KeithStone53151

I generally agree on pretty much everything, with a slight add that Houser pitched a bit in fall league and is probably a bit ahead of 2017 Williams. Houser I think gets worked harder than Williams early on and could make a major league impact sooner than Williams. It is definitely nice having so many quality arms and trying to make sure we have appropriate room for them all at levels they belong

Not really actually, especially seasons 2 and 3. Plenty of pitchers flip a switch and go from dominant to mediocre or completely fall off very suddenly. He's already showing signs of it with his velocity dip(94.6 to 93.7 to 92.1). If it dips again(say 91), and then again in 2019(say 90)...I'd bet he ends up projected to be a back end starter for the 2020 season. His other pitches are simply not good enough if he can't hit at least 93-94 consistently.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/03/mets-trade-rumors-juan-lagares-american-league.html If Juan Lagares, with his contract, is drawing trade interest...then Broxton is absolutely drawing interest from similar teams. Broxton is probably a more talented player than Lagares as is. Factor in the team friendly contract and option, it's a no brainer.

The consensus seems to be to ignore Pham and Bregman, and I agree. Pham doesn't seem like anythign special, and 3b is so stacked that you surely can find a better 3b. I assume Ramirez offers positional flexibility, he's especially valuable if you play in a league that counts strikeouts. I'm not sure I buy he's a 30 HR hitter though. Probably more of a 20/20 guy...but a near lock for over 300. I like Dozier a lot, but he'll be 31. Not that that's old, but he's past his peak physical years. Slightly more risk and less upside with him than the other 2. Springer hits in the best lineup of the 3, so he'd probably be best for counting stats...but as noted you won't get the 15-20 sb from him as you will the other 2. I don't think there's a definitive answer, might depend on what stats you target and your team composition. Since you have Betts, I'd be inclined to avoid Springer. I personally would take Ramirez and not think twice but I understand the arguments for the other players.

I get this point completely. I find it a bit crazy that Minnesota would give up a 3rd round pick for 1 year of Lance Lynn...who likely will be more of a #3 starter. 3 years, especially for a pitcher, seems like about the right deal to justify giving up that draft pick. If a pitcher isn't good enough that you feel comfortable making a 3 year deal...you probably shouldn't be comfortable giving a 1 year deal and draft pick.

Not necessarily. Sometimes a team needs to see what they have in Spring Training before deciding if it's time to make a move. Like I said in the other thread, I'd bet he goes sometime this week, and while the return isn't going to be gangbusters, it'll be something most here are happy with. Broxton having that extra option helps his value a bit. At minimum, he's a well above average defender with great speed and power. The best value we can get for him will be a rebuilding team that can dream on his upside.

Davies 5.8 Anderson chacin 5.6 4-5 even if you think 5.2 is possible. (Suter woodruff or miley cuz guerra can't go past 4) 71.2 ip per bp arm with an 8 man pen. Jeffress Barnes Albers look like 60 ip guys Logan looks like a 40ip guy Knebel hader 2 long men average 87ip? Ouch. Knebel at 72... hader 2 longmen average 92.5? Ouch. The NL averaged 5.4 innings per start last year. That's just the reality of baseball right now, and probably going forward. Like someone else said, the bullpen won't be 8 guys. It's going to be 12-13 guys, or more, over the course of the season. I'd guess we will see 2 guys, tops hit 70 innings. Even a lot of the high end starters(Carrasco, Keuchel, Lester, etc) are averaging maybe 6-6.25 innings per start. The premier guys like Sale are probably 6.5-6.75. Kershaw is probably the only guy approaching 7. If we can get 5.5-6 IP on average from our starters with under 4 ERA, that will be very competitive...especially with our bullpen.

I'll add to this, Adam lind has an incredibly solid MLB track record. He's also not all that old at 34 and coming off 303/362/513...got a minor league deal. Very good chance he opens in AAA.

Every year there are at least a dozen 1b only or LF/1b only type guys that have big springs. Most wind up taking AAA jobs, a couple get lucky like Aguilar and fall into the perfect situation. Go look up stats on 1b this spring, only a few guys have been as impressive as Choi to this point...but plenty have well over 1000 ops. I would love to see Choi slip through to AAA. If he doesn't, Aguilar might when he doesn't make the roster. If neither do, we can target one of the other dozen+ that had big springs and don't make other teams. We project to have Braun/Thames as 1b/OF options. Both have dealt with injuries, and the rest of the roster is fairly stacked. Appears to be a good opportunity for a journeyman at our AAA.

You should probably be questioning whether that person understands so much about baseball that they would be capable of outside-the-box innovations that are met with such incredulity. It's perfectly fine to break camp with 4 starters for several days when you have so many capable pitchers with more options than you need, who are arguably likely to be better than all the retreads anwyay. It would be a wise move considering some starters have no business going much more than 4-5 innings. They can call up a 5th starter when they need one. It's just laziness and not wanting to work hard on the details that makes some teams want to establish more of a routine right away, before it's even necessary. The Brewers are set up to do a lot of experimenting with their rotation and bullpen use this year. Piggy-backing, lack of true 4/5's, shuttle service, 13 pitchers, more long relief, etc. I think it was part of the plan all along. If you're resistant to trying new things, you're not going to enjoy this season as much as you could. I've responded to this already, but CC said off DAYS...plural. Our second off day is almost 3 weeks into the season, so he implied he's planning on rolling with 4 starters for almost 3 weeks...which is 100% a terrible idea. I'm all for shuttling the 8th reliever and keeping a long reliever or 2 on the roster. Much of your "experimenting" list isn't all that outside the box, and the ones that are...aren't likely to happen. Lack of true 4/5's, piggybacking, etc...not likely.

Suter has 2 options. I feel like I've seen it all offseason that Suter was likely to get an mlb job due to his performance last season and 0 options remaining, I could be wrong on that.

Due respect, THEY'RE not making it sound like that, the BF.net world is making it sound like that. A lot can happen in the next couple days, and all CC is doing is stating a fact that they won't need a 5th starter immediately. He didn't say for a month or even two weeks. This is probably overly nitpicking, but he says because of "off dayS"...meaning multiple. We will in fact have 1 off day before a 10 day stretch of games where we will need a 5th starter twice. Maybe haudricourt misquoted, but referring to multiple days and looking at when our 2nd offday is clearly implies a more significant stretch of time than a week.

The most value we would get out of keeping a starter in AAA an extra week would be if that starter was a Boras client...so we could see another world class hissy fit like the one he made of the 3 days Davies spent in AAA a year or two back.

He said “out of camp” which is technically true since the first time through the rotation they only need 4 guys with the off day. Guys would be able to stay on regular rest for their second start/time through the rotation and then that second time through a 5th starter would need to be added. They might not want to commit to a guy sooner than needed that way almost everyone is available in long relief for the first 3-4 games and could have that first 5th starter be whoever is rested/matches up best with who we play (I think it’s the 3rd series of the year against the Cubs series a 5th starter would be needed looking at the schedule). Skipping the 5th starter first time through gets Anderson starts in both the Cardinals and Cubs series too. It also might be getting too cute but they also could break camp with an extra RP (Williams?) because of this for the first 6-8 games and leave one of or both Guerra or Woodruff back in camp to stay stretched out and then bring them back up for that first start the 5th starter is needed. They would first need a 5th starter on April 6th, so maybe they can get by for a week with 4. What's the point? Maybe keep Broxton up for defense/base running for a week? Maybe a 9th bullpen arm for 3-4 innings? It all seems trivial. I think it makes more sense to let our guys get settled in a bit, and heck even give all our pitchers that extra day off early in the season versus sticking to the 5 day schedule. Either way, CC/Haudricourt make it sound like we'll roll with 4 starters for a much more significant amount of time than 1 week. Also, considering Miley/Suter probably have the inside track on starting gigs...neither player has options so they would both have to make the roster...thus 5 starters right away.

This is an interesting tidbit. Wonder how long we would go without adding a 5th guy to the rotation? Perfect... Anderson Cobb Davies Chacin This is stupid. What a dumb comment from CC. We have stretches of 10, 10, and 7 games in April. Either we need a 5th starter 5 times, or we'll have 5 bullpen games...in friggin April. If a random person made this exact comment, I'd question whether that person knows anything about baseball.

I posted the link in the mlb pipeline top 30 thread, but Flanagan came out and said Medeiros will be opening in AA this year.

https://www.mlb.com/news/milwaukee-brewers-pipeline-report/c-268250676?tid=151437456 Excellent tidbits all around in here. Especially appealing are the positive comments on Medeiros and Hiura. Comparing Hiura as a hitter out of college to Braun, praise doesn't get much higher.

Except a playoff appearance if second base is the black hole it was last year before we brought in Walker. I understand liking a player for his upside, but we've given Villar a lot of "leash," while we traded away Brinson, blocked Phillips, and won't let Hader into the rotation because we didn't want to roll with their growing pains in a potential playoff year. I'm just having a hard time putting together the pieces in the Brewer puzzle this offseason. Stearns has done a wonderful job in his short tenure, so I'm sure he's got his reasons, but signing Walker and Lynn to one-year deals would have seemed to have made a lot of sense in conjunction with what we've done. This all makes a lot of sense. Each decision on its own had some logic to it, but putting them all together doesn't make much sense. I feel like the overall plan was either poorly conceived or poorly executed. You can make moves specifically for value all you want(which appears to be what happened), but those moves need to tie together to an end game plan...otherwise value(phillips/walker) are wasted in the minors or not acquired while other spots(SP) are not addressed.

Whether he is or not to open the season, I like the idea of batting Villar(and Sogard) 9th. Cain/Yelich can be good rbi guys and it would be good having them up with a pitcher distracted by Villar's speed. If Villar ends up more like 2016 form to the point he should be higher...well then we have a fantastic problem of how to work 3 very good players into the top of the order.

That's fair, I would have even been ok offering 1/8 to beat it. But your point is fair, he may prefer the yankees...batting in that crazy lineup...title odds...etc. Someone else might have offered more, and then players will still complain how their offers aren't good enough and certain teams aren't trying to contend when they commonly take less to play on good teams and make it that much more difficult for bad teams to get good players. Oh the hypocrisy...

I saw 1 year 5 million. Why in the hank did we not do this?!? - here it is

Every single year from 2013-2016 he was better against LHP or roughly equal against both. In 2017(a terrible year for him) he hit RHP better and you argue that he's better against RHP? This would be like going into 2016 after Will Smith posted 545 OPS against RHB and 786 against LHB in 2015 and trying to argue he should be a specialist against RHB. Yes, it is that illogical.

Enjoy being a clear starting catcher with the A's instead of being a backup here Luc. To each their own. Good for him for taking the best deal and wanting to play everyday, versus doing like some guys and taking a team friendly deal with a good team to try and be part of a WS team.

People keep saying that. Villar is not better as an LHB. He is better as an RHB for his career. He only had ~120 pa's as an RHB last year. That is not nearly enough evidence to refute his career numbers, which are still much better as an RHB. If you pull his career stats, 253/325/384 or 260/323/423. Seems to be fairly similar from both sides of the plate based on career numbers(FWIW, the latter set is as RHB). Looking at 2016, he was 309/385/545 as a RHB vs 276/363/422 as LHB. So when things are going optimally, he's better as a RHB. I think that's the best gauge for him.

I still appreciated Lucroy and his time in Milwaukee, I hope he succeeds. Can't blame a player for not wanting to go through a rebuild. Not much different than what the Marlins and Pirates are going through, except those franchises seem more interested in profit than building a winning club...which is not how Mark A operates.