The Brewers are finally starting to do something!

The biggest news of the day comes from Tom Hardicourt. The Brewers have inked a 2-year, $18 million deal with Prince Fielder in order to buy out two years of his arbitration and keep him on the team.

The deal in itself doesn’t sound too bad, as it’s kind of a wash — Prince Fielder rated as about a 2.2 adjusted VORP for 2008. The average win in 2008 was valued at $4.5m. That cost in 2009 might go down due to the struggling economy — unless you’re the Yankees — so Prince’s value can be placed around $9m or so per year. That’s about what he’s worth. Not bad.

However, instead think about this in terms of what these players tend to be worth in the real world. Fielder compared himself to Ryan Howard when originally coming up with an arbitration figure. Last year, an arbitration hearing thought Howard was worth $10 million, and this year, he’s submitting a figure of $18 million. This bloated figure is largely a product of unjustified media hype on a high-strikeout, high-HR lefty with poor defense. They don’t think Prince is quite as good as Howard, however, the comparisons are close enough where during next year’s arbitration, Prince’s salary would climb so high that he would be paid far more than he’s worth. The deal makes sense for Prince, too, because he’s getting this as guaranteed money just in case he unexpectedly loses time due to poor play or injury. It’s insurance for Prince, and good economics for upper management. Other teams might also be more inclined to aggressively try and trade for Prince since his salary is set for the next two years and is less of a wild card because he utilizes Scott Boras as his agent.

As was noted in my pitching preview, Milwaukee’s probably not going to spend any more money. This may be a bit of a rebuilding year/let overpaid contracts die year, but the team’s still not competitive enough to be a playoff contender or threat. Hopefully we can soon rid ourselves of the Suppans and Halls and not get burned a third time. For a mid-market team, to waste that much of your payroll on subpar players won’t get the job done. One of the things I like to see is that owner Mark Attanasio has increased payroll every year since he’s been here, giving a team like Milwaukee a better chance and more leeway to give out bad contract. Florida or Tampa Bay couldn’t give a career 4.7 ERA pitcher like Suppan $44 million over 4 years.

On a different note, over the past year or two, I’ve become obsessed with The Orb. For those unfamiliar with them, The Orb is an electronic music group consisting of Alex Paterson and other guys who have rotated in and out. They started out in the early nineties pioneering ambient house and other dub-induced chillout music. Most of their stuff is ambient, but they tend to go all over the place sometimes, consistently creating fresh, innovative music out of whatever they find. One of their most popular songs, A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld, sampled such things as nature sounds, science fiction radio shows, and Minnie Riperton’s song “Lovin’ You,” for example, and most of their other stuff samples other songs and puts them together nicely.

A different popular song, Little Fluffy Clouds, ripped off an interview with Rickie Lee Jones in their song. Jones got angry and went to court for ripping off her copyrighted material. Eventually they settled, but Paterson has noted fans would go nuts if they found out where the drums came from.

Anyways, being an ambient, downtempo, sample-based band, they have longer mixes and remixes of their songs. On an old internet radio website called Groovetech, The Orb would play a few of these mixes– they came to be called “Thursday Tea Times.” Most were 2-3 hours long and incredibly enjoyable. My boss first alerted me to these mixes — he got a few from a friend, and since he knew I liked The Orb, he sent them along my way. I had four mixes of varying length, and all at terrible quality (96 kbps).

There are more of these mixes. Recently I was able to come across them due to some dumb luck and kindness by an absolute stranger– link to them here. These are my personal favorite pieces of music in the whole world, so get used to them. Download them all and listen to them and buy Orb albums.

The sweet thing is that these guys are still going strong.

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Brewer stuff, Uncategorized, electronic, milwaukee brewers, music by Cody