KeithStone53151

For me it is that he is never healthy at the young age that he's at so why should I trust that he'll be healthy during the course of his major league career? I would just rather get something of great value (Yelich) than to roll the dice on a guy that seems to find the DL every few months. This is exactly how I feel... I'd rather get a great piece and take the risk that he becomes a super star for someone else, than risk keeping him so he can never reach his potential due to injuries... Do you guys have similar concerns for Harrison, Ortiz, Grisham(Clark), Ray, etc? Do you want to trade all of those guys because they got hurt once or twice? It's not like Brinson blew out a knee or hurt a wrist like Weeks to the point that he'll never be the same. He's played roughly 100 game each of the last 3 seasons. The injuries he's had have been simple muscle strains, these types of things happen to plenty of good players. If that's your only reasoning, it's absolutely terrible reasoning to trade away a top prospect.

Sounds like a bluff then. Trying to get a player to accept a trade because if he doesn't, he'll be stuck with a bunch of castoffs. I couldn't agree more actually. Like the Marlins would doom their franchise to what 8 years of losing because they want to maximize their return as they get out of Stantons contract. If I was Stanton, I would absolutely stick to my guns about which locations I'd approve a trade to. From what I've read, he prefers the Dodgers but would accept a number of teams. Many teams including San Francisco(not too far from LA) are willing to offer significant packages for Stanton. This is the biggest offseason the Marlins will have for a long time, it would really be something if new ownership came in and screwed it up right away.

I'm super curious why just about every bf.net person wants to trade Brinson. And it's not so much that you'd move him in the right deal, everyone seems in a hurry to trade him this offseason for whoever the best SP is that we can get...or more recently in a package for Yelich. Is the thought to have a Broxton/Phillips platoon? Were the handful of at bats we saw from Phillips in September enough to make Brinson expendable? I'm honestly curious, Brinson is the best position prospect we've had hit the majors in years and very few people want him to play for the Brewers.

You do realize that young pitching is far more valuable than young hitting right? Burnes and Ortiz probably have more combined value than yelich on their own. Both will be top 100 guys and again they are pitchers, likely mid rotation or better.

Good point. His power numbers might really spike here, I'd bet a lot of his doubles/deep outs to right field would be HR to that short porch in right.

I would want more back in a Yelich for Domingo trade straight up. Domingo is so much cheaper than Yelich, and similar team control. I could see this interesting the Marlins to some degree if they do trade Stanton.

I would like to think we have plenty of other guys that would get cleared off the 40 to make room as needed ahead of this guy. Obvious candidates are Drake, Webb, a catcher, Broxton. Less obvious are Hughes, Wilkerson, Jungmann, and one of Perez/Aguilar...considering only one is likely to open with the roster based on it's current construction. Not that all these guys will be dropped, Broxton is an obvious trade candidate...not a cut candidate.

If you are Ohtani’s agent, are you advising him to sign in Cincinnati? Where do you think shoe companies, sport drinks companies, car companies, etc. that will be providing a majority of his income for the first few seasons want him? Its not really big market bias, its just the best guess as to where he will land given all the inputs. Not only that, but while even every small market has some sort of Japanese presence in its town, the big markets have large Japanese populations. I'm sure I'll get a variety of answers like "I actually am a small town guy" or "I really like all Japanese food" on this, but in general, if you were forced to move to Japan for work (but barely speak Japanese), are you choosing some smaller city with 3% of the people speaking English and no American/English amenities, or are you going to one of the bigger cities that you can ease into that has a lot of English speaking areas and people you can befriend/speak with? If he is looking specifically at easing into US culture in that regard, Seattle makes the most sense and it isn't close. Also the team that brought over Ichiro. I believe Seattle also can offer the most money or close to it. I can understand including Yankees as they've had a ton of experience/success bringing over japanese stars, and are one of the few hoarders of int'l money they can give him. Lumping in teams like the cubs and red sox is just silly. The cubs haven't brought over any Japanese stars and the Red Sox only Dice K if I remember right. Blanketly listing every big market team is just lazy and biased. And it's not like small market teams are these tiny suburban cities with no Asian influence. Every MLB club is in a big city, with a large and diverse population. The Twin Cities, the Florida teams, any west coast team, etc. Milwaukee is probably one of the worst in that regard.

Recent articles on expected landing spots. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/255389146/10-potential-teams-for-japans-shohei-ohtani/ http://m.mlb.com/news/article/262478194/scouting-top-contenders-to-sign-shohei-ohtani/ Shocking that the big markets are all presumed favorites and high on their lists. It's like the media thinks the big markets deserve all the best players, and teams like the Brewers should all be filled with 2nd tier talent. I really hope he signs with a small market team, any small market.

So what if he does? This falls into "no harm no foul" territory. I'm sure he won't let these waiver claims impact any signings/trades he intends to make.

I'm not so sure I would hate this, aside from the most obvious piece in that Hader should be a frontrunner for a rotation spot to start the season. Aside from that, both Chatwood and Mikolas have some degree of upside along with some risk. But the dollars won't be too bad and we have reinforcements coming if one should fail. Neither contract should force us to keep them in the rotation if they aren't getting it done. Reed and a lefty is pretty much the dream moves as far as I'm concerned from a bullpen standpoint. I'd target a lesser lefty, maybe Zach Duke, if I was calling the shots. I think it's safe to assume that Stearns has given Mikolas a very significant look, will be interesting if he pulls the trigger on that.

I tend to agree with you here. It sounds great in theory to get talent for Chen, but we don't have the payroll space to easily afford a move like that. I know the contract is split up, but for simplicity sake, 17 million is 14.2% of 120 million(which might be an optimistic payroll) while it is slightly less than 9% of 190 million(what many big markets are working with). It's a better opportunity for a big market than us. And a team is only going to give up so much talent to shed that contract.

I would think there's a good chance he is cut then. He could also go to AA. This guy is probably more or less one of those extra arms to eat innings in spring while the other pitchers are on strict workloads.

I think the thought process is the idea of salary sheds for cheap inexpensive pieces. While highly unlikely, I could see something like this if a team were willing to take on Chen as well. This is my thought as well. I personally don't like the idea of trading for either Yelich or Gordon, but if they want to dump salary bad enough to do this deal...it's a no brainer for the Brewers and Phillips or Brinson become expendable(probably Phillips). It's highly likely the Marlins get better offers than that one though.

I honestly feel like our odds are maybe slightly worse than him going to an AL team, but overall about on par with the rest of the league. That still puts our chances at 1 in 30 at best though. If we don't get him, I hope he goes to some other small market AL team and not a big market. Let the Twins or Indians have him.

So you're saying the Baez-for-Archer rumor won't happen? My Cub fan friends will be crushed :-) I hadn't seen that one, but yeah it's definitely right up there on the silliness scale. I don't think Schwarber + Baez is enough to get Archer(it's close), and regardless I don't think Tampa targets that sort of return. Maybe they can work a 3 team deal, but Tampa will want young/cheap players...not overvalued players entering arbitration for big $...not with their payroll limitations.

Thames did cool off, but still posted a .794 OPS in the 2nd half and had a 1.004 OPS in 72 PAs in Sept/Oct. His numbers are not that skewed by his April. He had a bad June and August, but posted a .861 OPS in July as well. Abreu is a better hitter, but a big reason why the Brewers can even consider adding a FA/trading for a good SP is because they are getting great production from a 1B platoon that costs them <$6M/year. Add in Abreu's arbitration raise... and that inhibits their ability to add pitching. This. Also consider the cost in prospects to acquire what likely is similar or slightly better 1b production. I'm not going to try and argue that Thames/Aguilar is better than Abreu, best case for the Brewers is our guys will get similar production to Abreu again, but it's pretty close...and the cost in payroll $ and prospects is too great to even consider the upgrade. Other teams surely have a greater need for a 900 OPS RH power bat at 1b and will push the prospect cost beyond what we should be willing to pay.

True, but I don't think expectations will be low based on this one flawed premature projection. Plenty of guys underachieved last year. Besides the obvious, Villar, I contend Braun underachieved considerably. So did Broxton. Let's not forget the first 6 weeks of Feliz as the closer. Marginal underachievers were Perez, Thames (other than one exceptional month), and even Davies. How do we know Shaw and Santana overachieved as both are just now reaching their primes? And it's ridiculous to think a guy like Arcia who had been a consensus top 10 prospect overachieved. In my opinion, he's the most talented player on the roster and the arrow is still clearly pointing up. I would not be surprised to see him in the All Star game this season. I tend to agree with a lot of this. It would be one thing if a lot went wrong next year and the Brewers won 68 games. It's another to project us to lose something like 20 more games than we did last year with all the young talent we have hitting the majors. Those projections would have to assume virtually every Brewer overachieved and is due for massive regression. And projecting at all at this point with virtually no offseason activity is meaningless...as has been noted. And regarding east coast bias, there is a clear bias towards big market teams. It's not really up for debate. It's the reason you see so many Boston prospects rated so highly and then fail miserably at the highest level. They get overhyped because they are big market(Will Middlebrooks anyone). Boston, New York, Chicago, LA, etc...this type of ridiculous bias is how you get silly trade discussions like Ike Davis for Braun straight up or Samardja and Melancon for Heyward and his albatross contract...trades that make all the sense in the world for a big market and only a minuscule amount of sense for the small market.

While we are at it, we should trade Hiura and Ortiz for Tim Tebow... Yeah cuz Yelich and Tebow are almost comparable. In case you haven’t, and judging from y Ur response you have not, look at Yelich contract and career stats. He’d cost at least 2 top prospects It's just as silly. Brinson has a good chance of being a better player than yelich and for cheaper. And then there's Philips. Why would you try and trade for a good outfielder by giving up a better, younger, cheaper outfielder AND another outfielder?

While we are at it, we should trade Hiura and Ortiz for Tim Tebow...

Before I look at it, I'm going to predict that they tab the Dodgers, Cubs, Yankees/Red Sox, etc as division winners all primed to win 100 games.

I'll be honest that I thought Villar would break out, and I'm incredibly surprised by the year he had this year. His true talent is probably somewhere in between those extremes, closer to 2016 than 2017. But I didn't expect Guerra to post anything near what he did in 2016 again. Same with Jungmann a couple years back. I had him tabbed as almost a surefire regression candidate. Anderson is a bit younger, and we've all seen pitchers with plus changeups and command have solid or better results(marco estrada). Him finding mid 90s heat is a bonus and probably the difference between him being a low 4s ERA guy and a mid 3s ERA guy. I'm not convinced Anderson will maintain the velocity uptick, part of the reason I could see him regressing...but he won't be Guerra bad. Santana I believe is what he is, he could in fact be better than his 2017 season. Look no further than his minor league track record. Knebel was a first round talent as a known RP. As he's physically matured, he's added ticks to his fastball and become dominant. This shouldn't be overly surprising as he was 25 last year, it's not like Guerra who all of a sudden found mid 90s in his early 30s. And with Shaw, he's at his career peak. He could regress a bit, but he'll likely be a decent/good player for at least a couple more years. And he may even have some upside left if he isn't playing through injuries that he shouldn't be playing through in a playoff chase again. I think that the issue here is that if you assume Santana/Shaw/Knebel/Davies/Anderson do about the same, you're gonna need a big step forward from Arcia, Hader, Woodruff, Brinson, or Phillips to make a big difference. Because with the exact same performances (say Brinson breaks out but Shaw has a down year and everyone else is about the same), you're basically just taking last year's team and subtracting the 5-6 games that Jimmy Nelson was worth. I'm not advocating for doing nothing. I'd like to see a starter on a 1 or 2 year deal, CC Sabathia type...he would be ideal in my opinion. Add a couple relievers. And that's correct, I'm banking on big steps forward from the young guys. We have to be able to count on young guys to perform to be successful as a small market franchise. We can't just buy a team like the Yankees and Red Sox, and even they bring up some players from their farm systems.

I'll be honest that I thought Villar would break out, and I'm incredibly surprised by the year he had this year. His true talent is probably somewhere in between those extremes, closer to 2016 than 2017. But I didn't expect Guerra to post anything near what he did in 2016 again. Same with Jungmann a couple years back. I had him tabbed as almost a surefire regression candidate. Anderson is a bit younger, and we've all seen pitchers with plus changeups and command have solid or better results(marco estrada). Him finding mid 90s heat is a bonus and probably the difference between him being a low 4s ERA guy and a mid 3s ERA guy. I'm not convinced Anderson will maintain the velocity uptick, part of the reason I could see him regressing...but he won't be Guerra bad. Santana I believe is what he is, he could in fact be better than his 2017 season. Look no further than his minor league track record. Knebel was a first round talent as a known RP. As he's physically matured, he's added ticks to his fastball and become dominant. This shouldn't be overly surprising as he was 25 last year, it's not like Guerra who all of a sudden found mid 90s in his early 30s. And with Shaw, he's at his career peak. He could regress a bit, but he'll likely be a decent/good player for at least a couple more years. And he may even have some upside left if he isn't playing through injuries that he shouldn't be playing through in a playoff chase again.

Doug Melvin, is that you? As one user noted, we would have too many other holes in the roster to put all our chips into starting pitching. We've seen the results. Yuni B getting way too many at bats, Mark Kotsay in CF, etc. Also, this isn't a video game. No way are the other 29 teams going to let the small market brewers get the top 2 FA SP on the market. Too many other teams are in the mix that there's no way we can outspend everyone else and get BOTH pitchers.

You said what I was thinking but didn't really want to say. I had high hopes on him, I liked him predrafts. But really what are we doing with him? 10 total games started and 2 Relief for a total of 44IP. 25Walks so bigger than 5 per 9. He'll be in A ball somewhere and with the system's depth, a guy that I don't see making it past Rule 5 draft still in Milw's system. It's a shame last year was a lost season for him due to non-arm related injuries and his suspension, but he's still a talented guy and we have a year to decide whether to add him to the 40. Evaluating prospects isn't simply saying "what kind of stats have you put up lately?".