bill hAll Star

That is probably not a fair trade. Would you give up Khris Davis and Domingo Santana for Tom Koehler?

Peralta's control time is starting to run down. 3 more years and they'll get a little bit more expensive. If he ever figures out how to get lefties out he'll be good, but he is likely just a low-level starter that if things go wrong is a replacement-level pitcher. I'd take anything I can get, because he could have to go in for TJ surgery at any time soon and/or never figure it out. Could we wait it out a year or two and see if he becomes a stud pitcher? Sure, but all you get out of that is improved trade value (which simultaneously diminishes as his control years fade). Let's say he improves to a very good #2 pitcher - he's still an incredible risk to try to re-sign at the end of these 3 years. All of this risk assessment says trade now if a good deal is offered. The reward down the road is unlikely and not that great.

I like Lamb. Even if he's as some say, 10-15 HR and good OBP he's a good lefty to have. Looking at his minors numbers and the fact that he's still pretty young, I think he could hit 20-25.

Sure, that is always true. The Cardinals have shown us this as well as the Rays, A's, etc. That is kind of dodging the question, though. If I am a small market, I must have brilliant management to win. If I am a larger payroll/market, I can win just by brute force given that more money equates to more success. I may dig myself a hole, but I have a good chance to be generally successful over a period of time if I just have a bunch of money to spend. Outside of the steal of a trade for Miggy, I think the Tigers have been foolish in a lot of their MLB moves. Yet they've been to several World Series and have been generally successful over the past decade because they've been able to get overpaid, yet productive guys like keeping Miggy, V-Mart, Fielder, Hunter, etc. Nobody's saying that other factors like coaching, management, etc. don't factor in. However, payroll is a large factor in making things a lot easier, which is what we were debating.

This will save some time: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dont-be-fooled-by-baseballs-small-budget-success-stories/

Over the past 5-10 years, the Yankees and Red Sox have made it a lot in the mega/super mega-rich. The Dodgers have been in the playoffs a ton. Rangers, Tigers, Giants, Nats are in the semi-rich and often make it. The Cards, A's, and Rays are the obvious outliers with their success/payroll ratio with KC and Pittsburgh asking to join that group. Houston and the Cubs will be back up in the top 10 in payroll soon enough.

This point is very important. Given that salary is not distributed evenly saying a top 3, top 5, top 10 payroll is fine for quick & dirty purposes but doesn't really tell you much outside of a general range within league context. Looking at the 2015 opening day payrolls the mean payroll was approximately 125 million with a standard deviation of about 45 million. With that in mind the best way to group teams based on opening day payroll for 2015 would be as such... 3+ Standard Deviations above mean (Super Duper Mega Rich) (LAD $273) 2+ Standard Deviations above mean (Super Mega Rich) (NYY $219) 1+ Standard Deviations above mean (Mega Rich) (BOS $187, DET $174, SFG $173) 0-1 Standard Deviations above mean (Rich) (WAS $165, LAA $151, TEX $142, PHI $136) 0-1 Standard Deviations below mean (Status Quo) (TOR $122, STL $121, SEA $120, CHN $119, CIN $117, CHA $115, KCR $114, BAL $110, MIN $109, MIL $105, COL $102, NYM $101, SDP $101, ATL $98, ARI $92, PIT $88, CLE $86, OAK $86) 1+ Standard Deviations below mean (Poor) (TBR $76, HOU $71, MIA $68) With those groupings established, 3 of the 9 teams in the rich & above brackets (33%) qualified for postseason play, 6 of the 18 teams in the status quo (33%) qualified for postseason play and 1 of the 3 poor teams (33%) qualified for postseason play. You've done all of this nice analysis and then you took it and based your conclusion on a 1 season sample.

I'd imagine if the Brewers would assume they can take on a good risk/reward with Lee, they will fit that salary in with or without Garza. If Garza is the deterrent, now you're probably trading away a prospect or two to rid yourself of Garza's salary - just to take the risk on Lee. Uhhhh, yeah, no.

You can win with a small payroll - fact. Your chances are lower. Most years, the majority of playoff teams come from the top half of league payroll. Sure, the Astros and Cubs have middling/low payrolls right now and made it in, but they will be top 10 payrolls within 2 years. When the Brewers made it in as a Cubs/Astros-esque team, they had to sell their souls to get Greinke/Sabathia. They could have gone the Rays route assuming they had excellent talent evaluation and hoped if they made it 5 times in 7 years that they'd luck out once, but they went the route of taking their only chance to get elite players to maybe get them through in their 2 chances. Cubs and Astros fans can be certain that they will have playoff teams for probably 5-8 of the next 10 years.

Everyone knows the Phillies have been foolish lately waiting to tear their roster down and that the Cubs were foolish at the back end of their Soriano/Ramirez/Zambrano run. The Phillies still won a title. The Cubs are still coming out of choosing to take a long-form rebuild with the ability to keep all of their superstar players and buy Jon Lester and other supporting pieces.

If there are 10 "big spenders" in the league, let's say 7 or 8 of them are always "getting it right" whereas 2-3 of them randomly mess up and get Sandoval/Ramirez and crash and burn. The Brewers still have to beat the 7 or 8 teams that have spent big bucks on current, excellent players. Maybe last year it was the Cubs and Yankees...the next year it may be the Red Sox and Rangers. Percentages tell you that not every team that throws a bunch of money at players will have it work - and the percentages keep getting "worse" for the big-dollar players...but it's still a competitive disadvantage.

Totally agree that high payroll allows a longer window of success and better ability to bounce back. It's silly to point at some teams where it has crashed and burned to disagree with that statement. It can crash and burn for 5 larger market teams/year, but they can all come out of the doldrums more quickly. Even big-market teams like the Cubs can see this advantage. They just broke out of their extended slump from their own hole that they dug by being "smart" and having a bunch of cost controlled players. By the end of the year, they already had a higher payroll than the Brewers opened 2015 with. The Brewers were still "going for it" with one of their largest payrolls in history and a team that is just in their infancy of opening up a long contention window had a higher payroll. Just imagine what it will be when Bryant, Arrieta, Soler, Russell, Schwarber, etc. all get their "buy out of free agency" or 2nd contract and they dump a pile of money in front of another FA pitcher. They'll suddenly be over $200 or $250 million. Imagine if the Brewers were able to hang on to Sabathia, Fielder, and just signed a Greinke-esque pitcher instead of having to dump a bunch of prospects for Greinke...or even if they just got to keep Greinke. Sure, eventually some of these big $ players have crumbled to injury, but the Brewers' window would have been open much longer (or they'd at least have given themselves 1-2 extra playoff chances). They'd still have to "pay for it" someday down the road, but the only advantage the Brewers have right now over the Cubs in 2011 or 2012 when they finally gave up on winning in the current timeframe is that the Brewers have less of a payroll burden to worry about. The Cubs chose to take 3-4 years to rebuild, but a big market team could just build things back up in a year or two if they so chose.

He's been on track to be a AAAA player his entire career, starting from A ball. He had a nice stint to start with the Red Sox (as stated above), therefore he got a ton of attention.

He's been on track to be a AAAA player his entire career, starting from A ball. He had a nice stint to start with the Red Sox (as stated above), therefore he got a ton of attention.

He's been on track to be a AAAA player his entire career, starting from A ball. He had a nice stint to start with the Red Sox (as stated above), therefore he got a ton of attention.

If they're still doing PEDs, they're not doing the same ones that they used to. 2015 league-wide OPS: .730 (2014 was .706) 2010 was .734 2005 was .754 2000 was .792 Actually, you may be on to something just recently. The league OPS was continuing its decline up through 2014 and finally took a bounce back up. Probably just a shift in philosophies, but it finally bounced back up just a little bit.

Not expecting him to reach his enormous potential anymore - but I do agree a good guy to give a chance to and maybe deal later on. He probably will not play 3B because he is terrible at that and also pretty bad at 1B.

Park factor factored in, the O's probably just picked up their Khris Davis (Trumbo). Very similar production if both allowed to hit in hitter's parks.

The Sox just don't have a need right now at C or 1B. Swihart looked good in the 2nd half last year and too many MLB-caliber bats to not have to push one of them to 1B.

Villar to 2B and Perez playing 3B vs. LHP is how I'd go. Though it's still laughable to me how last year they were going to play Scooter full time and ended up giving him one start all year against a LHP. Gennett destroyed LHP in his stint in AAA last year, and that apparently meant nothing. He's got a massive sample size of not hitting lefties well. I'm OK with this. Colorado Springs can do crazy things to small sample sizes.

I'm not sure about his defense, but I think the D-Backs are probably happy with Wellington Castillo right now.

I'm not sure Boston has much of a fit for Lind, given that Ortiz has one more year at DH and they'll find someone else at 1B out of their swath of MLB caliber bats. Seems somewhat fair, maybe a bit too much coming in from Boston. Again, no reason to dump Garza now unless Mark A. really wants to pay back his investment group right now.

I come down on both sides with Villar. I like his buy-low potential, but he'll get plenty of reps at 2B/SS/3B. If they want to bring in a "starting" 3B, I don't think anyone they get is going to be that good. Given that Scooter needs a platoon-mate, Segura has minimal upside left, and the 3B will not be that exciting - Villar will get his ABs. Gomez platooned for awhile and was just fine.

^Exactly. Garza looked solid at age 29 as well, which is just before the Brewers signed him. Zimmermann does not seem like a pitcher that's going to age incredibly well. At the very least, he's going to a division with the DH and he does not get garbage lineups of his old division in 2014 and mostly 2015 (Mets improved late) in cavernous parks.

Not a huge fan of Zimmermann for big $ but it does seem to be a short deal. Tigers are going to be the worst team in baseball by a wide margin in 2-3 years.