Fear The Chorizo

Like it was said above Brewers should be looking to move vets and bring up prospects all the time. In general, yes that's the ideal approach - but if you do that exclusively you're nothing more than a glorified farm system for big market teams serious about winning titles. At certain points, you need to pull the trigger on adding veteran pieces via trade or free agency that fill holes on a team serious about contending. Having a farm full of mid level prospects in danger of going elsewhere via rule 5 next offseason seems like a pretty good time to package a bunch of them for MLB talent that is still under team control at better than market rates. I'm not saying send everyone in the top 100 to get archer, but to me losing Brinson's 6 yrs of control to gain 4 yrs of a pitcher archer's ability at a lucroy-esque contract is well worth it. I'd rather santana headline that trade, but in all likelihood it would take Brinson to get it done with tampa. I'd be more hesitant if archer's asking price includes more than 1 of the brewers' minor league arms with promise. I'd argue the brewers have the flexibility as an organization this offseason to sign a fa pitcher like Sabathia and trade for a quality starter like Archer, too.

they find a way to beat a solid Panther team Sunday and strike the fear of god into the rest of the NFC playoff field. If the Packers find a way into the playoffs, there are some eery similarities to the last year the won the Super Bowl as the #6 seed... - likely top NFC seed (Eagles) is talented but untested in the playoffs, and their QB hasn't won yet on the big stage (2010 Falcons) - likely #2 seed is an NFC north team in front of GB due to Packer injuries - they have a great defense and a decent offense with questionable QB play in a playoff setting (this year's Vikes and 2010's Bears are very similar, IMO) - Packers team is largely healthy on offense with emerging young running backs, and a healthy/effective Rodgers could light it up with them on anyone. To me the biggest difference between these two teams is this year's defense isn't solid - the 2010 defense was great at times, and they came through with big plays in the postseason. I think the potential is there for this year's D to play well and make plays, however I think the Packers would need to win a couple shootouts compared to 2010, when they basically won the super bowl by grabbing leads early and holding on to win playoff games sealed by defensive plays (Atlanta falcons demolishing aside in the 2010 playoffs)

Again, nobody is saying they hate Archer and we shouldn't target him. Our rotation is improved with him - but it's also improved with a lot of others as options as well What are all these other better options that give the brewers 4 years of a starter in his prime for well under 10 million per season and how are they acquired?

Then why did Nelson and Chase just significantly drop their HR9 while pitching in one of the worst pitchers parks? cherry picking more than I did - Nelson significantly lowered his HR rate from 2016-2017. He had a bad year in 2016 (so much so that he was an afterthought for the 2017 rotation, many here wanted him moved to the pen or traded), so lowering that rate back to his career average isn't surprising given he was a different pitcher in 2017. Anderson definitely made a huge jump in production during 2017, but he also doesn't have near the body of work Archer has - Anderson hasn't pitched over 153 innings in a season yet.

Archer had the lowest Contact % of his career in 2017 - he's missing bats at a better clip than ever, but also giving up more hard contact when hitters do get the bat on the ball. Again, to me that's just as much a result of the MLB-wide shift towards prioritizing HRs/hard contact and all-or-nothing ABs.

Here are a few, provided from Archer's 1st big league season in 2012 through 2017. SO/9 -11.0, 7.1, 8.0, 10.7, 10.4, 11.1 BB/9 - 4.0, 2.7, 3.3, 2.8, 3.0, 2.7 FIP - 3.40, 4.07, 3.39, 2.9, 3.81, 3.40 HR/9 - 0.9, 1.0, 0.6, 0.8, 1.3, 1.2 SO/BB - 2.77, 2.66, 2.40, 3.82, 3.48, 4.15 Aside from the spike in HR rate, Archer has been consistent to improving on these peripheals. Taking a closer look at the HR rate, here is the MLB-wide HR rate for the same years (2012/2017): 1.02, 0.96, 0.86, 1.01, 1.16, 1.26 So, the spike in Archer's HR rate over the last two seasons correlates directly to the MLB-wide spike in homers as well - probably more of an indicator of a league-wide shift towards homers moreso than Archer suddenly becoming a mediocre pitcher. Archer's HR/9 rates actually line up similarly to the league-wide variations, too. If we're suddenly concerned about trading for or signing a veteran starter whose HR rate climbed the past two seasons, there aren't going to be any pitchers worth acquiring.

Except he had a 3.22 ERA in 2013 (128 IP), a 3.33 ERA in 2014 (194 IP), and a 3.23 ERA in 2015 (212 IP). The entire premise of baseball analytics suggests that his 2016-2017 ERA is the outlier. This was why I made the comparison to AL East club offenses in 2015, when Archer had a fantastic year. Not only would you take him out of the AL East, you take him out of the AL - so he gets to face pitchers a heckuva lot more. Looking at Archer's 2017, his ERA was impacted by 4 bad starts during the season - At Baltimore in April when he gave up 5 runs in 6.2 IP and also walked 5; 6 runs in 5 innings of work at Cleveland in May when he walked 6; 6 runs in 3 innings at Boston in September; and 5 runs in 3.2 IP at Baltimore in September. The early season bad starts had to do with all the walks he allowed, and he may have been running out of gas or pitched hurt in September (many short outings down the stretch). Actually, those September starts occurred after he suffered from forearm stiffness in his throwing arm that forced him to leave his Aug 29th start after 8 pitches. In 2016, his ERA again was impacted by 5 bad starts during the season - At Baltimore in April giving up 6 runs in 5 innings; At Boston in April giving up 6 runs in 4.1 innings; at Detroit in May giving up 6 runs in 3 innings; at Boston in July giving up 5 runs in 6 innings; and at NY Yanks in August giving up 5 runs in 6 innings. Every one of his bad starts that severely impacted where is ERA wound up compared to earlier years came on the road, and all but two happened against an AL East opponent. Plus, it appears that at least one month of his 2017 season was impacted by wear and tear - to me, that should be the reddest flag when evaluating him, not what his season's counting numbers wound up being. I'm having a difficult time understanding what unicorn pitcher that's out there on the trade market would be a better alternative when factoring all the information. A younger, talented pitcher under team control with a friendly contract for FOUR seasons prior to free agency. Feels like this board is talking out of both sides of its collective mouth this offseason because the Brewers are sort of in roster limbo - "we have $ to spend in free agency...but don't spend it all on a free agent starter...but maybe get more involved in the pricey relief free agent market...maybe not...but we have a ton of prospects in the system to use in trades for controllable pitching talent, so let's do that instead...but don't trade x/y/z away because we need young, controllable talent...what about trading Braun??...stick to the rebuild plan, but spend money and maybe trade some prospects that wouldn't exactly be sticking to the rebuild plan..."

Take Archer out of pitching in the AL and AL East, and those hard contact rate #'s drop. Guy has had to make almost 1/2 his starts against the Red Sox, Yankees, Orioles, and Blue Jays throughout his career. In 2015 he was 6th in ERA for the AL, the same season his AL east opponents were ranked #1, #2, #4, and #9 in OPS across all of MLB. He's a very good pitcher - the question is whether we'd have the stomach to give up what it would take to pry him from Tampa Bay, who really doesn't have to trade him and could probably get equal value at this year's deadline.

look for next year's rule 5 draft to be much more eventful for the Brewers - they have alot of roster managing to do over the next 12 months

I feel like his "struggles" recently still correlate to a solid mid to upper tier rotation pitcher that has the stuff to project as a top of the rotation starter leading into his free agent year in 2020 - someone with some warts that could enable the Brewers to swoop in with a pile of good-not-great prospects and have both teams wind up viewing the trade favorably. Yes, Cole would likely be walking a couple years later in free agency, but frankly there won't be teams looking to trade more talented arms under more team control than Cole without asking for more than the moon in return. His HR rate concerns me pitching in Miller Park, but if healthy he still has the stuff that made him a #1 overall pick. To me, he's the kind of pitcher to target acquiring via trade using the surplus prospects in the Brewer system who are approaching Rule V/40 man roster limbo.

So now people want Stearns to go out and find another David Riske to sign? Priority should be to bolster the rotation via offseason trade, then use excess prospects to try and acquire relief help as needed at this year's deadline, when it's easier to assess which available veteran relievers are having great years to go after.

Lots of rumors surrounding the Yankees and pirates with Cole, but the brewers also got some mentions about exploratory discussions. Trading for him would be costly, but if the pirates make him available he'd jump towards the top of my wish list should other teams not be willing to part with their best prospects. I think he could be had with a quantity type deal headlined by Brinson and Ortiz. Always sketchy trading within the division, but getting 3 years of pre-free agent Cole might be worth the risk of sending impact talent to pittsburgh...

Theo is buying up everything in sight because unless he trades from and weakens their mlb position player roster to shore up pitching there's nothing left on their farm worth a damn... The last thing a small market team should do is outbid large market teams for veteran relievers.

There will be a TON of NFC playoff hopefuls rooting hard for the Panthers Sunday to snuff things out before Rodgers gets his footing...Looking around the NFC, there isn't a team out there that would want to see a Rodgers-led Packer team in the playoffs. All the excitement aside, the Panthers are a tough matchup for the Packers even with a healthy Rodgers - what they do on offense is nightmare scenario for the Green Bay D, and the Panthers front 7 is arguably the best in the league.

Even with money to spend, the Brewers need to continue building bullpens with internal options mixed with occasional scrap heap acquisitions. I struggle justifying a small market team spending a significant chunk of their budget on relievers - even if the bullpen has become incredibly important to winning MLB games. The Brewers have to fill that priority with internal options and spend wisely on starting pitching. If healthy, Williams should absolutely break camp with the big league club or be on the speed dial list in AAA.

The problem for Boras is Arrieta's last name isn't Verlander, and the owner he conned into Verlander's contract is dead. Arrieta simply doesn't have the same track record as Verlander did at the time of his extension. Boras is picking the last 3 years and leaving out Arrieta's early career struggles. Is it collusion or blackballing if the owners/front offices all tell Boras to pound sand with that nonsense?

meh - Brewers can't give upwards of 40 Million over 3 years to a free agent pitcher whose #'s just aren't very good. Guy also hasn't ever pitched over 160 innings in a season - doesn't exactly scream mid-rotation stalwart in his prime to me. yet another case in point why developing your own starters or developing a pile of prospects to acquire controllable starters is the way the Brewers need to build rotations.

each player's situation with the NFL draft is very different - I don't recall Nelson being one of those 5-star prospects who scouts are just waiting on to develop football skills to go along with freakish athleticism. Nelson's draft stock may never get higher than it is right now, and the injury risk for a guy projected in the mid-rounds is often too great to risk having a down/injured 2018 collegiate season and miss being drafted altogether. sidebar to this discussion, I fully expect a TON of early draft declarations following the 2019 collegiate season - all signs point to an NFL strike/lockout that could easily wipe out the 2021 season/draft entirely once their current CBA expires end of 2020. Players have been talking about it ever since their last labor agreement was signed. I think if the NFL strikes and either loses a season or partial season, irreparable damage will be done to their game. It's already been showing signs of decline with fans over the past few years, due to alot of issues (CTE/longterm health topping that list). The next CBA negotiation will be very interesting, because it will have the players' side demanding much more of a shrinking Pie of NFL revenue that the owners will be struggling to deal with. In fact, if I'm an owner of an NFL team I may seriously consider selling now.

Food for thought - had the current playoff system been of the 6-team variety (top two teams get a bye), Wisconsin would've made it as the #6 seed and played Georgia, while OSU would've faced off against Alabama. For all the debate about whether OSU or Alabama is more deserving, they could've settled it on the field. I'm sure if the committee knew they were picking 6 spots they could've easily given USC or Penn State the #6 spot to knock out the Badgers. Notre Dame has to be wondering why they get so crazy with their scheduling - they already have USC and Stanford games penciled in every year, then essentially add on a bunch of ACC games to a slate that still includes decent to solid Big Ten programs, with the occasional top 5 SEC school sprinkled in. Their travel schedule is more extreme than anyone else in the country, too. At minimum, there needs to be a scheduling tweak across the Power 5 conferences that requires 9 conference games to be played by everyone. That removes what is essentially a 2nd bye week for SEC and ACC schools from their schedule compared to Big 10/Pac 12/Big 12 schedules. I feel like the current conference schedules for the Big Ten / Pac 12 / Big 12 are artifacts of the SEC dominance during the BCS era - to try and bolster their schedule strengths and avoid a repeat of that LSU/Alabama national title game. What it's ended up doing is making it more difficult for these other conferences to have a guaranteed playoff spot, regardless of how their best teams play down the stretch. This whole fall, there was never a debate about whether the SEC or ACC deserved to have 1 team in the playoff, it was typically about how they could field 2 teams based on how the other conferences' best were losing games in late October/early November. Obviously, only way to change the perception is to win big games against other conferences - but right now the SEC and ACC have so many things tilted in their favor (scheduling, travel advantage, poll bias chief among them) that it makes it difficult to even get invited to the party to compete against them. By no means am I a Baker Mayfield fan, but I'd love Oklahoma to light it up for two games and walk away with a national title about 1 month from now.

Takes two to tango with scheduling, and middle of the road to bottom tier sec teams simply won't schedule games against better programs so they can prop their win loss records up to get bowl eligible and improve the perception of the conference as a whole. Not sure how feasible it is, but if I'm the big ten I try to schedule even more conference games instead of trying to go OOC for quality wins. To hell with the rest of the conferences. They have enough teams, schedule 10 conference games and 2 cupcakes. If wisconsin got 1 more conference game against the east, they would have added osu, msu, or psu on their schedule instead of Utah state.

Well now I have 1 less thing to watch...Alabama getting in is absurd

Terrible non call on pi against davis on the play that the badgers oline held. Would've been offsetting penalties

Barrett has actually been pretty bad tonight...

Great, now we will have a 2 hour delay because grass apparently doesn't grow in indianapolis...

Run. The. Ball.