CheeseheadInQC

Maybe I am wrong, but I doubt Quero gets dealt this offseason. I don’t think any team is going to pay his pre-surgery value without seeing him throw several times, and if the Brewers are suddenly willing to deal him for less than that value I would suspect they know the arm isn’t what it used to be.

If this is true and it is just 2-for-1 then you can cross Bohm off the list for Milwaukee because the Phillies’ valuation for him is out of touch with reality.

Maybe it is because they got traded on the same day, but does anyone else see a bit of Isaac Paredes in Durbin’s profile. Extreme pull, lots of contact and walks, results better than EV would indicate. I don’t think he will ever hit 30 homers like Paredes, but he might hit a few more than you would expect.

So you are saying clutch isn’t a thing but anti-clutch is (not criticizing, tend to agree).

Yah, this feels like an old fashioned win-win trade. It fills holes on both teams while being fairly comparable value-wise. It wasn’t what I was expecting, and maybe doesn’t give you as much to dream on, but if they wanted another solid starter, given the going rates, they’d have to send out an equivalent prospect package to what they would have gotten for Williams anyway if they had gone the normal route.

Do we have any exit velocity numbers from the AFL on Durbin.

The one caveat I see is Durbin did kind of earn that BABIP (lots of pop ups). He was also a D-3 guy who had just reached Rule 5 eligibility, while Monasterio was about to reach minor league free agency and spent most of that year in double-A.

I don’t believe the other team could have added him. When the Brewers traded for Dunn, it happened before the deadline so they could add him. I think the only players who could be added to the 40-man between the protection deadline and the Rule 5 are free agents and players on another team’s 40-man via trade or waiver claim.

Good on Evan Reifert for getting picked in the Rule 5 draft. Still no clue how he couldn’t get at least a triple-A look for the Rays last year.

The Brewers have rolled the dice a number of times recently and hadn’t been burned (how lucky was it no one picked Myers last year). Now they have.

He doesn’t fit needs as well as these guys, but unsurprisingly this is still my preference.

If this isn’t just for show (and I seriously question that) Milwaukee, Cleveland and Tampa would match a lot of the criteria. Cleveland at one point was estimated to have among the most left uncommitted. I wonder if he does choose Milwaukee if the Brewers would scramble to acquire more signing space in trades to avoid breaking all of their agreements.

It feels like you could insert the names of most of the top young pitchers in the Dodgers’ system into that sentence and have it still be accurate.

The one thing that gives me hope is that there seem to be a fair number of decent pitchers left available. As long as there is always one the choosing team prefers to Smith ...

Does anyone know if the Yankees ever approached him about just hitting lefty? While he has had a year or two where he has been passable against lefties, for the most part his splits haven’t screamed switch hitter. Although that conversation might be tougher given that he is a switch thrower as well.

Since 2000, no MLB player has debuted during his age 18 season (which is what 2025 would be for Made). Nine players have debuted during their age 19 seasons. Three were end of season cameos (Jurickson Profar, Wilson Betemit and Junior Caminero). Four played between 40-51 games (Manny Machado, Mike Trout and the Upton brothers). The other two played more than 100: Juan Soto and Bryce Harper. Is Made arguably ahead of where Chourio was at this point in his development? Yes. But that doesn't mean that things will go as smoothly as they did for Chourio. At this point you can maybe optimistically hope for something similar to Caminero's 2023 in 2026, and even then Caminero spent more time in AAA in 2024 than in the majors.

I knew that the Carolina pitching staff was young, but I recently looked it up and I think Baseball Reference has them as the youngest low-A staff since the post-pandemic realignment.

I didn’t look closely at ACL promotions as much as guys who eventually reach A ball. Among those, there were a bunch of guys who missed the mark their first year, repeated and then hit it. There have been several who reached A ball without hitting it, most prominently Patricio Aquino and Jesus Rivero. Both fell into the 10+ K/9 but too many walks category. Carlos Carra is one guy from last season who fits this mold.

I wonder if this idea is being floated to make a variation (say you can only use someone on the bench as the substitute) less controversial.

It is almost impossible to tell how good of a prospect a Dominican Summer League pitcher is by stats alone. Stuff is king, and great DSL ERAs don’t always equal great stuff. So why am I, who focuses almost entirely on statistics, writing about DSL pitchers? Because while statistics can’t tell you a DSL pitcher’s ultimate upside, two stats in particular can tell us something else interesting – which pitchers are most likely to be brought stateside, survive the pitching nightmare that is the Arizona Complex League, and emerge on the other side in full season ball. The MOST Important Stat It might surprise you to know that the stat that in recent years best predicts which Brewers’ DSL pitchers reach low-A isn’t a rate stat. It’s not ERA or WHIP, strikeout rate or walk rate. It is a counting stat. And, for all but a few exceptions, it is a stat that you can count on your fingers. Based upon the years since the pandemic, when Brewers DSL pitchers reaching full season ball stopped being a novelty and started being a regular occurrence, look first at the games started and set aside any relievers with fewer than four starts. It makes sense, with pitchers this young and far from the majors, that the Brewers would look to get the guys they are highest on the largest number of starts and innings. There have been two categories of exceptions from this rule. The first is composed of older, late spring or early summer signings, who usually don’t throw many DSL innings before being promoted (Jesus Broca, Cristofher Carrasco, Leoni De La Cruz). Outside of maybe, if you squint, Jhosep Ospino, I don’t know that any of the remaining DSL crop from last season really fit this category other than the already promoted Broca. The second category isn’t so much a category as much as it is a single person: Dikember Sanchez. Last season’s three-level success story started four games in his first season in the DSL but had moved to the bullpen long before earning his stateside shot. Perhaps there will be another outlier, or perhaps the Brewers view a higher-inning guy like Lonell Downs as part of the starting group despite only having three starts (the starts were spread more evenly than in past years). For the purposes of this article, however, we’re just going to focus on the pitchers with at least four starts. The Second Cut-Off So, DSL starters are more likely to end up in full-season ball than relievers, but not all do. There is a second stat that can be quite telling: strikeout-to-walk ratio. I know what you’re probably thinking: “Wow, so you’re saying that pitchers who the organization believes in who strike out a lot more hitters than they walk are more likely to move up the organizational ladder? Not. Exactly. Shocking.” And no, it isn’t shocking. But it is predictive. Between 2021 and 2023, 17 Brewers DSL pitchers started at least four games and compiled a strikeout to walk rate of 2.5 or better. Of those, three got hurt and haven’t been heard from since. One, Aneuris Rodriguez, was on track to hit Carolina before being dealt for AAA depth. Of the remaining 13, only Domingo Mejia fell short of hitting A ball, which is pretty remarkable when you consider how little time has passed. Edwin Jimenez, Miguel Segura, Stiven Cruz, Alexander Vallecillo, Manuel Rodriguez, Daniel Corniel, Anthony Flores, Bryan Rivera, Enniel Cortez, Eric Prado, Melvin Hernandez and Jeral Vizcaino have all reached A ball (Vizcaino admittedly as a Cub) Falling short doesn’t mean that the player won’t hit A-ball, but for the sake of keeping this article shorter than my DSL hitters one, I’m going to focus only on the six who hit this benchmark, so we are setting aside Ayendy Bravo, Dalvin Bodre, Dariel Jaquez, Christopher Peralta, Carlos Carra, Josue Toledo, Lukas Gonzalez, Aldrin Gonzalez, Gabriel Colmenarez, and Paul Hoff. That leaves the following six: The Prospect Wande Torres It wasn’t supposed to take this long. Wande Torres was a mainstay in the 2022 Brewers DSL rotation. I even tossed him in my honorable mentions for one of the prospect polls that year, basically saying that he’s 6-3, left-handed and strikes a lot of guys out. Sure the walks were too high, but his ability to miss bats (and give up few hits overall) made him a coin-flip for being brought stateside in 2023. Then he got hurt. Torres missed the entirety of the 2023 season and the beginning of 2024, but unlike many lower-level pitchers who get hurt and then are never heard from again, Torres came back stronger. His K-rate was over 50%. His K/9? Almost 19. On the rare occasion a ball was put in play, he induced grounders at a nearly 70% clip and was the toughest pitcher on either Brewers DSL staff to pull the ball against. And, almost as importantly, he cut his walks down to a reasonable rate. The first episode of the Spencer Michaelis-Joseph Zarr minor league podcast series did a great job touching on Torres, so I will leave it at that, but suffice it to say, I think the Brewers have something here. The Ace Wenderlyn King Perhaps calling King the ace of the DSL staff is an exaggeration, but with Torres still working his way back from injury, you could make a good case. Among those with a starter’s workload (or what passes for one in the DSL), King had the best FIP. He didn’t just meet the K/BB criteria, he blew it away. Among Brewers DSL pitchers, only Enniel Cortez’s absurd nearly double-digit K/BB ratio in 2023 topped King’s 7.17 mark. Simply put, King managed to combine a double-digit K/9 with one of the best walk rates a Brewers DSL pitcher has ever posted. While the stateside struggles of another recent smaller DSL star pitcher, Osbriel Mogollon, give a bit of pause, the control issues that would plague Mogollon later on were somewhat present in the DSL as well, something which was definitely not the case for King. The Control Artist Manuel Moreno In each of the last few seasons, there has been one 16- or 17-year-old pitcher who hit this metric more by avoiding walks than racking up strikeouts. In 2022, it was Manuel Rodriguez. The next year, it was Melvin Hernandez. This past season, it was Manuel Moreno, who was the best of the three at avoiding walks. Outside of the 4.0 BB%, there wasn’t necessarily anything about Moreno’s stat line that stood out. His K numbers (7.75/9) weren’t that interesting either way, and Moreno was one of only a handful of Brewers DSL pitchers who pretty much pitched exactly to their peripherals, his ERA nestled roughly midway between his FIP and xFIP. Still, there is little reason to think, based upon his stats, that he can’t follow the same path laid out by Rodriguez and Hernandez. The Former Two-Way Player Argenis Aparicio If you were to take Moreno’s season, increase the walk rate slightly but give him superior batted ball luck, you’d probably get roughly the season enjoyed by Argenis Aparicio. A year after splitting his time between the mound and the outfield, Aparicio shelved his bat in 2024, and the move so far has paid off. Aparicio led the Brewers’ DSL hurlers in innings pitched while posting a sub-3.00 ERA. Like Moreno, he has thus far been better at avoiding walks than missing bats, but his performance was good enough that we should be seeing him stateside next spring. The Trade Acquisition Joshua Quezada Of all the players here, only one has hit the minimums to be on this list twice. That would be Joshua Quezada, who hit them first for the Yankees in 2023 and then for the Brewers in 2024 after being acquired for Clayton Andrews. While that makes him interesting, and shows consistency, it also leaves me with one nagging question about Quezada. Why wasn’t he in Arizona? He’s an older prospect for the DSL, not making his debut until his age 19 season. This is the kind of guy the Brewers usually have been fast-tracking. I’m hoping that he just had an erratic spring or they had something specific they wanted him to work on, because the stats show a guy who should at least be able to hold his own in the lower full season levels. The Outlier Enderson Mercado For most recent Brewers pitchers, hitting these marks has led to a very successful season. There are more than twice as many who have posted sub-2.00 ERAs than those with ones higher than 4.00. There have been two entire years in which all of the pitchers who hit the mark have been below 4.00. So where does that leave Enderson Mercado and his 5.95 ERA? That is the question. Was his absurdly bad BABIP simply bad luck, or a product of mistakes getting hit hard? It is impossible to say from just his stats. If you want some optimism, look to one of the other three pitchers on the list who posted a 4.00+ ERA. Much like Daniel Corniel, Mercado had stretches of dominance (note a three start stretch where over 12 innings he struck out 20 and walked 2) and periods of struggles. Corniel made his way through two rookie ball seasons like that, however, and ended up holding his own as a teenager in A ball last season. There is a precedent here, and that is among the reasons why Mercado is one of my favorite deep sleepers on the pitching side.

Trade 1: Detroit gets Devin Williams Milwaukee gets Jaden Hamm, Gabriel Reyes and Kelvis Salcedo Trade 2: Philadelphia gets Ryan Helsley and Russell Smith St, Louis gets Tyler Black, Alexander Cornielle and Manuel Rodriguez Milwaukee gets Alec Bohm I'm not predicting this is going to happen or even that it should, but I wanted to try to get close to the budget without going over; trade Williams and acquire Bohm, but in separate deals; and just toss out a couple of other names. Bohm isn't a great fit at third, but outside of Kim signing a reasonable one-year prove it deal, which I'm not convinced is going to happen, I don't know that there is a great fit. C: William Contreras ($7.60M) 1B: Rhys Hoskins ($18.00M) 2B: Joey Ortiz ($0.80M) 3B: Alec Bohm ($8.1M) SS: Brice Turang ($0.80M) LF: Jackson Chourio ($4.25M) CF: Garrett Mitchell ($0.80M) RF: Sal Frelick ($0.80M) DH: Christian Yelich ($24.25M) 4th OF: Blake Perkins ($0.80M) Utility: Andrew Monasterio ($0.80M) Utility: Carlos Santana ($7.0M) Backup C: Eric Haase ($1.80M) NA: Add Dead Money Here ($0.00M) SP1: Freddy Peralta ($8.25M) SP2: Aaron Civale ($8.00M) SP3: Tobias Myers ($0.80M) SP4: Brandon Woodruff ($5.00M) SP5: Shane Bieber ($12.00M) RP: Trevor Megill ($2.00M) RP: Aaron Ashby ($3.45M) RP: Nick Mears ($0.90M) RP: Jared Koenig ($0.80M) RP: DL Hall ($0.80M) RP: Joel Payamps ($2.80M) RP: J.B. Bukauskas ($0.80M) RP: Elvis Peguero ($0.80M) NA: Add Dead Money Here ($0.00M) Payroll is 6.00% under budget

I am guessing they sign someone else, but Ramón Rodriguez would probably be the backup in AAA as of now. He has past AAA experience.

I kind of go the other way. Maybe the Brewers change course because of the depth but: 1. If the Brewers follow recent trends, Meccage and all of the college pitchers from last season will be in full season ball. 2. The only A-ball promotion from last season that, based on age and performance, I could see dropping back down is Jesus Flores. 3. Caden Vire, as young as he is, is still entering his fifth season in the organization. I can't think they want him to spend another season in the Complex League That would leave I believe three or four holdovers (Johnson, Yanez, Meneses and if he is sent back down Flores) plus four healthy high school pitchers if Broughton isn't ready to start the season. That is plenty of room to bring over 10-12 DSL pitchers.

I've got 20-22 pitchers at every level outside of the MLB. But I'm not going to question it for two reasons. 1. Unfortunately with pitchers these things have a tendency to work themselves out with injuries. 2. I'm pretty sure I had the same thought last year when they signed Jared Koenig.

Wow! Good for him.