KeithStone53151

Someone snapped a photo of Andrew McCutchen's pay stub on a clubhouse tour & it's kind of interesting to see the numerous deductions... https://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2015/5/22/8647279/andrew-mccutchen-pay-stub-picture-taxes-deductions-money Super interesting. A couple observations. Deductions/taxes I don't see include social security and union dues. What the heck is major league dues? There's no way union dues are that low, so I automatically assumed that wasn't it. That "professional athlete fee" just makes my blood boil. What a ridiculous thing to get charged a fee for. If Pittsburgh has it, I'm sure every city does. Hopefully it's a percentage and not a set fee. $10k per check from a guy making $600k would add up in a hurry. One thing maybe few think about, all these players playing in so many states and having to pay state tax...I bet their yearly tax return is quite the nightmare. They are for sure paying thousands to have a CPA do their taxes. I would like to think the union or their agent can generally help get a group rate for MLB players, but it definitely won't be free...or $50 if you itemize like for the average Joe. Little things add up for the min salary guys, and I sure hope minor leaguers don't have to deal with that junk.

In sickness and in health, until 2029.

I don't know that I agree on Lauer, that might be a tossup at this point. Burnes I think starts in the minors and is first up with a major injury, or after he absolutely obliterates hitters in AAA for a month.

This guy says deal is official.

That would be my guess. It becomes a bit more clean if one of Gamel or Arcia gets traded, but yes that's my thought as well...we'll probably either roll 14 position players with both Gamel/Arcia on the roster, or one will have to spend some time in AAA. Which is not ideal, but keeping LoMo forces a move or forces us to keep potentially 2 guys down in AAA at a given time.

Also worth noting, Arcia is making 2.2 million and Gamel 1.4 million. That's a lot of money to pay someone to play in AAA as depth. We might have to option these guys for brief spells if everyone happens to be healthy at the same time, but adding Morrison as a permanent fixture would force us to have 1-2 of these optionable guys down all the time(or traded).

When has Stearns ever kept a guy with options over a guy without options if it's close? Especially for the last guy on the bench who will rarely play Morrison isn't even on the 40. Morrison also hasn't even been in the PH role before, Gamel was last year and was very very good in that role. Plus, versatility is a big deal for this team. Always has been.

He doesn't, this Logan Morrison stuff is getting ridiculous. He had 15 good at bats in the first half of spring, many against non-mlb caliber pitchers. He could mash for 2 more weeks and would still be very unlikely to crack the roster, because small sample and he has zero versatility. It's way more likely the Brewers are talking him up and hoping to trade him for anything of value 2-3 weeks from now. I don't know about that. The guy is pretty much starting every game. I don't think they would have signed him, knowing his feelings on not going to AAA, if he didn't stand at least a legit shot of making the team. I'm not really a Morrison fan. Pretty indifferent on him, to tell you the truth. But the tea leaves are starting to point to him making the squad out of Spring Training. Morrison has played in less games than Rodriguez and Broxton, games played right now is irrelevant. He was brought in as basically cheap/free insurance in case of injury to Smoak/Braun/Gamel. Gamel has basically been equally productive with the bat every year the last 3 years outside of Morrison's fluke 2017 season...and then he's useful in so many more ways while Morrison is literally a PH option only. It's not close between him and Gamel...Gamel is far more valuable. Gamel is also at peak age while Morrison is aging and on the decline...he odds of him bouncing back to 2017 form are miniscule. And let's say by some miracle that Morrison beats out Gamel in the Brewers eyes...he'd only be around a week or two anyways until Urias is back. And, Morrison also isn't on the 40 man roster. You have all those obstacles to navigate outside of the value they could potentially add in MLB games.

Sleepers 1. Carlos Rodriguez - I know he's pretty highly ranked, but I think he'll find his way into the top 5 of our lists by end of year. 2. Nick Bennett - Had a nice couple months after being drafted 5th round, not even in our top 30. 3. Joangtel Segovia - That hit tool though. He's not the athlete that Ray/Grisham/Taylor are, but he can hit. Breakout Rodriguez, Bennett, and then Lutz. I think Lutz is due to have a statistically very good year and shoot up the rankings. Comeback 1. Braden Webb - Filthy stuff, I think he finds control for a pocket of time and pitches out of the bullpen at the MLB level this year. 2. Phil Bickford - He's another guy I think has a real shot at the MLB bullpen this year. This maybe isn't fair because he had a bit of a comeback 2nd half last year. 3. Corey Ray - Highly rated, he kinda knows he'll lose all prospect love if he can't make it work this year.

He doesn't, this Logan Morrison stuff is getting ridiculous. He had 15 good at bats in the first half of spring, many against non-mlb caliber pitchers. He could mash for 2 more weeks and would still be very unlikely to crack the roster, because small sample and he has zero versatility. It's way more likely the Brewers are talking him up and hoping to trade him for anything of value 2-3 weeks from now.

From wildcats post above, I wouldn't be surprised at all if our 8th reliever isn't on the roster currently. There's always such a drastic shakeup that week or so before the season, we might grab someone off waivers.

https://www.mlb.com/prospects/2020/brewers/ Pipeline posted their top 30. Biggest surprise to me is Feliciano coming in at number 3.

I laughed harder than I should have at this...

Heyward also still has 4 more years left on his deal at $21.5m per. You guys are fighting a losing battle here trying to say Braun's deal is equal or worse than Heyward. As noted, Braun had those MVP/borderline MVP years in his prime as part of the deal...while Heyward in his prime part of the deal is posting 1-2 WAR seasons that are extremely heavily aided by defense...which is notorious for overvaluing defense. Those defensive skills will diminish as he ages and he might not even be rosterable by the end of his tenure if he can't hit better than a low 700s OPS. Basically, Braun in the twilight years of his big contract has been as productive as peak Heyward.

I'll personally echo this sentiment. At first I thought this was 7/200+ of NEW MONEY...taking him through age 37. Reality is it's 6/173 of new money only taking him through age 36. That extra 30+ million for his age 37 season was just a little too long in my opinion and a little too expensive. I didn't hate it, but at the same time it felt like this would be a mediocre-bad deal those last 2-3 years. This only going through age 36 is a real game changer for me. One less potential bad year. Looking ahead, we have a fringe contender this year. Very strong chance of playoffs and could be really good if the young pitching breaks out. We have a bunch of salary coming off the books next year and cheap options if any of the Sogard/Gyorko/Smoak group breaks out in a big way. Come 2022, we have a ton of dead money coming off the books and a good core to build around. It will be very important that we revamp the farm a bit and develop better over the next couple years to build around a very solid core. Overall, outlook of the team is excellent going forward. The 2-3 year window we had while Yelich was around is now blown wide open. We could very well be consistently good for a long time.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/whitesox/2020/03/04/white-sox-dallas-keuchel-beard/4941225002/ As if team rules about facial hair weren't stupid enough, it's apparently acceptable to violate those rules if "you're a great guy" and "you keep winning". Whatever that even means. I'm not going to dispute that the rules for facial hair are generally stupid, but the more likely reasons for letting him keep it are how iconic his beard is...and he's a highly paid player that he wants to keep happy. I recall numerous past instances of White Sox management being a bit obtuse about really small things...the biggest being Adam LaRoche abruptly retiring because they complained to him about having his kid around the clubhouse too often. This is just a fun way to help build a positive relationship with one of your most highly paid players.

Only if we didn't plan for it at the start of the off season. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, if you didn't sign Sogard, Smoak, and Gyorko that saves about 13 million. Trade for Dom Smith or cheap equivalent for 1st base. If payroll is still too high, you don't sign Garcia. Doing all of that saves about 20 million which would keep payroll well below last year. That amount of salary would be affordable within the payroll. It would give us a three year window to get a World Series done. If it doesn't work out in 2 years, you trade Yelich, Hader (which we are probably going to do anyway) and rebuild. That strategy would make us dangerously thin at basically every position. You'd be looking at likely a ton of starts from Ronny Rodriguez and Ben Gamel when someone inevitably got hurt. That right there would be Doug Melvin style team building. Those teams under his tenure had so many starts from reeeeeeeeally bad players despite having basically an all star at every position when healthy. As currently positioned, we can sustain injuries to multiple players at every position except catcher and not really miss a beat(unless of course one of those is yelich). All of the above doesn't even touch on whether he even wanted to come here, whether he would have taken the same $, whether the Angels would have bid more to make sure they got him. Also doesn't touch on his significant injury history, or the fact that he's significantly less valuable than Yelich yet paid on average $6 million more per year compared to Yelich's new money. Also, for all we know the Brewers analytics simply didn't deem Rendon to be all that valuable. Maybe they view him as very likely to regress quickly, especially considering his significant injury history. There's so much more to the whole GM thing than sticking a square peg in a square hole.

One thing you all are missing, yelich gets no new money until 2022...when we have far fewer significant payroll commitments. We don't really have the ability to add 28 million for rendon for 2020

I was listening to Bill Michaels interview Stearns this morning, they talked for a few minutes about a question from a viewer about extending Yelich. That must have been an interesting one for Stearns to answer, knowing that news would break literally at any moment regarding the deal. There's a good chance there is video on the internet somewhere.

I don't want to muck up the other thread to much with financial stuff. I looked at Brewers contracts 2022 and beyond, the only players we have signed to guaranteed deals in 2022 and beyond include Cain($18), Lindblom($3 with incentives), and Peralta($2.5). Cain and Lindblom both fall off the books after 2022. We obviously have considerable players in arbitration and will have to add some players via FA as our farm is not good right now...but overall we have an excellent base to build from with Yelich staying put for a long time.

Significant deferrals, I saw multiple people reporting this.

Completely agreed. The whole 2-3 year window that I expected is no longer that at all. This extension blows that window wide open. Especially with the young pitching we have up now, and that we have coming down the pipeline.

I officially love this deal. Compare this to the Rendon and Arenado deal, it is without question on the team friendly side.

His quote is two years, option year ripped up, and seven new years added. Total package of ~$215m. Yelich is signed for 2 years $26.5m, so this appears to be a 7 year ~$190m extension (if all true). Not to nitpick, but ripping up the option year was a choice by the Brewers. I get that Heyman worded it that way, but we didn't have to and wouldn't have done that. That's why I view the new money as 6/173.5.

Now Heyman says 9/215 from this point forward. He was signed for 3/41.5, so we basically added an additional 6/173.5 to his current deal. Assuming all this is accurate of course. And he is signed through his age 36 season. That actually seems very reasonable considering he's basically 2 time MVP.