bill hAll Star

Yes, and while it was correctly brought up from some that Austin Jackson does it in a different way, his value is similar is what I was saying. To bring him into the mix, after his age 27 season, he averaged 350 plate appearances with a .741 OPS which includes a .336 OBP. It's true that he's not a completely analog player to the rest of the Broxton/Stubbs/Young list because Jackson is a higher average guy that doesn't wield the power or SB potential. Also, the 350 for Jackson is a bit misleading because 2015 was the final year he was given rope as the everyday CF. He's now correctly a platoon player.

Yeah that's a good one as well. Probably the best/closet possible comp. Thanks.

You also must have missed my post where I noted that Austin Jackson has hit around 20 HR over the last 4 years combined. I'm not sure I'd call that an outfielder with power. No, I acknowledged that in the middle of the post. My point is that Broxton has equal value. He's a good starter if you play him against lefties and he's a decent OF if one of your outfielders go down. Yes, Jackson is a .275/.335 guy with less strikeouts, less power, less steals. Broxton is a .230/.320 guy with more power and speed on the bases. But the point is that they have the exact same value and exact same role, even if they do it in a different way. Over Broxton's career he is at a .296 OBP and .699 OPS against righties. Against lefties it's a .364 OBP and an .829 OPS. Yes, this past year the splits got a little more narrow, but they were already controlling his ABs a bit more with platoon splits and he had an uncharacteristic year of monster games crushing the corpse of Adam Wainwright, Colon, and Coors field against some righties. Expect the splits to be more in line with his career.

The bolded part is extremely important. Modern day GMs are extreme in valuing platoon stats. Jackson's career is not a sharp difference between RH and LH pitching, but the past several years, he has platooned with Zimmer and a slew of other guys and he has had very sharp LH/RH platoon splits. Broxton may not be the exact same player in style, but his value is the same. He can play 1/3 of the games as a 4th OF and put up very nice numbers if his situations are controlled and be a dependable backup if called on. Just like Austin Jackson.

I wonder why you picked those guys since they are not really comparable at all.... #petpeeve What? Good defensive outfielders with power that are right-handed and crush lefty pitching but cannot play every day because they can't hit righties. It wasn't a race thing as you perceived it to be. EDIT: OK, Jackson doesn't necessarily have the massive splits or power over his career, but he's still a guy that's on the right-handed side of a platoon. Trust me, I'm the last person to make a comparison for your pet peeve reasons. Call it a mistake for including Jackson even though he's functionally the same thing as a right-handed platoon/4th OF. Over the last few years he's hit lefties well and righties not well.

Unless the Brewers plan on signing Arrieta or Darvish, I'd take a $6 million risk on Harvey. I'm not sure why we're worried about chopping Harvey's contract down in trade proposals when our payroll even with a few relievers signed will probably be somewhere around $75-80 million. Again, I'm not looking to trade for him and I realize this discussion has gone off the rails, I'm just saying that Harvey is not someone that we should be worrying about the contract of. $6 million is par for the course for a #5 starter, much less one that has the ability to figure out his old stuff and become an ace.

Harvey is projected to be due $6 million for 1 season. He's not someone I'd bother taking a risk on given that we'd lose him anyways if he did get back to his old self this year, but it's not like we'd be taking on Jordan Zimmermann here. If the Mets were giving Harvey away for a bag of baseballs and we had to pay $6 million for him, though...sign me up. And that's coming from someone who thinks as stated above that he's probably gone anyways after 2018 if it goes well for him. I'd pay that money to find out if he gets his velocity back in a contract year.

Epstein must think he'll continue throwing high 90s for 2 more years. That means he'll be a really good pitcher if he can. If he wears down this year or next year, they move on to the next guy. Good risk for them to take.

He's going to turn 28 early next season. He's not young, he's basically what he is at this point. I meant tough to comp to the free agents, and right he isn't young but he doesn't have a ton of experience at the mlb level yet like the to be free agents. I'm not sure that we've seen the best of Broxton yet. In May/June last year he was an upper 800s ops guy as an everyday player. He went ridiculously ice cold in July and basically got benched/platooned from there. He's more dynamic with more upside than any CF on the free agent market, even Lorenzo Cain. There's a lot to dream on with Broxton. We've seen that even hitting .246 is a very productive season for Broxton(2016 season). I would also like to point out that Broxton posted the lowest BABIP of his career at .323 this season, at any level. If that goes up a bit(which it should), and he can cut his k rate down closer to 30%...that probably gets him into the 240s and is a very productive player again. The issue is that when Broxton goes on a tear, it's usually predictable. It's against left-handed pitchers or really bad righties. Those stats count, but we're going to continue this rollercoaster if he's an everyday player. I don't think the older dog will be taught too many tricks to suddenly consistently hit right-handed pitching. Too many strikeouts. This isn't some 23-year-old prospect that we're expecting to learn how to hit righties next year. Keon is a poor man's Austin Jackson. Or he's Chris Young. Those guys have roles and still get paid $5 million/year, but MLB GMs are smart enough to know the role for those players in that they should start 1/3 of games (against LHP and bad righties), be defensive replacements/pinch hitters late in games, and could be relied upon to be not terrible if your lefty or consistent starter gets hurt. Jackson and Young are good outfielders with power and some speed that unfortunately bat righty and strike out so much that they cannot beat right-handed pitching. It's time that we embrace this and understand his trade value and/or deploy him as such. We're going to keep banging our heads against the wall thinking that the guy will blossom into a better player because he's somewhat under-experienced.

Doesn’t do it for me. Ever since he stopped throwing his slider in Tampa with the arm issues, he does about as well as any of our AAAA guys would do in an extended stint in San Francisco. He’s a fly ball pitcher so he may quite literally push a 6 ERA in Milwaukee.

2 years with a 3rd year club option. I know both he and Chatwood have risks, but both of these are good signings for the Cubs. If one or both falter, it’s not going to destroy their payroll near-term. I also like both in their contract timeframes, given cost.

I can see Stanton wanting to be on the field for defense more than he should, but I think this is a real stretch to create a Yankee “weakness” and opportunity for the Brewers.

Roughly... LF - Gardner 60%/Judge 20%/Hicks 20% (Hicks against LHP) CF - Ellsbury 50%/Hicks 30%/Gardner 20% (again Hicks against LHP mostly) RF - Stanton 50%/Judge 50% DH - Stanton 50%/Judge 30%/Sanchez 10%/Others 10% Gardner has heavy splits and hits righties very well (.760 career but .800+ since he’s “come of age” of late) Aaron Hicks crushes lefties. Ellsbury is still going to have to play and isn’t terrible. Stanton is terrible at OF. He’d be fine in the tiny RF at Yankee Stadium but he should DH a lot. They have a loaded OF/DH situation. Absolutely loaded with good platoon sets. 1B is a bit of a question but they like Bird. That’s 75% of the ABs if he can run with it. They also have Clint Frazier in the mix and maybe Fowler the following year if his leg heals.

Stanton and Judge will rotate at DH plenty. Ellsbury isn’t a great player at this point but he’ll still play and then they can essentially platoon Hicks and Gardner (Hicks hits lefties very well) so that means plenty of days for Stanton and Judge to DH, plus Sanchez getting some days off behind the plate. At 1B they’re high on Greg Bird. They probably will pick up a cheap RH bat to mix in there or maybe Judge or Stanton can play some 1B (probably not).

Looks like it’s about to be completed. Stanton to the Yankees.

I agree that the "best" trade is our surplus for their surplus...but that's a harder trade to find than one thinks. Keon Broxton will still probably only net you a Mike Fiers-esque pitcher that has a Mike Fiers-esque contract. Either that or you're trading Broxton to someone to eat the salary of Jeff Samardzija (no longer realistic), which is almost like signing an overpriced free agent. Trading for a pitcher that's closer to free agency is even more head-scratching. The Brewers have a long window in my opinion. A small chance to win the next two years and hopefully a larger chance to win 2020 and later. Making a trade for Cole Hamels in theory means that we'll enter 2020 without Cole Hames AND without the prospects we gave up for him. Who mentioned Hamels? And I strongly disagree on Broxton only being able to fetch only a Fiers or Samardzija type (and nobody in between). Broxton plays good defense in CF (can also play both corners), has a solid arm and great speed in the field and on the bases. He was 20/20 with a 300 OBP/720 OPS in a down season after being above average offensively the season before. He has 5yrs cheap control entering his prime. Moving forward he realistically can be somewhere between his 2016/2017 seasons, if not better than that middle ground, which makes him an average or slightly above average every day CF. He has value. There were 6 OF last year that were 20/20. *SIX* And 2 were CF (Trout and Broxton). Chase, Davies, Woodruff are locks for the rotation this year - if Hader is given an opportunity there's 1 open spot. Hence needing an arm for *one year* because you'll also have Nelson back at some point this year and realistically can expect Burnes to take a rotation spot in 2019. Unless they're planning on moving Hader to the pen full-time *AND* trading a current rotation arm by 2019 why wouldn't we need an arm for *one year*? There are only two options for acquiring that type of player - sign a vet FA to a 1yr deal or trading for someone with 1yr remaining on contract. Please explain what's head scratching about all this? The Brewers don't need to use Broxton or Perez for a MLB arm as they could also target a AAA pitcher they believe in, who's MLB ready, that's blocked at the moment. They also have a deep system and can easily afford to part with 1 or 2 *ok* prospects for a MLB arm that's an upgrade over Garza. Prospects that won't affect anything moving forward. Other teams have backend starters who are in their contract years that could be moved for a variety of reasons - quality MLB prospects needing a spot as they're MLB ready, acquisition of a controllable FA pushing them out, etc etc. None of this is difficult because there are *options* everywhere that don't require signing a FA for 3-4yrs or trading Brinson and company for 3-4yrs of a proven arm. I mentioned Hamels because I couldn't really come up with many other options that would have 1-2 years left on control. I'm not so optimistic about Nelson ever being that good again given his injury. Even though I like Woodruff, we are foolish to ever just pen him into a long-term role. Same with Hader. I've said it in a few other threads, but we have a lot of guys in the Woodruff range that are nice #3-ish prospects. But I'm going to assume like a 30-40% hit rate on those types. I want a lot of them in addition to Davies and Anderson (and maybe Nelson). We have some coming down the pike, but several of them are still 2-3 years away from taking on a full workload in the majors. I'm not being an overly pessimistic, rather realistic. This does not mean that we need to sign a pitcher for 4 years to add to that main grouping, but I just think the list of guys that most on here would actually be interested in if they're shocked by the price tags on the free agent pitchers so far will be very small. And I don't want to trade from our system unless it's for an absolute ace. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Broxton is a nice player. I like him. But he is a platoon bat, unfortunately. His talent is only maximized facing mostly left-handed pitching. I'd love to make a shrewd move where we find another version of Zach Davies while he's in AAA. That's something I'd pursue. I just think there are limited opportunities for that.

My assumption on Arrieta or Lynn is 4 years. My take is that given the depth in the system, we don't need extra money anywhere for the next 3 or 4 years. Obviously a handful of relievers we may want to spend money on, but I don't see us breaking the bank to sign somebody to replace Orlando Arcia or Travis Shaw or any regular position or starting pitcher. We have one bullet to fire over the next few years so I'd like to get one of the best available and also keep our better prospects for the next window. One can definitely argue that signing Lynn for $15 million/year could cause issues in 2020 or 2021 if a need arises, but I just think that all 9 position players or all 5 rotation spots and important bullpen spots should be covered from our system going forward. I agree that Archer is a bit better than them, but he has his issues as well that could get a bit ugly at Miller Park.

Done All three of those guys ought to be top 100 prospects as the 2018 preseason rankings come. I don't think there are many teams to out bid that offer, willingly. Disagree on Diaz for the top 100 rating (though I like Diaz still) but this is why I'd rather just sign Arrieta or Lynn than trade for Archer. We're taking a hammer to some of the potential for 2020 and later and building an 87 win team with Archer. I'd rather just overpay for Lynn or Arrieta, be an 85-87 win team, and still have our full future in front of us.

But other teams could offer 3 of their top 10 younger boom/bust prospects as well. The Phillies don't have to deal from their seasoned AA or MLB-ready stock. They could throw Moniak and other A ball or far away AA guys in there that are just as highly rated if they wanted to. We aren't the only team with several good "2 or 3 years away" prospects.

What an offseason for them.

I kinda detailed it on the other board, but even though we control Archer for 4 years in this case, it's really just interesting that people will throw away cheap, productive prospects and then scoff at the idea of paying Lance Lynn $60 million for 4 years at the cost of a draft pick. If you're trading for Archer, you had better be pretty certain that you can build a World Series contender that can beat the Cubs before his contract ends in Milwaukee. Trading Ortiz, Harrison, and Diaz isn't the death of the farm system, but it definitely weakens the team 2020 and beyond when we lose several key players. I also agree that that package isn't enough for 4 years of Archer.

You make that sound like that's a good/great thing, though. Say we trade 3 good prospects for Chris Archer. That's 3 slots that in 2019 or 2020 that we won't have a good MLB player making $550,000. Instead, we'll have to go to free agency and pay $4 or 5 million for that position (if we're in a competitive position) or we'll go to the next prospect up which may not be as good of a player. On top of that, while Archer's deal is very affordable...it's still $7 million/year. You don't need to trade for the Archer's of the world. You can trade for someone who's a FA after this year or the next. Stearns can also trade from the depth of his MLB team - Broxton, Perez I agree that the "best" trade is our surplus for their surplus...but that's a harder trade to find than one thinks. Keon Broxton will still probably only net you a Mike Fiers-esque pitcher that has a Mike Fiers-esque contract. Either that or you're trading Broxton to someone to eat the salary of Jeff Samardzija (no longer realistic), which is almost like signing an overpriced free agent. Trading for a pitcher that's closer to free agency is even more head-scratching. The Brewers have a long window in my opinion. A small chance to win the next two years and hopefully a larger chance to win 2020 and later. Making a trade for Cole Hamels in theory means that we'll enter 2020 without Cole Hames AND without the prospects we gave up for him.

Yeah, if Minor is for sure a reliever, I'd rather have him. I also like him as a cheaper option to try out as a starter again and have him throw faster and live with less innings. You look around at contracts and trades and you can see MLB GMs have a pretty good grasp on something that is repeatable or not. Minor and Swarzak both will get paid because there is a specific reason for their success. Minor turned up his velocity by 4-5 MPH and Swarzak over the past few years has gone to his slider and pushed his velocity upwards. That's different than some guy that has always been the same pitcher and randomly turned in a lucky season where his ERA dropped by 2 points.

You make that sound like that's a good/great thing, though. Say we trade 3 good prospects for Chris Archer. That's 3 slots that in 2019 or 2020 that we won't have a good MLB player making $550,000. Instead, we'll have to go to free agency and pay $4 or 5 million for that position (if we're in a competitive position) or we'll go to the next prospect up which may not be as good of a player. On top of that, while Archer's deal is very affordable...it's still $7 million/year.

You severely discount his steals, but yes I'd give that up. I don't think Ponce will be a major leaguer. If I'm in all-in mode like the Mariners are, unless I think Ponce is a blue chipper, sure, I do it. One can rip what they did to get to this point, but they have: 1 year of Cruz 2 of a declining Felix Cano is getting older Seager, Segura in their primes They're overpaying Mike Leake Might have a shot at Ohtani The money for Gordon doesn't bother me. Sure, he may be useless in 3 years but he can collect his $14 million on his 67 win, low-ish payroll team as they probably will be forced to rebuild.