2014 Discussion Thread

[Kerb Hohl]

Attention Doug Melvin: Please claim Eric Surkamp

[trwi7]

Some dude in the MJS today said that the Brewers should build from within. Agree with that. He also said a few years ago they had a nucleus with the usual suspects - Fielder, Braun, Hardy etc. but he also managed to throw Gwynn's name in there. :lol;

[Kerb Hohl]

Surkamp was claimed by the White Sox yesterday, if anyone was hanging on the edge of their seats.

Surkamp is maybe a AAAA guy, who knows, but when something is out there that cheap, I have no idea why Houston and Miami would pass.

[trwi7]

Sounds a lot like a certain basketball team we know.

The always excellent Adam McCalvy had this wonderful nugget of a quote from Brewers’ manager Ron Roenicke over at Brewers.com this morning:

“It’s a good division,” Roenicke said. “We know what we’re up against. We know everything has to go right. We certainly can’t have any injuries we had last year. But that’s OK. It’s fun when you’re not picked to win something and you end up having a great year. That’s really nice to do.”

OK, I know he doesn’t mean “we know everything has to go right,” literally. Pitchers won’t strike out every batter they face and hitters won’t hit home runs every time they come to the plate. He’s obviously talking about things going about as well as can be reasonably expected over the course of the season. No major injuries or massive performance collapses from key players. Young guys take steps forward rather than backward. None of the other teams in the division pull a 2001 Mariners. Things along those lines.

The problem here, of course, is that this sort of thing just doesn’t happen much in reality. The MLB season forces teams to play 162 games in about 180 days, and that is meant to test a team’s depth and ability to get production from a number of different players. Injuries will happen. Someone, probably multiple players, will have an unexpectedly bad season. Age will catch up to someone and they’ll face both injuries and decline.

Take, for instance, the best team the Milwaukee Brewers have put on the field in the last 30 odd years, the 2011 squad. For all that went right with that team to win 96 games, they still faced their share of hurdles. Zack Greinke, Corey Hart, Rickie Weeks, Takashi Saito and Carlos Gomez all missed a significant number of games due to injury that year. Perhaps most glaringly, they got less than nothing from the left side of their infield of Yuni Betancourt and Casey McGehee. Yet, they managed to win 96 games because they got enough from their star players to offset those losses.

Going into a season saying “we know everything has to go right” is essentially conceding that the team isn’t a contender. Roenicke has been around the game long enough to know that even the best teams in the league generally have a laundry list of things that have gone wrong for them, they just are able to get past those hurdles. Counting on no hurdles to emerge isn’t a plan for success, it’s a dream people tells themselves so they can get up and go to work in the morning with some hope for the ultimate payoff.

This line of thinking doesn’t stop with Roenicke, either. This was from general manager Doug Melvin‘s season ending press conference:

“Can we win with this roster? Yeah, we can win with the roster we have,” Melvin said. “Again, a lot of things have to go right, the younger players have to take the next step in development and our best players have to be on the field. I think if our best players are on the field and our young guys take that next step, we can be there. Last year, we got eliminated in the last week of the season. If you look at some of the teams that are out there, it takes a lot of talent to win. We’ll keep working at it.”

Melvin isn’t saying that “everything has to go right” for the team to win here, but he’s coming fairly close. He, too, has been around long enough to know that counting on “a lot of things to go right” generally doesn’t end in success for a baseball team. It can, and he probably can squint at this roster and imagine scenarios where the team ends up in the playoffs. If you gave him truth serum, though, what would he really say about the team’s chances for 2014?

One of my least favorite things to do when talking about sports is to try and parse the intended meaning of a quote from a coach or manager. They so often fall into cliched “coach speak” because it’s the best way to avoid saying something foolish when speaking off the cuff that it’s rare any real, clear value can be gained. This seems to be the rare exception, where leadership figures give an honest answer to a question and it provides a real glimpse into the mindsets of people in power.

All of this begs the question what the man ultimately responsible for the direction of the franchise, primary owner Mark Attanasio, thinks of this mindset? Does he agree with them that winning in 2014 is going to take a lot of things going right while relatively few things go wrong? On one hand, if he disagrees, what does that say about his confidence in the ability of the men he’s entrusted his investment to? On the other hand, if he does agree, then why isn’t he demanding that the focus shift towards winning in future rather than trying to win now?

The Milwaukee Brewers appear to be stuck somewhere between contending and rebuilding, and on some level the upper management of the team seems to realize this. The club is almost certainly headed towards some sort of reckoning down the road where it will be obvious that the “middle road” is no longer possible or practical. The only questions really left are how long it will take to get there, and if they can possibly manage to sneak in a true contending season or two along the way.

http://disciplesofuecker.com/we-know-ev ... ight/15741

[Kerb Hohl]

I think you take that comparison way too far.

This is a manager that has nothing else to say.

Outside of burning a draft pick on Kyle Lohse I don't know what the hell else signals that they've been playing for mediocrity. It's almost as if the Brewers didn't trade a rental player for a franchise shortstop or anything.

I get what you're saying, building through young pitching is smart. That's what I'd do if I was handed the reigns on a small market team. But after 2011, there is no way any competent owner deals away any valuable players they had. They made the LCS with a young team. In 2013, they did waste a draft pick to sign Kyle Lohse.

Ask me again in a year or two if the team still sucks and then goes out and trades a prospect for Jeremy Guthrie. Then you can strike up the Bucks comparisons for real.

Here is what happens:
2011: Win now trades get Brewers to the LCS
2012: Brewers lose fat defensive, great hitting 1B...add good hitting 3B.

Since the beginning of 2012 everything has gone wrong in terms of health and suspensions, and I think they are dealing as such. You didn't see them go out and burn money on a stopgap for 2014. They know what's going on.

[humanrefutation]

It is interesting that the team has been very, very quiet this offseason. Something tells me that there will be a flurry of activity over the next month.

[El Duderino]

All of this begs the question what the man ultimately responsible for the direction of the franchise, primary owner Mark Attanasio, thinks of this mindset? Does he agree with them that winning in 2014 is going to take a lot of things going right while relatively few things go wrong? On one hand, if he disagrees, what does that say about his confidence in the ability of the men he’s entrusted his investment to? On the other hand, if he does agree, then why isn’t he demanding that the focus shift towards winning in future rather than trying to win now?

Has the writer of this article been blind and deaf to the comments and actions of Attanasio over the years?

At what point as Attanasio ever advocated rebuilding over trying to win now so long as there is even a slight hope of it being able to happen? This is the same owner who personally took the lead in signing Suppan, Ramirez, and Loshe, even after Melvin stated multiple times that he didn't want to give up a first round pick to sign Loshe. He likes seeing Miller Park filling up to the tune of 2.5 million plus fans each year, so i think the roster would have to be a projected only 70ish win mess before he'd green light a rebuild.

[humanrefutation]

He hasn't gone overboard in acquiring win-now talent. His biggest prospect dumps were ultimately justified in leading to a division title and another playoff appearance. If our scouting department was actually competent, there is no reason why we couldn't have a solid farm system and pursue a limited and considered win-now strategy every few years.

[Kerb Hohl]

So, uhhh, excitement is kinda low right now.

[ReasonablySober]

We live in a **** world where some slap dick can vote for **** Jack Morris and only Jack Morris and leave Greg **** Maddux off the ballot. **** **** everything, the world is ****.

[Turk Nowitzki]

We live in a **** world where some slap dick can vote for **** Jack Morris and only Jack Morris and leave Greg **** Maddux off the ballot. **** **** everything, the world is ****.

Switch to decaf?

[humanrefutation]

We live in a **** world where some slap dick can vote for **** Jack Morris and only Jack Morris and leave Greg **** Maddux off the ballot. **** **** everything, the world is ****.

He should have his ballot taken away from him. Seriously.

[Kerb Hohl]

Welcome to baseball, where writers romanticize over long-tenured role players (I realize Morris was a little above that) and also pretend that players haven't been cheating since the game was invented.

[ReasonablySober]

I love that LeBatard was the one to give deadspin a vote. I never really had an opinion on the guy and I associated him with the PTI/Around the Horn crew which isn't good, but it surprised me to learn that dudes online that I respect seemed to like his show. Then I started listening to his PM radio show since it went national a couple months ago and it is AWESOME. It couldn't be further from anything ESPN. LeBatard, and his crew, are absolutely great.

[humanrefutation]

Welcome to baseball, where writers romanticize over long-tenured role players (I realize Morris was a little above that) and also pretend that players haven't been cheating since the game was invented.

Morris was pitching in the midst of the steriod era, too. That seems hypocritical on the writer's part.

[humanrefutation]

I love that LeBatard was the one to give deadspin a vote. I never really had an opinion on the guy and I associated him with the PTI/Around the Horn crew which isn't good, but it surprised me to learn that dudes online that I respect seemed to like his show. Then I started listening to his PM radio show since it went national a couple months ago and it is AWESOME. It couldn't be further from anything ESPN. LeBatard, and his crew, are absolutely great.

His radio show is really good. I also enjoy HQ with Bomani and Papi as well.

[OnWISports]

And now LeBatard is getting raked over the coals by the "good old boys" network of baseball writers. What he did was less insulting than what the guys that voted for JT Snow or didn't vote for Maddox did. Writers use their ballots to make statements all the time, not sure how what LeBatard did was any different.

[ReasonablySober]

And now LeBatard is getting raked over the coals by the "good old boys" network of baseball writers. What he did was less insulting than what the guys that voted for JT Snow or didn't vote for Maddox did. Writers use their ballots to make statements all the time, not sure how what LeBatard did was any different.

Not gonna lie, I was legitimately surprised at the outrage. I expected some blowback, but he got killed. I did like it when he was being taken to task by the PTI crew on the radio and his co-host defended him by asking Tony and Wilbon how it was any worse than not submitting a ballot for Greg Maddux. At the end of the day Deadspin voters submitted a pretty damn great ballot, and a large number of legitimate voters didn't.

[Kerb Hohl]

Man, this is great. All of the old guard of the baseball writing fraternity has stepped away about writing sap pieces on gritty, slap-hitting 2nd basemen that suck to try and save the last shred they have of credibility in a changing game.

The Deadspin article highlighting all of the writers flipping out is great. A few "we're writers so we know more than the fan" lines in there. Sure you do.

[Kerb Hohl]

What a bunch of idiots. They just banned LeBatard for life of having a vote.

This move of idiocy is going to end any credibility for their fraternity. Seeya later, BBW Association.