers isn’t likely to do much good. In fact, it may actively make him worse. Here’s how it might happen without care:

“Adam, you swing at nearly 11 percent more balls out of the strike zone than the average hitter. You make contact nearly 7 percent less. If you're going to swing at more pitches out of the zone, you'd better be good at hitting bad pitches. However, our data says you're not. Because you're not having a ton of success at swinging at pitches out of the zone while up in the count, you need to take those pitches. Instead of making an out on a bad pitch, work the count."

Man, the crazy thing is as i started reading this article and before it even got to this Jones example, i honestly was thinking in my head nearly the exact same thing.

I've wondered for awhile now with all of the pitch and swing tracking data out there, why so many hitters continue having such terrible plate discipline even though data is out there showing these hitters just how often they are helping pitchers by swinging at balls outside the strike zone and hurting their own production? It truly baffles me.

We are talking about hitters losing out on everything from earning power to losing starting jobs, all the way to potentially losing out on a major league job mainly because they simply refuse to be more disciplined on swinging at pitches outside the strike zone. In the past, sure you could still tell which hitters were more disciplined overall, but today there is rock solid data tracking every pitch a batter swings at. Yet even with that data available, plenty of hitters keep swinging at tons of bad pitches and in turn hurting their production.

[El Duderino]

Nope. The manager tells a player to stop swinging at the first pitch every time and the player stops swinging at the first pitch every time. It's pretty simple. Gomez did this for weeks at a time.

So how exactly would this work? A manager tells a hitter he can only swing at the first pitch when that manager gives a swing sign, even if the first pitch is grooved right down the middle?

The problem with Gomez isn't that he swings at the first pitch so much. Hell, he had a whopping .424 batting average, .746 SLG, and 1.173 OPS this year on first pitch swings put in play this year, his best production of any other count. His problem is that just overall he's got below average plate discipline, but at least it's improved a little bit each of the last three years to the point he is third on the team in walks and has a .350 OBP, something like that which seemed nearly impossible a few years ago.

I'm more than ready to hire a new manager, but show me other managers out there who has been able to regularly turn free swinging hitters into disciplined hitters because i sure haven't seen it? For example. There is a reason why zero power having Craig Counsell has a higher career walk rate than MVP Braun has, and it has nothing to do with who their big league managers were.

[Thunder Muscle]

I just have a hard time seeing RR back next season. I think someone higher up has to take a fall for this epic collapse and 3rd year in a row without playoffs. Public isn't really high on RR.

Luckily due to market size and people shifting their attention to the Packers that the collapse has kinda been almost secondary in the past few weeks. It didn't really even feel like we were in a pennant race to be honest. I don't know if fans just slowly tuned out or the wild card doesn't excite people that much. I don't know if I really like the 2 wild cards to be honest.