gregmag

I like the idea of finding a couple of spot starts for him, assuming he's stretched out enough to do it. Even if the rotation doesn't fall apart, guys will have minor injuries and, if we're unfortunate, major ones. Also, I don't think we have a single pitcher who's so well-established as a MLB starter that we can be sure he won't pitch himself out of the rotation.

A player can avoid that. If he's up against certain teams or pitchers, they know who will likely throw at them if they do any show-boating. So it works both ways. Sure, go ahead and stare down a pitcher after you hit a HR. But then accept the consequences. That's baseball to me, for better or worse. I don't want to sanitize the game and make everyone play nice. We seem to want the players to police this stuff themselves, but then want to dictate how they police it. Well, I don't want to sanitize behavior, and I don't expect the players to police anything. I do want the Commissioner's Office and/or the league offices to police acts of violence. That seems like a pretty bright line.

I can't decide which of danzig6767's posts to quote, and I can't figure out how to quote multiple posts because I'm 48, but as usual I think he's right about pretty much everything. I'm never going to tell anyone not to have an "old school" attitude. If you have ideas about "playing the game the right way," that's cool. If you want to criticize people who play the game differently, we can respectfully agree to disagree. My problem comes when people try to impose their views on others by force. If you argue that retaliation for batflips or whatever is appropriate, that bothers me. We'd all like for everyone to behave in accordance with our own views of the world. But trying to make that happen is generally a pretty bad way to run any kind of organization, whether it's a sports league or a society. Celebrating may seem obnoxious to a lot of people. Aggressively showing up another player seems obnoxious even to me. We can talk and argue about that stuff forever, and it can be an interesting discussion. But throwing at another player is dangerous; it crosses a line.

This makes me like Ryan Braun more, for the same reason I love batflips. I like people who play baseball however a grown man who wants to be called "Goose" thinks is the wrong way.

Podcast with Dallas Morning News' Rangers beat writer. Toward the end of his interview, middle of the podcast, he talks about Lucroy. He says he doesn't see the Rangers going after him this spring unless their starting catcher gets hurt; thinks they would go after him at the deadline if they didn't like their catching situation; and thinks he'll be there at the deadline because no other team will offer "a reasonable price" (not sure whose definition of "reasonable" he's talking about). http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2016/03/podcast-evan-grant-on-rangers-bradley-woodrum-on-tj-surgery.html

I was just looking through the BA Prospect Handbook, and it reminded me that they had Sardinas as our #3 prospect last year. I thought that was weird even at the time, but in retrospect it seems even weirder. I had no problem at all giving up Sardinas for Flores, but if you had asked me at the time whether I was okay trading our 2015 BA #3 prospect (whose identity, at the time, I wouldn't have remembered) for Flores, I would have said no way.

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this in another thread, but Fangraphs today has a pretty optimistic piece up about Santana: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/domingo-santana-as-george-springer/ Something to hope on, at least.

Khris Davis and his 20 HRs in Aug/Sep and 4 years of team control says hello. Domingo Santana and his 2.5 WAR ZiPS projection say hello back at you, and then Khris Davis and his 0.8 WAR ZiPS projection say goodbye. Or if you prefer Steamer, Davis (1.3) and Santana (1.4) exchange mutual pleasantries. You're going to keep insisting that the Brewers are tanking no matter how many knock-down arguments people throw at your biases, and that's fine. But if the Brewers were tanking, the most useful predictive evidence we have tells us that making a trade whose consequence for this year's team is to replace Davis in the lineup with Santana would be at most irrelevant and at worst harmful to the Great Tanking Conspiracy.

I've been thinking in terms of Braun, Santana, Liriano, Flores, and Broxton as the five OFs with Walsh as more of an IF. Does that not work roster-wise? I guess it doesn't if we keep Hill, because we still need Rivera as a backup ss. So from at least one angle, Hill is blocking Broxton (assuming Walsh fits as an IF). I don't love that. I understand that we're paying Hill and people think maybe we can flip him, but I think he's toast and dead weight. I know Broxton has an option, but he's old for a prospect; I'd like to see what he can do sooner rather than later.

The Brewers just had a 5'9" guy play there for 7 years. When Flores hits 50 HRs and is one of the most feared sluggers in the game, get back to me and Ill reevaluate my thoughts. So until someone has excelled in MLB, we're supposed to categorically take your word that he sucks? That's not a predictive judgment; it's just a bias.

I want to keep Walsh (not least so that we'll have an actual hitter at 2b against LHPs), and people make a good case for putting Cecchini in AAA to start the year. If those moves open space for Hill as a warm body at 3b, I guess that's okay. But this idea that he's a proven major leaguer, and that's why we should give him a chance to jack up his trade value . . . I just don't get it. He's a proven bad major leaguer. The biggest thing he has proved recently is that he's in a steep decline phase. Hill shouldn't be more than an afterthought and a stopgap.

[sarcasm]Awesome. When do WS Tix go on sale? I want to make sure I have mine![/sarcasm] All kidding aside, few fanbases would even care about a Flores and we are one of them that shouldnt either. Braun is locked in at LF, Santana in RF. CF is up for grabs but I wouldnt imagine Flores profiles as an everyday CF under even the most optimistic of fans. Therefore he is at best a 4th OF who is also hurt. You seem fond of making very strong declarations about young players' value -- the pitchers in the Lind trade, now Flores -- without offering much to back up your arguments. I'm not saying your bottom line judgments are wrong, but you aren't offering much reason to think they're right, and the range of possible outcomes for young players with some indications of talent tends to be pretty broad. Whether a guy like Flores gets a real shot probably depends on whether either Braun or Santana misses some time with injuries, which seems fairly likely to happen. The FO is collecting young players with upside (which is what makes them worth trying) and limits or tarnish (which is what makes them available). Some of those guys, like Flores, are at the point where they'll have to put up or shut up at the MLB level this year or next. For me, that's fun. We weren't going to the World Series with Gomez, Davis, Fiers, etc., and we sure aren't going this year without them. I'm looking forward to seeing how these young guys pan out.

I'm with the starry-eyed camp; I don't think Stearns has set a foot wrong. I understand why people like Rogers, and I could see him hanging on as a starter for a year or two in the best of all possible worlds. But he's too old to improve his skills much, not really a power bat, and effectively limited to 1b. The only guys I regret losing even a little are Wagner and Sneed, but I like what they got us better. I'm going with the Lind trade as the best move, because of the strategy it represents: Make trades to get talent at all levels. As part of that, get young guys with upside. When thinking about upside, have your own informed idea of what it is. Stearns is buying a lot of OBP with hitters and command with pitchers. Lind wasn't good enough to get us an advanced prospect worth caring about, so instead Stearns brought back three baby prospects worth betting on.

Obviously it would be nice if we still had Banda, but this makes me feel even better about the sequence of trades. Banda is 15th/C+ in a weak Arizona system. (Arizona's ninth best prospect is a B-/C+ guy; for comparison, the C pluses on the Brewers' list begin with Demi at 17.) Davies is a B- guy, 14th in our stronger system, and has already climbed the ladder to the majors. Plus they're about the same age. It's hardly a blowout, but Davies looks like a meaningfully better prospect than Banda through Sickels' lenses. Then you throw in the facts that (a) the only other thing we gave up was Haniger and (b) we got a really strong year (putting together the two partial seasons) out of Gerardo Parra? That's not a huge win, but I think it's very sound resource management.

I think trading away good players with the draft pick as your main goal can be considered tanking too. If Stearns took a weaker deal now for Davis just to hopefully lose more games that is tanking in my mind. Don't think he did that, but someone can believe that if they so choose. I think this is the key point. When people talk about "tanking" in the NBA, they're always talking about draft position. (I don't know or care about the NFL.) The only way the Brewers are "tanking" is if they're selling players at a discount to improve their draft position. I think it's very difficult to argue plausibly that they're doing that. I think the MLB team's talent level has dropped, but I don't think the Brewers care about that one way or the other. They've acquired some players -- Santana, Liriano, Anderson, even Villar -- who could make the 2016 team better than it would be without them. If they were tanking, they wouldn't acquire guys like that. They would actively avoid acquiring guys like that. The reality, I think, is that Stearns is indifferent to the 2016 team's record. He doesn't want the team to lose; he just doesn't care if it does or not. Under no conventional definition is that "tanking."

I like YoungGeezy's point about Derby's resemblance to Thornburg. Everyone who's saying we don't really know much about Thornburg is right. But YG is right too -- we got excited about Thornburg based on very similar information. The fact that a guy like that now strikes most of us as an afterthought shows how good our system has gotten. The debate about talent and winning is interesting. I think it's just a disagreement about first principles. Thurston Fluff, if I'm reading him right, doesn't believe that "true talent level" as distinct from who wins the most games is real. I'm with those who disagree, but it's an interesting premise. I haven't said much about the Davis trade, partially because he had become just about my favorite Brewer, and I was sad to see him go. He could definitely take his talent to a higher level (though his new home park would likely mask the improvement). His power is elite. His overall defense is passable, despite his noodle arm. He added more walks to his approach last year. He's not the swing-and-miss machine some power hitters are. Still, I love the trade. Davis has one important thing Santana doesn't have: a real major league track record. But people who emphasize that tend to ignore other, less perfect but still valuable evidence of a player's ability, and they also tend to overestimate a "proven" major league player's ability to sustain a high level of performance. The biggest example of this, for me, is Lind. To assume Lind will continue to do what he did last year boggles my mind. If you look at his career numbers and his birth date, last year screams "fluke success amid decline." Davis isn't like that at all, but he certainly could decline, as surely as he could improve. Beyond that, Santana has a bunch of things Davis doesn't have: a stronger prospect pedigree, an arm, four extra years of youth, and two extra years of control. In choosing to trade Davis and keep Santana, we sacrificed some of the thing we need least right now -- certainty -- while holding onto the things (besides the arm, which is gravy) that we need most -- upside and time to try to reach it.

I think Briggs is right about this one. Boyer is kind of a, what, ROOGY? He's situational, and developing young guys for specialized situational roles isn't really a big developmental priority. That role is more where somewhat disappointing prospects end up; it isn't much of a springboard. Anyway, we're probably talking about 60 innings, and Boyer's expendable.

Coulter to 1b sure makes a ton of sense, if he hits enough to start there. Maybe they'll leave him in the outfield this year at AA, take stock of his bat after his year in the FSL swamp, and judge from there. If his bat doesn't profile as a starting 1b, then he's likely a utility guy or trade bait for us, in which case he should probably stay in the of. About the whole current of logjam . . . I think many of us may be overthinking it with too little information in hand. I've seen smart commentaries that talk about how we have too many ofs, and it's a flaw in Stearns' roster construction. It seems to me, given the way Stearns seems to operate, that he likely has a plan for each of these guys, presumably formed in consultation with Counsell, scouts, etc. "This guy is our first option for cf; this guy is just a 'lightning in a bottle' stab in the dark; this guy starts out as AAA depth; this guy is Davis trade insurance." I don't mean to criticize or discourage speculation or criticism, but it seems pretty likely that the org has a well-developed depth chart that would advance our discussion, except none of us knows for a fact what the chart looks like.

Sorry if somebody posted this already -- I've lost track -- but here's a really good, long analysis of the trade from a D'Backs blog: http://insidethezona.com/2016/02/cashing-out-chase-anderson-literally/

Maybe there's something I'm missing here, but it seems pretty clear that Lucroy held his value when he was healthy last year. He had an uncharacteristically crappy start, then got hurt, came back healthy, and basically hit like career Jonathan Lucroy. So isn't the only real, affirmative basis for concern his concussion, which caused the Brewers not to have him catch at the end of last year? If so, can't the acquiring team resolve that concern via medical examination? This is important because, as others have said, it's very hard to trade a starting catcher except in the offseason. We probably can't give him ST and April to look good, then trade him. It's now or next offseason. I'm not especially worried that he'll lose value by having a bad year, but the facts that he'll be a year older and have only one cheap year left on his contract rather than two make him substantially more valuable now than he'll be in a year.

This is such a good idea that I bet Stearns has already been working on it for a month. The point about hitters' leagues is valid, but what do you want from the guy? He's hit three years running. He's been youngish for his league each year. He's basically done everything he can do to establish himself as a legit prospect. I'd love to have him.

To be fair, it took 'til 2013 -- the 5th season after the trade -- for Brantley to start showing much of anything meaningful at the MLB level. He didn't exceed a .750 OPS until 2014, when he finally showed he'd become a pretty complete player..... That's SIX years after the trade (incidentally, 2 years longer than it took Lorenzo Cain to do the same), which is a pretty long time given that he started '09 in AAA after being sent to Cleveland as the PTBNL. I don't know that that many really underestimated Brantley. By that I mean that it took a darn long time for him to prove that first Milwaukee's and then Cleveland's faith in his potential was fully justified. He peaked at age 27 just like most players. If someone said "I believe in this guy's talent, but he's going to take to long to develop for him to be useful to us," that's not underestimating him. But a fair number of people said "He'll never hit enough to hold a job." That's underestimating him. Either way, hoping to keep Green rather than Brantley manifestly amounts to underestimating Brantley, because he became a player and Green didn't. I confess that defending Brantley is like a trip down memory lane. Those were good times. I'll stop indulging in nostalgia now. Stearns . . . seriously, I could not be happier with this guy. Trading tradeable assets, shooting for upside, diversifying the ages and skills of players he's bringing in, emphasizing secondary offense and pitching command, grabbing guys who are there to grab because their teams don't have room for them . . . I can't see a foot that he's set wrong so far. This seems like an incredibly sound rebuilding strategy. BTW, this needs to be said occasionally: Doug Melvin had one hell of a fine 2015, at least from the perspective of this moment in time. He traded everybody who wasn't nailed down, every trade helped the rebuild, and he presided over (I know, didn't run) what looks like a hell of a draft. I'm glad we have Stearns, but DM deserves great credit for what he did on his way out the door.

If we're okay thinking of Gennett the way we think of Carter -- as a low-reward stopgap who's fine as long as he's cheap -- then I like the comparison fine. The suggestion that Gennett is anything more than that is what bothers me. He's a platoon, poor-fielding 2b who at his best can hit .300 with a little pop against RHPs. He has no defensive versatility and no speed. The biggest problem is that he has declined badly over his three MLB seasons. His BA and OBP have dropped by more than 25 points each season. His SLG has dropped by at least 45 points each season. Last year the only thing he did well was hit an empty .279 against RHPs. If that's all he is, then he's worthless. There are reasons to hope, if not really believe, that both Carter and Gennett can improve. The team isn't going to win next year, so I have no problem giving them some time to see if either of them can do it. But if either fails, or if a better shot in the dark comes along for either spot, neither one is worth worrying about.

That's true, and I was about to post the same thing. You never know but you almost have to wonder with a change of scenery could he have further benefitted from going to the Indians organization in that trade? Good luck to him! Wasn't Luc on that list as well? The most detailed version I heard of this story, which somebody posted here well after the fact (I'm sorry my memory isn't better), was that the teams agreed that the Indians would get Brantley if we made the playoffs and Green if we didn't. I have no idea whether that's accurate. At the time, the information I recall seeing here was that Cleveland just got to choose between the two. Some of us, I have to say, hoped fervently that the Indians would take Green. No disrespect to him, because I also hoped fervently at a lot of points that the Brewers would give him some kind of real shot. But a lot of smart people (really smart, I'm not being snarky) badly underestimated Brantley.

Shortstops whose bats play down the defensive spectrum are never blocked.