Article: Where Do the Brewers Project in the NL Central Over the Next Five Years?

[Matthew Trueblood]

In the stormy present, it’s hard to remember the halcyon home stretch of 2021, and even harder to see a sun-drenched dynasty emerging in the near future. Yet, blending current trends with core identity, it’s the Brewers who look best-positioned to own the NL Central for the next half-decade.

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

A losing jag at home, especially one punctuated by a sweep at the hands of the worst team in MLB, can make everything seem hopeless. At this moment, the Brewers (who started 14-5, against what looked like a formidable early slate!) are barely over .500, and they’re staring up at the Pirates in the standings. Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Willy Adames are all a year and a half from free agency, and it’s not clear which (if any) is a good candidate for a contract extension at an agreeable price. Craig Counsell isn’t under contract beyond this season, and the lack of news on that front has gone from eerie silence to an active, ominous sucking sound.

That’s one way of looking at things. Here’s another. If you had to line up the five teams in the NL Central from best to worst for the next five years (2024-28), based on their current assets and liabilities (be they players, ownership, market strength, or other), how would you do it? I think I would go:

1. Brewers
2. Reds
3. Cardinals
4. Cubs
5. Pirates

If the early progress of this season has taught us anything—and that’s a subject of some debate, but let’s take it as read for now—it’s that everyone in this division has problems. Funnily, despite Bud Selig having long ago made sure that they were the embodiment of baseball’s Third World, the Crew currently have first-world problems. Their owner is consistently committed and motivated, to a greater extent than at least three of their rivals. Their front office has demonstrated greater competence in scouting, player development, and roster construction than at least three of their rivals. They have a better balance of proven talent and help coming from the farm system than at least three of their rivals.

At the moment, and in defiance of all odds before this season began, the Reds look like the most serious threat to the Brewers’ hegemony. They’ve built a promising, young pitching staff, and even with Kyle Boddy having moved on from his affiliation with the team, they feel as close to the state of the art in technology-driven pitching development as any team in the division. They were perspicacious and fortunate in trading off the core of their last would-be contending club, and they’ve drafted quite well recently—blending betting on upside and smart draft demography as well as any team in baseball. They also have Elly De La Cruz.

On the other hand, nothing in the track record of any members of the Castellini family suggests that they’ll be as patient or as resilient as Mark Attanasio has been. When they spend money, they do it hurriedly, fitfully, temporarily, and not on a sufficient scale to obliterate the downsides of those errors. In all likelihood, they’ll leave the door open for others to win the division, even when they have enough talent and (theoretical) spending power to lock things up.

The Cardinals still have the best mix of organizational fundamentals—tons of money, an august market, good player development—of any team in the Central, but let’s be honest: they’re a mess. They’re a mess in 2023, and the particular way in which they are a mess makes it likely that they’ll remain pretty messy in 2024 and beyond. Their farm system, especially compared to those of the other four teams in this group, is top-heavy, and their current core is getting old right in front of our eyes.

That leaves the Cubs and Pirates, who are what they have been for the last 125 years or so: perfect foils. The Cubs are always rich, but only sometimes interested in acting like it. They’re often talented, but frequently uninspired. Owned for much of their history by monuments to nepotism and vestigial entrepreneurship, they’ve frittered away many of their best chances to claim lasting dominion even in this minor regional kingdom, and the Ricketts family (the very reason why they’ve fallen so far in the last half-decade) is the most galling example of that yet.

The Cubs need new baseball leadership, but lack owners with the give-a-damn to see that need, let alone act upon it. The same problem has often haunted the Pirates, but whereas the Cubs’ endless supply of money creates a wide and lived-in margin for error, the Pirates never have one at all. As has sometimes been the case, though, Pittsburgh has the edge at the moment. They have as deep a farm as anyone in the race, especially if one counts the infusion they’ll enjoy after picking first in next month’s draft. They have made some improbably fan-friendly moves recently, including extending Bryan Reynolds, and there are signs that they’ve gotten back to (or even north of) average in player development, after falling behind the curve several years ago.

Still, you can’t trust the Pirates to be good for long. As much as they make better foils for the Cubs throughout history, in the modern baseball landscape, they’re like the Reds, only more so. At some point, they’ll fall behind on the development side again, and they’ll fail to invest what would be required to make up for that, financially.

To a greater extent than at any time in recent memory, the division is wide open. The Cardinals are at a 30-year nadir. The Cubs aren’t in position to strongarm anyone. Yet, to a greater extent than usual, every team seems to have short- or medium-term hope. There’s no clear-cut favorite locked in for the years to come.

Do you agree, though, that the Brewers have the brightest future? Or do they face a steeper set of peaks and valleys ahead, as they navigate the nearing free agency of some key contributors and the aging curves of others? How would you rank the five NL Central clubs, starting next season?

View full article

[brewmann04]

the reds and Pirates hve young prospects and will be  tough

brewers have a young of and potetial C on the horizon

but do they have the pitching in the minors to step in?

[Sixtolezcano]

7 hours ago, brewmann04 said:

the reds and Pirates hve young prospects and will be  tough

brewers have a young of and potetial C on the horizon

but do they have the pitching in the minors to step in?

Nope.

[TURBO]

I don't understand the real purpose of this article.

Just thinking about where we'll be in 5 years makes my head hurt.  There is no possible way to tell what will be happening at that time.

I understand it's just a topic of conversation, but as a Brewers fan, I'm more worried about what is going to happen in tonight's game, that is about all I can wrap my head around at this time.

[nate82]

8 hours ago, brewmann04 said:

but do they have the pitching in the minors to step in?

The Brewers have some.  Gasser has looked better as of late.  Carlos F. Rodriguez has looked good in AA along with Justin Jarvis.  Anything beyond A ball is too hard to predict. 

[SF70]

23 hours ago, Matthew Trueblood said:

In the stormy present, it’s hard to remember the halcyon home stretch of 2021, and even harder to see a sun-drenched dynasty emerging in the near future. Yet, blending current trends with core identity, it’s the Brewers who look best-positioned to own the NL Central for the next half-decade.

author-tracker.gifauthor-tracker.gif

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

A losing jag at home, especially one punctuated by a sweep at the hands of the worst team in MLB, can make everything seem hopeless. At this moment, the Brewers (who started 14-5, against what looked like a formidable early slate!) are barely over .500, and they’re staring up at the Pirates in the standings. Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Willy Adames are all a year and a half from free agency, and it’s not clear which (if any) is a good candidate for a contract extension at an agreeable price. Craig Counsell isn’t under contract beyond this season, and the lack of news on that front has gone from eerie silence to an active, ominous sucking sound.

That’s one way of looking at things. Here’s another. If you had to line up the five teams in the NL Central from best to worst for the next five years (2024-28), based on their current assets and liabilities (be they players, ownership, market strength, or other), how would you do it? I think I would go:

1. Brewers
2. Reds
3. Cardinals
4. Cubs
5. Pirates

If the early progress of this season has taught us anything—and that’s a subject of some debate, but let’s take it as read for now—it’s that everyone in this division has problems. Funnily, despite Bud Selig having long ago made sure that they were the embodiment of baseball’s Third World, the Crew currently have first-world problems. Their owner is consistently committed and motivated, to a greater extent than at least three of their rivals. Their front office has demonstrated greater competence in scouting, player development, and roster construction than at least three of their rivals. They have a better balance of proven talent and help coming from the farm system than at least three of their rivals.

At the moment, and in defiance of all odds before this season began, the Reds look like the most serious threat to the Brewers’ hegemony. They’ve built a promising, young pitching staff, and even with Kyle Boddy having moved on from his affiliation with the team, they feel as close to the state of the art in technology-driven pitching development as any team in the division. They were perspicacious and fortunate in trading off the core of their last would-be contending club, and they’ve drafted quite well recently—blending betting on upside and smart draft demography as well as any team in baseball. They also have Elly De La Cruz.

On the other hand, nothing in the track record of any members of the Castellini family suggests that they’ll be as patient or as resilient as Mark Attanasio has been. When they spend money, they do it hurriedly, fitfully, temporarily, and not on a sufficient scale to obliterate the downsides of those errors. In all likelihood, they’ll leave the door open for others to win the division, even when they have enough talent and (theoretical) spending power to lock things up.

The Cardinals still have the best mix of organizational fundamentals—tons of money, an august market, good player development—of any team in the Central, but let’s be honest: they’re a mess. They’re a mess in 2023, and the particular way in which they are a mess makes it likely that they’ll remain pretty messy in 2024 and beyond. Their farm system, especially compared to those of the other four teams in this group, is top-heavy, and their current core is getting old right in front of our eyes.

That leaves the Cubs and Pirates, who are what they have been for the last 125 years or so: perfect foils. The Cubs are always rich, but only sometimes interested in acting like it. They’re often talented, but frequently uninspired. Owned for much of their history by monuments to nepotism and vestigial entrepreneurship, they’ve frittered away many of their best chances to claim lasting dominion even in this minor regional kingdom, and the Ricketts family (the very reason why they’ve fallen so far in the last half-decade) is the most galling example of that yet.

The Cubs need new baseball leadership, but lack owners with the give-a-damn to see that need, let alone act upon it. The same problem has often haunted the Pirates, but whereas the Cubs’ endless supply of money creates a wide and lived-in margin for error, the Pirates never have one at all. As has sometimes been the case, though, Pittsburgh has the edge at the moment. They have as deep a farm as anyone in the race, especially if one counts the infusion they’ll enjoy after picking first in next month’s draft. They have made some improbably fan-friendly moves recently, including extending Bryan Reynolds, and there are signs that they’ve gotten back to (or even north of) average in player development, after falling behind the curve several years ago.

Still, you can’t trust the Pirates to be good for long. As much as they make better foils for the Cubs throughout history, in the modern baseball landscape, they’re like the Reds, only more so. At some point, they’ll fall behind on the development side again, and they’ll fail to invest what would be required to make up for that, financially.

To a greater extent than at any time in recent memory, the division is wide open. The Cardinals are at a 30-year nadir. The Cubs aren’t in position to strongarm anyone. Yet, to a greater extent than usual, every team seems to have short- or medium-term hope. There’s no clear-cut favorite locked in for the years to come.

Do you agree, though, that the Brewers have the brightest future? Or do they face a steeper set of peaks and valleys ahead, as they navigate the nearing free agency of some key contributors and the aging curves of others? How would you rank the five NL Central clubs, starting next season?

 

View full article

 

Sorta agree with your ranking.

The combination of young core (Contreras-Turang-Mitchell-Wiemer-Frelick-Peralta-Ashby-Williams) strong farm system and tradeable assets will form the team to beat from ‘26-‘28+. 2024 & ‘25 likely belong to the Reds, who are ahead of us in prospect development.

The Pirates have to prove they can develop pitching first to win me over. The Cardinals farm is devoid of impactful pitching just like their big-league team. The Cubbies are a sleeping giant due to their trillions and will probably pose the biggest threat along with Cincinnati to the Brewers over the next half-decade.

The Brewers need to put up Burnes at the trade-deadline and make him available to the highest bidder because he would be the most sought after player available and return 2-3 eventual starters, 1-2 of them impactful.

Woodruff probably won’t have enough time to show the baseball world he’s strong and healthy so he probably should be held until the offseason, the same with Adames, unless the LAD make a huge offer.

With that said, depending on what happens over the next 6 weeks, the team can sell-off more than Burnes and reset for ‘25, just sell Burnes and stand pat in hopes of winning the central with a rotation of Woodruff-Peralta-Miley-Teheran-Rea-Gasser-Houser, or trade mid-levels for a bat upgrade.

And this offseason trade Woodruff, Adames, Urias, Tellez and Houser and instantly have the best farm in baseball, develop in ‘24 and ‘25 and with some good fortune start winning again in ‘25.

[brewcrewdue80]

Pointless. No reason to ask this question until after the trade deadline-Next year.  Because at that point you'll know what the returns are(if any) for all the Brewers whose control ends after 2024 season. Which stands at 7-10players.  Team could blow it up this year by trading most of those players and say Urias/Williams/Rea controlled through 2025. Tank to 70-ish wins, get a top 8 draft selection and have a stocked aplenty minors system of players you're likely seeing 5 or more play in September.

[shanedog19]

The key will be how much they net for Burnes in a trade. There is zero chance Burnes re-signs with Milwaukee after hiring Scott Boras, who is not known for giving out hometown discounts. The writing on the wall became very clear when Burnes changed agents. So, do you trade Burnes in July, or wait until the offseason? If I'm Matt Arnold, I let it be known Burnes is available this trade deadline for the right price. There is simply no other pitcher of his caliber that will be available, and the return could and should be enormous. That trade alone could very well determine how good we are in five years. BUT, with how much of a backlash there was over trading Hader at last year's deadline, I could see Arnold waiting until the offseason to make the trade. I believe there is zero chance we see Burnes in Arizona next February.