Fear The Chorizo

lol, guess that comp pick is starting tonight in Milwaukee for the Brewers!

It's not that I dislike Adames....he seems to be a great guy and good on him for securing a generations-changing contract from someone to play baseball past his prime. I'm just happy it wasn't the Brewers who paid Adames given how the economics in baseball works, and I'm looking forward to the comp pick in this year's draft. He's just off to one of his typical extended cold streaks where he kills the lineup he's in, but good for the Giants to have been finding other ways to win without expecting Adames to carry them.

I'd actually wager quite a bit that won't be the case - i think he'll muddle into obscurity in short order due to middling performance and/or injury and wind up on some other team's AAA squad 2-3 seasons from now. Nothing but my Easter dinner-filled gut to base that on, but I'll stick with it, lol.

They signed the top safety and one of the top RBs to their team last offseason in free agency. Gute signed the Smiths in the same free agent offseason. Despite the current cap room, they do have in-house talent that will need to get paid over the next calendar year if they don't want to have cap issues again in the near future, and some of this year's cap room will get eaten up with extension signing bonuses. Gute has been fine in free agency when both a need and the right players are available to sign. You can't play in that sandbox every offseason as a GM though

Call it anecdotal I guess - an athletic 3B with a wet noodle arm who could run down more pop fly fouls than a statue with a rocket arm probably doesn't create many more outs in a season since foul territory is so small and since most fair pop flies towards left get run down by SSs. The range a guy built for middle infield excels when they're playing ~125 feet plus from the plate compared to ~90-100. There's just not enough time for balls hit towards the gap between third and short for a 3B to move towards the hole to field before it's past them. That's a dive play, and if it's an athletic but short player at third their dive is a range-limiting factor, too. There's a reason 3B has seen players with frames like Arenado, Machado, Mike Schmidt, etc playing there over the decades.

Range just isn't as important at 3rd - if you have to cover alot of ground to get to a ball at 3rd the SS should probably already have gotten to the ball. Arm strength/accuracy is probably equal with reaction time/sure handedness to catch shots at you cleanly for 3B defensive ability. Not having a quality arm over there is forcing a square peg in a round hole for defense, which is something the Brewers shouldn't be doing longterm if they prioritize run prevention to win games

Yeah, I can see Ortiz being the odd man out, too - or packaged with some blocked prospects when another SS is ready in the brewers system

I know the batting average and uneven start to his career is a large red flag, but I still have hope that Wilken is going to be the longterm answer at 3rd (or potentially 1st) in the next couple of years. You've got to give power like that as many chances as possible, and he's sitting in AA with a 0.421 on base percentage despite currently hitting below 0.160. The Brewers also have a wave of IF prospects in the low minors, where one of them could fill that 3B void. Hoping Durbin makes the most of his opportunity at 3B, because he's the type of player that can wreak havoc in a lineup with his speed. He just doesn't have the frame or arm to play an above average defense at 3B. I see him as an ideal utility IF, or potentially as a trade chip to bring in a legit 3B from a team looking for an everyday 2B. If Turang is going to be the Brewers 2B longterm, Durbin is blocked at his best everyday position,

Yeah I don't buy the Packers are the worst drafting team in the NFL....how much of that metric is based on consistently picking towards the end of most rounds? Every team has significant misses - I think the current Packer front office does a great job in the middle rounds finding starting caliber players on both sides of the ball, but where they struggle is drafting a guy at one of the marquee positions in today's NFL (WR, DL/edge rusher, T) early and have it be obvious they hit a HR as soon as that player steps onto the practice field. Frankly, a big part of that issue is the Packers either don't draft those positions in round 1 (WR, T), or they take raw development projects like Gary/LVN who take years to sort out if they're going to make an impact. At some point they need to target obvious holes on their roster in round 1 drafts at positions like OLB or WR, with the expectations that those players turn those existing roster weaknesses into strengths simply by entering the building. The Packers have hit on QBs drafted early - they've only had to attempt doing it twice in the last ~25+ seasons, which is insane, but assuming Love is at minimum an above-average NFL starter you can't question their approach with how they've maintained quality at by far the NFL's most important position compared to pretty much any other team in the league over the same timespan.

He's always going to be slight in build, and the hope is that as Turang fills into his frame he'll hit with a bit more pop - but more importantly be able to get through the grind of a MLB season without wearing down. That definitely happened with him last year. Frelick had similar struggles with staying fresh/strong as the season wore on last year, too. It's part of what made Chourio's 2nd half so impressive to me - for a kid to figure out MLB pitching at 20 and then seemingly not wear down through the dog days of a season is bonkers. With his defensive ability and baserunning, Turang OPS-ing anything over 0.700 makes him a perennial all star. Proof is in the pudding to see if he can maintain this start and carry through the offensive improvement through September.

With the exception being the Chiefs, who have the best quarterback of this generation playing for one of the best coaches ever that leads what is probably considered the best coaching staff in the league, Being among the top 5-10 teams in the NFL consistently is about all you can ask for a GM to give his organization the best shot at winning a Super Bowl. The difference between last season's roster being a playoff participant and it going on a run towards a title is primarily Love taking the next step in his development. The fact the past two seasons led to Packer playoff berths while unraveling the accumulated salary cap purgatory the last few years of the Rodgers era put them in speaks to Gute doing a very good job at replenishing the roster with talent without having to crater their onfield results. I do think the Packers need to do a better job in general at landing instant impact talent at key positions in today's NFL (DL/OLB, WR) in the 1st round instead of having to wait on 2-3 year development of athletic freaks or guys coming off injuries who aren't great NFL players yet. The one criticism I have for Gute is to make better 1st round draft picks that instantly enter the building as a starter - regardless of the organization's veteran depth chart at their position. This Packer defense is better than what they consistently ran out through most of Rodgers' Packer tenure - but they don't have the horses on the line right now for them to take over games. It's on Love to take that next step for the offense, which now has plenty in the backfield and upfront on the line to run the ball. The Packers have got to get more pass rush upfront, and that has to mean new faces in the DL and OLB rooms via the draft along with LVN showing up and Gary rebounding from a disappointing 2024 season.

Pretty decisive 2nd opinion after what was probably an initial undesirable one. Stinks for Steele, as this likely costs him any shot at a mega contract after spending the max number of seasons in the minors and then also in the majors under team control, but then again he's never, ever been able to establish himself as a workhorse starter who would deserve crazy pitching money.

stay 500 miles away from giving that guy any sort of longterm contract...that elbow is probably putting him on the shelf until middle of 2026. He's somehow still in arbitration through the 2027 season, at which time he'll reach free agency heading into his age 32 season. Checks notes, my God he's been in the Cubs organization for 11 years already (minor + major) and still needs to go through 3 more seasons counting this one before he's a free agent.

Chourio is still younger than a good number of draft prospects who will be picked in this year's draft....and currently OPS-ing around 1.0000 despite an 0-5, 5K Opening Day that accounts for 10% of his at bats so far this year. Truly a generational talent.

Gotcha and makes sense - just the timing of how Smith's career began with the Brewers put them behind the 8 ball. Not saying Smith didn't deserve to be protected and added to the 40 man last fall, but who know what other irons were in the fire at that point that prevented them from doing so.

We will see the longevity of this "mistake"...to me this has alot of the same feel as Phil Bickford winding up on the Dodgers after the Brewers DFA'd him, saw him have success for a bit and then has been with multiple organizations (major and minor leagues) since then trying to hang onto his career. Smith looks to have all the stuff you'd want to see in a pitcher - but he does have the injury history that initially made him an undrafted FA signee by the Brewers just 4 years ago...and the jury is out on his durability due to limited innings pitched while in the Brewers' system over the past few years. I hope he is great and stays healthy - he couldn't have asked for a better team to pick him (one that is terrible and has no intentions of contending) in the Rule V to give him an extended MLB opportunity. I'm sure it was explained late last fall when it was apparent Smith would be Rule 5 eligible - the rule states if sign at 19yrs of age or older and play 4 professional seasons in the minors you are Rule 5 eligible. I know Smith signed in '21 but I don't think he logged any minor league innings that year because he was rehabbing from TJ that he sustained his senior year of college - his minor league stats only span 3 seasons. Shouldn't Smith have still needed to log a fourth minor league season in 2025 before being Rule 5 eligible?

This is a great big game of chicken that won't last very long, and it's one a whole bunch of other countries hope the US caves first to return back to the "status quo" of what the tariffs on US exports were without the US raising tariffs on imports. There's a difference between what Wall Street and Main Street needs to feel like the economy is working for them, and this approach is the first thing in decades that actually puts Main Street's longterm interests ahead of the financial markets - even if it is heavy handed and poorly thought out in places. It's why private sector unions are in favor of this. Also, knowing that roughly $10T (!!!) of the existing national debt has to get refinanced this year, with almost $7T of that amount needing to be refinanced by early this summer, starts making an alterior motive for this kind of heavy handed tariff bluster in the short term pretty obvious. It's forcing a big shift out of capital and into treasuries that otherwise wouldn't have happened. From that, T-Yields have dropped 30 basis points the last couple days - the lower that yield is, the friendlier gov't debt refinancing costs are longterm. With interest rates still elevated over what they've been during the last 20 or so years (thanks Fed for a decade+ of ~zero interest to print all this money!) that most of the current national debt has been accumulated through due to the US government opting to continually spend way more than it makes, it feels like an intentional effort to drive them down a bit. The truth is the global economy needs the US much more than the US needs the rest of the global economy, and the global economy is going to have to at least make some concessions with their own tariff policies to avoid their own economic depressions while the US works through a recession. Of course, the status quo of increased deficits and debt accumulation would be less volatile over the next decade or two than what appears to be the current "plan"....but that approach also eventually reaches a point where the whole system collapses anyways. Leaving things as they are gets the US to a point in about 20 years before a debt default that makes the great depression look like a hiccup across the globe - that's roughly my retirement timeline, so at this point I'm open to any sort of shift in strategy. My gut says this back and forth will continue over the next couple months, resulting in some minor foreign tariff reductions on US goods while many of these recently announced "bad actor" tariffs set way over the 10% baseline get knocked back down - then we get a bunch of "we made a great deal" announcements just as a chunk of this national debt is quietly refinanced at a lower interest rate before money floods back into the markets.

This team will win 95 games with a -50 run differential, lol

I saw alot of that, too - people worried about losing Adames production and then the first solution is to send their best hitter to the minors because he's 21 and had a terrible opening day. That OPS is going to keep climbing, too.

They should just call them bowling pins...that's pretty much what they are. I still think the combination of a comically short porch at Yankee Stadium and atrocious Brewer pitching are far more to blame than a weirdly shaped bat for all the HRs they hit over the weekend. Particularly since Judge isn't using one of these bats. I still say the reasonably simple antidote for these bats designed to do more damage when hitters get a little jammed is to pitch these hitters outside with velocity.

no, it's balance is just different - instead of the end of the bat having most of the weight the trademark area has it, and then the bat tapers back narrower at the end.

I mean, isnt the adjustment to just pitch to the outer half of the strike zone and watch them splinter these bats or not get nearly the loud contact with the weaker ends of these bats out over the plate? Then when the players creep in on the plate you can bust them inside on the hands where they won't be able to barrel the ball either? The story is the putrid start of the season on the Brewers' staff - it's not just the bats.

When teams know an organization won't be able to afford keeping a good player on their team through free agency and may need to trade them to get some form of quality return, I don't really see why they'd be willing to pony up blue chip prospects and great players to acquire them. Devin Williams threw like 40 pitches and barely got out of blowing his 1st save opportunity as a Yankee a couple days ago - I actually don't think he should be viewed as some organization-changing dominant reliever anymore. Stating they should have gotten better players without offering up which other trades the Brewers should have made with specific prospects/players that would be realistic offseason trade scenarios isn't much more than throwing strawmen at people endlessly. The economics of baseball, IMO, actually have me thinking the best value small market teams can gain from their premium talent is to ride them out through their free agent years, don't trade them at all unless at the deadline before they walk if the team is out of it, and pick up the comp draft picks. Then again, you thought the Yelich trade was a terrible move at the time the Brewers made it for giving up all those great prospects to the Marlins, too.

I'd be all for deferred money counting fully towards a team's luxury tax payroll coupled with more significant penalties for staying over it. In other words, Ohtanis contract is counted as $70m annually per luxury tax payroll accounting instead of the 35ish M it currently is and the actual dollars payment of $2m in 2025 to ohtani's bank account. Make the luxury tax a realistic accounting for what's on the field now competing against the rest of the league vs the deferral madness

The Dodgers have an absurd financial advantage over the rest of the MLB at the moment - even including other huge market teams across the league. In the absence of any meaningful change in future collective bargaining agreements to level the playing field in terms of how MLB rosters are constructed (salary cap/floor, adjusting how deferred money in contracts is accounted for, more punitive luxury tax penalties, etc), I was wondering what other options the "have nots" organizations across MLB could offset what the Dodgers can do and actually set them up for an extended period of being stuck in the wilderness when a bunch of these high priced veterans start breaking down.... One thought I had was for the rest of MLB, particularly the small-mid market clubs, to essentially avoid making any sort of trades or transactions with the Dodgers - and force them to make some very tough roster decisions without the benefit of trading away unnecessary veterans or prospects to fill in any of their own roster gaps or refresh their minor league talent pool. The Dodgers have a ridiculous pitching staff who would all need to be added to their 40 man roster currently sitting on the IL - as those arms get healthy there's going to be guys who other organizations would line up to trade for made available. Instead of competing to give the Dodgers the best package available to acquire those guys, other teams could simply force the Dodgers' hand and make them DFA/release them for nothing in return. Same goes for a bunch of their prospects who essentially are MLB-ready but are blocked by guys they are paying for many years down the road....don't allow the Dodgers to trade some of those guys for MLB roster improvements or younger minor league talent from other organizations - instead force them to age out of their system and become rule V draft eligible players. I'm certain the players' union would cry foul if it became obvious the rest of the league was refusing to answer any phone calls from the Dodgers' front office and it would be considered some sort of collusion - but I think over time this sort of strategy could be a pretty effective way to hollow out what is essentially an all star team roster with a deep farm system and who's who of recovering players on IL on top of all that. I think this would be more fun than MLB sitting on strike for a season or two while hammering out sufficient changes to their financial system that prevents this sort of circus from happening again.