SB Nation - Randy Messenger

Friday's Frosty Mug

KLSnow — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:42:24 -0000

Yes, this is a picture of Trevor Hoffman with his dog from the Brewers' 2010 Pet Calendar, via Adam McCalvy. This might be the slowest news day ever.

View full size photo »

Some things to read while having it both ways.

If we're not hearing much from the Brewer front office this week, it's because they're in Arizona working on a plan for the offseason.

Here's proof that it's been a quiet week: The Brewers' Wives announced the release of their 2010 Pet Calendar, and it's one of today's top stories.

Keith Law chatted with fans again yesterday, and View From Bernie's Chalet has a roundup of all the Brewer-related notes. Today's topics include a terrible Ryan Braun trade proposal and Rickie Weeks.

The full article is Insider-only, but Jason Gray of ESPN has a look at Jonathan Lucroy, and the sudden shift that has led to him being considered the organization's top catching prospect.

Elsewhere in the minors:

I don't remember if I've seen/mentioned this previously, but Baseball America's Minor League Transaction Report noted that the Brewers re-signed former first round pick Mike Jones as a minor league free agent. Jones reached AAA for the first time in 2009.
The Timber Rattlers are asking for your help to pick a first baseman for their 15th anniversary team. Follow the link for bios on the candidates, then jump over to the front page to vote.

Around baseball:

Blue Jays: Claimed pitcher Sean Henn off waivers from the Orioles and designated Michael Barrett for assignment.
Mariners: Outrighted first baseman Bryan LaHair, and pitchers Randy Messenger, Cesar Jimenez and Marwin Vega to AAA. Vega is the only one who won't become a minor league free agent.
Orioles: Declined their option for 2010 on Melvin Mora.
Pirates: Claimed left handed pitcher Justin Thomas off waivers from the Mariners.

Do you have software development and/or engineering skills and the desire to find a job where you can spend the day talking sports? SB Nation is hiring for a couple of positions.

Oh, and speaking of open positions, you have until the end of the day today to express interest in the Weekend Editor position here at BCB. I'm planning on making a decision tonight or tomorrow.

Happy birthday today to Manny Parra, who turns 27. Hopefully Rick Peterson turns out to be an early birthday present for him.

Elsewhere, happy birthday to:

Laynce Nix, who turns 29.
Former Brewer farmhand Marco Scutaro, who turns 34.
Dave Valle, who played in 16 games for the 1994 Brewers and turns 49.
And a posthumous happy birthday to longtime Milwaukee Brave Joe Adcock, who would have turned 82.

Drink up.

40-Man Roster Moves

Jeff — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:06:23 -0000

Every so often I'll have a little debate with myself over what I want this blog to be. Do I just write about what I find interesting or relevant, or do I try to make this sort of a one-stop shop for everything any Mariners fan could care about? In other words, where do I set the threshold of significance above which I write, but below which I ignore? I started thinking about this again most recently after the Bruce Hines story came out. I don't care that we fired our third base coach, and I don't think it really matters, but a lot of fans like to be aware of what's going on with the coaching staff, so how do I react? I didn't write anything about Hines, but I still go back and forth.

No matter which way I'm leaning, though, I still wouldn't write about this.

Bryan LaHair, Randy Messenger, Cesar Jimenez, Marwin Vega, and Justin Thomas have been outrighted off the 40-man roster. The first three are minor league free agents. Vega's sticking around. Thomas got claimed by the Pirates. LaHair's nothing, Messenger's nothing, Jimenez is a lefty that struggles against lefties, Vega's nothing, and if Justin Thomas tries really hard he could be the new Randy Keisler. The only reason this is the least bit notable is that the Mariners are now way less smelly. Which, hey, all right.

Is This Sparta?

Graham — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:21:58 -0000

More photos » by Duane Burleson - AP

His hat is stifling. It narrows his vision. And he must see far. His glove is heavy. It throws him off balance. And his target is ninety feet away.

Browse more photos »

We've been hearing about the Mariner bullpen quite a lot this season. For a unit that was entirely comprised of question marks, it's held out particularly well, and is often cited as one of the prime reasons the Mariners have remained above .500 well into September. Perhaps no element of the team has defied expectations so much as the relief corps. With a week left in spring training, there was no closer. Late inning duties this year have been shared by a guy who was traded for a no-name last winter, someone who was a no-name last winter, a guy who's coming back from microfracture surgery in his pitching elbow, someone who isn't Tim Lincecum (he didn't last for very long), and Sean White, who is boring. Complementing the late inning boys was a random crop of AAA arms and Miguel Batista. One can only imagine how bullpen coach John Wetteland must have felt when presented with his men at the start of the year, but eventually he was able to turn them into a functional (albeit more than slightly insane) unit.

How? As the story goes, on an early-season road trip, Mark Lowe downloaded 300, which for those unfamiliar with it, is a ridiculously over-the-top movie about the Spartans at Battle of Thermopylae, which occurred during the second Persian invasion of Greece in late 480 BC (spoiler: they all die). He shared his enthusiasm for the film with Wetteland, and things snowballed from there. Members of the bullpen adopted characters from the movie, Spartan helmets popped up everywhere, and a grand ol' time was had by all. One wonders exactly how badly the relievers expected the team to do if they felt as though they identified best with a bunch of guys who all end up dead, but there's no denying it fueled an us-against-the-whole-damn-world mindset that the bullpen latched onto and used as inspiration to pitch their hearts out. The siege mentality was further reinforced when MLB officials decided to take their helmets away. Small wonder, then, that the bullpen has pitched their collective hearts out this year, keeping games just close enough for the struggling position players to scrape out more wins than losses.

This would be all well and good if the Mariner bullpen was actually as good as traditional numbers suggest. But they're not. They're not even average, despite all the one-run games and saves for David Aardsma. By using tRA-derived valuation statistics, they've been more than a quarter-century of runs below average, which turns out to be the worst mark in the American League. AL West rivals Oakland, on the other hand, are well over the +50 mark, which is a spread of almost seven and a half wins. By the numbers, they have answered the questions surrounding them in spring training, and the answer turns out to have been 'holy crap they're bad'. But this doesn't jive at all with their ability to keep them Mariners in business in close games. The team has won an absurd number of one run games, and generally has the ability to keep games close once the team turns over pitching duties to the bullpen. So what gives? Is the Mariner bullpen an above-average unit with an elite closer as the spearhead, or is David Aarsdma the equivalent of affixing a razor blade to a forty foot tall marshmallow and calling it a weapon? Or is the answer somewhere in between?

I hope it's the last option, because otherwise I've just spent a tonne of time collecting data for no good reason. Let's dig in.

Note: All data current as of 2:39 PM Sept 12th, 2009. Partial innings denoted as .3 for one out, .7 for two.

First, let's look at our cast of intrepid heroes and Denny Stark. Who's been leaned on the most? The quartet of Mark Lowe, Sean White, Miguel Batista, and David Aardsma have accounted for a little over half of the innings thrown by Mariner relievers this season, as shown in the chart below:

Figure 1: Innings pitched by Mariner relievers in 2009

Chris Jakubauskas and Shawn Kelley have also both seen significant time this year as well, and Kelley was thriving in a late-inning role until he suffered a rib injury in mid-May. Five arms have appeared in both the rotation and the bullpen, including Brandon Morrow, who began the season as the closer before a series of meltdowns got him demoted. Now that we have a pretty good idea of who's soaked up how many innings, let's take a look at their numbers in RA and tRA form:

Table 1: RA, tRA, rRAA, and pRAA for Mariner relievers in 2009

rRAA and pRAA are computed by taking the difference between league RA and tRA respectively and multiplying by innings pitched/9 for rRAA and expected innings/9 for pRAA, with Δ denoting the difference between rRAA and pRAA. As the column on the far right shows, Mariners pitchers have, by and large, far exceeded their expected value as far as defence/park-independent statistics are concerned. This is hardly a surprise, as the Mariners have the best defence in the game and play in a pitcher-friendly park. The biggest differences are in Sean White and David Aardsma's numbers, who between them 'should' be worth around 15 runs less than their actual numbers would suggest. Again, this isn't a surprise, as the pitchers likely to have the biggest negative difference between pRAA and rRAA are those who've been highly effective by ERA and associated metrics. The opposite should also hold true: the poor performers are likely to have been negatively impacted by their fielders.

In fact, the only relief pitchers who have a lower tRA than RA are Mark Lowe, Brandon Morrow, and Garrett Olson, and only Lowe has been part of the bullpen all season. The numbers are fairly remarkable - by using traditional numbers, the Mariner bullpen has been worth +6.4 runs total, and with pRAA, they've been at a rather alarming -25.9. Miguel Batista is particularly notable for having cost us almost ten runs over the course of the season, but he's had a couple of competitors for the suckiest bullpen arm award, with Jakubauskas and Stark (in ten innings somehow) pushing him all the way. Some (most) of the numbers in the table above has to have come from the defence, as Safeco Field isn't going to explain away the whole thing. But before we look at defensive contributions explicitly, I'd like to introduce the concept of leverage.

Most of you should be familiar with Jeff's lovely win expectancy charts, which appear after nearly every game. The idea of win expectancy is straightforward. For each game state (outs, score, runners, inning) we can figure out the likelihood of an average team beating another average team. Despite most teams not being completely average and entirely constituted of average players, win probability can be used as a measure of how important a given event was in terms of winning or losing baseball games. A walk-off home run? Worth a lot. A two-out walk with the bases loaded in the second when down by five? Not so much. In fact, for each game state, we know what the possible swings in win probability are. A team cannot possibly make a big impact in one at-bat when they're ten runs down, even if the batter hits a grand slam, but with the tying run at third with one out in the ninth, the situation can become critically important.

Table 2: 2009 AL relief leverage by
team, descending

Leverage is a measurement of just how important those situations are. Fortunately, the good people at Fangraphs keep track of this number for both teams and individual players. Here we are concerned with the average leverage a pitcher sees, denoted as pLI (the average is 1.00). In general one might expect bullpens to see higher leverage situations than starting pitchers, but as Table 2 to the left shows, this is not the case for most of the American League, which have seven teams below 1.00 and 12 below 1.10. The standout teams are the Boston Red Sox and the Seattle Mariners, with the latter leading the major leagues in bullpen leverage (the Dodgers and Cubs are also both over 1.20 in average bullpen leverage).

There are a number of reasons why we might see such a disparity in the stressfulness of situations seen by a bullpen. One such reason might be that a team is poor enough that they are regularly losing by large enough amounts to make winning improbably: this might apply to the AL's basement teams: Oakland, Kansas City, and Baltimore. Or the opposite could be true and the team could routinely be so far ahead by the time the manager goes to a reliever that their innings simply aren't worth very much, which is the route taken by the New York Yankees and their absurdly powerful offence.

Conversely, a team which finds its bullpen highly stressed will be in contention to win many games, one that relies on excellent run prevention to keep things close. That would be the Mariners. Their bullpen leverage index of 1.23 means that the runs saved or given up by Mariner relievers are worth 132% of those saved or given up by their counterparts in New York.

The same concept applies to individual pitchers on the same team. By multiplying innings pitched by individual pLI, we can see the relative importance of the innings a pitcher has soaked up, as shown below:

Figure 2: IP*pLI for Mariner relievers in 2009

As we can see, David Aardsma springs into the lead once important innings are considered. The top four of Aardsma/Lowe/White/Batista are now responsible for almost two thirds of leveraged relief innings, and the team total has jumped by more than 100 innings (this is insane, by the way). Aardsma and Lowe are entirely responsible for the team's jump in innings total, with the former experiencing the equivalent of 76 extra innings' worth of stress and the latter a robust +38, due to pLIs of 2.21 and 1.55 respectively. Brandon Morrow's adventures in Minnesota and Texas see him grab more innings, and poor Doug Fister, who made his debut at the end of a blowout game, has his contribution marked as wholly irrelevant and thus discarded.

We need to account for leverage when we look at value metrics like pRAA, and again this is a simple case of multiplication. Numbers multiplied by pLI are denoted with an apostrophe:

Table 3: pLI and leveraged rRAA and pRAA for Mariner relievers in 2009

Aardsma's performance is particularly notable, but apart from the fantastic contribution from our closer, what really stands out is how poorly Miguel Batista has been used. His pLI was just a tick below average, and this season he's been running a tRA of almost six. While his contract demanded that he be on the roster somewhere, the damage he's caused could probably have been mitigated by relegating him to mop-up duty rather than deploying him in relatively close games. Denny Stark and Chris Jakubauskas both saw their negative contributions decreased due to their throwing in less stressful situations, which would have left Batista all alone at the bottom if not for the increased impact of The Adventures of Brandon Morrow. The chart does show you why the Mariner pen is held in high regard by those watching, though. The important innings have gone to White, Aardsma, and Lowe, and by and large they just haven't allowed runs, to the tune of 44 runs saved by rRAA. Let's look at an overall comparison between rRAA, pRAA, and the leveraged numbers:

Table 4: rRAA, pRAA, and leveraged values for Mariner relievers in 2009

As shown in the table above, leveraging the numbers results in an increase in both rRAA' and pRAA'. This should go as a feather in the cap of Don Wakamatsu, as it demonstrates his ability use his bullpen arms (sans Batista) effectively - the most important innings have gone to the most able pitchers. It's really no wonder that those watching games and following closely think that the team has a good bullpen. Naturally, we pay more attention when we're in with a shot at winning, and in those situations, the relief corps just doesn't give up runs. It's hard not to be confident in the later innings when your top arms are that good at shutting the opposition's bats. But again, how much of this is the responsibility of the pitcher? pRAA' agrees that the bullpen is generally far better when the game's on the line, but still has the unit as well below average, and almost three wins less valuable than it would appear when simply looking at runs, which is a similar result to what we saw earlier when looking at unleveraged values.

The defence, then, has to have some responsibility for the perception of the bullpen as an elite unit. How much defensive support has each pitcher received? Is defence clutch in any way (the most likely explanation for this would be sensible use of defensive replacements)? Although you could probably figure things out from the numbers above, we like our graphs around here - the chart below shows the defensive support given to each pitcher per tRA's xRR, which is simply expected runs minus actual runs with park effects accounted for. Both plain xRR and xRR multiplied by pLI are shown.

Figure 3: Defensive support (standard and leveraged) for Mariner relievers in 2009 (click image for full size).

Aardsma and White have been the primary beneficiaries of the defence this season, but it's hard to argue in favour of defensive clutchness: Morrow didn't get much support, and Lowe has been a little better than his traditional line too. In fact, summing leveraged xRR and subtracting plain xRR leaves you with one extra run, which is a little surprising considering the average pLI of 1.23. Overall, the defence hasn't cared who's pitching or what the score is - it's just gone out and made plays no matter the situation. Despite some of it being explained away with leveraged numbers, I have to conclude that the greater part of the difference between 'common knowledge' and a quick statistical peek at our pen's numbers is due to Franklin Gutierrez and company.

All in all, I think it's pretty clear that although the bullpen isn't as good as commonly believed, it hasn't been as bad as simply looking at unleveraged pRAA would suggest, simply because the guys relied on when the games are on the line have been much better than those in mopup duty (surprise!). However, the bullpen has still been below average, and without the safety blanket of the best defence in the game to make them look good, we'd hear less about resilience and esprit de corps and more about fatigue and the need for mechanical tweaks.

If this is Sparta, it's been more Sellasia than Thermopylae.

Jakubauskas to Tacoma, Messenger Recalled

Matthew — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:32:32 -0000

Drayer's Tweet.

Chris Jakubauskas was sent down to Tacoma, possibly because of his minor shoulder impingement? Either way, Randy Messenger is back. This really means nothing.

Finally

Jeff — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:19:15 -0000

Earlier this month Randy Messenger came on like gangbusters, but a couple bad outings in a row have dragged his numbers down to a more appropriate level for a guy like Randy Messenger, which should be enough to keep the coaching staff from thinking that he earned a roster spot. Mind you, I don't know how much the coaching staff liked Messenger in the first place or how much they care about ST performance, but as far as I'm concerned, anything that might help keep bad players away from the roster can only be good, and Randy Messenger is a bad player. This also leaves David Aardsma and maybe Shawn Kelley as the only bullpen standouts to date, which is both stupid and pretty cool. The longer we go without Mark Lowe doing something positive, the closer we become to an interesting experiment.

Incidentally, six Mariner pitchers have struck out at least twice as many hitters as they've walked so far in ST. Those pitchers have allowed 83 hits and 42 runs in 55.2 innings. Nice month for the defense.

On Spring Surprises

Jeff — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:23:30 -0000

One of the brightest stars so far - at least as far as the coaching staff is concerned - has been Chris Jakubauskas, a converted outfielder who toiled in the Indy Leagues before signing with the Mariners and pitching well in West Tennessee and Tacoma. He's become something of a sleeper to break camp with the M's based on his ability to throw strikes. The issue is that that's kind of all he does. Among 123 starters with at least 100 xOuts in the PCL last year, Jakubauskas' 65.8% strike rate was a full standard deviation above average, but his ability to induce groundballs was middle-of-the-pack and his 5.8% swinging strike rate came in 120th, between Joe Woerman and Tyler Lumsden. That's 5.8% against AAA competition, with a league average of 8.8%. That's bad.

Jakubauskas throws enough strikes and has a good enough changeup to keep from embarrassing himself on a bigger stage, but realistically, there's nothing special about him, and his upside is far lower than that of many of our other bullpen candidates. He's a good story who just isn't good enough. Which might be for the best, since I'm already damn tired of hearing jokes about his name. It's long. We get it. You're more predictable than Friends.

Chris Shelton has 13 hits and three homers in 25 at bats so far this month, and is doing a wonderful job of securing a roster spot as the other half of the 1B platoon. Shelton was always the favorite, but unless he takes a nasty turn for the worse over these next couple weeks, at this point he's all but a guarantee. That's good news for ginger people. Don't be alarmed by Shelton's reverse platoon splits in the Majors - the samples are small, reverse platoon splits don't really exist, and he was normal in the minors. Going forward, we can say with near-absolute certainty that Shelton is a more productive bat against lefties than he is against righties. This platoon isn't going to light anyone's hair on fire with its awesomeness, but it ought to be solid.

All I'm going to say about Matt Tuiasosopo is that you better hope he's almost ready, since there's pretty much no way that Beltre re-signs after the season. It really is remarkable how well Tui has bounced back from his .185/.259/.218 stint in AA a few years ago. Say what you will about the many questionable operating philosophies of the Bill Bavasi administration, but the whole rush-prospects-until-they-fail thing seems to have worked out okay, all things considered.

Felix has yet to allow a run so far in the WBC, which is good. But he's walked six batters in 8.2 innings, which is bad. He only threw 57% fastballs against Puerto Rico the other day, which is good. Only 53% of those fastballs were strikes, which is bad.

Carlos Silva has only allowed one run in WBC play, but then Carlos Silva has thrown 11 innings against Italy and the Netherlands.

Jose Lopez, Endy Chavez, Ichiro, and Kenji Johjima are a combined 27-70 in the WBC with 13 extra-base hits. Ichiro's been the worst. Lopez has just been flipping out, with five doubles, two homers, and one single that he tried to stretch into a double (nearly succeeding). He also has three walks and zero strikeouts as part of a talented lineup. I don't know how much to read into this, if at all, but what I can say for sure is that this can't possibly be bad news. A Jose Lopez breakout season at the plate would be a godsend to a Mariners team that's right on the verge of making the AL West awfully interesting.

Of all the Mariner pitchers in camp, none have performed better than Randy Messenger. Which is pretty convincing evidence of why ST stats are retarded. But anyway, Messenger's a four-pitch righty with a straight fastball, and because his change isn't very good, he uses his curveball instead as his primary offspeed pitch to lefties. A contact guy who doesn't keep the ball on the ground, Messenger's only as good as his ability to stay in the zone, and while his 2008 was solid in that regard (in both the Majors and AAA), his strike-throwing track record is barely above average. It's interesting that his top PITCHf/x similary score is the doesn't-suck Ricky Nolasco. Messenger's a nobody reliever with 174.1 innings under his belt as a nobody reliever, and nothing he does this spring short of throwing 100 miles per hour somehow should be able to get him a roster spot. That he looks like a total douche can't be helping him either.

The Five Biggest Subplots Of Spring Training

Jeff — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:43:18 -0000

The news needs to report news. Even when there is no news to report. That's how we end up with ST articles about Ryan Feierabend's kid or Bryan LaHair's laughable bid for a job. Let me help you sort through all the fluff so you can focus on the most important things to which you should pay attention over the next several weeks.

The closer race. It's been talked about at some length both here and at USSM, but as of now, the Mariners haven't yet settled on a designated closer. The list of candidates includes Mark Lowe, Miguel Batista, Roy Corcoran, and - depending on who you ask - David Aardsma, Randy Messenger, and Tyler Walker. Nobody stands out right now, as pretty much all of them have had their good games and bad ones, but Lowe, Aardsma, and Walker have the best pure stuff. This is going to be an interesting race; barring surprise, Lowe's my preferred choice, and probably the team's, as well, but in this kind of competition it doesn't take much for a guy to fall out of favor. And these guys know it, too. There's probably a lot more intensity and focus in the bullpen than there usually is this time of year.

Erik Bedard's progress. Okay, so this one won't be that easy to follow, given the pointlessness of Spring Training statistics and all, but it's important for the team to have him throwing at full strength and being able to spot his fastball and curve. It'll take a lot of work for Erik to put last season behind him, but remember, it was just a year ago that he was arguably the best starting pitcher in baseball. That talent is still in there somewhere. If he's able to build up his arm strength and stay healthy, then he'll be in line for a considerable rebound, a rebound that could conceivably put us in the blessed position of having two #1's. Whether the team's looking to run to the playoffs or acquire prospects at the deadline, Bedard's well-being will be a big deal.

Shortstop. When the Mariners traded for Ronny Cedeno and said they planned on using him to push Yuniesky Betancourt, a lot of fans rolled their eyes, having heard this kind of tune before. This time, though, it's not all talk. Granted, Yuni is the projected starter, but the Mariners have told Cedeno that he's in the running to start, and if Yuni has a rough go of it this month, then he could be shit outta luck. The new front office doesn't hold him in the highest regard. Rumor has it that Yuni shed some weight over the winter, but if that offseason dedication doesn't translate into better agility and focus on the field, then we might really see a changing of the guard. This isn't exactly a Lopez/Vina sort of thing. This is a legitimate threat. It doesn't help that Yuni already had to miss a bunch of time with a bad hamstring.

Griffey's legs. Before committing to any plan for where Griffey is going to play, the Mariners have said on multiple occasions that they want to see how his body holds up to the rigors of playing the outfield. How he fares is going to have a significant impact on the outlook of the roster. If his legs give him a little trouble, then he'll serve as the regular DH, with both Chavez and Balentien getting time in LF, which is better for the team. If his legs hold up, though, then he'll presumably get a lot more time in left, which makes the team worse at two positions. I suppose this is both a test of Griffey and a test of Wakamatsu, because even if Griffey makes his case for playing the field, it's the manager who has the ultimate say in where to fit him in. I guess what we should be hoping for is that Griffey's knees are too bad for him to play the field, but good enough to let him hit without being a cripple. That way we don't have to worry about the possibility of a rookie manager caving to a beloved veteran.

Griffey's influence. I haven't spent that much time talking about all the alleged clubhouse issues from last year, because I didn't want to contribute to what I believe to have been an overblown story, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of players on this team really do not like Ichiro very much. And no matter what you think about the impact of clubhouse chemistry, a lot of players having a problem with your biggest star can't possibly be good. So with that in mind, it's going to be interesting to see how Griffey changes the dynamic, if at all. For one thing, we know that Ichiro's a big fan of his, so that might be one way to unify the clubhouse. And for another, while a lot of people see Ichiro as a primadonna, Griffey puts him to shame in that regard, so having another high-profile celebrity with even more grating tendencies might put things in perspective. Either by showing that you can be a primadonna and a contributing teammate at the same time, or by showing that being a star who doesn't lead isn't a quality unique to Ichiro. This is the first time a Mariner clubhouse has ever been shared by Ichiro and another international icon. Shifting some focus over to the new guy instead of heaping it all on the incumbent could work wonders.

Monday's Frosty Mug

KLSnow — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:27:36 -0000

Some things to read while wondering about a groundhog's ability to predict the weather.

Expect an announcement soon on Bob Uecker's new partner in the booth: It had been previously reported that the Brewers had narrowed their list of candidates to two. Now, this morning we have a report that Jeff Munn, a pre and post-game show host for the Diamondbacks, has withdrawn himself from consideration. As such, the pick appears to be WGN Radio's Cory Provus.

The Brewers haven't been to an arbitration hearing since Doug Melvin took over as general manager, but that could be about to change. Gord Ash says the Brewers have made "zero" progress in negotiations with Corey Hart and Rickie Weeks. Both sides still have a little less than three weeks to work something out.

If his last name wasn't Gwynn, would it be a story? Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe (via MLB Trade Rumors) lists Tony Gwynn Jr. among players who are out of options and could be on the move this spring. If someone wanted Gwynn and was willing to give the Brewers anything of value for him, I'm guessing he'd already be gone.

A few notes from around the minors:

Stop me if I've already mentioned this, but Alcides Escobar is MiLB.com's #8 prospect. The link includes a scouting report and a brief video package on the young shortstop.
As noted in a FanShot over the weekend, Taylor Green underwent surgery last week on his wrist to repair a compression fracture suffered late in the 2008 season. He will likely miss April of 2009.
Mark Rogers, a former #1 pick who hasn't pitched in a game since 2006, reportedly feels great and hopes to break camp with a team in 2009. Rogers is still just 23 but has never pitched above A ball.

The Brewers have at least one more sandwich pick coming in June's draft, as Brian Shouse has agreed to a deal with the Rays. The Brewers could get as many as ~~three~~ two more picks in the top 60 of the draft when Ben Sheets ~~and Eric Gagne~~ eventually sign(s).

In yesterday's Advent Calendar, I mentioned that Mike Cameron has 168 more strikeouts than hits in his career. Taking it to the next level, TheJay (over at Recondite Baseball) has compiled a list of 34 players with at least 100 more strikeouts than hits in their careers, and no less than five current or former Brewers appear on it, including three (Rob Deer, Russell Branyan and Gorman Thomas) in the top four. Also, Enrique Cruz is one of just a handful of position players in MLB history with at least 20 more strikeouts than total bases.

Still trying to figure out what to expect from Trevor Hoffman in 2009? FakeTeams projects him as the NL's sixth best closer. And while he appears to already have his entrance music picked out, Ducksnorts has 71 terrible suggestions for if he decides to freshen things up.

On the hot stove:

Astros: Were reportedly ready to spend as much as $120 million this offseason, but have now settled closer to $104. (h/t Crawfish Boxes)
Cubs: Could be near a deal to send Rich Hill to the Orioles, but the Mariners are also interested. The Cubs also signed Paul Bako to a one year deal worth $725,000.
Mariners: Could be interested in cutting payroll, including Jarrod Washburn, Adrian Beltre and Miguel Batista. They also re-signed Randy Messenger.
Phillies: Have reportedly contacted Will Ohman as a possible fill-in while J.C. Romero serves his suspension. They'd also like to trade Geoff Jenkins.
Pirates: Designated reliever T.J. Beam for assignment to make room for Eric Hinske on their roster.
Rockies: Signed Josh Fogg to a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training.

It's becoming more and more likely that there will still be a significant number of free agents on the market when spring training opens in 11 days. Murray Chass remembers 1995, when the Players Association held a camp for unsigned players, called the "Homestead Homies." Looks like that concept may need to be dusted off and used again.

How do you rate your prospects? It's probably safe to assume most teams don't rank them by Facebook friends, but that's what the folks over at Halos Heaven have done.

Speaking of prospects, The Biz of Baseball has the details on a new documentary series chronicling life in the minors. I think I'll stick to watching actual games, but it seems interesting.

George Carlin did it more famously, but he didn't stop in the middle for a rant about bravery and courage: Joe Posnanski takes a look at the language we use to describe baseball.

Oh, and while I love trying out the food at minor league ballparks, I don't think a monstrosity of five beef patties weighing five-thirds of a pound, dressed with sliced Spam, sausage gravy, fried eggs and a gigantic pickle is in my future.

Drink up.