gregmag

What Patrick is doing now won’t keep working. Nine strikeouts and seven walks in 19 innings. BABIP of .241. Fly ball percentage up and HR percentage cut in half from last year. Maybe he’s a starter, but nothing he has done this season makes that more likely. I don’t know if this is the moment to move him to the pen, but if this is really who he is, then that’s where he should end up. His stuff played up in shorter outings during the postseason. We’ve seen him do that job well. Both Henderson and Gasser have shown flashes of dominance as starters. Drohan and Crow are promising wild cards. I have a hard time believing that Patrick is the best starting pitcher of those five.

Hmmm. Lesser Contreras threatens violence he’s already committed if the Brewers try to get him out (what a competitor!). Wild Mis up tomorrow. Should be fun. Lesser Contreras has had an interesting career. He came up for half a season while the veteran Cubs won their title. As soon as he established himself, they declined. He joined the Cardinals after a playoff season; they immediately declined. He joins the Red Sox; they’re 2-8. No wonder he makes so much noise — it’s all he’s good for.

A lot of preseason assessments of the Brewers dwelled on the team’s success last year in scoring without hitting the ball hard, emphasizing how unsustainable that is. What those assessments seemed to miss is that we had 3.5 hitters who accounted for a lot of that weak contact success — Collins, Durbin, Frelick, and Mona (the .5) — and we traded 2.5 of them. That’s a deliberate change to move on from offensive smoke and mirrors. If the guys Boston traded were spare parts to them, you have to view the guys we traded the same way. The Brewers clearly did not view Durbin and Mona (let alone Siegler) as meaningful contributors going forward.

It seemed late last year that he might be getting more coherent in interviews. It seems now like that was a false alarm, and I’m very relieved. The grim world we live in cannot afford to lose any comedy gold.

I love this deal. It reflects the reality that MLB salary structures never actually line up with a player's present ability. The typical way salaries work after the six years of team control is that teams pay players for what they did before. That's mostly unwise for teams, because they aren't getting what the player did before. Most players past team control are in their late 20s or early 30s, when they're likely to decline. The Brewers are trying the opposite approach by paying players for what the team thinks they're going to do later. This has one inevitable disadvantage in common with the other approach: You don't actually know what you're going to get. But it has two advantages. First, it just costs less money. Fifty million dollars over eight years? Even the Brewers won't be too bothered if that contract turns into the worst-case scenario. Second, the team is paying for players at an age when they tend to improve, not decline. You won't like this analysis if you're a big believer in the value of proven major leaguers and/or the worthlessness of players who haven't made the majors yet. The Brewers aren't believers in those things, and they've done pretty well betting in the other direction. The Pratt contract, though unusual in a lot of ways people have discussed here, is really just another instance of the Brewers' consistent approach.

I'm glad for the turn this discussion took. I'm very sympathetic with Playing Catch's premise that too much online discussion is negative and mean. But to me, this article is fantastic. Wit and whimsy are great ways of making a criticism into something more than a rant or a cheap shot. I've never seen an umpire make a call as blatantly bad as Bucknor's last night. You have to be able to have some fun with that, which is a gracious alternative to just getting angry about it.

I’m a huge Perkins fan, but I think this is the right decision. In the statcast era, some aspects of spring performance mean more than they used to. Lockridge has clearly figured out how to tap into some power. It makes sense to see if he can actually sustain that at the highest level. I’m glad Murphy can make these decisions based on indicators of performance rather than seniority. Mitchell’s obviously a weird player. I take Jopal’s point that he’s a vet and needs to perform now at the major league level, but he just hasn’t played much the last couple of years, and clearly he’s still figuring stuff out that a lot of guys get past (if he’s going to get past them at all) at a younger age. I could definitely see the wisdom in sending him to AAA for a month to get more swings in. OTOH, I think it would suck more for Perkins to get sent down after making the opening day roster.

To say that "Tauchman plays all three OF spots" is tenuous. In 2023, at age 32, Tauchman played mostly cf. In 2024, at age 33, he played 67 games at the corner spots, mostly in rf, and only 15 in cf. In 2025, at age 34, he played only in rf. (Also, FWIW, in his one really good defensive season, way back in 2019, he played 78 games at the corners, 14 in cf.) It's not impossible that a 35-year old whose teams have aggressively moved him off cf for two years could play meaningful innings at the position, but it's pretty unlikely. I don't think teams would look at Tauchman and Perkins and see fungible players. Tauchman is a corner of bat. Perkins is a defense-first cf and also six years younger. I'm not sure Perkins has trade value, but if he does, it's because some team wants to pay for cf defense. Also, if Tauchman opts out, he's a free agent, right? So wouldn't we have to assess his value based on what some team ended up paying him (or not)?

They probably should trade one of McGee, because two of him is entirely too many. Kidding aside, thank you for this breakdown. That’s a really good roster, and the pitching staff is borderline unholy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a AAA pitching staff where every guy could be a reasonable candidate to call up because the team affirmatively wants him. Maybe not Rodriguez, but he has actually started games in the majors.

Two things : first, Bitonti has a 60-grade arm? Second, I don’t think we emphasize this enough: The Brewers are the best system in baseball; the Brewers never draft high because they’re always winning; and only four of the Brewers’ top 30 prospects came from trades. Those three facts should not be able to live together.

Priceless. Carlos Gomez vs. Brian McCann is about the easiest moral choice I can imagine.

I think Rengifo vs. Urias is pretty easy to understand. Urias has been a better player, but he’s entering his age 32 season. Rengifo is three years younger. If you buy that Rengifo’s struggles last year were an outlier, they’re pretty comparable now. You trust the 29 year-old to hold more of that value than the 32 year-old.

Jack, this is such a great story. I love when you’re able to combine your expertise and ability to find an interesting angle with the great quotes you’re able to get in interviews. Just a terrific read.

Counterpoint: He just put up the second-best OPS in his league while playing at nearly a year below league-average age, he’s healthy after working through the freakiest of injuries (unless you think his face is a ball magnet or his feet will slip in every clubhouse party), he has the offensive skill the Brewers most lack and plays the position they most need, and at AAA he’ll be on call by definition. There’s no way he doesn’t see the majors by June! Or, you know, we could be intellectually honest and look at the whole picture, which seems like it’s mostly down to his K rate and defensive performance as he starts at AAA.

Why on earth would a one-year deal for Sanchez, in what is likely Contreras’s final Brewers season, make it more likely that they would trade Quero?

Broxton was a power guy, though. He was so fascinating. Dude couldn’t make contact if he was swinging at a beach ball, but he was great at everything else. I miss watching him play.

This is an unbelievably arrogant comment. People here have been making all kinds of nuanced assessments of Harrison, and people here make all kinds of nuanced assessments of other prospects all the time, and you know that perfectly well. If the only way you can feel smart is by taking cheap shots at the community to aggrandize your own supposed superior wisdom, maybe don't.

A few words in praise of Mona. Dude made positive contributions to division winning teams two seasons out of three. He did whatever the team asked him to do whenever they asked him to do it, and he stayed super positive through all of it. I also don’t think he ever got enough credit for his curious resemblance to Malcolm X. I’m really going to miss him. My general take on the trade is that Caleb Durbin is a nice, useful player, but he’s not the kind of player you ever let stand in the way of getting a guy with serious upside. I think they really like Harrison. They like him enough that, yeah, it would have worked out better for this deal to be on the table in a year, but it’s on the table now, so you make it now. It’s possible you lose a win or two at 3b in 2026. That’s what you’re risking. So you figure out how to beat that risk, or you compensate for the loss some other way. Good teams can mitigate risk in exchange for upside.

Even stacking the deck with negative characterizations as you’ve done here, that sounds like a pretty decent return for an expensive closer we didn’t need.

Trigger warning please!

Wow, I sure am glad someone here is “inclined towards independent thought.” The rest of us lemmings will all try to bask in your unique example.

People say the same thing over and over: The Brewers have a regular season strategy. They need to spend more / trade prospects to win in the postseason . (The fact that the Brewers won a big playoff series last year, then lost in the NLCS to the one team neither they nor anyone else can outspend, seems to have made no dent in this claim.) But can anyone present any evidence to support the relentless, numbingly repeated narrative that spending big and/or trading prospects will win the Brewers a World Series? Have other small market teams won the World Series that way? Small-market teams don’t really win the World Series, which maybe should tell us something, but — well, the Royals did. Did they win by spending and trading prospects? When the Brewers have spent some money (Rhys Hoskins, Lorenzo Cain), has that had the desired effect? When the Brewers have traded big prospects (e.g., for Zach Greinke), has that worked? (Well, it worked for the Royals, but that’s the exact opposite of the relentless narrative, so never mind.) Last year, the Brewers actually traded a bunch of prospects. Did those deals help them win the World Series? The Priester deal may yet help to get us there, but he was an unproven young guy himself. Did Danny Jansen move the needle? Shelby Miller? Brandon Lockridge? And how are we feeling these days about the Reese Olsen deal? Ah, but what about the deadline deals the Brewers didn’t make? Certainly three of our top prospects could have netted Eugenio Suarez. Did his heroics win the World Series for the Mariners? What about spending? If the Brewers had ponied up for guys they traded, would they have more likely won the World Series? Is there a good argument that Corbin Burnes was the missing piece last October? Josh Hader? Devin Williams? I can see a case for Adames, given how badly Ortiz cratered for us, even though Adames didn’t even help his own team reach the playoffs. But it had better be a damn good case, because having Adames in 2025 means he’s breaking your bank for four more years at the position where you have your most and best prospects. Or is there someone else out there whom the Brewers could have signed to a big free agent contract who would have put them over the line? I’ll give you Ohtani and Sosa, who of course would both be here if Mark A. weren’t such a cheapskate. But seriously, who? I understand that it’s impossible to prove a hypothetical, but you should at least be able to support it. Is there any concrete information at all that gives the spend / trade prospects narrative any substance?

You make a sound point that some logjams clear themselves up. However, your comparison requires some context. As of preseason 2020, MLB.com ranked the Brewers’ farm system dead last, and we had zero top-100 prospects.

To add to this article’s very reasonable analysis: Think about all the players the Brewers have either traded or not resigned in Peralta’s situation. To this point, not one of them has come close to earning the big contracts that most of them got: Prince Fielder had one great year, one decent year, and then got hurt. Corbin Burnes had one very good year, was off to an excellent start last year, and then got hurt. He has a good chance to come back and make his contract look good. The Brewers could’ve used his pitching in 2024 – but then they would’ve been without Joey Ortiz’s very good 2024 season as the starting third baseman. Willy Adames was very good last year, his first post-Brewers season. He’s the one guy on this list whom the Brewers really missed, taking into account how he did, what they got to replace him (not much in his case, because they chose not to trade him), where they were in the standings, and what they got from the replacement at his position. Let’s see how his contract looks going forward. Josh Hader has mostly been good after leaving. However, the Brewers seem to have replaced his contribution very easily. Devin Williams stunk up the joint last year. I would bet on him to recover. But again, the Brewers’ bullpen didn’t miss a beat in his absence. Carlos Gomez did almost nothing after leaving. Jonathan Lucroy did almost nothing after leaving. Then we get to lesser veteran “stars” whom the Brewers let go after good seasons, like Hunter Renfroe and Adam Lind. Those two did almost nothing after leaving. I can’t immediately recall any such guys who made us question our decisions, although I may be forgetting someone. Looking at these players’ results, I can’t see any good case against the Brewers’ strategy of cutting bait on veterans when they get expensive, because when they get expensive also tends to be when they decline. The two big veteran extensions the team has handed out, to Ryan Braun and Christian Yelich, made sense in that those guys were the highest level players in this group (not to mention the ones who meant the most to the Brewers). But even those contracts look like not the greatest baseball decisions. MLB’s rules make players cheaper when they’re better and more expensive when they’re worse. You don’t have to be the cheapskates the Brewers are always accused of being to see the wisdom in taking advantage of that structure.

I would add that even those scenarios assume that Boston would want to trade a key vet hitter to get a key vet pitcher, which isn’t impossible but doesn’t make a lot of intuitive sense. Teams that trade for key veterans want to be seen as “going for it,” which is why they usually trade prospects, not vets, to get vets. Anyway, the line of discussion you’re ably responding to strikes me as pointless. I remember a decade ago when the Brewers traded arguably their best hitter from the prior season, an Established Big League Power Bat, for three A-ball prospects — the exact opposite of the kind of move some folks here want the team to make now. The vet, Adam Lind, got old and never did squat again. One of the prospects — “which are exactly that, prospects,” we hear over and over, and are therefore inconsequential— was Freddy Peralta.