KeithStone53151

I think a handful of guys are doing that with breaking balls, generally throwing a slider a lot more. Look at swarzak last year. Also look at McCullers in the playoffs. In one outing I think he threw 27 straight curveballs or something ridiculous against the Yankees. As long as this is a low $ deal, I don't mind it. If it's more than like $3 million I'll be a bit annoyed.

They are kinda at that point anyway? Their pitching situation is awful, and they still have a couple bad contracts that they won't be able to trade. Are those 2 guys really gonna help them compete this year? If they can deal yelich and realmuto, the prospects they receive would likely result in major league talent hitting the majors in 2019ish. Depending how long those guys take to develop will determine how long until they compete, though smart money says your 2022 call isn't terribly far off. They don't have as many major league assets on good contracts to trade, or as creative a GM as Stearns, so they'll likely be a longer rebuild than us.

And apparently Guerra is one of the top 3 guys worth noting when it comes to our rotation? Does this guy even know how to spell Brewers?

I couldn't disagree more with this comment. If he's getting himself into shape to pitch this year, he isn't set on pitching for one of a handful of teams. He's going to want to pitch. He's also smart enough to know that if he pitches well, he could be flipped to a contender if he doesn't help pitch his current team into contention. I'd bet a number of teams will offer a minor league deal with big league invite and he'll have his pick of the litter, or maybe a more desperate team like the orioles offers a guaranteed deal and wins him over. I'd be happy to bring him in on a minor league deal though, give him a chance to win a job. There's never any harm in minor league deals.

It's not like we can just wait and we'll eventually be the only team in the NL Central with good players. When the Cubs window closes and they go into rebuild, the cardinals/pirates/reds will still be there and have good teams.

Totally agree. They'd be nuts to mess with him now. What would be nuts is to take the first potential TOR starter we've had come through the system since Ben Sheets and relegate him to bullpen duty...

I'm with you here. If the Brewers got Brinson for Lucroy there is no reason the Marlins can't do the same here, nobody in this Brewers system would be off limits. I also think the Brewers value Pina but don't know what his value is in trade. Except Lucroy had a 4yr stretch where 3 of those years were better than anything this dude's put up and he was a 2x AS. Also, this guy didn't request a trade. He simply stated he wouldn't mind if he was traded given what's transpired the past couple weeks. You also have to look at the contract. Lucroys was an unbelievable bargain contract. I want to say something like 9 million total over 2 years. JT Realmuto is estimated at 4.2 in arbitration this year. A reasonable estimate is probably 3/18 or 3/20. While still a good contract, not quite as good as lucroys. He also, as noted, wasn't nearly as good/established as lucroy.

Gallardo is like the rb that gets 350 touches a year for 6 or 7 years starting at age 20/21. Sure he might only be 27/28 while 30 is generally the cutoff date when rb production takes a nose dive, but that's a lot of mileage.

This is spot on, I've never understood why good catchers don't get bigger contracts. The upgrade from Pina to Realmuto is significant, and Realmuto still has upside. And I couldn't agree more that he's one of the most underrated at his position. This deal would only make sense for us if Miami valued Pina as he is. They could look at Pina as a downgrade but still very serviceable/cheap catcher that could be traded later for prospects. Pina/Ray/Ponce for Realmuto. Or for those in the trade for Yelich camp, Realmuto/Yelich for Pina/Broxton/Harrison/Peralta/Diaz plus a flier or two. That could push us towards a Santana+ for Archer trade, and successfully trade some of our minor league depth for young, controllable talent.

I don't mind the deal if it's cheap and if it's of the mindset you've noted. Also I'd hope we could potentially shift him to a pen role if he pitches decent but someone in ST pitches better. A cheap deal for ST depth, creates additional competition.

I think the brewers had fairly reasonable hooks last year for guys like feliz, villar, broxton, Guerra, peralta. I trust their judgement on a leash for Gallardo when the time comes.

Agreed, im underwhelmed as well. I hope he's a near veteran minimum guy that was brought in for spring depth and competition. If he looks serviceable in spring and none of our internal options claim the 5th spot with a big spring, give him a shot for a few months until burnes/nelson are ready. Or maybe he's being brought in for a potential bullpen role with hopes his stuff plays up a bit in that role. Plenty of guys move to the pen successfully later in their careers. Maybe Stearns doesn't think we need a 5th starter as he's more aware of nelsons recovery than everyone else. That's my best effort to try and justify the move. In Stearns I trust.

I read yesterday that albers signed with an unknown team. Based on how the brewers operate, I get a sense that could be us. Here's hoping

Couldn't agree more. Let some of these teams pay gobs of money to Martinez and Hosmer as well.

It wouldn't take a lot for us to dip down to 73 wins. We won 86 but we're going to be without Nelson for an undetermined amount of time and if he gets back during the season it will probably just be to get some innings, not expecting ace like production. That's probably a 3-4 win drop and we're already down to 82 or 83 wins. If Anderson regresses to say a 1.5 WAR pitcher (last year's 3.3 WAR was more than he accumulated in 400+ innings over his career previously) then we could be in for another 2 win drop and we're down to 80 or 81. Knebel could regress, Santana could regress, Shaw could regress, Braun could get hurt and all of those things happening and they aren't as far fetched as some think, then we're probably in the 72-75 win range. Now obviously we could get breakouts from Arcia, Phillips, Brinson etc to push the win total back up but you had a lot of guys that are older doing things they never came close to doing before, so projections are probably going to have them regressing to somewhere between what they had done prior to last year and what they did last year and weighted closer to the lower end because there's more of a sample size of production or lack thereof. There is no doubt that the Brewers could win 73 games, or less. I just think projecting us there is silly. And meanwhile the Cubs and their(at the time) 3 starting pitchers are going to win 100 games? Anything less than a 78 win projection is a terrible projection in my opinion. We have so many guys that could break out. If even 1 or 2 of our many breakout candidates do indeed break out, the 73 win projection is going to look incredibly terrible.

I think this is much more than people expected, Hosmer is licking his chops somewhere. If Santana is worth 20 million per, what is Hosmer worth?

Great point. I tend to agree, I think it's a buyers market on infielders. A number of teams looking to trade 2b/3b guys, also a few good free agents available...only a couple teams with a need at the position.

That's still too much. I'm thinking closer to Santana, Peralta, 1 or 2 lower end guys. Think Supak/Ponce and Peyton Henry.

Any arm will do. One thing I've noticed is RH relievers are being more heavily targeted than lefties. I like the idea of getting a lefty or two in the pen as it makes it more likely that Hader gets a shot in the rotation.

Not to mention some of their staff have turned down past opportunities to work for front offices. The Fangraphs “clowns” staff don’t claim to have access to more data points and analytical ammunition than the organizations do. In fact on several occasions Dave Cameron has referenced how much they don’t have access to in comparison to teams. What exactly are we arguing against here? They have a bunch of savvy baseball minds that help drive good content and thought provoking dialogue. None of it is bullet proof and certainly some features are more proven than others, and they would be the first to admit that. So while they may fall short of the resources that the teams are privy to, how does striving to develop a repository of baseball data and analytics that fans are able to access qualify them as “one of the worst things to come to the world of baseball fans?” How exactly would fans be better off without Fangraphs? If anyone is taking their projections or analysis as gospel then that is on them, not Fangraphs. Fangraphs provides valuable data for sure, but their team projections are always absolutely terrible. My issue came from the poster that said we shouldn't bother signing relievers because fangraphs says we are going to be 7th worst in the league. It's basically the classic bf.net pick one statistical measure that supports your claim and ignore all evidence to the contrary...and the supporting measure they chose was an awful one at that. Fangraphs is terrible at projecting young players and regression of aging players. Not that it's easy, it doesn't change that they typically project aging players to be timeless until shown otherwise and young players to be terrible until shown otherwise.

I have no idea what his hard contact rate is that he gives up but I agree with the overall point. People can continue to point to his peripherals but when it's the same every year while posting a 4 ERA at what point does it become he's actually not as good as his peripherals say? Except he had a 3.22 ERA in 2013 (128 IP), a 3.33 ERA in 2014 (194 IP), and a 3.23 ERA in 2015 (212 IP). The entire premise of baseball analytics suggests that his 2016-2017 ERA is the outlier. He's not Kershaw or Sale, no, but those kind of guys are not available to the Brewers for four years on a cheap contract. Archer reportedly is. You are trying to suggest that 2 full and consecutive seasons of starts are outliers? Reeeeeeeally?

LOL! I'm glad the Brewers front office doesn't base their decision on what these clowns at fangraphs tout as analysis. Certain measurable pieces of their analysis have some value, but their big picture outlook has always been dreadful at best. Do you have access to better analysis? Me, no. But I think the Brewers front office has world's better analysis than fangraphs. Their analysis always overvalues veteran players and undervalues young players...it's a hard and fast rule. They probably predicted us to be bottom 5 last year and we see how that turned out. Their analysis had the cubs at a 100 win team before any offseason moves happened and before they even had a 4th and 5th starter.

Disagree. There's always going to be a team to compete with. It's not like we should be waiting around for the windows of certain teams to close. By the time the Cubs go into a rebuild, the Pirates/Cardinals/Reds will surely be hanging around. We should never punt on a season based on the flashy moves of another team, it should solely be based on the status of the current roster. If Stearns wants to use this season as another evaluation year for some younger guys, fine. I don't agree with it, but fine. The winners in December are not necessarily the winners in October...ask the Red Sox about that.

LOL! I'm glad the Brewers front office doesn't base their decision on what these clowns at fangraphs tout as analysis. Certain measurable pieces of their analysis have some value, but their big picture outlook has always been dreadful at best.

Which is why I don't understand the militant like stance some here are taking towards signing one. You don't get a prize for winning with the cheapest players possible. Agreed, we absolutely need to make value signings in some areas. But unless Stearns has something cooking up his sleeves with our remaining spending power, we should be more involved in this free agent relief market.