SoCalBrewfan

Seeing birth year 2003 makes me feel incredibly old Welcome to the life of teachers (college in my case) who look at DOB on student lists and think...I not only remember that year, I was already xx years old in that year.

Every year there are folks who are certain that their browsing of some short video clips and 30 word scouting blurbs give them the expertise to know that the front office has FAILED! to make the right choice. It's fun to follow the draft, but let's not pretend that we know more than we do. Enough MLB draftees fail that these folks are sometimes right, but right for the wrong reason IMO. I myself had strong opinions that Prince Fielder was too fat...a prominent poster was certain that Ryan Braun had a hitch in his swing and would never amount to much. Jimmy Nelson was too boring. The list goes on and on. There's obviously risk, as there always will be in the MLB draft. There's years that fifteen of the first twenty picks amount to very little, though those guys had scouts drooling over tools and potential. So sure, say what you don't like, or what you do, but have your say and be done with it, and remember that none of us can be certain about how this will play out for years.

Are these guys considered high floor types? I would think so, both seem likely to move through the system reasonably quickly and profile as at least major league bench players with some offensive and defensive value. Unlike, say, Corey Ray who was acknowledged to be a guy with big tools but a bit more of a project than one might expect of a college hitter taken so high.

If you find yourself saying the same thing in multiple posts, maybe rethink that. Repetition does not make the argument, or complaint, more compelling, and it gets frustrating for others. At the same time, if you find yourself contributing to the discussion turning into something about a poster rather than, say, the draft, maybe also rethink that. I said earlier that I imagined we'd pick a guy who fell, that search for value seems like the most consistent track record of recent Brewers drafts, and that's exactly what happened. Also I like the emphasis on guys who put the bat on the ball, often enough the doubles in the low minors start to leave the park as players mature. Not always, to be sure, but it seems to happen more often than a guy with a lot of swing and miss suddenly starting to make contact. I may of course be overreacting to current trends, e.g., on the big league team... Also, Sal seems like a good name for a Milwaukee player.

Yeah, having 33 is pretty exciting, both for the pick itself and for the flexibility and additional bonus pool it gives them. Wouldn't surprise me to see some shenanigans.

I also hope that Leiter does not make it to the Red Sox because, well, it is really necessary to explain that?

Back to the '21 draft, I've come to the point in my life where I just can't get worked up about this stuff....anyone here who pretends to know for sure who the Brewers will, or should, draft, I just think they are full of themselves, among other things. I don't remember many correct mocks of Brewers picks the last few years and they always seem to zig when they are projected to zag. I have been quietly hoping for McLain but it seems like he might go way earlier now. Hicks seems like he's mocked in part due to Small, but I don't think that's how the Brewers do things...the common thread seems to be value and guys who lost some luster in the lead up to the draft.

We haven't developed any position players yet under Stearns. Hopefully Mitchell pans out but we regularly field an everyday lineup with no players drafted by the Brewers. That's a very strange argument. The first draft since Stearns was hired was 2016, and HS players from that draft are on average 23 years old. Two young catchers, Feliciano and Henry, have played in AAA this year and are well-regarded, particularly Feliciano who is among our top 5 or 10 prospects in most lists. (That's not to mention the fourth rounder Corbin Burnes that year, who in a redraft would easily be a top ten pick.) The early college picks haven't looked great, but in fairness the top of that draft just hasn't panned out, with only 3 of the top ten picks having put up positive bWAR at this point. Oddly enough, Eric Lauer, picked 25th overall, has put up 0.5 which places him 8th in bWAR to date among '16 first rounders. There are even some who have hopes for mid-round college picks Cooper Hummel and Weston Wilson, who are both performing well in AAA. If it's early for the '16 draft, it's even more so for subsequent drafts. Also, Hiura, warts and all, has played almost 200 major league games. An unbiased analyst would totally count him as a position player drafted and developed by the Stearns regime, even if he's been disappointing. There are position players in the system beyond Mitchell and Turang who will play in the bigs and/or be important parts of trades, and quite a few young guys have taken nice steps the first half of '21, including '17 and '18 picks Joe Gray, Korry Howell, LG Castillo, and JeVon Ward.

It's often this way, the AS selection process seems to have a built-in lag, and players who have a breakout one year often don't get recognized until the following year. Burnes put himself on the radar last year and of course had the crazy start to the season. Freddy and Narvaez are both close, and if there are injuries I could easily see one or both ending up on the team. (Wasn't Posey injured over the weekend, for example?) Also, I never thought I'd see the day that the Brewers had two home-grown starters in the All Star game, with two more deserving pitchers in the mix as well.

I remember this, I feel like the Milwaukee paper ran a little blurb every day with the number of days since Coop had played. Cooper was one of my favorite players and though I was not really a kid anymore by '87, it still struck me as disrespectful to one of the all-time great Brewers and I had a young person's righteous indignation at the whole scene. I don't know that I knew about the money issue, that would only have made me angrier. (I got in the habit of reading the JS sports section in my high school library; we were in western WI and Twins/Vikings news annoyed me so this was my fix. The high school library had a week's worth of paper issues of the JS and the Wisconsin State Journal...crazy to think nowadays. I did so but less frequently in the college library and then when JSOnline came around, that was a natural transition...by that time I was far from Wisconsin. The JSO message boards then eventually gave rise to Brewerfan, which in the beginning was intended to have a level of discourse higher than that at the JSO.)

De Jong played ball not too far from here, and if you're curious, here's a video about an epic prep game in which a much younger De Jong (ha!) faced another high draft choice in Shane Watson. (You'll see JP Crawford and Chris Betts, as well, for at least four top-two round draftees, also Timmy Richards had a good college career at Fullerton.) My son competed in the Moore League (not in baseball) so it's always kind of fun for me to see local kids on bigger stages. https://lbpost.com/sports/video-a-classic-look-back-at-de-jong-wilson-vs-watson-lakewood-2012

I don't think there's even the tiniest chance that Grisham was traded due to one play....the evaluation of players on both sides made it seem like a decent trade. I also think that even though some posters (myself included) have said give it more time, if Stearns had a do-over on that trade, he'd take it in a heartbeat, and this deal confirms that. I've heard it said that you rarely see prospect for prospect trades because one side often ends up looking really bad and you figure a team knows all the strengths and flaws of their own guys better than anyone can. Urias and Grisham weren't exactly prospects, but the theory might still apply. I want to believe in Urias but recent returns are not promising, and now we've made a significant investment in replacing him at an awkward time.

I haven't read everything, but I'm surprised at the negativity I saw early, like folks haven't heard of Willy Adames. If you told me we could get Adames before the season, I would have been elated. He had a big time pedigree, was as high as a top 10-20 prospect a couple years back, has put up something like 8 WAR and had a 127 OPS+ as a 24 year old shortstop last year (asterisk for small season if you want). He's controlled for three more years, but will probably start to get quite expensive if he continues to perform well. I don't think any of that evaluation has changed due to Adames' slow start, even though I like both guys we gave up. (JP in part I probably overrate because he's a western Wisconsin kid like myself.) It does look like they're cutting bait on Urias as a starting SS for the foreseeable future, which is disappointing but probably the right call for a team that still has hope of playoffs in the near future.

It's fun to think about having all the Zimmermen on the roster this year, but I guess Washington beat us to that particular achievement.

Sometimes the reasoning behind a trade is sound and it still doesn't work out, and it's generally easier to be certain about things that have already happened. I think looking at the parts of that trade at the time it was made, it seemed like both teams might be getting things they needed...Urias got on base like crazy in the minors and had the 70 hit tool according to some. Grisham had made some noise in the year before, but he was one of a few OF we had that looked promising and there was perhaps some reason to wonder whether his big leap forward was a sure thing and not a fluke. I don't believe that the playoff goof was a factor, Our guys have been worse than expected, though I still have some hopes for Urias, and Grisham has been better (did anyone see him as a gold glove CF?!), but it's not hard to imagine things going differently.

I mean, with a seven run lead (at least) you could probably trust the 'pen to bring this one home.

We might see a position player pitching today...

With the apostrophe, 'Brewer's offense' sounds like an old-timey euphemism for unpleasant after affects of too much of Milwaukee's finest. "Ruth was out of the lineup, with what one source called a case of the Brewer's offense. The Bambino was spotted in the wee hours tippling at a public house..." It's accurate to say that it's too early to tell about this offense, but also reasonable to have concerns after the also-small sample of 2020. This never looked like a top 5 offense, and the projections suggesting middle of the road relied on some of the guys who played poorly last year regressing to their career norms. There's not a lot of room for error if one or more of the guys that _should_ hit turn out not to.

While putting File on the major league 60-day IL would open a roster spot, it does also give him service time as though he were on the 26 man roster, bringing him closer to arbitration and free agency. It may seem insignificant, but there have been players in the past that had enough IL time that the team was forced into difficult decisions by Arby timelines. The Brewers value control so much that I'd guess they would work pretty hard to find other ways to find a roster spot.

Probably best to move on from that particular thread of the discussion. Whatever they decide for opening day we'll be glad for depth this year, that's certain. I'm sure they are making clear to guys sent to aaa that they are expected to have a role on the major league team this year. This is an area of roster usage where the brewers are ahead of the curve I think... I'm glad to read that Urias is likely to start in the majors and would truly love to see him seize the job at short. Rarely do my Brewers wishes ever come out quite the way I hoped or expected though.

I tend to agree with what Briggs and others are saying about Taylor and the younger relievers as opposed to the likes of Zimmermann. However, I keep reminding myself of what I believe to be the team's philosophy: the opening day roster is just one snapshot, and it is expected to be different from the roster for the first playoff game. They really view this as a team that goes 30+ deep and fully expect to use most of the guys that we think of as being on the bubble over the course of a long season. As much as my head tells me that, it still kind of annoys me to see some of how that plays out every year... Also, I don't know whether it was linked here (I didn't see it, but my danged job keeps getting in the way of reading the internet...), but MLB trade rumors had a post that suggested that the chances of Urias starting in AAA/whatever are higher than I had previously guessed: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/03/brewers-notes-infield-mckinney-lauer-cain-williams.html

Lathund has it right. (Feel like I've typed that before!) Always with Stearns the initial roster seems to reflect a bias towards preserving depth and not making irreversible moves to lose talent, so the guys with options are at a bit of a disadvantage if they are going head to head with someone without them. This is almost regardless of spring performance (and, within limits, probably it's unwise to judge solely on spring performance anyway). This year the bubble guys without options are Black, Nottingham, Vogelbach, Robertson, Fisher, and McKinney. For each of those they have to decide whether they are willing to risk losing them, and/or whether they think they can slip them through waivers in the flurry of end-of-ST moves. That said I see four of them as likely off the 40 before too long: Black I think is not going to make it, though I can imagine him passing through waivers. Nottingham might go DL but he's not one of our top two catchers, probably he's off the 40 when he's healthy? Vogelbach I think they like a bit but as a DH, and that ship seems to have sailed. McKinney is probably competing vs him and Fisher as a lefty bench bat but he can play several positions...but even if he's ahead of DV, is he ahead of Fisher? Is he one of your best 26? We got him on waivers and he might well clear this time. I think ZIPS or some other projection loved him though and so, who knows... OTOH I think if healthy Fisher probably wins 5th OF over Tyrone Taylor as a virtue of Taylor's option and Fisher's LH bat...that way they keep both even if Taylor gets a bit screwed going back to AAA again. Robertson they seem to like and since they can keep him and Reyes both without risk they'll do that. Odds are good they'll need that depth so I can't even say I hate this, much as I'm a mild T Taylor fan and have enjoyed Reyes' spring.

TomH is like a lot of us in that new technologies mean our jobs have changed a lot since we started. Now there are hobbyists and fans providing analysis that is much deeper than what you could read in the newspaper when I was first reading brewers news. There's so much free information of varying quality out there that it's worth asking what a beat reporter should be doing now. Whatever it is, it's different than in was in 1990 and some reporters have adapted more successfully than others.

I don’t want to make assumptions but one doesn’t make this signing if Cain is expected to start 140-150 games. I think there's two important aspects to this. One, flexibility and depth are going to be the name of the game in 2021 MLB. I think we'll see the pitching staff and roster as a whole used in that Counsell and Stearns many plates spinning way all season long. Cain is older and missed most of last season so having a complementary piece in Bradley makes a ton of sense. Counsell loves to play matchups and Bradley and Garcia both would benefit from a soft platoon. I think it's not all about Cain, but fits with the whole Brewers approach to have multiple options to put the best team on the field for any particular matchup. Two, their theory of the offseason seems to be that the best value to be found this year was in run prevention. I can't think off the top of my head of a player the brewers were linked to that didn't fit that; Turner is a good defender too even if most posters were drooling over his bat.

I for one will not consider it spending money until the contract value ends in 99 cents, e.g., $23,999,999.99. Everyone knows that even numbers are dollar store prices and that doesn't count. (Also, some help here...these goalposts aren't going to move themselves, folks...)