JosephC

I think Turang probably should be listed on the back end of the top 100. But I'd guess the current home run/SLG/home run/SLG craze in MLB probably is the major reason behind his absence. I still really like him as a plus-plus top-of-the-order table-setter and solid defensive player.

I wouldn't put Grisham in the top 100 if I'm an unbiased evaluator. Baseball history is littered with guys who go through a hot stretch and end up reverting right back to what they were. Grisham has posted great numbers this year, but there was a really significant number of at-bats before that which suggested that he was a .230/.355/.345/.700 hitter. The Brewer evaluators will love him, but other evaluators will look at him and legitimately question if he'll be the .230/.355/.345/.700 hitter that he was for much of his MiLB career when the time comes and he has to step up in the batter's box against the big boys in MLB. The other thing that is somewhat prohibiting when looking at his prospect status is the defense. Every scouting report I read says the same thing...left field. And to get high prospect marks as a left fielder, generally that guy really has to hit...and not for three months but over the long-haul. Even if an evaluator looks at all the offensive numbers...and concludes he is an .800 OPS guy in the majors...the batting line out of LF this year in MLB is .262/.331/.456/.787. So posting an .800 OPS as a left fielder isn't really all that special. I don't mean to rip on Grisham. I'm very, very happy that he's had such a dramatic turn-around with the bat. His prospect status has gone way up. But big sample sizes have to play in the equation. If we are just to assume that Grisham has turned it around, holds top prospect status, and will be a great MLB player....if we use the same approach for evaluation then we also have to assume that Corbin Burnes is garbage, has next to no chance of becoming a good MLB player and holds zero trade value.

Top 30 prospect plus two other solid pieces means, minimum, 60 million in surplus value with the Mets shooting to get the number in the 70-80 million range. I don't see the Brewers as a match here. Even if they would be willing to offer up Hiura, where would the Mets play him? Cano's contract is way to rich to ship to small-market Milwaukee, and it's very unlikely the Met's ownership would be willing to eat a big chunk of Cano's contract AND trade away Syndergaard in the same deal. Only possibility is if the Mets don't think J.D. Davis has a future, and they are willing to play Cano at 3B for the next few seasons. I don't see this one happening.

I would have been in for Wheeler a few weeks ago, and Ray as recent as a few days ago...but the Brewers have slipped to only having the 7th best record in the NL. Now they have to overcome Woodruff's injury, can't even hold hope for a Chacin rebound, and the bullpen has really looked bad recently. I think I'd be out as an active buyer at this point. The team has just lost too many recent series to bad ballclubs.

This I agree with 100%...if you are going to buy, you must buy big, otherwise, what's the point?? Might as well just stand pat then. If they take Hiura off the board, then I don't think they even have the ammo to buy big.

It wasn't one lump payment to the Mariners when the trade was made. The Cardinals are sending the payments on a yearly basis. There is very little doubt that a Leake trade would results in the Mariners not only agreeing to transfer those payments to the new team, but also throw in a bunch of their own money as well. Just look at the recent trades they've made, they've thrown significant money into several of those deals and there is little doubt that they would do that with Leake too. If a team trades for Leake, I can almost guarantee you that they would be on the hook for less than 10 million dollars. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the price for the new team would be as low as 5 million dollars. Look at the Jay Bruce trade. He was under contract through 2020 and had 21.3 million left on his deal. The Mariners picked up 87% of his remaining salary. Instead of the Phillies having to pay Bruce 21.3 million dollars, they are only paying him 2.75 million and the Mariners picked up the other 18.5 million.

I don't know if I would call him a big disappointment, because I'm not sure how many fans thought he was that good at the time. But remember how the Brewers broadcast (live broadcast) Kevin Mench's first arrival at Miller Park during a game and walking to the clubhouse and having the announcers hype him like he was going to be a star player for years to come? Fast forward to the end of the following season, and if I remember right, the Brewers don't even offer Mench arbitration and he ends up signing a minor league deal with the Rangers.

Oliver Drake and a voucher so Attanasio can get a free steak dinner the next time he is in Tampa.

Brewers just can't beat bad teams.

I'd guess that Dubon is the most likely to be traded.

If the Brewers have decided that they are picking up the 2020 option on Thames, then I think they have to consider this. My initial high ask would be for LHP-Shane McClanahan, LHP-Anthony Banda and SS-Taylor Walls and then work down from there. Not sure if McClanahan would be untouchable in a deal like this, he's the guy I would really like to land. If Tampa Bay would pull all 15 of their best prospects off the board, then I keep Jesus. Not really interested in trading him for a role player prospect and a couple of lottery tickets. I would really have to wonder if someone like Banda would even have that much value anymore? But it seems like he's been on the cusp of MLB so often and is coming off Tommy John...he just seems like the type that everyone may have written off by now, but still has a chance to be a quality lefty out of the bullpen (maybe more). Wouldn't mind "stealing" him in as a second or third piece in a deal like this.

Good luck getting anyone out of San Francisco now. Historically they have been a seller-adverse franchise and they've climbed to 1 game over .500, third place in division and 2.5 games out of the second wild-card spot. I thought the luxury tax would be a limiting factor for them, but Cots have them at nearly 30 million under the threshold. Good chance that the Giants consider themselves buyers at this point.

The Cardinals are already picking up a pretty big chunk of Leake's contract. Subtract out what the Cardinals are paying and his annual salaries are: 11 million in 2019, 11 million in 2020, 5 million buyout in 2021. The Mariners paid 18 million of the 21 million left on Jay Bruce's contract when they traded him to Philadelphia. The Mariners also paid the Yankees 8 million when sending Edwin Encarnacion to New York. Subtract out what the Cardinals are paying Leake, and the remainder due is almost exactly 20 million. The Mariners would likely pick up at least half of that total. I'm pretty confident that if the Brewers made a trade for Leake that the most they would be on the hook would be something like 2 million this year, 5.5 million next year and 2.5 million of the 2021 buyout. Leake is a crazy up-and-down pitcher, but there is one very attractive aspect of his game: 2019 = on pace for 31 starts, 195 2/3 innings 2018 = 31 starts, 185 2/3 innings 2017 = 31 starts, 186 innings 2016 = 30 starts, 176 2/3 innings 2015 = 30 starts, 192 innings 2014 = 33 starts, 214 1/3 innings 2013 = 31 starts, 192 1/3 innings 2012 = 30 starts, 179 innings He will take the ball and give the team innings. The juiced ball is the only thing to worry about with him. From 2016-2018, he posted a very solid 3.96 FIP. That has ballooned to 4.80 this year and it's almost entirely due to the home run (HR/9 was 1.0 from 2016-2018, has jumped to 1.7 in 2019). I definitely would not dismiss Leake if what I suspect is true and the Mariners would pick up 50+% of his remaining salary. The HR aspect is a definite concern but when looking at some of the numbers....his HR/FB ratio sits at 17.0% and that's above league average but it's not crazy high (league average is around 15.2%). His ground ball percentage sits at 46.3% which is above average (ranks 29 out of 76 qualifiers). And the prospect return to Seattle would probably qualify as something next to zero (I don't think a Bubba Derby would be out of the question). There is enough value here that I would be interested if Seattle initiated talks.

I wouldn't be in favor of this trade, but Turang and a fringe prospect for Madison Bumgarner and Will Smith would probably be a pretty fair trade, numbers-wise.

That's a bit high IMO, but a back-end top 100 hitter and a back-end top 100 pitcher is not out of the question. 2017 bWAR/fWAR = 2.6 2018 bWAR/fWAR = 3.1 2019 bWAR/fWAR (prorated to full season) = 7.5 Three-year average = 4.4 if one goes with the LOW number, take the three-year average and apply that to the rest of this season and that would make him good for 1.8 WAR. Then for 2020, take the three-year average and subtract 0.5 due to age which would make him a 3.9 WAR pitcher. Bottom number one comes up with is that he'll be good for 5.7 WAR over the remainder of his contract. I'm sure from the Ranger's perspective, he should be credited with just continuing to do what he's been doing this season, which would make him good for 3.1 WAR over the remainder of this season (instead of the 1.8 I calculated above), so right there could be an 11.7 million dollar difference in surplus value. But going back to the low numbers, 5.7 WAR = 51.3 million in value minus 13.37 million in salary he's due puts his surplus value estimate at +37.93 million. That would be roughly equivalent to Turang plus Lutz plus Supak plus a fringe prospect. Better be willing to go pretty big with Minor, otherwise you are just wasting time.

Hey MadThinker88, I would guess the Indians would move Bauer in a millisecond if they were offered a proven, comparable-value MLB outfielder in return. But do you think they would be that interested in trading him for prospects? That part I'm no so sure about.

They seemed hot to move Greinke this off-season after they had moved Goldschmidt, but at that time they weren't thinking they would be all that competitive. Now that they've turned out to be a decent team, I'd guess their attitude has changed because Greinke's name really hasn't come up much. Greinke is also on pace to completely blow away all of the projections on him coming into the season. Looking back through old threads, I had put Greinke's surplus value at a -12.85 million in mid-November. But that assumed he'd be a 3.4 WAR pitcher this year and then decline by 0.5 WAR per year after that. But Greinke's currently sits at a 3.2 fWAR and 3.5 bWAR this season, so he's on pace for a 5.7 bWAR/fWAR season. He won't be projected to be a 5.2 WAR player in 2020 and then a 4.7 WAR player in 2021, but his future projections would have to be well higher than 2.9 WAR in 2020 and the 2.4 WAR in 2021, values that I had used to calculate the -12.85 million surplus value in November. If anything, it's a pretty good bet that he probably carries plus-surplus value at this point and really isn't a candidate as a salary dump player at all. There would be limited buyers due to the size of his contract, but there is a difference in having a limited market versus being a negative value player. I don't think including him in a Ray deal gets the Brewers one bit of a discount. Something like Greinke/Ray for Anderson/Nottingham/Erceg is completely unrealistic IMO.

A couple weeks back, when I was still thinking the team would be in a buying mode, I figured Ray would be the best non-rental starter they could land with what they had in the minors minus Hiura. I had the price figured closer to 30 million than the 22.9 million listed on the baseballtradevalue site. I don't think a deal gets made without Turnag being the centerpiece, so it would be critical that the Diamondbacks like Turang. If so, I think the Ray for Turang + Supak + Bello would be a pretty fair deal.

Seems like a great deal for the Royals. Montgomery has been awful this year (5.67 ERA, 6.21 WHIP, 1.78 WHIP), but has been a really, really solid swingman-type pitcher in the past (3.35 ERA, 3.94 FIP, 1.26 WHIP from 2016-2018). Royals get 2.5 years of Montgomery for 0.5 years of Maldonado. I like picking Montgomery over a couple fringe prospects in the hope that I can get him turned around.

Giants would definitely ask for another player. But I have Dubon's prospect surplus value at 7.4 million and I'd figure Smith to be valued at around 10 million in surplus value in a trade...so Dubon should make up well over 50% of the value heading to the Giants. If the Giants want upside, they could ask for Bello as being a second player and that would be pretty fair...the Brewers might want to ship them someone like Erceg or Stokes as a second player and the Giant's 40-man roster aspects could play into that.

Nah, Hiura too. [sarcasm]They stagger them in the order to maximize TV ratings.[/sarcasm] Yeah, but he leads off the inning, so at most he can only be good for one run when the Brewers are down by two. At least I don't feel bad now. If Counsell put Burch Smith in the ballgame, then he's given up on it too.

Am I the only one that counts the number of hitters to get to Yelich, and then just give up and turn off the TV if I determine that odds are <20% that he'll get to the plate?

One of the more important July games you will find (from the Brewers perspective). I think the next seven games determine if Stearns is an aggressive buyer, conservative buyer, conservative seller or aggressive seller. A 5-2 run would very likely make the Brewers an aggressive buyer, whereas a 2-5 run would almost certainly put them in sell mode. Also a big start for Houser tonight, have to think he's the rotation's odd man out when Gonzalez returns. Hopefully he'll pitch well enough over his next couple starts to make that a difficult decision for Milwaukee.

Burnes is the poster-boy for everything that is wrong with the current state of MLB pitching. "His velocity is up over 95 MPH and he's hitting 99 MPH occasionally on the radar gun. So there is nothing wrong with his fastball." "He's still generating excellent swing-and-miss numbers and soft contract percentage numbers with his slider. So there is nothing wrong with his slider." "He's struck out 67 hitters in 46 innings, so there is nothing wrong with him." It's like the entire league has just decided to ignore that location is step #1 in making an effective MLB pitcher. And not simply location, consistent location. It seems like the approach around the league now is, "just throw it harder and the additional velocity will allow you to get away with more mistakes." That hasn't worked with Burnes.

Seems to be a pretty even swap to me. Merrell's stock has slipped some as he's had a poor season with the bat so far, but he's a speed guy that had hit pretty well previously. He could prove to be one of those guys that get filtered out in AA. Can't really see getting much more for Bailey that that. Even though Bailey has been a serviceable innings-eater, he still has been a 4.80 ERA, 4.48 FIP, 1.41 WHIP pitcher so far this season. But over the previous three seasons he's been a 6.09 ERA, 5.03 FIP, 1.68 WHIP pitcher. Figure to only get one fringe prospect back, and Merrill is probably one of the better fringe prospects that you will find out there.