HiAndTight

That's an awesome draft. Now in the 4th round, get that edge from Michigan, and then grab a RB in there and that's an awesome draft in MY opinion. If guys fall...like Oliver, it gets even better. Awesome breakdown. I love the guys you named. Not only good fits and players at positions of need, but they'll likely be among the best players available. Chase Winovich is the player who's name I couldn't recall. He's compared to a more physical but less agile and athletic TJ Watt. He was a more productive edge player for Michigan and he ran a 4.59 at his pro day and could be one of the steals of the draft. If they could manage to get him in the 4th...or even in the 3rd, that'd be a great get. We got two solid pass rushers this free agent period, we need to just keep pilling them up. We need 5-6 GOOD pass rushers. Assuming the Smiths fit that, we've got Clark, the two FA's and then MAYBE Daniels if he's healthy and the same could be said if we brought back Wilkerson(unless he signed and I missed it). I do know this, I PRAY we are NOT counting on Kyler Fackrell to be one of our top 3, hopefully even 4 rotational edge rushers. He's like the utility guy who put up a .325 season with a .450 BABIP. It's just not sustainable. He doesn't beat his guy often at ALL. He gets his sacks peeling off when the QB starts scrambling......I'd honestly go back to Reggie Gilbert than him. And our 3rd edge rusher is going to get a lot of run with ZaDarius Smith moving over the guard. Plus we need to keep them fresh. Amazing how much better an average secondary can look with a great defensive front! The Jets proved that when they had Leonard Williams, Mo Wilkerson and Sheldon Richardson starting together.

Little is a guy that is going in the 3rd and even 4th rounds of some mock drafts. Definitely not a fan of him there. Harry is a nice player, but he's a physical guy who doesn't create much separation. He's a good player and worthy of going in that spot, but we have enough of those guys. I'd rather reach for Campbell at 37 than take a guy who is a poor mans Adams. He is not a replacement for Cobb as he's not quick in and out of breaks. A good WR'er, but I'd prefer a more polished route runner with better quickness. And sorry to do this because I think your projected trade makes sense. I even think the Packers could use that 37 to trade back into the 1st round, but I do NOT want Burns. He's soft and after the spectacle he made of his interview with the Packers, he'd have to fall to our first pick in the 3rd round for us to take him. I think he got pissy and actually got up and walked out because the Packers played some of his lowlights and asked questions that he didn't like. Question that...at least according to his agent who was pissed at him, were not the questions Dez got or questions about being Gay or out of line. If we're going 17/30/37, I like Hock if he's there, I like the idea of Simmons of Miss State if the top 2 TE's are gone and we didn't get one prior and at 37 BPA, preferably in the secondary. If it's a good corner, they can move guys like Jackson around and he can play safety along with Williams, if it's a safety, all the better so we're not trying to make guys fit. Amos is a guy who can play either safety and Pettine's D calls for versatility in his safeties, so Adderly,Rapp, those guys make sense there. Ideally, Hock, Simmons, Campbell...in your proposal. Though if the Giants want to move up to get a QB and jump other teams, they're going to have to pay more than Jimmy Johnson's card says picks are worth. Not all picks are equal. If Lock, the guy they want, is available at 12, I'd be asking for next years 1st, the 17th pick and we'll send 'em a 4th round pick back. They have to overpay. That card doesn't account for rare situations. Like if you believe a player is your franchise QB and you badly need one like the Giants do.

Those people wouldn't know what the definition of the word "outlier" was then. They may believe it will end up being an outlier, but given that he's played one full season, I don't know how you can argue that season is an "outlier" in his MLB career. Of course, he also put up a pretty solid partial season in 2017. You need more than one point on the graph to create an outlier. At best if you want to use the 133 games he appeared in, many as a pinch hitter, he put up a .837 OPS, a .891 OPS and he's struggled for 21 games this season. Moreover, this isn't fantasy baseball. I've seen where you've wanted both Kimbrel AND Kuchel, you now want to dump the young guy we have for the next 4 years for a vet who had a career year that was basically equal to Aguilar's season last year.

Not an upgrade? 2017- 38 hr .270 .355 .529 .883 131 2018- 25 hr .243 .350 .458 .808 124 This year even better .313 .439 .1021 176 If we’re gonna ask for salary relief, they going to want bigger prospect package. They won’t want Thames and his salary. Smoak > Aguilar & diplan. And the three years before those his combined slash numbers looked like this; .216/.297/.403 Those were his prime years. If you cherry pick stats, you can really make them look however you want. Aguilar last year .274/.352/.539 134 and 35 HR's 108 RBI's. So Smoak has basically had one really good year and that's not as good as Aguilar's was last year with the bat. I'd rather stick with the young guy than add another 1B only player to this roster and in the process likely get rid of a lot of your payroll flexibility. I'd rather stick with Aguilar. I still believe he's going to turn it around and improve his offense.

You're making an enormous assumption that his new reported asking price is going to account for his first year being prorated. There's really no reason to believe that at this point. Nor is there much reason to believe he's going to backload money or that we'll be able to easily trade him in the future when nobody else has signed him and now you're backloading money and saying, "here, take him and give us something for him."

Really? That's certain? And I actually agree, how little do you think of Brewers fans that they don't know who this guy is? Your first sentence is right, the rest of your post couldn't be more wrong. They won't promote Hirura to time it with some home stretch. They didn't do it with Braun or others, they won't with him, but most Brewers fans know who he is, they can actually be excited about him even when the Brewers dont' suck and he very much is the type of prospect to get very excited about.

Why would we pigeon hole a pitcher like Rasmussen into the role of a reliever right now? You talk about aces, he's actually got the stuff to be an ace. And if they're ramping his pitch count up(I'm pretty encouraged by 50 pitches right now) he's the guy who ACTUALLY could be an ace. I think you're being really overly optimistic if you believe we'll have 3 TOR arms in this staff this year. It's been a loooong time since the Brewers have had that. I'm still pretty bullish on Burnes, Peralta was never likely going to be an ace(though I think he's better than he's shown thus far) and Woodruff could be a really solid #3 IMO. Burnes is the guy with the highest ceiling and that's probably not that of an ace. Though I'd be glad to be wrong.

Got it. I think people tend to underestimate how hard it is to actually get a guy with the ability to be an ace..and I've always said I believe there are several of those guys in every organization to actually get them up through the minors and to perform like an ace. Also, what is an "ace?" I view an ace as an elite pitcher. Not top 30, but top 10-15. Scherzer, Degrom....Thor if he listens to the trainers, Buehler now, Kershaw the last decade. Either way, I'll stand by what I said, we haven't produced an ace since Sheets and before that...what, Teddy Higura? But it's fun as hell to watch a guy like Rasmussen going out there and putting up great numbers and being able to get that pitch count up while sitting in the upper 90's.

Also, ANY Kirby updates would be appreciated. Between the two, I'm thrilled just to see one of them getting their stuff back and having some success, but...damn, it'd be nice if both could. I remember hearing how Kirby was Williams rehab partner and then had to undergo another procedure, but Taylor's been back for a couple years now. Is Kirby at least still throwing simulated games in extended spring?

Is this meant to be sarcasm or do you genuinely believe he's a future ace? I get the sarcasm part because he's still only in A ball and he's had a lot of arm issues and then you throw in the word "another," when I don't think we've developed an ace since Sheets and I can see it being sarcasm(plus...you don't always have the sunniest disposition on here when it comes to projecting future prospects). On the other hand, there's zero question with the stuff he's showing right now, he could be a future ace. So I'm curious if you were being totally serious.

I'm so late to this, it's ridiculous, but I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in here. A guy I knew pretty well was having trouble with his business. I had experience and he made me a pretty good offer to leave my job and come and WITH him to help get things going. There were supposed to be clear lines. He was clear from the start that he was way too easy as a boss, guys were taking advantage of him and he wanted me to handle one aspect of the business while he handled the other. I worked there for a year and I fired a few guys who were doing just stupid things on the job or at job sites, no call-no shows, etc..etc... He'd hire them back because they had families and he was just too nice. I ended up leaving...not because I didn't like the guy and I don't still count among my friends, but because we just didn't work well together. We had a fundamental difference of opinion. I don't mean to infer that the same type of issues occurred here OBVIOUSLY, however you can like a guy and just not believe the same things they do about how you're supposed to go about your job. So if the issue WAS at all CC, I'd imagine it was that the two had a difference of opinion, Johnson didn't love the way CC handled "his" staff and along with a litany of other reasons, perhaps the Reds offered him more of a say over how the pitchers would be deployed and with a young, unproven manager(I think we can safely count Counsell among the young but proven managers by now) it was just another reason. I can't imagine CC being difficult as a human being to work for, but I can easily envision a differeing of opinions on how to best run a pitching staff.

Both the ERA & the OPS against marks are being driven by the unsustainably high HR allowed number (in our case) & the unsustainably low HR allowed number (in the Reds case). Pretty much the entirety of the "our pitching sucks" argument comes down to HR allowed which is by far the flukiest element of pitching over a sample this small (still only 211 IP as a team). The most important thing you wrote relative to future results is "It's still April". If at the end of the year the Reds are still top 3 in all categories & we are still bottom 3 in all categories I'll drink a Budweiser Light. That is an awful, horrific thing to inflict on yourself. The truth is, the Reds were a darkhorse for a reason. They added some pitchers who have had really good stretches before. I'm sure you're right and the HR's will normalize, but I still think they've got a talented rotation. The very type that you'd expect to have some very good stretches.

Well, Sonny Gray is a guy who's always had a lot of talent, it was my understanding that he was pegged as a guy who just couldn't handle the media spotlight in NYC. Roark has been a good pitcher for a while. And I don't know Castillo other than having watched a little bit of him and seeing some nasty stuff. Looking at his stats, coupled with his stuff, he probably is a better pitching prospect that most of the guys we have. But again, we haven't had an easy series yet. We're facing some of the better lineup's in the game over and over. We also have the talent and we'll improve. Still...everyone who saw the gains some of our pitchers had made under Johnson, we had to be a little worried that the performance may dip without him.

Ok, we all know this was a great trade for the Brewers, even if the prospects were performing better, but mis-representing how well the other teams prospects are playing doesn't really strengthen the argument. If I said, "Yelich struck out 142 times last year in 157 games," that really wouldn't tell you anything about how well he played. Harrison HAS struck out this year. He's also hitting .333/.444 with an OPS over 1.000. And if Harrison ends up being as good as Yelich, we still win the deal. We wanted a player who was good now(We got a great one) they wanted players for the future. At this point, I don't care how well the prospects play. We did what we wanted to do. In fact, if Stearns keeps fleecing teams like this, it may hurt us in the future when we need to make a trade and nobody is willing....(I'm only about 5 pct serious here, but opted to go against the blue font as teams should probably be a little leery of dealing with Stearns).

Just to state that I'm not going back and doing an "told you so," or trying to call anyone out, I'll point out I was a big fan of Tyler Chatwood. I thought he was a pitcher who might be more aggressive outside of Coors, his stuff may play up more and I was hoping we'd sign him for like 3/30. So we're all wrong about these deals. Even the biggest Yelich supporters didn't think THIS is what was going to come out of his deal. But looking back, some of these posts are funny. The ones saying that it wasn't the right year to make these moves(Cain as well) because we didn't know if '17 was legit, how badly we overpaid, how none of the other 28 teams were willing to make these deals. Baseball's a funny game. I remember hearing who we gave up, and while I wanted Brinson traded...just because I thought he'd take a long time to get going,(and by the way Miami, PLEASE send the kid down to AAA for a couple months...you're just ruining whatever is left there right now) but I DID think that giving up Brinson and Diaz in particular was a lot. And this was after a game I was watching with my old man when Stanton was going for 60 HR's and I said to him that he might be the 3rd best OF'er on that team, so I was always a fan of Yelich. Turns out Harrison is the only one who looks good right now, the other two have looked awful, Brinson in particular and the Brewers have probably gotten one of the 2-3 best offensive seasons+ out of a player in franchise history and he's locked up through 2022. So no shots at anyone, Yelich wasn't THIS good when we traded for him, the prospects looked better at the time, but it's just funny how much your perspective can change in a short period of time. There were people who were angry we didn't use the same prospects to acquire Archer from TB. This game is fickle and apparently short of David Stearns, you're more likely to be wrong than you are right when predicting future success. I don't think as it stands either the Cain contract or the Yelich trade has a chance of looking bad the final year we have both under team control. This thread sure makes for some interesting reading....

No, there's a FAR greater difference between the first four(3 especially IMO) and Claudio, and I don't care what a small sample size for a left-handed specialist says. The other 4 pitchers are elite power arms who can get out both lefties and rights and can break a thin pane of glass with a baseball, not to mention almost all of Claudio's WAR comes from two years ago when he had a fluke year and put up a 2.8 WAR season. This also includes a year in which he posted a whip over 1.5. It's not close at all regardless of what one stat driven primarily by one year says. Also, when in tough spots, I'll take the guys who strike out 3 times as many people as Claudio does.

Red Sox not gonna add the payroll, they are at max tax now. They're one of the teams that have been pretty clear about that. Them, the Cubs and even the Yankees and Dodgers don't want to be repeat offenders with the luxury tax. If the Red Sox sign him, they will be over the tax again and as repeat offenders are paying 42 pct tax on his deal. That's probably got more to do with why they'd let a reliever like him go.

This is the same team that just re-signed Sale after he had concerns about his shoulder late last year and now has been awful this year with his velocity way down...so not sure I'd trust them when it comes to picking when a player is hitting a wall. Still, even if Kimbrel is losing some of his stuff, he could lose 2-3 MPH off his fastball and still be a dominant reliever.

Better than? He looked pretty good in the rotation two years ago. Last year he would have been a nice starter if his HR rate was down just a little bit even.

Joey also enrolled early for the spring semester last year, which used up his redshirt. So not only sitting out a year, but he only gets to play two. Really bad look. Have to think Wojo is out if he can't win in the tournament next year, or at least make it and put together a heck of a recruiting class. I really can't get excited for MUBB anymore. You sure that's how that works?

I saw he threw well. It's been a long time for Kirby. I wonder how long he's gonna keep going if he doesn't see results soon.

Everyone says this with the idea in mind that we take the best starting pitching prospects we've developed in a long time and move one or more of them to the pen. And then you have to hope that a soft tosser like Kuechel who gives up a ton of hits is going to just slide into your rotation.

Well, he could avoid that by just not coming out and pitching right away. Hopefully the Brewers would demand he throw a few innings in AAA before he pitched for us. But the three-year deal is a non-starter for me. The Brewers can build an incredible bullpen moving forward without wasting money on Craig Kimbrel for THREE years. I'm alright with it for one because of all the bad luck, but next year by the ASB we should have Wahl, Knebel, Jeffress, Hader, and who knows what young arms will be up and ready.

Since when have saves EVER been a good metric by which to evaluate a reliever, much less an entire pen? How about the games where we were down a run and the pen came in and the other team blew it open? I'm also not sure what you mean by "rigid" pitcher, but not sure it's important. Hate to break it to ya, but this has already happened. To the bullpen. That injury was Knebel. But lets look at the rest of the team. Grandal, that'd be a big blow. Won 96 games last year with Pina. 1st base? I like Aggie, I think if he can just stay calm and not jump at pitches, he's gonna be more than fine, but we have lots of options if we need to replace him. 2nd? Guess we'd have to get by on Dubon, Hiura, Perez(probably in reverse order there) as well as several other guys in the minors, a few of whom would likely get the call before our top prospect. SS-Well, Arca struggled all year last year, again, 96 wins. If he gets hurt, that'd sting, but light hitting, defensive SS's aren't hard to come by. 3rd base? We have Travis Shaw and then an older Travis Shaw already at 3rd. OF? Yelich-That's a season changer and you're not going to be able to trade for or acquire someone to make up for him anyway. Same with Cain. We expect Braun to go down, so you have Gamel and then Tyrone Taylor, Corey Ray and about 30 corner OF'ers who come available at the deadline. Point is, we're deep everywhere else. If we COULD get Kimbrel for 10 million, I think we'd be foolish not to. I highly doubt however Kimbrel would accept that. He seems to be hanging on to the quickly outdated FA system.

Both of these are somehow stated as facts, but are anything but. Unless you saw Giannis or LeBron say "I don't care about Harden," I don't know how you can make that type of statement. And saying if you put him on Golden State over Durant they'd get worse...is not really a strong argument. Durant is probably the best player in the NBA right now. Putting Giannis on Golden State would probably also make them a worse team right now. As for the link, the players vote touches on what the players think of Harden. Not one name was behind any of those quotes. Why go back to an article written without one single player putting his name behind any quotes from the All Star break instead of the recent players vote that favored Harden?