Never Outhustled

Woodruff?

You are using his statistics as a starter. There’s a decent chance he’s a serviceable reliever that can give you a couple innings at a time. He may not make it on our team but that’s what the Brewers are looking at him for. Except nothing about what Gallardo throws makes me think he'll play up in relief. 91-92 at best with an above average curve. Would you rather have that guy or the one throwing 96-99 with an above average-plus slider and serviceable change? Best case scenario for Gallardo is he throws high fastballs and keeps guys guessing on whether it's a high fastball or a curve breaking below the zone. Let him do that for a rebuilding club, I'll take the 96-99 guy that's only 27 and hasn't thrown 1700 pro innings already. Gallardo's average fastball last year was 92, as a starter. We'll probably see it around 94 as a reliever. Williams average fastball was 95. Not a huge difference here. Williams will pitch in the majors plenty this year, but if Gallardo does too it won't be a disaster. I still doubt that Yo makes it though.

+1 again, you're on fire today. It will be very annoying watching Gallardo post a 7 ERA, get cut in early May, and then have Williams come up and do his best 2017 Josh Hader impression. While I don't think Gallardo makes it, I don't know why anyone would project a 7 ERA from him as a reliever. He still has plenty of velocity left, and his curve is solid. He could probably be a good reliever. We just have a excess of those, and the team needs some relievers who can be optioned for roster flexibility. Same reason i think Hoover didn't make the club out of spring training.

The Brewers were 9th in pitching a year ago, 19th in runs scored. We've added Chacin, and replaced Torres and Drake with real pitchers, and improved the OF defense. We'll be a top ten pitching staff again. I hope the offense can carry it's load this time.

I'm not making that argument, but if someone did, they'd simply point out that Pina was more WAR than Braun last year. Again, I'm not making that argument.

You're right that he's been awful the last 2 years, but I'm not sure those numbers are a true representation of his talent, because he's battled injuries each of the last 2 years. He's had a terrific spring, with 5 homers. Having said that, he does have durability concerns. I'm intrigued, now it's about the cost of acquisition.

April 6th is the 8th game of the year, I'd DFA Aguilar and recall Woodruff. If the Aguilar situation has already been resolved, a different player would be optioned. This would also be around the time when the team could start needing an 8th reliever. Broxton could be optioned now, if he hasn't already.

And some on here think Braun is a 4th OF. He's arguably our best hitter. He's also arguably only our 6th most productive position player, behind Yelich, Cain, Santana, Shaw, Arcia. Arguments can also be made for Pina and Thames.

That position player group, barring any trades, feels like a lock to me. I could see Suter in the rotation, with either Woodruff or Miley making way, and potentially T. Williams in the bullpen instead. But with Williams having options (as do some other fringe names like Guerra and Houser) he might be more likely to start in the minors. The opening day roster will look much differrent than this, though this could be the roster come game #8, which is the 1st game they'll need a 5th starter. Also, I don't expect the team to open the season with 8 relievers. They wouldn't be able to get them all sufficient work considering there's an off day the 4th day of the season. Also, I wouldn't expect the team to just option everyone with options remaining. They're more likely to keep some players with options to preserve flexibility, while maintaining organizational depth by sending down players on minor league contracts such as Miley, Hoover, Choi, and Bethancourt. My opening day roster, which will be very temporary and fluid: Starting Rotation = Chase Anderson, Zach Davies, Jhoulys Chacin, Brent Suter (Brandon Woodruff added later as 5th starter) Bullpen = Corey Knebel, Josh Hader, Matt Albers, Boone Logan, Jeremy Jeffress, Jacob Barnes, Junior Guerra Catcher = Manny Pina, Jett Bandy (Vogt to the DL) Infield = Eric Thames, Jonathan Villar, Erik Sogard, Orlando Arcia, Travis Shaw, Hernan Perez, Jesus Aguilar Outfield = Ryan Braun, Christian Yelich, Lorenzo Cain, Domingo Santana, Keon Broxton This gives the team more time to shop Aguilar, and delays optioning Broxton, giving the team a deeper bench for a few games, while allowing Woodruff and the relievers to stay sharp working in minor league spring training games. A reliever can be purchased or recalled as soon as one is needed, optioning Broxton. Something will need to happen with Aguliar before game #8.

I agree. Strong defender, and has actually looked decent with the bat. Younger than Bandy too. I like Bethancourt, but I think he'd really benefit from playing and catching full time in AAA for awhile. The Padres really screwed up his development. Hard to understand why a team would take a great throwing young catcher with an underdeveloped bat and decide to move him all over the field and saddle him with learning a bunch of positions on the fly, while rarely getting at-bats for 2 years. He's on a minor league contract, so I hope to send him to AAA and give him an opportunity to try to develop into the next Manny Pina. Either settle for Bandy as the back-up catcher for now, or explore the trade market.

Braun isn't available often enough to be a regular anything. The present roster composition fits perfectly. Yelich, Santana, and Shaw will continue to out hit him too.

This alone makes me want to say scrap the 1B experiment, make Braun the 4th outfielder getting around 100 starts while giving the other 3 days off in RF/LF for rest and the inevitable injuries, and let Broxton/Phillips battle it out for 5th. Then keep the Thames/Aguilar platoon. It's not like Braun's going to start 150 games if the starts are available anyway, and now we're apparently wearing down his already fragile body. Your set-up would force the team in to an 11 man pitching staff, in stead of the more likely 13 man staff they'd like to use a majority of the time. The roster will be super fluid most of the season, but I think we'll only see an 11 man staff for the first 7 games, as the 5th starter won't be needed until game 8, because of an off day on day 4 of the season.

Especially when Puk was your guy, like he was mine, going into that draft. How the Brewers passed on Puk at 5 will stick with me for their careers. Whoever decided Ray over Puk should be let go of their duties in the drafting department. That's already been done, and it's no coincidence that the replacement is an analytics guru. Ray was statistically the worst top 5 drafted college hitter in the last 20 years.

It’s not about comparing players. It’s about allocating Capital properly, or at least more efficiently, and looking at opportunity cost. 1 of Dyson/Jackson/Gomez+ 1 of Lucroy/Avila+Walker+1 of Chatwood/Cobb>Cain. Let alone passing up Cain and any FA all together and just going to what was needed to get Darvish. Moustakas was 1.8 WAR, Cain was 5.3. Easy to see why one gets top dollar, and the other is unwanted.

CC has said good things about almost every pitcher in the mix, including Williams, Woodruff, Barnes, Jeffress, Miley, Hoover, Guerra, and Suter. I'm not seeing favoritism towards Gallardo. He is unlikely to make the team, management have him a non-guaranteed deal, and then signed others for a reason.

Arrieta showed strong regression in every single known metric over the last 2 years. Stay away! With Cobb, there's at least plausible hope that he'll regain his split change.

I'm going to guess $52.5 million is total value of the contract including incentives, and the guaranteed portion is significantly less.

Almost all of the top prospects have been position players, which is why we haven't had big money pitching signings. Nobody has either. We did get a steal with Vasolotti.

I for one, can say that I'm currently not ok with what they have right now, if they're planning on attempting to compete this year. If their plan is to attempt to sign free agents in the future, then that's a different story. That would make less sense to me because the price of pitching is going to be higher than it is currently in years to come. Will I break down because they don't sign somebody? No, I will continue to support them and cheer them on, but would I agree with how they handled the off season if they don't sign a new pitcher? Not necessarily Arrieta was .1 WAR better than Suter last year. He's regressed, and we'd be paying for past performance. Suter has muscled up and is in line for a big year. Woodruff needs to be in the majors, sink or swim. Sure, they lack depth after those 2, so an injury early would hurt, but a super deep bullpen makes up for some of that.

The Brewers can wait until he's healthy to release him. Then they'd only owe him termination pay. He should clear medically a few weeks before the opener.

Pretty much, Yelich will get extra starts in LF in games with the DH. Braun likely won't get 120 starts, that's significantly more than last year. The 5th OF will get some starts too.

Yelich hasn't played a single inning of RF in his major league career. If the plan was for him to be the regular RF, he'd be playing there full time this spring. He isn't. No major OF trade is imminent.

I don't see how the 2 are related. Santana is going too start as much as usual, Braun is a part-time player now. I'd guess Aguilar gets traded by the end of camp.

I think many are reading too much into it. I think all Braun is saying is that he won't be playing much first of Aguilar is on the team. Until he's traded or released, Aguilar is still here.

Not one of the options, but I'll predict Guerra as the bullpens breakout star. With his fastball back, he has the perfect stuff for short relief. While he's not young, he has years of control left, making him super valuable as the 8th inning guy going forward.