Lots on the Plate Today
Might as well separate this post into a few separate sections…
A) BREWERS WIN!!!
B) Gregg Zaun’s going on the DL, Jon Lucroy is going to get called up. Carlos Gomez will be back today, probably for Adam Stern. These are all acceptable moves, although I’m not anticipating seeing Lucroy get the starting nod over Kottaras yet. He’s still too young and needs some more seasoning – his bat isn’t quite there yet. I like Lucroy as 2011′s starting C.
C) Zach Braddock might get called up? Both good relief prospects are coming up at about the right time. I agree with what Al said (see below) that the Brewers are a week with a fresh pen away from being good again.
D) Miller Park Drunk/Al’s Ramblings did a back-and-forth about Doug Melvin.
I’ve always been an avid defender of Melvin myself… which is weird. I generally come from the Seattle Mariners/Baltimore Ravens ‘defense first, offense second’ philosophy of building a team. Melvin’s is obviously the other way around. I’d recite exactly why I still like Melvin as the GM, but that link did as complete a job as I ever would.
The one thing neither of them talked about is the current minor league system as it is. There aren’t any starting pitchers near a major league waiting in the wings, and prospects like Brett Lawrie, Jon Lucroy etc. are still at least a year away from making it. Many Brewers farmhands that we’ve had for cheap these past few years are now a year or two away from free agency, and we don’t have near the firepower waiting that we once had.
Which makes me question… How much of our team was built by Doug Melvin, and how much by Jack Z’s impressive scouting? Melvin doesn’t exactly have the best track record with signing free agents vital to the team’s success. In other words, Melvin’s great at signing below-average, undervalued, bargain-bin players like Zaun, Counsell, Edmonds et al, but when the pitching staff needs one more anchor or we need another solution in the bullpen Melvin tends to miss with more players than I’m comfortable with.
All this talk about firing Melvin seems silly to me, because he’s only in control of so much of what happens. If Bruce Seid ends up becoming a poor scouting director, the blame is going to fall on Melvin, much like the poor play of a team will cause the firing of a manager. It’s best to take all the ‘dependent metrics’ out of the equation when evaluating Melvin, and insofar he’s about as good as his track record: average to above-average.