JosephC

Considering the injury he had, working back from that injury, the fairest number would probably be to just take what Smith has done and pro-rate it over the remainder of the season. That's also the highest number one would come up with when looking at historical WAR values, so that should be pretty much the highest number used. bWAR and fWAR both 1.1, so if that continues over the rest of the season he'd be worth 1.4 WAR. That's 12.6 million in value minus 2.4 in remaining salary and he has 10.2 million in surplus value. I suppose it's possible some team overpays and gives up a back of the top 100 prospect, but IMO the numbers show a fair deal would be more along the lines of a solid top 10 organizational prospect or 2 role-player prospects. Market demands probably would also require another fringe prospect to be included. When talking about the Brewers system, I think a couple players in the #8-#15 region works best, but it's the Giants pick of those two players. So no Webb and Stokes...more like Ashby and Feliciano. I think pretty reasonable deals would be: Will Smith for Tristen Lutz and Clayton Andrews Will Smith for Aaron Ashby, Mario Feliciano and Korry Howell If the demand goes over that level, then IMO it's super-easy to transition away from Will Smith and ask about Tony Watson instead.

Kind of surprised this thread didn't get bumped back up after last night's game. Will Smith made Yelich look foolish in the 9th inning, something not very many pitchers can do. Extremely impressive performance by him. I was also very impressed with Dyson. Cain gets a cheap hit to start the inning thanks to some bad defense by Sandoval. Then Dyson is smart enough and trusts his stuff enough to pitch around Yelich, even though it puts him in a 2 on, nobody out situation. Then gets Braun on the double play ball and Grandal on a ground out. Very good ground ball rates throughout his career, he looks to be a solid fit a Miller Park and juiced ball environment. Normally I'd like to wait at least a couple more weeks just to see if another need area pops up due to injury. But if I was in Stearn's chair, I'd be letting the Giants know today that I would have interest in Smith, Dyson and Tony Watson and checking on the prices.

I think the right-handed bat aspect is completely legitimate. Grandal has gotten the job done as a right-handed bat. Hiura is probably back in a couple weeks and will certainly help. Cain's bat has been mediocre all season. Braun is up-and-down and will likely end up on the DL sometime this season. Arcia's consistency has improved but he just isn't a big threat with the bat. A key factor in this could be how much money the Mariners agree to eat. They ate a ton of money when they traded Jay Bruce away, but Encarnacion is way, way, way better than Bruce. I just question if Stearns would want to add Encarnacion's awful defense to the mix. The defensive metrics are sub-par but not horrible, but reports are that he is really poor in the field which isn't a surprise...there is a reason he's spent so much time as a DH. He's still guaranteed about 16.35 million (rest of this year's salary plus a 5 million dollar buyout for next year). If I'm in Stearn's chair, the Mariners would have to send at least 12 million to keep me slightly interested. I like the idea of adding another right-handed bat, I just don't know if Encarnacion's salary and defense makes him the best fit.

Reports are the Padres aren't trading him, so if someone were to pry him away from the Padres, they would likely be paying a top price for him. He had his breakthrough in 2018, so it's likely the Padres would ignore everything that happened before then. In 2018 he was a 1.9 bWAR/fWAR player. Pro-rating this year out to a full season, and his bWAR/fWAR would project to a fairly staggering 3.9. Just to put in perspective how dominant Kirby has been this year, in 2018 Josh Hader was a 2.4 bWAR/fWAR pitcher with a 2.23 FIP and 2.43 ERA, whereas Kirby pro-rates to a 3.9 bWAR/fWAR pitcher with a 1.26 FIP and a 1.24 ERA. It's nearly impossible to think that a team could land a full 3.9 WAR value for a relief pitcher currently (unlike the Chapman/Miller craze that happened a few years back), but a fair price for Kirby would be to take and average of 2018 and a full 2019 season, which would put the WAR value at 2.9. That would make Kirby worth 4.5 wins over the rest of 2019 and 2020. 40.5 million in value minus an estimated 9.23 million in earnings puts his surplus value at roughly 31.3 million. I have Turang's surplus value at 20.9 million. There is probably no way the Brewers can get a deal done without starting with Turang. The numbers say a Yates for Turang + Ashby + Feliciano would probably be a pretty fair deal. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the Padres would instead make a demand of Turang + Peralta + non-top 30 fringe prospect.

Petricka's recent performance in AAA means nothing IMO. In 2018 he posted a 0.78 ERA and 1.09 WHIP in 23 AAA innings. He first got to AAA in 2013 and over his career is a pretty amazing 1.36 ERA/1.04 WHIP AAA pitcher. He seems to be the textbook example of a AAAA player. Just has never been able to find solid success at the MLB level. At 31 years old, he have to be a heck of a late-bloomer to finally find it but it's happened before. I don't mind that the Brewers dealt him and he seems like a pretty reasonable pickup for the Rangers. The Rangers shouldn't really be in it, but here we sit mid-June and the Rangers are in the second wild-card spot. Would be way too risky for them to make a big move now because they probably still think the potential to go down is much greater than the potential to go up. But make 2 or 3 cheap moves like this early, perhaps strengthen the bottom of the roster a bit, and if the team keeps playing well over the next month and is in a good position mid-July, then maybe go out and add and reward the players and please some fans. The Rangers are working way below payroll levels that they have had in the past, so they should be in pretty good shape to add if that's what they elect to do.

He was a 0.4 bWAR/fWAR player in 2016, a 1.6 bWAR/fWAR player in 2017, a -0.3 bWAR/fWAR player in 2018, and is pro-rated to be a 2.4 bWAR/fWAR player this season. Maybe Greene has figured it all out and will be a dominating reliever from this point forward, but he has the history of a volatile up-and-down reliever. Very likely the Tigers would try to get about 2.5 WAR per season type value back for him, but all the numbers from 2017-2019 show that he should be valued more in the 1.2 WAR range. Just hard to get over the fact that he was a negative bWAR/fWAR player in 2018. It was also surprising to see that he got a raise from 1.95 million in 2018 to 4 million in 2019 considering how bad he was in 2018 (5.12 ERA, 4.61 FIP, 1.37 WHIP). While the bigger salary helps in terms of pushing down his surplus value, if he's a good year/bad year type pitcher, the Brewers could get stuck with a bad reliever earning 7.5 million next year and that salary is not out of the question with the season he is currently having. I'd just use the 2017 to 2019 numbers and conclude he is a 1.2 WAR player. So he should be good for 0.7 WAR for the remainder of this year and 1.2 WAR next year, 1.9 WAR total. He will make roughly 2.4 million for the remainder of this year, and I would guess 7 million for next year. 1.9 * 9 million = 17.1 million in total value - 9.4 million salary estimate = 7.7 million in surplus value. Fair return out of the Brewers system would be something like Ashby plus Bello for Greene. If the Tigers can pry 2 WAR per season from someone, that would result in about 19.4 million in surplus value. I'd put Turang's surplus value at 20.9 million. I very much doubt if the Brewers would remain players in this if the price got that high. I don't see them dealing Turang for Greene or even selling low on Ray and doing something like Ray + Ashby for Greene, but it's not crazy to think the price could get bid up to those levels based on what Greene has done so far this year. But he's been so volatile, it will be interesting to see what the Tigers could get for him. Looks like an ideal "sell high" opportunity for them.

Yes you are missing something. He plays in the AL East, therefore is AL East proven, and therefore is better than any hitter other than Yelich on a lowly NL Central roster like Milwaukee. Just ask any national baseball writer and that's what he'd tell you (without the blue aspect).

Through 67 games last year the pitching staff had given up 69 home runs, this year the number is up to 96. Through 67 games last year the Brewer batters had hit 83 home runs, this year the number has gone up to 117. One could argue that Moustakas and Grandal have a lot to do with that, but to counter that, one could argue that Shaw and Aguilar's near no-show should off-set the Moustakas and Grandal additions. And we are not talking about a jump from 83 to 93....it's a jump from 83 to 117. Balls are juiced and IMO it's essential to account for that when judging this pitching staff.

I'm not sure you can even go with most optimistic number as his consistency the last 3 years and over 300IP is a 1.4 fWAR/100IP player. That's not horrible, but as your number crunching indicates, given contract status, he's really not worth much of anything. How about the rights to Victor Roache... Is he even still playing? What happened to Dykstra? Rights to Dave Krynzel? A pair of season tickets to the Brewers? I can't think of something tangible that would not be an overpay... I calculated the numbers again yesterday and the most optimistic number had been the 2019 fWAR projected over a full season. He had a 1.2 fWAR on May 31, but now we are nearly two weeks down the road and he still has the same 1.2 fWAR. So now instead of pro-rating to a 3.6 fWAR over a full season, and then being worth 2.4 WAR from May 31 to the end of the season, now his season fWAR pro-rates to 3.0 and with 97 games remaining (for San Francisco), now he is only worth 1.8 fWAR from June 12 to the end of the season. Most optimistic number = 1.8 fWAR * 9 million = 16.2 million - 7.19 million in remaining salary = surplus value of 9 million (down 4.6 million just over the last two weeks). I have a feeling that most offers will top out in the 8-12 million in surplus value range and the Giants will decide they don't even want to move him for that. A comp A pick is not worth 8-12 million but the Giants might be just as content to take a draft pick instead and be happy they don't have to face any fan backlash from trading him. Then Bumgarner gets the QO and ends up just re-signing with the Giants for the simple reason that they will value him more than any other team and will give him the best offer. We'll see what happens but that would be my best guess. If they put a price on him like a back end top 100 player plus another "role-player prospect," I'd be pretty stunned if a team would step up and meet that price. But we'll see. Most of the time this math comes close to matching what actually happens, but there is always one or two trades every year that seems pretty lopsided.

I'm still trying to figure out of this pitching staff is just bad or if everything is completely skewed by what sure appears to be a ridiculously juiced set of baseballs. The home run by Alvarez last night is another example of a swing that looked like it had no business in a resulting home run. Low, out-of-the-strike-zone pitch where the hitter is off-balanced and seemingly out front and ends up "poking" (word used on the Astro's website) the ball over the right field wall. Brewers sitting 11th in the NL in ERA (4.59) but are 4th in xFIP (4.17). Took a look at park factors at a couple different sites, and has been the historical trend, Miller Park has favored the hitters but it's not over-whelmingly tilted towards the hitters. Looking through some of the peripherals, the Brewers are towards the bottom in HR/FB% (16.5%, 12th in NL), but seem to be average in many other categories that one would assume could lead to higher run totals in the current environment (7th in hard hit ball percentage @ 38.1%, 8th in fly ball percentage @ 34.2%). Really hard to get a read on how this pitching staff stacks up against the rest of the league. xFIP is a pretty good indicator that better days may be ahead, but most of the other numbers make this look like an average-at-best pitching staff.

Bauer normally hangs around 3 bWAR/fWAR, but he was nearly a 6 WAR player in 2018 and that's such recent history that it has to be figured into the math. Pro-rate 2019 over a full season, and then add in 2017 and 2018, and he's an annual 3.9 WAR player and that's probably a pretty fair number. That would make him worth 6.3 WAR total for the remainder of this year and next. That's 56.7 million in total value. He'll probably make something like 26 million so surplus value should be right in the area of 30-31 million. I'd put Turang's surplus value at 20.9 million as a back end top 100 hitter. IMO including Burnes along with Turang would be an overpay for Milwaukee. I don't think madtownhawk's suggestion of Turang + Brown + Ashby is out of line at all. I thought some of the lists that stuck Brown in the top 100 last off-season were a bit over optimistic, but even with the poor start this year I'd have him as a top 300 pitcher and would probably put a surplus value of 8 million on him. Ashby holds rock solid "role-player prospect" value at 5.5 million. So I'd have the Turang + Brown + Ashby surplus value at 34.4 million...slightly higher than the Bauer's surplus value at 30-31 million...but they are in the same ballpark and that swap would be a reasonable one IMO. All comes down to what kind of upside the Indian's see in Turang + Brown + Ashby. I've no doubt the Indians could land a prospect that ranks higher on the top 100 list than Turang, but let's say if they get a player that sits at #50, I'd bet the rest of the pieces would not grade as highly as Brown and Ashby.

I wouldn't just shoot for Will Smith, I'd shoot for landing two of the three: Smith, Sam Dyson, Tony Watson. Dyson would actually be target #1 here, as getting him plus one of the others would be adding 1 righty and 1 lefty. If the asking price was significantly lower for Watson rather than Smith, then I would actually prefer Watson as he also has a very solid track record. If Houser's recent performance continues, and he turns out to be a good MLB reliever starting now, having Houser + Dyson + Smith OR Watson really solidifies the Brewer's bullpen situation. We probably just have to come to terms that relievers like this will require names like Ashby, Feliciano, Rasmussen, Supak...some combination of that tier of players going back to San Francisco. I thought Troy Stokes would be a perfect fit a month ago, but a .647 OPS has likely eliminated that. These quality relievers will not be moved for players like Diplan and Webb just because they are in the 10-20 range on the Brewer's prospect list. Take the guys in the #7-#15 range that have performed well this year and those are the most likely and reasonable candidates for both sides. Joey Meyer Bombs suggestions of Dubon and Brown are also reasonable and certainly not out of the question.

Have to admit, when I first logged in yesterday the first thing I saw was "Kimbrel (3 years / $43 million)" and the first thoughts that flashed in my head was how stupid the Brewers just were for likely blowing all the money they had left on a guy that would probably only pitch 35 innings this year and make it very hard to sign up another quality catcher for next year. I was simply delighted when the next thing I saw was the word "Cubs."

I don't like Kimbrel for the Cubs for the same reasons I wouldn't have liked Kimbrel as a Brewer. The Cubs have gotten good performances out of Kintzler and Cishek, but the rest of their bullpen hasn't been very good. Adding one, inflexible ninth inning guy frees up the other two relivers for earlier innings, but the bottom line is that the Cubs can only expect about 35 innings out of Kimbrel this year (after what I assume will be at least a 2 week extended spring training session). 35 innings of work is just not enough to swing what has been a bad bullpen. For what will probably be an 11 million dollar payout in 2019, I would have rather gone out and picked up 2 or maybe even 3 decent middle reliever or setup type guys and gone with a strength in numbers approach. Brewers got Soria at a real nice price last year and one would have to think there will be a solid group of relievers available this year that can be had, especially if the team that is trading for them can pick up 100% of their remaining salary. I also have to think that this move could have a significant impact on what the Cubs salary situation is like in 2019. A quick look at Cots shows that Cubs only have about 98 million committed, but that doesn't count a big arbitration number for Bryant and some other pretty significant numbers for players like Baez. I'm assuming the Kimbrel breakdown is 11 million for this season, 16 million for 2020 and 16 million for 2021. Cubs have three big salaries coming off the books, Hamels at 20 million, Zobrist at 12 million and Cishek at 6.5 million. So that's 38.5 million they've freed up but subtract 16 million for Kimbrel and there looks to be, at a minimum, 15+ million in arbitration raises. So it looks like this could pretty much take care of all their 2020 off-season money. Not a big deal for a good team if they weren't losing some quality....but Hamels....I still think he's a really solid cog in that rotation and taking him out with Darvish's continued troubles (and possibly Lester's age)...if signing Kimbrel now completely takes Hamels out of the equation for 2020 then I really dislike this move for the Cubs. But granted, I've always really liked Hamels and am less and less and less of a fan of inflexible, 1 inning relief pitchers no matter how gaudy some of their numbers are...so I'll admit right off the bat that there probably is a bias built into this.

Bottom five system after Hiura graduates. I was trying to put together a Sam Dyson + Tony Watson for prospects deal in the proposal forum. Normally this would include a couple solid "role-player" prospects. But the Brewers don't have very many attractive guys in that tier, and the tier above that "top 10 organizational prospects" is full of guys who have either just become "blah" or underperformed this year (Dubon, Brown, Erceg). If I were the Giants, I may have to insist on two of Ashby, Supak, Rasmussen, Feliciano just because most of the other targets are just not that interesting. And if Rasmussen is one of the two, I'd probably want a little insurance considering his injury history, and would insist a third fringy piece be thrown into the deal. Really thought Stokes looked like a good fit a month ago, but that slash line he currently possesses makes him near worthless on the trade market. And I am only estimating Sam Dyson's surplus value at 4.17 million, and Tony Watson's surplus value at 4.37 million. Getting pretty high up on the Brewer listing of prospects when only talking about trading for roughly 8.5 million in surplus value.

Claudio and Barnes looking like stud pitchers tonight. Relatively speaking of course.

The bigger issue is a star player got hurt on what should have been a meaningless play that resulted in one out. There is no question that King Manfred should decree that as soon as a pop fly leaves the bat the umpires should immediately just rule it an out to avoid such needless injuries. P.S. This wasn't meant to be a serious post. Should have put it in blue.

Any real news in Kimbrel in the last 24 hours? I did a search on Keuchel, and there are reports that the Yankees and Braves are the two most likely candidates to land him and both have made offers. All I see on Kimbrel are lists speculating where he could fit best and that the Twins have interest. Is this guy still insisting on a big, multi-year offer?

Dodgers land both Kody Hoese and Michael Busch? This could turn out to be a pretty good night for them.

Seems like his greatest asset might be his funky delivery. Sometimes that works against big league hitters...sometimes it doesn't. Doesn't really seem like round one talent after reading some of the scouting reports and listening to the talking heads on the MLB Network. Hopefully the Brewers made this pick because they see talent and upside...not because they see a guy who can move through the system quickly.

Just tuned in. Doesn't appear to be any major droppers so far. The guy that was # 8 on And That's compilation, Corbin Carroll, made it down to #16 but I wouldn't consider that to be a major drop in this draft. Only guy that has gone way higher than anticipated is Keoni Cavaco, a 35 to 40'ish player that went at #13. Twins have been known to take cheaper options earlier and then pay bigger dollars later like with Blayne Enlow in 2017. I don't know if that's the strategy with Cavaco at all, but since the Twins do have that history, then that pick really isn't that much of a surprise either. So far there doesn't seem to be any real surprises.

A look at some of the Wisconsin prospects: http://baseballprospectjournal.com/2019-mlb-draft-top-wisconsin-prospects/

Exactly. I'm not a proponent of sending Hiura down but I know enough about baseball economics and how Stearns handles a 40-man roster to think the possibility is very real and fairly likely to happen. But all of that should be completely irrelevant until Shaw EARNS his way back. A .515 OPS with ZERO extra base hits followed by a two singles/one walk night is not earning his way back to the 25-man roster. I'm pretty disappointed to hear that the Brewers have already made a decision about this and Shaw is back on the 25-man roster early next week.

Big thanks to And That for posting the list. What a wonderful reference to have when watching the draft! I'll go with Gunnar Henderson as my guess. I could also see Stearns loving Maurice Hampton, but with his potential as a football cornerback and the Brewers lacking just a bit of flexibility after trading/losing a couple picks...I just don't think he is "as likely" as some of the other candidates. But all the bats in that part of the draft, I really don't think one is any sort of step down from the other. Henderson, Hampton, Shewmake, Hoese, Callihan, etc...I'd be happy with any of those guys. Have to say that I really wish the Brewers had that comp pick, but easy to say that now. I'm sure I'd feel otherwise if Claudio had a sub-3.00 ERA, too bad Stearns lacks that crystal ball that all of us wish we had.

Chacin had put four pretty decent outings in a row together, but now the last two times out.... Looks like more pitching decisions could be coming soon and Burnes and Chacin are guys #1 and #2 that have to be looked at. At least Claudio did a nice job covering the last two innings.