Analyzing Melvin's comments

Doug Melvin addressed the media Wednesday (no invite for me??).  Well it was covered by Todd Rosiak at JS Online and Adam McCalvy at MLB.com and it was apparently full of nothing but warm fuzzies and "we'll decide on him later"

I dug deeper into Melvin's brain:

it's what I do

The goals, he says, haven't changed: Get to the World Series and win it.

Thank you captain obvious

"You won 96 ball games; how do you improve on a 96-win club?"

win 97

"I feel good about the club, the organization," he said. "When you have a closer like John Axford, a young catcher in (Jonathan) Lucroy, we have Rickie Weeks signed, (Ryan) Braun signed, (Corey) Hart signed. All five starting pitchers back. Those are major holes"

what??

(filled)

oh

I want to meet with Ron and get his opinion on each individual player on the club, areas that we think we can improve upon. With (owner) Mark (Attanasio), we'll fill him in on free-agent players, our club, what our game plan is.

bring your checkbook Mark

Q.How do you categorize the chances of possibly re-signing him?

A. We've got to look at all the other players. It's not as easy as a player's salary comes off, and you've got that much to spend. It doesn't even come close to working that way, because there's so many other players' salaries that increase. It's too hard to predict your team this early.

negative 8000%

Q.Do you think it's more about the money or the years with Fielder?

Who's more dead, Abraham Lincoln or George Washington??

Q.What kind of timetable do you have?

I believe right up until he signs with another team

Q.Can you pinpoint Marcum's struggles?

The games he started

Q.How did you view the left side of the infield?

oh, this will be fun

A. I thought Yuni Betancourt was a better player than what his critics said

critics?? Don't look at me like that!!

I thought he did a very good job. If you look at the on-base percentage, that's the thing that always seems to hurt him.

Yeah not taking walks tends to hurt the OBP

I thought he made a lot of good plays, a lot of outstanding plays. I'm very surprised at the critics of him, personally. Sure, he made some errors, but he also made some outstanding plays.

really??

Q. So, does that mean you'll pick up his $6 million option?

*spit take*

A. We'll discuss that. We're not here to make any of those decisions on players.

So no dumbass

Q.Is Corey Hart an option at first base?

and put Prince in RF??

Q.Most of your bullpen setup men are free agents and older. What are your plans there?

A. LaTroy (Hawkins) and (Takashi) Saito both did an outstanding job. They're both in pretty good shape, too. We'll look at that and see what they're thinking about with their careers.

you guys are incredibly old, you can come back if you feel like it though

Q.What do you have in Casey McGehee?

a paper weight??

A. He did have a season that regressed.

no

He'll be the first one to admit that.

I think I was first there

He had a big season the year before. We'll have to figure that out. I think he's probably somewhere in-between what he was this year and where he was last year. Can he get back to being somewhere in between? I think he can still be a good player.

in AAA

Q.Is a contract extension possible with Zack Greinke in the off-season?

A. We have to sit down and look at the whole layout of the ballclub. We've done that preliminarily, what we want to do long-term-wise. Starting pitching is a key thing, but we have some other players we might sit down with, too, and talk about long-term deals. He's still a young starting pitcher who's performed very well.

short answer: no

Melvin said he had not yet spoken with ownership about his own contract, which is guaranteed only through 2012.

"You don't go and ask for an extension," Melvin said.

not when you come up short

"It's nice to be the third-last team disappointed," Melvin said.

3rd place rules







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