Out of curiousity, what in the offseason has changed your mind? Z being that good or Melvin faltering?

That’s what I was thinking - The Brewers and Mariners are in totally different places right now, so it’s not really a fair comparison.

Part of the “problem,” such as it is, is that we don’t have anyone breaking down the door to make the major-league club. Gamel and Escobar are the closest, of course, though only if you’re fine in skipping AAA for those two. It would be easier to trade Fielder if we had Gamel OPS’ing .950 in AAA. The same with Lorenzo Cain: it’s hard to trade Cameron, who gives you great offense for a generally weak position, when your in-house option is lacking. (Of course, our in-house option could have been Melky Cabrera.)

In a related note, I was looking over the Brewers salary. We have only 5 players who make as much as $5 million on our roster right now. Of those making $5+ million, 3 of them are “good” (Cameron, Hoffman, Fielder), and 2 of them, not so much (Hall, Suppan). Barring a trade, Hall and Suppan can be expunged from our roster after 2010, but only if we pay them a combined $2.5 million to not play for us…which, upon thinking about it, might be a bargain.

Jason Kendall is our 6th highest paid player.

We have Ryan Braun for another 7 years. Seven!

No question that contending teams can make moves around the edges — and I would say Melvin did a decent job of that last year picking up high-upside guys like Kapler and Branyan.

I’ve been saying this off and on for a couple of years now, but I think the biggest problem with the Brewers as they are currently constructed is that we’ve got a lot of “average” or “above average” players — but the only superstar is Braun, and maybe Gallardo will come through at that level. And now that arb years are arriving, we’re paying for that average-level production. Reliable little birds tell me that the FO has made some effort to move Prince, and that’s the sort of thing that needs to happen — get the potential for superstar-level production at a few places, and find cheap solutions to give you average-or-close production at as many other places as possible.

For instance — I don’t have a problem with resigning Cameron, but…this year, we could probably come close to his production for less than $10MM. And while this was less clear two years ago, obviously we could be doing better than Suppan for a lot less money. The Mets are not usually a good role model, but consider that their 5th starter spot is now a competition between Freddy Garcia (rehabber with high upside), Tim Redding (solid pitcher for $2MM+), and Jon Niese (pre-arb internal solution).

I increasingly suspect that good teams with moderate payrolls should decide to punt on one offensive position — 1B, 3B, LF, and RF. We spent $6MM or whatever on Hall last year, only to get better production out of Branyan. This year, a lot of people would’ve been just as happy with Kapler/quad-A platoon mate as with Hart. You can get decent quad-A options there, but you can’t cheaply fill holes elsewhere, which is why we had to spend for Kendall and spend for Cameron.

Now I’m rambling … but the short answer is: Don’t go for average everywhere. Get as much as you possibly can out of some positions (especially if they are up the middle) and be creative with the rest. Incidentally, this gives somebody like Melvin a chance to use his bargain-hunting skills even if he’s building on a 90-win team.

if he were a legitimate 400 OBP / 600 SLG guy every year, he’s a superstar. But I was thinking more in line with 08 and projections going forward — still damn good, but down in the ‘above average’ range when you consider fielding. So yeah, Dunn’s a good comp.

And yep, Hart and Weeks are the perfect examples…they are still cheap for what they provide, but they’ll create a payroll crunch starting next year.

When this glut of averageness becomes obvious is when you try to upgrade the team at the deadline — this is when I was harping on these points last season. Aside from SP, who could the Brewers have acquired that would’ve made a huge difference? Every position except for LF and maybe SS left something to be desired, but who do you bring in at 2B to represent a big increase on Weeks?