SB Nation User Blog: nmc

This is stupid

nmc — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:20:52 -0000

I think what's even more stupid than the idea (why on Earth would the Brewers want to move back into the AL?), is that the commentors don't know that it's impossible to schedule an odd-numbered team league. Idiots!

This line is here because I can't fathom commenting on the asinine idea any further.

Payroll calc

nmc — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:18:59 -0000

Crossposted from my silly blog (RSS-it already)

It's that time of year again when beat writers dust off their math and attempt to calculate an official baseball team's payroll for the season. Like it matters much, all it does is heighten expectations (logically: higher payroll from PY = more wins this year).

Haudricourt from the JS came up with a number close to $73mm, which isn't all that bad. However, I came up with a number of close to $77mm based off of the wonderful Cot's Baseball Contracts numbers and my own gumption. Obviously, neither number will actually be the final number as players are cut, signed to different deals (in the Brewers case, their glut of young position players), or should finish arbitration any day now (ie Hardy). First, the key:

The Brewers have no contracts (as far as I can tell) without a player option. Obviously a conscious part of the braintrust. The major league minimum contract in 2008 is worth $390,000, so where players figures aren't known, I've inputted that number. Players are eligible for salary arbitration after their third, but before their sixth, year in the majors. Braun may actually qualify under a "Super 2" rule if things go his way this year, which means he would be arb-eligible prior to next season. Alright, on to the spreadsheet:

(I'm a sucker for color coding and organization, it really makes things better, doesn't it?)

Alright, now, as a Brewers fan, how can you not be excited about the future? Should injuries be minimized, players signed to reasonable contracts, and players performing to our unnecessarily lofty expectations, the Brewers current window of opportunity appears to be 2008-2011, four full years of players. Of course, the youngsters could turn on the team, the team could go south, and they could be on their way out of town in 2011, but still ... lots of optimism in these silly colors. Heck, the Brewers could even sign a few of the key players beyond 2011 and keep them until the decline.

The infield is set (of course), and even starters if Gallardo and Villanueva pitch as well as we think they will (with Suppan as the Charlie Liebrandt of the rotation for many more years to come). Outfield could be an issue if Braun doesn't take to LF (ha!) or LaPorta doesn't pan out. The bullpen is a fickle thing, one year contracts are the nature of the pen at the moment.
Maybe I can write something about baseball soon.

Brewers sign Cameron

nmc — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:53:41 -0000

I don't know how I feel about this:

Free-agent center fielder Mike Cameron has reached preliminary agreement with the Brewers on a one-year contract with a club option for 2009, according to major-league sources.

The deal is pending a physical.

...

The addition of Cameron likely will result in the Brewers moving Bill Hall to third base and Ryan Braun to left field.

[bumped by Roy Oswalt, Carlos Zambrano, et al.]

[UPDATE: I'll link to it in the comments, but the financials look surprisingly reasonable: about $5.5 million for 2008, and a club option for $10 million in 2009, with a $750,000 buyout. It also looks like we'll go with Gwoss (Grynn?) in center during the suspension. --- roguejim]

I've never been a fan of Cameron. He'll forever be linked as the main guy the Reds traded to get Griffey, Jr. from the Mariners. If anything else, this will quit the "No way Braun can play 3B" complainers ... but I'm not certain it's the right move.

Turnbow: one batter guy

nmc — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 03:16:54 -0000

I'm trying to contain my rage, but as I was on the elliptical machine watching yet another Turnbow meltdown, it came to me...

Turnbow is nothing more than a one batter guy. Notice I don't mention "out" ... just one batter. All too often I've seen him come into the game and pitch OK, but as soon as one little thing goes wrong (tonight the walk), he completely loses it. I think his issue is all mental, and I don't believe there is anything he or the team can do to remedy it ... so, one batter guy.

I present how the team should use Turnbow from this point out (if they use him at all): have him pitch to one guy. He gets an out? Alright, tempt fate and leave him in. He gets ... a walk, a bloop hit, a solid hit, a HBP, a catcher's interference, Ned scratches a bug bite, the ump asks him to remove an earing ... ANYTHING ... get him out of there.

Got it?

God, this team is frustrating.

Newsville: Sheets out until 9/1

nmc — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:09:40 -0000

For whatever reason, I relented and subjected myself to a Baseball Tonight. As excruciating as it was, Peter Gammons, the lone voice of reason, came on and said that Ben Sheets will not be pitching for the Brewers before 9/1. I don't think he has any other information.

I don't think the club will push him, but the optimistic Brewers fans should be disappointed. I'm not concerned about it seeing how well Gallardo is pitching, but it's saddening nonetheless.

I've been firmly in the camp that many of Sheets' injuries were of the freak variety, but will the Brewers ever be able to count on a perfectly healthy Ben Sheets from this point forward?

Priorities, priorities, priorities

nmc — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:01:30 -0000

Cross posted at my fledgling and underwhelming blog:

Rarely do I watch the local news, but when I do, I dare them to the "humor me" with something remotely interesting and not the most recent, wretched sensationalist garbage on videotape. Sometimes I get home right before the national news (which I still watch), so I catch the last few minutes of sports on WTMJ. Usually it's the latest update on the Packers (even in May and June), but tonight they were live at Miller Park.

Of course, everyone on the intraweb and anyone who considers themselves a baseball fan is looking toward Yovanni Gallardo's major league debut tonight. He's only the best pitching prospect the Brewers have brought up through their minor league system since Ben Sheets, and he's only been absurdly dominating at each level the 21 year old has played at.

You would think they would give a passing mention to the young phenom of the home team since they went through all the trouble to bring a live shot from the stadium on the 5p newscast. Nope, just another "Hey! Barry Bonds is here! Come out here and boo because he's evil! Eeeevilll!"

I don't know why I torture myself by watching the few minutes each week of local news that I do, but it's clear that it is no place for a real baseball fan. I won't go into how terrible WTMJ, once the most distinguished of the local channels, has fallen into a interminable duck speak sensationalism the last year, but I wish they would at least treat their audience with one iota of intelligence. Maybe they should start talking about players on the team in their home city than the old standby of saying who's coming to town and begging people to come out to the ballpark.

Along these lines, Gallardo did not come up as a question on today's Jeopardy, though George Orwell and Aaron Burr did.

6/4/03: NEVER FORGET

nmc — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 02:53:02 -0000

(This would have been more timely had I gotten my act together last night, but, tough cookies.)

The typical Brewers fan may not recall 6/4/03 as a momentous date, but to me, it's what signified the rebirth of my favorite team.

Coming off an atrocious 106 loss season, the team finally hired a man hereto fore known as our savior Doug Melvin. Unlike his predecessors (Sal Bando, Dean Taylor), Melvin actually was a real live and successful general manager with a few division titles to his credit. He knew how to build a team, he know how to find players. And, near and dear to my heart, he knew how to recognize a bad investment.

Over the winter of 2002/2003, Melvin made some minor moves (setting in motion the red paper clip project with Scott Podsednik), but to the casual fan it was the same old deal, just without signing the bloated underwhelming free agent. Melvin had a plan, and he knew the plan would take a while, but what he didn't know were the clowns standing in his way.

Jeffrey Hammonds had signed prior to the 2001 season for three years and $22 million. Everyone except Taylor thought that was a bad deal: an injury prone 29 year old outfielder coming off one career season in Colorado. He had been a serviceable player throughout his career when healthy, and the only thing I knew about him was that I had about 15 of his rookie cards. But still, this was the team's savior in the first season of Miller Park? Hammonds blessed the team with 49 games in 2001 and a .247/.314/.425 line. In 2002 he patched himself up to appear in 128 games and a stellar .257/.332/.397 line to lead the Brewers to a 56-106 record.

I'm certain the Brewers ownership hoped that he would turn it around in this 2003 contract year (at that point he had the reputation of playing well when it was in his best interests), but that wasn't the case and Melvin, the new guy, wasn't having any of it. Still riddled with injuries, Melvin fired Hammonds on June 4, 2003 even though he was being paid $8.2 million that season.

This was quite a bold move for Melvin to do being that it was two months into the season for a small market team, but it was something that had to be done. Hammonds' last game with the Brewers was actually April 14, 2003. But it was relieving for me, for too long the team had put up with their poor decisions and the new management put an end to that (Yost isn't included in that because he still refuses to play by any sane person's rule). In fact, the day prior to Hammonds' official release, with the second pick of the draft the Brewers selected a second baseman named Rickie Weeks.

So, that was the day when I started paying more attention to the team. It's still been somewhat painful, but the team is ascending in (probably) the way that Melvin, Ash, and the rest envisioned it to happen (well, perhaps a little slower than they wanted). But it was a great first step in restoring fans' faith in the organization, which could only be topped by the ownership change and (hopefully) some kind of hardware this season.

(Also of note: The Brewers on 5/27/03 made the deal of the century by getting rid of Alex Sanchez for Noochie Varner)

(Sources: terrible archive at JSonline.com, Baseball Reference, Retrosheet, my own tepid memory, Photoshop by me)

2007 Draft

nmc — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:34:23 -0000

I will be Tivo-ing the draft Thursday to see how it's presented on ESPN and how non-excited I will be when it comes to the Brewers pick. I guess the question is not who you would pick, but what would you be looking for?

I am not a draft expert, but having paged through the year-by-year (PDF) of the first rounds, it looks like you're really cheating death by selecting a high school pitcher. I understand teams want to capture lightning in a bottle, but wouldn't a surer thing be selecting a college pitcher?

As far as the Brewers outlook, I do not think they need to draft any hitters unless there is a solid catcher available. The infield is supposedly set, and outfielders can be had. A college pitcher could be ready in three years, a high school pitcher in five ... I would say a college pitcher is the way to go. Who, I don't know because I find it difficult to follow college baseball.

I have faith in Team Canada and fully expect them to pick the best available. They've had extraordinary success in their picks thus far.

Sickels' mock draft has the Brewers picking Jarrod Parker, RHP, Indiana HS. Just what the team needs, another HS pitcher.

MLB Press Box's official info page. Let me know if you can see it, it used to be off limits but they have done some tweaking of the site this year.

[editor's note, by Jeff] Thanks, nmc, for posting this. Personally, I'd love to see Matt Wieters (power-hitting college catcher) fall to #7, but I don't think it'll happen: I've seen him projected as high as #2.

TWIB Reflections

nmc — Thu, 10 May 2007 18:45:55 -0000

Every baseball fan has heard of and possibly seen This Week in Baseball, the goofy show before the Fox game of the week which is an 80% subsidiary of the Pepsi corporation. Sometimes it actually shows highlights from the previous week, but for the most part it features ruminations of players mic-ed up watching others highlights, features on newer players that aren't interesting (aside from Tim Hudson jumping out of a closet to scare Eddie Perez), and reflections on the past (which is conveniently crammed down our throats by the powers at MLB Corporate). Oh, and they sometimes expound on how the game keeps kids out of poverty in poor countries and shady parts of LA. Ok.

Well, it used to be a good show. In fact, it used to be the only way normal people could get highlights outside of their local teams if they didn't want to pay fledgling cable networks. This is the 30th year of This Week in Baseball and ESPN Classic has been airing olde tyme episodes showing us what we all long for in a highlights program.

If you can get past the wandering puns and bad jokes from Mel Allen, there's actually a great amount of content and large amount of highlights. It gives a great view into who the teams to beat were back in the day, who was up and coming, and, heaven forbid, a little character to the players we just know as a series of percentages and crooked numbers.

The program started in 1977 and I caught a few in that year as well as 1978, then they skipped ahead and went straight into 1982 (which they were on all last week and most of the prior week). Unfortunately, it isn't airing this week, so I can't tell you what happened the rest of the 1982 season, but it's a nice look at the Brewers outside of the rose-tinted glasses we sometimes see them through here in Milwaukee.

Watching these shows, it gave me a better appreciation for how good the Angels were back in the day ... they seriously had a vaunted offense and a very solid pitching staff. The Red Sox and Dodgers were frequent features on the show, as were the up and coming Orioles, surprising Pirates, and the hard luck Expos. I can't tell you how interesting it was to have a feeling as to what a team was like long before I was ever interested in baseball.

Of the individual players, each time someone would be make a play in the field, it was like a list of former Brewers coaches (Dauer, Foli, Garner, Lopes) and other middling coaches around the league. It was almost as if you hit terrible, you were guaranteed a coaching job later in your career.

The actual play on the field was really fast, and all the players looked like this year's Pirates and Nationals: mostly thin guys who could move around quite well. This was just before the weightlifting revolution, and aside from Rickey Henderson, there were very few players who looked like they worked out at all. JJ Hardy would be considered a big guy back then.

Also, the nicknames of Greg "The Bull" Luzinski and Ron "The Penguin" Cey were not unfounded. They were goofy looking guys.

So if you have free time and ESPN classic, set it up to record, it's an interesting look. With a little luck they'll start airing them again and pick up in mid-September 1982 and show a few more Brewers highlights.

Rumorville: Kevin Mench

nmc — Mon, 07 May 2007 15:10:31 -0000

From the LA Times via MLB Trade Rumors:

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that with injuries to Howie Kendrick and Garrett Anderson and poor performance by Shea Hillenbrand, the Angels are stepping up their efforts to improve their anemic offense via the trade market. Reportedly, the Angels are kicking the tires on several players, including "Colorado third baseman Garrett Atkins and outfielders Brad Hawpe and Jeff Baker, outfielders Kevin Mench (Milwaukee), Jacque Jones (Chicago Cubs), Pat Burrell (Philadelphia) and Emil Brown (Kansas City), and third basemen Morgan Ensberg (Houston) and Edwin Encarnacion (Cincinnati)."

Trade Rumors suggests they'd be up to moving Santana, which I don't think would make that trade fair.