pacopete4

meh, I don't know about that when speaking about Braun. Luc and Braun would give them the offensive punch they need. Arica would be their SS of the future (maybe present), and if you had a pitcher to give them that can be a #3ish who is young and controllable... you may have a shot at Urias and Seager

Add maybe Nelson or Peralta, IDK... just too many moving pieces here

Put in Arcia instead of Segura (or maybe both) and you might have a shot. Maybe...

Mark always seems seem genuine. Maybe that's the good business person in him but he comes across as a good guy.

All depends on what the Brewers do with some of their bigger pieces. If they deal, it'll be an all out battle for the cellar. If they hold on guys like Luc, we probably are the better club.

Yeah there gets to be a point where you see a guy have pretty good success in the pen and with their ages, there is no reason to mess around with the possibility of starting. It is nice to have guys in the pen who can give you multiple innings as well so they are valuable pieces to a competent pen.

2,244,747 Book it.

Not an overly impressive trade looking at those three.

Don't you usually have to read about WAR? Not if someone reads it to you.

You're welcome. Just seemed like it came up in just about every player that we sign or we'd like to sign.

When will you people stop drooling over WAR? You act as if that is the end-all be-all when it comes to a player's value. Braun has outperformed Gordon in all aspects offensively his entire career, including last year, outside of 2013 (injury/suspension) and 2014 (coming back from surgery). How convenient you failed to mention the issues surrounding 2 of those 4yrs. But, but, but...fangraphs says his Defensive WAR is XYZ. Laughable (defensive war is literally laughable at this point). Braun was a solid LF and he's an average RF. Statistically, Braun's 2012 6.8 WAR absolutely destroys Gordon's 2014 6.6 WAR season - there isn't one person that would take Gordon's 2014 over Braun's 2012. Yet their WARs were essentially the same. Gordon's highest WAR was 2011 (7.1) and even though he had 13 more ABs than Braun did in his 2012 season, Braun still posted higher numbers in runs, hits, HR, rbi, SB, BA, OBP, SLG, OPS with fewer Ks (30/30 season - Gordon's never even had a 20/20 season) and would have easily been named MVP if it wasn't for the leak and him being tied to PEDs. Gordon's stats the past 3yrs (all-star years) are worse than his previous 2yrs (2011 and 2012) when he wasn't even an all-star and where he had 2 of his highest 3 WAR seasons. Gordon's more highly regarded, in your opinion, because of Braun's roid suspension and nothing else. If Gordon ends up around 20M/yr the Brewers will be happy knowing they have a better player in the same contract (same will be said for a lot of other player's starting to get paid more than Braun as well in the next couple years) Glad someone said it. MKE81 thank you. A lot of people don't realize how truly great Braun is/was, whatever you want to say about him. And last year he showed signs of being that top hitter he's been for most of his career. I'll throw money down on Braun over Gordon any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

I'm excited that we are giving guys like Middlebrooks and Cecchini an opportunity to be those guys who blossom later in their careers. It is a solid move at a position we have really no one at. What do we have to lose? Either way, it does provide a fun chance to track these guys as they try to make their impact on this team.

I'm excited that we are giving guys like Middlebrooks and Cecchini an opportunity to be those guys who blossom later in their careers. It is a solid move at a position we have really no one at. What do we have to lose? Either way, it does provide a fun chance to track these guys as they try to make their impact on this team.

Keep Braun, win the World Series. Life complete.

If you trade a guy, do the deferred payments go to the new team? Or do they stay with the original team? Or is that negotiable?

Cueto pairing with Bochey, Righetti, and Posey will have a huge impact on him this season. Not only that but playing in AT&T for half his games along with visiting SD and LAD often will also help. This was a good signing for them. I thought the pay would've been greater actually.

Who says they're not signing anyone? Lots of time before that 40 man roster is set.

Maybe the Dodgers should trade Kershaw and look to compete in 2017 - 2018. There division is just too good to compete now.

Teams would be silly not to check in on him. He's still a very good hitter.

Giants rotation now the real deal again.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/14367708/san-francisco-giants-johnny-cueto-reach-agreement-pending-physical

The funny part is merely a few hundred miles to the west the Twins have had 4-5 years of absolute terrible baseball, and despite an unexpected good showing last year the fanbase did not come out in droves. As a matter of fact, they had LESS FANS ATTEND GAMES even though they contended for a playoff spot than they did in 2014. They have had LESS FANS ATTEND GAMES every single year since their 2010 playoff sweep to the Yankees, which is about 33% less (3.1 million vs 2.2 million). Did I mention their stadium is brand new and one of the best in the league? Oh right, that didn't seem to help draw the fans in either. You mentioned the key point in your last sentence here. New stadium in 2010 = a lot of fans. It's a bit smaller, so 3.1 million is good. Team begins to fall apart, stadium is still new 2011-2013 = Decrease in fans, but only slight. Team begins to rebuild 2014-2015, last ounce of new stadium excitement wears away = Bottom. Stadium began to fill again near the end of 2015. 2016 and beyond assuming they don't fall apart again = lots of fans again. I'm not sure what else you want to do. Do you want to keep signing players to win 75 games? The Bucks tried to "stay competitive" for the last decade before Kohl sold the team and nobody showed up. Fans get tired of mediocrity as well. Nobody's going to show up at Miller Park in 2016 and 2017. They already stopped showing up in 2015, and that team had Lind, Lucroy, K-Rod, Gomez, and were coming off a year that looked to have promise. Sure, I think Pedro Alvarez and guys like that are good pickups and might bring 1% more fans in, but for me, I want these moves to flip for players later to bring fans in down the road. There is nothing the Brewers could do/could have done save for deciding to dump a billion dollars in future money on free agents that would have gotten Miller Park to draw large crowds for 2016. To me, it's more about doing what you can to try to win as many games, not matter what your resources are. If the Brewers want to keep payroll around $65 million this season, fine. But at least do it with the best 25 (40) players you can find and try to win as many games as we can. If that's 75, hooray! If thats 65, okay well at least they did what they can to try to win games and not just play who's convenient to them. To me, the rest of this talk is bunch of malarky.

Umm.. they should sign a few guys to compete this year. Crazier things have happened. Otherwise what the heck is the front office/GM even there for? We could have BrewersNet posters put together the team and make the lineups. Sign a few guys off the heap and see what happens. It's baseball. Teams gel, players have career years, other teams have down years, etc... No one is expecting this team to compete but that doesn't mean they shouldn't make smart moves and sign discounted players and try to win some games. Some of you guys I just do not understand, at all.

You're never going to stay around for decade(s) at a time being a legit WS contender. It all goes in cycles and you have your windows to go for it. The Astros feel as though they are in that right now and I kind've agree with them. The Brewers had a similar window not too long ago and they did not get it done but sometimes you have to take chances.

Since we seem to have this debate/discussion quite a bit on this board I just thought I would look into a little and see if there is something to it. The last two seasons the Kansas City Royals have ranked 30th (being the best) in amount of strikeouts in the regular season. They have gone to back to back World Series and won it once. I know, pitching wins in the playoffs but I also think there is something to making opponents pitch. But when I look at the numbers from the past two seasons and compare teams that missed the playoffs in 2014 but made it in 2015 (Cubs & Astros), they ranked #1 and #2 in both years but only did playoff damage in 2015. When I first sat down to look at the numbers, I thought I would see this big correlation between striking out and winning ball games. I'm not sure there is one. Pitching still trumps it all. So I guess the next time we talk about this guy being a high strike out guy, maybe we shouldn't be too hard on him? I know we can't have 8-high strikeout guys in our lineup but 2 or 3 won't kill our team.