KeithStone53151

It's not an injury either per Adam McCalvy... Maybe I'm cynical, but I firmly don't believe that he isn't either traded or on the cusp of being traded... and that's very disappointing.

Agreed on all counts. Good trade for both teams but probably better for the white Sox.

This would surely be a very low cost move. Pure rental, 30+, not much track record. The white sox are obviously in sell mode and would likely take whatever they could get. I'd be fine with this move, another hard thrower for high leverage outs.

If that's true, I'm good with moving on. I'd be comfortable giving up that for Gray, but if that's on the table and has them moving on, then there must be some big offers available. We'll see. I could see it coming down to the deadline and having the Brewers back in the conversation depending on how the week goes. I would think Gray will overall come at a lesser cost than Quintana. To me, that says that package is the absolute ceiling of what we would offer for Gray. I tend to agree that Ray/Ortiz would be a lot to give up, but it trades from strength(OF) and doesn't touch our top 3 pitching prospects(Hader/Woodruff/Burnes). I don't think I'd do that deal if it was my call, but I can understand it and don't think it would be a significant overpay.

His high A season sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of his minor league stats. Sub 800 ops, look it up.

I'd say Peralta, Burnes, Gatewood, Stokes and QTC have had very good years under the tutelage of the Carolina staff. I'd say Yamamoto, Diaz, Clark, Griep, Harrison, and Ponce have been very good Medeiros and Supak have been OK relative to expectations. Erceg and Ray are probably the only two I would truly say severely under performed among anyone you would attempt to call a prospect. For starters, you missed Diplan and he falls in line with Erceg and Ray for sure as a far below expectations guy. I also would say Diaz, Clark, medeiros, and supak have performed below expectations at the high a level. It's fair to give them credit for a few of those high performers, but they got so much talent this year, you'd think the success rate would be greater and you'd see more guys in the 800+ ops range. Also it's very difficult to ignore all the K's. Nearly all of our top hitting prospects at this level are striking out at alarming rates. You of course can't blame everything on the coaches, but when these K rates are such an across the board issue...it makes you wonder what our coaches are telling these prospects.

Apparently not. Prospect paths are not always 'rake your way all the way up to the majors', but for some, if it's not awesome results in the last few months, they're future bench players. Heck, Lewis Brinson had a .277 OBP for the season in AA when he came over from Texas last year. Although with the struggles being almost across the board at High A, I can't help but wonder if they are going to take a very close look at the Carolina coaching staff after the season. I was thinking that before the season to be honest. Remember how absolutely dreadful our high a team was last year? A reminder of their 40-97 record. Mind you it had significantly less talent, but there were good players there and the numbers were almost like if you sent 9 pitchers to the plate every day. I was shocked that they had almost no turnover at that level. Subpar results 2 years in a row, especially with all the talent they have, I have to think there will be some turnover before next year.

Clark was drafted out of high school, fact. It's been posted on here before, but much of our top organizational talent including Braun struggled in high A. If you start digging in to some current major league players, plenty of them had struggles in the minor leagues at one level or another. The fact is, we won't win consistently without drafting and developing our own talent. Trading prospects for players must be done sparingly and carefully for the brewers to be successful, that might mean we get outbid more often than not, and that's ok. And you are clearly cherry picking a few guys having down seasons. I notice you don't have brinson, phillips, dubon, burnes, ortiz, gatewood, harrison, etc stats listed. Plenty of our prospects are having very good seasons. Expecting every hitter to post 800+ ops and every pitcher to 10k/9 and sub 3 era is just silly. That's not how it works. The bigger the pool of talented prospects, the more that come out the other end as quality major leaguers. It's simple numbers.

I'm not surprised in the least...As I had assumed all along. Being mentioned with everyone, but not acquiring anyone. Oh well, looks like Brewers aren't going to do anything. I have a feeling that Stearns is the type of GM that WAY overvalues his prospects, and thinks most of them are worth a lot more than they really are. So no matter what, he is always going to feel like acquiring someone is an overpay, when in reality it's likely not. I think he has no problems giving up "fringe" prospects or guys that are blocked (Cooper), but when it actually comes down to trading away(what he thinks is) a higher level prospect...He just can't bring himself to do it. I think no matter what, he would always feel like he didn't get a very good deal, and he can't stomach that. I just hope his rebuild works, but it's a long shot I'd say. Agreed. Not going after Gray and letting the Cubs jump up and grab Quintana is a clear message to the current roster: "You guys aren't good enough". Now wonder they're tanking badly since the break. Management doesn't believe in them, why should they? You can't really think they're not playing well because some mighty ducks-type feeling because Stearns doesn't believe in them like Gordon Bombay sarcastically said to coach Reilly? why try to win when the GM hasn't made a big trade yet? Oh goodness, enough of this "not making a splash is a clear message" nonsense. How emotionally weak do you think the brewers are? These are grown men and professionals, not some little leaguers that need a candy bar and an "atta boy" at the end of each game they lose to keep it fun. They all have every reason and motivation to leave it all in the field everyday. Of all the opinions being discussed in this thread, this subtle "message" is so wrong and silly its laughable.

It's really more of a shame than anything. That historically awful arm is keeping him from being a very solid 1st division regular.

Can I just ask why you'd prefer to trade for the guy that is almost 7 years older, is insanely expensive and having a significantly worse season? Verlander doesn't have nearly as many red flags as gray. He also has an incredibly solid track record and hasn't shown much regression. I believe verlander will be a better pitcher over the next 2+ years than gray. At the very least he has more upside. Also it would all depend on cost. If we took on most of the salary, I would think it will have minimal prospect cost. It's possible we could also get Justin Wilson included in a bigger deal that still doesn't require too much in prospects and for sure doesn't touch our top pitching. And if it doesn't cost minimal in prospects, then don't do it.

I think you are drastically underestimating the value of those 2 guys, especially Jimenez. He is rated extremely highly by anyone who has seen him play, and his numbers are fantastic. He's steamrolling the minor leagues and has a very real chance to be a star. The cubs are setting themselves up to crash HARD in 4 or 5 years with another full scale rebuild. Epstein will surely bolt right before that happens just like in Boston. Most people on this board don't want to see that happen, and we know we can't afford to overpay in a trade as easily as the cubs can. Our margin for error is much more slim. As far as verlander goes, I would advocate for a trade there more so than for gray, but again it depends on cost. Keep in mind though, taking on all that salary will limit our ability to spend in free agency down the road. So the deal has to be right. Stearns can't be reckless, and I have full faith he won't be.

Or a great plan when he continues to pitch like he has of the course of most of his career and then Hader sticks in the bullpen and Woodruff pulls a Peralta and gets DFAd in four years. We can all make assumptions as to what is going to happen but the fact is none of us know. Gray could very well spend most of the next two seasons hurt. He could also spend the next two seasons pitching like he did in 2015 and receive Cy Young votes. I just don't understand this reliance people want to have on our pitching prospects. Hasn't history taught you anything? The liklihod that they all reach their potential is almost nil. If all of our prospects fail, then it simply isn't meant to be and we need to draft/develop new prospects and hope some pan out. Our prospects panning out are the only way we will consistently compete. It's nice for Boston that they can trade away 2 prospects of the highest caliber/ceiling and supplement any shortcomings by throwing gobs of money at high end free-agents. The Brewers don't have that luxury. The only way we will get star caliber players is to draft/develop and bring them through the system, or trade away a ton of prospect value for 1-2 years of a star-caliber player. The more prospects we keep in the system, the better our odds. It's a numbers game, as so many prospects fail. Hence why I have no desire to dump some of our highest ceiling, near mlb ready talent for 2+ years of a #2/3 best case scenario before our team is truly ready to contend.

That is an awfully big assumption. Anderson and Nelson both are pitching significantly better than they ever have. Assuming that that is who they are now is a big big assumption. Not making a move based on that would be a mistake. I'm sorry but I'd argue that if we acquired Gray he'd be our best starting pitcher. People who argue that he is a 3 at best are not doing him justice in my opinion. I think he's a solid 2 when he's at his best and maybes borderline 2-3 in general. That's better than almost all of our starters in general. Nice post. 100% agree with this. So you think we should make a trade for what according to you is a #2/3 starting pitcher, so he can be the best pitcher in our rotation and that will be enough to make a playoff run? If you really think that low of both Nelson and Anderson, I would think you'd be advocating to do nothing as even adding Gray wouldn't be remotely enough to stay in the race. Both Nelson and Anderson have made measurable improvements to their stuff since last year, and Nelson has made significant command improvements which will admittedly be tough to know whether that part will stick around. Seeing improved results based solely on their improved stuff shouldn't be surprising. Part of the reason I am as anti-Gray as I am is that I don't think he'd be enough. I think his stuff right now is that of a #3 that plays up due to command/pitchability. I'm not confident in him maintaining that stuff for much longer. If we are going to make a run, it's going to be due to the offense catching fire again down the stretch. 1 starting pitcher won't be enough.

I'm looking at Santana's splits this season and trying to understand why on earth he should be platooned. Or more importantly why anyone would put Domingo Santana in CF...he is pretty brutal in RF. I'll second that, there is absolutely no reason for Santana to play CF. One of Broxton, Phillips, and Brinson will almost certainly be the primary CF next year while the other 2 or Perez are better defensive options to fill in there than Santana.

Reports I've read say fastball/slider/changeup. Not saying he won't end up a reliever, but I doubt he's just throwing fastball/changeup to righties. I've read the same 3 pitches. No way is he having that kind of success against lefties without an improved changeup or just throwing FB/slider. That said, I tend to see him as a reliever as well. Shorter guys tend not to make it in the rotation for one reason or another, especially RH.

That's fine but how are we going to give a long look to Cordell, Phillips and Brinson, all of whom are putting up numbers good enough in AAA to warrant a call up? Obviously the answer is we can't because we can't play 6 outfielders at once. As I mentioned before, every time I made a comment about drafting an acquiring all these outfielders I was told "well we can use them as trade bait" or "it'll work itself out". But now nobody seems to want to use them as trade bait. And meanwhile there is nowhere to put them all other than the bench or the minors. This is a problem that we are going to have to do something about. I don't see it working itself out. Phillips, Cordell, etc...I'm on board. I am not on board with losing any of those top pitchers. I suspect Hader would be given a shot to win a starting job next year along with Woodruff. We'd have Nelson, Anderson, Davies, Guerra returning...of which only those top 2 would likely be guaranteed spots. I think you are extremely down on Hader, while I'm a bit higher on him than most. Except you'd also be willing to swap out hader for woodruff or burnes. So it's moreso that you think Gray is much better than he is and are completely ignoring all the red flags that come along with him. Size/injury history/poor 2016/non-elite velocity/moving to a hitters park/etc. All those risks for the upside of paying a decent chunk of payroll for a #2/3 best case? Not worth our top pitchers, not even close. When Gray gets moved, I doubt any deal includes a pitcher as highly regarded as those 3 guys...whether it's the brewers or someone else.

lol that's funny. No they don't. Brewers have 1 more loss than the Cubs. edit: please don't use that word. It got past the cuss filter but it's not allowed. Thanks. This is just silly. Wins matter just as much as losses in a teams record. If one team is 25 and 20 and misses like 10 games to rainouts and the other team is 36 and 19 there is no argument in the world that the team with 1 fewer loss is in a better spot. Exactly. Just because the Cubs won 6 straight out of the break doesn't mean they are going to win out the season. We've played more games and they aren't a lock to win all games of the difference. Funny things happen when teams play the Cardinals. It's getting to that point in the season where they tend to get going and make a run at the playoffs...I'll be plugging my nose and silently cheering on the cardinals this weekend.

Agreed. I assume we'll explore the option, but we shouldn't tap into the top 10 prospects for a rental...not at this stage of the rebuild.

Scouts. Their entire job is to figure out what a players ceiling is. Obviously they can be wrong on guys and often are but for the most part you know what you're getting with any given player. Over the course of 14 innings. With 11 walks. Derrick Turnbow "proved filthy" once too. Look I'm not saying the guy isn't good or can't reach his potential. Im not hoping they trade him but if we want to get a guy like Gray we're going to need to give something up. People need to be realistic with these scenarios. We'll take Gray from you and you can have Medeiros, Ray and Peralta. These aren't genuine proposals. Whether we care to admit it or not Oakland is going to get a nice haul for Gray. As another poster (I forget who) said if you don't want to give up what it takes to get Gray then just say so. But we cannot seriously claim we want Gray then refuse to give up Hader Ortiz Burnes and Woodruff. Every scouting I've read says his likely ceiling as that of mid to back end starter. If I'm missing something that says he can turn into a 1 or 2 I apologize. But I've been fooled by good minor league numbers before. Didn't Wily Peralta once have the upside of a 3? Would 6 years of him held more value then 2+ years of an established, quality major league pitcher who finished 3rd in the Cy Young balloting? I appreciate your optimism and I certainly hope you're right but you seem to have this assumption that every prospect we have is going to reach their potential. That ignores are sorts of history. Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes and Josh Hader could very well headline our rotation for the next 6 years and all reach or exceed their potential. I'm certainly rooting for that. Or every single one of them could flame out. Forgive my cynicism but I've seen good pitching prospects in the Brewers system before that I've been excited about. And other than Ben Sheets, Yovani Gallardo and maybe Jimmy Nelson every one of them has failed to live up to their expectations. That certainly doesn't mean the ones we have now will also fail but it does give me pause to just automatically assume their going to be quality pitchers and we shouldn't move them for established players. We have an opportunity to obtain a quality MLB pitcher who has already had major league success, will probably instantly be the best pitcher on the roster and can help us for multiple years. Yes it's risky but so is relying on unproven prospects. We have the unique opportunity to make a trade that helps us now without sacrificing the future. We have a glut of outfielders and a number of quality pitching prospects (emphasis on prospects). We will have to give up two good prospects plus some but we will obtain a quality player in return. Because Gray has already reached his upside. If Woodruff reaches his he'd probably be a similar pitcher in terms of quality. But if he doesn't then you lose out. That's the risk in relying on prospects. And for what it's worth between Hader Burnes Woodruff and Ortiz I'm only willing to move one in a trade for Gray. The other headliner has to be an outfielder or other position player. I'm certainly not anti prospect and unwilling to hang on to them to see if they pan out.. I of course realize the value of them but I also realize the risk. I completely understand Gray is going to come at cost. I'd rather trade outfield prospects than pitching. Any outfield prospect not named Brinson is on the table as the key piece. A package of Phillips, Peralta, Harrison/Gatewood is a plenty good package. If someone else tops it and overpays for Gray, so be it. Listing the worst case scenario for each of our prospects as a reason to trade now while they have value is melvin/dombrowski style GM'ing. It's playing checkers while most other GM's are playing chess. At least Dombrowski got Sale for his top prospects, who's an elite pitcher and not merely a #2/3 at best when healthy. We aren't going to compete consistently unless guys like Hader/Woodruff/Burnes/Ortiz/etc develop and become core pieces of our rotation for 6+ years. There may be a time and place for trading higher end prospects, but it isn't at this stage of the rebuild or for Gray.

Because I see Hader as a bullpen arm. The admittedly few times I've seen him pitch it seems like nobody has any idea where the ball is going. His command is awful. Even when he was pitching real well in the minors he was only going 5 innings or so because he was throwing way too many pitches. I just don't see him starting games, at least not any time soon. Burnes is putting up really good numbers as well but his ceiling is that of a 4 or 5. Mike Fiers put up really good minor league numbers too. I'm not saying that'a not worth something. Nor am I saying he'll for sure only be a 4 or 5. But that his profile. Woodruff I also see as a 3 or 4. Now don't get me wrong. I don't want to trade any of them. But you have to give up something to get something. I personally think Gray is already a better starting pitcher than any of them will turn out to be. So therefore trading one of them wouldn't be the end of the world. What exactly is our plan? Because I could have sworn it was to build a consistent winner. Trading away some prospects, of which we have plenty and some of whom are major league ready but currently blocked, doesn't mean we are abandoning our plan. Wasn't the whole argument for acquiring outfielder after outfielder after outfielder after outfielder that we could trade some of them away for quality MLB players? Now that opportunity has arrived and people are acting like if we trade away a prospect we are abandoning our future. Face it. We do not have room on our major league roster for Braun and Broxton and Brinson and Perez and Phillips and Santana and Cordell. Nor do we room in our rotation for Davies and Woodruff and Hader and Nelson and Guerra and Anderson and Suter and Derby and Jungmann, all of whom we make a decent case for being in the rotation right now (plus Burnes and Ortiz in AA). Whenever people like me make a comment about drafting or trading for prospects who play a position we are already loaded at we are told "Don't worry the logjam will work its way out". Well guess what. The outfield logjam is not going to work its way out. We will have to do something about it. So why not use some of those guys, plus some of our pitching prospects, to acquire a quality major league pitcher who will be here for at least three more years? I don't understand how trading guys we currently have nowhere to put other than the bench or the minors, where they don't need to be, changes our plan? Our plan was to win. We are winning. So how about we try to maybe accelerate the plan? Hader is still young and can improve. Baseball is littered with examples of guys that have improved their command and guys who haven't. The upside there is tremendous if he does, and if he doesn't he's already proving filthy in the pen. You might want to search out some recent scouting reports before dubbing burnes a 4 or 5 ceiling. Enough said there. Woodruffs most likely result might be a 3 as you said. 6 years of that has more value than 2+ years of Gray. And that completely ignores the upside woodruff has that Gray doesn't. Pitching is king. We should push heavily to center this trade around our surplus of outfielders or not do it at all.

I tend to agree with most on the thread. We get verlander and take on most salary, they get something like Clark plus jungmann plus Zack Brown. Clark and jungmann can be touted as 1st round picks to their casual fans. Most of our other talent should be cheap enough to keep some payroll flexibility even with most of his contract added on through 2019 when he drops off and 2020 when Brauns drops off. The tigers already signaled they were dropping out of contention for at least this year when they punted Martinez for salary relief and little more. Clark? Trent Clark? No thanks. Why give up real assets for a guy who is pretty questionable. He may do well the rest of the year, but what about the other two years? Could end up a total dumpster fire at his age. Too risky. Fair enough, I personally don't view Clark as much of a prospect but that's my opinion. He had 4th outfielder/tweener written all over him on draft day. That's another conversation though. From Detroit's standpoint, it's gonna be tough to sell a pure salary dump for an effective starting pitcher. Maybe do gatewood or Harrison or diplan, but they will surely need something of quality or they won't do the trade. I'm sure they'll also eat a chunk of salary to get some prospect return, so it's not like we'd take on all the $.

I tend to agree with most on the thread. We get verlander and take on most salary, they get something like Clark plus jungmann plus Zack Brown. Clark and jungmann can be touted as 1st round picks to their casual fans. Most of our other talent should be cheap enough to keep some payroll flexibility even with most of his contract added on through 2019 when he drops off and 2020 when Brauns drops off. The tigers already signaled they were dropping out of contention for at least this year when they punted Martinez for salary relief and little more.

Of course gray would help our tram, but where you lose me and likely others is the idea of giving up hader, woodruff, or burnes. This team was not supposed to contend this year and it isn't a good idea to shell out any of our top pitching for a mid rotation guy. If we want to compete consistently, overpaying for pitching now is not the answer.

Gray would not have helped at all over the course of the last 5 games. I am not sure how Gray was going to help the Brewers core more than 2.4 runs a game. Even with Gray's outing today I doubt the Brewers would have won today or even adding another bullpen arm wouldn't have helped. You are not going to win all that many games scoring on average 2.4 runs a game. So True, this game with the pitching matchup whether Davies or Gray is a bad matchup for Milwaukee. Gray can only pitch 1 every 5 days....We've lost 4 straight, he'd be on deck for game 5 of this losing streak. Bullpen has blown the last four games, not the Starters.... Quintana made one start. The Cubs are roaring. Silly or not it cannot be denied that making that deal woke them up and pulled them out of the malaise they had been in the whole first half. It could have just as easily been the 4 day break. The same break that we went into winning 10 of 12 and came out of 2-4. The cubs have some tougher games coming up. Hopefully they'll cool off to some degree and we'll start scoring runs again. If not, this is the beginning of hopefully sustained success if everything goes to plan