bill hAll Star

It's probably like chasing a ghost. He seems like the type of guy that's trying pretty hard in Tampa anyways and I'm not giving up top prospects because I think a guy is going to try harder in my organization. If they do think there is something they can "fix" in him, then go for it. I think all the hope and dreaming comes from us all salivating at trying to get somebody who can go 6 plus instead of the 4 we are used to. Yes having a strong bullpen helps and is nice, but as we saw in that stretch , that can heavily tax the pen, and is not a long term success you can depend on. Can it work? Of course. But would be real nice to have a TOR/2-3 type guy that goes innings. Those options (that we KNOW of) are limited. Who knows what happens today. It is exciting for now though! That is why I tread with caution. I don't want to overpay for someone like Archer. We have 30 days to go before we don't have to worry about the bullpen being taxed anymore this year. I understand that we're short of a starter or two that can help the bullpen out, but it is what it is this year. I trust Stearns if they think they get the right deal for any controllable starting pitcher, but I don't want to derail the window of contention we have here to save 10 innings that have to be covered by middling relievers.

Don't you guys believe that DJ AND the NL AND not the AL East AND a contender would do wonders for Archer? As I've stated before his numbers have gotten better this year from his first month or so... but mentally, don't you think it would be a different animal if he came here? Or is that more like chasing a ghost? It's probably like chasing a ghost. He seems like the type of guy that's trying pretty hard in Tampa anyways and I'm not giving up top prospects because I think a guy is going to try harder in my organization. If they do think there is something they can "fix" in him, then go for it.

Archer throws a hard fastball and slider basically as his only pitches. Lose 2 MPH and he's worse than he already is and may barely crack a rotation. Yes, he also has a high ceiling with his stuff if he keeps the velocity on those pitches if the Brewers find some sort of tweak to fix his hard contact issues (not sure what that is?) Gibson is not the "lucky" guy everyone is assuming him to be. He changed his pitch mix last year and has been great ever since. Adjustments like that are things that I can trust and it is not some fluke.

I know its early but Moose hasn't been very impressive so far. Yes, its only been three games but he has also had a pretty bad July. Hoping he picks it up a bit. I'm not doubling down with a crappier player in Dozier and trading out Shaw's control for it. Mous will be fine.

I am not a fan of trading for Dozier and I think we're going with this Shaw at 2B thing. I'm much more confident in Shaw's defense at 2B not being a huge factor than I am in Dozier's magical 2nd halves. That is something I would never chase...and right now he's been terrible since the ASB. I do like Gibson.

On top of that, I think they can be a contender again pretty quickly. Soto, Eaton, Taylor, Turner, Rendon with Robles on the way is enough to work with. Scherzer is still going strong and they have to just pray for Strasburg to be healthy next year.

I love that you keep using the GM of the large market team that is currently 74-33 as an example of foolishness. He recently walked away from the Tigers, leaving that situation a disaster. They haven't been good since he left and won't be good for at least a couple years thanks to him. It's easy to hide some levels of foolishness behind a skyhigh payroll. And not that the Red Sox aren't a good team, but they play in the AL and specifically the AL east. It's kinda like the Patriots...sure they are a very good team but it really helps their record basically getting 6 free lay-up wins a year for 15 years. He's made some really good moves for having a huge payroll. Plenty of questionable ones like the Miggy extension, but all of these GMs shift their strategy this way with a huge payroll. The guy freakin' acquired Miguel Cabrera for a bag of magic beans (in hindsight), Max Scherzer for Granderson and change, and recently acquired Chris Sale (we'll see what Kopech and Moncada eventually turn into) and Sale is going to put up 25 WAR in 3 years. Of course they were a disaster after he left. Mike Illitch died meaning payroll may be a bit lower and at a certain point, being a mid market with a big payroll, going to 2 WS, 2 LCSs, and another playoff series in a decade is pretty good. Almost any GM has to be graded differently for a large market.

Again, similar to the Royals tweets, this could just be GM-speak. The GMs are going to say this stuff unless they're blown away with an offer. There's a good chance that neither the Royals nor the Mets deal their remaining pieces but they're going to say this no matter what. Either team could trade those guys in the offseason. The Mets, while I don't necessarily agree with it, could also rebuild for next year. It wouldn't be the most insane thing as they probably could put together a good team with deGrom, Wheeler, Thor, Matz, and some spending on supporting cast. Too big of a hill to climb most likely as we've seen how atrocious the rest of their current roster is, but it could be done.

Add a couple of those names to Hiura and Burnes and they say yes to that deal. If you were to add one of those big names, I think you have to subtract one or two of the above names at least. The idea of trading 7 good prospects including your top 2 for 2+ years of 1 player not named Mike Trout is pure insanity. I don't even think Dombrowski is that foolish. I love that you keep using the GM of the large market team that is currently 74-33 as an example of foolishness.

Is the roster rule still in place that, in order to make the playoff roster (with the exception being as an injury replacement), you have to have been on the 25-man on 8/31 or earlier? I thought it was 40 man on 8/31 or earlier.

It may go down (I'm guessing Shaw/Mous only start 30-35 2B games), but my counterpoint: This front office clearly knows what it's doing with its defense. Shifts, scouting, etc. Maybe it goes down, but they have to know what they're doing to think that it's not going to go down too much or at all...or at the very least the offense far outweighs it.

I was a middle of the road "trust the process" guy on Chacin, but I saved some tweets/replies when Haudricourt had a tweet like "Chacin coming out in the 4th, 5 ER" type of stuff. Chacin had a clearly brutal BABIP against him and it wasn't going to stick, but people were ready to fire the entire ownership and management team, if at all possible.

Mod edit: no need to pile on

I can't see that being done unless Attanasio wanted it, and stuck his nose in - $25M per season is a lot to take on and that doesn't seem to me (being the Stearns expert that I am) like a move that Stearns would make by choice. Even though Zimmermann is pitching better, if the Brewers were taking on that contract, the Tigers would be the ones sending back several prospects. I could see a deal where the Tigers take on $35-40 million of the remaining $55-60 million but even then, Mark would have to sign off on it. That's still $10 million/year for 2 more years.

Alright, here’s my dissertation on this. Maybe I’m giving Stearns too much credit, but I think he is obviously on the cutting edge. I try to reverse engineer any outside the box move he makes because I think he must have some good ideas. Maybe he thinks Shaw is a good 2B and I’m going to far... These are old ideas but they are more extreme now... 2B defense is the least important that it has ever been: Shifts, historically high K% from hitters, every team is trying to launch the ball so a lot of fly balls. Stearns may believe that 2B defense is a very small issue over a large sample of games. “I’ll live with the 2 times a grounder is hit to Shaw/game.” They’ll also defensive sub in games they lead late. Playing with a DH: the AL has historically always crushed the NL in interleague play and the common theory is that the AL roster already has a DH whereas the NL team comes in with a utility guy at DH. Enter: our bench and bullpen ball against NL teams. I think one of Shaw/Mous rides the pine against lefties. We generally do a lot of bullpenning and basically get a high caliber DH out of it with Thames, Miller, Shaw coming off the bench in those games. Ditto for the RH games. Alright, now feel free to steal my lunch money and throw me in a locker.

Trying to reverse engineer this as I always do with a weird move from a front office that seems to be on the cutting edge of some newer analytics: I don’t have time to look ahead, but I’m guessing we’ll face a lot of lefties given the Cubs’ staff plus the upcoming Dodgers series, etc. I wonder if I’m a lot of those games we only start one of Shaw/Mous but we see it as even more of an edge to have Thames and Shaw off the bench for our double-switch bullpen games. The bullpen games get even crazier in September. I guess one other small complete shot in the dark is maybe the Cubs were going after Mous with Bryant out? I don’t know. That’s a complete shot in the dark.

Gibson changed up his pitch mix mid-season last year and had an excellent 2nd half. He started mixing in his slider and curveball more often and used his changeup less all while increasing his velocity on his fastball a little bit. He's a guy that I feel isn't one that is getting by with a luck and this may really be who he is for at least a little while.

People want even more grizzled vets. Ones that they've seen play in the playoffs already, as if that really has much to do with anything.

Verlander still "had it" for the 2nd half of seasons and I was pushing for this if Mark was willing to pay the huge price ($$$). You're the Cole Hamels-wanter and they're not the same. Hamels is just a decent pitcher at this point that has nice stretches. Verlander was dominant for the 2nd half in 2015, 2016, and 2017. I'm not a fan of "let's get a veteran-y guy and he'll veteran leader us to the promised land." I'm a fan of guys that still display elite skill, which Verlander had been doing. Obviously the Houston pitching substance/analytics team has turned him back into a Cy Young pitcher on top of it all.

Well if he's your everyday 2B that can spell in the OF at times while you get Miller a few reps at 2B (if you keep him around), a guy on pace for a 5 WAR this year is not a big acquisition? Merrifield seems to have figured out the hard contact thing and I'm ready to call what he's doing sustainable. Granted, he's a bit of an older player to have just broken in seriously last year, but he could be pretty good for a few years. Yeah, he might be the super-utility guy when Hiura is ready.

Soria is not a "lights out" reliever. He's a 34 year old having a good season, coming off decent but not great seasons in 2016 and 2017. This is a disappointing end to the Brewers career of a former 1st round pick (and 12th overall). https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/41572/rubbing-mud-joakim-soria-slider-monster/

At first I assumed that next year's option wouldn't be picked up, but I could see it now. Load the bullpen up even more. Yes, I know that we're in a bit of a crunch financially but we'll see what happens when the dust settles salary-wise.

My prediction is they trade for Dozier to play 2B, and Arcia comes back up to play SS. Saladino can slide into a utility role. Miller can slide into oblivion for all I care. He's horrible. I'm generally a "trust the career numbers/don't put it all in how this year is going" type of person when valuing players. One would expect Dozier's arrow to still trend up and Miller to basically be the same streaky/iffy platoon hitter. All of that said, Dozier is getting to an age that a lot of 2B-types have fallen off a cliff. If he doesn't get it going, you've arguably traded for a downgrade in Dozier and in putting Arcia back at SS, you have somehow made your middle infield even more of a black hole in the batting order.

He always gets it done, until he sets a team up for 5 years of failure and leaves... The Red Sox would probably still be bad had the Dodgers not bailed them out for some unknown reason. The Red Sox won a World Series the year after the bailout with essentially the same roster minus the bailout guys. It was a bit of a fluky thing (both being good enough to win it all in '13 and a sub-70 win team in '12), but I think that they'd still have been fine sitting on a pile of dead money with Carl Crawford. A-Gon would've been fine for a few years, Beckett was injured but his money would've been gone 2 years later. They basically only added Napoli and Shane Victorino in the stead of those guys the following year. You could argue they'd have struggled to bring in the next era of guys helping them sitting on Crawford, Gonzalez, Beckett, etc. but I think Gonzalez would've had some good years, Beckett was OK Any GM of a big market when offered the idea of: "well, you could sign Carl Crawford to fill this hole in our organizational system or you could trot out some subpar prospects" will take the big money deal eventually. Friedman is about as good as it gets as avoiding that and he's going to sign some big $ guys this offseason. The Red Sox are dominant and they are sitting on a gigantic pile of dead money again. The Dodgers have been a force since bailing out the Red Sox, both the high payroll and lower payroll versions have been. It's not so taboo for big markets. You run the risk of eventually having a bad year if you're a mega market like LA/Boston(salary-wise they are)/NYY, but all of these teams are sitting on $50 million in guys that aren't playing. The Dodgers have been on a bit of an austerity run the past few years but they're going to probably have some decisions coming up soon.

Why so they can basically "tank" the rest of the season in the middle of a playoff chase?? It's not tanking, it's giving your touted prospects a turn if the return isn't a game changer. The acquisition of Kyle Gibson does not turn the Brewers into World Series contenders. See my comment: we'd be hurting our bullpen and several of those guys are not stretched out to start and will likely hit innings limits (Peralta).