JosephC

This doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. Graveman looks like a failed starter who may or may not be a good reliever in the long-term. He has a sparkling 0.82 ERA this season but his FIP is 2.88. He's really been helped by a ridiculously low .176 BABIP against him. Strikeout and walk rates don't appear to be anything special for a reliever in 2021. He's also a free agent after this year so this is a 2 month acquisition. Before 2020, Graveman signed a deal with the Mariners for 1.5 million with a 3.25 million option for 2021. Instead of picking up the option, the Mariners declined the option for 0.5 million and Graveman became a free agent. Graveman ended up going back to the Mariners on a 1 year, 1.25 million dollar deal. That paints a pretty good pitcher of what Graveman's value was just 9 months ago. The Astros will be the 5th different franchise he's been with. Toro hasn't done squat in the majors, but he was an .836 OPS guy in the minors. Sounds like his glove will always be questionable, but it's possible he could hit enough where a team is more than willing to live with the subpar defense. One really can't value 2 months of Graveman as being worth anything more than a role-player prospect, and Toro still carries that value IMO even with the bad start as a major leaguer. When the Mariner's players smashed clubhouse equipment when news of this deal reached them, hopefully they did not smash the $400 toaster that the taxpayers paid for.

I'm not denying the AAU thing isn't a factor because it definitely is. Parts of Madison's faculty had a big problem when Nebraska was added because Nebraska is not an AAU school. I can't remember the details, but Nebraska countered this by arguing that data from their medical school is not counted with the rest of Nebraska's data because it's operated separately, but if it wasn't then Nebraska would be eligible for the AAU. Again, can't remember the details, but there was a big stink about it in Madison. Just kind of makes one sit back and just shake their head. Isn't the entire mindset of UW not to be "exclusive?" And what beats all is that it all comes down to football programs. Exactly what is there about Ohio State and Michigan State's football programs that screams "highest academic standards." Pretentious nonsense. I just can't figure out what the motivation would be for the Big 10 to add 2 more schools unless those schools would be bringing in considerable revenue. If I'm sitting in Chris McIntosh's chair...right now I am getting 1/14 of the Big 10's shared revenue. If Kansas and Iowa State are added, now I get 1/16th of the shared revenue and I just don't see that being a reasonable deal for the rest of the Big 10. At least Kansas brings the Kansas City market, but Iowa State?

I'm likely done with college football if the Big 10 adds two more fourth-rate football schools and, even worse, they end up in the west. Wisconsin's annual football schedule would be- Iowa Minnesota Nebraska Northwestern Illinois Kansas Iowa State Awful, just awful.

Call me an absolute hater of all these big conferences. I liked the old days when the Big 10 had 10 teams and you would only miss one team every year. Now if these conferences go to 16 teams then you have 7 games in your own division, 2 in the other division and you completely miss SIX teams per season. As a Badger fan, I don't care if it's Ohio State or Indiana, it sucks only playing a conference opponent only one time in four years which is what would happen in a 16-team conference. What is super annoying is that we have prime matchups again Ohio State or Michigan taken away from us because the short-sighted idiots running the Big 10 had to add Maryland and Rutgers to shake dollars out of cable subscribers in those areas. To suck money out of a market that just 10 years later looks to be dying a much quicker than expected death. Thanks a lot! Idiots.

I've always been a big fan of this series, but this year's list is nearly complete garbage once you get past the top few names on the list. At least as a Brewer fan, I can say that they probably got the 3 pitchers in just the right area. But there is definitely a big market suck-up bias happening here. By their own numbers, Julio Urias is good for +6.6 WAR total in arbitration years 3 and 4. He is #29 on the list. Freddy Peralta is good for +7.0 over the same time-frame at a total cost of 6.2 million, a complete bargain for that level of production. After that the team is on the hook for another 3+ WAR season at a bargain price at that level of production. Maybe it's Urias' extensive injury history that gives him the edge here? Or maybe it's because he's a Dodger? I've been a big Alex Verdugo supporter in the past. But they have him as being worth 8.1 WAR over the next three years, and while that is really solid it's certainly not elite. Generally using the surplus value formula = 8.1 million * 9 = 72.9 million minus what is estimated to be about 24 million in arbitration earnings = 48.9 million in surplus value. Roughly speaking, that translates to a hitter ranked #42 on the top 100 prospect list or a pitcher ranked #24 on the list. Safely speaking, the top 15 minor leaguers should all be ranked ahead of Verdugo. But sticking to names on the list, Verdugo's 8.1 WAR over three years ranks him only one spot behind Trent Grisham's 15.8 WAR over 4 years...and one of Grisham's season will come in at just above the minimum salary. Yeah, I know I should have picked someone below Verdugo, but he and Grisham sitting right next to each other was just too glaring to ignore. If you want to go pick someone below Verdugo that should be ranked higher, just go to the list, look at Fangraph's own projections in the table, and you'll find a whole bunch within seconds. This, of course, would have nothing to do with the fact that Verdugo plays for the Red Sox. And Gerritt Cole...don't get me started. We've seen these types of contracts traded before, and history has shown time and time again that what the team gets back is nothing more than a few spare parts when moving this type of contract. But history doesn't matter when it's a Yankee.

Ball is looking a lot like the Lutz/Erceg type of prospect. A guy who first hits the scene, tears it up in his first season of pro ball and gets the fans all wound up...and after that really doesn't do anything with the bat to warrant any excitement. I'd put Ball as a fringe prospect (2.2 million in surplus value) and Lutz as a role-player prospect (5.5 million in surplus value), but on his current trajectory Lutz will likely be down in the fringe prospect category going into next season. Fangraphs have been his biggest supporter, and in their recently released rankings have Lutz down to a 40+ FV and slotted #17 on the Brewer's top prospect list. He really can't be considered any type of stand-out prospect anymore.

And I can say first hand that it's a pretty easy thing to do. I'm down to only watching Badger football games on ESPN, nothing else. Never thought I would say something like that 15 years ago. Lots of other entertainment options out there.

I was watching pretty much every inning of every game during the time-frame that Sutton was broadcasting Brewer games. I wasn't surprised when he was let go. He was very, very critical of the organization down the stretch in 2006, flat out stated a couple of times that the Brewers organization had to figure out if they really wanted to be winning organization or if they were just content with the status quo (for those that don't want to look it up, at that time the Brewers had a .500 season in 2005 but hadn't had a winning season since 1992). He was basically saying what pretty much every Brewer fan was thinking at the time, but it probably didn't make Attanasio and Melvin very happy. No idea if he was doing the same thing in LA, but he was probably having a field day in LA if he was. Huge market, best player in the game, having Ohtani fall in your lap at a ridiculous bargain price....and you still are as mediocre as can be. If there is any team that should be awful right now it should be Oakland, and they have completely outclassed the Angels over the last half-decade and it isn't even close. If fate would have it that Sutton would someday wind up back in the Brewer booth, I wouldn't be upset about it. Just as long as Attanasio doesn't neuter him first.

Next year Braun Day will start. Braun will get a 1.8 million dollar payment from the Brewers on July 1 from the years 2022 through 2031.

I occasionally talk with one of the writers/reporters on one of the major recruiting sites and he doesn't think they should publish any star ratings until the upcoming season has ended. Unfortunately for those guys, they are in a business that doesn't allow them to do that since all their readers will pretty much demand those rankings. But there is one guy who would flat out tell you that any rankings you see within the next few months are pretty much worthless.

According to both DRS and UZR/150, Vogelbach has played better defense than Pujols. Using Fangraphs baserunning metric, Vogelbach has run the bases better than Pujols (not surprised, the eyeball test tells me that most 35 year old backup catchers look like true speedsters compared to Pujols). And in terms of 2021 WAR, Vogelbach is ahead in both bWAR and fWAR. Any contribution that Pujols can make with the bat these days will likely be completely cancelled by the other aspects of his game, which at this point are truly dreadful.

I see Rich Hill is crying that it's not fair that MLB is changing the rule mid-season. But MLB is not changing a rule mid-season. To answer the first part of your question, yes, a memo was issued to players that data and balls were going to be collected and MLB could go as far as suspending players even if they weren't caught during a game. And the pitchers are acting like they are totally blind-sided by this? https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2021/03/24/mlb-spin-rate-baseball-foreign-substances/6980466002/ As far as the media complaining...it's pretty safe to say the only reason this is being enforced now is that the media kept harping on bad offense, spin rates, and the fact that so many average guys were posting videos on the internet with footage of guys cheating. Pretty hard for the league to ignore that, especially when it results in less offense which they likely believe is bad for their pocketbook. I'm still 100% convinced that the only reason the electronic sign stealing crackdown happened is because of all the Youtube videos and it just became too big of a story for them to ignore.

No sympathy for Glasnow or any other pitcher that might get hurt and make this claim. "I was cheating and you made me stop cheating so it's your fault." Not sure how many people are so morally warped that they would buy this argument, but I am definitely not one of them. The only ridiculous thing about MLB's crackdown is that it didn't happen two off-seasons ago, but that's because Manfred is a complete idiot and is rotten for the sport. As far as changing things midseason, I have no problem with them doing it now. Would rather see a half-season of a clean game with players playing by the rules instead of what we have been subjected to lately.

I'd probably put them both in the "role player prospect" category and put the same surplus value on them. I suspect, total opinion on my part, that Lutz's value has largely come from Fangraph's positive support, and in recent writeups they have drifted further away from the plus exit velocity and talked more about his poor bat control and marginal athletic ability. Fangraphs still has not done the pre-season/early-season writeup on the Brewers system. When that happens, I think Lutz will be further down their rankings and that will domino his rankings on other sites, dropping him out of the Brewer's top 10 prospects and putting him in the same value class as Ray. Just speculation on my part. Really bummed about Lutz. If I remember right he has a pretty strong start to this season, but I just looked and he's slashing a really mediocre .211/.285/.374/.659. We are several years removed from his big start in rookie ball and since that time it's looking more and more like he's a probable .240/.320/.400/.720 hitter that will end up in right field (yes, I know he is mostly playing CF these days), and .720 OPS corner outfielders would probably mostly be thought of as just above replacement. And that's assuming he makes it and spends some time in the MLB, which looks more and more questionable as time goes by. I have to admit that I would have blown it on Lutz. I looked at that pick and for the longest time and was wanting Drew Waters and about a week before that draft flipped to Lutz and it sure looks like that was a complete flub. Maybe Lutz will turn out to be great and Waters will be a bust. Time will tell. But one thing that I feel pretty safe in saying is that Waters likely has 5 to 10 times the trade value of Lutz currently which is a pretty big deal as, if I were in Stearns chair, would definitely be in the buying mood in July. Heck, I'm in a buying mood already.

The problem with those folks are that Mancini and Aguilar are both good and controllable through 2022 so the Orioles and Marlins would demand a quality return. Santana is also under contract next year for 10 million, plus the Royals have decent pitching and are still on the periphery of the race and may sell I don't see Aguilar as carrying nearly the same price-tag as Mancini. Cranking the 3 year numbers on Aguilar, and his average annual WAR comes out more than 1 win less than Mancini. I'd put Aguilar's surplus value at +9.3 million, the BaseballTradeValues site has him at a puny +4.3 million. Could be a pretty affordable add IMO. A package as low as Carlos Rodriguez plus a lottery ticket wouldn't be a ridiculous offer IMO.

I see Mancini being pretty expensive. Throw out the season lost due to cancer, and he's been a pretty solid 2.5 WAR player and his arbitration numbers have been team-favorable. I'd have him as having 26.9 million in surplus value, the baseballtradevalue site has him at 20.7 million. Mitchell OR Turang would not be an unreasonable ask at all. Take those guys off the board and then it's probably something like Ashby + Feliciano + Carlos Rodriguez. Has posted a .287/.360/.521/.881 line over his last 930 plate appearances. Very good .833 OPS this season with all the pitchers cheating. Definitely not going to come cheap.

Looking at his salary and the fact that he's been about a 1.5 WAR per season player over the last three years (when pro-rating 2020 and 2021 to full seasons), I'd put his surplus value at somewhere in the 2-3 million range and the baseballtradevalue site has him at 2 million. Trading for him this early probably only costs the Brewers one attractive lottery ticket type prospect, probably at the tail end of the Brewers top 30 list or a "just missed" on the list. If Escobar continues to struggle, and maintains a sub-.290 OPB through mid-July, then the market for him would likely be non-existent and Arizona would be willing to trade him for organizational filler (nothing) just to clear the salary. I wouldn't be opposed to this deal at all because it could end up being a great buy low situation, but since the beginning of 2020, Escobar has been a .225/.279/.399/.677 hitter and that's not very good.

In a heartbeat. When all this started shortly after the draft, I looked at all the roster of rumored trade partners, and the Broncos were the only team where enough names popped out at me to at least spark some interest. Jerry Jeudy, Noah Fant, Dalton Risner, Josey Jewell. Only really would be interested in players along with the two first rounders. Third round picks don't do squat for me when talking about trading a player of Rodgers' ability.

Cole has a good future in American politics once his playing days are over.

I would imagine Hiura's "trade value" number might have the largest variance of any 1+ year player in the majors if one had access to the analytics department of every team and could calculate that number. Would love to see front offices opinions of Hiura around the league. Baseballtradevalues has him at +18.6 million as I type this, but I'd guess the average from MLB front offices would be less than that. Only reason I say that is that I read so many doubters regarding Corey Ray and his swing-and-miss problem with pitches in the strike zone...would have to assume MLB front offices would be looking at Hiura the same way. His trade value really doesn't concern me as I would have him cemented in as a "hold" at this time.

The "safety" issue is a complete pile of crap when looking at the numbers. 2016 league average hit batters by team = 55 2017 = 59 2018 = 64 2019 = 66 2020 = 73 (27 pro-rated to a full 162 game season) 2021 = 69 (24 average HBP per team...average 56 games per team....pro-rates to 69 over a 162 game season) https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2016.shtml There's the link for anyone that wants to double-check the numbers, very easy to use "previous season" and "next season" towards the top of the page to quickly scroll through seasons. So the number has been on a consistent climb until this year where so far there has been a slight dip. If more and more pitchers are using this stuff and it's improving control...leading to greater safety...then the HBP numbers should be on a steady decline down the last few years and they clearly are not. Another decent read on the hit by pitch trend. https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/05/17/corey-seager-injury-hbp-epidemic-the-opener

Yelich for Hosmer? Get the barf buckets out.

Ozuna and his wife seem to be perfect for one another. Last year she was arrested for domestic violence after she smacked him in the face with some sort of soap dish. Lovely couple. There are a couple Braves blogs that are saying Ozuna has a personal conduct clause in his contract that allows the Braves to walk away from the deal if he is convicted of a felony. I'm just guessing but would think this would be bargained down to a misdemeanor and then Ozuna is only subject to whatever suspension that MLB gives him. But if the Braves could walk away, I think a Yelich/Braves matchup would be a wonderful fit.

I wonder if spin rate really means anything? It always gets thrown out when talking about someone like Verlander, but is there any real correlation between spin rate and success? I just did a quick search at Baseball Savant, and if I am using the search engine correctly, the MLB pitcher with the highest spin rate on 4-seam fastballs in MLB last year (minimum 300 pitches) was CORBIN BURNES at a remarkable 2656 rpm. #2 = Jose Leclerc, #3 = Mike Minor, #4 = Lucas Sims, #5 = Felipe Vazquez. There are some big names near the top....#8 = Verlander, #11 = Cole, #12 = Darvish...but there is a Phil Maton or a Jesse Biddle mixed in with every good name on the list. There are a ton of fields in the search engine so I could very well be screwing something up. Am I the only one who has noticed that every time a pitcher does great, the first thing they talk about is his marvelous spin rate. Meanwhile, if a pitcher is doing poorly, then spin rate is not mentioned (even if the pitcher's spin rate is excellent). BTW, when I posted the above Burnes had just finished his 8.82 ERA, 6.09 FIP, 1.84 WHIP season in which he could not even survive in AAA. Anyway, the spin rate numbers didn't seem to do much for Lindblom. I have a very strong suspicion that location, location, location will trump spin rate every time. Those high spin rate pitches end up right in the hitter's wheelhouse, and over the fence they go. Again, see the 2019 version of Corbin Burnes.

Oh yeah, gotta love Shildt's comments- "This is baseball's dirty little secret, and it's the wrong time and the wrong arena to expose it" Pretty much a flat-out admission of cheating. I think the Brewers should have a forum the next time they go to St. Louis where they can teach the Cardinals the RIGHT WAY to play the game.