MrTPlush

Nice quote. If only Nottingham's defense was as good as it. Since TheCrew07 mentioned wild pitches I went and looked up the Shuckers. For 2016 they had 87 as a team which isn't MLB worthy(double the 44 the Brewers have this year), but doesn't appear 80+ is uncommon. Unfortunately I don't know of a way to see how many weren't Nottingham and since he split levels last year I can't really gauge how he did last year at all.

Why the concern with the QO signing There is no reason we should be signing anyone major in free agency. At least we aren't the Phillies who despite having the worst run differential are sitting at #9.

You are correct from what I have read.. Before they optioned him it was well talked about in the Dodgers forums/blogs sphere that they could gain an extra year...for themselves or an eventual trade. I think he can opt out for arbitration at any point, but that does matter in all honesty. Actually I would love for him to be traded here and do that since it means he is hitting well enough to get a raise.

Bump. I'm really interested in this. People here are bashing him and I would love to hear someone who has actually seen him play. One does not need to watch Nottingham to know he had a horrid year behind the dish. 21 passed balls, 15 errors, and a CS% of just 29% is really bad. That is WAY too much and needs to start improving on. The real question is did he do anything well? Blocking skills obviously don't show up on the stats sheet nor does his game calling(the former I have heard is shaky at best). If those things were half decent at least he would have something going for him. The few times I saw mentions on his defense this year it was pretty similar to what was said before the season. Still very questionable and not much improvement on last year which is not a great sign. Still has athletic ability and youth on his side to keep hope alive. My biggest concern is the fact how much he needs to improve. A full MLB season and he would be at 25ish passed balls. Honestly there is no excuse for that to be over 10 for an MLB catcher and even that seems steep. The errors took a huge spike this year for whatever reason. Once again that number should be 5-10 not 15. Then you have his CS% which was 29% which is livable, however a catchers CS% usually goes down as he climbs the ladder so that number would be lower than 29% if he had MLB guys running on him daily. He needs a ton of improvement plus his bat really needs to shine since his defense is going to be average at best. Honestly it gets to be a Clint Coulter situation where you contemplate just moving him so he can just focus on offense. If he doesn't make any strides next year I think that is what should be done.

Not like he was given a lot to work with.

From everything I have read he is arbitration eligible for the 2019 season. So he is controlled for three more season not two.

Are you referring to when I mentioned Alvarez? When I was speaking of Alvarez I was referring to taking the money saved on Braun and getting a Alvarez type prospect. Just showing one of the many ways that money saved can help the ball club. As for the Dodgers actually tading Alvarez I agree not happening because of the money commitment. People seem to forget you can do a lot with the 40mil or whatever we would be saving. One could acquire quite a few promising prospects with that.

Twins are slowly securing the #1 pick with a record of 6-24 in their last 30 games. Unbelievably bad. Wow

Injury issues are there, but then again Braun isn't much better in that regard. With Puig I am more concerned about the injuries versus the attitude. Good chance you can fix the later, but the former has really effected his performance and not so simple to fix.

I just don't understand the thinking that trading him somehow speeds up the rebuild. Taking his presence out of the lineup sets back the rebuild. Yah I certainly don't see this speeding up the rebuild by any means. I don't know if it sets us back, but I can't see it speeding up the rebuild. Then again who said the goal was to speed up the rebuild. It would be a move to make the team better in the long run would be the thinking. Trade a pricey/old player for younger and/or more controllable players. Right now you are lucky if we compete one year that Braun is still here. Maybe two if you are feeling really good about things. Keeping around Braun for $80 to hopefully get one useful year out of him? Questionable.

You do realize that Puig isn't the only piece of this trade right? Yasiel Puig isn't perfect, but neither is Ryan Braun. They both have big concerns that could really put a damper on their production. We don't even know what Puig is valued at in this phantom trade. He could be just a small piece of the puzzle for all we know. You are pretty concerned about Puig becoming a free agent leaving us with just a comp pick, but why not so concerned about Braun? He is controlled a grand one extra year and if we don't compete in that year not trading Braun was a huge waste leaving us with nothing. Wouldn't it be lovely to waste $80mil and get nothing out of it except Braun around a few more years? Also why are you not concerned about Braun's age or his lengthy injury history? Lastly of course we can pretend and think Lara/Gatewood/etc. have a ceiling that of Puig's, but what are their chances of hitting that ceiling? 1 in a million? Difference is Puig has shown his ceiling over two years when he was a 10 WAR player in that time span. Someone like Gilbert Lara has a grand 3 HRs in 475 at-bats. One can not like Puig and not support a trade for him, fine. Don't look at it from only one angle though. There is a lot of reasons to trade for Puig and that is exactly why Stearns was considering it.

I don't think the problem with trading Davis was the fact we could have won two more games. It is more the fact we could, quite possibly, got more than we did. Then to a lesser extent Nottingham being dreadful at catcher which isn't exactly a great thing. For me it is more Nottingham being so bad defensively and if he can't stick at catcher big fail on our scouting department for whiffing on that. I think the A's sold high in Nottingham knowing his defense might not be good enough. Of course we don't know yet because he is still at catcher and young. After a year though things aren't looking very good. I don't get too bent out of shape over him having more value now because I wouldn't have held onto him last winter. They needed to open up the OF spot and that was the reality. If we had room for him I most certainly wouldn't have moved him for a Nottingham package, but there just wasn't a spot moving forward for him.

Madison a year or two ago was rated the 20th best baseball market. For amateur Northwoods League, they draw 6-7k a game..... Over 4,000 more than league average. Size of Madison doesn't matter as you stated. People in Madison love baseball & just show up! Exactly they could draw a AAA worthy crowd. They currently are in Colorado that draw a tad over 4K. No question they can do that or better. That being said Madison won't have a team for different reasons.

It seems you all missed the point of my post and instead took it as some knock on Carter when it was an example. I said all outs are not created equal nor are baserunners all created equal. Most of you unknowingly provided more examples proving this point.

Who cares how big Madison is as long as they draw which appears they could. Is Green Bay too small for an NFL team?

Looks like I missed the part about where I said it was all about wins or losses. Pretty sure all I said is they care about it and do consider it. Which you then touched base on in your post.

Well if things were simple and we knew Braun would OPS near .900 maybe you don't make the trade. However things aren't that simple. You have a guy that is getting up there in age and has a long injury history. That could catch up on him in a flash and we will forever wonder what happened to Braun. No offense, but if Braun regresses into an above average player he is probably wasting a spot that some 10 years younger could do it for $20mil less. Mind you I am talking about 2019/2020 when we may care about him wasting space. There is risk both way and I am not sure there is a clear answer.

Right or wrong it seems like teams do care about winning. If it is all about prospects explain to me why we are still stuck in Colorado or what may be a bad A+ situation? It may not be all about winning, but a near 100 loss team? That isn't even baseball. Fans are still going to watch a baseball game and the Manatees didn't do that often last year.

Come on now. So he is going to instantly shape up because of the thought of going to Milwaukee? Yet he doesn't care about the $100mil+ contract he is losing out on if he doesn't shape up? You are really grasping for straws with that theory.

Sometimes you have to really look at what have you done for me lately. It's hard to make a case for Puig with the dollar value he has. Well you can't just look at stats. Why has Puig not been the great the past two years? It isn't because of potential, but more distractions and not having his head on straight. We know what Puig can do and that is be a 5 WAR player. If the Brewers are trading for Puig it is because they believe their system in place can get him on track. He is well worth the risk dollar wise. If they make Puig like he was the first two years in the league you sure won't be complaining. Odds of that? Impossible to say.

It's ok to admit you are just a Puig hater. You act like he just had one good season. After his 5 WAR rookie season he had a 5 WAR second season.

Was it top 5 before the trades and draft this year? I'd expect our teams in the minors to fair pretty well in the next few years. Was at least Top 10. Braves if I recall we a Top 5 to a lot of experts and their teams didn't fair much better.

HR #30 for Braun would look nice for his trade value.

They don't care about prospects, they care about winning. And you know the two are more times than not correlated, right? Sometimes yes....sometimes no. We had a Top5 system and a bottom 5 record. Sure didn't help us this year did it?

Clint Coulter didn't hit much better (if any better) there: .236/.311/.372 over two years. Coulter had a reasonable first go at A+ and then the disaster second year. Gielgud has a small sample size of being a total disaster. Coulter was 21 and Ghelfi is 23. Coulter was a high draft pick Ghelfi not so much. Just because Coulter got promoted with bad stats does it mean Ghelfi will. Ghelfi doesn't have the luxury of being a once highly touted prospect so he will hit or never move up.