bill hAll Star

Right after he signed an extension, too.

Are we? A cheap 20-20 guy with several years of control and solid CF defense. 28 years old. I think Broxton is a perfect fit for the Giants. Personally, I think Broxton needs a LH platoon mate to get his full value to at least take some of the ABs. If you put Broxton out there against a lot of RHP, while he is a good defender and still has a bit of pop, be ready for his .215/.290 BA/OBP against them. His splits got a little bit better this year, but I think a bit of it was an aberration. I think teams might be better off just going out and signing Cameron Maybin, Rajai Davis, Melvin Upton (off the market), Austin Jackson to a 1 year deal. Those guys may all do it somewhat differently but can give you similar production. It may cost more for one year, but with Broxton, his arbitration numbers will go up in the "advantage" of a longer deal.

Bummer ... I was hoping Crick would be one of the pieces coming back for Broxton. Upper level power pitcher who has battled injury. Good candidate for the pen. I think we're really overestimating the value of Broxton on this board.

I'd call it a wash or maybe a good idea to keep McCutchen for 2017. He had his worst career year in 2016.

I wonder if the Pirates are going to absorb Pence in this.

The Giants will very likely be the next White Sox or Astros in 2-3 years. Either that, or they'll just keep buying more free agents (and probably not winning) for the next 5 or so. They still may stink in that period, but they have dead weight coming off the books in most forthcoming years.

I'm not sure if I follow this, but if the Rays trade Archer, even if they have some decent young players, I don't see them buying a prime veteran in return...they're going into the tank if they deal Archer. I tend to disagree with this. They have a couple good pitching prospects coming up and a fairly full rotation. They have more issues with run scoring than run prevention. Maybe they do intend to rebuild instead of re-tool, but I wouldn't fully discount shaw to TB as a possibility. The premise of it is that they don't have the money to sign Moustakas. They just dealt Longoria away and they wouldn't be able to theoretically sign 3-years-younger Moustakas to basically the same deal? That original premise does not have to be true, but in that absolutely top-heavy division I'm not sure I'd be trotting out a bunch of guys with innings caps in my rotation, some solid hitting/stud defensive outfielders, Shaw, and a bunch of light-hitting infielders to try to win that division. They have probably about an 80 win team even with Shaw. They won 80 last year after buying at the trade deadline, with Longoria, and with Archer. So replace Archer with some of their young arms and throw Shaw into the mix (no career-year Morrison) and they're really going to compete?

I'm not sure if I follow this, but if the Rays trade Archer, even if they have some decent young players, I don't see them buying a prime veteran in return...they're going into the tank if they deal Archer.

I feel for the Pirates. I think they had a pretty similar reshaping to the Royals...one just had the breaks go their way in the playoffs, the other ran into Bumgarner/Arrieta and just didn't get it done.

I would do this if Mous was gotten at a bargain (4 years or less). Interesting suggestions here about his fly ball rate which would do very well in Miller Park (and Great American/maybe Wrigley). He'd be a high power/low OBP guy, which I realize isn't what we necessarily need, but I could see him being valuable at Miller Park for the right price. https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/mike-moustakas-is-the-former-royal-you-want/

I'm guessing that the $23 million extension for Villar would've been something like $2 million (last year)/$3 milion/$6 million/$6 million/$6 million? Were there going to be team options on that? This year is huge for him. If he makes it into another year of arbitration, then he's closing in on $10 million since declining the extension. Obviously looking like a dumb decision right now, and a possibility existed that he only got his $500k of last year and was cut from the majors forever, but he most likely will be able to get $8-10 million out of his career if he can hang around just a bit. Also, the team options would be interesting in the rumored buyout. If it's like Chase Anderson's, Villar was probably more likely walking away from $10-15 million guaranteed and not $23. I agree that I'd have taken the certainty, but, "wow, $2.6 million compared to a $23 million extension" is a bit misleading. Could be options and even with a mediocre year he may get his arby picked up by someone and suddenly he's amassed $8 million already as of next year.

I think this analysis is basically due to the fact that we're Brewers fans and watch them every day and tend to get angry at our own signings when they aren't so good. I am guilty here of two things, I didn't really expound on what I meant, and I was certainly overstating it. There are plenty of teams that have had much, much worse free agent signings than the Brewers. Maybe this is more a byproduct of the lack of total number of free agent they have signed, but the Brewers don't seem to have many cases of "good" free agent signings. There are certainly cases like Mike Cameron and Aramis Ramirez that turned out mostly positive, but it seems like other teams have had more success with signing free agents that provided value. Recently it seems like they have actually had more success in non-traditional free agent channels with players like Nori Aoki and Eric Thames. You are correct though, being a fan that closely follows one team, and merely a causal observer of all others, makes it difficult to make an accurate assertion without any actual analysis. Yeah, that is much more of a correct point. I will say, though, that I think people's opinions of Garza, Wolf, Suppan, etc. all need to be taken with a lens on what we had. In the Suppan/Wolf days, we were trying to compete and while Suppan was basically, decent, decent, terrible in his few years, he was covering up for...Manny Parra coming up early? I'm not even sure who else would've pitched. Same with Wolf. Claudio Vargas was in the rotation in those years. Garza/Lohse, we were in the twilight of competitive years, but we once again had minimal pitching depth in our system. Some of those years, the #5 starter was Chris Narveson. In Garza's injured/bad years, we were rebuilding anyways. While those resources maybe could've gone to something better, the payroll was very low. I'm not saying that I'm glad that we threw $30 million away in a few seasons/parts of seasons for Garza, but I don't think it was prohibitive of the Brewers going out and getting another piece to win a World Series. Yes, they could have been developing other talent or spending that money on other pieces of development, but it is what it is.

In general, true. I keep hammering this point, and I don't necessarily think that the Brewers are at this point, but you can keep filling your team with 1-2 WAR guys at minimum or $3 million/year contracts and then, what...hang a banner for having an 84 win team with only a $55 million payroll? At a certain point, the entire point of getting all of the cheap help allows you to overpay elsewhere. It's inevitable. Whether that be extending/keeping Santana or keeping Jimmy Nelson, those guys will be highly paid, mid 30s guys too on their 2nd contract with the Brewers. Now, signing these guys at the wrong time or doing it regularly will destroy your franchise. But if the Brewers think that Arrieta or Cobb is a guy that will be productive for 3 of the 4 years of a contract and they don't think it will be a financial constraint in 2020 or 2021, then go ahead and take a shot at it. They can deal with the fans getting angry about a $20 million/year guy only being a #4 starter in 2021 or sitting on the DL all year while forgetting that he provided a great surplus from 2018-2020 over our replacement option...or simply allowed us to have greater depth of talent. (Almost) No $20 million player is going to consistently deliver $20 million of results every year. A lot of $600k guys are going to be spectacular. That's the nature of the market. If ownership sees it as an affordable move or something to win a championship, then I'd gladly take $10 million of performance some years out of a $20 million guy (with the chance that he's truly spectacular) rather than plugging in Jhoulys Chacin in a year that we'd be chasing a championship (not necessarily this year) simply because "it's better value." And a couple of notes on this quote: 1. Archer's salary is going up towards 10 million in coming years. 2. You might be trading 3 guys that will provide you 3-5 wins (WAR) for $600k a few years from now to acquire Archer. To acquire Arrieta, you just pay the inflated cost and give up a supplemental draft pick.

I think this analysis is basically due to the fact that we're Brewers fans and watch them every day and tend to get angry at our own signings when they aren't so good. I'm just going completely off the top of my head here... Red Sox - Crawford (traded), Adrian Gonzalez (traded), Rusney Castillo, Sandoval, Price, I'll stop there Giants - Zito, their recent FA pitchers are "fine" but are not worth the $, Melancon Royals - Omar Infante Cubs - Heyward, Lester/Zobrist/Lackey all were "worth it" but have some very overpaid years Marlins - The Heath Bell/Reyes/Buehrle offseason. Prado. Dodgers - They had Scott Kazmir on the DL all year last year. Angels - Hamilton, Pujols, CJ Wilson was alright but overpaid later in his contract. Tigers - Zimmermann, Sanchez was good for a while, then dead $. I'll stop there because that's just the top of the list. I don't have to go through every team, but they've all had bad ones. And to clarify our view of our own guys. Fans wanted Suppan, Garza, Wolf, Lohse, A-Ram, Gagne, etc. to be MVP candidates or Cy Young candidates. Some of them were good for a while (A-Ram, Lohse), some where just average players and then flamed out. But none of them were THAT terrible, and the ones that were like Gagne were off the books the following year. Given expectations of middling free agents, these guys were honestly all actually "fine." They all were solid or OK for 2/3 of the deal and then dead money for the final year. It's just a sampling thing. We see all of the bad stuff but if we were fans of the Orioles, Rangers, or any of these other teams - we'd see just as many (or many more as a large market) massive failiures.

Nah

What prospect capital? Castro's market isn't great. He's a salary dump. They'd take a Hernan Perez to be their everyday 2B (and potential flip candidate) and a lottery ticket type or two low level guy. The Marlins have said they're now pretty happy with where their payroll is. I agree that Castro still ends up in the "salary dump" range of things in the end and that the Marlins may eventually do this, but they can hold out for something of value unless Castro becomes a serious clubhouse issue.

Agree. It would truly take a lot to pry Mejia.

Right-handed bats are a dime a dozen. If they’d deal for Aguilar it would be for peanuts. If not, they could cycle in a myriad of AAAA guys that one of which would eventually OPS .800+ against lefties.

Probably not enough. Mejia was a top 30 or top 40 prospect going into last year and he had a nice year. I'd guess he's a top 15 or top 20 prospect this year. So, maybe Brinson or Burnes or a combo like Ortiz and _____. Salazar is almost fair straight up for Santana, maybe a slight edge to Santana given an extra year of control and Salazar having some issues last year, but then again, pitching is always valued a bit more. So now you're taking a somewhat fair swap and adding one of the best prospect in baseball in return for a grab bag of a decent prospect or guy like Broxton.

Santana definitely should be a target for Cleveland, though I guess one could argue that they can get a much cheaper RH bat. If there's a lefty on the mound, Zimmer and Alonso should not start. Chisenhall has developed more even splits in recent years and Brantley is a guy that can hit lefties. Encarnacion 1B, Santana DH (or corner OF). With a righty on the mound, they can give any of the OF a day off or Alonso a day off at 1B and put Encarnacion in there. They've got Guyer as a RH only corner bat, but Santana would fit in pretty well.

Speaking of the ridiculous trade offers thread on the transactions board, remember this? http://www.myajc.com/blog/mark-bradley/braves-trade-that-might-fit-bethancourt-for-lucroy/Do7P2D3DSqZppOBthaoZ4O/

How about a reverse example of that Brewers homer blogger and a few on this board that think we can get Robbie Ray for Domingo Santana?

Well I guess we could ask him... agent39, are you just trying to drive up his value? "We are staying with our goals and priorities,” said Stearns, who has focused on starting pitching, his bullpen and finding help at second base. “We think we’ve made progress with the work we’ve done to this point. We’ll see what the next four, five, six weeks have in store for us." Pulled from Haudricourt's article. Reading between the lines, that suggests reported interest may just be a phone call checking in on asking price. He’s not going to outright say, “we’re also looking at outfielders, because we may soon be dealing several outfielders making a position of strength as of now one that might need an upgrade.”

I don't get this after all of the trades you've suggested. You've suggested trading for iffy Danny Duffy, regression candidate Merrifield, or a king's ransom for Chris Archer. But Lorenzo Cain, who is averaging about 4 WAR/year, rumored that he could come at a relative bargain for 3 years, and in which case Santana and/or Broxton and/or Brinson would be dealt for probably TOR pitching...is a no? You wouldn't want Cain/Archer/a good reliever for $25 million/year total minus Santana/Broxton? I think you are generally getting too caught up in WAR and defensive value. While his avg and obp might hover in that general area for the next 4 years, the SB totals and defensive value are likely to keep trending downward as they already are. Cain would still fit well on the team if all those moving parts come together, but unless the asking price comes way down this won't work for us. We'd also be giving up our comp pick to sign him. I agree, and while this is all a far-fetched scenario because it involves dealing Santana and others for pitchers, I'm just saying there is just a strange stigma around any free agent signing by most, but trading away a boatload of prospects is fine.

I don't get this after all of the trades you've suggested. You've suggested trading for iffy Danny Duffy, regression candidate Merrifield, or a king's ransom for Chris Archer. But Lorenzo Cain, who is averaging about 4 WAR/year, rumored that he could come at a relative bargain for 3 years, and in which case Santana and/or Broxton and/or Brinson would be dealt for probably TOR pitching...is a no? Cain would only cost a comp pick and signing pool $. Not nothing, but you've been offering our top prospects up in several trade for equally risky players. You wouldn't want Cain/Archer/a good reliever for $25 million/year total minus Santana/Broxton?