Escobar, Cain, Odirizzi and Jeffress for Greinke+

[El Duderino]

Boston has Jed Lowrie.

My bad, forgot about him. I wonder what Boston would want, assuming they'd be open to trading Scutaro?

[El Duderino]

If we're going for it, lets patch up the holes we got at CF and SS. Gomez/Dickerson and Betancourt is gunna suck.

I could live with that platoon in CF because Gomez would only start in roughly 60-65 games vs lefties and at least he's very good defensively. Where i really want a move made is SS if say the team can only afford to address one of the two positions because Betancourt is bad both on offense and defense. At worst, bring back Counsell and have him start vs most righthanders because for as bad as Betancourt is, he does hit lefties quite a bit better than righties.

[LUKE23]

Ruben has been trying to stir the pot here forever.

Regarding the Greinke and Sabathia comparison, it has nothing to do with saying Greinke will match what CC did for the Crew, it's talking in terms of pure ability/stuff/production up to this point. And if you don't think they are comparable, check the numbers. Greinke is an absolute monster.

The Cubs are not a worry regardless, that team is a mess. How much are they paying Soriano/Ramirez/Big Z combined for crap production? At least they signed Wood though, that will help.

[MajorDad]

other posters on this board will back me up on this issue. melvin had an agreed upon trade with toronto for halladay before they traded him to the phillies. the toronto GM even admitted our deal was better than what he got from Philly. melvin went public and actually told the truth to the press last year. The brewers had an agreement with toronto for halladay, but halladay invoked his no-trade claus to cancel teh deal.

and like you said , everybody with an open eye knew Halladay, peavy and bedard were great talents. but melvin went the next step and actually had deals made for each pitcher which is a lot more than any Cubs gm could admit to doing. the brewers and padres had a done deal for peavy. melvin got peavy to waive his no trade clause. A press conference to announce the trade was even scheduled. the deal involved parra and i believe Escobar or gamel. the trade was canceled because of peavy's injury. melvin made a similar deal for bedard that was canceled because of bedard's injury.

it's one thing to have an eye for pitching talent. and it's a no brainer that 2 years ago, Halladay, peavy, C C Sabathia, and bedard were all regarded as 4 of the best starting pitchers in the majors. But what seperates melvin from the basic onlooker was that melvin actuall y had made agreed upon deals for each of these pitchers. melvin knows great pitching talent , and he has bent over backwards trying to acquire it.

[MajorDad]

and ruben - never critisize m y typing ability. it's bee n a lot worse! if yo u ever critisize m y spelling or typing ability again, yo u wil l feeal m y wrath w hic h could be 2,000 50 paragraph posts al l about one minor grammer error of your own.

don't you just hate people who don't know the difference between your and you're? What I hate are people who know the difference but are too lazy to use that little ' inbetween the the u and the r.

and txt. what is so hard about including one more letter as in the e?

if you believe my spelling is bad, then you need to get a ticket and stand in line after the 140,000,230 other posters on real gm, JSonline, and ESPN and Yahoo, and purdue rivals , and old gold and black and CBS sports who also believe my spelling and typing are bad. this is a sports forum post - not an English term paper.

how original: telling major dad he can't spell.

[clownparade]

Mickey - your name came up a couple of times in this thread. they called you a blogger wh o reported the Adam dun n dea l as a done deal.

as for career OBP less tha n .300, I say it's all about sample size. just last year , people were saying gomez was a career .290 hitter. We know that wasn't true.

I'm not a huge betencourt fan, but he beat out several other KC players who were penciled in as starters last year. betencourt was supposed to get about 250 atbats last year as a super utility guy. betencourt was supposed to be KC's Counsell. he ended up starting.

I believe betencourt would be a great replacement for Counsell as our utility infielder. I'd really love to see the brewers add renteria or lopez or "GASP" that guy named Reed - I mean Reid. In a perfec t world , betencourt would be a great super utility player, and the brewers would sign a decent FA shortstop. if we all believe betencourt sucks, i have to believe Melvin's new scouting staff is also well aware of his shortcomings. KC had several other shortstops i n their organization. it sems odd this is the one melvi n chose. either Melvin's scouting staff is terribl y wrong , or melvin has alread y targeted somebod y else as his starter. or betencourt is better than his stats and people seem t o think.

Either join my bandwagon and call out melvin's scouting staff as not doing their homework. or give melvin's scouting staff some credit and betencourt isn't as bad as some brewers "FANS" think. when the guys here saying betencourt sucks start getting paychecks as brewers scouts, then I'l l start believing their opinions. until then , their opinions are just as good or as bad as mine.

youre acting like melvin made a specific trade for betencourt and we are upset about it. the trade was for greinke and it seems like the crap ss was thrown in, maybe for use as a bench player but theres even been rumors that hes gonna get bought out. regardless your huge rant post makes no sense, betencourt isnt very good because he was an afterthought in this trade, a throw in

and how did we get sidetracked to start talking about the cubs? they are a joke and have been for a long time

[MickeyDavis]

as for career OBP less tha n .300, I say it's all about sample size. just last year , people were saying gomez was a career .290 hitter. We know that wasn't true.

3000 AB's. Not a small sample size "professor"

As for Gomez, before coming here he hit .232 .258 and .229. Who was calling him a .290 hitter if he never came close to hitting .290? Must have been you Einstein.

[WEFFPIM]

My interest in this team next year has exploded. Can't believe they got him. Gave up a ton, but at least we know this team is gunning for it here at least this year if not next. Get an extension worked out and I'll have sex with this deal.

[Ruben Douglas]

and ruben - never critisize m y typing ability. it's bee n a lot worse! if yo u ever critisize m y spelling or typing ability again, yo u wil l feeal m y wrath w hic h could be 2,000 50 paragraph posts al l about one minor grammer error of your own.

don't you just hate people who don't know the difference between your and you're? What I hate are people who know the difference but are too lazy to use that little ' inbetween the the u and the r.

and txt. what is so hard about including one more letter as in the e?

if you believe my spelling is bad, then you need to get a ticket and stand in line after the 140,000,230 other posters on real gm, JSonline, and ESPN and Yahoo, and purdue rivals , and old gold and black and CBS sports who also believe my spelling and typing are bad. this is a sports forum post - not an English term paper.

how original: telling major dad he can't spell.

I will never doubt your typing skills again. When you teach grade school you tend to get annoyed by terrible spelling...especially after you just taught a unit on the difference between their, there, and they're.

[Ruben Douglas]

Ruben has been trying to stir the pot here forever.

Regarding the Greinke and Sabathia comparison, it has nothing to do with saying Greinke will match what CC did for the Crew, it's talking in terms of pure ability/stuff/production up to this point. And if you don't think they are comparable, check the numbers. Greinke is an absolute monster.

The Cubs are not a worry regardless, that team is a mess. How much are they paying Soriano/Ramirez/Big Z combined for crap production? At least they signed Wood though, that will help.

Luke, I still love you. I'm coming back to Milwaukee tomorrow. Do you want to hang out and have a beer?

I'm not comparing the Cubs to the Brewers here at all. I know the Brewers are better than the Cubs...they had a better record last season and that's all there is to it.

I'm sorry you have so much hate in you, Luke. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to the dark side, Luke.

[MajorDad]

I'm begining to like Ruben. So Ruben, what do you think of Purdue's chances in basketball this year? Boiler UP !

[Turk Nowitzki]

Just reading some stuff from blogs and newspapers from the bigger markets teams, it's hilarious how they are playing this off like they didn't even want Greinke(NY), we gave up way too much(Texas), or it's not going to matter much(Chicago). Very little respect.

[trwi7]

New York Post has a headline "Whatever It Takes" with a picture of Felix Hernandez. They have to do whatever it takes to get him! Who cares if Seattle doesn't want to trade him, we're New York and we struck out in free agency, give him to us!

[Soca]

New York Post has a headline "Whatever It Takes" with a picture of Felix Hernandez. They have to do whatever it takes to get him! Who cares if Seattle doesn't want to trade him, we're New York and we struck out in free agency, give him to us!

[ajb905]

Anyone have Keith Law's review of the Greinke deal. Its insider so only the relevant brewer snippets would be great.

[MickeyDavis]

Witrado:

I just got off the phone with Zack Greinke and was able to ask him why he took the Brewers off his no-trade list and he was very definite in his answer.

“I think I made that decision to put them on the list too quickly; I didn’t think about it long,” Greinke said. “I knew Prince (Fielder) only had one year left on his contract and I wasn’t sure what direction they were going to go in with him, but once they signed (Shaun) Marcum and didn’t trade Prince, I knew they were in it.”

So Greinke originally kept Milwaukee on his no-trade list because he figured they were going to trade Fielder and fall into somewhat of a rebuilding mode, even if they didn’t completely break down the roster. He clearly didn’t want to be part of that. So for GM Doug Melvin, it turned out to be a good thing that he couldn’t find much of a trade market for Fielder, and his trade of top prospect Brett Lawrie to get Marcum ended up also netting Greinke from afar.

Greinke said the trade was in the works for “at least a week” but he expected it to happen sooner than it did.

“I knew it was possible, but a certain day passed when I thought it would happen by,” Greinke said. “But after that day, some things happened and they were able to get it done.”

Obviously Fielder staying in the fold and the club adding Marcum helped Greinke to scratch the Brewers from his no-trade list, but it also helped that they’ve kept other good offensive players, Greinke said, not to mention what the pitching staff did late in the season to National League opponents.

Greinke even joked that since he’s regarded as a decent hitter, for a pitcher, and he has a “K” in the books against the Brewers’ previous ace, they must be headed in the right direction.

“I know (Yovani) Gallardo struck me out before,” Greinke said, “so he must be pretty good.”

We’ll have more from Greinke and Melvin and manager Ron Roenicke later today as their press conference is going on now

[ReasonablySober]

Quotes.

"I could hit me if someone were on base. It wouldn't be easy, but I could do it. If no one were on base, I wouldn't care as much, so I could get me out."

Upon hearing then-GM Allard Baird was going to watch him throw: "And you're gonna be impressed,"

"I'd say the average person wouldn't eat a Chipotle burrito and still do his running, full speed, like me. That's why they call me special."

"I was giving Brian Bannister all the credit for being the best-hitting pitcher on the team, until today. Now, I've got my confidence back. They're throwing me sliders, and it doesn't matter."

"For the first month of the season, (Billy Butler) has definitely been an above-average first baseman. That's hard for me to say because I never thought anyone would say that but him and his family."

Two years ago, with Alex Gordon struggling, Greinke pulled him into the video room to show him a clip of Greinke hitting his home run. "In case you forgot," Greinke said, "this is what a home run looks like."

"Nice effort by the defense. They didn't get tired of running after balls to the wall. I was pretty impressed by that."

To Jeremy Affeldt after Affeldt gave up a homer on what he thought was a good pitch. "Really, I went back to the clubhouse and looked at the pitch on video. It was a really bad pitch. Right over the middle of the plate, and you got it up. I mean it was a bad pitch."

Affeldt: "Thanks, Zack."

Zack: "Right down the middle. I could have hit it out."

Affeldt: "Thanks, Zack."

Zack: "Yeah."

On making the Sports Illustrated cover: "There's a lot more interesting stuff going on right now. They should have something else on the cover. Playoff basketball or something else. So it's a mistake. They'll probably sell their least amount of magazines in a long time -- except when NASCAR was on the cover."

On hoping President Obama would cuss him out at the All-Star game: "Because none of the White Sox guys like me. So I was hoping that he'd recognize me and be like, 'You punk, I hate you.' But he didn't do that."


“I cried in bed, moaning ‘why, why did this have to happen?’” — when asked how he reacted to the news of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston breaking up.

“No. She’s way more big time than me. She’s pretty old too.” — when asked if he thought Jennifer Aniston would date him after the break-up.

“I’d say the average person wouldn’t eat a Chipotle burrito and still do his running.. full speed.. like me. That’s why they call me special”

“I don’t know if we really want to talk about this anymore…it’s kind of stupid” — after talking about golf for about 5 straight minutes in an interview.

“It gives me more time to think or not think, which is a problem.” — when asked what he thought about having an extra day off.

Restaurant customer:”Hey, you’re Zack Greinke, right?”
Greinke: looks at him for a second, points at a short, fat Hispanic man next to him, and says, “No. That’s Zack Greinke.”

“You don’t faze me, Gobble.” - From one of his mic’d up segment on RSTN, when he’s shagging fly balls in the outfield and Gobble runs past right as he’s about to catch one.

“I was looking at colleges for me to go to, schools in vacation places like Hawaii, just to get away from everyone I knew, so I could start over. I also thought about mowing lawns for a living because I like to be outdoors. ” — after breaking out of the depression funk he said sometimes he thought about quitting baseball and mowing lawns..

"I’m not going pro" — when asked by a reporter why he had given up the game of golf, even though Greinke was, by most accounts, the best golfer on the Royals at Spring Training in 2008

“If I lived in Kansas City, I probably wouldn’t go to a lot of games, but I’d definitely go to that one.” — on a pitching matchup where Greinke was facing Daisuke Matsuzaka the second or third game of the year.

Reporter: “Hey Zack, would you mind doing an interview before or after your start tomorrow night?”
Zack: “After is better. Uh, what time does the game start?”
Reporter: “I think it starts at 7:10.”
Zack: (With a sly grin across his face) “OK, thanks, now I know.”

“Soria, you runnin’ today? You’re goin’ down then. I’m gonna run so much faster than you, you’re going to be eating my dust.” — talking to Joakim Soria during pre-game warmups.

“I really want to rob a homer today. Really bad. It’s all up to the hitters.”

“No. Anyone can sign one player.” — when asked if signing Gil Meche to a $55 million deal showed him that the Royals were willing to go out and get free agents to make this team better.

“Well, Davies thinks he’s good at everything but he’s not really good at anything. He thinks he’s good at golf. He thinks he’s good at ping-pong. He thinks he’s good at basketball. He thinks he’s good at tennis. And probably everything else he thinks he’s good at. He thinks he’s good at cards. But he really is very average at all of them.” — when asked if he knew any surprising facts about his teammates

“Yesterday I saw a good one. I was going to eat, and the person I was with wasn’t there yet, so I thought, okay, I’ll just watch the sun go down, and it was nice.” — when asked if he had seen any good sunsets in Arizona during Spring Training.

“No. She, like, has a special mouth . . . so that her breath is usually pretty good, but she complains about mine a lot.” — when asked if his girlfriend liked to eat at Chipotle with him.

“It’s got to help some other guys, seeing someone as old as he is and playing as long as he has, playing as hard as he is.” — on second baseman Mark Grudzielanek

“Well, one thing is, when you’re warming up in the bullpen, they’ll spray you sometimes and get you wet.” — when asked what he thought about the fountains at Kauffman Stadium

“There definitely will be flying cars, but whether there’ll be flying cars for most people to use, it’ll probably take a long time to straighten everything out, all the rules and hassles. It’ll take a while to figure out how to keep people from crashing into each other.” — when asked if he thought there would be flying cars in the future.

“No, I’m not a fan of them. We could try to think of someone else we could do it with. But not them.” — when asked if he and his girlfriend would double date with Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson.

“If I hit a guy, I want him to be hurt.”

“Things can go either really bad in two innings or go really good in two innings. You really don’t get the whole story.” — on spring training pitching outings.

“I just wanted to make this clear: I can’t live without baseball…It’s to the point where it caused problems with my girlfriend because she knows baseball is more important than her. I say, ‘Hey, I’m sorry. I love the game that much. You’re not even close to being No. 1 — that’s how much I love baseball. I couldn’t live without it.”

Everybody was mad at me for only throwing fastballs and change-ups. So I threw some first-pitch strikes with curveballs. It?s an easy way to get a strike. It?s not like it?s a real hard pitch to throw. You just throw it for a strike.”

“Seriously, that was the best pitch I’ve ever made that got hit over the fence. That was probably the only pitch today that I did exactly what I wanted to do.” — after giving up a home run to Prince Fielder in a spring training game.

“Nice effort by the defense. They didn’t get tired of running after balls to the wall. I was pretty impressed by that.”

“Me. I’m a better hitter.” — when Greinke was asked by a National League scout, “Should we draft you or Scott Kazmir?”

[trwi7]

Amazing quotes.

[Balls2TheWalls]

My favorite Brewer already.

[DH34Phan]

His wife isn't too bad either...