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Unfortunately that probably says more about the Brewers drafting over that time than Lutz. At the end of the season, he was talked as being taken in the top 10 in a re-draft. Compared to Royce Lewis and Jo Adell, he hasn't established himself as that level of prospect. Its not a disaster of a season, but his stock has dropped since end of last season so far. Plenty of opportunity to work out still, and figure out plate discipline, but...

Any update on Fernando Villalobos?

I didn’t necessarily agree that Cabell’s FSU commitment meant he wasn’t signing, just that he didn’t like his leverage as the deadline approached. Olson’s signing probably does put the nail in my hopes of getting Cabell though; but then again, I had given up hope on Blake Lillis and LG Castillo but the Brewers got those deals done so I guess I’ll have to wait it out. Hopefully they can get Daniel Davis done.

Nottingham is K-ing 5x more than walking. Projection systems have him basically matching Pina’s production. He is not ready and he isn’t a clear upgrade, but he is different, so there is that.

I guess my preferred outcome is the Brewers keep him and he puts up 20+WAR from mid 2019-2025, but glad he is making strides.

Well he is only 200 plate appearances removed from a 126wRC+ and 30 home runs. That may still have some predictive value....

I checked him out as well. Only concern I have with him is his high BB rates. I’d add significant ground ball rate decline this season vs. pre-surgery, and his ability to make through the season at 45% slider usage. That being said, he is still a good pitcher and would be happy if the Brewers got him without using a top 5 organizational prospect.

Please explain how Woodruff has looked like a 4A pitcher. Outside of Colorado he has a sub 4 ERA, FIP, and xFIP with a 10:2 K:BB in 9.1 innings. His SIERA is still under 4. His fastball has been over 95 mph in every appearance. His slider looks sharp a number of times. Of coarse its a small sample on a pitcher and a league still adjusting to one another but its hard for me to believe he isnt one of our 5 best rotation options at this point and it isnt in our best interest to give him more chances. Good pitchers have gotten hit in Colorado before.. If Woodruff is one of our 5 best rotation options we have serious problems. He looks like a worse Wily Peralta reincarnated....and that's not a good thing. Woodruff's brief career, even despite his struggles, he has a higher K:BB and swinging strike rate than Wily Peralta had in any season in his career. They arent the same pitcher and you can't expect the same development (or lack of) curve. He has pitched just over 50 big league innings, it is possible his fastball command is partially explained by nerves and mental lapses.

Please explain how Woodruff has looked like a 4A pitcher. Outside of Colorado he has a sub 4 ERA, FIP, and xFIP with a 10:2 K:BB in 9.1 innings. His SIERA is still under 4. His fastball has been over 95 mph in every appearance. His slider looks sharp a number of times. Of coarse its a small sample on a pitcher and a league still adjusting to one another but its hard for me to believe he isnt one of our 5 best rotation options at this point and it isnt in our best interest to give him more chances. Good pitchers have gotten hit in Colorado before..

The Rays playoff odds are at 12.7% according to baseball prospectus and Wilson Ramos would represent a nice upgrade.

That’s a sample that includes one of the worst 2 week slumps of Votto’s career and their 2nd best hitter Suarez on the DL. Since both those events have changed over the last week in a half, they are 3rd in runs scored, 4th in wOBA, and 6th wRC+. We are probably arguing semantics as I agree they aren’t a top 10 offense, but its not a AAA lineup and it still has one of the best 5 hitters on this planet. Anyway, I saw nothing that made me think Miley is going to be in the rotation still come August.

PECOTA had the Reds scoring 613 runs ROS, 5th most in the NL. Reds offense is fine.

The guy who led the league last year with a 12.8% BB % and you are eating crow after one start where he only walked 12.5%? Not hungry yet I guess.

Its noteworthy that his flyball % jumped 10% last season which is part of the reason he showed some power output. But basically if the downside is we replace Eric Sogard with Eric Sogard? I can live with that to see if Orf can provide something more.

Admittedly, it might just be looking for something new, but I agree 100%. He has earned his shot, he may be no better than Sogard but at least he might find some success until they develop a MLB scouting report on him. Sogard’s lone redeeming quality is he doesn’t strike out and he isn’t even doing that for some reason. Villar’s bounce back year has somehow produced further regression. I’d be fine sticking with him if he showed some advancement in K:BB or power output, but nothing.

Going back to last season, Roegner's last 6 appearances; 28 IP 0.96 ERA 34K:6BB.

1) Woodruff 2) Hiura- 3) Burnes 4) Grisham 5) Phillips 6) F. Peralta 7) L. Ortiz 8) Bickford 9) Dubon 10) Lutz 11) T. Williams 12) Stokes 13) Ray 14) Erceg 15) Ponce 16) Mederios 17) C. Herrera 18) M. Feliciano 19) A. Wilkerson 20) Carmona 21) Houser 22) Perrin 23) Pennington 24) Kirby 25) Lemons

These all disproportionately hurt the Brewers. Lets say the Brewers have 200 million in revenue and the Dodgers have 480 million in revenue. Probably not far off. Currently those expenses are currently average 80 million for both. And these proposal raise it to 120 million. The Brewers discretionary spending is far more hit than the Dodgers. Obviously the math is more complex as these expenses are larger to the Brewers because they have to use those cost control vehicles more than the Dodgers, so reality is probably worse. If you can get the Dodgers to share local TV revenue, cool.

You are on a Brewers fan site. The interests of the “billionaire class” in baseball tends to benefit the competitive ability of our favorite team. I won’t disagree that most of the “Competitive Balance” Initiatives are primarily motivated by cutting or controlling costs, but you also cannot deny that they help the Brewers. Hard international spending limits enabled the Brewers to sign one top 10 international prospect and another top 30 last period. That wasn’t happening when the Dodgers, Red Sox, and Yankees could drop 9 figures in any given period. There is no more Boras clients pricing themselves out of Milwaukee with hard caps in the amateur draft. The Brewers have the largest free agent deal this winter and have been tied to many more still available free agents. That’s not happening without a luxury tax. Proposal like less team controls, higher minimum salary, more arbitration years, etc. may help the players but disproportionately hurt Milwaukee as we rely on a larger portion of the budget toward cost controlled players. And more revenue sharing is a tough sell and it should be given how certain teams behave. Your interests as an agent are for maximizing player earnings. Our interests as fans are seeing the Brewers win baseball games. I could care less about distribution of wealth amongst the billionaires and millionaires. Now if you wanted to talk about reducing current overall revenue from owners to increase fan access to baseball increasing future interest in the game amongst younger generations and lower income people, then you might start to win over my sentiment.

I do love your willingness to interact with fans and the insights you provide, but I’m still not there on smelling anything fishy. So we are supposed to believe that 30 MLB highly competitive executives and owners got together and said, “I know revenues are healthy, despite the fact that the overall value and revenue of our individual franchises are tied heavily to whether we win; let’s just refuse to compete with each other on high end free agents.” I mean I guess it could happen, but we’ve seen teams felony hacking each other’s intellectual property (Cardinals), bribing 16 year olds and shady trainers (Braves and Red Sox), and trying to blackmail a player’s amateur status (Astros) to gain an edge. Now they are all going to disregard their own evaluations of what a player is worth to artificially keep costs down? I can look at the Phillies, Diamondbacks, Mariners, Twins, Brewers, etc and see baseball front offices are changing. I also see a market that has 3 pitchers coming off of Tommy John and a 4th with substantial decline trends in performance and see why there would be limited action. I don’t see a substantial, new, or any growing motivation for teams to collude.

Huh? I cannot imagine a more different player. Cueto has so consistently outperformed his FIP metrics that you question its validity. Archer is trending toward and probably the best example the other way. Not to mention Archer is 3 inches taller and strikes out 5-10% more batters in the AL vs NL.

The multiple top 5 picks thing is no guarantee. How many top 5 picks did the Dodgers had? How about the Indians? Red Sox? There are correlations between pick and success but of Dave Cameron’s top 30 assets in MLB, only 4 were top 5 picks (Correa, Bryant, Posey, and Jon Gray) You can scorch the earth all you want, but if you don’t get good at evaluation and player development, you are just going to have less MLB assets to trade from. Stearns is not dumb. He can knows how projections work. He knows how to account for all the data presented to him and make smart decisions for the overall health of the organization.

Wisconsin played its best game yesterday against #1 Notre Dame at the United Center. Got the first goal, Berry made some strong stops, and Wisconsin buried a few more opportunities. Notre Dame didn’t play its best game but it did show Wisconsin’s potential as they out played Notre Dame most of the game. Hopefully this sparks something. Would be nice to break Penn State's dominance of head-to-head matchups this weekend.

I disagree that there isn’t room to grow the sport. There is a reason more hockey prospects come from St. Louis than Milwaukee and it isn’t just population. The presence of an NHL franchise would do a lot for youth participation, IMO. While watching Shea Weber and Pekka Rinne come through Milwaukee was great, I don’t think anyone picked up the game because of them. Having hockey icons in town would help. That’s one big loss of the Admirals no longer being independent. There are no longer players spending multiple seasons with the franchise or living in the area after their playing career is done to grow the game. That being said, as a hockey fan, Im fine not spending $250+ to go to a game in much worse seats than I can get for 25% of that to go watch the Admirals. Wish we’d have a USHL team or D1 option in southeast Wisconsin though.

The only smaller (2) sport market is Buffalo (who only has to support 8 football dates and lower revenue hockey). Milwaukee is already supporting 81 baseball dates a year and 41 Bucks games. Furthermore, Hockey just isn’t very big in the Milwaukee area. Dave Steckel and Drew Stafford are about the only 2 NHL players I know of with any ties to the area. A part of that is a lack of a local NHL franchise sure, but youth participation isn’t strong considering the climate and abundance of frozen lakes. Also, I don’t know that people in Waukesha and Ozaukee Counties are that interested in driving downtown in the winter.