KeithStone53151

I understand your point, but I still think the A's are dumb...or at minimum are making a very dumb trade. But as I said, I do see your point there are aspects they are certainly considering that many here are not.

I'm quite confident he did not like it. i actually was against that trade at the time, it wasn't the slam dunk this one is.

This might literally be the first trade the brewers have made that you've liked, at least publicly/on these forums.

I feel like the report must be wrong, no way did we really get Contreras plus for Ruiz.

This is always just informational, Ruiz with his tools can have a widely variable valuation depending on the club/scouting done on him. That said, I don't see a scenario where this is all we give up. There's just no way. If it is that's highway robbery.

The delay makes me think we might be giving up a non 40-man guy. Because usually the big name 40 man guys are named right away.

I wouldn't say this is accurate, but he did significantly improve his framing during his time here...

Oh man if that's the best player we trade I'm ecstatic. Though it might not be...

Based on that, I wouldn't be surprised to see Keston moving to Oakland and from there who knows what comes back. Most likely the Brewers getting prospects.

there's 2 of the 3 pieces.....

Dude has 100k+ followers, at the very least it's interesting...

I'm a bit underwhelmed by this, but for different reasons than most. Simply looking at an ERA and having an opinion is far too simple. My biggest issue is with him being a 2 pitch guy and not really liking the look of his slider. It doesn't seem to have a nice, tight shape. FB/slider with not a huge gap in the velocity already makes him a RH specialist more or less, add to that his slider doesn't seem like enough of a plus pitch for a 2 pitch guy...i have concerns. All that said, he's clearly not a finished product and can get better. That leads to part 2. Coming from the Dodgers has good and bad to it. The good is, the Dodgers are the best development team in baseball and we can potentially learn from him what the Dodgers are doing. The bad is, the Dodgers are the best development team in baseball, we can't expect to take a Dodgers pitcher and turn him into something if the Dodgers couldn't. So, the hope would be that the Dodgers have him doing stuff over the offseason that transforms him into an effective bullpen arm. That's the big upside here. The other potential outcome is, we learn something about how the Dodgers are developing pitchers and offer him back sometime during spring training for a 5 figure loss. If our development team learns anything from the Dodgers, that's almost certainly worth 5 figures.

With our starting pitchers getting more expensive, we have to pinch pennies to stay within payroll constraints. Turang is the obvious replacement, and while he may very well have growing pains and could just downright be bad, that's mitigated by having urias/brosseau/Jace on the roster(assuming we keep them all). You can rotate those 3 guys between 2 spots if turang flops. I also suspect brewers will make a point to bring in vets on a minor league deal to compete for that roster spot in spring training. But in general I'm expecting us to give our top rated position player prospects a chance to open the season. I've enjoyed Wong and renfroe, but I suspect the brewers will try to cut costs at those 2 positions utilizing the younger talent and allocate those dollars to SP raises and probably bullpen help.

There's still an opportunity to catch them. We'll probably lose tomorrow in the tough pitching matchup but if we can kinda stay around 2 back through this tough stretch of games, we have a real shot at catching them over the last 2 weeks. The Padres don't have an easy game left on their schedule, and the Phillies also suddenly are much more catchable at only 2 games ahead of us with also a tough schedule to go.

The likely cy young alcantara has something like a 7 era over the last 30 days. I know this because he's currently tanking my fantasy team. Helping drive home your point. It's not just us, all good pitchers go through rough stretches. You don't just get 7 clean innings every start otherwise burnes would have a 0 era and 25 wins.

The Cardinals last 2 opening day payrolls have been $154 and $163 million. The Brewers probably aren't super comfortable going over $120. We need to be a bit more of a hybrid of the two models. Melvin basically picked one guy to give a big contract and build around and that was Braun. Stearns picked Yelich. Giving one guy $20 million back in the early 00s while giving someone close to $30 million currently and then building around them at lower cost with the rest is a pretty good model(assuming you pick well). The Cardinals have a big enough payroll that they can do that with 2 stars. I'm not sure the Brewers have enough that they can put half their payroll into 2 guys and round out a good roster with the other $60 million. The Brewers are also always at risk of having a bad year that really tanks attendance. Yes they can probably go over $120 million if they were a surefire bet to make the playoffs, but I suspect that payroll would be a money loser if they start bad and wind up in the 70s for wins.

I feel like you're looking at Peralta/Ashby and trying to make a comparable. The situations are entirely different. Neither guy was firing off Cy Young seasons when extended and both were sub 2 years service time. Also regarding your comment that teams are giving shorter deals with higher AAV to pitchers, I feel like you're looking at Scherzer/Verlander types with that comment, and both guys are upper 30s. Those aren't comparable at all. The best comparable I can find is the Kershaw extension in 2014. Kershaw had 2 years left on his deal but also had an opt out, so he more or less could negotiate for free agent $. In 2014 he netted 7/215. I looked through some contracts other pitchers have gotten and was probably a bit overzealous in my estimates. I looked deeper and came up with better numbers. Burnes arm could fall off tomorrow and he'd still get $25m in arbitration the next 2 years combined. With the last 2 seasons of numbers, it's hard to imagine him not commanding a minimum of $35m per year in free agency if he gets there and he'll probably command a 6-7 year commitment. So maybe the Brewers to get in the ballpark could offer 25+4 years of free agency at a discount(25/year) with some option shenanigans and an opt out. 6/125 with a player option for $25m in year 7 with a $10m buyout, and also throw in an opt out after year 2, 3, or 4. Maybe he bites at that, though it might be hard to considering he knows he could get 25+210 over the full length of his deal at free agency and 40m more over the life of the contract the Brewers are offering. Certainly his agent will be providing that context as the agent would probably gently nudge him to max his earning. All that said, the Brewers may not be willing to offer the contract I mentioned. That's a lot for a pitcher. It's also possible Burnes thinks he's worth 40 per in free agency considering Scherzer got 43. Certainly we could have a conversation but it's probably better during the offseason in case the Brewers do provide a mildly insulting offer.

Burnes is going to command close to 10/400M in free agency. The Brewers probably aren't comfortable offering much more than something like 7/200M. So maybe not half but pretty close, and 7/200 is a pretty insulting offer considering what he'll probably get. The Yankees and Dodgers can still field a good team in years 8-10 of that deal if Burnes is bad. Imagine the Brewers trying to field a competitive team with a $40M/year bad contract on the books for 3 years. We'd turn into the Pirates real quick during those years.

The Brewers obviously should do some sort of communication with him, but they also aren't going to start negotiating and hinting at a contract of maybe half what he's worth. They don't want to insult him, and he absolutely should be aware of our market size and the fact we already have a bad big contract on the books.

I wonder if they'll let him play winter ball in Venezuela. Would be massive for his development but he's 18 and had a big year and who knows how much the elbow issue is still a thing. Maybe best to take a rest.

If you want to alienate your fans, yes please keep sending Counsell out there to make boneheaded decisions that cost us games and ask him why he's so handsome in the post game.

Oh come on what a ridiculous response. Asking follow-up questions, somewhat pointed...is a far cry from "this show sucks". Many people probably want(and frankly deserve) the answers to some more pointed questions. Those questions wouldn't make the broadcast look bad, just the individuals answering the questions that should have to own up to their decisions.

From what I've heard, if Sophia/McCalvy/etc ask the proper difficult questions...it tarnishes the relationship and it's hard to get good information later down the line. They are also much less likely to get called on to ask a question in the post-game conferences. I believe Haudricourt hinted at this once before. Haudricourt always was able to get an interview from Stearns shortly after trades that gave a lot of good information, and nobody wants to risk that type of relationship. And frankly, I understand it from Sophia's perspective as it's a big risk to ask questions that might tarnish your relationship with someone and not get called on to ask questions in the post game conferences or elsewhere anymore. It shows how soft Counsell is though, man up and take ownership for your decisions...and answer to the people paying your salary and supporting you. Nobody should have to kiss the ring to continue to be at the table.

Interesting, bad game, only whiners around, only something like 40 posts in the game thread. Figure it out mods.....

My predictions in order of most likely. Kelley, Perdomo, Cousins, Reyes, Feliciano. I think 2 pitchers is what they'll look at the most with this run of games. I think if they wanted Small, he wouldn't have pitched yesterday. Reyes I think they'd bring up over Ruiz as he plays multiple positions and is also really really fast...so he's maybe a slightly worse PR option than Ruiz but still exceptionally good. He's also a utility type, and we all know what CC thinks of utility types. So those are my thoughts. I'd be shocked if it was someone exciting like Turang or Frelick.