sveumrules

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.

Over the last ten years there are 2,755 individual player seasons with at least 300 PAs. 2024 Drury comes in 2,754th at -2.1 WAR. The only player worse than 2024 Drury in the last ten years is 2018 Chris Davis at -2.5 WAR. His 34 wRC+ last year was two points lower than the 36 wRC+ that JBJ posted with the Brewers in 2021.

Ortiz had a 101 ISO+ last year, so its more like two infielders with extremely limited power and one who is around average. Moncada has a 93 ISO+ in the 2020’s so he likely wouldn’t have moved the needle much on the power production front.

Moncada 2019 559 PA | 139 wRC+ | 5.2 WAR 84 BB+ | 120 K+ 124 AVG+ | 125 ISO+ [Even adjusting for heightened leaguewide offense in 2019, Yoan was clearly a big beneficiary of the juiced ball posting career best hit and power numbers.] Moncada 2021 616 PA | 120 wRC+ | 3.7 WAR 161 BB+ | 111 K+ 107 AVG+ | 87 ISO+ [2021 was fine on the surface but was almost entirely propped up by a crazy high outlier walk rate as Yoan’s hit fell off and his power cratered to below league average levels.] Moncada 2022-24 835 PA | 88 wRC+ | 2.2 WAR 84 BB+ | 123 K+ 97 AVG+ | 96 ISO+ [Last three have been injury marred blah. I’m not sure there’s much left to really bounce back to at this point.] Maybe they get 350-400 PAs of league average-ish production?

Putting Quero third is kind of burying the lede here. I wouldn’t give up Jeferson alone, much less the rest of that package on top of it for one year of Cease.

The Bucks are 5.5 games up on the last team in the playoffs at the moment, and that is the Bulls who are selling. They are 6.5 up on the 76ers in the 11 spot. It would pretty much take a catastrophic injury to Giannis, Dame or both for them to miss the playoffs this year.

its been all down hill since Giannis hired Adrian Griffin.

I mean, we are definitely in the tailspin and have been for some time, but that is just the reality of navigating the cap with a Superstar. You sell the future for the now until the bottom completely falls out. Assuming this year ends with another 1st or 2nd round exit, fire Horst and fingers crossed they find some whiz kid to take over who can either rebuild it around Giannis and convince him to stay, or deal him (& Dame) for a haul of assets to kick off what will likely be a long rebuild with teams chock full of AJ Johnsons.

How we got to this point is the 2nd apron restrictions introduced in the new CBA. Getting under now frees them up to aggregate salaries to make another move if so inclined. As much as I love Midds and the offensive game is still there, this last ankle(s) procedure(s) seem to have really sapped his lateral movement on defense and has further limited his already tenuous minutes / availability situation. Thanks for everything Khris, and sorry it had to be Washington in the end. Hopefully they can reroute him somewhere relevant like POR did with Jrue. Never been a big Kuzma fan, but with a hopeful motivation / performance boost from getting out of DC and next to Giannis, 2025 Kyle should be better than 2025 Khris.