gregmag

What other "biggest misses" are you thinking of? You suggest that Olson for Norris is representative ("such as") of other, equally bad trades. You criticize the OP for being selective. What's your full, non-selective argument? Off the top of my head, the worst recent trades I can think of after Olson-Norris are Richards and Francis for Tellez, Strzlecki for Chafin, Kelly and Mathias for Bush, and Toro for Patrick. None of those is consequential, let alone anywhere near as bad as Olson-Norris. Patrick may still help us. I think it's also misleading to suggest that the OP's approach mainly excludes bad trades. I don't think it excludes any great ones. But it excludes the very helpful deadline deals for Canha and Santana. In addition, Taylor / Houser looks like addition by subtraction even if we get nothing out of Coleman Crow. Same for Urias for Blalock, who is looking pretty good. Alex Jackson for McKendry won't sting and could still help. I'm not sure your point boils down to anything more than "count the Olson deal as a substantial negative," which is entirely fair. But I can't immediately think of anything else that would change the OP's bottom line.

I'm a huge fan of this trade for the familiar reasons: We get six years of Ortiz and Hall for one year of Burnes. However, I think those of us who took that view in the offseason assumed that 2024 would be a year when Burnes wasn't putting us over the top. As good as the team has been, that may not end up being right. So -- if we're focusing on this year, would you undo the trade now? Would you take Burnes / some guy (Monasterio? Dunn?) at 3b over random dudes (Ross, Myers) in the rotation / Ortiz? On one hand, I think it's a closer question than offseason critics of the trade ever imagined. On the other hand, I think we'd be better right now with Burnes than Ortiz. The really interesting question is: How much better? Would our chances in 2024 of winning the division, or a playoff series, or the World Series be improved enough with Burnes to justify losing him for nothing after the season, rather than getting six years of Hall and Ortiz, including what Ortiz is contributing now? (The comp pick is basically a wash.) It's obviously a hard question empirically. I say no, but I could very well be wrong.

Also, while I’m nitpicking here, I have a grammatical question / gripe . . . So first: Thank you for these recaps. They’re fun and informative. I imagine they take a bunch of time to write, and I’m grateful! Okay . . . Why do you use “would” forms to describe simple past events: “Contreras would drive in the runner” rather than just “Contreras drove in the runner”? Normally “would” only works in the past tense either to describe a repeated past event (“we would go on vacation every summer”) or to describe a past event in relation to an earlier past moment (“he thought he had a bright future, but he would end up disappointed”). You aren’t doing either of those things. It isn’t just you — sportswriters seem to do this a lot. I can’t see any reason not to use the simple past tense, which reads much more smoothly. That’s it. Sorry. Walk on my lawn all you want. Go Brewers.

Unless you’re counting in some way other than adding up the seven game scores, you’re a little off on the total runs scored and allowed. It’s 49-25, not 46-28.

Taylor’s now down to near replacement level, and Houser appears to be toast. I suppose you could argue that Taylor has been better than Chourio and Weimer, but those guys are part of the future, plus they’re cheap. The trade looked like a decent move when it happened. It looks better now.

According to news reports this morning, much of the city will be without power for days. Officials are telling people to stay home because many roads aren’t safe and most traffic lights aren’t working. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/texas-flood-tornado-storms-outages.html?smid=url-share

Really well done. This is the most thorough account of Thomas’s life and career that I’ve seen. Such a sad story. I’d like to think that teams now would be equipped to help players with major mental health issues.

How exactly do we know that players can’t provide credible offense with low EVs? This is the central, unstated assumption of the article. I wish we had EV data for older players like Carew, Brett Butler, Dave Concepcion . . . all different kinds of hitters, but all successful low-power guys. Why can’t versions of that work in the modern game, especially with the demise of extreme shifting? I’m not asking that question rhetorically, like I already know the answer. I’d like to see the assumption unpacked.

We have to be clear about the denominator here. The reason the vast majority of players don't sign extensions before free agency is that they aren't good enough to warrant extensions. Of course you're right that most players who do warrant extensions don't sign them, but that's a much smaller pool within which we would need to break down the reasons extensions don't happen. Often, to take the most obvious counter, particular teams don't want to do them even when a generic GM might do them. It would be interesting to identify a pool of players who were, let's say, "extension plausible" and trace what happened with them. I think the story would be a lot more nuanced than you're making it out to be. For example, you argue that Contreras wouldn't rationally sign an extension that ended at the likely point when his skills would be declining. To test that argument, we would need to know a bunch of things, including how many catchers really get paid a premium past age 33-34, how much they had shown to that point in their careers, and when (in relation to arbitration and free agency) they got paid that post-33-34 premium. As others have pointed out, comparing free agent contracts to pre-arby extensions is apples to oranges, at least without more context. I'm not sure about my ultimate take on a Contreras extension -- you and others have made a lot of strong points. But it seems at least plausible that the two sides could agree on a deal they both liked. Also, I'm as big on trusting the prospect pipeline as anybody, but developing catchers is hard. I don't think you can count on catcher development as confidently as you can count on say, outfielder development. OTOH catchers do get hurt a lot. So yeah, not sure.

If we can get an actual Gasser equivalent for Adames — a MLB-ready, borderline top-100 SP, or even one who’s a year away — I think we have to do that. The problem is matching up with a team that has that guy to trade.

If Boras and Hoskins were really surprised by the Burnes trade, I suggest they learn to read. If that take is coming from Burnes, then one of Boras or Burnes is likely just being a prima donna. They both have plenty of experience.

Fair enough. I know nothing about poker (though the other two references are common enough that I get them). All I can do is read what you write with my ordinary understanding of what words mean.

After “apparently not the nuts,” I refuse to take anything in this article seriously.

I don’t see how Anderson or Escobar would count as an upgrade. Anderson is a middle infielder who just turned 30 and has been declining on both sides of the ball for three years, completely cratering last year. Escobar is 34 and has been in clear decline for at least two years, once again cratering in 2023. How is that “low risk”? Turang and Monestario were both better than both of those guys last year, and Turang and Monestario are young enough that they’re likely to improve, while Anderson and Escobar are already declining — and that’s before we even talk about Black, who’s very likely to outhit all four of the players we’re talking about. Given those options, standing pat is a better bet for both the present and the future. Urshela’s a different story. I don’t think you’ll see his 2019-2020 peak again, but he’s been solid the past few years. He’s a likely upgrade for 2024, but not a slam dunk, and after 2024 I’d bet on our young guys. So if you can get him on a short deal, sure.

I’ve said this same thing for a long time. It makes a ton of sense. Excellent article!

Gantner is the ultimate third wheel. He wasn’t just mediocre; he was an albatross. He was a decent player in his 20s. Then he stuck around forever and the Brewers indulged him, so they never bothered to look for a 2b who could actually help them win games — which they rarely did over the rest of his career. One of my all-time least favorite Brewers.

Sorry if this has come up before and I missed it. A number of discussions I’ve seen have talked about being able to offer Hoskins a qualifying offer if he opts out. I have a dim memory that sometimes teams agree not to offer the QO in that situation as a condition of the contract. Has anyone seen anything reported about that possibility with the Hoskins contract?

I think it's a great HoF year. Three deserving candidates got in, Wagner got to the doorstep, no bad candidates (like Baines or Morris) gained much ground, no good candidates (like Whitaker) got egregiously beaten down (although of course there are always good candidates who don't gain as much traction as you or I might like), and Sheffield got aggressively disrespected. Mauer stacks up solidly in the array of HoF catchers, an underrepresented position anyway. Speaking of underrepresented positions, it's great to honor a top-tier 3b. Coors deflation leaves Helton with solid HoF numbers -- 61.8 WAR, 133 OPS+, right there with Ortiz, Dawson, Guerrero, and McGriff (all of whom Helton beats on one metric and trails on the other, neither by massive numbers); better than Rice, Perez, and of course Baines but let's not even talk about that. Is Helton a first-rank Hall of Famer? No. Does he satisfy overall Hall of Fame norms? I think he does. Relief pitchers are tough. On some days I can talk myself into the idea that the only Hall-worthy primary relievers are Wilhelm, Eckersley, and Rivera. I think we overrate what closers contribute to winning. Fingers and Sutter IMHO were mistakes, but that's a big ship that's long since sailed away from my biases. Wagner was better than those guys (as was Nathan).

No one other than you has Clarke as anything more than an emergency catcher at the MLB level. You have, for years, touted player after player after player as being able to play significant games at positions that the player had only played years and levels earlier. I can’t recall a single time any of those players has actually played the position you imagined going forward — please remind me if I’m forgetting any. People repeatedly provide evidence that the players in question can’t play the positions you’re insisting they play. Without fail, you either ignore that evidence or cherry-pick specious stats (like, say, a catcher’s fielding percentage in a small sample) to try to dress up your baseless arguments. This isn’t creativity, or thinking outside the box, or even good faith discussion. It’s passive aggression.

I'm not sold that the positive difference between Arraez as a 2b-1b and Black as a (3b?-)2b-1b will be worth the cost. Black appears to have more power and more speed. He's substantially younger and healthier. He's substantially cheaper, if you believe opportunity costs are relevant for this front office (and whether or not you believe it, I'm pretty sure the front office does). We're just about to see the baseline, the starting point, for what Black can do in MLB. That seems like a terrible time to trade a guy who can potentially do things we need. The presence of Wilken shouldn't cause us to devalue Black, any more than the presence of Quero should cause us to devalue Contreras. Let's learn whether, hopefully how, Black can make us better.

I have a recollection that Jenkins really helped his stock in the AFL after not looking great at AAA. Relatedly, I thought it was awful and classless when Bulls fans booed Jerry Krause the other night with his widow present — and I would absolutely do the same thing to Sal Bando every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Being terrible at your job is one thing. Being terrible while acting arrogant and entitled is a whole other thing.

It seems like people’s argument *for* him is that he can almost hit .290. No one is arguing that he does anything else well. If his average tapers off at this point on the aging curve, as it does for most hitters, you could very easily (not worst case) be looking at a .275 hitter who can’t field, hit for power, walk, or run, soaking up PAs at DH and 1b. How exactly is that better than Owen Miller?

Excellent article. I think this piece perfectly sets out the logic for trading Houser, and it also tells you why the Brewers couldn’t get more for him. I actually think a very similar analysis applies to Taylor, although I agree he has a wider range of possible outcomes.

Please tell me if I’m misunderstanding, but you seem to be saying that (a) if we don’t sign a player, and he then plays badly for the team that does sign him, that information has no value for assessing how he would have played for us, and (b) it’s reasonable to treat any possible signing of any big name / big money player as if that signing will win us a World Series. Neither of those points sounds to me like a reliable way of thinking about opportunities.

I have to stick up for Weeks on the position switch thing, as I did at the time. Asking a guy to switch from infield to outfield in the middle of the season, when he has never played outfield, is just bad management. How many times have teams tried such a move, let alone with any success? IMHO Weeks did the best thing for the team, as well as for himself, by pushing back against a very unwise idea. I'm happy about Murphy. Maybe he was Counsell's secret sauce all along. At a minimum, Counsell will have to look across the field at his friend and mentor, which is the best counter-trolling card the Brewers had to play. I hope Murphy wipes the floor with him.