tmwiese55

I read the article and it's phrased at "spent 16% more". To me that means total sales and is not indicative of profit. I'd guess they made less profit than before. Also, they had 65% more points of sale, or places to buy stuff so that helps too. However, as the article points out it leads to better fan experience and happiness overall so hopefully teams take notice all over and start bringing prices down a bit.

Generally hate the arguments of finding the exception to rules and then acting like everyone can do it. Pedroia as an example in baseball. Or pointing out some 29 yr old that all of a sudden figures it out, sure it happens but that doesn't mean every 29 yr old will or that it's still not extremely unlikely to happen. Say in basketball, someone says a guy is too short to play PF in the NBA. Well Charles Barkley did it, so why can't he?, etc. I just don't think this type of thing bring anything to a conversation. This is all about making best guess/projects, weigh risk and making decisions with the best odds of working out. Sometimes things defy odds, but it doesn't mean the odds were wrong or that every person similar will also defy them.

Shaw had a very similar second half dip the previous year too. He passed the eye test for me even in the 2nd half dip, but yea you can't ignore it. I chalk a lot of it to a teamwide pressing thing once they hit the cold spell, seemed everyone tensed up too much including him.

I know the trend in baseball is to youth, but my goodness the Brewers signed Aramis Ramirez to what turned out to be a 4 year $46 million deal when he was entering his age 34 season and he had a much less athletic body than does Cain. Granted wasn't as much money, but revenues in baseball are up considerably since 2012. Yeah the game has tilted toward youth, but 2012 is not that long ago. I would completely agree with you if we had the black hole like we did at third base. Until we move some of our outfielders, it just doesn't make sense to make a splash with a player like Cain when we could be seeing what Brinson/Phillips can do for us out there. At some point you stop seeing what guys can do and you make an attempt to win with known quantities. It's the same thing with waiting an hoping for a guy like Villar to rebound. Cain's a proven outfield talent. Phillips and Brinson are not. CF was a black hole in 2017. The guy who saw the most action there hit .220 and fanned 175 times. Cain or Yelich would improve the current roster immediately, and not just for 2018. Cain would allow prospects to be used for pitching. Santana is a proven talent though. 3B requires way less athleticism than OF and we had a blackhole at 3B. We do not at OF. The hole is pitching, let's focus there. Cain did miss 60 games in 2016. And just a bit of regression to take him from 295/360ish like he is now down to 270/330 is basically what you can get for rookie scale rather than 15 mil per year and combine that with reduced athleticism bring down his D (which is one of his positives now). Hey I get it, I wouldn't have much concern the next two years but the lasat two you might be looking at two OF spots being used by overpaid underperforming guys. All the while you had a 280/370 already on your team that you're paying nothing that you pushed out instead. Also, Cubs giving Heyward a truly awful contract doesn't mean we should do the same. And as MKE fans we've been laughing for years at big markets giving out big contracts to 32ish yr old people and then watching them reduce to blah players. Could be natural age progression, could be once you get your last big payday you work a little less. Who knows, but it happens over and over.

With the hole at 2B for MKE Castro certainly could make sense with what HH said for 'friends'. Realmuto could too, sure Pina was fine last year but still nothing close to Realmuto. I guess if you're going to give up a big package of prospects you might as well go big, might as well ask on these guys.

Cain is certainly enticing for the upcoming season for the reasons said of good contact skills being so needed in our lineup, but a 4 year deal taking him to age 35 I'm very skeptical on, assuming you're talking 15ish mil per year. When you have a guy in Santan controlled for the same 4 years for almost no money who had a 370 obp last year. Just not sure why we're jumping through hoops to make this happen by dumping Santana instead of just putting the resources into pitching. Seems much more easily accomplished. And our top two prospects can play CF for free the next few years.

Do the Nats have the horses to trade for Yelich, though? Didn't the farm take some significant hits with the Eaton trade and some of their deadline moves? The Dodgers probably do, but they don't have the payroll space to take on much more than Yelich if they want to stay under the luxury tax line. I just keep thinking the Brewers are the best, most likely fit in terms of what Miami might want. Doesn't mean they'll get him, but unless LA is willing to offer up a few of their own big names, I'd be all about getting this thing done with the Crew if I were the Marlins FO. Yea they've made some deals that might have depleted them. I also forgot they had Eaton to play left this year, was remembering them trotting out former Brewer great Adam Lind last year. So actually probably cross them off the list. Why I brought this up is that the other non-contenders could easily say is it really worth it to pony up here when we can't win (as even some here are saying). So hopefully we're not bidding against ourselves a bit.

Sure maybe the Escobar comparison is a bit much. But I think the phrasing was 'closer to Escobar than to the Seager/Correa types' or something like that. I'd generally agree with that phrasing. I agree with you that there is more improvement likely from Arcia as he beefs up a bit and just learns to hit better. However, I think the greater point is that he's unlikely to ever be a middle of the order top hitter on your team type guy. There really isn't someone behind him ready to go so a trade would still make no sense right now, but the logic that he's not a superstar type that's untradeable isn't off either. And of course D at SS is huge. There's a middle ground here among you guys arguing that I think you'd all agree on if dug out of your stances a bit.

General casual fan has no idea what fan fest is, it would have no bearing on anything. I'd add that I think the Dodgers and Nats as contenders could be seriously interested in Yelich. Nats of course have the inner division. But after that most of the contending teams don't seem to make much sense, so that's a plus, only 2 big money teams.

I'd agree that even though Yelich hasn't played RF before that he'd be much easier and better at it than Braun at this point.

Why not just pony up the prospects for Archer then instead of trying to pull off this crazy series of moves if we need move a few guys to clear space? 4 years of control and pulling off one move seems way more realistic than everything involved in this musical chairs involved here. We'll see, fingers crossed. Another thing, if the team thinks of itself as contenders why did they punt on relief pitching? For the recent Yelich control posts, yes of course that's correct. But you're not giving up one guy for him, you're giving up 3-4 and at least one will be a starting P prospect which MKE should be clinging to like dear life. In it of itself, getting Yelich even for a pricey package is fine but the subsequent moves needed after make me nervous. Along with that you don't really need an OF since you have Santana controlled for 4-5 years too and he's good. And no matter what you do you're not the favorite to win the division.

Good on Stearns for trying all this, more power to him and good luck on pulling all this off. I'll believe it when I see it but I'm biting my lip on how much it's all going to cost after years of building up all these prospects attempting to do a rebuild the way we've all wanted to do it up until now but now changing course fairly sharply. It's been working imo so far

Even the best case scenario of Yelich, Cain, and Archer. Which would be about the highest wishlist we could come up with for this year's team I still don't think they're favorites to win the division assuming Darvish is a Cub. And the Dodgers and Nats would still be favorites beyond the Cubs.

I have, and I see us moving a lot of prospects out to put together a team that still is not a favorite to make the playoffs. And you could probably just take the money you're going to spend on Yelich and Cain and just sign a P and have just about the same win expectation while keeping all your prospects. I'm excited and glad to be involved in some action for once, but I'm a bit worried they're rushing things while 3 teams are loaded right now instead of letting the rebuild play out. And in a way just overthinking things a bit.

I think Santana is the next domino. This is how the game is played. Right, I mentioned out of why the need to give up your #1 guy and more when you already have a good guy sitting there that costs you nothing who's also controlled for years.

But you're also giving up multiple other good prospects, and likely at least one of our few starting pitching prospects and you already have Santana.

I'm really not sure if we should be emptying our farm and you have to assume P prospects would be involved, kind of the last thing MKE should be giving up. Kind of a numbers game there so need as many as possible to get a few to hit. Don't want to play scared but the Nats, Dodgers, and Cubs are basically loaded. I'd rather do smaller less risky things to be in the WC chase and with some luck the division while keeping the farm intact for a couple years down the line. Just adding one more P along the lines of Cobb probably puts their over/under on Ws around 84-85. You're involved in that ballpark while keeping your farm and still have fairly low payroll.

That would be nuts. One is a proven player with 5 years of control. The other is a prospect with 6 years of control. It's a no-brainer.. Judge and bellinger were mere prospects to start 2017, judge in particular had a dreadful 2016 of limited at bats. Both those guys are more valuable than yelich at this point, and it isn't all that close. And tons of guys flop too or just become ok/mediocre players too.

Well it depends what would be with him. Like the logic of they wouldn't trade him for Quintana/Gray so they won't now. That's not really accurate, they wouldn't trade him plus the three or four other prospects it would take for those pitchers. Quintana took a guy ranked top 10 and three others. Same here, straight up is different than Brinson, Santana, and Ortiz or whatever other prospects would be also in on it. It's just not an accurate way to describe it. And in this case you have Santana already sitting there already who doesn't cost you anything to just keep him and have him play.

All the Yelich talk, maybe swoop in and steal Realmuto instead. I think 3 years of control left on him, only 26 yrs old.

If you can pull all that off, more power to you. Good luck. Or you could simply just trade your prospects for pitching if you're so willing to trade prospects. Or just sign the pitching. All much more easily accomplished. If he's going big or nothing, I get it, why not try. But let's all be prepared for nothing to happen then. I have no problem with playing out the rebuild too. you have Woodruff, Burns, Ortiz all on the way up with Davies having control, Anderson signed, Nelson can likely get an extension easily done if you want. Hader could go either way. Instead you're likely going to have to deal these guys in all this stuff you're trying for, and giving up some OF prospects too. And a proven hitter in Santana. Like I said, lots of plates in the air and lots of risk.

Can't wait until we get Brinson and Phillips some PT and they do well so we can trade them.

Ellsbury hasn't been good in years and Santana hit in the 280 with a 370 obp really can't expect too much more. Defense is his only issue. All the money these other guys cost could just be put towards pitching. Yelich's deal is so good that I see why you have to check on him but I strongly doubt you can pull off all the moves necessary for it work out. Long term, 2019 or 20 I hope Santana can be the guy at 1B.

It IS the least of their worries. But it's the only avenue we have to cost-effective starting pitching. Unless we ante-up. So you have to pull of a trade for an OF to replace your OF, (who'll cost more than Santana) or pay Cain at age 31 to replace Santana, who will cost way more obviously. Plus pull of a trade for the allusive cost controlled P and cost us more prospects. Bit too many plates in the air imo and you're messing with the farm quite a bit. Or you could just sign a second tier P like Cobb and be done with it and have your whole farm in tact. Or just keep rolling with rebuild as planned, which is working just fine.

What is the infatuation with shaking up the OF so much? Santana basically did great last year and you have him for years. Braun is set in left. Your top two prospects can split CF and are considered good defenders, while getting extra ABs when Braun sits and hits the DL. Seems like it should be the least of their worries to me.