Three-way trade with A's, Braves; Brewers get William Contreras

[UpandIn]

6 hours ago, monty57 said:

I'm missing something here. I agree with you on Winker. I think he played injured last year, as the previous two years he was one of the best hitters in baseball. If he's healthy, I hope for closer to the 140-ish wRC+ guy he was prior to last year. If that happens, he will be the DH nearly every day.

That means Yelich will be our everyday LF. Unless things go really wrong this year, and Winker is traded at the deadline, Yelich's transition to DH will be in 2024, not 2023.

That leaves CF and RF. I think that will be Mitchell and Frelick, with Taylor as the backup. I guess it's possible they call up Wiemer and leave Frelick in AAA, but one of Mitchell, Frelick or Wiemer will very likely start the year in AAA, and I'd guess that will be Wiemer. 

Wiemer will get his debut when someone gets hurt, but I think his shot at a starting role will be 2024, when Yelich likely moves to DH. His opportunity may be limited, as Chourio will likely be in the majors at some point in 2024, and at the rate he's going, none of Frelick, Mitchell or Wiemer will block him. My guess at that time will be that Chourio will play nearly everyday, and Frelick, Mitchell and Wiemer will split time at the other two spots, but a lot can happen between now and then.

To topic, we will still have our catcher position locked down, because we just filled that for the next five years! That we cleared up the aforementioned logjam to some degree in order to fill that catching spot made a lot of sense. We should now have our entire OF, Catcher, and shortstop all filled for the next six years with talented young players. We still have a lot of people set to leave after '24, but we're starting to see the guys who will be the "new core" going forward. 

I like it when a team operates with a long-term outlook.

I don't think you're missing anything, it's just a little out of context. Clancy suggested the Brewers "flip" Winker at the deadline as Wiemer and Taylor could likely match his production. That doesn't make sense to me and I was agreeing with @jakedood who questioned that logic. 

You trade Winker if he's having a year like he did in 2021 and the Brewers are just bad and everything goes wrong I guess. Beyond that, if he's having a good year, then you want him. Presumably we're competitive. If he's having a repeat of last year, nobody would want him, so what's the point?

As for Wiemer, I think it's possible he could force his way onto this roster. I think he's got a Jay Buhner with better speed type upside. I wouldn't count on that next year, but...it's certainly plausible. And if he does, they can make room for him in the OF. Presumably in RF with Frelick in CF and Mitchell...who I'm not completely sold on. I don't think it's a stretch that Wiemer ends up being better than Mitchell and he's a very different type of hitter than Frelick. One that we could really use. But he's such a wild-card, I wouldn't be really factoring him into the plans. 

A great start to the year and you can re-evaluate, and it'd be great given we've still got pretty serious issues vs lefties, but the point was...there's no need to worry about flipping Winker and there's no reason to swap out his possible production for Wiemer and Taylor's as it doesn't match. 

[sveumrules]

Contreras has also posted lower K% through his minor league career, 20.7% over 222 PA at AAA, 19.1% over 202 PA at AA, 20.2% over 297 PA at A+, all while being over a year younger than league average at each stop.

Steamer is projecting a 25.9 K% for William in 2023 vs 27.7% in 2022 (376 PA) and 28.4% for his MLB career (571 PA).

[MrTPlush]

5 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

That maybe so, but there’s a reason he’s been with 5 organizations in the last two years.

I don’t know that anyone is trying to act like he is some star in the bullpen. But a useful bullpen arm? We would have seen October baseball if we had a few of those last year. That’s a great addition to a trade and more than just a throw in.

[sveumrules]

It’s [insert adjective of your choice] looking at the A’s Cots page and Jace ($4.75M) & Manny ($4.5M) are their 2nd and 3rd highest paid players at the moment.

[MNBrew]

8 minutes ago, MrTPlush said:

I don’t know that anyone is trying to act like he is some star in the bullpen. But a useful bullpen arm? We would have seen October baseball if we had a few of those last year. That’s a great addition to a trade and more than just a throw in.

Agreed.  Pre-Hader trade, more than a few of the seemingly low-glitz bullpen additions of the past few years -- guys that hardly seemed interesting or impactful at the time -- turned out to be more significant than we thought they would be, guys like Boxberger, Strickland, Hughes, Phelps, Pomeranz, even Gott, to name a few, not to mention starters like Miley and Lyles.

[UpandIn]

3 hours ago, Robocaller said:

He's a better-than-average hitter and a better-than-average fielder.

He has value, particularly after trading Ruiz, who is a RH bat that could have been on the roster on O.D.

 

Better than average? He's pretty much the definition of average. 102 WRC+ last year, 104 OPS+. Projected to be at 98 WRC+ and he's solid defensively, but he's not a great defender. He was out there because we just didn't have options last year.

He's just a guy. I didn't say he had value, I said he was a 4th or 5th OFer. 

He's got some value or I wouldn't have said he's a 4th or 5th OFer, but a guy with a OBP in the .280s who's not an elite defender, hit lefties alright, doesn't have great speed...

 

I just said he was a 4th or 5th OFer and not much more. Am I wrong?

 

[UpandIn]

26 minutes ago, Brewcrew82 said:

He also said that contenders don't dabble in Rule 5 picks, when the Phillies, Padres, Mariners, Cardinals, and Mets all made selections this year, so I wouldn't listen to this particular poster for factual analysis on the Rule 5 draft...

And...again, that he's just here to annoy people.

 

LOL...I mean, c'mon. We got a trade that's not only gotten universal praise by people who know Baseball and...pretty much everyone on this forum except for...ONE person. 

And again, this, "well he's been on X number of teams in X years," is...the dumbest logic. Who cares? Look at how a guy produces. If 5 teams acquired him, 5 teams wanted him. It's like taking a date to a 5 star restaurant, going to see a great show on show/movie/play, whatever...and then you ask for their opinion and they complain that the Uber took the long way home. THAT'S their takeaway. 

Some people just focus on the negatives...

[Robocaller]

7 hours ago, brewcrewdue80 said:

 

You know how 30% or higher k rate for batters are frowned upon? It carries an expected lower BA. Meaning less times getting on base.

Well for our pitchers less men getting on base mean less runners to steal a base. Brewers pitching had a .302 OB. With a 3.1 pct HR pct.  So about .290 OB? Pct.. 

This vs the Cardinals who has a .314OB but 2.4pct HR rate. About 306 OB.   About 95 less baserunners throughout an entire season.

ah, so it's not SO rates, it's OBP. There are plenty of high SO pitchers that give up high OBP.

Not giving up a SB, once a player is on base, is determined (from the pitcher's standpoint) by how well the pitcher can hold the runner on (LHP tend to be better), how many pitches per PA, and how quickly the pitcher works.

[Robocaller]

4 hours ago, UpandIn said:

Better than average? He's pretty much the definition of average. 102 WRC+ last year, 104 OPS+. Projected to be at 98 WRC+ and he's solid defensively, but he's not a great defender. He was out there because we just didn't have options last year.

He's just a guy. I didn't say he had value, I said he was a 4th or 5th OFer. 

He's got some value or I wouldn't have said he's a 4th or 5th OFer, but a guy with a OBP in the .280s who's not an elite defender, hit lefties alright, doesn't have great speed...

 

I just said he was a 4th or 5th OFer and not much more. Am I wrong?

 

If 100 is average, 104 is above average, is it not? I didn't say he was well above average. And he can play every OF position just fine.
There's a big difference in my mind between a  4th and a 5th OF. The 4th OF will play a lot. the 5th OF might be in AAA.

He's an ideal placeholder until Wiemer can be promoted. I was all for trading him before Renfroe got traded. Now, we have to keep him (unless another RHH OF is acquired).

 

[Jopal78]

8 hours ago, MrTPlush said:

I don’t know that anyone is trying to act like he is some star in the bullpen. But a useful bullpen arm? We would have seen October baseball if we had a few of those last year. That’s a great addition to a trade and more than just a throw in.

I guess, but in the same vein that Jandel Gustave is a useful bullpen arm (and the Brewers already dropped him).
 

As for Yeager, he was available in the Rule 5 draft. Ask yourself who the last “prospect” was the Brewers left unprotected in the Rule 5 draft?

Nothing wrong with adding two pitchers, I’m just not slapping the GM on the back for fleecing teams out of these two guys who most likely were/ soon were to be freely available to every team. 

[MrTPlush]

22 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

I guess, but in the same vein that Jandel Gustave is a useful bullpen arm (and the Brewers already dropped him).
 

As for Yeager, he was available in the Rule 5 draft. Ask yourself who the last “prospect” was the Brewers left unprotected in the Rule 5 draft?

Nothing wrong with adding two pitchers, I’m just not slapping the GM on the back for fleecing teams out of these two guys who most likely were/ soon were to be freely available to every team. 

Umm, I’d say about 24 prospects a year. Now if we are talking at AA+ and comparable to Yeager. Because you know, guys below AA rarely get selected.

This past Rule 5 draft we didn’t protect Felix Valerio. MLB.com lists him as our #14 prospect. Victor Castaneda was also left unprotected, rated #30 in our system. Tristian Lutz quietly had a bounce back season at AA last year, was left unprotected.

I am sure I could find more and do this for the last decade…but I think this sums it up enough.

 

[Jopal78]

33 minutes ago, MrTPlush said:

Umm, I’d say about 24 prospects a year. Now if we are talking at AA+ and comparable to Yeager. Because you know, guys below AA rarely get selected.

This past Rule 5 draft we didn’t protect Felix Valerio. MLB.com lists him as our #14 prospect. Victor Castaneda was also left unprotected, rated #30 in our system. Tristian Lutz quietly had a bounce back season at AA last year, was left unprotected.

I am sure I could find more and do this for the last decade…but I think this sums it up enough.

 

Yes, case in point. Lutz and Castaneda are closer to six year minor league free agents than they are “prospects” regardless of what the lists may say.
 

 I don’t know anything about Valerio besides he came over with Bobby Wahl (remember him) for Keon Broxton. Besides being outside of the top 5 or 10 on those lists doesn’t mean much anyhow. 

[MrTPlush]

Just now, Jopal78 said:

Yes, case in point. Lutz and Castaneda are closer to six year minor league free agents than they are “prospects” regardless of what the lists may say.
 

 I don’t know anything about Valerio besides he came over with Bobby Wahl (remember him) for Keon Broxton. Besides being outside of the top 5 or 10 on those lists doesn’t mean much anyhow. 

I wish you had just led with this in your previous post so I knew not waste my time just to find out a prospect to you has to basically be a Top 100 prospect.

[GreatNWwi]

10 hours ago, UpandIn said:

 If 5 teams acquired him, 5 teams wanted him. 

And before long 4 teams didn't want him.  It could be more like dating that hot cheer leader only to find out she is a piece of work you can't stand.

 

Not that I think this is a bad pick up but your analogy does not dispute what was said.

 

[CheezWizHed]

41 minutes ago, GreatNWwi said:

And before long 4 teams didn't want him.  It could be more like dating that hot cheer leader only to find out she is a piece of work you can't stand.

 

Not that I think this is a bad pick up but your analogy does not dispute what was said.

 

This was also Brad Boxberger's history before he was signed by the Brewers.  And Box had worse results on the mound (pre-Brewers) than Payamps.  He is clearly an MLB BP arm.  Maybe he just hasn't found his spot.  Maybe he is a locker room cancer. Or maybe relievers bounce around a lot.  

Whatever the cause, he is merely a toss-in on the trade.  Anything he brings is gravy.

[CheezWizHed]

For me, Yeager is basically replacing Antoine Kelly on the team.  High end arm with control issues.  High ceiling, low floor player - a lottery ticket.  

I don't buy lottery tickets, but I can't complain when someone basically gives us one. 

[Jopal78]

1 hour ago, MrTPlush said:

I wish you had just led with this in your previous post so I knew not waste my time just to find out a prospect to you has to basically be a Top 100 prospect.

I really don't know what you did with your time, because two of the three you mentioned are less than a calendar year from being 6-year minor league free agents.... by that rationale Corey Ray is still a prospect, no?

You haven't really disputed the hypothesis: teams really don't leave "prospects" un-protected. It's organization soldiers, players who can't stay healthy, and players that may have a tool or two, but also come with significant question marks (Yeager-nice strike out numbers but will never see the majors walking 5+ batters per 9 in the minors).

Great trade, I'm happy about it. To me the pitchers are nothing more than bodies that the Brewers could have likely picked up this off season anyways. 

[JosephC]

Payamps has just over 2 years of MLB service time and has posted 2.0 bWAR (which primarily comes from run prevention) and 0.5 fWAR (which primarily comes from the peripherals).  A 1.0 WAR/year reliever is a pretty solid guy as the 4th/5th guy in the bullpen.  A 0.25 WAR/year reliever is just above replacement level and will always be either the 7th or 8th guy in the pen and will always be in danger of being let go.

He has a career ERA of 3.35, but his career xFIP is 4.50.  What is interesting is that his ERA has been significantly lower than the xFIP in each of the four seasons he's appeared in MLB (the first two years only totaled 7 innings, so it would be reasonable to just throw those out).  So if the ERA gravitates towards the xFIP over time, then Payamps run prevention will start rising which is why he's been passed around from team to team over the last couple of years.

So at Fangraphs I just picked 2022 > Relievers > minimum 40 innings pitched.  There were 203 players that made it through the filter.  Here is where Payamps ranked on the list of 203 players in the following categories-

K/9 = 6.63 = ranked 188

K% minus BB% = 10.4 = ranked 169

BABIP = .303 = ranked 60

HR/FB% = 12.7 = ranked 48

GB% = 52.8 = ranked 33

Hard hit % = 26.4 = ranked 76

SIERA = 3.86 = ranked 149

xFIP = 4.07 = ranked 136

Two of the three best numbers are the BABIP and HR/FB% ratio, which a lot of experts consider to be "luck" numbers.  The K rate is awful, and is a major factor in dragging down the SIERA and xFIP.  But overall, when looking at the peripherals, he looks like a marginal reliever who probably needs plus infield defense behind him in order to stick.

One thing that really concerned me is this-

https://www.mlb.com/player/joel-payamps-606303

Scroll down to charts and look at the Batting Average Against chart.  Normally when you see this listing of peripherals, the first thing that comes to mind is that the guy is a sinker baller and owns the bottom of the zone and needs his pitches to stay there in order to survive.  But he gets hammered at the bottom of the zone.  I don't know if the cold zones (primarily up and away to righties, or up and in to lefties) has a luck factor at all, but overall the chart really makes it look like Payamps really needs to get hitters to chase pitches out of the zone to be successful.

To me, Payamps just looks like another guy to throw in the Peguero/Junk/Varland/etc/etc pile and see which guys win the #6/#7/#8 reliever spots in spring training.

[MrTPlush]

27 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

You haven't really disputed the hypothesis: teams really don't leave "prospects" un-protected. It's organization soldiers, players who can't stay healthy, and players that may have a tool or two, but also come with significant question marks (Yeager-nice strike out numbers but will never see the majors walking 5+ batters per 9 in the minors).

 

I’m not sure what you want me to say when you describe exactly what a prospect is…as not being a prospect.

Prospects have question marks and 90% of them only have a tool or two. Most players are not 5-tool players. You are calling our #14 prospect that played at AA as a 21 year old ‘not a prospect’. I mean…I don’t know if you could find another baseball fan that would look at Valerio and not call him a prospect. He wasn’t protected because he isn’t ready to hit MLB pitching and no one is going to stash him on their roster all year.

I also can’t help you if you don’t know how to see the difference between 27 year old Corey Ray and 23 year old Tristian Lutz. One is a prospect the other is a minor league journeyman. One has been playing AAA baseball since 2019 and the other hasn’t ever played at AAA.

 

[monty57]

Regarding the relievers, who were essentially throw-ins because the trade looks like a landslide victory even without them:

Payamps is probably going to be on the MLB roster as a middle reliever, as he's out of options. He's in his final pre-arby year, so he'll be playing for around league minimum, and if he can keep his ERA in the 3's like he has in 2019, 2020 and 2021, he should be useful. Steamer projects him for a 4.11 ERA, 7.72 K/9, 3.03 BB/9 with a 43.4% Ground ball rate. He's not someone you build a team around, but a league minimum guy who can eat up some middle-relief innings for you is necessary for every team in baseball. Like anyone, he might blow up, but he does have some track record to show that he'll help the Brewers this year. All-in-all, adding him to the deal probably saves us a couple million we would've had to spend on a veteran reliever.

Yeager is going straight to the minors and may never leave. If he gets his command issues fixed, he could be a good reliever. That could be said about a lot of guys, and the odds are probably against that happening.

These guys probably aren't worth getting too excited about, but I'm sure Payamps will play with our emotions through the season... hopefully more in a positive sense than a negative one. Relievers will do that to you.

[JosephC]

Just a few years ago, Zack Brown was listed on the MLB pipeline as the Brewers #1 prospect, and the Brewers left him unprotected in the Rule 5 and the entire league passed on him.  Granted, at the time the Brewers minor league system was considered terrible and the worst in baseball.

[monty57]

2 minutes ago, JosephC said:

Just a few years ago, Zack Brown was listed on the MLB pipeline as the Brewers #1 prospect, and the Brewers left him unprotected in the Rule 5 and the entire league passed on him.  Granted, at the time the Brewers minor league system was considered terrible and the worst in baseball.

That  right there shows how far we've come. I'm amazed at how well Stearns & Co. rebuilt the farm while playing playoff-caliber baseball at the MLB level.

[CheeseheadInQC]

7 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

I really don't know what you did with your time, because two of the three you mentioned are less than a calendar year from being 6-year minor league free agents.... by that rationale Corey Ray is still a prospect, no?

You haven't really disputed the hypothesis: teams really don't leave "prospects" un-protected. It's organization soldiers, players who can't stay healthy, and players that may have a tool or two, but also come with significant question marks (Yeager-nice strike out numbers but will never see the majors walking 5+ batters per 9 in the minors).

Great trade, I'm happy about it. To me the pitchers are nothing more than bodies that the Brewers could have likely picked up this off season anyways. 

And sometimes guys with those tools improve. Especially on the pitching side. Heck, Cam Robinson was protected this year after not last year because he made those improvements. On the hitting side, Manny Pina was never a star but provided value to the Brewers. He was initially a PTBNL in order to make sure he wasn’t taken in the rule 5. If you see major league traits in a guy, that is a non-negligible value. No one is claiming he is an elite prospect, but it sounds like he might have a better chance than most minor league relievers.

[Lajitas]

Career minor league slash lines for the two players involved:

.285 / .363 / .457

.281 / .346 / .414

[Harold Hutchison]

14 hours ago, MrTPlush said:

From that FA graphs article:?

“Because now it’s time to come down to Milwaukee’s role in this trade. If you want to know why your life is harder than it should be, you should become familiar with an economic concept called rent-seeking. Rent-seeking is the behavior of middlemen, people or more often companies that insert themselves between the people who produce goods and services and those who consume them, charging additional fees and exploiting regulatory loopholes while providing little or no additional value to the proposition. Examples include: Health insurance companies, Ticketmaster, rideshare and gig economy startups. Think sub-cable company levels of cost-to-usefulness ratio and you’ll be on the right track. 

That’s how much the Brewers won this trade.”

Honestly, the A’s are stupid. They should have just taken Contreras, because that would have made way more sense. At minimum, they should have traded for Contreras and then shipped him off to the Brewers after the fact. I have no doubt Matt Arnold is like every Brewers fan under the sun and would have shipped Ruiz plus multiple other players to get Contreras. The fact the Brewers only sent Ruiz and got a bullpen pitcher and a prospect on top of Contreras is really just a total failure by the A’s. This must have been a trade completely done via text because there is no way Arnold could have kept a straight face in person or composed himself on the phone hearing this offer.

I would not bet against the A's. They did take the Moneyball concept to an extreme by finding things other teams undervalued. With his speed, OBP skills, and defense, Ruiz is going to be valuable as he gets more time in CF. I think 2 to 3 WAR is not unrealistic, especially if a fair bit comes from defense (see 2018 Keon Broxton). If he posts a .350 OBP and steals 100 bases, then this does good things for Oakland. Keep in mind, Oakland has Langeliers at catcher, and Pina has been solid. 

The A's have had 13 seasons at or above .500 since 2002, when they went full Moneyball. They've been doing a lot of things right, and Beane's track record is hard to dispute.