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.

Some of this will be quite obvious to most serious Brewers observers, but I thought I’d jump in with both feet and take a peek at who the Brewers have under contract now, and who they’ll have in two years. The Halladay rumors have me interested to know whether it’s time to make a big move now, and sacrifice the future, or if the team’s secure for quite a while.

Catcher:
Angel Salome is slotted to be catching in a few years, and maybe even next year, if Kendall doesn’t re-sign. I see no reason why that won’t be the case. Any prospect is a question mark, but it doesn’t appear to me that there’s much to worry about regarding Salome. That, and having Jonathan Lucroy available if Salome doesn’t make it is also heartening.

First Base:
Prince Fielder will not be a Brewer in 2012. I’d put money on it. The reason: Scott Boras. There will be no hometown discount, and there will be a lot of money in Prince Fielder’s pockets. This is where I have Gamel slotted in past 2011 if his defense isn’t up to par. Otherwise, I’m sure there will be a veteran fill-in available for a decent price if there isn’t a prospect that is ready by that point.

Second Base:
We can hope that Rickie Weeks recovers well from a second major wrist injury, but I’ll admit I have my doubts. I’m a big Weeks backer, but I find it hard to bank on him coming back strong, especially since he took a lot of time to recover from his first one. Brett Lawrie’s slotted to show up sometime around here for his first real taste of the bigs, which makes me feel much more confident about the position going forward, as I think one of the two will be able to contribute consistently. I highly doubt Felipe Lopez is more than a rental.

Shortstop:
I feel much better about this than I did earlier in the year, when I had doubts about Escobar’s hitting ability. He won’t be a star with the stick in the bigs, but I think he can hold his own soon enough. That makes what happens to JJ Hardy a bit less important. According to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, he’s eligible for free agency at the end of 2010. One wonders if he has a lot of value if he struggles the rest of this year and next. On the other hand, if he plays well, he’s due a big payday that the Brewers may be unable to afford. If the team doesn’t do so well next year, expect to hear a lot of Hardy to (insert AL East and/or high payroll team here) rumors.

Third Base:
Who’d have thought Casey McGehee would make such a claim to third base? Maybe it’s a mirage, but this gives Gamel a touch more time to get ready, at the very least. I can’t say for sure if he’s sticking around third for long, especially with Gamel nipping at his heels, but even so, McGehee may have to be the torchbearer at second in 2010, if Weeks doesn’t come back quickly. He’s also an option to come back to third should Gamel struggle with his glove. All in all, a very nice problem to have. Taylor Green is also a potential option in the future.

Outfield:
Ryan Braun is locked up for the next six years, which will hopefully be good ones for him. Even if, somehow, that doesn’t work out, Melvin made a great move getting him locked down to under-market prices for three of his free-agent years. Cameron will be long gone by then, sadly, and Corey Hart will be in his last year of arbitration in 2011. I think Hart’s leveled off a bit, but he’s still a major league caliber player. I’ll admit to being worried about center, it’s something Melvin’s going to have to find a solution for, even if it means moving Hart over and finding a fill in right fielder. Lorenzo Cain sticks out to me as the only possible prospect option there that I know of to this point.

Starting Pitching:
Even if somehow the Brewers swing something for Halladay, they’ll lose him after 2010, most likely. Suppan will also likely be gone at that point, and I wouldn’t count on Braden Looper either. Dave Bush is also a free agent after 2010. Gallardo and Parra may well still be up and running, but I’m not even going to try to project a 2012 starting rotation.

Relief Pitching:
Ditto here, but I’ll just mention who’s tied up through 2011. Carlos Villanueva will have his final arbitration year then, and Todd Coffey will just become a free agent for the first time. Mark DiFelice will still be under team control if he’s not moved, but he’ll also be of an age where not much can be rightfully expected of him. Tim Dillard will be a bit younger, and also under team control, although I do wonder what the team has planned for him.

What’s the point of all this? This is the kind of thing that Doug Melvin already has in mind as he’s negotiating with Toronto. Most likely he has different views on some of the players than I do, especially the prospects, but the point is, its decision time. How much of this future does he give up? Does he trust his young pitchers to keep developing to replace the old arms? Does he trust the young prospects in the field to become what we think they can become? How much more money can he expect from Mark Attanasio for payroll in the future? If the answers to those questions are no, no, and not much, don’t be surprised if Melvin sells the farm for this chance. If the answers are yes, yes, and quite a bit, there’s no way he’s risking the future. I’ll bet that the answer is somewhere in the middle. This makes the next 10 days very interesting indeed, as we know Melvin at least believes enough in the team to sacrifice some minor prospects for a shot at the playoffs, due to the Lopez trade. Your guess is as good as mine as to what will actually happen.

On Monday I took a quick glance at four similar baseball players just by looking at their statistics and nothing else. Each player played the same position and therefore had the same normalized stats:

Chicks obviously dig the long ball, but let’s run a few comparisons, “mystery game” style. Check it out, using 2008 statistics:

Player A: .270/.341/.500, 25 HR in 492 AB, 123 OPS+, UZR/150 -7.1
Player B: .251/.339/.543, 48 HR in 610 AB, 124 OPS+, UZR/150 2.6
Player C: .276/.372/.507, 34 HR in 588 AB, 128 OPS+, UZR/150 -8.7
Player D: .247/.377/.494, 31 HR in 590 AB, 127 OPS+, UZR/150 3.8

Check out how similar these players are — you can’t guess who’s who without specifically looking up the statistics first. Without doing that, rank these players from who you’d most want and why, and I’ll lay out the same (putting contracts in mind) on my next post and explain why the three players who aren’t Ryan Howard are more desirable to have on your team than the big slugger himself.

Just for the record, if I were looking at these statistics by themselves, I’d rank the players, from best to worst, 4-2-3-1. Let me know what you think.

Those players, in order, were Adam Laroche, Ryan Howard, Prince Fielder, and Carlos Pena. I was a little bit surprised to see that Laroche was almost as good as the other “big three” first basemen in this category in terms of pure statistics, even though he lost quite a bit of value defensively for not being that good at first base.

These four players are very similar statistically, with about one total win being the difference between them (assuming they all had the same amount of PAs). However, their contracts appear to be wildly different. Check out what each of these players are getting paid:

Adam Laroche: 1 yr/ $7.05 million plus $10,000 in incentives for reaching PA plateaus
Prince Fielder: 2 yrs/ $18 million plus $500k for reaching 500 PA
Ryan Howard: 3 yrs/ $54 million with incentives for various accomplishments that could reach an additional $2.5 million
Carlos Pena: 3 yrs/$24.125 million plus $25,000 for each Gold Glove

It’s incredible to me how much the media can change the face of a player simply by means of how much hype they give him. Howard is considered a first-class slugger in the majors because he can hit home runs and plays for a major market team. Alternatively, Carlos Pena had a higher OPS+ than Howard, was better defensively, and gets paid less than half of what Howard makes. The only real “knock” against Pena is that in 2008 he only hit 31 HR while Howard blasted nearly 48 hitting in an extreme hitters park in Philadelphia.

Let it be known too that Pena went nuts in 2007, putting up an incredible line of .282/.411/.627 with 46 HR and 172 OPS+ with some plus defense in first base as well. Since he plays in Tampa, though, he doesn’t get near the amount of media attention that he deserves.

The discrepancy in salary between these two players is an obvious choice when deciding who I’d rather want as a player. Considering Howard’s massive $18 million salary next year, I’d just as soon take the services of Adam Laroche because he costs $11 million cheaper, and I can make up for Laroche’s dropoff in production by signing someone else to fill in the gap somewhere else — an extra $11 million will be able to buy me some more wins somewhere else where there’s a market to upgrade. Or that $11 million can be put back into the system for next year in order to afford a cool free agent coming out. Or, I can try and lock up a pre-arbitration player. The possibilities with extra money are endless; $11 million to lose out on one extra win is a gamble I’d be quite willing to take.

I decided to take a look at some of the best values of some of the best players in the majors. I used Beyond the Box Score’s Top 50 Players in 2008 list and compared the salaries of players with how much they’re worth on the field. Just a few notes before I publish the spreadsheet:

– I sorted players by those in their arbitration years and those who have signed longer-term contracts. I did this because players in their arbitration years get smaller contracts than those who have proven themselves and are ready to become free agents. This is so that we’re comparing apples and apples; not apples and oranges.

– Players who are in pre-arb years were omitted; the salaries are too similar. Of the top 50 players on Beyond the Box Score’s list, that means I’m skipping out on Josh Hamilton, Geovany Soto, Joey Votto, Carlos Quentin, BJ Upton, and Mike Aviles.

– Because some players’ contracts are backloaded, I decided to normalize cost/win values by averaging the entire contract of the player in terms of price/year and finding out the cost/win that way in addition to the player’s contract in 2009.

– Manny Ramirez hasn’t signed anything yet and I just estimated his salary at $20 million, since that’s the base number that gets thrown around a lot.

– Chipper Jones’ salary isn’t disclosed, so I just estimated it based on what MLB Contracts said. Nothing scientific there.

So, here’s what I found.

One of the things that jumped out at me was the incredible value ballclubs are getting by signing pre-arbitration players to long-term contracts that translates to guaranteed money for the players when they are just one injury away from losing millions of dollars (see: Ben Sheets). Evan Longoria is the best deal among the top 50 players, and likely the world — at $120,000/win, he’s an incredible bargain, no matter what team you are. And he’s only 23. Considering his contract is a little backloaded, he still only costs $630,000 per win, and when you consider he didn’t play the entire season last year (which means his WAR over a full season would be higher) and you expect a 23-year-old to improve as he continues to make progress in the big leagues, he’s probably going to come cheaper than that. The Rays paid their superstar virtually no money to go out and add 5 wins above replacement.

With that said, it’s widely known at this point that the Angels are not the most efficient of spenders. They considered Gary Matthews Jr. enough of a talent to pay $10 million/year to OPS .675 and play terrible defense. Torii Hunter is the lone Angelic who appears on this list, proving to be an inefficient purchase, even though he adds 3-4 wins to their win total.

Of course these numbers aren’t perfect. I personally don’t expect Ryan Ludwick to repeat his 2008 performance since it seemed like a flukish year and I don’t trust an oft-injured player like him to repeat an entire season’s worth of good hitting. However, if it’s a good quick cost-benefit analysis for players where you’ve already evaluated talent levels on.

For my part 3 preview (which I’ve started by the way!), I’m going to do a spreadsheet on all current Brewers and how they can project to do for the 2009 season using this analysis. Using Beyond the Box Score’s cost-per-win analysis to use Milwaukee’s current payroll to determine who’s worth it and who’s not.

Anyone want to undertake the task of doing this for the entirety of MLB?

The Brewers made the playoffs for the first time in 26 years mostly off of the pitching staff’s second-half excellency. It’s been well-documented how incredible CC Sabathia was, so we don’t hear that again. With the loss of Sabathia and (assumingly) Sheets to free agency, the rotation is going through a major change (and downgrade). Let’s take a look at the projected pitching staff and figure out just what we can expect from them in 2009.

Starting pitching

Last year’s starting pitching was obviously anchored by two of the best starters in the game. They are now gone. Doug Melvin has done nothing to try and replace those guys, but instead is relying on his young pitching staff to recreate their performance. Let’s break down the projected rotation starter by starter.

Yovani Gallardo
Gallardo was injured for most of the year, as everyone knows, so his contributions to the club were minimal in 2008. Luckily his problems were entirely related to a freak play where he hyperextended his ACL and not a continual arm problem due to poor mechanics or overuse. He threw only 24 innings the entire year, including a 4-inning stint to start off the 2008 postseason for Milwaukee.

He throws a low-90s fastball with an excrutiating curveball and good slider. A young, cost-controlled, three-plus-pitch pitcher with little to no injury history due to mechanical problems? Sign me up.

Projections for Gallardo vary wildly to the point where one could project any combination of innings pitched/ERA and it’d be a reasonable projection based on one of the three main ways numbers are determined (Bill James, CHONE, and Marcel projections). For example, Bill James expects Yo to throw nearly 200 innings of wonderful ball, with more Ks than innings pitched and a 3.15 FIP ERA. Marcel, on the other hand, doesn’t think he’ll appropriately rebound from his injury last year, and will throw 79 good innings with a 3.65 FIP ERA. 79 innings means he’s either injured, demoted, or both; judging by the numbers he’s going to put up, I don’t see him getting sent down to AAA for seasoning any more.

While most people think of “projections” as what experts and computers “think” a player is going to do, that’s not actually true. Projections are merely a mean of “what-if” seasons played. For example, if you imagine a million hypothetical Brewer seasons next year, it’s possible that Gallardo throws 220 innings with a 2.65 FIP ERA and 11 K/9. It’s also possible that Gallardo has continual arm problems through the year and struggles mightily with only 60 innings and a 5.5 ERA. It’s a projection based on average seasons, so these things are inaccurate. With that said, we can reasonably expect Yovani Gallardo to be Milwaukee’s #1 starter in 2009.

Manny Parra
Parra emerged last year as a legitimate #3 starter behind Ben Sheets and CC Sabathia, posting pretty good numbers, except for his high walk totals. Last year, Parra was doing pretty well until his final few appearances of the year, which may have been related to fatigue, as he had a substantial innings-pitched jump from 2007 to 2008. Usually anything over 25 additional innings pitched in a year is cause for concern, because not only is the pitcher deflated, it also leads to poor mechanics which makes for a high injury risk.

Last year, Parra threw 166 innings, which is far more than he has at any point in his career, which is a bit concerning to me because he came off rotator cuff surgery in 2005. What’s most concerning about Parra is that he’s had only one other season of 100+ IP since joining the minors, so his workload is a little concerning, especially since rotator cuffs have a tendency to reoccur. Projections for Parra don’t get any higher than 150 innings, so it’s imperative that Milwaukee has depth at starting pitching as it’s not unlikely that Parra will go down sometime throughout the year with a major injury or a reirritation of his rotator cuff.

I also don’t like the mechanics he displays in this picture don’t make me too happy, either. There’s too much stressed being placed on his shoulder when he whips it around. That tells me that I might see more headlines of “Shoulder soreness lands Parra on DL” than I’d like to see.

Jeff Suppan
Jeff Suppan is Milwaukee’s version of the overrated, overpaid pitcher who gained instant credibility due to a good run pitching in 2005′s playoffs for the St. Louis Cardinals. Hidden behind that small stretch of good pitching, however, is an “innings-eater,” which, in other words, means a below-average pitcher with a rubber arm who is only out there because he’s dependable. It’s kind of like sending Brett Favre out to play with the Jets — he might be good, he will probably be bad, but you know he’s going to go out there and play. Whether or not you’re satisfied with 22TD and 22INT in a season is up to you to decide.

Considering the state of 2009′s rotation, I don’t mind seeing Suppan in there at all. Losing CC Sabathia and Ben Sheets and keeping Suppan in the rotation is obviously a blow, but it’s not as if the Brewers have the immediate resources to compete in 2009 anyway, so having a below average starter who will post around a 4.7 ERA while tossing 200 innings in a transitional period isn’t the biggest cause for my concern. Unless, of course, we can pawn him and his contract off to a sucker team who thinks that he’s above average. But I don’t think that’s likely, because everyone who’s well as anyone knows that Suppan is what he is– a rubber arm who can give you 175-200 innings a year, which is still a valuable commodity to have.

Dave Bush
Comparing 2008 with his other major league years, Dave Bush had a career year in 2008. He posted a 4.18 ERA in 185 innings last year, including a great stretch run that helped propel Milwaukee to the postseason. Dig a little bit deeper, though, and it’s clear that his season was very lucky and fluky.

Despite Bush’s lowest ERA of his career since his short stint coming up from AAA with Toronto in 2004, his FIP was the highest it’s ever been. His low ERA was largely driven by an incredibly low .245 BABIP last year, which over the course of two seasons should be impossible since his LD% has been fairly consistent at just below 20%. His BABIP should be on the other side of .300, and an extra 70 points (or more, if he’s unlucky) on opposing batters would make an incredible adjustment to Bush’s actual pitching performances.

Even more, Bush’s ground balls were down and fly balls were up in ’08. More fly balls will generally mean more home runs, and since Bush pitches to contact and doesn’t strike many out, he will need to rely on the ball staying in the park more often, so the more ground balls, the merrier.

Hopefully Bush will continue on his hot stroke of luck, but I doubt it. Instead, he should work on either striking out more batters or working on his home run ratios. Having Mike Cameron in the outfield will unquestionably help him with his BABIP, thank goodness. His lucky year last year is netting him a nice payday.

Seth McClung/5th starter

Milwaukee hasn’t officially designated a 2009 rotation yet, and the 5th spot has been mysteriously vacant so far all year. Nobody in the minors is ready to make an appearance in the big leagues, but Tom Hardicout made a subtle hint that Seth McClung might be next year’s 5th starter simply because he left McClung out of his bullpen preview.

McClung would probably make the most sense to fill the vacant 5th starter spot out of everyone remaining, as he was a starter with the Devil Rays before coming to Milwaukee and has experience starting baseball games. Carlos Villanueva also has experience starting, but by now Milwaukee has found a place for him in the bullpen simply based on his small sample size of doing well in the 7th inning.

McClung was given a chance when he was incredibly young with the Devil Rays and posted abysmal results. Hitters were able to tee off on him when they were able to tell differences in his mechanics while pitching. An excellent analysis of McClung was already posted on Brew Crew Ball analyzing his performance and why it changed from the 6.00 ERA guy originally found on the old teams of Tampa Bay.

Since coming to Milwaukee and he’s shored up his delivery, he’s turned into quite the acceptable pitcher. His FIP ERA was at about 4.5 over a not-insignificant 105 innings, which is pretty good. He strikes out his fair share of batters, but walks far too many to be a truly legitimate #3 starter. One of the problems that will plague Chucky throughout the rest of his career as a starter will be his tendency to walk and strike out many a batter, thus making his pitch count not efficient enough to throw more than 6 or 7 innings. If you don’t mind pretty consistent 5IP games, McClung is your guy to fill the back end of that rotation.

Overall, the starting rotation is going to enter 2009 with a lot of question marks and not a lot of depth. Yovani Gallardo is coming off a major injury after logging a very few amount of innings last year– remember, in 2007, Gallardo had to be shut down near the end of the year because he had eclipsed the proverbial innings limit for a young pitcher. Milwaukee still has to worry about the strength of their young stud after posting only 24 innings the year before. He isn’t quite ready to become the team’s ace yet.

Also, McClung isn’t going to be able to log very many innings due to his high pitch counts, and Suppan/Bush just aren’t very good. With no depth in the organization outside of bullpen necessity Carlos Villanueva or Tommy John Surgery rehab guy Chris Capuano, Milwaukee will be searching for some depth in case of injury or poor performance from the scrap heaps of Triple A or the literal scrap heaps of pitchers who didn’t get signed.

One more thing to worry about for the season: with all of the high pitch counts (McClung, Parra) and poor, wild card pitchers (Bush, Suppan), tat most likely means that the bullpen will be overtaxed at different periods of time as the pitching staff hits a rough spot during the season– if normal 5-6IP starters have a bad outing, that means they’ll be limited to 4-5 innings through rough stretches, and it’s not going to be nice if a bullpen like the Brewers has to throw 4-5 innings by themselves over a period of a couple of weeks. Poor starting pitching ultimately harms the bullpen just as much as the team.

The bullpen
2009′s bullpen is going to be very similar to last year’s as both are a consortium of spare parts and dejected major leaguers looking for a new home. Take a look at the comparisons: each bullpen has a large free agent signing with the intention of taking over the closer’s role (08: Eric Gagne 09: Trevor Hoffman), each has former pitchers ridiculed for their performances even though it was probably their manager’s fault for placing those pitchers into high-leverage situations in the first place as they don’t have the talent to be a big guy in the bullpen (08: Gulliermo Mota 09: Jorge Julio), and a general consortium of average to below-average pitchers thrown together from scrap heaps in hope that they will perform acceptably.

Thus, there are not many returning bullpen members, with the losses of Eric Gagne, Brian Shouse, Gulliermo Mota, and Salomon Torres. To replace those guys, we’ve gotten Trevor Hoffman, R.J. Swindle, and Jorge Julio to shore up the bullpen along with Todd Coffey as an addition from the end of last year.

Hoffman is Hoffman (and MUCH better than Gagne, thank God), and R.J. Swindle is more than enough of a replacement for aging, expensive Brian Shouse; seriously, when Ryan Howard is up with the bases loaded and 2 out in a one-run ballgame in the 7th, you’re going to be glad Ken Macha went with Swindle instead of Carlos Villanueva. He murders lefties. Jorge Julio is an average pitcher who has succumbed to teams thinking he has more talent than he actually has and therefore will be a serviceable reliever as long as he’s relagated to low-leverage situations or games where it’s not all that close. David Riske is coming back from an injury-plagued year last year where he just couldn’t quite get to full form seemingly all year, but early on in the season performed acceptably as a reliever.

Riske is definitely overpaid for a middle relief guy (3 years, $13m plus a 2011 option and incentives) who you can develop through the minors or pick up for cheaper on a free agent market, but he’s still good to have on the team. I could easily see Riske becoming the 8th inning guy for Ken Macha, keeping Hoffman in the closer’s role and Villanueva in the 7th inning spot. That bullpen isn’t half bad, and when your better relievers are set for the high leverage situations while guys like Julio or Coffey aren’t, the bullpen should be slightly improved in 2009. Whether or not they crumble from overuse due to short starting pitching stints remains to be seen. I don’t want to see Riske getting injured in 2009– I’d want to run him out of town then.

The overall pitching line of Milwaukee doesn’t sound too bad, however, the depth and reliability of the rotation leaves quite a bit to be desired. The difference between the rotation when it’s healthy and when it’s not is contention for a playoff berth, so the health of the rotation is crucial in determining the result of the 2009 Brewers. It’s not going to be surprising, though, if someone gets injured and Milwaukee starts giving up 10+ runs more than it should.

It’s about time Suppan earned his huge contract as well. It’s time to earn their paychecks one more year.

Cash called. Cameron’s sticking with the Brewers.

I still don’t like the move, although it’s not too heartbreaking. Cam will net another couple of draft picks once 09 is over.

Naturally, the biggest news of the day is still… the Brewers might grab Kei Igawa from the Yankees in the well-publicized Mike Cameron-for-Melky Cabrera deal that makes it seem like the Brewers are getting bullied around.

Cabrera had a terrible year last year for the Yankees, batting a mere .249/.301/.341/.641. Marcel projections put him at a better year next year — however, while he won’t be quite as good as Mike Cameron would be (Marcel projects Cam at a .333 wOBA compared to Cabrera’s .317), the dropoff in performance is definitely worth the $9mm+ shed in payroll by sending him to the Yankees. After losing CC and Sheets already, this team is still a little ways away from contending, and shedding payroll for the future is the way to go.

However, the Yankees either want the Brewers to eat some of Cameron’s salary, or take on the 3 year, $12mm contract of Kei Igawa. Igawa struggled in his brief appearance in the majors, giving up 15 HR and a 6.25 ERA. While his AAA stats don’t entice too much excitement (3.45ERA with about a 2.5:1 K/BB and 117K in 156 innings), they’re not nearly as bad as his small sample size in New York would imply. A year and a half ago, John Sickels of Minor League Ball projected Igawa to have a career of average-to-below average ball, and his stats in AAA would imply that he would have such a career. If he can, in Milwaukee, throw a couple of seasons of 4.5-5.0 ERA ball, $4mm/year wouldn’t be too bad (remember: Jeff Suppan is doing the same thing for over $10mm/year). That’s still plugging a rotation spot with a 4/5 starter for a year or two while Jeferess or other prospects develop (not to mention the discussions right now probably are about how much of Igawa’s salary the Yankees will eat).

If the Yankees will pay 1/3 of Igawa’s salary, two years of average/below average pitching and a light-hitting center fielder is worth sending one year of Cameron to the Yankees for. It’s not like the Brewers with Cameron are going to contend this year anyways. Hopefully the Yankees can take Bill Hall off of Milwaukee’s hands, but that’s a bag of worms that’s not necessary to get into.

Music of the Week for Dec. 15:

System 7 – Phoenix.
System 7 is an electronic band (you’ll hear this quite a bit) unlike most you’ll hear. It’s not your typical techno — mostly because it can be classified in multiple genres. The base of the album is psytrance, however, it’s more ambient than anything. The album isn’t so much a CD of separate songs, but instead, separate experiences — it’s really good with some high-quality headphones when you don’t really want to concentrate on anything. System 7 is Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy, and Phoenix was recently released in 2007. Check ‘em out.