Brewers trade with Phillies. Acquire Oliver Dunn

[Austin Tatious]

12 hours ago, sveumrules said:

FanGraphs article on the trade.

Encouraging: Dunn has a lot of late bloomer indicators that make the age relative to level maybe a lil less concerning: 2019 draftee from Utah, missed year in 2020, dealt with injuries in 21/22.

Discouraging: sounds like he is a pretty marginal 2B only type of defender.

The missing alot in the strike zone is cringy as it’s shades of Hiura.  Hiura favoring that exaggerated upper cut to get the ball in the air while compromising contact wrecked his chances.  Hopefully Dunn can overcome that because it’s a major flaw.  

Regarding defense, the scouts who like to put immobile guys at second are shortsighted IMO.   Second base requires range.  You want a guy who can get to balls.  Look at Turang who played a brilliant second.   He was rangy as heck.  

Despite all this, I’m intrigued by Dunn.  The Brewers quite obviously see him as a late bloomer with a good skill set and analytics that they can work with.  He may not be a plus defender at second but hopefully he’s adequate.  He discovered some uncommon pop which is a huge plus for a second baseman and they probably think they can fix his missing in the strike zone.  

[endaround]

The Brewers have Owen Miller at home

[CheezWizHed]

1 hour ago, endaround said:

The Brewers have Owen Miller at home

As much as I like Owen, he isn't the type of player to prevent us from acquiring other players at that position.  Frankly, Owen's defensive flexibility doesn't make this as much of an overlap anyway.  And just like the trade for Owen Miller, this is throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. 

[sveumrules]

1 hour ago, endaround said:

The Brewers have Owen Miller at home

Miller’s highest ISO in the minors was .192 and he played over 1,000 innings at shortstop on his way up. 7.6 BB% and 16.3 K% for his MiLB career.

Dunn bats in the other box, and has shown more power, but less defensive acumen. 15.7 BB% and 28.1 K% for his MiLB career.

Both play IF, but that’s about it for similarities.

[MVP2110]

Yea I don't really see the Owen Miller comp at all here

[TURBO]

Hopefully we didn't overpay for a guy with one good year.  I realize he was hurt a lot for a couple years, but that is a red flag as well.

Maybe we just got ourselves a bargain, but maybe we didn't...

[wallus]

2 minutes ago, TURBO said:

Maybe we just got ourselves a bargain, but maybe we didn't...

Next time put hot take incoming, geez... so hot!

[CheeseheadInQC]

I think what this says is the Brewers didn’t view Mendez’s swing as fixable. If they did, I don’t think they’d give him up in this deal.

[brewcrewdue80]

Get the vibe of a Travis Shaw potential addition in batting without the 3b defense.  Who's playing 1st? Black? Yelich? Dunn in the future?  Any relation to Adam Dunn?  Just a churning of the bottom 5 in a 40man who may turn out productive.  

[CheezWizHed]

38 minutes ago, TURBO said:

Hopefully we didn't overpay for a guy with one good year.  I realize he was hurt a lot for a couple years, but that is a red flag as well.

Maybe we just got ourselves a bargain, but maybe we didn't...

99.9% of these trades end up impacting either club by less than 2.0 WAR.  That stat was totally made up, but probably correct. 😉

[nate82]

These early trades in the off season are always fun to read all of the questioning of the acquisition and hyper analyzing of something that usually doesn’t matter.

[sveumrules]

15 minutes ago, TURBO said:

Hopefully we didn't overpay for a guy with one good year.  I realize he was hurt a lot for a couple years, but that is a red flag as well.

Maybe we just got ourselves a bargain, but maybe we didn't...

Dunn has one good year in AA. Moore’s one good year was as a sophomore at Arkansas. Hendry’s one good year was in the Complex leagues.

All these guys are low probability dice rolls, but Dunn has had the most success at the highest level out of the three, so right now he’s got the most favorable outlook.

Hendry has plate discipline and time on his side, but he’s a corner OF only prospect so he’s gonna need to run a 120 wRC+ to ever have any value. That’s a high bar to clear for someone who hasn’t shown much contact or power in over 700 PAs off the complex.

Moore doesn’t look to have the defensive chops to play SS everyday in MLB, so his ceiling is likely a utility guy. After posting a 94 wRC+ in Wisco this summer he should probably start 2024 back at A+ for the Phils affiliate.

Brewers get the safer bet (whose power potential also gives him the highest ceiling), while the Phils bet on their development team being able to turn one or both of Mendez/Moore into a Dunn calibre prospect before their 40 Man timelines are up.

[Harold Hutchison]

23 hours ago, Brewcrew82 said:

Dunn offers the ability to play 2B, which Black doesn't really anymore. I would compare him more to Brice Turang anyways. And he seemingly offers more offensive upside than Turang. Granted, he's older. 

Moore is fine, but he really disappointed in Appleton this year. I'm not sweating his departure with all the upside IFers we nabbed in the draft this year. 

Given that 2023 was his first full season, I wasn't disappointed in Moore at Appleton. If anything, I saw him as an option to replace Turang down the road.

Dunn added some pop in 2023, but really, I didn't see him as a must-add. The Crew has Devanney, Dorrian and Zamora at Nashville, plus Turang/Monasterio/Miller/Toro/Adames on the 40-man, and Black's pretty much the front-runner at third. Unless we think we'll get blown away by an offer for Adames... I don't see the utility of Dunn - and would have at least kept Moore - maybe send Garcia or Murray instead.

[Outlander]

Moore and Mendez slot in at 25 and 30 respectively on the Phillies Pipeline. Seeing the Phillies did not even add their #6  prospect to the 40 man it makes sense that they were willing to trade Dunn.

[Playing Catch]

I think a lot of this is simply managing the 40-man and minor league roster numbers. Not just for the present, but for the future. I think the Brewers wanted to improve their AAAA-IF depth, and knew they would need to release a few minor leaguers in order to bring guys stateside within roster limits. They may as well trade from their depth (Mendez a corner OF, Moore not good enough to be expected to offer MLB-worthy ABs next season).

This seemed like trading the current Moore for the future, 26 year old version of Moore, and needed to include Mendez to off-set the difference in development risk associated with the current Moore.

[BigWoo53]

Looking at this trade from a while ago, as someone else said it seems like a lottery ticket type deal but Mendez probably being the youngest had the highest upside but it's at a position of depth in the Brewers system. I wasn't a big Moore fan and didn't like the early 2nd round pick on him either. As for Dunn, I don't see what he brings that Devanney didn't, I wish Devanney got his shot in MKE instead of KC. 

[sveumrules]

10 minutes ago, BigWoo53 said:

As for Dunn, I don't see what he brings that Devanney didn't,

Dunn played all of his age 25 season at AA, Devanney played most of his age 25 season in AA (459 PAs) with a brief cameo at AAA (56 PAs). Here’s how their production lined up…

Dunn
271/396/506 (148 wRC+) 16.2 BB% | 27.5 K% | 16 SB / 5 CS

Devanney
264/342/496 (116 wRC+) 9.3 BB% | 21.4 K% | 6 SB / 2 CS

Main advantage Dunn has is that he walks way more with those extra 54 points of OBP accounting for most of his 32 point edge in wRC+.

He also is better on the bases with another 12 SB / 0 CS while lighting up the AFL.

Devanney has the edge on defense and doesn’t strike out as much, but as the wRC+ bears out Dunn’s seven extra walks every 100 PAs are way more valuable than Devsnney’s six fewer strikeouts.

[RobertCrawley]

On 11/14/2023 at 2:55 PM, Mass Haas said:

 

Let's all dream for a second.

[RobertCrawley]

My kingdom for a starting pitcher.

[torts]

[Jopal78]

1 hour ago, torts said:

Harsh. 

[torts]

1 hour ago, Jopal78 said:

Harsh. 

As if

[umphrey]

I once thought of him as a dark horse breakout candidate but it looks like that ship has sailed. Still 0.2 WAR though and seems to take more crap than he deserves. Same WAR as Frelick for example. 

[tmwiese55]

40 minutes ago, umphrey said:

I once thought of him as a dark horse breakout candidate but it looks like that ship has sailed. Still 0.2 WAR though and seems to take more crap than he deserves. Same WAR as Frelick for example. 

Yea he had his good start which helped the team, plays good D.  Seems like a fine depth guy and won't kill you when he inevitably is needed to come back up due to injury.   It was just too much leaving him on the strong side of the platoon when a good prospect at the same position has been doing better.   That said, at least they pulled the plug now rather than wait another few weeks like they've done with others in recent years.  Probably went on a week or two longer than needed but still, mid-May isn't drastically long and he was good the first week or so.

I'd guess his focus in AAA should be hitting/driving the ball more as opposed to milking walks. Sure it could hurt his numbers down there but he has to clean up staring at 3rd strikes hoping to get walked. 

[HarryDoyle]

On 11/14/2023 at 3:49 PM, HarryDoyle said:

World Series, here we come!!!

Welp, so much for the World Series this year.