MrTPlush

Swanson is a better comp, and honestly, a pretty darn good one. Comping Wily Adames to Rafael Devers feels like borderline clickbait. Adames is older, farther from FA, and is nowhere near being on the same planet as Devers offensively. Devers has posted a .900+ OPS before and has been an upper .800 OPS bat the last two years. Devers is a proven elite bat, Adames couldn't post a .300 OBP last year and has been very inconsistent over his career. Adames simply does not have the track record nor the elite offensive ceiling that commands these big contracts.

I always live for the next installment into the 'hot dog side hustle' story. The boring answer is trade in your truck for a sweet van. haha

I watched a few of the recent movies in theater before starting from Phase I. She told me while watching those movies in theater they wouldn't make any sense until I watched from the beginning of the Marvel Movies. To be honest...I am lucky if I can get through an entire movie and not be confused about the plot. The whole comedy part of the movies is fine to an extent...but seems really overdone. Blooper-like comedy in the middle of a big action scene seems like an interesting choice. But I guess that is a Marvel movie thing and just expected after awhile.

The problem is, shifts aren’t being banned. Putting your 3B/SS 50 yards into RF is being banned. We go back to how shifts were before. 2B shading towards 1B and playing on the back of the dirt…then the SS will virtually just be directly behind 2B. While we won’t see piss missiles getting caught by guys halfway into RF, those guys hitting the ball that much to one area are still at a big disadvantage in the grand scheme The MLB.com article does point that out. 10 extra hits is nothing to sneeze at…but hardly world changing. Not to mention, as people have said, other teams will have guys benefit too. So even if you think we were one of the most unlucky teams against the shift, the gain is hardly anything to get excited about because it probably won’t matter much competitively. Maybe the games are more exciting though.

My significant other is a massive marvel person…like huuuuge fan. So naturally I have accepted watching them and she started me off from the start (never watched one before). I am trying hard…but I don’t like them . The storylines are strange and scattered…the middle of the movies are really boring and I pretty much doze off. Anyone familiar with the phases I just finished the the second avengers movie. The only movie I have really enjoyed are the Iron Man movies and maybe the first avengers. The Thor movies have been really boring to me. Don’t line those at all.

I worked at a pizza place when I was in high school. The reason is simple. People have epic meltdowns and tantrums if it isn’t ready at their pre decided pickup time. If you want it at your lunch time 5-10 minutes late can be a third of your lunch time…huge problem. To avoid it getting lost or slowed down by an unexpected rush we made sure to get those orders done slightly early to avoid it being late and in case a mistake/problem occurred. At a pizza place (at least where I worked) the warmers were really effective and if your food sat on the warmer longer it wasn’t really noticeable at all. With other types of food maybe not. Also, those pre planned orders ahead of time are incredibly annoying and a pain to track time wise. People don’t walk around with alarms that say “start the order to be ready at 12:00” that came in two hours ago.

His rookie campaign was fine. Easy to be spoiled by our current aces and they easily overshadow anyone else. Rookie campaigns aren’t always great…even for really good pitchers. Greinke once dropped a 5.80 ERA in 33 starts to begin his career. Verlander once had a 4.80 ERA early in his career. 4.26 ERA for Kershaw in his first year. Scherzer had an ERA north of 4.00 2/3 of his first years. This isn’t to say Ashby will or could end up like them…just that a starters first crack at it is more about showing flashes of promise than it is actually results at the end of the year. Does he end up like Brandon Woodruff, Wily Peralta, or somewhere in between…time will tell.

If we are versatile enough, he is a decent bench bay fill-in guy.

I think they would have shipped him off by now if they didn’t want him…but his usage with Counsell as manager was pretty sad. Unless they are hoping some team ends up wanting him as a backup option at DH/1B/2B if they can’t find better by March. I just for some reason doubt they would offer him arbitration unless they felt they would actually want him in some form. Unlike Wong/Renfroe, he isn’t exactly that intriguing or valuable in a trade.

After today, I am quite confident Matt Arnold is not dumb enough to hand out $25mil a season to a guy that can’t even manage a .300 OBP. I really don’t get so many clamoring for him to get a massive extension.

He gets incredibly annoying and really repetitive…but it’s kinda funny in its own way. His loyalty and love for the Brewers is also a great touch. I will give him credit, despite being pretty old school, he understands the games changes and can still be a good announcer. A lot of announcers have gotten very whiny watching today’s game. That being said, I wouldn’t mind him retiring and having a fresh face soon.

Just because the farm system was weak, doesn’t mean we couldn’t make trades. You aren’t trading for Juan Soto, but plenty of solid contributors can be had for 50 grade prospects etc. If they want to build their next core through the farm system, that is fine. At that point though, extend Woodruff if you can, trade Burnes, and trade Adames. Get those prospects into our system or on our team, get this thing steamrolling by 2024-2025. Then we can happily commit to Turang/Mitchell/etc. in 2023. A rotation of Woodruff/Peralta/Ashby is a pretty good start before considering any type of acquisition from Burnes/Adames. On the other hand, if they lose both of Burnes/Woodruff, I think people will wish we tried a bit harder while they were around. Because it’s going to be one big prayer to get the necessary pitching to be a strong competitive team with the way our farm and current team are (minus them of course).

Probably a combination of budget constraints and just having some common sense. At least with obvious resign targets like Grandal/Moose. Stearns has some slick trades and short terms acquisitions early on offensively…but it sure did deteriorate quickly as the years went on. Adames was a great get, but that’s really the only solid guy by either trade or FA the last few years. It is kind of interesting Stearns made that big trade for Yelich early on and then proceeded to never make another notable trade (using good prospects again). Makes you wonder if Stearns had an unreasonable love/attachment for prospects his FO drafted/acquired.

And a solid 5 years younger.

It isn’t only players that get traded though. There probably were guys that didn’t end up traded that could have been had the right deal come along. Which is why I don’t tend to chase the ‘what-if’ game because we don’t know who they maybe could have had and what the cost would have been. Would we be favorites for anything? Well no, but neither were the Phillies going into the postseason. Do we still come up short? Likely so, but surely better odds than watching from the couch. Would have ‘overpaid’ to acquire someone? Possibly, but we have done that in the past and has led to the best seasons in Brewers history. 2008 headlined by Sabathia trade, 2011 headlined by the Greinke trade, and 2018 due to Christian Yelich. For all the moaning about losing such great players…we ended up giving up a grand total of two OFers. Both of which were only good when we were rebuilding and wouldn’t have been that useful to us anyway. I am not really clamoring for anything at this point. I think they dug themselves into a hole. Partially bad luck, partially their own doing. Feels like their options are dig the hole deeper or build a 15 foot ladder to try and get out of a 20 foot hole. Might as well build for the future with the prospects we insisted on hoarding and hopefully have Burnes/Adames/Woodruff fill in most of the holes. You then aren’t adding another long term contract to make the payroll a crippling mess even for the next stint of competing. Though I’m not against extending Woodruff because they could have enough pieces to maybe do a quick turnaround in a few years. If it ends up not being quick I suppose the contract isn’t that big of a deal and you just lose out on the prospects you could have had.

I think the lack of using prospect capital is a little less relevant to baseball economics and budget. Depending on the player and where they are in arbitration it may add some payroll…but usually easy to fit in a budget. Especially for an impact player. You might not be signing the Andrew McCutchen’s of the world or paying $10mil for Jesse Winker Maybe they hit a home run on Winker this year…but would be nice if we could add someone we could expect to be an impact bat. Not praying Winker bounces back or rookies can be impact bats. That isn’t to say I don’t like the Winker trade (I think he can fit in nicely hitting at Miller Park) or dislike letting rookies have a chance. But if that ends up your entire concept of building around the core we have and that is what you depend on giving us a solid offense…well, that just seems to be really wishful thinking. Personally, if that is the game plan, I’d rather them try to cash in big on one of our huge trade chips.

They also are getting record revenue sharing and got a newly minted TV deal in recent years. I’m not going to sit here and claim they are just stashing money, but they are hardly raising payroll. We were doing $100mil payrolls a decade ago. $137mil in 2022 is hardly impressive, baseball inflation since then has been bonkers. FA and adding a bunch of payroll isn’t the only answer anyway. They could have traded for someone. Don’t ask me who because I don’t own a crystal ball or take part in trade talks in the Brewers front office. The point is they didn’t build around those players. A bunch of guys regressing off of ridiculous career years wasn’t shocking, that should have been expected. They don’t seem to want to invest payroll (whether by choice or can’t afford to) and protect their prospects like they are all holy grails. That leaves us with a fringe playoff team that missed the playoffs in 2022, hoping to get better by rearranging deck chairs. If that is their plan just trade the guys now if a great offer comes by. Maybe that changes before march, but that is how they have acted the last year+.

David Stearns really screwed over the Brewers and Matt Arnold, in my opinion. The time to build around the 'big 3' was last off season. We should have been making a serious run in 22-23...multiple years. Stearns left Arnold with a crappy situation with the MLB roster. Should we really be making notable FA signings and make notable trades when all of those guys should either be extended (unlikely) or traded next offseason? Probably not, not for just a year. Would have made waaaay more sense to do it last year and get multiple good cracks at it before a mini tear down. Matt Arnold wants to build around them, but it is a little too late for that. Why build around guys that you would trade next offseason? It doesn't make any sense to hold anyone to the '24 deadline. What are you going to do if you are competing? Ride them to FA? Yikes. It should be interesting to see if they can extend Woodruff or Burnes...but that seems unlikely. If not, they are as directionless as their moves make it seem. It is too dumb to invest in a roster that only lasts a year and too dumb to waste all the talent on the team. Honestly, Arnold is in a tough situation without a good answer on what to do.

Swanson is going to get paid because of what he did the last three years. Not the crappy hitter he was at the start of his career. The same goes for Trea Turner, who's wRC+ the last three years is 139. Trea Turner is the third best positional player in all of baseball since 2020 according to Fangraphs (Bogarts #12 / Swanson #13 / Correa #15). Wily Adames slots in all the way back at #35. Offense pays though. Turner has given 91.0 value in that timeframe, Bogarts 62.5, Swanson 27.3, and Adames at 31.7. Swanson/Adames are half of Bogarts and a measly third of the production Turner provides. Adames and his 27% K rate and low OBP aren't exciting. Not to mention Adames has never put up anything close to the MVP level seasons Bogarts/Correa/Turner have put up multiple times. The ceiling for those players compared to Adames is astronomically different at this point. All of those guy feature Top 5 MVP finishes, Adames got zero votes last year and was just #17 in 2021. It is also possible people put way too much stock in Adame's defense. The stats didn't even like his defense prior to 2022. Can he continue being a great defender?

Wily Adames isn't anywhere near the same class as those players. Elite offense at SS gets paid huge bucks and long contracts. Adames is nowhere near elite offensively. He is pretty comparable to Dansby Swanson at this point. He might be able to raise the bar a little bit with a few seasons like 2021...which is pretty close to what Swanson just did in his contract year. Obviously, we have yet to see what Swanson gets on the FA market. He was projected about 6/$150mil at the top end according to experts. Unless Swanson gets some shocking deal those contract figures for Adames are way too much. Swanson is the real bar to compare to. Turner/Bogarts/Correa...yah, that isn't Adames market at all.

1-6 are lottery picks. Those are the ones being drawn for. The Tigers/Rangers/Nationals will all be picking #10 or worse next year, regardless of record. As I imagine all of them are considered large markets. If they are #10 or worse to begin with it won't matter, outside of not being eligible to try and hop into the Top 6. Hypothetically, if all those teams ended up in the same draft slots next year, I believe they would get slotted at #10-#12...then whoever was actually #10-#12 would get shifted forward. Then lottery odds would be set for the eligible teams. Those three ineligible teams could then pick even worse if a team behind them wins a lottery spot.

Meh, if he produces it will outweigh and douchbaggery. If he sucks then they just cut him. It was his most games ever and his worst season ever. I wouldn't be shocked if he was kind of a douche all season, especially considering he finally started getting paid the big bucks. I would imagine there is a short leash on him if he sucks and is annoying.

Yes, lets take a poor financial decision for 8 years and make it one that lasts the rest of our lives. Awesome.

.939 OPS last year in high leverage situations…what more do you want?

Meh on this trade. Winker could bounce back, but then again they fact we acquired him for little tells me no one across MLB is all that optimistic it will happen. Odds are he bounces back a little and Wong regressed a little so it’s about a wash with the bay value wise. Now it is a matter off what you do at 2B to see if you gain there versus a Wong/DH combo we could have had in the opposite reality. So far a bit disappointing. Brewers are just rearranging deck chairs just to have new faces around. Except Wong is consider a good clubhouse guy and apparently Winker is a big time bum. If he can up his average we should have a really nice high OBP guy at the top of the lineup that doesn’t strikeout too much.