KeithStone53151

That call was absolutely embarrassing. Even the split screen view isn't convincing. Maybe the tag was there, is it definitive? Absolutely not. I've been tracking comments and it's a fairly universal opinion that the call was crap

I'm a big fan of all the food upgrades in general, but the beer upgrades are really the stars of the show. So you guys are the ones paying $12 for a craft beer? I can't justify paying that when I could get one for $5 at almost any bar, or by a 12 pack for $15. It's Friday's long island or bust as far as alcohol goes at miller park.

If Santana is gone and we have multiple injuries/poor results, we can do like the Dbacks and pick up the 2018 version of JD Martinez at the deadline for scraps.

Most posters still think that of Arcia...

Trading Santana should only happen if it involves extremely high end and cost controlled pitching. Every player has a price, including Santana. The likelihood of that type of trade materializing is very low, fyi. But, if we were to tack on a high end pitcher to put atop our rotation, rolling with Ace, Anderson, Davies, Woodruff, Hader...we probably don't need to score quite as many runs as we had previously. Especially considering it's highly likely Stearns spends some money on the bullpen this off season. Remember, great pitching > great hitting. Also Perez/Thames likely wouldn't replace that spot. You'd see Braun/Brinson/Phillips/Broxton as our 4 OF with Thames and Perez out there sparingly.

Fair points. I will usually offer anybody but a cub fan my SSH discount if I happen to be getting something for me or a friend and they are in line next to me and it's a SSH day. That 25% goes a long way to making prices fringe reasonable.

I'm not sure why this discussion has gone on so long. All tickets have barcodes, and can be easily tracked and audited. I guarantee external auditors review ticket sales and match a number of selections to cash receipts coming in. If nonsense was happening, it would be caught quickly. And catching something like this would be kid stuff for auditors. Point being, it isn't happening...the numbers they put up on the board are tickets sold. Whether all those people with tickets show up is another conversation...but I guarantee those ticket sold numbers are accurate.

They'd have to charge like $80 bucks for an 8 oz sirloin to meet the ridiculous margins they already get. If I go straight from work and have to eat at the park, I usually go the pizza route. $10 for a personal pizza that is pretty good and filling. I'd rather do that than pay $15-16 for a burger and tots, plus like someone noted you can't customize anything so that's not a route I'm willing to go anyways.

I did like the new setup and organization of the concessions. You can tell they spent a lot of money on it by what happened to the prices. And the quality of most items didn't change. I'll tailgate all day every day before spending $12 on a craft beer or $15 on a burger and tater tots.

You also predicted this: Brewers MVP: Thames Brewers Cy Young: Peralta Disappointing Player: Shaw 2 of those 3 predictions...ouch. You couldn't have possibly been more wrong. I'm disappointed we missed the playoffs, but we should have a better shot at it next year and into the future. The types of moves Stearns makes this offseason will tell us if we he views this as a contender next year. If we add payroll and make a couple higher level SP/RP signings, then buckle up because we could really have a shot next year.

I tend to agree with you on this as well for the most part. I could absolutely see us making a play for a high $ player, whether via trade or FA. I fully believe Stearns targets high-end pitching this offseason on all fronts, especially guys that wouldn't be under contract more than 3 or 4 years. I think under the helm of Melvin, Santana/Shaw would be looking at an extensions right now. I don't think that's going to happen with Stearns. And with all that said, it's still important to be generally responsible with how we spend this offseason. Arbitration bumps will slowly increase salary, and spending now even on 3-4 year deals impacts our flexibility over the next couple off seasons. I'm very excited to see what Stearns has in store.

There is zero chance that villar is non-tendered. It baffles me that the idea even found it's way to the table. I Don't think there's any circumstance in which we wouldn't tender him at this stage with the team control remaining, but especially given our payroll flexibility.

Corey Ray has absolutely no business being in the top 100. I have a hard time even putting him in the top 10 in our own system (I’d put Brinson, Burnes, Ortiz, Peralta, Phillips, Harrison, Hiura and Lutz ahead of him for sure, possibly Diaz and Erceg and definitely Woodruff if he’s still eligible). He may be young and he may be athletic but he’s done absolutely nothing as a pro. This is a college hitter and top 5 pick who can’t even hit A ball pitching. That’s not a good sign. Hopefully he figures things out and lives up to his potential but he has a long long way to go. I tend to agree with you there. I would put him around the Gatewood/Harrison grouping when they were 1.5 years into the system. He has the loud tools, but no results thusfar. I need to see something from this guy before he gets back into a top 10. Regardless of his ranking though, he's a heck of an athlete. That part isn't up for debate.

I think every scout and baseball talent evaluator would disagree with you. Your ability as an athlete contributes to how good (or bad) you are at accomplishing some task or feat or skill - whatever you want to call it. It's certainly not the only thing, but it's a huge deal. And in professional baseball, athleticism is what teams will bank on when looking at a player's upside - particularly position players. It's why you can take dozens of 15 year old kids who have been playing a particular sport (baseball, basketball, whatever) for 10 years, and have one kid who has never played the sport walk in and be better than all of them in short order. I saw a quote from one scout who said something to the effect of he would almost always bet on the athletic kid with great raw skills over the polished kid with low athleticism (he was talking about minor league prospects). Why? The good athlete is the one who will be able to keep up to the 100 mph fastball or adjust to the improving change ups and curves or whatever other pitches that a player faces as they head up the minor league ladder. Athleticism allows a player to hit the ball harder, run faster, react quicker. It's why when we hear descriptions of exceptional players you sometimes have terms like 'quick twitch' or 'twitchy' used to describe them. Again, athleticism is not the only thing. Being a baseball player is so much more - practice, intelligence, etc. But athleticism is often what helps a player rise above other guys. Scouts love athletic guys because they are the ones that often have the best chance to be difference makers in the big leagues. Sorry, but Ray isn't a great athlete, if he was he'd be a SS. He's not even an infielder. Arcia is a great athlete, Ray is just fast, he doesn't have coordination or body control. Ray is also not young, he's 23. He's just a few months younger than Phillips and Brinson. However, he's years behind them developmentally, and hasn't progressed at the plate. MLB Pipeline is just sloppy. Their writers are hype men who no longer put in their time on the rankings. So outfielders can't be good athletes? Reeeeeeeally? Do you have any basis for your comments on coordination or body control? Ray is still very young. He'll be under team control for a few more years and has time to work on things and make it to the show. I will agree that many writers buy into the hype a bit too much. That's why the tops of these lists tend to be littered with big market names. I'm sure the cubs will manage to get 4 guys into the next top 100 despite not having one prospects deserving of it.

How is he supposed to be any good defensively if they keep yanking him from position to position? Give him time to learn one. I don't know but I doubt even if they allowed him to learn a position you are looking at Braun at 3B level of defense in the IF. His bat is going to allow him to play there is no doubt in that but his defense is just atrocious. I believe he will be even worse than Braun was at 3B playing any of the IF positions he just doesn't have the quickness or the instincts to play in the IF. His best spot would be 1B but he is shorter than Prince was and that is not going to be good at 1B. His arm would allow him to play RF or LF but again he is just not athletic enough to play either of those positions. He really is a DH player on an NL team. Braun is 6'2 while Prince is generously listed at 6'0. I think Braun playing 1b should be explored, but there's no guarantee he'd be ok there. I generally like the idea of him running less and not having to try and make diving catches. Let the young guys do that.

Being an accountant, I've tracked brewers payroll and arbitration myself for a handful of years. I always try to do my own arbitration estimates before they come out. I was fairly close on most but I have issues with a couple. For the guy saying 3 million for Villar was high. I had it at 2.8. Plush already noted the 2.6 Segura got, and don't forget they account for your entire body of work...not just the most recent year. For Nelson I had 3.9. Chase Anderson got 2.45 and Wily Peralta got 2.8 their first go-round. Nelson for his career hasn't been much better than Anderson prior to this year. He's sitting on a 4.12 career ERA with a 4.04 FIP. Even this year, his "breakout" he only had a 3.49 ERA. Looking at silly stats like wins and losses would hurt his stock further. For Knebel I had 5.2. The first comp i used was the 5 million John Axford got in 2013. He was the closer for longer, which no doubt helps his cause. It's also 5 years later and salaries are going up like crazy. Knebel had an incredible season including an all-star appearance, I think that boosts his stock just past the 5 million mark.

Really? Do you remember Puig in 2016? Braun had more HR's than Puig had extra base hits (yes there were 200 more ABs). Puig is just as injury prone as Braun is. He was sent down in 2016 because of his poor play and immaturity. When he got recalled, he was in a strict platoon. Not to mention Puig is a gamble when it comes to team chemistry. How would he deal with playing in Milwaukee and not making the playoffs every year? There were a small number of people on this board in favor of the deal. Most weren't. I think people tend to overreact to the current year of production. Most people wrote off Phillips after his 2016 season. Most are currently writing off villar after the 2017 season. I also think some people are overreacting to his season this year and not looking at his body of work or any of the advanced metrics pointing to some lousy luck. I personally thought there was a very real chance that Puig was a comparable player to Braun at the time, but I didn't want any part of Puig under any circumstances as a bad clubhouse guy on a young/impressionable team. Calling Puig a gamble when it comes to team chemistry is actually very generous in my opinion.

Memo to the writer, the Brewers aren't rebuilding now either having finished one game short of the playoffs. There's no way Santana is dealt for prospects at this point, unless they are top 30 types and ready for major league action in 2018. The giants would have to include some major league level value with some highly ranked prospects to get Santana. And it is extremely lazy that they don't realize Santana isn't a CF. Feels like a "the brewers should just trade him to us for a couple prospects because big markets deserve all the good players" type of article. That said, it's conceivable that the Brewers could trade Santana now. I don't think it's likely as we have no motivation to move him, the deal would have to be a major haul and probably include a high end major league reliever along with prospects. Every player has a price, but a Santana trade isn't realistic. Now Broxton to SF would make sense, a team with Posey and Bumgarner and money to blow is NOT going to rebuild. Trading for Broxton and saving payroll $ to add in other ways makes a ton of sense for the Giants and the Brewers.

Athletic ability absolutely can help you hit better to some degree. From a swing mechanics/consistency standpoint. The part it can't really help with is tracking pitching and plate discipline. I think there needs to be a little less panic on this board about young prospects. Many of you were calling for Phillips to fall off every top 100 list last year, and now he seems penciled in as the CF starter to open 2018 and back on top 100 lists. Diaz/Ray had down years, but they are incredibly young and have plenty of time to adjust and improve. No sense in panicking on them as many of you did with Phillips.

Lumbering 1b's who hit .827 with the benefit of a lot of platoon starts are a dime-a-dozen. That's why they play sporadically in the first place. That roster spot could be used much more effectively by having Braun, Vogt, and maybe Santana able to play 1b. He played a grand total of 14 innings at 3b in the minors. Fielding grounders at 3b during warm-ups means nothing. Baseball reference has him as a -.7 dWAR for his career in about half a full-season's worth of total innings, so his sporadic pt is protecting him from being recognized for the bad defender he really is. I know dWAR stats will disagree but that sure jives with what I see in terms of range and agility. He has a decent glove and all, but so did Jeter and Rollins when they were the worst starting ss's in baseball. What about the fact that he had an .OPS of .800 in the minors? That's horrendous for a slugging prospect. You really think his .827 OPS (which isn't even good) in 311 pa's this year is somehow more indicative of his skill than his 4000+ MiLB pa's? You're relying too much on the narrative of the season. The sun shined on his butt a few times in crucial ph appearances. Don't let it go to your head. Jason Rogers him as soon as you get a chance. I don't think anyone is trying to say he's a superstar or anything. Just that a .837 OPS from a bench bat is fantastic, regardless of position. Aguilar ranked 20th out of 59 in OPS among 1b with no restrictions on PA or games. He's posting numbers in the Matt Adams, Matt Carpenter, Brandon Belt, etc range of player. Not everyone needs to be super versatile like Perez, we have guys like Perez so we can afford to have a guy that plays only 1b and puts up big time numbers for a bench bat. Aguilar is also around that 26-28 age range where guys tend to peak, so I'm not overly surprised that he's found something and is performing better than his minor league numbers. If we were to get a Jason Rogers type offer, you absolutely consider it. I don't think we had any intention of trading Rogers at the time, but that offer was something we couldn't say no to.

Yep. He had a really good year and I don't see why people are just focusing on his 2nd-half stats. He was clearly working his way back from injury. Also, it seems obvious that the knee operation that caused him to miss all of 2016 made a difference. His year was a bit of a fluke, but he's at least earned the right to stay on the island for another year. He's a good fit as a versatile, patient lhb who can back up both middle infield spots. Aguilar is the fluke guy they should move on from. An .827 OPS as a bad 1b with the benefit of a lot of platoon starts is nothing. He has significant negative value on the basepaths and not even a prayer of playing any other position effectively, and his career MiLB OPS of .800 would be a bit suspect for a middle infielder, let alone a guy whose can barely even play 1b. He's basically a significantly less versatile Jason Rogers. You actually couldn't possibly be more wrong on Aguilar. .827 OPS from a bench bat with sporadic playing time is like winning the friggin lottery. How many guys do you know that with very sporadic at bats can post that line? Guys that hit better than that usually end up taking over the starting spot and push for an all star appearance. I'm not sure what else you want out of a bench bat. Also Aguilar would be an emergency 3b if we were ever in a pinch and fields grounders there often before games. He grades pretty well as a 1b, I'm not sure where you are getting that he's a bad defender. The only thing you got right about Aguilar is he's a significant negative value on the basepaths, which is not a huge deal for a big time power guy.

If he's such an impressive player, why wouldn't another team sign him for more than the ridiculous 2/6 deal you are talking about? Name one starter on this team that he deserves to consistently start in front of? Exactly, you can't. That's why he's a bench bat.

Sogard is basically in competition with Perez for that super utility role. He's not an elite athlete with range or arm like an Arcia, but he is extremely consistent in making the plays that he can get to and he's not extremely limited like a Yuni. He's also underrated in how he grinds out his at bats and sees a ton of pitches. I would say 260/360/360 is a reasonable expectation for Sogard. That isn't terrible by any stretch, albeit not something anyone wants starting a signficant number of games.

Having Brinson in CF, Phillips in RF, and Santana in LF...very few guys would ever get an easy extra base on us with those arms in the outfield. That's the dream

These are the types of guys we should target, for sure. If I traded for one of those guys, I would not be inclined to also sign Lynn or Cobb. We'd have a good set of 5 guys and enough depth. We might have to count on Suter/Wilkerson/whoever to make starts until either Nelson came back or Burnes was deemed ready, but that would probably work out ok. I think bringing in a vet or 2 on a minor league deal to serve as depth would be a good idea if we went that route.