Thurston Fluff

It's hard to compare. Stearns had more money to spend when he got some of those free agents. Not necessarily always higher payrolls but fewer players making high salaries early in his tenure. You can splurge on Cain and Chacin when you're paying Hader, Burnes and Woody pre/early arbitration salaries.

Why does this team have so much better a chance at a World Series than last season? Or any of the last seven times they've been good enough to get in the playoffs? Nor buying into the magical year mentality is the Brewers superpower. Overall I'm a bit confused with some of the complaints. I get being disappointed by nor upgrading shortstop. Yet, when adding defense into the mix, I don't know how much of an improvement could have been made. We are a top ten offense with a defense only shortstop. Was there any combination of infielder help available to make us a top five without hurting our top five defense? What I don't get is one of the complaints I've seen is we didn't improve on the margins. Yet we got a marginal improvement at catcher and reliever. Just because we didn't improve in an area fans wanted doesn't mean we didn't improve. I think it boils down to some people equating not addressing every need to doing nothing.

I'd take him over Yuni B. any day of the week. Twice on double headers. You can win with one major weak spot on offense when that spot produces and defense.

I think if the Brewers did a deadline trade for a veteran rental with identical numbers as Priester and Vaughn for more than they traded for Priester and Vaughn the same people complaining now would be cheering that they finally went all in.

We're currently 8th in baseball in runs scored, 5th in team ERA, have one of the best defenses in all of baseball and have one of the best records against teams who would be in the playoffs today. Which is why we have the best record in baseball. We don't need to be aggressive. Other teams need to gamble their future just to be as good as we already are.

Bauers is on borrowed time. Barring injury, when Hoskins comes back he's probably gone. So in reality the question should be; Is a month of O'Hearn on the bench better than a month of Bauers on the bench? Or, more accurately, how much prospect capital is a month of upgrade to a first base bench player worth?

Hard to make sense of this one. Maybe some teams are starting to see defense as an underrated asset???

I'll answer that. Never. It is never wise to go all in on a crap shoot. Trading to get Ohtani woud only marginally boost our odds to win the World Series. It would also cost so much that it would reduce our odds of fielding a playoff caliber team for the next few years. It is a fools errand. That isn't to say all trades are bad. Nor is trading for a "needle mover" by definition always wrong. What is always wrong is doing so because of the "this is our year" mentality. Nobody knows which year is "the" year until its over. Believing one year is the year is magical thinking. You don't change the organizational philosophy that is considered one of, it not the, best, most competently run organizations in the the league based on a belief in fairy dust and unicorns.

What is so special about this year vs last year? A year IIRC you also thought was "the" year. It was supposed to be the start of another group of young players not the end of one. We have very few core players about to become free agents. If you think Woody is a core member he's the only one we don't have control over beyond this season. All the position players are under team control and we have replacements in house on the pitching side. This is not some sort of magical year where all the pieces fell into place that cannot possibly be repeated next season. The reason this isn't that one magical year is because the front office doesn't subscribe to the magical year philosophy. We are better off because it doesn't.

Sticking to an organizational philosophy that got us further in the playoffs than the all in year of 2011 seems like trying to me. You seem to be saying doing whatever is necessary to win now would be better than what we're doing because what were doing hasn't got us the result we wanted yet. Which would be a valid argument if the method you're proposing didn't also fail to produce the results we wanted. Arguing for a way to do things that produced worse results doesn't make sense to me.

The Sabathia trade was not a bad trade for the time. We were trying to end a long playoff drought and were trying to get rid of the image of perennial losers. Just getting to the playoffs was an important step. But if anyone asked me then if I'd have been satisfied with two playoff appearances for the next decade I'd have said no. It also wasn't an all in move. We still had a good young core just starting to come into their own. The Greinke trade was the very definition of all in. It got us one playoff and five years of futility afterward. Now compare that to the current run. Since the 2017 run, which went deeper than the 2011 all in season, we've missed the playoff once and are still one of the best teams in the league. Would us trading three of our young players now have gotten us a World Series ring? We don't know which is why people keep saying we should. What we can do is a thought experiment to illustrate why going all in isn't the best way to get us over the hump so many seem to think it is. Say last season Devon Williams was on another team instead of injured. At the trade deadline we had a good team but could use some bullpen help. So we traded Patrick, Collins and one of our younger prospects to get Williams. Now we have a "needle mover" closer to close out game three of our first round playoff series. We wouldn't be competing for the best record in baseball this season to get us to the same result we ended up with anyway.

Those were the days. When those two teams won the World Series it was well worth not getting back to the playoffs for three to five years after it. Seeing KC win with the players we traded didn't hurt at all because we won a World Series due to those trades.

Some chips yes. That's always how they've done things. All the chips, no. I think one of the things that people sometimes think of the Brewers is they'll always sacrifice the present for the future. That's not the case. Not sacrificing the future for the present isn't the same as sacrificing the present for the future.

Apparently you agree teams don't trade for playoff experience. So, why the thumbs down?

They're not 50 year olds playing 162. I can flip that around and say young players have less experience playing such a long season. For rookies it might be the most they've ever played. I think a guy like Durbin would be less energetic at the end of his first season on a losing team than he would be in a playoff atmosphere. Again, while there may be some players who this is true for, it's not a very good reason to trade for someone. Or to replace a player already on the squad for that matter. Overall could see the value in playoff experience if the team was full of players with none at all. The Brewers are not one of those teams.

Isn't it also possible some who've already found success in the playoffs lose some of the intensity because they've been there done that? If one can lose focus playing in the regular season because it's nothing new why not of the post season?

I agree. Which leads me to believe getting someone because they have playoff experience a fool's errand. Trading for a particular person because of it when you don't know if A-that person's experience matters and B- the person you replaced because he didn't have the experience could be equally capable as he would be with the added experience. I guess my question is more about why trading for someone because of their playoff experience is a thing more than some who may be better because they have experienced it already.

I can't speak for others but I think defensive metrics are less reliable than offensive ones in a single year sample size. When you go back and look at what was said about him in the minors was a great defender with some offensive upside. His calling card seemed to always have been defense first. He certainly passes the eye test for me. I also question how they weight some of the measurements. When it comes to offense it's pretty easy to compare the numbers. It was also fairly easy to determine what skill sets mattered most. (Though I sometimes question if that is as set in stone as some people think.) Defense, I'm not as convinced they weight each skill properly. Hell I'm still waiting for someone to show me objective metrics showing how important defense is compared to offense let alone how important each defensive skill set is compared to others.

I don't want to derail the tread too much but I always wondered if playoff experience is that important. The deepest run the current Brewers have had was 2018.

Overall I get what you're saying and agree to an extent. But I don't think it's realistic to get an upgrade at short or third for what would essentially be our leftovers. Ortiz's doesn't have to take a backseat to anyone at short. Certainly none that are available and a huge upgrade on offense. Giving the team a boost at short on offense would virtually guarantee a step back on defense. Third is a little harder to determine but so far Durbin seems to be doing far better than most of us thought he would in spring. It looks like our pitching was built around the fact we have a great defense. Giving up more runs to score more runs seems like a fools errand.

I think their record is closer to their true talent than most of the preseason analytics were. Then again that's been true for several years now.

I think it's more likely they want to see if Black can be a possible upgrade from Collins. Nothing against Collins but I think he's a better fit as a fourth outfielder while Black has to potential to be a starter. Key word being potential.

That's how I took it. My counter argument would be if the Dodgers had to compete on a level playing field they'd be forced to become a better run franchise. It's not a coincidence the best run franchises on a dollar for win basis are the ones who cannot just throw money around to fix their shortcomings.

Where did I assign blame to anyone? All I said was I don't view any of the ones who took over for an all-star as an all-star. I was expressing my personal opinion. It has nothing to do with who's fault it is. It has nothing to do with it being a problem that needs to be blamed on anyone at all for that matter.

Unless I'm missing something from the last CBA he still needs 6 full years of service time. He won't have that for six years past this season.