bill hAll Star

No way I want Chisenhall. He's going to be a free agent after 2017. This is an exact example of where this board needs to stop panicking about the near-term position depth. If collectively it were the GM, it would be left with no Santana and a mediocre 3B that is probably going to skip town or get overpaid by the time we care about competing again. I'd honestly prefer signing Yuni Betancourt to play 3B for 2 years (since it does not matter - we have no chance to compete), keeping Santana, and attempting to sign Chisenhall in 2018.

Why not both Garza and Chacin? Let Chacin start out of middle relief. 4 reasons (at least) not to dump Garza yet: 1. Garza has once been valuable enough to sign a $50 million dollar deal. Maybe he gets back there and can be dealt. 2. The Brewers don't have a ton of high upside players ready to start in the majors right now. While I'd like to give a handful a try, I'm not in a rush to see Wagner, Cravy, even Jungmann, maybe Davies go. Jungmann is a fringe MLB guy, Davies is hopefully a long-term #4/#5, Cravy/Wagner are probably not MLB guys. Lopez I'd like to see, but there will be plenty of injuries and openings for him (see below). We'll also be making trades. The first sign of Peralta pitching well means he should be dealt away. 3. No need to tax the young pitchers in the majors. Garza is an extra arm to cover some MLB time (Chacin can fit in as well). Somebody is going to be a horrendous failure. If so, Garza is another "buy low" target already on the team to try to eat innings. Also, this keeps guys that we may think are future pieces hitting arbitration earlier. 4. If Garza is a horrendous, it helps our draft pick. Then you cut him next year.

Next step in this process is to pick up 1 or 2 reclamation project relievers at 1 year, $2 million or something in that ballpark. Ship them off at the deadline if they're able to put up mirage save numbers. Don't give a guy like Jeffress or another pre-arby guy the job because all it will do is jack up their arby $. It is possible that none of these guys in the K-Rod trade or the "next up reclamation project" trade get to the majors or provide excitement beyond that of Yadiel Rivera...but basically you're putting 2-3 extra Yadiel Riveras in the system and the total cost is $10 million less than what you'd have paid just keeping K-Rod for 2 years. Maybe one of those Yadiel Riveras magically learns to hit and at the worst, you've got some guys that can play MLB defense in your system if 2-3 guys at a certain position get hurt.

He's not exciting. He's the 11th ranked prospect in what is arguably the worst system in baseball. Maybe the PTBNL will help make this trade a bit more exciting, but losing his salary is probably the best thing for the club, as well as clearing a roster spot and simply letting our young guys play. Moving the salary is fine and dandy but Krod really isn't blocking too much. He's a closer. They pitch about 60 times, maybe, on a bad ball club. I really hope the PTBNL is something of use because I would toss money down that this Betancourt doesn't sniff the majors. You've hit the nail on the head. This is exactly why he had minimal trade value around the league. He's a "closer" that is about as good as 40-50 other relievers but happened to pitch in the 9th inning. No reason to keep him around and I doubt his value was getting any higher save for the fact that his "money owed" goes down every day from here on out. Let's assume we'd never get a better offer for K-Rod and neither Betancourt nor PTBNL sniff the majors -- well, that's $15ish million that Mark A. can spend elsewhere. K-Rod was not going to take the Brewers anywhere over the next 2 years.

That lineup doesn't excite me much too much unless we have a star-studded pitching staff, which we will not have. Best-case scenario (read: extremely unlikely) is that you have 2, maybe 3 All Star caliber players in Braun, Lucroy, and one of the younger guys. I don't see any ace pitchers in the near future and you're relying on a bunch of young guys to be good right away. I don't think Reed will be ready to be that good of a hitter right away. Somebody's going to get hurt and we have minimal depth ready to roll beyond that lineup. Likely-case scenario is you have 3 borderline All Star caliber hitters, injuries with no depth behind those guys, and you're going to start paying both Braun and Lucroy $20 million/each annually to get worse and worse from 2018 to 2021 while your young core is improving. I also doubt Lucroy just takes an extension unless he really doubts his abilities. He probably wants to play it out until free agency - then you have the fear of getting nothing other than the draft pick for him or the smaller chance that injuries begin to derail his career or he already starts to decline at an earlier age.

Adding to the above thoughts, you can give guys innings/a tryout in the middle innings. Let some of your assumed lower tier prospects throw the 4th-8th if Garza gets rocked. I'm not so tied to Peralta anymore. He doesn't seem like he's going to be a higher-end rotation guy. As soon as he starts pitching well (unless he magically starts throwing like an ace and it somehow seems sustainable - yes, basically not going to happen), he should be dealt, freeing up a spot.

So you're probably going to deplete the depth at 2-3 other positions in your farm system that you've just been building up to get a guy that is just a tick above Adam Lind? Somebody that we can't really give a supporting cast to (due to what is going out in this trade) so that he can be on a ~4 year, $85 million deal in 2018 when things get going again...pass. We can just find our own Freeman in a trade or draft in the meantime.

The problem is that the strategy seems to be, "plug this guy in at 1B, plug this guy in at C, plug this guy in at SS, plug this guy in at LF, etc. etc. and we're all set!" The issue is that in the pipeline, players end up being overrated by their home fans, getting injuries, busting, etc. On top of that, you may get Freeman in his prime, but now you have to worry about Braun or Lucroy (or whichever other supporting cast members you bring in) falling off a cliff in this window. You have to have perfect luck/planning to get all of those prime windows to join up. I know that most are not advocating this as the "must play" winning strategy to go out and have Freeman plugged in at 1B, but we need to have a mass wave of players ready to play and waiting in the AA/AAA wings in a few years. Dump 4 prospects out for Freeman, you are now lessening the chances that he has any sort of supporting cast. Sure, you can say, "but we have Phillips in CF, so we're set there" and so on, so forth...but there will be busts. Give me a wave of 20-30 exciting or valuable players in 2018. I'd rather have a Cardinals (best case) or Rays type scenario where no matter who we lose to attrition, free agency, injury...there is a positive WAR guy ready to come up. When we were in a competitive window, I'm OK shortening the farm system to fill a hole, but not now.

Freeman is signed through 2021 and just turned 26. Trading for him wouldn't be about 2016, though he would help no doubt. He would be a third cornerstone player to go with Phillips and Arcia. If Lara, Taylor, and two arms won't do it, then how about Santana, Lara or Clark and any one arm not named Lopez or Hader? He might get us to 75 wins all the way through 2021. I like Freeman, but he is not that good. His offensive numbers are barely better than Adam Lind's. Give him the benefit of the doubt for not getting to platoon as much and playing in a slightly tougher park, but it's going to cost way too much to get him - and he'll have no supporting cast when (we hope) the Cards/Pirates/Cubs are actually beatable in a few years.

This is exactly the guy we need to get to 75 wins.

Depends if the Blue Jays want Peralta to be in their rotation. Stroman, Dickey, Estrada (nearing a deal) are locks. I'd imagine they were planning on Hutchison and Sanchez (maybe?) as their 4/5. Depends on if they think Peralta is better than those 2, if they want depth, or if they wanted to go more "high end" than Peralta.

I think this trade signals that the Braves are prepping for 2017 or 2018 and I doubt Lucroy fits into those plans anymore. Aybar has been a 3.5-4 WAR guy a lot (and recently). I'm not sure Simmons could have a better defensive season than this one, so maybe his stock was at its highest. Aybar is only around for 1 more year, but they could flip him at the deadline if they so choose for more value or they could sign him to continue along as a stopgap until Ozhaino Albies is ready. The Braves also have an elite 18-year-old prospect at SS (Ozhaino Albies), mentioned above. I like this trade on their side. Not that the Angels completely failed on it, but the Braves will have an ace-caliber pitcher for 6 years, their young SS, and maybe Ellis all for 6 years starting around 2018 when they want to be good again.

I don't necessarily agree with that theory, but it's not a terrible idea and most teams tend to feel they need that. In which case, trade K-Rod with high stock, buy low on an experienced player like the Cubs did with Kevin Gregg or the Astros did with Brandon Lyon.

I really hope it doesn't take 4 years to get competitive. That is insane to me. There is enough young arms in this organization, many in which are close to the majors for it not to take that long. I can understand sucking next year because of pulling off a lot of these trades will leave holes that maybe we cannot fill but those holes should be filled sooner than four seasons from now. C - Montero 1B - Rizzo 2B - Castro/Baez SS - Russell 3B - Bryant LF - Schwarber CF - ? RF - Soler Lester, Arrieta, and a dump truck full of money to sign more C - Cervelli 1B - (?) 2B - Walker SS - Kang 3B - Harrison LF - Marte CF - McCutchen RF - Polanco Cole, Tallion, Liriano, A bunch of other good prospects, a good pitching philosophy The Cards - no need to list anything other than they have 1,000 guys in the minors that will go on to be All Stars. Long story short, we're not going to be fighting back over .500 until 2018 realistically. Any sort of quick rebuild would be shortsighted. I'm not sure what all of these "young arms" are. Sure, the outlook looks pretty nice, but I wouldn't just call the rebuild overwith and assume we have a Rays/Mets/Cardinals type of inflow of young pitchers ready to dominate. We're not even close to that. Nelson is a nice mid-rotation guy, Lopez has potential, Hader has potential, Davies is a nice long-term #5 type guy, Jungmann might be a low-end rotation guy but I still don't believe that...I know there are some lower-end minors guys that I'm not listing, but I'm not expecting a dominant rotation here. There is still a lot more work to do.

Here we go again. Murphy is a nice B-level major league player that is relatively young. He's a decent hitter and I'd assume a good defensive catcher. If this rebuild takes 3 years and the Brewers aren't competitive until the 4th year...you really think they can't find a young prospect in the meantime through a trade or draft? I'll just sign my 28 year old version of Murphy if all else fails in 2018 or 2019. Murphy is only signed through 2020, which seems silly to worry about, but you'll basically have him on a 2-year contract when your hopeful extended window of contention begins. Shoot for the stars. You can find a decent vet like the Cubs did with Miguel Montero to plug holes pretty easily if you completely strike out. I'll bet they can draft one or find one in a trade soon. No reason to go "oh no, I'm terrified that we won't have a league average catcher in 2019, so let's panic and get one right now." The Twins kind of did this with Kurt Suzuki. They initially signed him as a cheap vet to fill some rebuilding years, he had a lucky BABIP year, and they signed him to a very regrettable extension that is basically a pile of burning money now that they are ready to contend again.

I'm assuming that Cleveland is not interested in just taking on Garza's salary. Bauer has his issues but he's in that rotation. Carrasco is in. Kluber. Anderson and Tomlin have been decent. Salazar probably is in there. Long story short, why would Cleveland take on 2 (maybe 3) years at $14 million/year for a guy that probably doesn't crack their rotation? In terms of Johnson - I don't know if I'd make the trade on the Brewers' side either. You can get a 0 WAR (and declining) player anywhere if you want. I'm sure Casey McGehee (a 2 year older clone of Johnson) is going to be available. Saving $7.5 million in theory is nice, but I'd rather just pay Garza and see if he can flash his old self (Johnson has never had positive value save for a lucky BABIP season, Garza has had plenty of valuable seasons) and be traded for more than just Chris Johnson. EDIT: In terms of opening a rotation spot for somebody like Lopez - I'd rather just let those guys play middle relief. Lopez, as a good prospect, should probably start. Lower ceiling guys like Jungmann, Cravy, or Peralta at this point can pitch the middle innings as we're getting smoked as a 70-win team. They can have their tryout there. Not much harm being done. Let them pitch 5 innings in relief if Garza keeps getting rocked early in the game.

Also, when you get rid of productive players like Lind, Lucroy, or K-Rod for prospects, you could replace their salary with buy low players right now or shrewd, younger contracts that are a bit more costly in the 2017ish area. Win-win. Get your prospects for current assets and add some later. Also, if Lind, K-Rod, and Luc are gone, you can start eating salary for assets. Maybe somebody is dying to get rid of their Bronson Arroyo (last year) contract. Sure, we'll take him if you give us a prospect. To add, you can mix vets/young players when we compete again in 2018. It's why I keep reiterating that I don't care about filling the 3B or C voids right this very second. If we still don't have a 3B prospect ready in 2018 - payroll could be down at $50 million. Go out and buy somebody's overpaid, yet still productive 3B. Look at the Cubs. They have their baby boom but they still went out and got Montero, had Coghlan develop as a buy-low player, Fowler isn't extremely young, older pitchers, etc. Payroll will be so low when you build organically through the minors, that you can overspend on some FAs or trade targets to fill your holes. Looking to the extreme long-term build, let's say we have a Cubs-esque crop of players coming up in 2018. Those guys will all have to get paid in 2022ish-2024 through higher arby (pending FA buyout deals). If you're smart, you trade a handful away as a smaller market and keep stocking the minors but keep a few that you want. You'll have a continuous cycle of mix of vets/young players. There is just no point of holding your assets as you go into this rebuild. Sell them off. If not, you're just wasting a year or two (and value) like the Phillies did. It will just take that much longer until you are ready to contend again.

Given that we're trading half of the rest of the team's veterans, I'd have been fine with signing Park, trading Lucroy soon, and depending on Park and the team's development...trade him. Heck, if you do that, if you are really dying to get Lucroy back, offer him a boat load of cash to come back after his current deal runs out at that point (I am not actually endorsing this).

No worries - you'll note that I am the original poster on this thread that went out of character saying we should eat the contract of Joe Mauer to bring back more value in a trade. I was throwing something a bit ridiculous out there as well, but I will say, in general, we don't need to fill 3B or catcher right now. Just restock the farm system and those positions will eventually get figured out.

If you can paint a scenario where the Brewers are legitimate contenders with the Cubs, Pirates, and Cardinals (heck, the Reds are also rebuilding) before 2018, without: -Warren Buffet buying the team and boosting payroll to 400 million -Something that mortgages the entire farm system to compete in 2016 Then catcher does not really matter right now. We have 3 years to draft, trade for, sign, etc. a new catcher. If the rest of the Brewers roster looks great in 2018 or 2019, we can overpay the most expensive catcher on the market. Heck, I'll bet that whomever bought Lucroy in 2018 will possibly be having buyer's remorse by 2019 and we can give up a modest prospect and eat his contract to have him come back.

Give me anybody in the minors with a pulse/potential instead of Plouffe in the deal. The Brewers' team is going to be terrible the next few years, so go out and get some buy-low 3B candidates to fill the void.

Beating a dead horse - why do we need Plouffe? He's going to play 3B for a 65 win team and then be gone, or we're just going to be looking to trade him again immediately after we've acquired him in your deal here.

Why not just take the prospects straight from the Twins instead of worrying about Plouffe being in a Brewer uniform for a few months simply to trade him again?

I was always waiting out Brad Miller to fill out his potential. It feels like all of the lefty, middle-infielders with high hopes that Seattle has pushed out recently have been spectacular busts. I've always wondered if they would have fared differently in different parks. Middle infield guys that can hit the ball well but don't have the raw power to hit it out of Safeco (and O.co and Anaheim) regularly. The Trop isn't an incredible amount better, but Ackley already seemed to be looking better in a platoon at Yankee Stadium. This is what I'll be following. Franklin (switch) had a lower ceiling and is also in TB with a "TBD" decision on that due to injury last year.

Sure, I'll agree that you want to have every position to be buy-low guys or prospects. That said, I wouldn't rush to fill a spot if you don't have one. I like what the Cubs did with a buy-low formerly highly ranted prospect of Luis Valbuena. Things like that are a good idea, but I wouldn't waste time or value on a position if there isn't an immediate filling of a spot.