LouisEly

If no trades are made, the 2017 organizational starting pitching assignments could look like this: MLB: Guerra, Peralta, Garza, Nelson, Davies/Anderson AAA: Anderson/Davies, Hader, Jungmann, Wang, Woodruff/Lopez AA: Lopez/Woodruff, Ortiz, Ventura, Bickford, Perrin A+: Diplan, Peralta, Ponce, D. Williams, M. Diaz This means that Medeiros, Burnes, Supak, Yamamoto, Harber, and Z. Brown either repeat where they were in 2016 or are in the bullpen at the next level (Medeiros certainly repeats in whatever role he has). It also does not account for assignments of T. Williams, Kirby, Webb, and others who did not pitch in 2016, but they could easily start at low-A to get their feet wet and then progress as warranted. The organization has pitching depth. And I believe quality too - IMO, Woodruff/Hader have #1/#2 potential, Ortiz/Bickford #2/#3, Jungmann/Lopez #3/#4, and Wang/Perrin #4/#5.

This one is on Sedar (how in the hell do you send Elmore with Braun coming up next?!?), Counsell (why not bring in Suter to face the lefties Adams and Carpenter, and also Moss - 3 of 4 batters LHH), and the home plate umpire Torres (Wainwright gets the call on Perez a couple of inches off the plate but Knebel and Marinez don't get the same location in the bottom of the 8th). For those rooting for losses to improve draft position, you should be happy with the last two games.

I'm curious what you need to see from someone to think they have a top of the rotation ceiling. I agree with you on Suter, but Woodruff led all of minor league baseball (every league, every level) in strikeouts this year and had numerous reports of him touching 98. If that's not TOR-type stuff, what is?

What is more important than a couple of spots in the draft order is the depth of the draft and the delta of talent between, say, the fifth overall pick and the 10th overall pick. Last year was generally a weak draft - no one or two players stood out as being the clear #1/#2, and there wasn't much difference in talent between the #3-5 picks and the #11-13 picks. 2014 was similar - it could be argued that Hoffman/Conforto/Turner/Beede/Newcomb is as much if not more talented than Kolek/Rodon/Schwarber/Gordon/Jackson. 2013 is the other side of the coin - there certainly is a dropoff after Frazier at #5. Meadows/Bickford/Smith are still fairly talented, although I think that Meadows is overrated. The question is how deep 2017 is.

In most instances this is true for players that age, but the exceptions are when those players are coming off of injuries (both Guerra and Garza) or haven't established that they can go 180 IP in a season (Guerra). Guerra certainly needs to prove that he can be relied on to still be effective in September/October if a contender will give up significant value for him.

Fantastic job. Having taken a turn at this once I know that it takes a bit of time. Just a note, Wang's ERA in his blurb is not correct. That might have been his ERA at AAA at the time (8/10) but the rest of the stats in his blurb are from AA (107 IP, 33 BB, 91 K) where he had a 3.52 ERA.

Nothing is more fun than beating the Cardinals, so I'm totally OK with whomever gives the Brewers the best chance to win. Same with the Cubs.

As other have said, this can be a very good thing because it means that the young guys on the big league club are developing and improving, and/or the older players who will need to get moved soon (Garza, Guerra, Torres, Braun) are playing well and increasing their trade value, allowing the Brewers to bring in more prospects. The difference between the 5th pick in the draft and the 10th pick will be made up for by acquiring prospects who have some track record of success in the minors and are more of a "sure thing" than a draft pick. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks that Monte Harrison is likely to have a better career than Keon Broxton; Keon's the type of prospect a veteran who is playing well can bring back. If Guerra is still pitching this well next year, think about what they could get for him. He doesn't have the track record, but that is more than made up for by his low salary and team control. Anyone could take him and not have to worry about his salary for several years. If Garza keeps this up by mid-season next year he will be relatively cheap and could bring back a decent prospect or two. But the key is that those guys have to play well in order to have that trade value. Think of it like having the 5th pick, but signing a guy for the 10th slot and using the extra pool money to buy guys later in the draft - those later picks are the prospects that will come back in trades for guys who are doing well.

I'd argue that there are a few things that irritate you more than that , but I agree completely with the premise. Still bothers me that Joey Meyer got all of 516 PAs to prove himself in the majors. Had to have Greg Brock get his ABs (and Jeffrey Leonard). "He struck out too much." No, he didn't; his career minor league K rate was about 20%, and his walk rate was ok (almost 9%, for a slightly higher than 2:1 K/BB ratio). Yes, he had a bit of a sophomore slump, but that happens when you only play in 11 games (plus one PH) in the month of April.

There are people on this board who automatically think that when a player goes into an extended slump he is terrible and will forever be terrible and useless. Just look at the comments about Broxton the first half of the year. There are comments about Peralta being useless, having no value to other teams, etc. In the second half of this year, covering six starts, he has gone 37 innings (> 6 IP/start), given up 30 hits, walked 11, struck out 33, for a 1.088 WHIP and .713 OPS-A. And he is regularly throwing 97, touching 98, and is 27 years old. If we're GMs and you think he's useless, I'll gladly take him off your hands. In his 11 starts in the second half of 2016 Garza has a .686 OPS-A. That's pretty darned good. No one has ever said he is a #1 starter. But among the 72 NL pitchers with at least 80 IP this year (roughly five per team), Garza ranks 40th in ERA - that's #3 starter quality this year. (Guerra is 8th, #1 starter quality; Nelson is basically tied with Garza at #39, a fraction lower). Garza has a better ERA than Gio Gonzalez, Jaime Garcia, Michael Wacha, Zach Grienke, Scott Kazmir, Mike Leake, Adam Wainwright, Aaron Nola, Archie Bradley, and Matt Harvey. Yes, there are other metrics, but at the end of the day it's about keeping runs off the board. In his last three starts he's held the Cubs, Cardinals, and Pirates to a total of two earned runs and struck out 22; only four of his 16 starts this season have been against teams that are not in playoff contention. He's hasn't been bottom-feeding. I've been called a "Garza apologist", etc., for the last two seasons, but there have been darned good reasons for it.

I'm really curious as to why people think that Carter is terrible defensively, or what stats/evidence point to it. According to B-R, the Brewers as a team are in the middle of the pack at 1B in terms of Total Zone Total Fielding Runs Above Average; they are at -1, so one fielding run below average, ranking 17th, and Carter is rated at 0 so exactly average (Lucroy is -2 which offsets Perez's 1 and Carter's 0). There are 31 players with at least 500 innings at 1B or roughly one per team; Carter ranks 15th. Qualitatively I haven't watched a lot of games, but from what I have seen he hasn't looked bad at all. Back to 2017... again, we're dealing with a lot of ifs. The biggest is starting pitching; is Guerra a 3.00 ERA, is he a mirage, or will his elbow give out? Which Peralta/Garza/Anderson/Jungmann do we get - the first half of 2016 or the 2nd half (Peralta 3.35 ERA, Garza 3.85, Anderson 3.32, Jungmann 2.51 ERA at Biloxi)? The Brewers 2nd half team ERA is 3.72, which would rank 5th on the season in MLB. Is Nelson a 1st half pitcher (3.62), 2nd half (5.94), or pitching hurt? If you take their best halves you have Guerra (2.85), Peralta (3.35), Nelson (3.62), Garza (3.85) plus Davies (4.00)... that's a pretty darned good staff, and doesn't include Jungmann, Anderson, or Hader. If Guerra is healthy and pitching well I think he's gone by July 31st. Second is Braun - will he get traded? I think there is a good chance he becomes a Dodger, if the Dodgers can find a way to clear a little payroll. Don't be surprised if Howie Kendrick is a Brewer in 2017. Or if Puig is. Or if Ethier is the LF... or the 1B. I'm not concerned about the bullpen. The Brewers kept their top 3 relievers in terms of K/9. The "if" there is if they can find a LHRP option, and if Suter is more than a LOOGY. I think the Brewers have one of the best bullpen pitching coaches in the game, and besides the obvious guys (Thorny, Knebel, Torres) the rest have quietly had very good seasons (Marinez, Cravy, Barnes). Add a lefty, and then you don't have to worry if Blazek doesn't return to form because you still have Magnifico and one or two of the seven starters mentioned above. We've seen the "if" movie before, but the way the Brewers have been pitching in the 2nd half they have every reason to have a shot at the Wild Card.

Fixed!

Because Braun's a cheater, not Sosa http://www.evolutionary.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Sammy-Sosa-Steroids.jpg http://www3.whig.com/whig/blogs/schucksclipboard/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/sosacork.jpg

The first half of the season: 1) was based on all of 26 innings B) after coming off of the DL for the first 2.5 months of the season 3) with a .366 BABIP 4) and those games were @SFG, @LAD, WSN, @STL, @WSN (every single team would be in the playoffs as of today and four of the five on the road) I don't think the first half is an accurate way to gauge his talent.

I really do believe that Chris Bosio is the best pitching coach in the majors and that the biggest mistake the Brewers made in at least the past 10 years was not retaining Bosio in 2009. In 2009 as the pitching coach for Nashville, they led the PCL in ERA and the top pitchers in terms of innings, in order, were Tim Dillard, Lindsay Gulin (who??), Chase Wright, Chris Cody, Mike Burns, Matt Ginter, Sam Narron, Chris Narveson, Nick Green, David Johnson, and Ryan Houston.

When people "watching" a game on MLB.com Gameday definitively declare a pitch a strike or a ball. [sarcasm]Because measurement instruments are never off by a couple of inches.[/sarcasm]

Maybe, just maybe, Garza really was pitching hurt last year. His .366 BABIP the first half of the season likely had some bad luck to it too.

I remember the 2011 draft and looking through some top 250 list and thinking that the one guy I did not want them to draft in the first 5-6 rounds was Nick Ramirez. Seemed like he was pretty average - relative to other college 1B - with his hit tool. He did better than I thought he would, and I thought he would spend some time in the OF to take advantage of his arm and become a utility player, but ultimately I thought that he had limited upside and would struggle with OBP due to a low BA and high K totals, which is what materialized. Hopefully he can become a good reliever and revive his career.

Yep. When doing an analysis, at it's simplest there are three data sets to look at - current state, reference state, and trend. The current state is similar to reference state - major league average. (And there is nothing wrong with average - you don't need a team of All-Stars. Great teams have 3-5 All-Star caliber players, 4-6 very good players, and the rest need to be average. It's the Yuni B's that hurt you.) But the trend is that he is getting better. And at 25 he has not hit his peak yet. Plenty of examples of players who still improved significantly well into age 27/28.

This is why, when it comes to the Cubs and Cardinals, I want the Brewers to play whomever gives them the best chance to win. The other 27 teams, yeah, I'm on the development side at this point of this season. That being said, I think there is something for putting young guys in a position to succeed and building their confidence first.

So who's more obsessive - Stearns with OF or Ted Thompson with WR? Cordell is a talent, but another right-handed OF is not the highest on the organizations' need list. My guess: the Braun talks with LA had significant substance to them even if the deal wasn't completed.

You don't have to have All-Stars at every position. The Royals and Giants have gone to, and won, the last two World Series with more than a few average players on the team. The 2014 Royals were extremely average across their starting 8 fielders, and the Giants had a number of average starters as well (Pagan, Blanco, Hudson, Vogelsong, Morse, Panik, Belt, Romo, Cain, Lincecum). You just need 3-5 All-Star caliber players and 4-6 very good players; the rest just have to be average. What kills you are the Yuni B's. One of the big reasons the Royals won is because they addressed the below-average players on the team (Infante, Rios, Guthrie) with trades (Zobrist, Cueto).

This is why we shouldn't get worked up over where/whether or not the PTBNL is ranked on MLB's top 30 prospect list. Woodruff wasn't on the list a year ago. Another team wouldn't be able to touch him now. It isn't about where a guy is ranked now, it's about where they guy will be ranked a year from now.

What hasn't been mentioned is that he's 27 of 31 in SBs. That would be almost 50 steals in a 600 PA season. Not just the number, but the success ratio is almost ideal (if you're 100% then you're not aggressive enough; ideal is 90% or so) And that's with a .300 OBP; if he can realistically get that up to .325 or so he could be a 60 or more SB player. That's incredible.

Oh yeah, LSU fans >>> Alabama fans. Way less cockiness/douchbaggery than the Alabama fans that were in Dallas last year. And none of those silly mini-pom-poms that the Alabama fans like to bring with them (and graze your hair with in the stands).