bill hAll Star

Wilmer Flores.

The Dodgers also are loaded with spare part AAAA guys like Broxton or "not ready" prospects in the minors that can get 50 AB OFs if they really did Taylor to 3B for a short while.

Oakland, Cleveland, Kansas City and San Diego all make logical sense to me. San Francisco could use an athletic CF to patrol that huge OF. Oakland has Boog Powell & SD has Manuel Margot. Neither one looks like a world beater, but both are young & inexpensive & I don't know that Broxton's a clear upgrade. SF signed Austin Jackson on a cheap 2-yr deal -- again, not great but would Broxton really be an upgrade? Cleveland has Bradley Zimmer, their 2014 1st rounder who hit well in MiLB & made his big league debut last year. KC actually looks like a good fit! Their OF looks like a mess. I wonder if there could be a deal there -- maybe Broxton+Santana? The Royals' depth chart currently lists Alex Gordon at CF & Jorge Soler at LF. Broxton/Santana are probably clear upgrades on both. Not trying to be contrarian, but I'd already looked at the non-KC teams thinking they might make sense. EDIT: second thought on OAK, it looks like Powell is a lefty bat they've shielded from LHPs. Maybe Keon would make sense there as the RH half of the platoon & 4th OF. Zimmer, even if a high pick, might want to be shielded from RHP if they can. Cleveland makes some sense. The Roylals likely aren't going to be interested in Santana (or maybe even Broxton). They're doing a good job of signing some of the FA afterthoughts to 1-year deals, but I doubt they'll be trading away any of their future for 2018 players. Maybe Broxton since the trade would be small, but not Santana. San Diego also is a no-no with Margot in there as noted in your post. He's a pretty highly regarded prospect. They'll have Myers and Renfroe starting in the OF with him a lot. All 3 of those guys are high K righty bats. Broxton doesn't make much sense there. The Giants already signed Austin Jackson for CF. I think they'll probably just roll with the speedy Gorkys Hernandez out there as a backup for defense unless something happens. McCutchen can play there for short stints in a pinch. Oakland makes some sense. Cleveland as noted above also does. I do think Keon has some value given the affordable contract and versatility/speed. I also think that he's not going to fetch a ton given that he's probably a righty platoon bat ideally. It'll be hard to find a happy medium between a team like the Giants perpetually willing to just sign Austin Jackson to fill the gap for 1-2 years rather than give up our perceived extra value on Keon because he has 5 years of control. The catch-22 is that I'm not sure anyone's willing to pay for 5 years of control for a RH platoon bat. Just sign Austin Jackson or any other similar player to a 1-year deal every year.

The account with 4 followers predicted JD Martinez to Boston (obvious) and Arrieta to Philly in late February. However, I'd bet a lot of money that someone created 5 accounts and guessed various free agent locations and whichever one was right would be used to gain steam to try to get followers/clout.

Then you 60-day DL him to free up the spot. That's fine, but you're burning $3+ million dollars.

I think it could get dicey releasing Vogt due to injury. It's supposed to be performance-based. He might be able to recoup at least some of his money if it's an injury release.

Plan A is much better to me unless Cobb is much more expensive than advertised. If things go south, the Brewers can probably survive the 2-3 years @ $12-15 million/year remaining after 2018 to keep building. Plan B has the potential to derail the Brewers completely for 5 years if it doesn't work.

This is an unrelated point here, and I agree that Hosmer's gonna end up being a bit of a burden in a few years and probably nothing special short-term, but just ignore the marketing Hosmer move and what have they done to screw up their future? The Padres have been one of the more future-oriented teams out there since they got past that stupid Upton/Norris/Kemp/Middlebrooks/etc. offseason. I was referring back to those moves, which set them up to have no other choice but to think about the future. You don't get credit for thinking about the future if you gave yourself no choice. If the first thing you do when you've started to turn around your long-term outlook is sign Eric Hosmer for $120m, you haven't figured it out yet. All I'm saying is I'm not giving them the benefit of the doubt. More importantly, they might have made themselves just competent enough to steal games against their far superior West rivals once in a while, which is my salient point about how difficult the West is this year. It's going to be very hard for SF or Colorado to win more than 80, and hard for Arizona to end up with a better record than the Brewers even though they're the better team IMO. The Hosmer thing is a stupid ownership marketing move. Just ignore it. Yes, it's owner meddling, but I'd bet that ownership probably was willing to pay the extra $8 million/year over what he's actually worth to have their marketing figurehead. As for the other part of the argument - they made a shrewd move in one of the final years of the old international signing rules and spent like $40 million on international prospects. They have been very shrewd the past few offseasons. At this point, I don't think what they've done is going to move the needle much on tanking/draft picks. Maybe Hosmer and some of their other, random vet pickups drops them from #4 to #7, but I can't see it doing much more than that...and I'm not sure it moves the needle at all.

This is an unrelated point here, and I agree that Hosmer's gonna end up being a bit of a burden in a few years and probably nothing special short-term, but just ignore the marketing Hosmer move and what have they done to screw up their future? The Padres have been one of the more future-oriented teams out there since they got past that stupid Upton/Norris/Kemp/Middlebrooks/etc. offseason.

The Twins were reportedly still looking at Cobb. It makes total sense. If they have the ability to go closer to $140 million for one season as they would with Cobb, they can do that. Mauer's giant contract is finally gone next year and the Twins literally have $0 non-arbitration contracts for 2020. They could live with a longer-term Cobb deal if they had to. Now, they'll have to decide on Gibson/Hughes being gone (likely a "seeya later" thing), Santana in 2019, and Dozier (after this year) but they have a very, very malleable long term outlook and I'm not sure Cobb would affect that even if a bit overpaid. They'll have to revisit their rotation after 2019 or 2020 and will have to decide on Dozier, but otherwise they have a very good situation.

We have no idea how affordable they'd be for the Brewers. It's understandable that Walker may prefer playing in NY, that Lucroy would not want to come back to MKE, that Luc would also see less competition in Oakland and therefore all of those things may make the cost a lot higher if the Brewers truly wanted these players. Sure...and that is valid. My point is not about the playing time or where people prefer to play. Rather my point is about our disappointment levels as fans given the Brewers could have added Lucroy and Walker to the lineup for $11 million total and still haven't upgraded the rotation. That's all. I don't think you understood what I meant. It's very possible that playing time and where they want to play may mean that it would cost closer to $15-$20 million or extra years of commitment to get both of those guys in the lineup. Also, what are the ramifications of cutting someone that has already agreed to arbitration or Sogard? You're likely lighting $2-3 more million on fire if you cut Sogard or Walker or Perez to add Walker. If it's Perez or Villar I'm assuming he just gets a prorated chunk of his arbitration agreement?

We have no idea how affordable they'd be for the Brewers. It's understandable that Walker may prefer playing in NY, that Lucroy would not want to come back to MKE, that Luc would also see less competition in Oakland and therefore all of those things may make the cost a lot higher if the Brewers truly wanted these players.

I'm sure the Brewers if they really wanted him may have been able to pony up a little bit more to win the bid, but it's entirely possible that Walker preferred NY and their higher title odds alongside the fact that he may prefer the city more. So "why didn't we do 1/$5" may not be really that accurate.

This is absolutely a fact. Moustakas was projected to get 5/85 at the beginning of the offseason and got almost 80 million less than his projection. Nobody except the pitchers were even within range of that. And every team needs pitching, those starters and Holland aren't going to go for pennies on the dollar like Moustakas. My guess is lucroy/walker take a 1 year deals and try to reset for next year. But even if they sign similar deals to Moustakas, they weren't expected to get the gobs of money Moustakas was projected for. Going from 3/36 or 2/24 to 1/6 isn't all that drastic, and neither player has a QO attached which shoudl help them a bit. Walker will get a deal. Not sure Luc will get a major league deal thou. People are paying for what you are not what you were. I think in most offseasons, Lucroy would. I get that teams are getting smarter, but this trickle-down from the big markets setting hard caps on themselves is huge. Guys will still get some silly "what you were" contracts in coming years. Boston got their one guy and went over the threshold with him, but they seem to be at their cap now. Yankees, Cubs (after Darvish), Giants (after their trades), Dodgers are all completely done due to luxury tax concerns. Nats are only set on maybe one pitcher. Angels/Rangers seem to be around their cap. Toronto is tearing down, Philly is cautious and only looking at maybe 1 guy as they build, Houston is happy and know they have a huge bill coming up in the next 2 years. Point being, almost all of the large markets are out of the bidding. Therefore, someone like Arrieta cannot say, "I have 4 offers from the Yankees, Cubs, Dodgers, and Nats" and then get mid markets to also step in and drive it up further. I think next year we'll see somewhat of a return to the norm. Huge markets will get the big players, mid or the big markets that missed out on the top dogs will overpay the next level, and the bottom level will pick up the scraps. In this year's case, the mid/small markets got some bargains like Cain and Hosmer (not a "bargain" but they got a guy they otherwise might not have). The rebuilding/lower markets cleaned up some of the 3rd tier scraps on one year deals like Carlos Gomez, and now the music has stopped and nobody's bidding. Almost everyone is happy with where they're at so the last 3 or 4 bigger free agents and the 10-15 over the hill MLB vets class are waiting for something that probably won't come. It's a buyer's market.

Nobody in contention really needs a 3B right now and the big markets are all officially sitting this out. I think the last handful of free agents are going to get less than what they wanted but Moustakas’ situation was the worst out there.

If it's for 1 year you're going to have to pay a high number but you avoid the long-term commitment. $20-30 million just this year isn't going to kill anything with the team to help stabilize the rotation. Exactly. Unless this is directly affecting Mark's ability to sign players in the next 3 or 4 seasons, I'd imagine that if he's willing to pay $20 million for one year of Lynn, he's making that his one year expense and he'd rather do that over paying for 3-4 years of Cobb or 4-5 of Arrieta at a similar rate.

Lackey bordered on turd but I'd have a lot more confidence in many of the other guys you listed than Miley or Gallardo. I'm confident that the Brewers saw something in Miley so I think he was a nice risky pickup that maybe could turn into a swingman or could find something in the bullpen if not, but in a hand-wavy way, I'd expect many of the bottom rotation guys you listed to be around a 4 ERA and I think Miley/Gallardo could be more in the 5 range, potentially 6 (in which case, we'd be going to minor league options).

The crazy thing is that if you throw in Cobb and Archer, their age 22 seasons were about the same, and those guys came out of high school. Archer had crazy walk problems but we knew he had the highest ceiling, and for now, he's got the best stuff...but that's why you value guys like Woodruff and Burnes. You can overpay someone like Cobb to be yet another stable rotation arm on top of it all with the expectation of young/cheap pitching.

As an extreme example, Tom Brady was a 6th round pick. In football, I would give a 6th round pick for a good player. I wouldn't give up 25-year-old Tom Brady for the same player. I don't want to give up Corbin Burnes even for Archer. I don't necessarily mind giving up a 4th in a signing. I would not make a habit out of giving up draft picks...but here's the thing: If we sign Alex Cobb and give up the pick, I'd be shocked if we sign more than one more pick-attached player in the next 3 or 4 years. Probably 0 of them. I wasn't trying to imply that we dare not sign Cobb because that 4th round pick is the next Corbin Burnes and we'll miss him if we get Cobb. I don't think a 4th round pick is going to stop us from making that move, I was just pointing out that the pick shouldn't be viewed as relatively meaningless...which was the vibe I got. And a 4th round pick in the MLB draft is far and away more valuable than a 6th round pick in the NFL draft. It's honestly very difficult to make any sort of comparisons between drafts as NFL versus MLB is so wildly different. I was making that as an extreme example, of course. Plug in any analog. Is the 4th round of the MLB draft more important? It's gotta be close. I'm picking random drafts from 5-10 years ago and while I'm sure there have been random studs in the 4th round over the years, I'm finding on average 1 or 2 decent MLB players like Sam Dyson (2010) and in the more recent drafts, some OK prospects that are still sitting in AA/AAA like Patrick Kivlehan (2012). Eddie Rosario is the best player I've seen while picking 3 or 4 random years in a range of guys that would be early MLB vets now. I'd say 6th round NFL and 4th round MLB values are pretty close in terms of pro impact, not to derail this convo too far. EDIT: Just hit 2007 that has some good MLB players. Arrieta and Cishek/Michael Taylor/Rypziecoasijfsahiski. That's about the best I've seen. I'd say probably an average of 1 good player and 1-2 OK MLB players come out of the MLB 4th round and that wouldn't be far off from an NFL average.

Corbin Burnes was a 4th round pick...just saying. As an extreme example, Tom Brady was a 6th round pick. In football, I would give a 6th round pick for a good player. I wouldn't give up 25-year-old Tom Brady for the same player. I don't want to give up Corbin Burnes even for Archer. I don't necessarily mind giving up a 4th in a signing. I would not make a habit out of giving up draft picks...but here's the thing: If we sign Alex Cobb and give up the pick, I'd be shocked if we sign more than one more pick-attached player in the next 3 or 4 years. Probably 0 of them.

Yeah, these aren't close to enough.

If it comes down to it way later in the offseason, maybe he takes this deal...but there are enough people bidding that Arrieta will wait as long as possible for a longer deal that maybe has its own opt-out. Just seems way to optimistic to think that he'd cave to a Brewers offer like this. I think at the very least he can get a 5 year deal that has lower dollar amounts in the final 3 years that he can opt out of after 1 or 2 years.

Dickerson has been traded to the Pirates for Daniel Hudson, Tristan Gray, and cash.

He probably would have a higher bidder.

I feel like HighHeat wouldn't consider Arrieta signing with the Brewers "bad news" even if it is a painfully long contract. I have to think it means Arrieta/Cobb are signing elsewhere - perhaps one with the Cards.