Boomer5

Brewer management did an excellent job with the 2nd extension based on the information they had. The Brewers did the deal on good faith, Braun did not.

As soon as they drafted him I assumed the goal was to make him into Billy Wagner. Based on delivery, size, and lack of a full compliment of pitches, but electric stuff. I think making him start is more about building his arm than where he will be eventually. Does any scouting service project him as an impact starter at the MLB level?

From @BrewerWorld Just received an interesting text from my contact with the Sky Sox #staytuned

He isn't an AS bat anymore. Those days are gone it seems. You are right about him not going to be traded though. A-wha? I read somewhere on these boards that some respected webbers (Fancharts? BP? BA? (couldn't have been BA. He's an over-rated announcer)) had Braun as the #1 left fielder in baseball coming into this year. I would not disagree with that assessment. Last year he slashed .305/.368/.538. That's incredibly good. He was doing just as well this year before nagging injuries came up. When he comes back, he will hit, just like he always has. The guy is no hero, but he can hit. He isn't overpaid right now, and we have lots of cash to spend. He MIGHT be overpaid in a couple of years. If he was the player you suggest he wouldn't have cleared waivers. He is 33 and despite being gingerly used and given frequent days off, he goes from one nagging injury to another. Those are significant red flags. If the NL gets the DH, he becomes a lot more valuable. As a LF, he is done being a 4 WAR player most likely.

Sort of OT, but Teams are carrying such huge bullpens, I think DH will almost certainly happen in the NL. One catcher and 3 bench players in the NL is insane now that so few starting pitchers can go past 6 innings consistently. In the case of the Brewers, we can't get much past 5 innings, so haviing a big bullpen is mandatory.

Bill Hall was a better player but this is a pretty good comparison. I was trying to think of a single player that went from All Star caliber to DFA candidate this quickly and at such a young age. It happens but it's not often that a young player can't build a career off Villars excellent 2016. I'd love to hear what Cubs fans are saying about Shwarber these days, for example.

If other execs thought he was a 4 WAR player he wouldn't have cleared waivers. Since his only market is the Dodgers, it's unlikely we can move him unless we take back some seriously bad contracts.

I found it interesting that CC is taking a little heat for letting Villar hit in the 9th yesterday. That says a lot about how far he has fallen from 2016.

The contract we take is going to be horrible and of no use regardless of who it is . The point is to eat enough of Brauns contract so a decent prospect package becomes a reality.

Fangraphs also has our depth chart as the 4th worst roster in baseball. http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=23 So if Mark A is seduced by the 25-22 record, the analytics team will tell him he is wasting his money to bring in veteran help for a year long WC push. Kind of odd projections. Broxton already had 0.6 WAR, and they have him getting 0.8 for the season. Shaw is at 0.8 WAR in 173 AB, and they have him getting to 1.2 WAR in 388 PAs - do they expect him to get hurt? Thames is at 1.7 WAR already, and they have him getting 1.7 WAR for the season (only getting 422 PA) Not sure how they came up with these. I think those are the remainder of the season projections.

Fangraphs also has our depth chart as the 4th worst roster in baseball. http://www.fangraphs.com/depthcharts.aspx?position=ALL&teamid=23 So if Mark A is seduced by the 25-22 record, the analytics team will tell him he is wasting his money to bring in veteran help for a year long WC push.

So a cheaper/younger version of Braun? I know that appears to be a snide remark but I just looked it up. BR has him at a Dean Wormer Zero point Zero. Fangraphs has him at a more robust 0.3 with a year long projection of 1.2. I think we can retire the what can we get for Braun thread.

I agree, and if Phillips is the call he should play most days. Also can't tell you how many times my phone has also wanted to autocorrect 'Braun' to 'Brain'. I've given up. From now on he is Ryan Brain and that's final.

So if he is out a meaningful period of time, it's time to call up some of the real prospects. A 4th OF will play a lot anyhow so it's time to see what we have at CS. A Brain/Broxton/Santana OF is full of questions marks anyhow from health to consistency so if say Phillips shows plus skills he will play a lot.

When he hits a bases clearing double to win game 6 in the NLCS, yes. A good move. We can't trade him for known MLB roster filler. It's either young high ceiling prospects or we hold onto him. And that's going to happen because? Thatt's no more likely to happen than with any other player in the lineup. Probably less so with Braun since he's less likely to actually be available for an NLCS. The days of trading him for young ceiling prospects has passed, that isn't happening. Not unless he can go on a good consistently healthy streak and even then teams will be wary . We aren't getting anything of value back for Braun unless we eat most of the contract and the Dodgers think they are a bat away from a WS title. He is at $19 mil and at 2 WAR, he is a negative value player. Which is why he hasn't been traded. He can't play a week in a row and he still has 3 more years in his contract after this, so that's that. As they say, /thread

He is headed to the DL. Again. According to Tom.

Sadly yes. I'm not losing sleep over not having those two though.

This is tired. We are stuck with a guy who has done nothing but hit his entire career and has not shown signs of slowing down from a hitting standpoint. Sure he has his injuries but we only know for sure that Puig and McCarthy were part of the Dodgers offer and I would rather have kept Braun than take on Puig. What prospects were included is purely speculative. Braun is not hampering the payroll nor is he inhibiting Brinson, Phillips or any other OF prospect from coming up. If the Brewers are competing in the next 2-3 years, I would rather have a 34-35 year old Braun and Brinson in the lineup than Puig/Broxton and Brinson. I'm not saying the LA trade was a good trade. Puig has little to no value to the Brewers. Without knowing the prospects no one knows if it was a valuable deal. I'm saying the Brewers aren't trading Braun for anything of value unless they eat the bulk of the contract. That is not tired because this whole thread is a wish list of elite prospects when that was never going to happen for Braun. The entire league sees him as a 2 WAR player at best who now can't stay on the field which means he will be a sub 2 WAR guy going forward. No amount of mathematical slight of hand will change that zero teams see him as 2012 Braun or even a 4 WAR guy annually for a meaningful portion of his contract. As a DH that changes but his no trade contract severely limits his market. The guy was a great player and I suppose one could make the argument that his contract has baked in with past performance rather than a statement that he will play well down the road. He isn't blocking anyone this year and at $57 million our payroll can afford him without question. I do think it's reasonable that he will be blocking someone next year though and he is very likely going to be a liability in 2019 and that's with Brinson, Ray, and Philips possibly being mainstays with Broxton.

Agreed. Braun isn't going to generate any value from the training table. He is just an injury prone guy at this point in his career and as he gets older it's very likely only going to get worse. Our window closed after last August and that's that. We are stuck with him.

Garda has been our best pitcher and he is incredibly cheap. He should have a lot of value on the trade market if we want to trade him. At 23-18 I'm not sure the Brewers should be selling unless the deal is significant.

Luck certainly plays a part. But generally, it's bad drafting. Add in tight budgets (we never went much beyond recommended player slotting in the draft, we never spent much on scouting, we never invested in Latin America scouting), poor development of players (meaning when we had a good player, we didn't figure out how to get him to his full potential, or he got hurt from overuse, or something like that) - and then a degree of bad luck - and it was just a bad mix of things. The drafting in the 90s was absolutely horrendous. Sal Bando took a guy projected by most teams to be a 2nd-3rd rounder with the 4th pick. Just nuts. Well he was a 3rd baseman who played at ASU so that's all that mattered. Even still he picked Sheets and we haven't come close to picking a guy like that since. Maybe Gallardo I guess. We simply don't draft or trade for young quality pitching.

It's one of the worst Brewer bullpens ever assembled and it's being taxed because we don't have a starter who can pitch 6 decent innings. The offense has really done it's part but I'm not sure the plan for developing a playoff caliber pitching staff.

If this team had any bullpen at all, they might stick around the WC chase all year.

1.0 WAR is worth closer to $8 million. Braun would have to produce about 9 WAR between '17-'20 to justify his contract, based on the WAR measurement. I'd probably take the over on 9, but how much excess value other teams would assign his contract is a little dubious. That said, teams wouldn't be trading for 2020 Ryan Braun, they'd be trading for 2017-2018 Ryan Braun. Acccording to fangraphs, he hasn't come to close to being a 4 war player since 2012, when he was an amazing 7.3 Since then it's been 1.6, 0.8, 2.9, 3.2. So far in 2017 he is at 0.5 with a projection of 1.6. I think it's very far to say that no rival GM sees him as a 4 WAR guy and his recent visits (plural) to the training table won't help. He is now the " nagging injury guy" and that won't help his long term value. However, a WS is a game changer so a desperate LA might pull the trigger.

He just doesn't play enough games to justify his contract anymore. Our payroll is so low and we aren't contending so it doesn't matter to us, but it will to a team that is asked to take on $76M and elite prospects. We would be naive to think that once he returns this thing won't return and certainly not for the next 3 years after this. Nagging injuries are just that. Our best, and probably only, bet is LA feels they are a Braun away from a WS at the deadline.