KeithStone53151

The 9th will surely be Iglesias against Bryant, Rizzo, Zobrist. I have a hunch this game will come down to Baez(who is due up 5th)

It's almost more fun watching the Cubs get creamed than watching the Brewers win a game. Lester having another 2nd half meltdown game...

If we can keep winning games, we'll find a way into the playoffs. Whether it's wildcard or division. The cubs have really had a hard time against the reds. Pounded them the first game but lost the 2nd and almost lost last night. Boston is helping us out as well. We likely will at the very least be playing some meaningful September baseball.

I almost think the last week or so of the season they should intentionally play Phillips in the PH role to try and get him used to that for September. It's too bad about Brinson, I was hoping at minimum we could utilize his speed in a PR role and for defense late in games. With a Phillips/Brinson/Broxton OF late in games, that's as good as we can possibly defend out there. Including AAA callups, we can put premier defenders at almost every spot on the field in September if we choose. I saw the cubs and cardinals lose, but didn't know until Enders post that both the rockies and diamondbacks lost also. Keep the streak rolling!

I feel like more teams are getting themselves into the "big market" category. St Louis signed that massive tv deal, arizona, Angels, Giants, cubs, possibly rangers. There could easily be 8-10 teams that could afford the contract if inclined. Even the brewers with a slightly better tv deal and increased revenue sharing from internet tv packages can do better in competing years from a payroll standpoint than the 110 max we saw 6-7 years ago. We still can't afford stanton, but point is that more teams can get involved in these big free agents than in the past. I highly suspect that Harper will work opt outs somewhere into his megadeal when the time comes, that's becoming fairly trendy for guys talented enough to be able to demand it.

I kinda expected some wildly different opinions. The majority think it would be primarily a salary dump with a few decent pieces mixed in. A couple people said he would be completely off limits, and 3and2 said it would take the moon but really it's probably not happening. There's some pretty good evidence in this thread that valuing an elite talent in his prime but on a potentially crippling contract is very difficult. Considering that Harper is looking for a 10 year/$400 million deal(someone correct me if that figure is inaccurate) in free agency when he's 26, Stanton's deal seems like a somewhat reasonable deal by comparison.

Broxton was better last year than this year, Santana was close to as good last year but was hurt. Perez isn't as good as last year. The bullpen guys outside of Knebel are all having bad seasons compared to their last few. Very few players on this team are having career years with the SP being the most notable. It is a couple of guys who are in their growth stage having what seems like breakouts, a pair of starters who may or may not be legit and a bunch of guys having weaker years than we hoped. The additions of Shaw and Thames were massive improvements over what we had at those positions last year. Can't forget about that. That and the starting pitching have carried this team to this point for the most part.

I think the goal here is to open up 2nd base for Jacob Barnes and have Chorizo handle the 7th inning role.

I disagree with you on this one Briggs. I looked back a couple years and tried finding a comp. 2016-17 had next to no middle infielders on the market that signed to big deals. Justin Turner got 4/64 and Luis Valbuena got 2/15(most thought he'd get like 3/30 i believe). 2015-16 saw Zobrist get 4/56, Daniel Murphy get 3/37.5, and Howie Kendrick get 2/20. Murphy and Kendrick were on a QO, so I think they were then tied to draft pick compensation as well driving down their values. Murphy is probably the best comp for Walker at that point(he's worlds better now but at that point they were statistically very comparable). I suspect he would have gotten a bigger deal without the QO, and that was 2 years ago with 2 other solid 2b on the market and he got 12.5/year. This year, Walker will be the best 2b on the market with a pretty significant dropoff beyond him. 15 million is probably very reasonable, and it could be more depending on which teams are involved in the bidding.

I think the only way Stanton is traded by this deadline is if it's to the Dombrowski's of Boston, and Devers and Groome would for sure be involved in that trade.

I can see the argument where you are definitely selling high on him, and how much of a burden that contract is. I think it's hard to justify trading such an incredible talent in his prime unless you are getting back a ton in prospect value. I also can see teams unwilling to part with top prospects AND take on 290 million for one corner outfielder. The opt out would make it very difficult for the Marlins to eat any of the contract in a trade, though I doubt they'd do so anyways. I could see a team offering to take on the whole contract and give up maybe 5 total players with maybe 3 being top 30 prospects but none in the top 5, one being a current decent MLB player, and one flier type. That would seem like a lot to a casual fan, but in reality it isn't a ton of value. I can also see the Marlins saying "well if you want a generational talent in his prime, we'll take your first and second born, your right arm, keys to your yacht, and 5 top prospects of our choosing". I think jerichoholic is much closer on what his value truly should be versus what the Marlins would likely wind up getting in a trade now. Teams tend to pay way over the top for premium talent as opposed to very good talent. Hence why the returns were so much different for Miller/Chapman last deadline than they were for Robertson this deadline.

I've been reading a lot of media types writing articles and tweeting that the Marlins absolutely should trade Stanton now while they still can. I'm not advocating for the Brewers to make this move, it makes zero sense. I'm moreso trying to gauge whether you all think it would actually be a wise move for the Marlins to trade the Brewers and what kind of value he would garner on the market. I personally think it's completely ridiculous for the Marlins to consider trading him at the moment. The offense there is actually pretty good and he's a massive draw for the Marlins. This feels like media types trying to argue him to a big market because all good players should play for one of eight teams...or something. But again, let's just say the Marlins do try to trade him and aren't willing to eat any money. What kind of value in players/prospects could they get for him? With the massive contract, it's incredibly difficult what would be fair value in prospects/players for a trade.

This is a fair point, he will be 24 next year so I don't think they'll overly baby his arm. Since he's thrown in the 120-130 inning range from 2014-2016, I could see them letting him go to 160 or so next season even if he doesn't match that this year. Obviously that's not a full season which would get him shut down at some point. If he opened with the team, we might be able to get into September before he reached that threshold. Otherwise you could start with someone else and have him go shorter stints in the minors and bring him up in June as noted.

suter has only burned one of his three options in 2017. guerra, as referenced earlier, could burn his final option in 2017 if he isn't recalled soon. I assume keeping Guerra in AAA until September callups burns his final option? If so, I can't imagine us not bringing him up before then.

Come on man. I said address our current weaknesses this year. Brewers centerfielders are hitting a cool .216 with a .299 OBP, which are both far and away the worst numbers of our position groups. And that includes your prized propsects Brinson and Phillips having shots. I'd say that's pretty weak spot, wouldn't you? Now does that mean I wouldn't give Brinson or Phillips a shot? Of course not. There's a reason I considered Brinson untouchable at the trade deadline. But "addressing our current weaknesses" doesn't necessarily mean benching our top prospects like you believe. It couldn't simply mean signing an adequate veteran backup who can step in when Brinson or Phillips needs a day off or when/if they are in an extended slump. Forgive me for having little faith in Keon Broxton. Accepting the reality of the situation is hardly me having "literally zero willingness to give any prospects a chance at the MLB level" . No I don't. If he's down there working in becoming a better pitcher then absolutely it can help his development. For instance, he can work on throwing his changeup more often, refining his command and pitching to contact the extend his innings. The last thing you want is someone trying to figure out how to throw a third pitch while he's in the starting rotation in Milwaukee. If he needs to do it in Biloxi then maybe that's the route to go. As I posted earlier his walks per 9 have been getting worse for three years now. People just assume his command will get better. Why? Because Sale and Randy Johnson's did? What about the hundreds of pitchers who didn't figure it out? Are those not valid comparisons? Look, I agree. Hader absolutely should be given a chance to be a major league starter. But we're not at the point either depth wise or team success wise where he should be just given the chance. He needs to earn it. We have 5-6 guys currently ahead of him and while their ceiling may nkt be as high at least they've earned the shot. A veteran backup is one thing and not unreasonable, though I think having 2 of those 3 guys on the 25 man is ideal. There are enough rest days and braun injuries to get all 4 guys plenty of at bats. The other beauty of our situation is all 3 guys will head home for the season knowing that any of the 3 of them could earn the starting job next year. If that doesn't motivate you to grind like crazy in the off season, I don't know what does. There's a reason certain guys like Lopez and Wilkerson were sent to AA and not AAA. And a reason whoever ends up in Colorado Springs is a team that got "stuck" there. It's not good for development in general. Both hitters and pitchers can develop bad habits there. I'm also not opposed to sending Hader to the minors if he doesn't look sharp in spring. I simply think he should have the inside track on a job, and get it unless he's really bad AND a veteran on a minor league contract does awesome. I'm not exactly sure how Hader hasn't earned this shot. He wrecked AA, he did as well as can be expected in AAA, he's currently wrecking MLB level in an unfamiliar bullpen role. If you want to sign a high level free agent and have him and Woodruff fight it out for the 5th spot in the rotation, that's one thing and not unreasonable(though in reality it would be Woodruff/Hader/Davies fighting for 2 spots in that case). Giving the 5th spot to Garza, Chatwood, any pitcher that doesn't profile as a 3 or better is foolish and I can't imagine that happening. The best part about your "there's 5-6 guys ahead of him" comment, is there's a very real chance that if given the chance to start in the MLB rotation in 2018...that there would be literally nobody ahead of him in 2019. And either way, by that point we'd have a better idea if he deserves a rotation spot. We will have given him a fair shot. With someone like Garza taking his spot, maybe he comes up and makes spot starts and has to adjust on the fly to throwing with a different baseball in not colorado springs and to mlb hitters. You might still not know what you have in Hader or if he can adjust.

Come on man. I said address our current weaknesses this year. Brewers centerfielders are hitting a cool .216 with a .299 OBP, which are both far and away the worst numbers of our position groups. And that includes your prized propsects Brinson and Phillips having shots. I'd say that's pretty weak spot, wouldn't you? Now does that mean I wouldn't give Brinson or Phillips a shot? Of course not. There's a reason I considered Brinson untouchable at the trade deadline. But "addressing our current weaknesses" doesn't necessarily mean benching our top prospects like you believe. It couldn't simply mean signing an adequate veteran backup who can step in when Brinson or Phillips needs a day off or when/if they are in an extended slump. Forgive me for having little faith in Keon Broxton. Accepting the reality of the situation is hardly me having "literally zero willingness to give any prospects a chance at the MLB level" . No I don't. If he's down there working in becoming a better pitcher then absolutely it can help his development. For instance, he can work on throwing his changeup more often, refining his command and pitching to contact the extend his innings. The last thing you want is someone trying to figure out how to throw a third pitch while he's in the starting rotation in Milwaukee. If he needs to do it in Biloxi then maybe that's the route to go. As I posted earlier his walks per 9 have been getting worse for three years now. People just assume his command will get better. Why? Because Sale and Randy Johnson's did? What about the hundreds of pitchers who didn't figure it out? Are those not valid comparisons? Look, I agree. Hader absolutely should be given a chance to be a major league starter. But we're not at the point either depth wise or team success wise where he should be just given the chance. He needs to earn it. We have 5-6 guys currently ahead of him and while their ceiling may nkt be as high at least they've earned the shot. Phillips and Brinson were given sporadic at bats this year, not a real shot to prove anything. They've done literally everything they can at the AAA level. If you aren't willing to give them a shot, I can't imagine another scenario where you'd give anyone a shot. And Sale/Johnson developed well at the MLB level. Pitching at AAA(especially our current situation) can only get you so far. The last stages of development happen at the MLB level. We've given you example after example, but you seem to think he guys need to develop 100% prior to coming up to MLB for some reason...that's not how it works with most prospects. Guys need to be exposed to this level before they fully master their craft...in almost all cases. You will find very few examples of guys coming up from the minors and performing at their peak immediately and not having any growing pains or struggles. You generally seem to want to operate like Dombrowski or the Cubs currently(not the cubs regime that got to this point, but the one that currently has talent on the roster)...as soon as a prospect gets value, quick trade them before it goes down for whatever you can get. That along with a million other lucky breaks last year got the cubs a world series, and this year might not even win them the division. And it will all come crumbling down quickly to a full scale rebuild in 3-5 years time...around the time and Bryant and Rizzo are either drastically overpaid or move on to another team. And as for Dombrowski, I'd bet that every GM with talented vets calls him first because that guy flings around top prospects like they grow on trees, look no further than the glorious Thornburg trade. Fortunately for both of those teams, they actually have a chance to keep their core players with their payroll levels. We will never be able to, so we have to constantly have talent in the system and successfully cycle that talent to the MLB level as the aging vets get traded for more talent in their last year or two of team control.

I think myself and everyone else on this board will gladly let you rub this in our face in 2020 if you are correct.

Most people are simply saying don't make a bad deal just to spend all the money earmarked for this year. I don't think anyone is opposed to addressing areas of need by signing quality players to fair value contracts.

It actually is completely the right thing to do if: A. Mark is willing to pay $100 million or so for contending years which he seems to want to do. B. The contracts are not prohibitive of future years of being able to keep your young players. The Brewers have a ton of money to spend (assuming A) for the next 2 offseasons and only 3 or 4 roster spots to fill with them. Get the best player money can buy if it's a short contract. I think you'd agree that bullpen is one of the biggest issues right now. You mean to tell me that you'd rather roll with Blazek, let Swarzak walk, Barnes, Jeffress, and all of those other options next season instead of 2 guys that are much better pitchers that would only be 1-2 year contracts and Mark has earmarked the money for 2018 and 2019 payroll? Mark A has said that savings from these low payroll years will be rolled in to future years. I also think our TV deal and revenue sharing has improved to the point that the 100-110 million might be lower than it could be in competing years at this point, but that's a different topic. We shouldn't make deals that we think might be bad deals just because we have money to burn and it won't affect future years. I'm confident Stearns will sign quality players to fair value contracts this off season to help the club, almost all of which will likely be in the bullpen.

Big markets can get away with overpaying for vets. Our margin for error is much smaller. If the dodgers make a bad signing for 25 million/year for 5 years...who cares, they still have another 225 million they can use to fill out their roster. This isn't an issue for big markets until you become the 2010 cubs and have 5+ guys signed to bad contracts that are also stinking up your mlb roster. If we make a bad signing for even 10 million for a couple years, that's a massive burden.

I didn't realize until I just now looked how dreadfully thin our 2018 bullpen appears to be on paper. Knebel will close, Barnes will be in the back end somewhere, Suter likely will be a swing man if not traded. Ideally 2 of those spots will go to Webb, Wang, Derby, Scahill, Ventura, Lopez, etc...guys with options that can be rotated to AAA to keep fresh. Torres and Jeffress we can offer arbitration to, probably for close to 3 million each(I feel like we should keep 1 of these 2 at most). I don't even want to think about seeing Drake anymore, and Swarzak/Hughes I believe will be FA. Probably need to fill 1-3 spots with vets that can fill the back end. There seem to be a lot of quality RH relievers on the market, so we should be able to get a couple very good options...just a matter of price.

8-9 starting pitchers is fair. Start with Nelson, Anderson, Davies and 2 of Woodruff, Hader, Suter, Jungmann, Guerra, even Wilkerson as options. You hope the 8th and 9th starter see very little action and merely spot start occasionally, if 2 or 3 of the top 5 go down with injury...it just isn't your year. Those guys could likely get us through to July when we could add at the deadline if needed and/or Burnes/Ortiz might be ready by then. I wouldn't be surprised if we picked up somebody on a minor league contract/major league invite type situation. I think most expect Stearns to pick up the option and trade Garza, if we go that route we wouldn't get nothing for him.

I've kinda gotten into this debate on other threads/twitter/boards, etc. but if one thinks that 2B is a need, why not overspend on 2B? This assumes that Mark is willing to pay his usual $100+ million on the roster, but it's time to overpay a few guys hopefully on short deals to fill short-term roster holes. We can dump a ton of money into relief pitching, maybe a starting pitcher if we feel it's an upgrade, or 2B. Nowhere else justifies $ spent right now. If Walker is willing to stay for 2 (3 max) years then it's a perfect situation. If he's truly washed up then you go back to Villar or Dubon but you're no worse off than you were before because adding Walker to the payroll for 2-3 years is not prohibitive of keeping any player we value over that timeframe and probably doesn't stop us from adding anything at positions of need. It's more of an opportunity cost thing. Money spent on 2b is money that can't be spent on pitching. Imagine where this team could be if all else remained the same, Villar become a solid 2b option(or someone internal did) but we add a TOR pitcher and rock solid LH setup man in free agency heading into 2018? It's harder to make moves for impact talent when you $5 and $10 million your payroll away. We need to have as many solid guys on minimum and arbitration contracts as possible, and ideally only having one or two holes and being able to fill it with expensive impact talent to push us over the edge rather than back end starting pitching.

It absolutely is fine to have a back end guy like Garza, if your farm sucks and you have no better options and/or no hope of contending in a given year. It's also much easier to carry a back end guy like Garza when you have a TOR pitcher or 2 like most contenders. Since we don't currently have that, we need to have a rotation full of #2 and #3 starting pitchers to compete. We also need to give our pitchers a chance to develop at the highest level. Arcia didn't hit the ground running, but he's sure looking like a good player. Perez went through significant struggles at the MLB level before he got to where he's at now. Knebel was a middle reliever last year, he's a closer now. This team has to give talented players a chance to develop and grow at the mlb level or we'll never be successful. Spending $5 million on a guy like Garza at this point is a recipe for consistent failure. To compete with the Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs, etc, we need to develop better players because we can't compete with them on the market. If you don't give said good players a chance to play and instead rely on the market, you're literally guaranteeing failure. They'll pay more money for better players and be a better team. This really isn't that complicated of a concept.

Nothing really screams starting 2b. He's a solid hitter with speed and plays good defense. His career minor league slash line is 299/349/404/753. He's probably more of a Perez type guy in that super utility role when he fully develops. His career SB% is around 75%, which is very good if that percentage translates to MLB. Dubon isn't nearly as dynamic as Villar or have nearly the upside of Diaz/Hiura, he could be a decent stopgap option if Villar fails in 2018 rather than spending a bunch on 2b.