MrTPlush

I mean Chase Anderson has always been homer prone and his personal HR rate didn't spike to the moon. Is a juiced ball really making the ball fly 40 feet farther? It isn't like Hader is giving up wall scrapers. He should probably worry about not throwing his fastball knee high down the middle of the plate. That is probably a bigger issue for him.

I would bring back Moustakas. Likely cheaper and I am not really convinced Grandal leads a pitching staff well. From what I can tell the Brewers let the catcher have free reign calling pitches etc. and in my personal opinion Grandal sucks in that department. I think Pina can play better defense and lead the staff better...which to me is more important than the offense at that position. If we were to go Grandal that likely means Shaw gets 3B back and you have to pray he rebounds. Regardless they have to bring back one of them. They can't really afford to lose both as their replacements could both potentially be terrible (Shaw/Pina) offensively. They have to resign one of these guys and also improve SS offensively. If they can do that they are probably fine on offense. I wouldn't rule out both Moustakas and Grandal returning if their markets aren't there once again.

I would guess this has more to do with trimming off fat so to speak...positions that just aren't needed. I highly doubt it is people refusing to adapt. I don't think scouts are that stubborn of individuals, they make pretty modest salaries.

Friday

I also think you guys are seriously underrating Pina. He has had painfully sporadic playing time and still holds an OPS north of .700 with good defense. If he played daily I’d imagine he would float around the #15 ranked catcher in baseball.

I’d rather have Freitas than Lucroy...and that isn’t a compliment to Freitas and his one man fanwagon

Are Cubs fans mad their GM allowed us to get Jordan Lyles? Why are we mad the Cubs picked up some bad player? If Lucroy does good it is a fluke and they got him right when he decided to get hot.

Our amazing lead off hitter is on the bench. You have a young player/prospect fetish...you really do. My advice?? Seek the necessary help. I mean...he ain’t really wrong. Think I will take Cain vs. a LHP pitcher though.

Can you imagine a nice Hiura homer?

Can’t wait to blow this absolute gift. Thankfully our amazing lead off hitter is up.

Nice job Perez, gotta keep the LOB streak alive another inning.

The HR, or making sure we walk someone first to prevent the solo shot? Well I was thinking the homer, but both.

Hiura bad call on defense? Lol, not shocking. Anyone thinking he will ever be decent on defense is fooling themselves.

Predictable

Orlando Arcia is not good and it is becoming quite obvious his “flashes at the plate” are just hot streaks any other player experiences when they play almost every game. I’m pretty confident the Brewers are giving up on him after this year. It will be more interesting to see if they outright get rid of him or keep him as a utility player. He is young so you can dream he suddenly figures it out...or he just sucks...which is more likely. Regardless as a contending team we can’t keep trotting out one of the worst players in baseball that starts regularly.

We are talking about pennies here. If Grisham was willing to take security of 8 figures, why not? Also if I remember right the Astros pretty much made it an even $2mil a year so it was a bit more attractive to Singleton as he got an extra $4.5mil in his pre arbitration years instead of going $500k a year for three years. Using your example though, Marisnick made $4.5mil the first five years of his career...an overpayment of about $5.5mil on 5/$10mil contract. Or about $1.1mil a year Further supporting the fact there is zero risk for the Brewers. Of course who knows if such a deal even interests Grisham, likely not...but it’s a fairly sensible attempt from the teams perspective.

Great take. It’s a no brainer. Hiura Grisham > 8 years. Any other core position player do the same thing, saves tens of millions and extends window of title contention by 2 years. Step #1 for small mid-market to have more than a 2% yearly chance at a title. It should be interesting how Stearns approaches extending internal players. If I am correct the only deal to date has been Chase Anderson. Which was a wise near zero risk deal that worked well for both sides. Can't say they have a ton of obvious guys going into the offseason. I bet Shaw was offered some nice money both of the last two years...dodged a bullet on that one. You just have to be wise about extensions and not find yourself having $20mil+ a year sunk into failed extensions. Especially guys who are total wastes and not even providing value to the team. We as a small market can definitely not afford to have that kind of waste sitting around.

Trent Grisham would essentially be looking at something similar to what Jon Singleton took. 5/$10mil with 3 option years that equal $30mil. Basically securing 8 years of control for the risk of $10mil that is spread out over five years. Maybe some slight increase due to Singleton's deal being a bit outdated. The risk would be zero for the Brewers. Partially because $2mil or so is a drop in the bucket and partially because it would be almost impossible for Grisham (a guy who can play the entire OF, has speed, and can get on base) to not be worth such a paltry amount. Honestly I am shocked more of these deals have not happened. If I was a team I would try to do such a deal with players that seem like at worst a 4th OFer, utility player, or backup catcher. Think the Lucroy deal...many thought that deal was really strange for us just because Lucroy seemed so replaceable year to year. But we gave him a bunch of guaranteed money where at worst he would be worth it and maybe we would improve making it a deal for us.

Looking back I think this was a big mistake going into the season. Their only real depth was Chase Anderson. Being realistic we knew one of those three young starters was going to bomb. After that who was the solid depth, no one. If we aren't going to have elite starters we better make sure we have the depth to always have reliable guys. I mean thank god the rotation bombed fast enough so we decided to pick up Gonzalez.

Well for starters I wouldn't have signed both. Personally I wanted Miley because he seemed more like a guy who could pitch deeper into games...whereas Gonzalez is getting pulled after 5 max. Peralta wouldn't have been anywhere near my rotation. For what it is worth my rotation would have been the following to start the year: 1) Chacin 2) Miley 3) Burnes 4) Woodruff 5) Anderson I wouldn't have had a problem rolling the dice on the above rotation. I would have easily slid Burnes out of the rotation if an acceptable deal for a starter had become available. Only reason being you know many injuries/disappointment will happen and Burnes pitched so well out of the pen. What was the worst case there? The rotation is doing well/healthy and there is no spot for Burnes so instead he dominates out of the pen? Can't say that would have been a loss. Yah, injuries really hit us bad this year...still a pretty disastrous roster construction. Chacin regression is on Stearns though. What I mean is that if you are going to construct a rotation with average starting pitchers like that they almost always have a crap year for you at some point. If he goes into next year with average veteran pitchers and unproven guys it is almost assured to be quite similar results. Maybe a guy or two working out, but a couple disappointments to match. Personally I would like to see a dependable starter added that has a track record of success. Woodruff, Anderson, and Davies should all be good bets to get close to expectations...which naturally means one will probably be a notable disappointment. I don't like filling the last two spots with wild card types. They need another dependable guys to hopefully give us three good starters and ideally a fourth too. The way the rotation was constructed going into the year it isn't really shocking the majority totally bombed. Stearns needs to put the team in a position where multiple starters aren't needed at the deadline. That is not a good place to be.

I mean TR season ticket prices are like $16 a game. So the current minimum for the Saturday game is doubling your money. The Sunday game is still a nice increase % wise. The weekend games sell well...the Thurs/Friday ones, not so much.

I have always gotten more than twice face value on my Cubs tickets. For the Saturday game in July this year I got $70 each on $25 first row terrace box seats. I am sure it depends on the section you have to some degree. I got a single seat 20-game pack in the TR this year despite not going to many games. Really just wanted to be a SSH. So naturally most of the tickets got sold...well actually all of them because when I go to games I just get tickets with whoever I go with anyway. Moral of the story Cubs tickets sell for about 60-75% over face in most cases...after fees are taken into consideration. The Fri-Sun ones just sell insanely well....bobblehead days also do decent. Of course I am sure some of these dates do even better in a multigame pack where you can sell pairs. I actually will be upgrading to a full season package next year so I lose money...as making money on them just seems, wrong.

Yasmani Grandal is frustrating to watch...not actually bad, just frustrating. It is kind of like Gomez/Villar being the worst baserunners people have ever seen in their lives. No...I think they were just frustrating to watch. Or Chase Anderson pitching, not actually bad, just frustrating that a tater is almost assured every start.

There's a very good chance that the entire reason the two big one year additions were possible was that they rolled the dice on the starters, as in there not being the funds to really sign both Moose/Grandal and a starter or two. Spending money on starters would've meant rolling the dice on inferior options to Moose/Grandal in that scenario. Free Agency wise, sure, I would venture to guess that is pretty true/accurate. Though, again, guys like Gio Gonzalez and Wade Miley could have been had for very little. Now I am not trying to say that in retrospect...but it was two veterans that could have easily solidified a spot in our rotation that pitched well for us last year. There were and will be trade options available and as much as our farm system lacks we can still make notable/major trades with it. Not to mention last offseason we could have used one or more of those "roll the dice pitchers" we ended up using as a major piece to a trade. Peralta and Burnes both probably had quite high trade value last winter. I like Stearn's general thought of "his price" or not overpaying so to speak. At the same time this team is a ticking clock and it will likely go from contender to rebuilding faster than one would generally hope. We have some big time championship quality pieces right now (Yelich/Hiura/Hader). Probably best to not constantly try and piece together a rotation of prospects and over the hill veteran types. Woodruff/Davies/Anderson is a good start. I think ideally you sign Lyles/Gonzalez (or some other vet) to fill the #5 spot and acquire a more top of the rotation arm to fill the other spot. I am not saying full fledged ace, but something a bit more flashy than the Davies/Anderson's of the world. I don't think that is particularly hard to pull off. I suppose Houser has time to make the Brewers comfortable with him getting one of the spots, but it is easier to acquire in the winter and have Houser/Suter/etc. fill in when injuries happen (or just poor play) midseason. One of our young guys will get plenty of starts and likely an extended look in 2020 whether they start in the rotation or not. Right now 3 of our original starters are on the DL, 1 is in the bullpen still sucking, and 1 sucked so bad he is in the minors now.

I wish they would make the “rivalry” AL/NL six games instead of four. The set up now forces two game series on the weekdays...lame to me. We are so close I don’t see why they can’t schedule a four game series and have the teams play Thursday/Friday and then travel to the other site for Saturday/Sunday.