bill hAll Star

And the Cubs could sign Darvish, Ohtani, or Arrieta and stay under the threshold. I also feel sorry for the fans of the team that signs Charlie Blackmon to a mega-contract (I realize you just put him in the list as a good player that is a free agent coming up in that offseason).

I had this same opinion during the Sonny Gray and Quintana discussions. The Brewers are probably better off spending $ and letting the farm system play itself out. I get that Odorizzi may truly have diminishing value and may not be much to acquire, but really dealing anything from the farm system for even guys with 2-3 years of control means, "here is our window, let's get what we can get in these next 3 years." I don't know if anyone we have coming due in 3-4 years is worth keeping on a second contract, so continue to spend on external free agents and let the minors system fill everything else for the next decade. We could change course and go all in on 2-3 seasons if it's pretty clear that we've overtaken the division.

They can also non-tender Leonys Martin and Justin Grimm. Zobrist's deal goes down $4 million. Strop has an option that they can decline if they want to. Obviously they wouldn't opt out on Quintana. I think they could shuffle things and make it work. And like you said, maybe go over the luxury tax for one season.

Come on man, there are 29 other teams out there. They can't just get every player they want. It's not a video game. And they certainly can't hand out the money in the contracts how they choose to big names like Harper and Darvish. If the Cubs try backloading a deal to either guy, they won't sign the player. Both guys, but especially Harper, will want big money up front with opt outs built in. Even if the cubs get one of Darvish/Arrieta, the rest of their rotation really doesn't look good. It looks much better on paper than the reality. Lester is quickly becoming a mid-rotation starter at best. Quintana about the same. Hendricks, this guy cannot keep this up with 86 mph heat...he just won't. And Montgomery could be a mid-rotation guy but is more likely back end. Also worth noting the rotation for the most part is old/aging. Nobody in the rotation has "upside" anymore. I know there are 29 other teams out there, but they're going to spend big on one or two more big players and if they fail there, sign a ton of good supporting/role players. The point is that they have the money to keep a 90-95 win team for a few years if they want to. The fact that some of their trades and vets are making the window look a bit shorter may make them break the bank one or two more times. Sorry if it sounded like Bryce Harper was a guaranteed signing, but they probably have $50 million available per year for the next 3-4 years and more after that. If it's not Harper or Darvish, they will get some of the higher-end free agents even if those guys are not "worth it" in the long run. Other teams also have that available, but just due to the landscape of some of the bigger markets right now, the Cubs won't be competing against that many teams. The Phillies may be a huge player in all of this and the Yankees will be there, of course.

I'm definitely in agreement that the Cubs have weakened themselves a bit, but I think the rumors of their demise are a bit overblown. They can sign Darvish and/or Harper (next offseason) and also probably keep Davis. I think that's going to be their plan. I think their payroll will allow for that as guys like Zobrist come off in 2 years and Lester/Quintana after that. They'll probably turn into the Detroit Tigers with 6 guys making $20+ million and just pray they can get something from their minors system, but I think going with that plan, it'll at least keep them good enough to win 90-95 games for the next 4-5 years unless their pitching implodes faster than expected. They can also pray to whichever god they have that either Heyward is the Gary Andersen of players and opts out this year because he's not earning it or roids up and opts out next year. I also think however much is possible that they either frontload or backload their pitcher contract this year and/or Harper next year. Backloading probably makes a bit more sense, but they might get creative to keep a little bit more room for 2019-2021 with their next huge contracts.

Assuming of course, that Brinson is the hitter we all hope he is... Even if he's not, you'd have to think he'll still at least have decent splits against lefties. True, though, we are still waiting on returns from him in the majors.

If the Brewers can make it work (Braun and/or Santana moving to 1B) and keep him, they can make Broxton very useful, a la Kike Hernandez. .251/.364/.829. Those are his splits against lefties. The issue is the logjam at CF. I'm sure all can and will play a corner spot, but given that you want Brinson to be more of an everyday player, you are now moving Broxton over a lot. Against lefties, if you could have Brinson, Broxton, Santana, and Braun all in the lineup, the Brewers will absolutely crush it. That lineup will win a lot of games. Against righties, Phillips, Thames, Brinson/Santana, Braun/Santana is still good. They can still do pretty well with platoons without Broxton, but it does make some sense to just keep him as a cheap, useful player. I think most teams will value Broxton in trades as that. A lot of GMs might be looking to give him the Austin Jackson Cleveland role, Kike Hernandez, Chris Young, etc. Not an incredible amount of value, but most GMs will give him some value with those platoon splits.

I'm not sure this is a bad strategy for big markets. Most of these teams still let the cream of the crop rise to get to their team (we have to go way back for Posey/MadBum and Belt/Crawford/Panik/etc. while not great were allowed to come up). The Red Sox are still good even though they've mostly done this. The Yankees went bizarro for a bit, trading for prospects, but generally sign big $ guys and trade prospects. The Nats went out and spent big $ on Scherzer, Werth, traded prospects at certain times (Giolito recently). Detroit did this for almost a decade and it's finally crumbling. The Dodgers have gotten smarter lately but they had/have a lot of aging players. Friedman probably extended their window by another 5 years. The Cubs are beginning to do this. The Rangers had a nice window doing this. Long story short, it's a good idea for big market teams. Sure, when it crashes, it crashes HARD...but when a big market team has several superstars, it makes sense to plug deficient spots on your roster with overpaid, $10-20 million players instead of hoping your farm system depth does the trick. Bonus points for the Giants: Most of their $ on older players has gone to aging pitchers. Zito and backside-of-career Cain/Lincecum resulted in a ton of dead $ but they also had the best pitching staff in baseball for a good part of that decade. All of these teams (see: Rangers, Tigers, Giants, all coming down from being the best teams in the league ~2010-2015) do have to sit on a garbage heap of contracts for 3 years while they rebuild, but in general, it pays off. Of course the Tigers and Rangers fell short several times but I'd say they had pretty good runs. One could argue it was a bad idea for the Giants to try to open the window up once more with Samardzjia, Cueto, etc. but "it's not my money" and it's not the worst idea in the world to see if you can win it once more with Posey and Bumgarner around the age of 30, give or take a few years. In hindsight, they were probably better off trading Bumgarner and Posey for a haul and seeing if they'd be ready to compete for titles again in 2020, but they'll just start that process 2 years later now. Heck, they're still getting a great draft pick this year to kick start the rebuild if they fail again in 2018 and/or 2019.

Also throw in the fact that they're tied to this overpaid team. I do think that teams would probably take on Cueto/Shark if they wanted to trade some of them, but they have Posey and Bumgarner at the back end of their primes - might as well try to see if you can cobble it together for 2 more years and then probably blow it all up. The problem for them is that their division is absolutely loaded.

I'd be all over that trade and I think Merrifield is a massive regression candidate. That trade would basically be Merrifield vs. Villar. Is Merrifield really this good and is Villar really that bad? The rest are spare/AAAA parts probably. I like Broxton but he's a platoon hitter on the wrong side of it. Skoglund has some potential but probably isn't going to be much more than a back-end starter.

The issue is that if the Royals are going to sign one of their free agents and try to win again in 2018, they'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face by trading Duffy. If they're rebuilding, some lower-cost everyday players aren't the best option. Broxton and Villar are likely taking a 75 win team to 78 wins. Maybe Villar returns to 2016 form and they win 80, but not very likely. If they're trading Duffy, it's probably because they're throwing in the towel for 2 years. The Soler/Davis trade was a bit different. At the time, the Royals thought that maybe they could do a bit to win now and a bit for the future to extend their window. They were hoping Soler would be ready to be an MLB player. He failed on both accounts as I don't think the future is too bring for him. Davis was also an impending free agent after 2017, so his value was not so high. Duffy, while $15 million seems like a lot, is a bargain if he pitches as well as he has the past 2 years. I think even if they traded him for more "win now" type players, Broxton and Villar isn't enough. Maybe Santana helps.

29 is young? I was thinking that too. It's not "young" but certainly younger than most free agents. Also, not sure who the Jimnenz is that was mentioned. Probably Ubaldo. Not sure if they totally compare, though.

29 is young? It's young enough for a guy that is known to be good. I'll wait for your 2 page post about the prime of pitchers, but if his elbow holds up, having him until age 33 isn't terrible. Back to the original point, it's a transaction board, but it is a bit of a tired trend. "Team A wants to rebuild, maybe they want to shed salary and give us their All Star caliber player for cheap spare parts." This one didn't use "shed salary" but if they're rebuilding, Villar and Broxton don't do a ton for them. If they're trading Duffy, it's for guys that won't hit the majors until 2019/2020 and it's for stud prospects. Most owners will ride their high payroll into the ground rather than just give guys with a high salary away. The Tigers waited it out with Verlander and got something substantial. If it doesn't work out, the rebuilding teams will just sit on the salaries because they won't be active in free agency so in 1-2 years their payroll will be 2017 Brewers-esque and almost clean as a whistle. Anyways, not shooting the messenger as I've posted dumb trade ideas as well, but salary dumps are few-and-far-between unless an owner is in financial trouble or some crazy situation like the BoSox/Dodgers deal several years ago.

I feel like it would take a heck of a lot more than the packages listed, even with Archer's noted issues. I've gotta think that the Rays would want prospects that are further back in the minors over Santana. If you're trading Archer, you're punting the next 2 seasons and suddenly you barely have control on Santana when you come out of that. I also do fear Archer a bit in the sense that he's thrown a lot of sliders. That arm may not have much left in it before it needs a visit from Dr. James Andrews.

I feel a bit less like the Dodgers would take him at this time. Question - if the Angels call in January after missing out on getting Upton back and Braun is OK with it (going back home, playing with Trout) and basically just offer to take Braun for an average prospect, do you do it? What if it was for Kole Calhoun, essentially halving Braun's contract the next 2 years and removing the 3rd year of his contract all while giving the Brewers an average, lefty 4th outfielder?

I think one key thing to note is that other than extensions to the newest crop (Hader, Phillips, Brinson, maybe Arcia, etc.) which wouldn't kick any different money than we'd have already been paying them until like 2022 or 2023, the current crop of guys hitting arbitration are almost all not guys I expect to sign a second contract for the Brewers. If they do, it's probably as a cheaper player that didn't completely pan out. Maybe Santana. Shaw will be 32, Anderson will be 33, Davies will be 30 but seems like a guy somebody will outbid us for, Santana to me seems like a guy that may plateau soon, Knebel is a complete wild card, Nelson obviously we don't know if he'll ever be the same. Villar is a massive wild card that may not even be around next year. Those guys are all 3-4 years out from free agency, but I'm not sure if any of them factor into our plans after their rookie/arbitration times are up. I think that somewhat plays into the aggressiveness of the front office. They may want to spend up on a few bigger $ guys because we won't need to keep internal FAs for 5+ years in all likelihood. Sure, maybe they bring back Shaw because for whatever reason, 3B is the one spot that still remains empty in 4 years, but I think the plan is just to backfill with a deep farm system in general. Don't make many major trades (unless an absolute ace is available and controllable) and use free agency to improve.

I know that somebody mentioned a .753 OPS from Lemaheiu, but his career road OPS is .670. He may be a ~.700-.750 guy at Miller Park at best, which is "just a guy" to me and somebody will overpay as noted by the next poster.

We've discussed this on RGM. You win some, you lose some. Stearns could have given up Lucroy earlier than he did. Waited it out and won. Braun was playing well and at the time, the Dodgers trade probably just looked something that slashed Braun's '19 and '20 salary from the books with the Puig wild card thrown in. It's possible that Puig and McCarthy wouldn't have recovered their value in Milwaukee as they just did in 2017. The no trade thing is an issue, but it's possible that Stearns can still shed a year or two of the salary if they really need to or maybe flip him before 2019 for an overpaid, older back-end starting pitcher or infielder that fits our needs better while they other team could use a DH. Stearns has timed almost every trade perfectly and for all we know, the Dodgers jobbed him at the deadline in 2016 (we were likely only talking to 1-2 teams about Braun given his trade constraints). For those reasons, I'm not losing sleep over it. He seems to hold out for maximum value (Boston/SF/Rangers trades) and has walked away with a steal every time. The downside of doing that is every once in a while you hold off too long on a different trade that backfires. That's how it goes. Maybe he could have just done McCarthy/Puig and called it a day but thought he could get more and the Dodgers just hung up the phone at 11:30 PM on deadline night.

Do you have a link to anything that indicates this? Not to question your credibility, but I've just never heard that to be the case. I'll try to find the article that specifically says the Dodgers waited too long and the clock ran out, but this one notes that it got down to "the final prospect" in the trade discussions. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2663513-ryan-braun-was-reportedly-almost-traded-to-dodgers-for-yasiel-puig But like I said, I am 99% sure I had read that the Brewers were waiting to hear back and the Dodgers never got back to them. One could also say that Stearns should have just taken a lesser deal, but for all we know, the prospects could have been non-impact guys making the trade even less appealing back then.

I am not a Braun pessimist/hater and would've taken the trade, but I'm also not ribbing the Brewers in hindsight. I liked Puig as the wild card throw-in. The Dodgers are the ones that backed out, so whatever.

Great to have CHL over here now. Regards, Kerb.

Don't totally disagree, but context is necessary here. 1. He suggested inflating the yearly value for only 2 years of Cozart. 2/$40 softens the blow if Cozart busts. 2. Cozart does seem to have figured something out at this point of his career. He came out guns-ablaze in 2016 as well and then struggled after injury. I'm not willing to jump on board, but he's definitely more trustworthy than Hernan Perez. 3. Hosmer has also blossomed at this point of his career. I'm not a fan of signing him either, but he does give you an upgrade over the Thames/Aguilar platoon. A more consistent bat, only one roster spot. I'm not really a fan of the value of any of those contracts, but I think it's a bit disingenuous to paint Hosmer/Cozart in those lights. That said, I think your point is effective because I'd rather keep much less of downgrades at those positions and funnel all of our money into overpaying to improve pitching and maybe a 2B stopgap.

I'm not necessarily against spending the money on Hosmer/Cozart, but the pitching still isn't there and that lineup, while the defense is good, still probably isn't good enough. If we're going big in the "I know we're overpaying" market, give me Darvish (yeah, unlikely with market) or Arrieta at like 5/$175. The Diamondbacks stuck their necks out with Greinke on a deal like that that basically dominates their payroll while they have a bunch of arby/pre-arby players with a fairly low budget and it seems to have paid off. And yes, I think Arrieta is not anywhere close to 2015 Arrieta. I'd still consider doing something like that. Spend big for an elite player and pray that he's that or a notch short of it. Either that or do the same next year with Keuchel, etc. on the market.

That's absurd. Every one of those players is immensely talented and has a high percentage chance of getting better. The question would be will any/all take a step back first. For all 5 to stagnate or regress next year would be incredibly unlucky. Arcia and Santana could improve, but it's also possible that Santana has hit his peak. Hader doesn't have a changeup. If he gets one, he could be a dominant pitcher. If not, he's either the reliever he already is or he's a 4 inning starter. Phillips strikes out 30+% of the time and Brinson will be a rookie and I wouldn't be shocked if his production ended up being in Broxton's territory for his first year.

I'd absolutely trade Knebel for a haul as you mentioned and then spend $30 million this season on relief pitching.