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I think Peralta will be next to go. No options but there's no chance in hell that any team is going to take on his contract so we can send him down to AA or AAA and let him work out of the bullpen and see if he can figure out how to pitch 1-2 innings at a time instead of us having to watch him do that with the big league club. The only problem here is that AAA sorely needs starters right now and I'm afraid they'd send him down and stretch him back out. That said, there's really not much reason to considering our 5 starters at the moment have all been doing pretty good lately, and we have Woodruff/Lopez/Wilkerson ready for their shots too. I think if we could get to a bullpen of Knebel/Barnes/Hader/Torres/Drake/Hughes/Espino, plus maybe Wang as an 8th guy, I'd like to see what they could do before making any more big changes to the bullpen. So for now I'd just say DFA Peralta and give Wang his spot on the 40-man. Also glad to see that Scahill cleared waivers and was outrighted to AAA. I don't think he's a guy we'll want up in the big leagues all the time but in the case of lots of bullpen injuries he'll be nice AAA-depth.

I feel like if we're going to trade Knebel, it probably wouldn't be this year. He has so much control left that it's sometimes hard to trade those players as you would be expecting HUGE value, as we would be pricing him based on his current performance level and add that he would have 4 1/2 years of control left at this year's trade deadline. Add to that the fact that this is really his only great year so far, and I'm not 100% sure teams are going to want to give up the kind of haul we'd expect. Our bullpen is also one of the biggest problems we have right now, and finding someone like Knebel on the open market is going to be incredibly expensive (and a trade would likely have us sending back all the prospects we get for Knebel anyway, effectively). I know Knebel is not guaranteed to maintain this level for the next few years, but at this point I feel like having that anchor in the back of the bullpen is necessary, and Barnes doesn't look at all ready to be that guy yet. When we traded Jeffress/Smith, we knew Thornburg could step in, and when we traded him, we figured either Feliz or Knebel had a good chance to stick back there. At this point, Barnes doesn't even always look ready to hold down the 8th inning let alone the 9th (maybe one day), and the bullpen gets even thinner from there. Trading Knebel seems like something we'd do only if: 1. We were ABSOLUTELY BLOWN AWAY like 3 Top 100 prospects plus a few other guys, or 2. We waited until he got really expensive in arbitration and we had stronger bullpen options to replace him than we do now. I just don't see the point in trading him now. Getting a cheap, lights out closer is rare, and unless we want to put a ton of money or a ton of prospects into that, we're not likely to get one any other way. Knebel might be a big key to us making the playoffs again, either this year or in the next few years.

Gotta say, I don't see it that way. Another pretty disappointing year. Burnes and Supak are nice "surprises" but way too many top prospects under-performing. Ray, Diaz, Erceg, Clark not breaking out. Diplan hasn't been special repeating in A+. Nottingham and Coulter not bouncing back in a big way. Woodruff has been rocked a couple times, Hader hasn't been dominant by any measure. Some of this has to do with pitching environment in CS, but overall not the results I was hoping for, especially for the top 10ish guys. But a few of those guys are coming on lately, long way to go so there's time for these guys to turn it on. I posted that over a month ago, there have obviously been sizeable shifts to some prospects' performances since then (most notably Diaz), but prospects are more about growth for me than full season performance. Prospects are still learning consistency and one bad run in an otherwise good season can make your numbers look a lot worse than they were. Ray has actually had a nice season despite some early season (most likely injury-related) struggles, Erceg has started to look better lately and there were indications that he was feeling a little worn out after a busy spring, and after all it is his first full season in pro ball. These guys aren't in the majors yet, some patience is required and they aren't going to be lights out or 3-hit days every day, even with the top guys. Woodruff hasn't been great lately but cherry picking a few bad starts to act like he's having a disappointing year seems pretty extreme. Nottingham/Coulter both had rough starts but have quietly put up some good numbers since. So even though some things have changed since I first made that statement, I'll stand by it 100%. Last year it seemed like everybody had just crappy years with not much redeeming about any of it. We clung to Woodruff/Diaz, and even tried to act like Hader's AA dominance wasn't masking huge control issues that were then exploited at AAA. This year, we have potentially an even bigger pitcher success story with Corbin Burnes, Supak is really intriguing, Gatewood has broken out in a big way and seems to be sustaining it quite well after slumping a little bit in May. That whole AAA outfield has been killing it to the point where 2 have already been called up and Cordell looks like he should be right behind them given the chance. Bullpen success stories like Tristan Archer and Wei Chung Wang are fun to watch, not to mention Garrett Cooper's absolute dominance at AAA after quietly putting up good stats for years. There will always be more failures than successes in the minors, but there are a lot of prospects looking good right now throughout our system.

Did not realize that Perez had fallen off a cliff since April when it came to taking walks. That's concerning, I had hopes after April that he had really improved in K:BB, but seems like he's reverted back to the way he was last year. His WAR of 1.6 kinda speaks for itself though doesn't it? He's providing tremendous value to this team, and I never expected him to suddenly be an actual #3 hitter. On a competing Brewers team, I would hope he'd be a well above average #6/#7 guy. Arcia's offense has really started coming around, he's shown a lot of improvement apart from the low amount of XBH, but his OBP has improved each month this season, he's as-advertised-gold-glove-calibre at SS, and he's still very young. I'm hoping he can keep improving this summer and have a real breakout year next year at the plate, but if he was at .750 OPS for his career in Milwaukee I'd consider that to be a success. We have more than enough leadoff-type guys coming up through the minors that Arcia will probably always be our #8 anyways.

I guess to be fair, someone had to go to get Guerra up. It probably would've been Franklin. At this point, I would wager that they have an exact date at which they are willing to call up Brinson or other top prospects, and they have not hit that date yet. That date is probably sometime in early to mid June. Once that date happens, they probably DFA Franklin and call someone up if there's a need, but they seem to be adhering to some kind of plan to not bring Brinson up at this point when he would be allowed more regular playing time.

I think the good problem to have right now is that while all these guys are pretty much raking at AAA, the MLB guys are no slouches either, which means we are fortunate that we can trade some of them at their premium value and get something of value in return. Cooper is always a guy I've heralded but the 1B picture has gotten a lot more crowded in the past few months, with both Thames and Aguilar making strong cases for sticking around long term. Cooper probably doesn't have much trade value given his non-prospect status (although I'm guessing he could creep into top 30 lists if he continues like he's been going), but I do think he could have value for us at the big league level, so that probably means looking to trade Aguilar at some point, and look what we were able to get for Jason Rogers after he had a similar breakout performance (and honestly I think Aguilar could have more value than Rogers). Thames seems like he has the potential to be a franchise player, and we have him locked up cheap, I'd hate to trade him. If Cooper can play some corner OF as a backup in addition to backing up 1B, I'd like to see him get a shot at some point this year or next year. As for the outfield, the odds of trading Braun are slim at best, and I'm a big Santana supporter and think he has what it takes to stick in RF for the long haul (although I'd prefer him in LF). Broxton is terrific too but given our depth of center fielders, he seems like the best one to trade, and I would think he'd have tremendous value to the right team. Trading prospects will never get you top value because there's still the chance they just never produce in the big leagues, plus I really do think Brinson has the potential to be the best outfielder on the roster in a couple years, not just better than Broxton, and Phillips/Cordell provide a lot of cover in case of extended injury to Braun or as backups to Santana if he regresses. So for now, the two guys I'd think about trading would be Broxton (as soon as the trade deadline this year) and Aguilar (want him to get enough ABs to be of value to someone and not be seen as an unproven risk, so would probably wait to deal him in the offseason if we think Cooper is a real possibility to backup Thames).

Seconded.

The more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with this opinion. There's enough talent at the major league level and the upper minors that promoting these guys too fast could stunt their development. You want them to believe that they're just a phone call away once they get up to AA and AAA and honestly that's just not the case this season or probably next season because the position players on the Brewers right now are more than holding their own in almost all cases. Perez is actually the guy they should all hate because at this point even an injury to a starter doesn't guarantee a call up. The bright side of this is that we can be more patient with letting these young guys develop, let them experience full years at each level, stay with the same teammates, maybe build a few winning minor league teams and let them get their feet under them before moving up. A lot of these guys are pretty young for their levels, so there's not that much rush. I also agree that the pitching situation is different and we can really use all the help we can get there. In the next 2 years there's going to be a lot of turnover to that Major League rotation, since at this point it seems unlikely that any of them who are currently there make it through this rebuild, so getting guys up through the minors is a little more urgent to help support the young position core that we have right now. Looks like Supak already got the call, so hopefully Burnes is next, and maybe Ponce soon after.

Rodriguez is interesting to me because yes his numbers look great this year but he seems pretty old for a guy just out of rookie ball, especially coming from the DSL. That seems to be because he wasn't even in our system until he was college grad age, but I'm not sure why it took him that long to start playing (American) pro ball since that seems unusual for international players. Anybody know more about him? I'd be inclined to say just let him produce for a full year at Carolina but given the fact that he is already 24, a promotion to AA at some point midseason seems warranted to see if he can produce at the higher levels.

AA has quite a lot of starters, I'm curious what they're going to do if they're calling Burnes up. At the same time, A+ has a lot of starters too, so you'd think someone would be moving up to make room for Supak. With all the interesting pitching prospects in our system right now, it's weird that our biggest problem seems to be trying to find innings for all of them. Might be time to start considering moves to the bullpen for them, but I don't think they did that midseason with anyone last year, and especially for young guys it might make more sense to wait until the offseason to spring that change on them. Interesting that Lopez appeared in relief yesterday and stunk it up (0.1 IP, 5 runs allowed I think). Someone on Twitter said they were just skipping a start for him, but wonder if he might go on the DL and Burnes would take his spot? No matter what, the hopes of Lopez turning it around and taking Milwaukee by storm have been put on the back burner given his massive struggles of late.

Clearly they're going to have a discussion about what to do since they didn't announce it last night, but the obvious move does seem like Braun to DL, Guerra takes his spot. I think we're getting to the point though where Sogard is going to stay on the roster because he has no options left and that leaves very little reason to keep Franklin. I would also like Perez to keep his flexibility and give guys days off everywhere and kinda don't want him just stuck in LF for the next 2 weeks (or longer, sounds like Braun could be out longer than 10 days on this one, re-aggravating the injury means they will probably be extra careful with him). I think this is the perfect time to give Brinson a tryout, a guaranteed window to give him some regular playing time (if he struggles, let Perez take a few starts out there) and then you can send him down for a few weeks when Braun comes back. It's entirely possible we're already past the Super 2 window, although the org would obviously like to play it safe there. So even though I think Guerra taking Braun's spot on the 25-man is the obvious move, I would also DFA Franklin and call up Brinson, since Sogard is effectively providing that bench spot that Franklin was being used for already.

I think Williams isn't on the list because of TJ, and you just don't know how he'll bounce back from that, plus his age was a concern. After his performance so far, if he can keep that up I'm sure there will be a lot of yeast to his rankings by the end of the season. Hoping Burnes can put together a Woodruff-like year between A+ and AA this year and find a spot in the top 10 by 2018.

Two top 100's is what the White Sox got for Adam Eaton. Jeffress was a glorified setup guy with not a super long track record, and Lucroy had a year and a half of control left. Quintana is a proven innings eater with a remarkably consistent ERA in the low 3's over years with cheap control for 3 1/2 years. He's going to get a bigger package on his own than we got for Lucroy/Jeffress for sure. Brinson's going to be untouchable in trade talks, but I would think the Brewers would have to put together an offer of 4-5 prospects in order to get Quintana or at least be competitive with other teams' offers. Probably something like Ray, Hader, F Peralta, plus one of Cordell/Phillips/Broxton. Probably include a near major league ready reliever as well like Tristan Archer. I guess the question is: would that be worth it? I feel like we'd be giving up a future star in Ray but how many future stars do we need in 3 outfield spots? Braun/Brinson/Santana seems like a pretty awesome outfield to me, with plenty of backups to choose from from who we didn't trade. Broxton is expendable and seems like a great choice to include in a package for TOR pitching. Peralta is far from a sure thing, and seems like the kind of prospect you could get away with flipping, also we'd be selling high on him seeing as we got him for Adam Lind. I'd hate to lose Hader, but the risk involved in getting 4-6 years of a dominant Hader vs. including him in a deal to get 3 1/2 years of a proven Quintana seems like an ok risk to me. I'm not sure I'd like to offer much more than this proposed package though, and honestly this would probably be a losing trade for us in the long run in terms of WAR, but sooner or later some of these prospects have to be flipped for pitching. We can't have 7 outfielders on the team.

Did I miss something? Is Arcia a member of our bullpen?

Saw something somewhere that said he is day to day, so they're probably just being safe with him, maybe similar to Shaw just let the swelling go down. Looks like the Sky Sox offense is doing ok though, just put up a 6-run inning.

With all this talk about whether or not we should be buyers or sellers, I hope we don't end up just choosing one of those, or worse, doing neither. We have pieces that make sense to sell right now (Braun or Broxton to open up a spot for an extended tryout of Brinson, Matt Garza), and it'd be disappointing if we couldn't use the second half of this year to start bringing up some talented prospects and see if we can really push this team to the next level. At the same time, I think if we're going to keep competitive this year then there's no reason not to consider some upgrades at pitching, whether it be in the rotation or in the bullpen. Disappointing that it looks like Feliz is going to be a bust, but he was a $5M chance that might not pan out, and things could be a lot worse.

I more meant he'd be the centerpiece of a package we'd put together in order to get pitching.

Nottingham certainly turning it around this month so far: .283/.389/.413 in May, .382 BABIP but his season BABIP is .275 even with the recent lucky surge, so any luck he's had recently is outweighed by the bad luck he suffered in April. 26/10 K/BB ratio for the season (12/6 in May) is pretty good for a guy who had 138/29 last year (95/36 would be his projections for this year based on # of PAs from last year). No homers yet this year, but he's getting his swing back and if he has improved behind the plate a bit, that all sounds like positive news for Nottingham after last season. Houle is forcing their hand in Biloxi by playing pretty well, so Nottingham seems to be getting more time at 1B/DH now, something to keep an eye on. Definitely a guy to keep an eye on for the rest of the season.

This cold theory is definitely something to keep an eye on going forward. Hopefully he'll have a nice homestand and the theory can continue.

I think Garcia and Houle made enough of an impression that they could take on backup catching duties over the next couple years (Susac seems kinda like a bust so far, but still holding out a little hope for him). Bandy seems like he has taken a step forward this year offensively. Not sure what to think yet about his defense (Pina definitely looks better there), but he's certainly looking like he'd be more valuable in a trade now (I mean holy hell we only gave up a light hitting backup catcher who costs more for less control and a nobody reliever who probably isn't even good enough to be a AAAA guy - Angles gave up Bandy for nothing). My guess is a trade now makes zero sense. Let them play this out for a whole year, see if one guy distinguishes himself, and if you still have something going with both guys at the end of the year, don't be afraid to maximize value while you can and maybe include him in a trade for something bigger. If whoever is left behind can't hold onto the job from there, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it but honestly Pina looks like the real deal to me ever since he joined our organization, no matter how old he is.

I think Arcia is too young to give up on and has real potential to develop at the plate (hell, look at Cozart and how long it took him). I think if Melvin were still in charge, it wouldn't surprise me to see a straight up trade Cozart for Arcia. I think if Arcia had another year under his belt and was still performing the way he is, I'd consider this deal, but renting Cozart for half a year just seems too risky to give up anything of value for him. If the market on him softens considerably and a couple prospects toward the bottom of our top 30 could get it done, I'd consider it, but not sure who I'd want those prospects to be to make it worthwhile.

I'm actually fine with digging into our farm system this year in order to bring back someone like Quintana or Cole, but I don't want to get in a bidding war over any of these guys, so I'd probably want to wait and see what's left after the Astros and Yankees have their say. I don't want to have to blow a team away in order to get what we want, and I'm sure Stearns doesn't want to either. The advantage of trading for a controllable pitcher however is that if we end up failing in the 2nd half of the season, we can still get back 75% of the prospect price we paid by trading the pitcher away next year. I do think we have to be careful with who we're trading though. Middle infield is an area of relative weakness right now at the top levels of the minors, and I'd hate to give away either Dubon or Diaz right now. Outfield, on the other hand, is an area of extreme depth right now. I think that Broxton would be a good idea to shop around trying to get pitching in return, and Cordell's season so far at AAA has raised his value considerably (maybe the most well rounded hitter on the team right now in addition to playing 4 positions well). I'm honestly kinda liking the idea of including Broxton and Supak in a trade just so we can say that we got Quintana for a package of Ryan Cordell, Lucas Erceg, and Jason Rogers But I third the notion that I'm literally fine with whatever Stearns does. The man has a KILLER track record so far.

If it were up to me, these are all the promotions I would be looking to make sometime between June 1 and July 31, assuming there's room on the new team's roster/rotation (for example, Brinson to majors if there's playing time available, Ortiz/Wilkerson to AAA if there'd be room for them in the rotation). I'm more going on whether or not I think these players have proven themselves at their current level and are ready for the next one: AAA to Majors: Brinson, Woodruff, Cooper, Cordell, Wren, Espino, Cravy, Wang, Suter, Blazek, Archer (obviously I think we have a lot of guys who are ready to contribute, but many are blocked by guys who are doing pretty well right now, so not sure how this will shake out) AA to AAA: Dubon, Ortiz, Derby, Ramirez, Ramsey (this guy needs to get up, he's been killing AA for a few years now), Ventura (he was moved up to replace Espino, I'm assuming he'll be sent back to AA now that Espino's coming back) AA to Majors: Lopez, Wilkerson A+ to AA: Gatewood, Diaz, Ray, Clark, Burnes, Ponce, Peralta, Griep A to A+: Supak (Orimiloye and Feliciano are doing great but both too young and unproven to promote, would rather see them have a full good year in Appleton before promoting), Harrison (let him get out of Appleton, even though he's been struggling, he needs to be shown that we have some faith in him similar to Brett Phillips this year). Obviously a lot of these guys aren't getting promoted this quickly, just due to not having space on the new team for them to get playing time. But we'll see how it all shakes out in June/July. The no brainers to me are (in order): 1. Corbin Burnes to AA 2. Trey Supak to A+ 3. Jake Gatewood to AA 4. Isan Diaz to AA 5. Mauricio Dubon to AAA Burnes/Supak and Diaz/Dubon make sense because one gets moved up and the other follows behind to take their place. As for Gatewood, he wouldn't really be taking any playing time away from any important prospects at AA, but I'm not immediately sure who would replace him at A+. In the interest of moving Corey Ray forward, I think a midseason promotion for him is coming, and let Monte Harrison pick up the slack there at A+. I'm sure there are a lot more complicated conversations happening for stuff like this, in terms of you probably want balance to all your minor league teams but you don't want to stunt development, and it's a case-by-case basis with more information on these players than I can glean from a stat sheet. Always exciting to see guys get moved up though.

Moving him to the bottom of the order means he'll get a lot less good pitches to hit. I remember JJ Hardy struggling mightily in the 8-hole, but having a lot of success in the 2-hole where he was much more likely to get better pitches because of who was batting behind him. I'd like to see an in depth article that digs deep into advanced stats talking about Villar this year vs. last year because I want to know if there's anything significant that has stood out about his awful start this year. After Braun gets back I think it serves the team best to have Perez/Sogard/Arcia/Villar all splitting time at SS/2B.

Guerra's second rehab start is tonight, and we have an off day on Monday which means he'd be lined up perfectly to start on Thursday which would be Espino's next start, so it's pretty obvious that Espino is headed back down. The only chance he probably has is if Anderson pitches poorly again today. If that happens, maybe they send Anderson down to work things out and either give Espino or Guerra an extra day rest and let them start on Friday. But that would be an awfully tight leash to pull on Anderson given his great April and the fact that he's only had like 3 bad starts (I guess today would make it 4 in this case). To send down Anderson you'd have to be pretty convinced there's something wrong with him to give his spot to a career minor leaguer who only went 4 innings in his first start. Nelson and Davies saved themselves for now and one of them was probably the best chance Espino had at sticking around after Guerra came back. Unless they want to send Espino to the pen, I'd say he's pretty likely going back down.