bill hAll Star

Maybe I just have a different mindset but it's easy to parse here. -Wilkerson is a AAAA-type guy and everyone in the organization knows it. -He has options. -95% of the guys below him in the system are inferior pitchers as it pertains to pitching in the majors. -The other 5% are young enough that it's not worth starting their clock and not a certainty that they're ready. -He only has stuff to somewhat survive once through the order. So that's why he hasn't been cut and why he is used in such a way. The only logical idea here is that he'd be cut and replaced with...someone of literally equal value elsewhere around the league to place on the 40-man that has options so that we can shuttle them back and forth. If things are going right with the Brewers (i.e. 2018) you still need to have 2-3 guys in your system that can get sent up and down to mop up some innings. In these ideal scenarios, Wilkerson is getting called up and not even noticed when he pitches 2 late innings in a 10-1 victory over the Pirates or 3 mop up innings in an otherwise successful stretch when the Brewers lose 12-3 to Atlanta. If things are going wrong, people are getting mad because "why is this scrub on our roster?" because he's meant to be the 30th most important player on the 40 man and instead he is bumped to the 20-25th most important. It is possible that a better (read: depth guy) option comes along and the Brewers replace Wilkerson in 2020. If not, I'd put a lot of money on him being gone before 2021. Why? Because he will have no options left.

The league is pretty woke and also the DH difference between leagues also affects things. This is similar to Khris Davis except Santana does not possess the elite power of Davis. Santana is arguably a negative value player for an NL team and a slightly valuable player for an AL team. We also gained a year of control and got someone that fit the necessary role in Gamel. WAR is a volume stat and Gamel still exceeds Santana's WAR this year in less playing time. Now, the valuation of WAR here can be debated but it's pretty clear that Santana's defense is so bad that he was not highly valued.

Wait, WHAT?! Keon Broxton is having a better year than Gamel and preferable? I get the defensive help he provides but let's also remember that Broxton probably has 70-80 plate appearances for Baltimore or Seattle against the equivalent of the opponent's Jacob Barnes or Burch Smith because the game is 11-2 in the 7th inning. This is also a good time to bump the general feel of a lot of people on the board imploring a trade of Broxton and assuming major offers that should be out there for a guy that in hindsight and probably back then is a nice, fringe MLB player but probably didn't have much value around the league. On the whole, I don't think there is a huge difference but Gamel has been helpful this year even if very cold. He provides a much more useful bat late in games and passable OF. Broxton is a great late-game defensive sub and while he's had some big hits this year is not who I want to have as a pinch hitter late in a game.

I think the ideal route would be to do what Cleveland is doing (but maybe not so cheap in certain aspects). That has some risk in itself, but they've built a good organization through tanking and always thinking ahead. I don't mind what we've seen, though. Outside of that, you cannot compare Kohl to Attanasio. The trades at this deadline are on par with trading the 10th man on your NBA roster for a different 10th man that has a different skillset for next year and a change of scenery could help this year. Trading Dubon is like dealing the bench scorer that all of the fans like but he's so bad at defense that he actually isn't very valuable. Kohl used to use his last remaining resources to cap out his team with no chance to win more than 45 games and to actually have it affect the future. One could compare Cain to some of Kohl's moves but Cain nearly won the Brewers a World Series because baseball is different. Also, Cain didn't cap the Brewers out at, "hey, we're almost certainly gonna finish .500 this year and have no logical way to improve beyond this." The odds feel smaller this year but there is a universe where Cain is a .5 WAR player making $16 million in 2020 and they win the World Series or they go all-in in 2021 and win it with Cain being a shell of his former self. The Bucks did not have any sort of imaginable chance with some of those rosters they put out in 2011 or 2009 or whichever years Kohl went all-in for the 8 seed.

Arcia has to play every inning for a while but if Arcia gets hurt they can just bring Saladino right back. if within the next 10 days, a player would have to be placed on the injured list in order to recall saladino. it wouldn't have to be arcia placed on the injured list--just any player. Correct, but this situation would be the one that would be dire enough to recall Saladino out of necessity. He may get recalled anyways if Shaw rolls his ankle but all I'm saying is that Arcia will just not sit for the next 10 days unless he's hurt.

Arcia has to play every inning for a while but if Arcia gets hurt they can just bring Saladino right back.

Well, they won't have the benefit of the DH the rest of the way. I'm assuming one of Grisham or Shaw is sent down in mid August and comes back up Sept 1.

Why unreal? The Cubs get a decent bat being "unreal" ?

We have 30 days with guys probably getting sent up-and-down a lot + bullpen ball before we play extreme bullpen ball in September.

Fixed

Maybe a 1-1.5 WAR utility guy that gets around 300-400 plate appearances per year? So a slightly better Hernan Perez. They could probably just bring back Hernan Perez at some point for cheaper short-term, then.

FWIW, he had a lot of buzz coming into this season. The stats back it up, Steamer for example has a rest-of-season projection of 3.01 ERA, 3.10 FIP, 13.3 K/9. Don't just look at his ERA in 25 career innings. He's been walking everybody and giving up homers on top of that in AAA which has led to a 5+ ERA. Forgive me if I find it unlikely that he posts a 3 ERA in the majors. What do you project Dubon to do in the majors?

Dubon is probably overrated but yuck.

I understand that the Rays wanted RH power due to too many of their bats being lefty. Interesting question given the 40-man crunch if Aguilar is even on TB's roster next year and/or if he's non-tendered. There should be a place for him as platoon 1B/DH but he's probably the last priority position player. Depends if Yandy is healthy and is able to take the 3B/1B/DH role and they have Brosseau up all year.

Trading a God for a God would be fair and fill a need for both teams.

The problem with Grandal at 1B or using Thames against lefties is that we have a lot of data to say that's not a great idea. Grandal is OK vs. lefties but you generally want someone to mash at 1B. I'm guessing Braun gets the 1B glove back or there is a call-up or another move coming. EDIT: I will grant that Grandal is improved against LHP this year and of late.

That's a bit dangerous as it's only in 35 plate appearances. He's 7/27 with 7 walks and 1 HR. The walks are nice but in such a small sample, say a few of the liners found gloves was 5/27...that's a .185 batting average instead of .260. Of course you could take it the other way and say, "what if he was 9/27" but we've got a lot of data to suggest he generally can't hit lefties.

I do get it from that angle. They've probably set themselves up at a decent shot at things going well and winning the division or at the very least being in the mix in July next year and pushing their way into the Wild Card. The chances of this blowing up in their face and pushing competition out even further are there, though. Another problem is the pendulum not swinging far enough back to the AL by next year. Next year, I see probably the Pirates, Marlins, Giants, and maybe the Rockies as non-competitive NL teams. It'll be another 2 years probably where it swings back to 5-7 competitive teams and 8-10 very middling/tanking teams like the AL is right now. That might be a better year to sneak in just by having a competitive roster.

But you can make reasonable assumptions on it. I do somewhat understand that the Reds want to get out of the cellar and maybe take a run at the playoffs. But Bauer may be overvalued and they likely will miss the playoffs next year. Yes it's an age-old question and we asked it about Brinson but there was an actual window with Yelich. Odds are that the Reds will miss the playoffs in 2020 and have lost 20-30% of their useful farm system. Or they'll have to trade more of it to chase the Wild Card next year because all of the eggs are in that basket. Or they'll have to decide if they should pony up big $ for Bauer. I get the unfairness of it because if nothing else, the Cubs will still bully their way to being at least a competitor for the Central next year while the Reds need to decide which year to make a run at it with their $130 million payroll. Or the Braves or some other larger market will be in competition for a WC. But this is incredibly risky because if you go all in even more on 2020 if you're the Reds and miss, you might be talking about 2024 as the next reasonable playoff chance, somewhat like Seattle's efforts 2015-2018, making shortsighted lobs at a playoff spot and leaving a massive hole in their farm system and bloated deals on the payroll.

I think we've finally reached the point where if the Brewers wanted to do something with Braun, they could *read further* But they can't because of Braun. Someone, especially in the AL, would take Braun if the Brewers were rebuilding this year and were dead set on saving as much cash as possible for 2020. The Brewers could pick up the rest of 2019, half of 2020, and his buyout for 2021. That sounds crappy but someone would probably take Braun for free this year, ~$8m next year, and the option to bring him back for $11m in 2021 with no penalty for not doing it. I'm not sure how the deferred payments would work out but they could figure it out. Seems crappy to pick up so much of that, but $8m next year could be very useful. But Braun would probably reject nearly any trade like this.

They gave 2 prospects that look to have some very nice potential to the Dodgers in that trade. Jeter Downs is hitting well in high A ball at age 20 and Josiah Gray is pitching well at the same level and just moved up to AA at age 21 (10+ K/9 in the minors). Yes, they dumped Homer Bailey but they did pick up a lot of salary for equally useless players (Kemp and a later injured Wood). Looks like Gray was a good trade (so far). The excitement on Trammel has cooled a bit but he could be a star. I actually am surprised the Reds' record is as bad as it is given their pitching and understand why owners do this...but what's the end-game here? To probably still miss the wild card next year and the recoup the comp pick on Trevor Bauer?

I have no idea how to value Arcia, I don't value him very highly but some will always hold value for a young-ish shortstop that can defend in the majors. That said, Erceg probably cannot hit in the majors, Smith can. Rosario is discussed as moving to the OF but I'm not sure if Arcia really fits their plans, either.

Looks like you crashed the forums with that post. Tip of the cap for saying it then although we will forever disagree on the risk generally taken on that and the actual value he has added. With that, I look forward to being anonymously blasted as local idiot to your many followers in the future on a misunderstood point.

Oh, by the way And That, thanks for airing me out on Twitter by misunderstanding what I've said. The Saladino comparison was that in both cases, an insurance policy may cost $3-5 million before you get into your very questionable AAAA guys at all positions. The point was that if you're complaining about having to fall back on Burch Smith and Alex Wilson, a series of crappy events likely had to occur. Ones that you generally don't want to pay $3-5 million and a 40-man spot to protect against at most positions. And for the record, I think both Lyles and Saladino are perfectly fine replacement-level guys with talent/upside in the majors. If you told me that Burnes would falter, Peralta would fall from the rotation, Nelson would not be usable for most of the year, we'd sign Gio and he'd get hurt, Knebel would have Tommy John, Jeffress would get hurt and then lose effectiveness, Claudio would be not very effective, Chacin would struggle and then get hurt, Woodruff would get hurt...I'd tell Mark to just keep the $3.5 million and buy another yacht because the season probably isn't going anywhere. Yet, here we are, somehow staying alive and therefore we will make marginal moves to try to hang around, which is fine. With that, I'm out on this topic.

That's fine, I realized (far too late, as usual) that nobody is changing anyone's mind and ducked out yesterday...but it's still going. I am asking for those who are so strongly opinionated on the major failure by the front office where they were when the decision was made? That would be a trump card in this matter. I just find it hilarious because the support for this theory came on May 20 when he had extremely lucky peripherals going for him.