pacopete4

Smith has some really nice minor league numbers. Still very young.

[sarcasm]I’m not sure how to put videos in blue lol just having some fun with your rant.[/sarcasm]

Add Adrian Gonzalez to the headline. Signed with the Mets. Doesn’t say much about their prospect Dominic Smith.

That must be why a bunch of players decide to skip the Pro Bowl every year. Skipping it is one thing. Not being recognized or named to the team is another.

They care because they are competitive and they have pride. Why wouldn’t they care?

Cole isn’t that good. Return reflects that.

At that price we should’ve been in. Understandable that he’d want an opportunity to close though.

If Stearns is offering three years I’ll be really impressed because that’s about the only way I understand our interest and even then it’s questionable.

Sogard posted a .774 OPS vs. RHP in 2017. Perez posted an OPS of .789 vs. LHP in 2017. I'd be much more comfortable starting the year with a Sogard/Perez platoon than sticking Villar back there as starter with the hope he'll revert to the form of a year that he's not come close to at any time in his career before or after. So you’ll use Sogards career year as an example as to why you want him starting vs. RHP but you discredit Villar’s? Don’t let the fact that Sogards career split against RHP of .648 smack you right in the noggin when trying to make a point. Villar is 26. Sogard is 31. Which one of those players has upside and is headed into their prime again? Sogard is a safety valve in case things don’t work out well, or at least he should be. He’s never been very good other than a hot streak last season.

Yeah, I was a little stumped by the poster that pointed out injury concerns with Ortiz too. This is a big year for both Brinson and Ortiz. If either of them misses significant time again this season, it really is going to hamper their value as well as their chances for continued growth. Maybe it is a perfect time to unload both of them for some pitching and sign a guy like Cain. I think the injury issues are a far bigger concern for Ortiz than Brinson. Starting pitchers need to build on their innings from the prior year and work up to a 200 inning workload. It's hard to do that when injuries limit you to 100-110 innings per year. Position players don't really run into issues like that. Ortiz is young enough to build up durability and potentially help the big league rotation in 2019(solidifying himself for opening day 2020), but he needs a health season and to put up 130-140 good innings this year. I do agree there but for argument's sake, let's say Brinson starts the year in AAA plays alright but gets hut and misses 20-30% of the season like his track record shows. Now he's on the way back from injury, still stuck in the minors and his value is dwindling along with a year of control. This very well could be what happens this season with Brinson. Probably as likely as him coming up and being the awesome player some scouts believe he could be.

I don't know that he'll get that offer again regardless, but we'll see. I'd like to think he's going to show up in the best shape of his career and intent on winning his job back. Hopefully, he has himself in a better place mentally. He is a perfect example of having all the tools but not being able to overcome himself. If he has matured in that sense, I can't wait to see the production he puts out on the field. But for every guy that figures it out, there is probably a dozen who are out of baseball... or something like that.

Yeah, I was a little stumped by the poster that pointed out injury concerns with Ortiz too. This is a big year for both Brinson and Ortiz. If either of them misses significant time again this season, it really is going to hamper their value as well as their chances for continued growth. Maybe it is a perfect time to unload both of them for some pitching and sign a guy like Cain.

I'm curious if you have similar feelings toward Luis Ortiz. Ortiz has been injured at some point each year since being drafted & was even hurt during senior year of high school before being drafted. He has yet to throw 100 IP in any of his 4 seasons of professional ball. Still people think of him as a mid-rotation starting pitcher. I know I do. How could that not be a red flag?

Really hard to blame anyone else for a loss when you have the game in your grasp, are on the edge of FG range for what would be a game winner, have the opportunity to run for a 1st down and make an inexplicably bad rookie throw across the width of the field. After seeing his ankle after that game and hearing about the concussion he was playing through, all due to the way the game was reffed, I still stand by the fact that the Vikes were robbed. The Vikings were a better team and the Saints went out there to knock Favre out of the game. They couldn't do that but they beat him up so badly that they even needed a FG at the end to win. It was a complete sham.

Milwaukee Brewers among handful of teams with interest in Seung-hwan Oh, per report The first year was amazing, last year, not so much. Still good to see us kicking the tires on all possibilities and could be a good pickup for the Crew. I do find it interesting that the Brewers are in the mix with pretty much any free agent the Cubs/Cardinals are in on.

It is probably more likely that Brinson is an allstar and Phillips is a solid regular than your pessimistic viewpoint. Hope so. I really do. I just don't have a very good feeling about Brinson.

Favre and the Vikes were robbed of a Super Bowl appearance the last time these two teams played. What a joke that game was in terms of how it was reffed.

Here is my Brewer pessimism... We trade Phillips and he goes on to a great career and fan favorite elsewhere. Meanwhile we have Brinson who can barely stay healthy enough to play 100 games a season and his value slowly diminishes to a bag of balls.

Nope. I can't cheer for the Vikings. Its like cold fusion... just doesn't work. Agreed. Viking fans are insufferable enough as it is. I'd hate to see what they would be like with a championship. I'd like to keep the 'you've never won a Super Bowl' thing hanging over their heads as long as possible. While I'd hate to see Brady win another one, with 5 he's pretty much already considered the G.O.A.T. by everyone around. Everything else is just icing for him at this point. Mind blowing to me that Brady has played in a combined total of 18 conference championships and Super Bowls already. I'm not going to lie, I'm very envious. We've played in a total of 10 in my entire lifetime, and obviously we've been a highly successful NFL franchise. Let's go Jacksonville!! That solves the problem.

The first name that came to mind was Nolan Ryan, but I guess he was actually in his early 40's when he started his 5 year stretch with the Rangers, so never mind. A once in a generation type player that was paid $1million per season. While a lot during the time period, it definitely wouldn't hamper a team like $25 million might for the Brewers.

The team's history signing free agent starters has jaded many of us into believing that any starter they sign to a large deal isn't going to live up to his contract, especially in the last part of it. I think if the team operates with that mentality, it's a mistake. At the same time, the team's history also suggests that there isn't much success to be had home-growing successful MLB starting pitchers. Really, over the last decade, trades for top-end starters on reasonable contracts have proven to be the most successful ... but those are very expensive and rare. Can you list off players that have lived up to their big contracts they sign into their early 30's? I'm not sure there are many you would consider success stories. If that's being jaded, fine. But I just don't want to see us in a situation where a player has to play because of the money we are paying them. And that is exactly would very well could happen with Arrieta. It's a huge risk. Not sure this is the time to make it. As much as I do want us to field a winner, patience is necessary at times.

Matt Garza was never, ever in Arrieta's class as a pitcher. At his best, Garza was probably a #3-4 on a good team, and a marginal #2 on a bad one. Arrieta is a legit #1 pitcher. If you are looking at the Brewers from a few years ago, Garza was Marcum as far as upside, while Arrieta is Greinke/Sabathia/Sheets territory. Yes, I wish he was 28 years old, but like Briggs pointed out, the guy is a workout fanatic. And big contracts do not nearly come close to hamstringing teams as they did 10 years ago. The connection wasn't that Garza is anywhere near Arrieta in terms of a pitcher but that they kept trotting him out there because they were paying him $12 million to pitch and they will do the same thing with Arrieta if he is making $25 million. No matter how terrible he gets, they will start him if he's healthy. I don't want to see that from my team anymore. I would rather we home-grow guys and find reasonable contracts (Chacin) to fill out rotations.

Calling his great year an "outlier" to make a point he's not worth big money is really misleading. His great year was one of the greatest years of any pitcher since the mound was lowered in 1969. It would have been an outlier for Verlander, Kershaw, Randy Johnson, etc. He logged close to 250 innings counting playoffs that year. Regression was inevitable. He followed that up with another big workload in 2016 and a short offseason. Verlander experienced a similar regression in his age 30-31 seasons but bounced back after logging only 133 innings at age 32. Arrieta's 2nd half in 2017: 2.28 ERA in 12 starts with a 1.09 WHIP. His first half was an outlier. The guy is a tremendous competitor and a workout fanatic. I'd take him over Grienke in a heartbeat. I wouldn't go over 4 years with an option, but if there's a guy out there worth close to $25 million a year, he's it. It's a big risk certainly (all multi year deals to pitchers are), but the Brewers have payroll room and could absorb it. It's 2018. Revenues across baseball are up significantly since the Brewers went "all in" 7-8 years ago and their payroll approached $100 million. I hope you are right (if we do sign him) but to me, it's just way too big of a risk for the Brewers to bet on when all the data is telling the exact opposite. When we are trying to build a serious WS contender in 1-2 more years and this guy is dragging down $25 million of our budget, it could really affect things. Not only that but it puts us in the same position as we basically were with Garza. Well, you are paying him "X" amount of money so he gets the ball every five days no matter how terrible they are. I just don't want to see the Brewers in that type of situation anymore.

I'm hoping he is so smart that he just driving up the price for the Cubs and Cardinals. I guess that is about the last hope left with this situation.

Makes me angry that we are even involved here. Every sign points to his great year being an outlier and the trend are heading the wrong way with just about every one of his stats. I thought Stearns was supposed to be smarter than this?