bill hAll Star

Even better...I will gladly build a deal for Yelich for low level prospects not named Burnes or Hiura. I understand the Brewers are rich in OF prospects but are any of them superstars? For Yelich, I am willing to deal most anyone as I think he is right on the cusp of being a superstar. Trade for him now because it might be too late in the summer or winter of 2018. If we don't think the low-level prospects of the Brewers are superstar caliber players, would the Marlins' scouts/front office?

Not here. My expectation was to maybe sign some free agents (or not) and maybe stay with the Cards and Cubs if possible in 2018 but to really make a push in '19 or '20. Don't do anything silly with our depth of prospects. I am frustrated that the Cubs made a lot of shrewd moves, but nothing has bothered me about what the Brewers have not done.

Yelich is going to cost a massive haul. Like him as a player but no thank you. I don't think the Marlins would want Santana in the return or at least not to be built around in the trade. Why would the Marlins trade Yelich, under contract on a 5-year, affordable deal for Santana, who is affordable for 4 years? Santana won't be on any competitive Marlins teams. They're going to want low level minors players.

Not surprising but the package is rumored to be "greater than Stanton and Gordon packages combined."

Agreed. I really feel the Brewers overachieved in 2017 so perhaps this is for the best. Let the Cardinals/ Cubs bang heads for a few years as the Crew takes a small step backward in 2018, then starts moving forward again. Except in 2019/ 2020, more of the talent in the minors has gotten to the majors & other questions have been answered so the Crew has a better chance at success/ the post-season. Agree with this. This really takes the splash trade for a 2 year guy off the table. I'm still fine with free agency if the deals are short, but see if you can patch it together and compete this year and be ready in '19 or '20 to take the division for 5 years.

Knebel is under control for 4 years anyways. He'd still maybe make some sort of deal if it basically trades in his projected value for security. I don't think he'd add the extra year, though, unless it was a pretty lucrative one.

That one good season was due to a complete shift in style of pitching. I'd expect him to keep it up, though he is getting a bit older.

I fear that competing as a small market team for an 8-10 year window just isn't realistic the way MLB finances are structured. They will never be able to afford top-end free agents, and their studs will walk if given the opportunity to make it to free agency. The Brewers are going to have to follow the format the Royals did ... build the farm system, make a few big deals to fill in the gaps when their top players are in their prime, then begin a rebuild a couple years later when those top players price themselves out of the market. That's loosely that the Brewers have done as well after their playoff seasons. The Cardinals, while they always sneak into the back end of the top 10 in payroll, are what I'd shoot for. Always have a good farm system and be in the mix every year and have a handful of good, bigger contract guys on your roster every year. Only make a splash trade if you're in the World Series mix at the trade deadline. Say we stand pat. Would you be shocked if we were a 78 win team next year? Would it not be depressing to trade half of the farm for a few players to pull that 78 up to 82 or 83? We won 86 games last year and Jimmy Nelson was a huge part of that. I expect improvement from some guys, but I just really would hesitate to say that we're a few players away from being a likely bet to win it all. I at least want the years where we go all in to be ones like 2008 and 2011 and even with Cole on the roster, I'd be betting on the Cubs to win the division and at best we're going for a 1-game playoff.

Making such a trade takes your farm system from "well stocked" to "eh, it's decent." When Santana/Shaw/Davies/Anderson/Braun/Thames/Knebel/Nelson/maybe Anderson are all going to be gone or nearly gone after 2020, you had better be darn sure that these 2 year guys you trade for give you a shot to win a world series. Because if not, you finish the 2019 season and your outlook is you have a bunch of late-prime players with 1, maybe 2 years left and not a special farm system to replace them or replenish via trade. It will have the feel of 2012 or 2013. Or you have a bunch of high-leverage trade chips (late-prime players) to restock the system via trade. I mean, the whole goal of baseball is to go to the World Series, and the team proved last year that they are probably only a couple pieces away from being a prime playoff contender for the next few seasons. This is EXACTLY why you stack young talent in your farm system ... to use it as leverage to acquire the pieces needed to make a run. I am very excited about what Sterns did in the 2017 draft, and I think he'll be able to keep adding high-end talent to the farm system via the draft, trades and international signings. Having the top farm system in baseball does no good if the team is just outside playoff contention. In my opinion, we could have a Greinke/Marcum-esque offseason and unload 3/4 of the major farm pieces and load up for 2018 and 2019 and make the playoffs in neither season. It would be quite possible. We can debate overachieve/underachieve in 2017 but I'm not ready to push the chips in. I don't think adding a #2 starter and nice position player to this team makes it a lock to get to the playoffs. We are not the top farm system in baseball. We have a good farm system. What I'd like to use it for is to have cheap, good players in 2019 and beyond. I hope Stearns signs free agents to his heart's content and lets our good farm system speak for itself. Then we've got 8-10 years that we can compete. Not 2 years where we go all-in and hope to win 90 games with a good Cubs team in the division.

I think this "shed salary" idea has gone a bit far. Will the Marlins give up $260 million dollars worth of Giancarlo Stanton for essentially nothing in return? Yes. Will the Marlins attach something of value to get rid of Chen's $55 guaranteed remaining? Possibly. Will the Marlins give up good, productive (in some cases very good) players like Yelich, Castro, Ozuna, Barraclough for lesser current MLB players to save $3-4 million bucks/year on the contracts? No. If they were pondering this Villar offer for Castro, 10 other teams will swoop in and offer a valuable prospect or two and beat the offer.

Stage of a the rebuild? They were one game out of playoffs. The farm system is well stocked. The focus has changed from rebuild to how do they get over the finish line while the two main adversaries are still in a bit of a transition and guys like Shaw, Thames and Braun still are productive. Making such a trade takes your farm system from "well stocked" to "eh, it's decent." When Santana/Shaw/Davies/Anderson/Braun/Thames/Knebel/Nelson/maybe Anderson are all going to be gone or nearly gone after 2020, you had better be darn sure that these 2 year guys you trade for give you a shot to win a world series. Because if not, you finish the 2019 season and your outlook is you have a bunch of late-prime players with 1, maybe 2 years left and not a special farm system to replace them or replenish via trade. It will have the feel of 2012 or 2013.

Also signed Drew Smyly 2/$10. Maybe all of these blow up in their face, but they've signed 3 guys that all could pitch well above their contracts.

Not really sure it's worth its own thread, but Headley got dealt with Bryan Mitchell for Jabari Blash. A salary clearing move.

Probably cancels itself out pitching at Miller Park 50% of his games. No DH and less games in the other tough parks against tough offenses, but he gives up a lot of hard contact, which he'd have to pay for more often in Miller Park. To be fair, he's pitched well @Tor/@NYY in his career, which are probably similar to Miller Park, but he's gotten knocked around @Boston and @Baltimore, also similar parks.

Also, I don't think Miami trades Yelich for Santana, essentially. I also think that Barraclough is more valuable than Broxton. Yelich is the better all-around player at this point. Their contracts aren't vastly different at this point other than this year. If they're trading Yelich, it's for a prospect that's not in the majors yet. By the time they turn the thing around, Santana will be nearing the end of arbitration. Santana is probably 500k/5/8/12 if he's a good player. Yelich is 7/9/12.5/14/option. You save some money with Yelich to Santana but if Jeter is truly concerned with a few million bucks in a non-competitive year, that ownership group is cooked. They're looking for deals that dump 10s of millions like the Stanton deal or attaching something to get rid of Chen. They're not going to give Yelich away for an inferior player to save $5 million this year and $2 million/year for the 3 after it.

There's no reason to be scavenging at the bottom level of FA pitchers until late January. You only overpay signing guys like Chavez now. Especially before you see if you can get a quality guy in a deal. There's a level between the high end guys and Chavez. Heck if you want to shop at that level, why not bring back Yo? At least he was good at one time. Yeah, I agree with what you're saying in terms of what you'd give to Chavez and I'm not saying Chavez is the guy...but I do think that we should be scavenging in the dumpster if we don't get a big name. The tier I do not want to touch unless they come on 1-year deals is the Cashner, Vargas, Chacin level of pitcher.

Goodbye farm, hello window. I got the impression Stearns is trying to avoid the window theory and be consistently competitive. You really aren't eliminating the farm at all. You are trading 2 OFs in Harrison and Grisham (who should be blocked for the foreseeable future by Braun, Yelich, Brinson and Phillips) and still have Ray and Lutz on the farm. You move Ortiz and replace him with Archer which obviously is a huge win. Diaz is replaceable with Dubon or Hiura. The enormous amount of Brewer farm depth takes a small hit but is not the Greinke or Marcum farm-killing deals by any stretch of the imagination. The Rays, by definition of a professional team with a good GM, will likely be trying to extract our best prospects. If we've got 8 good prospects in a group that we're offering to the Rays, they're going to angle to get the 3 they think will be best. It's possible that we think we are loaded with OF prospects but the evaluators look at it and know that only 2 or 3 are realistically good players. And the Rays will want them. The larger issue I have with it when discussing lower level prospects especially is, "we've got other prospects." If we have a spot to fill, I want 3 prospects for it unless one of them is a blue chipper. Odds are that Ray or Lutz or Brinson are a bust and then you're forced to go the free agent route in a few years to fill the void left by Braun being done or Brinson not living up to expectations. Or one or of them gets hurt. If Braun gets hurt for an extended period, we currently have guys to go to to fill out the roster. After that trade, if Braun or Yelich go down, we're looking to raw lower-level prospects or we're praying that Phillips can be not terrible against lefties in an everyday role. Or we're back to the Doug Melvin playbook of placing a call to Mark Kotsay. If we want to keep the "always competitive" and no windows thing, we can't be just throwing away prospects because "well we've got another guy who might fill that role." The hit rate is not very high and we likely will end up with nobody to fill those roles. To be fair, Lawrie was a bust, but in the discussion of how we'd fill 3B and 2B after Weeks and McGehee, it was, "well, we've got Mat Gamel and Taylor Green." We ended up with nobody in either role and had to fill via free agency. Scooter ended up being alright, but there was an organizational hole at both positions.

If we don't go big on Lynn, Arrieta, Cobb, Darvish, I do think this is the level we should look to. Basically everyone on the next tier can be replaced by a Suter/Wilkerson/Guerra mix-and-match combo in my opinion. If we want to go big and upgrade with an overpaid #2 starter, sign me up. I see no use in throwing 2 years/$15 million at Cashner to be #5 starter depth because I'm no more confident in him than I am in our 4 or 5 options in AAA/long relief to fill the bottom of the rotation that we currently have. If that's the case, sure, give Chavez a $2 million deal to be a second swingman with Suter.

I wasn't suggesting that teams don't stack righties. Of course they do. I was saying that if Hader was truly a 4-inning starter, CHL has a point that he's maybe best used against a lefty part of a lineup in close games. I also was noting that teams can push his pitch count/hit him harder than the "he generally went 6 in the minors" thing. All of that said, I'm all for giving him a shot.

Honest question because I don't know the answer: Are there any successful pitchers that throw a fastball 70% of the time? I guess that's my concern. Maybe he is just hiding his change because he didn't need it as a reliever, but I just don't know how long a guy can make it only throwing fastball/slider. I'm definitely up for giving him a shot. I guess he probably could be Danny Duffy-esque. 40/40/20 on fastball, slider, change.

We won't know that until we give him a chance at this level. Hader most commonly had 5+ inning starts in the minors that many are referencing and he only threw 80-85 pitches in those starts, if given 100 pitches to work with he'd likely go 6+...which is plenty. There will absolutely be times that Hader and Woodruff have shorter starts(also will be times that Anderson/Davies have shorter starts), that's why we'll likely have an 8 man bullpen. Minor league teams do not have as much ability to work a pitch count like Hader can be worked, though. Also, minor league teams could have lefties in the lineup because they're trying to develop them. Major league teams will stack the lineups with righties. Also, a guy that doesn't have varied stuff like Hader could get hit even harder the 2nd/3rd time around as CHL said.

There are a lot of games where teams got Hader up to 20+ pitches in one inning by just fouling off his fastball/slider. How long is he gonna make it in games if he doesn't develop a 3rd pitch that he can consistently throw for strikes? I'm new age and don't mind starters that don't go too late into games, but at a certain point you might be better suited using him to be Andrew Miller as your weapon when you are tied/winning and facing the meat of an order with lefties if he can't get past the 4th inning regularly as a starter.

Harvey is only projected at $6 million this year. The Mets have weird owners but I can’t imagine this salary being a huge deal to get off their hands. They’ll need [some] value in return.

I'm not sure. They probably will never catch the Nats, but this is the beginning of the Phillies window. I'm not sure they're buying trade chips anymore. I guess this might be the last year if it doesn't get off to a great start that they'd be selling, but the wins should keep going in the up direction and they should be competing for a playoff spot by 2019.

Broxton would be a good platoon-mate with Dickerson given that the DH slot will possibly be filled with the overflow OF at times. Dickerson can still see a few lefties in that scenario. I agree that I'd love Odorizzi in that trade.