Thurston Fluff

There is a special place for BF fans to talk politics. That may be where this should go. https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/brewerfanpoliticalscene/general-discussion-f64/

If they close those loopholes do we still need a salary cap? It would be nice but a hard cap is going to be very messy and very well could mean a cancelled 2017 season. If the owners can get those loopholes closed it might mean the soft cap with enhanced revenue sharing could level the field enough to be relatively fair. This might be a good thing to be coming out now. It gives owners a reason to believe getting their house in order is a better option than demanding players give in on the one thing they are least likely to give in on.

If they close those loopholes do we still need a salary cap? It would be nice but a hard cap is going to be very messy and very well could mean a cancelled 2017 season. If the owners can get those loopholes closed it might mean the soft cap with enhanced revenue sharing could level the field enough to be relatively fair. This might be a good thing to be coming out now. It gives owners a reason to believe getting their house in order is a better option than demanding players give in on the one thing they are least likely to give in on.

To be fair it would have been a gesture of sportsmanship if the fans had thrown the ball inadvertently thrown into the stands back on the field.

Six man rotations are not totally normal these days. We'd need our starters to average seven regularly, not do it on occasion, for cost to the bullpen not outweigh the benefit to the starters. I think a six man rotation would be good if we did it all season and had six starters who could average 6-7 innings per start. That would limit each starter to 27 starts instead of 32 and limit the bullpen to 2-3 innings a game. I think as it is now we can go with a five man rotation and skip/push back a start for the starters here and there. The starters would still limit their innings and the bullpen wouldn't get overtaxed to do so.

Great. Now what about the past week?

I agree the offense has been the problem lately but the pitching was supposed to be the thing that could offset it. It hasn't. I think the six man rotation is because we have so many games in a row. The bullpen is only seven deep but they have managed to make it deeper with more creativity then ever. I think the biggest problem right now is the extra day off and only going five innings. Miz and Henderson were the only two to give us more than five inning in their last start. Henderson gave us the longest start with 6.1 innings. If they'd all be giving us 6 it'd be one thing. 6 as the high water mark quite another. If they get the extra day they need to be averaging more innings per start as a group.

It's hard to argue facts. I wonder if the way they play is because of who they have or who they have is because that's the way they want to play. I think he's wrong that it's harder for the team to get hot due to their style. We've seen them get hot as a team often enough to know they can. We've also seen them tear apart top end pitchers with their approach. It's not like they never do it. Just gonna take a hot streak and a little luck. Like it always did.

I thought the Dodgers would be the odds on favorite to win it regardless of who they, or we, got. I'd still think they were if we got Skubal they stood pat. That said, I thought the Brewers did enough to give themselves a legitimate chance to beat the odds. The Dodgers could only get so much better. They were always going to trot someone out with a good chance of going six innings with two or fewer runs. Now they probably added a 5% better chance of doing so. We boosted our chances of doing the same by a larger percentage by keeping our young arms fresher.

Whomever said that probably wasn't saying that at the time of the trade any more.

I don't think you're doing your argument any favors by claiming Frias is in the same category as Made.

Miz, Harrison and Henderson as your starting three with a more than capable Drohan, Gasser ready if necessary. Much more depth in the pitching staff as a whole. Coming into this playoff run having gotten the losing in the first round monkey off their back. I felt the team had a let down after finally winning a playoff series that partially contributed to their dismal showing. There's also the experience of knowing what it takes during the season to be ready for a longer playoff run. Which is why getting an innings eating starter plus two bullpen guys was such a big deal. The key was not finding players who could compete with other elite pitching staffs. It was making sure they were not burnt out come playoff time. This is not the 2025 Brewers team.

In a vacuum yes. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Prospects have a different value based on circumstances. Just like some teams prospects are more valuable as trade chips -the Dodgers for example- some prospects on a team have more value as a trade chip that other lesser rated prospects on that same team. I don't think the Brewers were interested in trading any of their blue chip prospects so I'll take the top 10 out of the equation. The Brewers outfield prospects are not as valauble to the Brewers as future players as their pitching or catching prospects. If the choice was to give up Dubanewicz and Dorchies or Ragsdale and Frias it would look like an easy choice to give up the former. But we'd also be giving up our number 4 and 5 pitching prospects. Both of whom will probably have are larger role on the 2028 tams and beyond than either Ragsdale or Frias would have. If you want to argue they could have got more for them fine. To do that you'd have to argue there was more out there that could have been had for those two. If you want to argue other teams paid less for more fine. But you'd have to argue there were better players available for the specific players the Brewers were willing to give up. If you want to argue we could have got more for them in the off season fine. But you'd also have to say they should have just not have tried to upgrade the rotation or get a left handed reliever at all. What you can't say is the Brewers left better options on the table for the players they were willing to give up. That would require them being entirely incompetent. I think we can all agree they are not.

I think the Cards will be more haunted by the guys we still have that are considered better than him. They still have a farm well behind ours after selling for a year and a half. The Cubs just gave up their top prospects just to try to catch up to what we were before the trades we made. One of our biggest rivals went all in to catch us now while the other had to sell to try to have a future anywhere close to what ours still is.

The Brewers went into the deadline needing bullpen help and an innings eating starter. It would have been nice to get a front line starter and/or a power bat. They got what they needed but are considered losers because they didn't get the cherry on top.

They emptied their farm and are at best as far behind the Dodgers as we are. This seems like an all in mover to win the division not win a World Series.

Top 20 in a farm system in the mid 20's. The cost for the Cubs is as much about what they didn't have to begin with. Further depleting an already weak system probably helps the Brewers more going forward than it helps the Cubs this year.

If you did then you wouldn't have paraphrased it incorrectly. I never once called him washed up or a has been. In a follow up post I clearly said he was a league average pitcher. How does that square with me believing he's washed up? My comments had less to do with him than it did with people's perception of players like him. Instead of reinterpreting what people say just accept they meant what they said.

That somebody was me. An accurate paraphrase of what I said would be he was a name people recognized which made the trade seem bigger than it was. If you're going to call my comment ridiculous at least get what I said correct.

I think he'd be a guy who could be used as an innings eater who would allow us to skip a start or two from some of the younger guys. We could use that. It would also give us a chance to see if Sproat can be a little more effective in relief. If he can turn into a Patrick type reliever it would be a nice boost going forward and another legit weapon in the playoffs. If not at least we'll know and we get the workload relief we'll probably need for the young pitchers to be effective in October.

Whatever he did last season in the playoffs has zero relevance to what can be expected out of him this year in the playoffs. Jeff Suppan won NLCS MVP. People see a name they recognize and that he has some success in the playoffs and think "needle mover!!!". The reality is he's a 35 year old pitcher with an ERA+ that says he's league average. That's not a bad move for the Cubs at all. They don't have a great farm system so this might have been the best they could realistically do without totally wiping out the system. It wouldn't have been a terrible move for the Brewers either. We could use a league average innings eater. It's also possible he does catch fire and help the Cubs make a deep playoff run. The same thing happened in 2006 with Jeff Suppan. But it isn't likely. Nor would it be worth trading for him based on it. My point is his name recognition and past playoff performance make him seem like a much bigger catch than he really is.

He did. It wasn't a major trade but it was a someone. He's a name people recognize. He had success once upon a time. He's a veteran with "playoff experience" so he's obviously going to do well in the playoffs again. If we were sellers and someone traded for Yelich people would be talking about how that team was willing to go for it by getting a needle mover.

The difference isn't risk aversion. It's what risk looks like in each organization is different. The Dodgers can lose every prospect and still not have to worry about how they'll field a winning team down the road. They don't have to worry about maintaining fan interest by having a homegrown star come up from their minors. They don't have to push prospects through the system because they're needed in the majors. They can afford to string out a prospect's timeline so they control them as long as possible. They don't have to add a player who's still a year or two away from needing to be placed on the 40 man because he's needed in the majors. They can keep them in the minors until they run out of options. All of those things keeps their farm strong but has less to do with being better than it is being rich enough to do fill their roster with high priced free agents. Their prospects are not as important to the team's future as they are to the Brewers. Teams that can do that see the value in their prospects as what they can help the team get to win now. If the Brewers did that the cost to future teams would be significantly higher than it is for the Dodgers.

It always made more sense for the Dodgers to pay what ever it costs than the Brewers. The Dodgers have a lot of money going to aging players they'll have to deal with soon. They'll likely be doing so in a system less favorable to high payroll teams going forward. They're trying to win three consecutive WS before the proverbial poop hits the fan. The brewers are on the other side of things. Their window is just starting to open. They have a crap load of talent just starting to hit their prime and more coming up in the next year or so. Having said all that I'm not sure it changes out chances all that much. It was always going to take a hot streak and some luck. That hasn't changed.

It's a lot easier to do when you can stash them in the minors because you can buy better players for your major league roster. Chourio, Pratt, Henderson, Sproat, and Patrick would all probably still be in AAA if we could spend the kind of money the Dodgers have.