igor67

In an environment where it is possible that both young players and defense might be overvalued, it is possible that one could get more for Maldonado then he currently has value to the team. I don't know that I would spend a lot of time looking for such a deal given some more pressing and obvious choices for deals to be made, but in many ways Maldonado is the old anti-MoneyBall player, which means he is the new over valued asset for those looking for buzzwords. A lot of the potential value in this hypothetical transaction would involve getting a starting player at a position of need vs. holding Maldonado as a above average back-up.

The problem is that if one jettisons K-rod, who replaces him? Maybe someone who can do better, but in this world were we just let everyone go the product in the field will likely be just as bad if not worse. I have no problem dealing him and giving someone else deserving a chance. But the fact is that a mass exodus of the bullpen will probably put some worse players in the pen then we currently have. Playing K-rod for a month to hope he hits a good streak, and can be dealt for salary savings is a better plan than seeing of Seth McClung can pitch like its 2009.

Kentrail seems to have tweaked his approach a bit perhaps in July. His walk and strikeout rates are both down a little, which suggests he might be attacking a little more earlier in the count. It would be hard to argue against that at this point. If we could get more of our pitchers healthy and dealing things would really be exciting.

There is no way Melvin can do enough deals to tear the team down by the deadline. It also doesn't make a lot of sense that the team went from almost in the World Series to tear it down in a year. As someone else pointed out the offense is at essentially the same performance after Prince left, and that was the only major change to the team. The team didn't get old overnight (see Phillies for what this looks like). All of which points to a similar talent level in the last years and this years teams. Even sans Greinke there is still a solid amount of talent. I can't condone a complete rebuild the history of that strategy is not a two year trip to the desert as suggested above, but more like a decade see how long the Pirates, A's, Rays, and Brewers were actually bad. People have blamed GMs for poorly carrying out the strategy for years, but maybe the entire strategy is just high risk and it takes a long time to refind major league talent after you sell it all off.

Wolf looks like more of a waiver deadline guy. Veteran presence, could have a good August and someone else in the race discovers a short term need because of an injury. Not someone I'd expect a lot of talent back for but a little salary relief is possible. The buying team isn't getting a player to put them over a top it should be thought of more as a move to not give up wins with an unknown injury fill-in.

The sample is not big enough to produce a definitive statement about him as a player. My point however was that if you look at all of his minor league stat lines, his data looks a lot like the same player this year as last year with a bump to his numbers from playing in more offensive parks. He might be making some improvements, but there is not enough statistical data to be convincing. Nor as tedaldtada pointed is there a strong amount of scouting evidence as yet that he is taking things to a new level.

Halton's home/road split is less kind. His home OPS this year is a mid .700's entirely consistent with last year in Huntsville. He's doing well enough to keep around, but I suspect the somewhat interesting line is mostly a PCL creation. Suddenly the no position prospect Brewers look at lot more like the mid 2000's Twins when they had a ton of guys at the corners who could all hit a little and field acceptably (Kielty, Kubel, Ford, Cuddyer... and a few others). No one who was going to become a consistent All-star but a lot of useful pieces. The biggest challenge will probably be figuring out who can play and giving everyone a fair look.

Wandy reminds me a lot of Wolf just a couple of years younger. The trade making that last option vest is a little tricky. I suspect that last year will be 13 million on a 5th starter, rather than the current solid production.

There is cause for some concern about Coulter at catcher, but the fact it was a question mark when he was drafted was only 6 weeks ago. If he is going to make improvement it is very unlikely it will show up in any obvious statistical way this season. Consider this as establishing a baseline, let him get a lot more coaching reps in the offseason and spring training and then we can start to evaluate more clearly next year.

I want to believe, but how many of these poor control guys seem to keep teasing with stretches where they find it? Letting him continue to start in AAA seems pretty easy at least until a starter gets dealt. A bigger question might be how is he used in September?

I've been pretty happy about Fiers performance (and yet disappointed at the same time, before the season started if you had said we'd get to call-up a starting pitcher who was going to post that low on an ERA I'd have been thinking we might run away with the division with the other starters we had on hand). Anyway in thinking about sustainability I'm wondering if Hideo Nomo isn't possibly a good comp. Just dominates as a rookie, and the follow-up is still pretty good, but then it starts to tail off as people finally adjust to the weird delivery.

Walla seems to have made some adjustments since their All-star game his BB and strikeout rates have dropped quite a bit (though the BB rate is still above 1-10) his average is higher and there is quite a bit more power as well. Given the numbers it suggests he was too passive earlier in the season and is doing a little bit more swinging earlier at his pitch. Khris Davis has been huge since coming back. If your a double A pitcher Morris and Davis is like facing Braun and Prince. I second the comment that it makes the OF situation for next year interesting. Of note Khris is right handed, and seemingly every other OF/ 1B bat option we have is left handed. Then again he will have seen a lot fewer AA/AAA ABs compared to everyone else, so I'd guess others will get a chance first.

Brain lock on the Rays thing, though it only strengthens my point. Not only is there no guarantee that the draft and pay a whole bunch of guys premium value will work, it rarely produces success at all. The argument was advanced that this new system hurts small market teams by 'taking away' this over pay in the draft strategy. Texas doesn't belong in the mix because they are a very large market and aren't forced into penny pinching. My counter argument is very simple for all the sabermetric rattling this strategy wasn't viable from the beginning it was just the only possible way it might work out, hence the lottery analogy. Even within the first round the expected caliber of production falls off dramatically throughout the round. Even then beyond about the 10th pick they already become noticeably more risky than the average free agent signing. By risky I mean washing out and providing no actual MLB production. I am not advocating an ignore the draft position or anything of the sort. I am pointing out that the historical record on the sabermetric revolution is not a roadmap to unbridled success. My specific goal here is to argue that this means small market teams have lost nothing of any real value in this new labor agreement, but instead have actually gained something of significant value a high round nearly guaranteed extra draft pick. Under the vaunted overslot scheme to find better value you would have to sign two players a year to overslot money consistently to be getting more talent, and that ignores my previous comments about dramatically higher risk. Sub point at 22 year old in AAA is not a dramatically different performance risk than your average free agent. A new draftee however clearly is, half or less of second round picks see any MLB time at all! That is a gigantic difference in risk. Or put another way any player who can hang around for a few years as a regular bench guy is a win compared to other second rounders in terms of value at the major league level. It is also worth pointing out that there is a FA limit, at least in practice the luxury tax threshold has clearly been a behavior modifier on the upper end. As a result evening out money that gets spent in the draft is actually a huge benefit to small market teams because previously there was nothing stopping deep pocketed teams interested in development like Boston and Texas from going crazy and spending 4 or 5 times what the Rays could spend on international FA and falling draftees. Now there is a limit and on a percentage basis every extra dollar spent on development took away a larger percentage of the total budget for small market teams than it did for large market teams. The playing field is still quite uneven, but it is a little better than the old version which was everything a plucky small market could do, a big market could do better.

Given the relative talent of the two drafts I'd say the Pirates have a lot of incentive to just wait next years pick. Boras has been very effective, but it is largely by being able to play Russian roulette multiple times with someone else's head. I wonder if we might see a movement with more fixed values away from agents in general. Some of that has happened in other sports. Really it is the only way to maximize your bonus now.

Small market teams were adopting the dump money into the draft as a winning strategy much in the same way that a high school drop out buys lottery tickets. Draft picks at escalating costs are not good investments because of the risk factor. Because they could not win a bidding war with large market teams the only thing to do was pick up a lot of tickets and hope enough are winners to build a decent team. We've lived under this main stream economic approach for over a decade and the Rays are the only team to win a World Series following this approach. The number of playoff appearances for all of the teams that have adopted this build only through the draft approach is not particularly impressive either. Case in point Manny Parra, easily our most successful draft and follow and he cost 2 million plus all of his years of drawing the league minimum. Every other DFE dollar has been a waste and Parra arguably could have been replaced with more cost effective minimum wage veterans. Small markets will be better off consistently getting an extra pick and not paying the extortion prices to guys who fall or otherwise have artificially inflated value because of the limited number of minor league free agents.

It is also worth thinking honestly about how much playing time Escobar would have gotten this year if he was still with the Brewers. Keep in mind he hit .235/ .288/ .326 in a full season with the Crew before the trade. He followed that up with a .254/ .290/ .343 last year for the Royals. His defense did improve somewhat, but those are not numbers that give one a lot of hope especially because he had more than a full year of AA and a full year of AAA in development too (so no arguing that he was rushed). He may have started this season had the Brewers held onto him or they might have moved on after 2 full seasons of uninspired production. Total WAR for Marcum, Sabathia, and Greinke: 3.5, 3.9, 4.6, 3.8 = 15.8 Indians 0.8 Escobar 3.5 Lawrie 5.1 Cain 0.5 Total WAR for players traded away = 9.9 One could attempt a more robust analysis by trying to project those younger players forward, but you'd also need to account for the value of the extra draft picks we picked up as well (assuming no trade that would be a total of 4 extra picks for us, where the average late 1st round pick has about 5 WAR for their career). It is certainly possible for us to 'lose' in this kind of accounting scenario, but so far we are substantially 'ahead' and it will take a fair bit for the other teams to catch up. I think this simplifies things quite a bit and doesn't take into account any kind of context, but I don't think that really favors those who have complained about the gutting of the farm system.

Given our position guys and depth wouldn't Hart make more sense to deal to LA? They could use help at either corner, and I like the idea of putting together a replacement for Hart out of Morris, Green, Gamel, Schafer, and Gindl more than plugging Green in for Ramirez (much higher OBP).

As some one else pointed out the compensation system was actually favoring the bigger markets because you would actually come out ahead on picks by signing and letting multiple FAs go a year(lose 1 pick, get 2!). It's far from clear that going over slot was actually a cost effective strategy. It strikes me as more similar to playing the lottery to get rich, than a clear path to team improvement. This system practically guarantees a team at the top of the draft can take the best player (a big win for small markets) and not worry about whether or not it makes sense to offer major league contracts to these guys (again it has worked for the Nationals, but that ignores the previous mixed success of this system of investment). The amount of talent in the draft will remain the same, but the large markets will now consistently get less of it because of the competitive balance draft, and fewer supplemental picks. The Rays GM is just mad because they had poor luck this year.

Find a reliable reliever, that could be someone from the minors or involve just a mid range prospect. I don't mind a modest investment of talent in this season if the team keeps rolling. Despite the 'gutting' you can't take the players Melvin traded away and put a better Brewer team out there right now, and unless Lawrie or Odorizzi breaks out in a big way it will have never been possible.

I think they need the sweep and either to pass the Cards or get within 5 of the Pirates to really look like they are in it. My thinking going in was 8-1, 7-2 works but they need a little help from other teams to makes close the gap. If anything going on a hot streak like 7-2 and not being any closer at the end of it is disheartening.

No plan survives contact with the enemy, so to speak. Even though apparently there are almost 3 times as many buyers or sellers, teams still seem to be treating prospects like hunks of gold. If the best package for Greinke is a quantity for quality dump where the best player wouldn't even crack our top 10 then you are better off holding onto him and taking the pick. Even in the world where you dump everything not nailed down for the best player available you still eventually need to field a team. It's become to easy to just advocate the dump strategy in the abstract. In the real world GMs rarely can pull off making more than a handful of moves to reshape the talent on hand into a roster. Sure you have freely available guys, but that is who you fill out the roster with when your out of better options and if you have too many freely available guys your kind of short on the talent to be a good team. One can squint and think the GM can man-up and make some more trades or whatever to reassemble this talent, but we have now had a decade+ of GMs using this mode of thought and the number of trades that can be made in a single year hasn't increased a great deal. The reason is that trades are a time and socially intensive process.

Given that the last two years have been kind of a long road, and Garfield is not old for low-A (and playing catcher as well, which seems to develop a little slower). It seems like letting him continue to swing away makes a ton of sense. I'm sure they have some defense related things he is working on improving. With Lucroy and Maldanado we also have no pressing MLB need for another, so there isn't that motivation to try and challenge him. About the only thing I could possibly see was if they needed to promote him to mess with the AFL roster in some way (not saying they will put him there, but one could make an argument).

I'm content to keep living the dream. Besides prospects are almost as bad as soon to be free agents. Compensatory draft picks we control those players for another 7 years.

Call me crazy, but I swear everytime for the last month or so I've seen the Brewers hit 4 games below to start an In-game thread the find a way to lose.

Well if it helps a pure replacement level team would win about 60 games. It's going to be pretty bad. 7 wins might not sound like a lot, but that takes this team to nearly 70 wins, which is dangerously close to mediocre all by himself. If one is a little more precise it would take basically one true ace and 1 Votto to get you mediocre if everyone else was Rafeal Roque and Cody Ransom on the team. Hopefully this shows how valuable 7 win players are. You get to a .500 team by simply having 3 of these guys and nothing but complete scrubs for the other 22 roster spots. The number of 7+ win guys a season doesn't get large enough even for the Yankees to continue this exercise.