KeithStone53151

Talking 3 years $50 million. We could have done it, but I'm ok not doing it. I think our 4 and 5 will be better than most think...

Service time should matter virtually zero for someone like Woodruff. Same with Suter. If the Brewers are intent on keeping Miley, whoever they think will do best of Suter/Woodruff/Guerra should get the 5th spot. All have options, and again service time doesn't matter.

That Brewer World tool tweeted something about Cobb. It's almost like his "source" gets the same info that national writers get, only on a time delay...

I assume you mean Woodruff. I'm fine going in with those guys. Miley/Woodruff will have relatively short leashes, and our 6-8 are far and away better than most teams 6-8. Every time the Cubs have an injury to the rotation or bullpen(like Strop currently), they have to bring up someone absolutely dreadful from AAA...because that's all they have. Hooray for Eddie Butler and his sub 5 k/9!

I don't think Broxton or Santana are legit targets for the Dodgers, but I'll add that Seager may not be ready to open the season...so Taylor will likely be the everyday SS while Forsythe fills in at 3b.

Not that I'm aware of, but if you follow @BrewersPD...they provide some highlights.

There might be a sweet spot between the start of the year and teams punting on the season where he can find value if he gets lucky. Come the deadline, guys like Stroman, Duffy, Hamels, etc could become available and nerf his value. It's a pretty risky play in my opinion. If I was him, it would only be worth it if the offers are truly dreadful. If anyone is offering him that 3/$42, I think he'd be insane not to take it. If his best offer is the same as Lynn's and he doesn't have confidence in his arm holding up, maybe waiting is the right call.

A Missaki sighting, how about that...

I don't think anyone is going to buy into his rumors again, I think he was merely stating how interesting if he was right yet again? I believe he made the call on the last week of March about 2-3 weeks ago, which is a fairly bold call at that point.

I think you're going to see a fair amount of bumping guys down. There's a decent chance that the only AAA opening day starter currently in minor league camp is Dubon. Broxton, Phillips and Wren could open in Colorado Springs. That could bump Coulter, Taylor and Davis to AA, and Grisham and Ray to A+ and Orimoloye to A. Franklin and Orf could bump Allemand and Noriega to AA. Hiura could bump Hairston to A. I am only seeing three position players who didn't either play on the major league side yesterday or in one of the lineups the last two days, Mario Feliciano, Nathan Rodriguez and Javier Betancourt, and given that catchers seem to get shuffled to the big league side often, the former two might just be that. At a second glance I think you are right, especially with the outfielders. But erceg for example I expect to open in aa, and Nottingham in aaa, lutz in a ball, Carroll in high a, medeiros in aa. We'll see, always exciting to see the initial assignments.

I see that. I still think Ray can bounce back, but having a normal injury-free camp is the first step. Todays lineups, Ray in there again. Fantastic to see Kirby getting a start. Also so far, it seems a majority of players are playing at the level I'd expect them at to open the season. That's not always true, and Carmona is certainly not going to open in AA, but for the most part these lineups seem a reasonable projection for 2018 affiliate assignments in my opinion.

This is brilliantly stated. Well done. I'm a bit more pessimistic on what the results of this approach will be, but I'll agree it is very well stated and a good strategy for a market size like ours. Looking specifically at Gallardo/Miley, both were good pitchers within the last 3 years and aren't all that old(32/31). Maybe the Brewers watched some video and saw something they could tweak to get that pitcher back to prominence. This type of strategy is likely to have more failures than successes, as long as the FO can properly analyze this and cut ties with the guys that aren't going to work out...it's a great strategy. If Miley ends up a 3.5-4ish ERA starters for 2.5 million, fantastic. Even if he hits his incentive and boosts to 5.8 or whatever, that price for 28+ starts is a steal.

Yes, but I would assume that can be accomplished by putting Nelson on the 60-day DL. Forgot about that. Drake just needs to be DFAd! Nelson, Drake, Aguilar, Broxton, Gallardo. Not all will be cut/traded, but all are legit options. Point being, the Brewers will not be excessively strapped for 40 man spots when the time comes to solidify the 25 man.

I'm not sure if there's a better place to post these. I noticed many A+ guys from last year with the AA group. I hope Ray isn't dealing with an injury already, as he is notably absent from any lineup.

You are using his statistics as a starter. There’s a decent chance he’s a serviceable reliever that can give you a couple innings at a time. He may not make it on our team but that’s what the Brewers are looking at him for. Except nothing about what Gallardo throws makes me think he'll play up in relief. 91-92 at best with an above average curve. Would you rather have that guy or the one throwing 96-99 with an above average-plus slider and serviceable change? Best case scenario for Gallardo is he throws high fastballs and keeps guys guessing on whether it's a high fastball or a curve breaking below the zone. Let him do that for a rebuilding club, I'll take the 96-99 guy that's only 27 and hasn't thrown 1700 pro innings already.

+1 again, you're on fire today. It will be very annoying watching Gallardo post a 7 ERA, get cut in early May, and then have Williams come up and do his best 2017 Josh Hader impression. While I don't think Gallardo makes it, I don't know why anyone would project a 7 ERA from him as a reliever. He still has plenty of velocity left, and his curve is solid. He could probably be a good reliever. We just have a excess of those, and the team needs some relievers who can be optioned for roster flexibility. Same reason i think Hoover didn't make the club out of spring training. 2016 - 5.42 ERA 2017 - 5.72 ERA ST18 - 5.40 ERA - 6 runs earned, 9 total. Ok fine, maybe he'll only post a 6 ERA or 5.5. Does that really change the conversation on him? If the team needs roster flexibility so badly, maybe we should option Knebel as well so we can keep Gallardo and Hoover? Obviously that's an extreme, non-serious example, but I'm trying to prove a point. There reaches a point where the player is too good to option and deserves a spot on the MLB roster at the expense of keeping some old washed up vet and hoping he magically got better. Just watch the guy throw, he can run laps around Gallardo and Hoover. I posted this in another thread, but we have plenty of AAA options for relievers when we inevitably need one or three. Houser, Derby, Ventura, Ramirez, Lopez, and any of 3 or 4 AAA starting options...just off the top of my head, I'm probably missing a few. Not having Williams be first man up in AAA will not drastically impact our depth that much. And again, I think he's too good to put back to AAA. I personally think we keep Gallardo and option Williams. I'm very critical of the overall plan of this offseason by the Brewers, and don't expect them to all of a sudden start making intelligent decisions.

I don't think anyone here is suggesting the Chacin doesn't get a rotation spot. Also, very few teams use 10 starters by necessity. Many do by choice when they decide to go with younger options for a start or 2. I think I saw it posted previously that the odds of 2 of our top 5 starters being on the DL for the same amount of time is 65% and the odds of 3 of the top 5 is less than 30%. That's less than a 30% chance that we need even our 8th starter. Anyways, let's say for arguments sake that Miley is not kept and Suter/Woodruff get the last 2 spots(which would be bad for "options" thinking. We still have Guerra, Wilkerson, and Burnes in AAA. Peralta has a chance to help later in the season, and Nelson is coming back probably in June. There's your 10 starters. Nobody in that group is someone we anticipate being dreadful. It's not like "well Milone is our 6th, Espino is our 7th, and Burgos is our 8th" like last year. Our depth at SP is good enough that we should be picking the best 2 of the 4 remaining candidates to start(assuming no Cobb). If we didn't have Wilkerson, Guerra, Burnes and Nelson...or maybe one of them...then sure I think Miley is virtually guaranteed a spot at that point so we can keep the extra option in AAA. That isn't our situation though...

Nelson always had that potential. He just had to mature and learn to stay ahead in the count and pitch with more strategy. Davies is probably still going to be good because of location and mixing speeds. Anderson was the big fluke last year. I recently read that he had one of the luckiest flyball/hr ratios in all of baseball last year. Many more of those will leave the park this year, as they always did in the past for him. Woodruff has a little more talent than Anderson ever did, but he's young. Suter is very intelligent and understands tempo. I think he will continue to be a little better than a reductionist look at his pitches would leave you to believe. I didn't really see Chacin has last year, but he has to be better than a lot of the guys who pitched last year if he's healthy. Didn't he have some kind of minor nagging injury that he's finally over, like Sogard with his knee? I think the staff will be about average, and I think that's all they need to stay in the top third of the NL. I'm just not at all impressed with any of the other wild card contenders besides Arizona. I don't see any reason to over-pay and give up another draft pick if you're already a strong favorite to claim a wild card and don't really have a realistic chance to hang with any of the division favorites/legit WS contenders. The NL has 3 elite teams, but after that I think it's the Brewers, Diamondbacks, and a whole bunch of mediocre teams that will be hoping to get lucky. I don't think it's necessarily fair to compare a hr/fb ratio to league average and say "well he's going to do worse when that regresses to average". It isn't that simple. It's like pointing to Santana's very high BABIP and saying he's going to regress to league average when the fact is...his BABIP in a normal season will be well above league average based on the type of contact he makes. Anderson made mechanical adjustments and his stuff improved on all fronts last year. It wouldn't be surprising if he had better than league average ratios in many categories this year and over the next couple years. On a side, I cannot believe how long this thread has gone and how far off topic it goes. I'll be happy when Cobb signs regardless of where just to put an end to this offseason.

Option B. No question.

+1 again, you're on fire today. It will be very annoying watching Gallardo post a 7 ERA, get cut in early May, and then have Williams come up and do his best 2017 Josh Hader impression.

+1

The chance of getting him through waivers would seem to be better a week into the regular season as opposed to at the end of spring training. Would you consider jumbling up your 25-man roster a week into the season? Good point. Maybe that's part of the thinking if we can't find a taker in trade...

He has a Knebel like arm, so i think the team wants to give him every chance to succeed. I'm not saying this will happen, but Knebel was also erratic in 2015/2016 before having his dominant season last year, maybe Barnes could break out also. That's the thing with relievers who have golden arms like Knebel and Barnes. The stuff is there to be really good or even dominant, but command of that stuff can be hard to predict when it will click or not. For me at least, Barnes would have to pitch his way out of a job in major league games before he wouldn't be on the roster if it was my call. Knebel mixes his upper 90s with a low 80s curve. Barnes mixes his upper 90s with a low 90s slider. Barnes slider doesn't move enough consistently, which allows guys to sit on the fastball and foul off sliders while waiting for a mistake. Knebel's pitches are so different that it's hard to adjust if you guess wrong, and both pitches are more quality offerings and test the hitter quite a bit even if they guess right. Barnes has options, it's becoming more and more likely that he gets considered for AAA if he doesn't improve in the 2nd half of ST.

Really sounds like they're going to keep Aquilar as long as possible and hope something happens before they need a 5th starter. https://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2018/03/15/brewers-still-have-rotation-and-bullpen-decisions-make-end-spring-training-nears/426741002/ Part of me wonders if another team wants him, and this is posturing...or maybe they think other teams are assuming he'll hit waivers and the brewers to try and get those teams to give up something worthwhile for him.

1. Hiura 2. Burnes 3. Lutz 4. Ortiz 5. Woodruff 6. Peralta 7. Phillips 8. Erceg 9. Medeiros 10. Dubon 11. Ray 12. Grisham 13. Nottingham 14. Herrera 15. Gatewood 16. T Williams 17. Feliciano 18. Diplan 19. Carmona 20. Houser 21. Harrison 22. Lemons 23. Kirby 24. Webb 25. Henry 26. Bickford 27. Stokes 28. Ponce 29. Ernesto 30. Garcia