danzig6767

I don't think many here are dead set against trading for Davis so long as the cost isn't someone like Thornburg. That said, if Davis is acquired, it would be terrible planning to not also carry a platoon partner for him given he doesn't just struggle a bit vs lefties, he's atrocious. Davis is an out machine with little power vs lefties and almost any righthanded bat with a pulse would produce better. Smart teams acknowledge when one of their players has a major deficiency and act to mitigate that weakness if possible. Dumb teams just keep trotting out that player even if he has proven he can't do certain things competently at all, thus hurting the team. It would be like using a LOOGY relief pitcher against righthanded hitters as much as lefthanded bats, even if that pitcher's splits say that righthanded hitters crush him.

Melvin was interviewed on the MLB network last night for a good 5-7 minutes. He said something that was actually very logical for the low offer on Hart - he was concerned that Hart would not be able to go on a day game after a night game, and the Brewers had over 30 day games after a night game last year so Hart could have potentially missed over 30 games. A very legitimate concern, given what happened last year with Ramirez. Melvin said that's not the case in the AL as Hart could DH during a day game after a night game, and Milwaukee being in the NL doesn't have that luxury. So no, I don't think it was a PR move. I think it was a legitimate offer based on what Hart's value would be to the team factoring in that he might only be available to start less than 130 games next year. I don't buy either that it was a PR move at all by Melvin and Attanasio for multiple reasons. 1. Pretending to be really interested in signing Hart would have zero impact. Fans aren't going to buy tickets because they heard the team tried signing Hart instead of not making any offer. 2. I've seen nothing during Melvin's tenure of him playing dumb games like Monty proposed happened, especially given there would be no payoff at all from doing this with Hart. On the Sabathia, Greinke, and Fielder situations, the Brewers did all they could. Make offers at the most they could afford, hope it would get accepted while knowing full well that the odds were against it. 3. There has been nothing in the media about multiple other teams making a strong offer besides the Brewers and Mariners who played Spring Training in Arizona as he wanted. In an interview, Melvin said that Hart never tried leveraging an offer from either team. So the team made an offer that they were comfortable with and Hart passed on the offer for a better one. This happens in free agency to teams countless times each offseason, including to bigger market teams who sometimes have their offer trumped. 4. Lastly, Melvin and the organization never once blamed the "greedy" player for leaving as Monty put it. He had only nice things to say about Hart as a person and as to how Corey/his agent handled the negotiations.

Given how poorly Gennett has hit vs lefties through his minor league career, it would be pretty hard for Weeks to do worse. Gennett was never platooned in the minor leagues and hit .330 vs. lefties in 2010, and .282 vs. lefties in 2011. The last couple seasons, he hit .241 and .235 against them, but that's not as bad as you suggest. Weeks slumped against all pitching the last couple seasons. Last year he hit just .226 off of lefthanders. Bianchi hit .258. There is much more to hitting than batting average. Gennett in AAA/AA 2013 vs lefties-- .262 OBP/.592 OPS 2012 VS lefties--.271 OBP/.607 OPS Weeks 2013 vs lefties-- .328 OBP/.705 OPS 2012 vs lefties-- .387 OBP/.740 OPS

If Davis is acquired, the team has to have a platoon partner in place because he's atrocious vs lefties and that's being kind.

Given how poorly Gennett has hit vs lefties through his minor league career, it would be pretty hard for Weeks to do worse.

Nobody is going to throw a big multi-year contract at Santana, but teams with much larger revenue streams can afford to risk a larger amount of money on even just a one year deal for players with major injury history, than teams with a stricter budget. So Santana isn't exactly untouchable to the Brewers. More so that rolling the dice with say 5-10 million on a guy with his recent injury problems is tough to risk with a team budget at 80-90 million, and most of that money already accounted for. Sometimes it can pay off big though with some luck. The Pirates rolled the dice on Liriano after he struggled for multiple years, but he was great for them last season and in turn made his contract look like a huge bargain.

I can't fathom any team even considering trading for Weeks unless the Brewers threw in around 3-5 million.

The biggest problem with Davis is he's absolutely atrocious vs lefties. Check out his line vs lefties over his MLB career so far. .204 BA .268 OBP .334 SLG .602 OPS You would have to be crazy to not platoon Davis if he's on your team and that would make me be unwilling to give up all that much for him. His problem vs lefties is the biggest reason why i don't want him on the Brewers because Roenicke has stated not being a big fan of platoons in general and there likely wouldn't be an obvious righthanded platoon mate on the roster to push Roenicke to never start Davis with a lefty on the mound. I think a case could be made for Sean Halton. His splits didn't show it in 2013 but in 2012, he posted a .941 OPS vs. lefties in AAA. There's also a rumor floating that the Brewers are interested in Brett Pill, but he's hit RHP a lot better than LHP. I'd be fine with a strict Halton/Davis platoon so long as we got Davis cheap.

The biggest problem with Davis is he's absolutely atrocious vs lefties. Check out his line vs lefties over his MLB career so far. .204 BA .268 OBP .334 SLG .602 OPS You would have to be crazy to not platoon Davis if he's on your team and that would make me be unwilling to give up all that much for him. His problem vs lefties is the biggest reason why i don't want him on the Brewers because Roenicke has stated not being a big fan of platoons in general and there likely wouldn't be an obvious righthanded platoon mate on the roster to push Roenicke to never start Davis with a lefty on the mound.

I'd love to see Nelson grab hold of a rotation spot and run with it, but i have far lesser hopes for Hellweg. If he was a hard thrower with control issues who walked to many guys, but also got a lot of strikeouts, i'd feel better about Hellweg's chances to amount to something. Instead, he only had 89 K's and a whopping 81 walks over 125 innings in AAA. Over 30 innings in the majors, he only struck out 9 batters, while walking an insane 26 and allowing 40 hits.

But it is still the firstbase postion, so i fail to see how that is an indictment of the front office for supposedly overvaluing power to much as both you and RightFieldCoder implied. Plus, for as much as some complain that Melvin is just to obsessed with power over all else, it's not like the rosters of late have only been filled with a bunch of slow power hitters who can't do anything else. Over the last two years the team has finished 3rd and 1st in stolen bases. The roster has multiple athletic guys on it. In fact, last season the drop in power because of injuries and the Braun suspension hurt the offense more than anything else did. They went from 4th in home runs to 16th. I'm no huge fan of either Ike Davis or Logan Morrison, especially if we'd have to give up anything of real value in a trade, but unless Hunter Morris can produce on the big league level, both guys or a healthy Hart would be upgrades over the garbage at firstbase last year.

Do you want the Brewers front office to look for a slap hitter to play firstbase instead of someone with power?

While I can appreciate how you're analyzing the trades, no matter what was traded away, what was returned was all short-term fixes -- and that is always the core of the disagreement in this discussion, not how the players the Brewers traded away went on to do. And at the times of the deals, the pieces the Brewers sent were legit & not simply the fodder they've mostly turned out to be with several years of hindsight. In other words (for an example), instead of trading for two seasons of Marcum, the move could've been to trade Lawrie for a young arm that would be Brewers property for 5 seasons or more. Clearly, to Melvin's credit, in the Aoki deal he did a nice job finding this kind of an opportunity. I'm sure plenty of posters could take the time to go back & find a decent suggestion of a young, cost-controlled pitcher that Lawrie might have been able to return. Frankly, you could come up with a few decent hypotheticals if you're willing to go back & look things over from that timeframe. How much of those trades were about Attanasio wanting to win now and hopefully make the playoffs as much as Melvin did? Between listening to the things Attanasio has been saying over the years about his desire to win now whenever possible and the aggressive approach he's taken by himself in negotiating contracts for Suppan, Ramirez, and Loshe, it seems pretty clear to me that he's quite involved in the decision making process of the team. In the direction he wants the team to go into from year to year. Obviously i don't have the ear of either Attanasio/Melvin to where i can know exactly just how much influence our owner has on moves made, but it would be hard to believe that he's a mostly sit on the sidelines type of owner as some are. If i had to guess though, it would be that when say Melvin would let Attanasio know that guys like Sabbathia, Marcum, and Greinke were available, that he was very excited at the idea of trying to get them. On the flip side, if Doug were to tell Attanasio this offseason that he could land some prospects for say Gomez and Lohse, that Attanasio would be much more skeptical of that being a good idea unless convinced that those prospects were either can't miss or could help the team win this year as much or close to as much as Gomez/Lohse could. That is why i think Mark likes Melvin a lot. As an owner he's almost always going to prefer trying to win in the now and Melvin is like minded. Not that both or either are oblivious to the need of cheap quality talent regularly being cycled in given the Milwaukee market size, but when push comes to shove, they'll view their roster from year to year as having at least a decent chance to compete for a playoff berth after some tweaks, unless it would be utterly ridiculous the believe so and thus moves are usually made in that thought process.

I get that many teams are swimming in revenues and thus have tons of cash to give out. What doesn't make sense to me is the length of so many of these monster contracts being handed out, not the yearly salaries. Look at Pujols and others for an example. Sure the Angels have tons of revenues, but if Albert stays in the decline he looks to be in, paying him 25 million per over the next eight years is still basically lighting piles of cash on fire. The same will likely happen at some point to the Reds with the contract they gave Votto which will be paying him 25 million per from ages 35-40. Odds are at best the Mariners will be lucky to get 5-6 really good years from Cano, then the other roughly 125-150 million will largely be used for a bonfire.

Good luck trying to sell a massive tradeoff of big league talent to Attanasio. He'd probably give the OK to signing another fairly pricey veteran player before he'd greenlight trading any of those four guys for prospects, much less multiple of those four. I agree that Attanasio will never allow a fire sale. The point is that the Brewers could reach the top 10 rather quickly if they so desired. And you are also spot on in your assessment that Attanasio will sign another pricey vet this offseason. My bet all along has been Garza at 5 years $75 million. Even though i posted what i did earlier, i disagree on two things you said 1. While i certainly believe that Attanasio will almost always prefer to go the route of trying to at least compete for a playoff berth each year and thus bristle at the thought of trading a very productive veteran or two for prospects, i do think there could be an instance where he'd greenlight attempting a rebuild for a year. It would have to be a situation though where when looking at the roster, it would take a massive stretch for him to even think the team could finish with just around 80-82 wins. Then maybe he'd OK trading a say Gomez and/or Loshe caliber players for prospects. 2. I'll be pretty surprised if the team signs a player as expensive as Garza. I expect them to either sign or trade for someone to play first, but nobody that costs big money on a 3-4-5 year deal. Other than signing/trading for a firstbaseman, any other money spent i see being fairly minor. Then again, i'll never say never with Attanasio. By most reports i read, he took the lead in perusing Loshe after Melvin said repeatedly that he didn't want to give up a draft pick for Loshe, but then the pitching was bad in spring training and Attanasio quickly got a deal done with Boras.

Correct. However, a Gomez trade now coupled with a Winter Meetings Gallardo and Lohse deal, followed by a mid-season Ryan Braun trade, assuming he is the old Braun, could arguably have them in the top 10. Good luck trying to sell a massive tradeoff of big league talent to Attanasio. He'd probably give the OK to signing another fairly pricey veteran player before he'd greenlight trading any of those four guys for prospects, much less multiple of those four.

I'm not sure why you feel the scouting insights you've heard -- and I'm guessing these, like most, were BEFORE the Brewers traded for him -- automatically carry more weight than the opinions of the Brewers' front office, who are extremely experienced and who see him play everyday. Stats are great and worthy of so much of the clout they carry throughout sports, but they can be independent and therefore also ignorant of the eyeball-obvious, which is not devoid of truth. The Brewers signed Yuni after having him play for them for an entire year. The difference between those two for me is i never needed stats to tell me that Yuni was terrible as a shortstop. Simply watching him play for a little while showed that he had zero range and was a lazy defender. On the flip side, Segura had vastly superior range and he certainly has enough arm to play shortstop. In fact, even after Sugera started the first few months hitting so well, i was as much or more pleasantly surprised by how well his defense was than the hitting given he had only switched to shortstop the year prior.

Price won't be a FA until after the 2015 season. He will have 5 years of service time after 2014. Am I missing something? Price will be a free agent in 2016

There is always some risk when handing a starting job to a prospect/player for their first time, but this move had to to made regardless if Davis ends up not being as productive as the team hopes for. A team like the Brewers have to regularly cycle in younger players from the farm system and let them sink or swim so long as those guys have shown skills in the minors/brief stretches in the majors that they can produce. Davis at least has the chance to be an upgrade over what Aoki can produce, he's seven years younger, and under team control for a long time. He needed this opportunity to be the opening day starter in LF and keeping Aoki as insurance instead of trading him doesn't make sense to me, especially given we have other backup OF options.

I agree and especially like that we got a pitcher who is still young, cheap, and under team control for five more years. If Smith proves he can't cut it as a starter, but ends up being a good and cheap relief pitcher for a number of years, i'm fine with that for a nothing special Aoki on his last year. If even better Smith can cut it as a starter for multiple years, even if it's just as a solid say number 3 or 4 starter, that would be a steal for Aoki. My worst fear about Aoki getting traded was that he'd end up getting moved for a more veteran bullpen guy who had zero chance to be a starter and wasn't as cost controlled as Smith is.

Not only that, none of Hellweg/Mitch Hanigar/Taylor are even close to being a prized prospect. If or when the Rays trade Price, that trade is going to involve some premium prospects coming back their way, not three guys like that. Friedman is arguably the best GM in baseball and won't trade a still pretty young true ace who is two years from free agency, without a package involving top shelf talent returning to Tampa.

I guess if they did it, they would hope that he is more than a replacement player. He takes a good amount of walks, but his batting average is usually to poor to create a good OBP and his power numbers have never been anything special, so i just fail to see the appeal in trading for him, even if the cost isn't steep back to the Marlins because i question if i'd want him for nothing in return.

Nice....you found....one. The overriding point is that Gennett doesn't do anything well. You can field like Mark Ellis, and we'll overlook the power deficiency. You can hit like Chase Utley and we'll overlook the glove. You can run (and field) like Luis Castillo, and we'll overlook something else. It's not probable to think Gennett will turn into an above-average MLB player with little supporting evidence. The same as it's improbable to think Jean Segura will stick at SS for the long-term. You can hope it happens, but if you bet money on it you'd be a fool. Watching Segura play SS last year, i saw no reason to think he can't stick at that position.

The Brewers need to get younger and more dynamic athletically... bigger arms, better range from the position players, more speed, etc. We aren't just behind those other teams in the standings, we're miles behind from a physical talent standpoint. Impact pitching... hell the Cards are using guys that would start for us in their bullpen. We have 1 pitcher in our rotation with an above FB.... 1, Peralta, every other pitcher has an average or below average arm. The rotation is a joke from a playoff perspective. The by far difference between the Cardinals and Brewers comes down mainly just to the draft. Their amateur scouting department has badly outperformed the Brewers, especially when it comes to pitching. Look at the guys on their staff who pitched well for them last year or prior winning years be it in the rotation, pen, or lineup. Trevor Rosenthal 21st round. Joe Kelly 3rd round. Shelby Miller 1st round. Michael Wacha 1st round. Jaime García 22nd round. Kevin Siegrist 41st round. Seth Maness 11th round. Jason Motte 19th round. Albert Pujols 13th round. Matt Carpenter 13th round. Yadier Molina 4th round. Allen Craig 8th round. Jon Jay 2nd round. Matt Adams 23rd round. They also have well regarded Kolten Wong coming next year after he was drafted in the 1st round. Carlos Martinez was signed internationally and is an top pitching prospect. Oscar Taveras was signed for only 140K and is one of the best prospects in the game. Stephen Piscotty supplemental 1st round. Marco Gonzales taken 19th overall last year was impressive as a rookie. I probably missed others. The Brewers amateur scouting/drafting under Zduriencik had a nice run landing position players like Prince, Braun, Hart, Weeks, Hardy, etc and he drafted Gallardo, but that's mostly it for pitching over many years and the drafting of high end talent anywhere has largely dried up since Seid was hired to replace Zduriencik. When we sign Latin free agents, they don't turn out like Carlos Martinez or Oscar Taveras. Given general managers don't have the time to go scouting countless high school and college prospects for drafts each year, to me, these amateur scouting directors are the most under-appreciated people in baseball. Their success or failure in drafting and helping evaluate international talent has incredible importance to every team in the league, but especially teams lacking huge revenue streams, and few fans even know their names. If your franchise is in that small to mid-market area and the amateur scouting director is pretty consistently to consistently providing quality cheap young talent, it allows for so many opportunities to compete for layoff berths each year via simply adding quality talent and allowing financial resources to spent elsewhere on the roster. If though your franchise is in that small to mid-market area and the amateur scouting director is struggling to provide quality cheap young talent, the impact causes a spider web like level of negative ramifications, especially if they fail to draft quality young pitching which is the most valuable commodity in baseball. IMO, the amateur scouting directors who do really well, particularly the ones not picking really high in drafts often, they deserve considerably more money than they get paid given the huge sums of money they both save and provide their team's.

Trade deadline of 2014 after hitting .195 in the 1st half. They'll move him for a 25 year old Single A pitcher with a 1.587 WHIP Why would anyone trade for an often injured Weeks who hits and fields like crap, along with being owed 11 million dollars? Even if the Brewers agreed to pay half of that 11 million, i really question if another team would trade for him.