sveumrules

All eight of Hudson's appearances in AAA last year came out of the bullpen and he never faced more than six batters in an outing. It does not appear that sending him to AAA last season was a long term plan to make him into a starter.

You don't need to extend Turnag to prevent him from walking early, he is still under team control for five more seasons at discounted rates through Arbitration.

Yeah, Peralta can be dominating for stretches, but he is what he is at this point. Staying healthy for 170 IP with an ERA around 10% better than league average like he has the last two years is probably the best we can hope for. Durbin could be dominating on the bases maybe? Hoskins can dominate for a couple weeks at a time if he gets hot. Haase is a fine backup catcher, but neither he nor Bauers have approached anything resembling what I would term as "dominance" since years ago in AA. A more accurate title would probably be something like "Freddy Peralta, 3 Players Who Could Be Varying Degrees Of Useful in 2025 For The Crew, and Jake Bauers"

Turang and Ortiz have potential upside remaining over what they’ve already shown in MLB. Dunn has hardly played and Durbin hasn’t played at all. They’re all still kids or young guys relative to their individual MLB timelines. If 22 is the cutoff there were only eight young guys or kids that were qualified hitters last year, That definition might be a tad restrictive.

It’s the same lineup that won the NL Central by ten games last year. Adames is gone, but that’s not ten wins out the door. Yelich, Mitchell and Hoskins all have upside over last year with potentially better health. Could get a full season of the Chourio we saw over the final four months last year. If he takes another step from there he could cover most of Willy’s lost WAR by himself Turang. Ortiz, and Frelick are all at the point on the aging curve where they could see improvement over last year. Contreras is the best catcher in the game already, but still has upside if he can dial in his approach for more contact in the air. Black and Durbin have had minor league success, just need exposure to MLB pitching to see who they are (or aren’t). Perkins is one of the best 4th OF in the game, could probably start for some teams in CF. Haase is a perfectly cromulent backup C with Quero waiting in the wings. I feel really good about twelve of the thirteen position player spots personally.

Will definitely be interesting to see how much infield Sal plays this spring. As for Turner, I think Black has first crack at the backup 1B sometimes DH role. After being letdown by so many old DH/1B only types over the years maybe they’re finally over it. Maybe Turner’s never wanted to come here to begin with.

Nashville needs a SS too and the only other option is Freddy Zamora. Guess the Brewers are hoping Vinny goes unclaimed and accepts his assignment at the end of spring training. If Murphy and the FO consider Frelick to be IF capable they could option both of Monasterio and Dunn keeping Vinny around as the 13th man.

Bummer, guess the good news with the timing of the surgery is he should be good to go for most of next season if all goes well in recovery.

Not sure how much of a catcher Seigler really is at this point. Didn’t catch at all in 2024 and during 28 games behind the dish at AA in 2023 he surrendered 54 SB vs only 9 CS. Maybe he gets a couple games a week backing up Alfaro if they slow roll Quero to start the year, but a 14.3 CS% at AA plus a year off from catching could equal chaos on the bases in Nashville.

The Cubs finished ten games back and the Reds were sixteen games behind us last year, they needed to make moves to have any chance of closing those sizable gaps. Nobody thought the Brewers were comfortably on top of the Central entering 2021, 2023 or 2024 either but they won the division by a combined 24 games in those three seasons. Maybe part of the problem in the playoffs this decade has been that the Brewers won the division too easily and lost their edge heading into the postseason after clinching with a week plus to spare. When they made it to G7 of the NLCS in 2018 they had momentum from fighting through the end of the regular season and winning Game 163.

This is where I’m at too. Everyday that goes by without an infield addition is that much more of a sign that the org is way higher on Durbin than many of the posters here. And that’s probably because his projections (and upside) are better than DeJong’s. Here’s the ranges for the eight different projections on each of their player pages at FanGraphs… Durbin wRC+ (80 to 95) WAR (0.6 to 1.3) DeJong wRC+ (75 to 85) WAR (0.3 to 1.3) ZiPS 80th percentile for DeJong is 101 OPS+ | 2.0 WAR versus 107 OPS+ | 2.2 WAR for Caleb. Personally, I’m excited to see what Caleb’s got. Baseball is supposed to be fun and what is more fun than a 5’6” speed demon contact machine? Something else to note about Durbin’s projections are that his highest combined BsR/DEF is +2.6. Don’t have to squint too hard to see him topping that by almost a win if he ends up getting 400+ PAs. If they were to add a still out there free agent I think I might prefer Brendan Rodgers to DeJong since he hits lefties way better and has more favorable projection ranges… Rodgers wRC+ (87 to 107 wRC+) WAR (0.8 to 1.5 WAR)

Batting average is kind of passé. but among 170 players with at least 1,500 PAs since 2021 DeJong comes in a not so nice 169th at .203. His 6.6% walk rate isn't quite as deplorable at 134th, but the combination of the two gives him a .268 OBP which is dead last in the sample by ten points. Out of 266 players with at least 300 PAs vs LHP since 2021 his 68 wRC+ is 256th.

What grades did the Tobias Myers, Bryan Hudson, and Jared Koenig transactions get? They ended up chipping in something like seven or eight wins last year.

We knew it was almost certainly going to be a one transaction offseason, and it has turned out to be a one transaction offseason. When expectation lines up with reality that’s a C for me.

Bregman didn’t sign with the Cubs.

Ding ding. Given their massive revenue advantage, there is little doubt the Ricketts are pocketing more cash annually than Attanassio. Ricketts own 95% of the team plus 25% of the network and a bunch of real estate adjacent to Wrigley. How much revenue is that compared to Mark A owning 40% of the Brewers? I’m not sure there is anyway for us internet posters to know the definitive dollar amount, but I’d imagine it eclipses the $80M or so that separates the teams respective payrolls pretty easily.

The rest of the division was mediocre - all winning between 76 and 83 games. It wasn’t like the Brewers were beating up on actual horrible teams like CHW (41 W), COL (61 W), MIA (62 W), LAA (63 W), OAK (69 W) or WAS (71 W) to pad their win total. Due to not having any truly horrible teams (and the Brewers going 31 W - 15 L against the AL) the NL Central ended up with the 3rd most wins in 2024… NLW (421 W) ALE (420 W) NLC (412 W) NLE (406 W) ALC (387 W) ALW (383 W)

Bucks are two games up on the #7 seed (Heat/Hawks tied at .500) and six point five games up on the #10 seed (Bulls). Giannis missing two three weeks might push them closer to the play in, but the odds of them dropping out completely are pretty slim. The season outlook is almost entirely dependent on the playoffs for me. Giannis getting hurt now, when he'll miss fewer games on account of the All Star break and should be able to return for the last month / 20 games or so before the playoffs, is about as ideal as it gets from a timeline perspective.

If they assign one or both of Bitonti and Adamczewski to Wisco there should be room for both of Made and Peña at Carolina. But yeah, would be tricky having all four in Carolina unless you want to start trying Bitonti in RF, Made/Peña in CF, or Adamczewski in LF for a game or two a week.

I think there’s a pretty good chance Made and Peña will both start in Carolina. Darkhorse DSL guys to join them would be Juan Ortuno - 344/464/481 (159 wRC+) with 29 BB / 27 K. Played all over at LF (13 G), 1B (12 G), 3B (8 G), DH (7 G), 2B (6 G), and SS (4 G). Jose Anderson - 283/403/512 (143 wRC+) with 29 BB / 38 K playing CF almost exclusively.

Earliest version of FanGraphs Playoff Odds are live with the NLC looking like this... CHI: 84.4 W | 42.7% winDIV MIL: 81.5 W | 24.2% winDIV STL: 78.5 W | 11.9% winDIV PIT: 78.2 W | 11.3% winDIV CIN: 77.7 W | 9.8% winDIV Focusing on the Brewers win projection, we know they are an MLB best +71 wins versus the FG preseason totals for the eight full seasons in their database. No doubt it's not just as easy as adding nine wins and saying cool, the Brewers are winning 90+ again, but maybe we can see where they might be getting underestimated (as they have been in the past). Let's start on offense. Last year, the Brewers 27.2 WAR ranked 5th in MLB. Their component rankings were 27.5 batting runs (10th), 32.0 fielding runs (6th), and 19.7 runs on the bases (1st). Of course, the main concern has been losing Willy Adames. He contributed 16.0 batting runs in 2024. But we're also "subtracting" Gary Sanchez (-1.3), Owen Miller (-3.0), Joey Wiemer (-3.4), and hopefully Jake Bauers (-5.3) from the ledger as well. Their -13.0 combined batting runs cancel out a good portion of what Willy contributed. Somewhat interestingly, the FG depth charts project the 2025 Brewers for 23.9 batting runs, with that 3.6 run loss from last year pretty close to the 3.0 run loss arrived upon with the quick & dirty math in the preceding paragraph. On the other two components they are projecting the 2025 Brewers for +8.2 base running and +9.4 fielding. So for the sake of argument, let's say they are right about the batting. It will take a step back from last year, but not collapse completely with the loss of Adames. On the other side of the coin, the base running and fielding are projected something like 34 runs worse than last year. That seems kind of harsh, especially considering Willy was abysmal on defense and Durbin is a speed demon. Pretty easy to see the Brewers adding three to four wins on the projections here. On the pitching side the depth charts like the rotation for 891 IP of 3.98 ERA | 4.10 FIP good for 12.0 WAR. That is a pretty strong projection for a rotation that posted 794 IP of 4.09 ERA | 4.52 FIP last year which shook out to 7.3 fWAR and 10.9 rWAR. At the same time, we know the Brewers rotation has posted a -0.42 ERA/FIP gap over the last two years, quite a bit larger than the projected -0.12 gap. Could be a win or two on the table here too. The 2025 bullpen is projected for 3.1 WAR. The last two years the Brewers bullpen has posted 10.6 fWAR (8th), 20.0 rWAR (1st), and +24.87 WPA (1st). Now of course Devin Williams accounted for 2.7 fWAR, 4.3 rWAR, and +6.18 WPA all by himself, and he gone. But even so, the Brewers could regress all the way down from 8.5 rWAR in 2023 and 11.5 rWAR in 2024 to around six rWAR in 2025 and still come in a three wins ahead of the projection. So putting it all together, plus three to four wins over the projections on base running / defense, another one or two on the rotation, plus three more on the bullpen (even with heavy regression baked in) gets you to plus seven to ten wins, or something like 88 to 92 wins.

Jose has two seasons over two WAR on FanGraphs - 2013 (2.3) and 2024 (2.5). He didn't play in MLB in 2014 or 2023 on account of injury, but every year from 2015 through 2022 he put up between 1.0 and 1.8 WAR. Has definitely been consistent in that high floor, low ceiling kind of way. Maybe the perfect example of the luxury backup, low end starter kind of archetype. Always thought Tyrone Taylor was another good example and he's got a four year run going now with 1.3 / 2.0 / 1.0 / 1.2 WAR since 2021. Back to Iglesias, since he doesn't hit for power or walk (4.3 career BB%) at all, his whole line is pretty much entirely BABIP dependent... 2013-19 (2832 PAs) .306 BABIP | 85 wRC+ 2020 (150 PAs) .407 BABIP | 160 wRC+ 2021-22 (978 PAs) .315 BABIP | 88 wRC+ 2024 (291 PAs) .382 BABIP | 137 wRC+ Has also hit lefties pretty consistently with a 124 wRC+ vs southpaws over 416 PAs since 2021, and a 110 wRC+ vs LHP for his career. Talking a tiny sample spread out over a really long time so it's probably meaningless, but Iglesias also has a 210 wRC+ (and a literal .500 BABIP lol) in 23 career PAs as a pinch hitter. Odd for sure. Out of 803 players with at least 4,000 PAs in the expansion era, the most similar player(s) I could come up with were... Jose Iglesias 52 BB+ | 58 K+ | 112 AVG+ | 62 ISO+ | 90 wRC+ GRUDZIELANEK 53 BB+ | 77 K+ | 107 AVG+ | 65 ISO+ | 91 wRC+ Dee Gordon 49 BB+ | 72 K+ | 111 AVG+ | 47 ISO+ | 88 wRC+ Tito Fuentes 56 BB+ | 65 K+ | 104 AVG+ | 62 ISO+ | 85 wRC+

Cross Drury off the list, minor league deal with the White Sox.

Think it'll pretty much come down to how the playoffs play out. With CLE, BOS and NYK all clearly ahead of them their realistic ceiling right now is the 2nd round. Bounce in the first? Prolly see big changes. Make it to the ECF or make a surprise Finals run? Horst prolly keeps his job to give it one more shot.

Drury (-2.1 WAR in 2024) is coming off the second worst season of the last ten years. DeJong’s .268 OBP is worst in MLB since 2021, he can’t hit LHP (68 wRC+ since 2021), and his SS defense nosedived last year. Rodgers at least hits lefties alright (106 wRC+ last two years), but he is pretty much 2B only with zero career innings at 3B and 16th percentile arm strength last year.