radio silence:

 Okay, so I slept on it, and I have a positive spin: the Brewers' defense will be fantastic up the middle, and that will hopefully help to rebuild the pitching staff.

Einsteinhood:

brewhawk:

DM should have thrown in, within reason, whatever it might have taken to get Buchholz.  Hardy and Salome or Hardy and Gamel might have gotten it done.

Again, the Red Sox refused to include C.B. in a deal for Johan Santana a few years ago, so I'm not at all sure the Brewers COULD have thrown in enough (never mind reason) to pry him away.

I think that's a little different.

A lot of things have changed since then.

Not saying we could have gotten him, but Buccholz' value is significantly less now, also.

ike1024:

Not saying we could have gotten him, but Buccholz' value is significantly less now, also.

At the time he was a top prospect and had thrown a no-no in the big leagues, so he had some pretty good value at that point.

Of course he also hadn't shown that he could come in and pitch start after start in the bigs for any length of time yet, and he did that down the stretch this year.

He probably had more value that offseason than now, but I don't know about "significant" the difference is.

Einsteinhood:

ike1024:

Not saying we could have gotten him, but Buccholz' value is significantly less now, also.

I honestly don't know that it is.

At the time he was a top prospect and had thrown a no-no in the big leagues, so he had some pretty good value at that point.

Of course he also hadn't shown that he could come in and pitch start after start in the bigs for any length of time yet, and he did that down the stretch this year.

He probably had more value that offseason than now, but I don't know about "significant" the difference is.

At the time, he was 23 with six years of controllability and coming off of dominating in his few games that he had pitched and creating a lot of excitement.

Now, he's 25 with four or five years of controllability and coming off of struggling really bad in 2008 and being mediocre last year.

I really don't know what his value was/is, but I would bet that the going rate for a ML-ready 23-year old is a lot higher than a 25-year old with a shaky ML track record.

I'm not saying Buchholz won't be very, very good, or that his trade value isn't high, just that, at one point, he was maybe the most sought after pitching prospect in baseball.

Macha is going to HAVE to run with this team. They can't swing for the fences.

With that said, I still think you go out and find a banger to be your 4th OF who hits you 20 HR's - and I'm sure they can do that for $5-$7 million.

Also, don't be surprised if this is a bit of a game by the Brewers to send a message to Cameron and his agent that they'd like him back, just not at that outrageous $10 million salary.

Cameron for $5 or $6 mil makes a lot of sense ...

alffan:

Cameron for $5 or $6 mil makes a lot of sense ...

alffan:

Macha is going to HAVE to run with this team. They can't swing for the fences.

With that said, I still think you go out and find a banger to be your 4th OF who hits you 20 HR's - and I'm sure they can do that for $5-$7 million.

Also, don't be surprised if this is a bit of a game by the Brewers to send a message to Cameron and his agent that they'd like him back, just not at that outrageous $10 million salary.

Cameron for $5 or $6 mil makes a lot of sense ...

Actually don't be suprised if this means Cameron will not be back.

I'm guessing Gerut and Gomez will compete for the starting job, with the other becoming the 4th OF.  Then, if one of them struggles badly, a Lorenzo Cain call-up will be in order.

TheDude:

As much as the casual fanatic hates strikeouts, you're not going to find a much better value than that.

Just imagine what the casual fan will think about Gomez's strike outs, sans walking and home runs.

alffan:

Macha is going to HAVE to run with this team. They can't swing for the fences.

And that's why this is such a stupid move. Macha won't run; he's not a running manager. He had solid speed with Cam, Weeks, Braun, Hart, even Escobar, and had one of the worse basestealing teams in the majors -- after Yost ran one of the best speed teams in the NL in 2008 with very similar personnel.

This offense was only 35 runs from being the best in the NL in 2009, using home runs and walks. Now we're moving away from that to feature aspects of baseball that the field manager won't use? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The more I think about it, I am not upset that Hardy's value netted Gomez -- that's not all that surprising. I am upset that this is turning the team away from becoming an elite offensive squad, and for what, $15 million worth of pitching moves in a market that features zero impact arms?

This was not the offseason to sacrifice offense for pitching.

radio silence:

I am really annoyed because specific player or not, overall it looks like the Brewers are building without direction for 2010.

Which is what I have been saying since the trading deadline of 2009.  If they weren't going to be Buyers, then they should have been Sellers.  If they aren;t going to keep Cameron (which they shouldn't), then they should have traded him and saved a few million dollars at the end of the year and gotten something (anything is better than nothing) back in return.

I have no confidence in Doug Melvin.  I don't think his player evaluation skills are all that great, he's wishy-washy when it comes to making moves (CC deal excluded) and he lacks any kind of a clearly discernable strategy for how he's trying to build his team.

cpk1994:

alffan:

What a happy day today. Just got back from traveling and someone e-mailed me the news. Did they move Christmas to November 6?  Cameron, Weathers and Hardy gone, $15 million+ saved, and the Brewers pick up some speed, and now have dollars to get real pitching.

I have to say, Doug has made a couple of good moves to start the offseason.

This is a good first step. I do believe Hardy is going to do well for someone, but he wasn't right for Milwaukee.

Somehow, I don't believe Carlos Gomez becomes the Brewers starting CF in 2010. I think we'll see the Brewers still search for another OF. 

Wow, someone is hitting the crackpipe hard. You do realize that the speed doesnt matter becuase Macha DOESN'T RUN HIS PLAYERS, don't you?

Also because he doesn't get on base very often.

radio silence:

This was not the offseason to sacrifice offense for pitching.

Tough to make that argument after last season.

However, committing to Gomez is probably too big of a dropoff than they needed to make.  There are other CF options out there who probably would not have been as big of a dropoff that would not have cost us a trade resource.  With a need for multiple pitchers and limited trade resources, Hardy should have been used to acquire pitching.  Or, at the very least, Melvin should have held out longer, with multiple interested teams, to do better than that.

radio silence:

I am upset that this is turning the team away from becoming an elite offensive squad, and for what, $15 million worth of pitching moves in a market that features zero impact arms?

Lackey is very much an impact arm. After that it gets much sketchier, with a mixed bag of guys who have been hurt but impact when healthy (Harden, Bedard, Duscherer) and mediocrites (Washburn, Myers) but I just cannot see how you can dispute that Lackey is an impact arm.

brewhawk:

radio silence:

This was not the offseason to sacrifice offense for pitching.

Tough to make that argument after last season.

However, committing to Gomez is probably too big of a dropoff than they needed to make.  There are other CF options out there who probably would not have been as big of a dropoff that would not have cost us a trade resource.  With a need for multiple pitchers and limited trade resources, Hardy should have been used to acquire pitching.  Or, at the very least, Melvin should have held out longer, with multiple interested teams, to do better than that.