SoCalBrewfan

There's some speculation I've seen that this trend, and this signing in particular, reflects some hedging against changes in the CBA that would impact the current pay progression for young players. I think it's an ok deal with the current system, not a slam dunk for either player or team. (Which is likely the sign of a fair deal?) But if the salaries of young players escalate more quickly in a new contract, it could be huge. I don't think the jealousy described above is an issue at all. I expect that the Brewers have had similar discussions with most of their young major leaguers and many top prospects as well, and most have opted to bet on themselves.

Dorchies is on there at 20. It should also be noted that many teams have those guys, the ones who could have a shot if things break right. We know our guys best but when you semi-follow other teams you'll see the same phenomenon. That's not to say the system isn't deep...I find it heartening to see that aside from Fischer, the highest draft/IFA addition is at 15; the guys already in the system are good enough that new talent to the org needs to prove itself. Contrast that to 2021 when nearly their entire prior year's draft was immediately in the top 20: Mitchell (1), Zamora (8), Warren (11), Hayden Cantrelle (16). (oddly, I suppose, Wiemer was not listed but rocketed up later) Plus IFAs who had yet to debut: Hedbert Perez (3), Quero (9), Medina (13), and Chourio (15).

Worry, don't worry, get mad, whatever. You can't change it. We will all just have to wait and see. The question is whether the Brewers have contingency plans. Our list of possible starters goes deep, but there's not a lot of proven major leaguers yet. Getting to ~800 starting pitcher innings (2025 total, approximately 5 * 162) is a figure of merit, and the Brewers have subtracted two guys (Peralta and Quintana) who combined for 300. Even the guys listed as certainties after Woodruff, namely Miz, Priester and maybe Patrick, have promise but none have long track records of success. Those three guys seem like the best positioned to combine innings and effectiveness; 500 quality innings from the three would already put the '26 team ahead of a lot of recent Brewers squads. Pitching is just uncertain though, and I'd plan for one or more of those guys to have some regression. We've kind of been here before, though. Remember 2019 or so, when Woodruff, Burnes, Peralta were largely unproven with some bullpen success, but they were going to be counted on going forward? Along with guys like Davies and Houser and a bunch of vets that I didn't even remember: Chacin? Chase Anderson? The lesson is that they have a plan, but are prepared to piece things together even if things don't immediately go according to plan. They recovered from Burnes' calamity of a 2019 season and Freddy's growing pains. Surely they knew that setbacks would be possible for Woodruff. The tell will be when (or if) they add a veteran.

I think you're seriously misinterpreting this. Managing the 40 man roster is way more than that. The Brewers do so carefully, and won't add someone before they need to because then they start burning options. It's not easy to move guys off once they are on, and poor choices here can lead to losing flexibility and even having to trade or release a player before you are ready. Understanding the rules regarding rule 5 protection and options are essential to managing the 40 man roster. Since Wilken is first eligible for Rule 5 in December 2026, it's poor management to put him on the 40 man until the moment you need him to be in the big leagues. If he's on the 40, he needs to be optioned in order to be assigned to the minor leagues, and there are only three option years in which that can be done, after which you can lose his rights. With him not on the 40, he can hone his craft in AAA and if he's ready, you make the 40-man move then and there. Not being on the 40 in spring training has nothing to do with how the Brewers regard him. In fact, keeping him off the 40 is done in part because he has some potential value that they don't want to risk losing prematurely.

The Brewers are always going to be acquiring scrap heap guys. There is no amount of farm system success that is likely to change that. Why? Because they have had success with it, and because there will always be a need for complementary players to supplement a team. Many of them will never do more than filling out the AA or AAA roster, but that's also something is needed. People get weird about these signings, and they won't all work, but even scrap heap guys are generally really good baseball players who have a chance to thrive in the right system with the right opportunity. Did anyone jump up and down about Megill or Koenig when they were acquired? Often there are the snarky comments, okay print the World Series tickets now, we got some guy named Blake Perkins. You don't win if all you have are the Blake Perkins of the world, but they can patch holes and a few of them will surprise you. There's very likely one of the minor league signing from this offseason who will play an important role at some point this year. Eddys Leonard? Gerson Garabito? Greg Jones? Who knows. Personally I love to see a guy like that get a chance and run with it. Rengifo is a guy that seemed like a great add two years or so ago. It's just like the Brewers to pick him up after an off year to fill a gap. Maybe he fills the 3b hole all year, maybe he's a platoon bat and IF depth piece, maybe his bat doesn't recover or he has lost a step defensively. He seems like a step down with the glove, unless I've missed something, but then nobody thought Durbin was playable at third and the Brewers made it work. Not much risked, in any event. He's not blocking anyone, and IMO his role is to fill the hole until some of the other options clarify. The Brewers do seem to have a lot of confidence in their ability to construct a roster that looked deeply flawed but then fill holes deep into spring training or even into the regular season. They have been right in many cases, but there's part of me that thinks this sequence of transactions this year might come back to bite them a bit. Hope not, of course. There are enough young infielders coming up that any holes might be only short term, but none of the young guys seem to me very likely to be a quality major leaguer in 2026, save perhaps Jett, and I don't think it's clear whether he fits in the infield at all. In any event Biloxi and Nashville will be interesting viewing this year, and I expect the lineup they end the year with to have some wrinkles that few of us could guess right now. Lots of fighting about Wilken but I don't think anyone knows for sure what to expect of him. Some of the arguments here are more than a bit thin, and just stating that he 'sucks' is the sort of thing that adds zero to any conversation. Fluky injuries, to be sure, and I think it's a win for him to become any kind of hitter after his face injury, much less one of the best in the Southern League. Still, he was essentially repeating AA (neither old nor young for the league, really) and there are big questions about his contact and defense that need to be answered. He was on the MLB list of top 3b prospects, but that list was really thin this year, without a single top 100 prospect. Maybe I'm selling him short, but I don't have him penciled in for substantial major league PAs this year. Honestly, the guys who seem most likely to take the 3b job at some point are all at least a year away (Made, Pena, Fischer). The point is always for the Brewers that you can't be certain that any one of those guys is going to be the guy. It goes for the infielders but the pitchers as well. That's why they just keep adding names to the list: if it's not Black that steps up, maybe it's Wilken, or Adams, or whoever is next in line.

Harrison was not long ago a top 50 or higher prospect, Futures Game guy, really big deal. He's got big league experience but also room to grow, is young, controlled, free agent 2031. I've seen a couple of takes that really like Drohan as a second piece as well. The return is not at all bad, it's just that the major league roster at the moment seems a bit imbalanced. (We already had a bunch of LHP on the 40, though the system as a whole might be a bit thin. The infield configuration seems very unclear for the moment, though there are certainly prospects on the way up.)

Lightning reaction: that's really an odd and surprising trade unless something else is coming. Can make a case for Harrison as a valuable add, and if this was a couple of years ago nobody would believe we got him for so cheap. Brewers tend not to get caught up in last year's numbers and look at long term value.

Given the current emphasis the Brewers place on run prevention, it's unlikely they would see Suarez as an acceptable option at 3b defensively. So I'm not sure Durbin is really the appropriate comparison. There is some reason to believe that past associations mean that the Reds got a deal that Brewers might not have. Apparently the Pirates had a better offer on paper, for example.

The 2020 list is interesting because as much as it's dismissed above, there are two 10+ bWAR careers on there (Turang, Rasmussen), plus Devin Williams who is 8+ and Tyrone Taylor who is close. Ashby has value, and we'd like to think has good years to come. For a bottom of the barrel system with no top 100 guys, there's some value there. Add Lucas Erceg while we are at it (caveats noted here). In addition there's a couple of other decent pitchers in the system at that time that didn't even make the list in Reese Olsen and Bowden Francis. Jeferson Quero is still a top 100 prospect who was very young at the time of the list. (E Garcia still has some hope as well.) It was a weird part of Brewers recent draft history with the likes of Lutz and Joe Gray and Caden Lemons. Hopefully our current approach to prep draftees is more productive. Dismissing some of these guys because they had success elsewhere doesn't make sense to me. If you say Rasmussen didn't help the Brewers, you're ignoring the fact that he was a key part of the Adames trade. And Olsen helped us get ... okay let's dismiss that, after all. Too painful to think about. If the point is simply that taking the current top prospect list and penciling them all into a near-future lineup is a bit silly, well, sure. And yet BA, among others, does it every year. It's a fun exercise that hurts no one. We have a top rated system again, it's ok to dream a bit on a dreary January day.

I don't know that I ever knew that Yost and Brouhard were Rule 5 picks. That's cool. Jeff Bennett was well known for his hat, if I recall correctly? Wei-Chung Wang was a memorable choice as well, though certainly not in terms of WAR.

A thing I don't love is when we trade away a guy and then suddenly he's flawed and over performed and whatever, and the FO are geniuses who saw the future that nobody else could. The Brewers clearly have their evaluation criteria and are right more than they are wrong, but that doesn't mean we only give away trash and get gems in exchange. This is not necessarily directed to anyone in particular, more to a vibe you seen sometimes. It should also be noted that there are a lot of differing opinions expressed, and I don't think it's accurate to say the whole board ever thinks X about much of anything (save maybe dislike of certain rivals). Of the many answers, sometimes the extreme ones get more play because that's how people feel a need to push back. Nuanced answers don't fire up the blood in the same way, I guess. Personally, I'll miss Collins, and he was a big part of one of the most fun Brewers seasons for a long time. He did some things well but there is definitely reason for caution in assessing his future. As well, as much as he was just what the doctor ordered in 2025, his long term fit on the Brewers was questionable. The team didn't seem to see him as a defensive option in the infield or CF, which is likely appropriate given his skills and the team's emphasis on run prevention. So it's hard to see him as a full time corner OF, and while it is fun to dream on him as a supersub who gets a near-regular's worth of above average plate appearances while playing all over the field, that's apparently not how the Brewers saw things. Interestingly, this article (for whatever it's worth) suggests that KC really suffered from poor defense (other than the excellent left side of the infield) and base running, so getting one of our guys was the right call for them. (Maybe they should have opted for Perkins instead?) Collins should help, nevertheless, and I hope he does well for them. https://www.royalsreview.com/royals-analysis-sabermetrics-stats/88114/the-2025-royals-failed-on-the-fundamentals Zerpa could be really valuable, with a skillset that seems made for the Brewers. The Brewers clearly don't care what ERA someone put up last year, and their track record is good with this kind of move, but pitchers are volatile so of course this could go bust. We do seem to have a lot of lefty options at the moment with only Gasser clearly best suited for the rotation. It will be interesting to see whether Zerpa ends up in leverage roles, as a multiple inning option, or possibly as a rotation candidate. Not that anyone seems too sad to lose him, but Mears was himself a pitcher that hadn't put it together and then gave us a year of good value. Or, perhaps, a fractional year of great value and then whatever was left after his arm nearly fell off? There was a stretch where he was on fire, but the workload never seemed sustainable. Without options his utility was more limited and moving him seemed kind of inevitable. Getting a good season to three from a second tier relief arm and moving on is just how this team rolls.

Beyond the news (which is kind of wait and see from my point of view), there is a bigger picture. Is this, as it seems to be, original reporting by brewer fanatic as opposed to a cite of something published (or tweeted) elsewhere? If so, that's kind of cool for the site. Releasing news that teams are making offers or inquiries also can only help beef up the options the Brewers have in getting a good return. I would like hold onto Peralta, personally, but we do have a bit of pitching depth and I could see a trade actually improving the '26 team, as well as the future, if the return is good.

By posting this I will be part of the problem, but goodness it's easy to get a rise out of people. I like the author's articles most of the time, but... Phillies resign a guy everyone assumed they'd resign, one of several key potential free agent losses for that team. Dodgers sign away a reliever from the Mets. (Again, probably best reliever available, just like last year, which worked so well...) Nothing about either move has anything to do with Brewers plans. But this headline? How about 'Phillies pause the free agent bleeding but are still under the gun?' How about "Mets lose another top reliever?" Is there a counterpart article on the Cubs site, two more players that won't be Cubs? (Or maybe, 'Cubs blunder continues to haunt them?') Do Schwarber and Diaz signings fundamentally change the NL dynamics for 2026? No, but this way you get the usual "brewers too cheap, we never go all in" and then the inevitable responses. Slow news day, generate 'engagement' with inflammatory headline. Winning?

Catchers are hard to stash through Rule 5, and historically there haven't been many to stick, though Liam Hicks worked out well for the Marlins. Maybe a team that genuinely expects their starter to play almost every day could pull it off? Even if there's some risk in losing Wood, it's still the right move to leave him unprotected. Pitchers will always be the most common picks in rule 5, and none of the ones we've left unprotected would be insurmountable losses. The price of having talent is that you can't keep it all, things like Smith are just going to happen. Be glad the Brewers have depth that they can have a mild setback like that and keep chugging along. We'll know soon...

I have never had a good sense of who was the next in line after Arnold. Is it Mueller? I think there are multiple Assistant GMs and special assistants and advisors, but is there an heir apparent here? Arnold has had success that you'd think he's be on some teams' radars. Or is this move an effort to make room to promote someone from within and keep them from being poached by another org, since they can deny permission if a new job is not a promotion?

If Woodruff declines the option, he gets $10M, and is a free agent. The Brewers decide whether to make a qualifying offer. If they do and he takes the QO, he gets $10M + ~$22M. If they don't, or if he declines, he gets $10M + whatever he can negotiate on the market, which is all but certain to be more than just accepting the option. You can hope otherwise, but in reality the mutual option is used by the Brewers as a salary deferral mechanism. (See, it's not just the Dodgers who are sneaky...) In all likelihood, it has always been understood by all parties that this is just a $10M bonus for Woody, and a way for the Brewers to shift where that portion of his salary hits the books.

Mutual is the key word. Mutual options are almost never exercised by both team and player...I can't think of a single one that was anything other than deferred salary. If it's a no-brainer for the Brewers to exercise , it's as much a no-brainer for Woodruff not to.

Rule 5 status depends on age at signing (this is wikipedia but there are many good sources): So Dec 26 will also include college guys from '23 draft: Wilken, Boeve, pitchers like Woodward, Birchard, Wichrowski, Kuehner, KC Hunt. Also don't forget international signees, Luis Lara is Dec 26 eligible, as are Juan Baez, Manuel Rodriguez.

This is very sensitive to the assumptions you make about the true talent / future winning %. If you flip a coin 47 times, how likely is it to get 29 heads or more? (The Brewers have 47 games remaining and need 29 wins to get to 100.) (I'm doing this on an online calculator but the numbers seem plausible, could write it up in excel or something too.) With a fair coin, exactly 29 heads in 47 tries is ~3%, 29 or more is ~7%. If you assume 55% winning percentage, odds go up to 22% of at least 29 wins. With the Brewers' current winning percentage, all the way up to 56%.

Lucky guess by me, it seems.

Both Pratt and Lara are having seasons that might look unimpressive, but they are both above average offensively in the Southern League. (The league slash line is .229/ .320/.339.) For plus defenders at two of the three most challenging positions on the diamond, that is already significant. Add to that the fact that both are 20 years old in AA and you've got something. It's easy to get spoiled by a few gaudy stat lines, but not every prospect is going to have a trajectory like Chourio. The fact that guys four or five years older and with lesser defensive value are outhitting them should not be held against them...it is to be expected.

As we ponder the 2025 trade deadline, it's perhaps worth looking back to see the impact of a past deadline, and the immediate rating of winners and losers. here's the article from last year on MLB.com: https://www.mlb.com/news/2024-mlb-trade-deadline-winners-ranked The biggest winners? The St Lous Cardinals, who acquired Fedde, Pham, and apparently also Shawn Alexander? "And all they had to give up was Tommy Edman..." You may recall that they missed the playoffs and that Edman was kind of good. The Dodgers were second, and obviously they had a pretty good run. Mariners, third. Arozarena and Turner. No playoffs. Mets, Orioles, Phillies, Royals fill out the list. Amusingly, here is another article showing increases and decreases in playoff probability for the few weeks after the trade deadline: https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-playoff-odds-changes-since-2024-all-star-break Of the big risers (including our own Brewers), only the Royals were on that trade deadline list. The three biggest declines were the Cardinals, Mariners, and Mets. Trade deadline winners list #1, #3, and #4. That's not to say that trade deadline acquisitions can't make a difference, or that fixing holes in season isn't important. There's a difference between a good process and good results. It's just that the instant analysis, both by fans and media professionals, is often just noise. Everyone needs articles with instant analysis because rabid fans will click and then argue more about what their team did or didn't do. Possibly there were Cardinals or Mariners fans puffing their chests because their team 'won' the trade deadline. Certainly there were Brewers fans disappointed that they didn't do enough in adding Montas and Mears. (Civale had been acquired earlier in July as well.) A little perspective is in order.

I feel like I've seen credible information that Jadher Arenaimo is Rule 5 eligible if not protected. He's far enough from the majors that maybe that's not an issue, but then a case could be made that he should be in AA already. I think he's really promising but he kind of gets lost in the shuffle between Pratt and then the Carolina kids. As I said in another place, possible deadline deals might well include the likes of Arenaimo and Cornielle because of the 40-man considerations, much as the Nick Mears deal included Yujanyer last year. Edit: I see this is technically the minor league FA thread, but a lot of the discussion has revolved around Rule 5.

Probably this won't happen, but what about setting up a short Contreras DL stint (maybe around the AS break) and letting Haase and Seigler handle the catching for a week or so? I don't know whether he has much experience with the pitchers or how his defense is rated, but it is kind of spicy to have a C/2B/3B guy on the bench. Zamora has had a year I didn't think he had in him, but it's mostly batting average as others have said. With elite defense that could maybe work out, but I feel like he's been more erratic than was anticipated when he was drafted...happy to be wrong. I assume they are mostly holding him as the break glass in case of Ortiz injury plan.

Gasser coming back strong from TJ would be really sweet, hard to imagine him having major league impact this season but there's at least some options if and when the next rotation tweaks are needed. I think he's still considered a ML rookie; with Mis, Henderson, Patrick, and Gasser, that is a bunch of rookie starters who have already had some ML success.