Greenleaf1

Jacob Barnes wasn't a top 30 prospect for us (or maybe just barely was at some point) and looks like he could be our closer by 2018. Relief prospects don't get a lot of love on those top 30 lists, but that doesn't mean Farris won't be valuable.

I'll only be concerned about Braun's salary when it affects our other moves, which it won't for a few years yet because we aren't spending money on anybody else. We also stand to gain even more flexibility than we already have when Garza's contract comes off the books, but honestly we have so much flexibility right now anyways that this isn't really worth worrying about yet. I'm concerned about the logjam in the outfield too, especially since it could start as soon as this year (I think Santana's a stud, and Broxton looked pretty studly at the end of last year too, that leaves nowhere for Brinson to play regularly), and I would love to have a raking outfield of Broxton/Santana/Brinson for $1.5M/year, trade Braun for a few more great prospects plus save $20M/year, but right now none of what I just said is a given and that money savings doesn't matter that much in 2017 so until we have 3 young controllable outfielders who can start every day, I wouldn't worry about not trading Braun. Every year that Braun continues to perform and his contract gets smaller, he will become more valuable. Just because he has full no trade rights doesn't mean that he won't be traded. I think he likes Milwaukee and would love to stay here, but I also think there are plenty of teams he would waive his no trade clause for given the right incentive. It would've been nice to open up our crowded outfield a little bit, but for now we have a great outfielder making market price on a team that doesn't need to save money and could use a veteran presence around all the youngsters. Keeping Braun or trading Braun this offseason was a win/win I think.

Adrianza is versatile but so is our infield. We're pretty well covered on the 40-man at 2B/SS/3B right now, I didn't see much reason to keep Adrianza. 1B on the other hand is potentially an area of extreme weakness on our 40-man with no real prospects in sight (I love Garrett Cooper probably more than 90% of the people on this forum but his realistic chances of being an everyday 1B are slim). If Thames doesn't work out or can't hit lefties, we're going to need a righty 1B who can platoon with him. Aguilar makes way more sense to me right now on the 40-man over Adrianza. Perez can't play both 1B AND 3B against lefties. Also I don't see how all these moves are wasting time and money. Any money spent on waiver claims pales in comparison to money spent on other things, and it's the offseason so I don't see what exactly a waiver claim is taking time away from. There's more than enough hours in the day any time of year for Stearns to check the waiver wire. Also he has people working for him I'm sure that do the legwork on this stuff. He's doing everything he can to accumulate talent in our organization. And acting like Liriano has such a higher chance of being a contributor over Aguilar seems like nonsense to me. I thought Scahill would provide nice bullpen depth but I'm not exactly lamenting his loss. We aren't even talking about the 25th man here, we're talking about the 40th man who likely won't even be on the 25-man roster when all is said and done. I know it's the offseason and we don't have much to talk about but complaining about Stearns here seems like much ado about nothing to me.

MLBRosterMoves ‏@MLBRosterMoves .@Cubs acquire RHP Eddie Butler, international bonus slot No. 74 from @Rockies for RHP James Farris, int'l bonus slot No. 28. #HotStove

Hi all, Not sure if this is allowed but I was planning on going to Spring Training this year until some family stuff came up and I won't be able to go. Unfortunately I had already bought tickets so trying to offload them. If anyone is looking for a deal on tickets, I can sell them to you for less than face value. Here's a list of what I have (they're all for the first week of ST). I have 2 tickets for each game: Saturday 2/25: Brewers at Angels | 18 Row F Seats 18, 19 | $21.00/ticket Monday 2/27: Brewers at Rangers | 105 Row E Seats 15, 16 | $27.00/ticket Tuesday 2/28: Royals at Brewers | 115 Row W Seats 19, 20 | $13.00/ticket Wednesday 3/1: Reds at Brewers | 105 Row J Seats 12, 13 | $22.00/ticket Thursday 3/2: Brewers at Mariners | 210 Row BB Seats 1, 2 | $18.00/ticket Friday 3/3: Brewers at Angels | 4 Row F Seats 14, 15 | $22.00/ticket If you're interested in multiple games (or all of them) I can give you a better price too. Apologies if this isn't allowed, but just trying to offload these tickets to somebody who would enjoy them.

Based on looking and realizing that there isn't a lot of room (or necessity) for a backup utility infielder on our roster to start the year, I'm guessing this is a minor league depth move and they're going to try to DFA him. If someone else claims him so be it I guess.

Can play all over the infield but no power. Hit for average in the minors and walks a good bit. Could be a good spring option for backup utility infielder (he played 2B/SS/3B last year). On the other hand, he's had multiple shots at the big leagues in SF and has not shown that he can hit at all (.605 OPS in 291 MLB AB's). I haven't looked that hard at bench options to start the year, but maybe he's going to compete with Rivera for that backup utility IF position?

I was surprised that Scahill got DFA'd since he seemed at the end of last year like he could maybe make the team again, but with the Feliz signing and all the different rotation options, my guess is Scahill was looking at about 10th on the bullpen depth chart anyways. Still kinda hope we hold onto him in AAA. He's nothing special but would be nice to have someone like him to call up in case of (probably multiple) injuries. Now to look at Adrianza's Baseball Reference page and find out who he is......

I'm not really sure who he's blocking for a spot on the 25-man to start the year, as we don't have a lot of bench-type guys on the 40-man, so I don't think it's much of a problem to pay him a couple million to be Villar's backup and a veteran bat off the bench. If he has some positional flexibility that could help for pinch hitting situations late in games. If he could play LF or SS in a pinch, that does provide some value (although probably not that much when we've already got Perez/Villar who can play all over if needed). He'll either show something in limited time and get traded for almost nothing or when we need his spot we'll option him and non-tender him after the season. His year will almost certainly be unspectacular, but we don't really lose anything by having him around because he doesn't make enough to be that big of a deal. I believe we tendered him before the Thornburg/Shaw deal happened, and if that had happened first he probably wouldn't have been tendered, but just call it a $2.5M mistake for the Brewers and move on, I guess?

This is great news. They obviously made a big push after losing Brevard County to make sure we weren't stuck in another terrible development environment for High A, and this only further proves that the organization is taking this situation seriously for the future development of prospects. Colorado is just a really crappy situation we were obviously going to continue to be stuck in for 2 years, but if we can lock up Carolina, we've already got strong positions in Biloxi and Appleton, this will allow the organization to focus on getting out of Colorado Springs for 2019. As for Carolina itself, it'll be nice for our A-ball hitters, especially power hitters like Diaz, to play in an environment that is more balanced. BC seems like it was where power hitting prospects go to die. Also, this might be a stretch, but I wonder if this is an indicator that the organization is concerned about our young pitchers spending too much time in Colorado Springs before being called up to the majors. Wouldn't be surprised to see guys like Ortiz/Woodruff/Lopez/Jungmann stay in AA until they get called up to the bigs. Based on how he looked at the end of last year, Peralta's terrible numbers at CS are another good data point towards proving that CS numbers mean nothing. Hopefully hitters AND pitchers won't develop too many bad habits in that environment.

30. Corey Ray 18. Lewis Brinson Well that wasn't as fun to watch as I was hoping for.

Only 5 Brewers on the MLB.com Top 100 65. Isan Diaz 62. Luis Ortiz 38. Josh Hader Not done announcing yet but I'm sure Ray/Brinson will be yet to come. Not a great showing for us. I'm guessing Bickford is off mostly because of the suspension. Clark/Phillips just didn't have strong enough showings in 2016.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2017/01/26/gennett-ready-battle-job-brewers-camp/97012124/ Very interesting article. Scooter could certainly enhance his value to us or another team in a trade if he shows any sort of ability at shortstop or in the outfield. If Arcia struggles though, Villar would more likely get ABs against righties and Scooter would play 2B anyways, so I'm not really sure what value he provides at SS (would rather have Perez there on off days for Arcia too).

The outfield is so interesting because I think by about 2019 we have the possibility of 5 OF with AS potential, at least in my opinion (Braun, Broxton, Santana, Brinson, Ray) with quite a few other options for backups (Cordell, Perez, Phillips). I'd be very surprised if we didn't have somewhere near the best outfield in baseball within a couple years. I know nobody's a sure thing but there's so much talent between those 5 guys that you have to wonder who gets traded. Obviously Braun seems the most likely based on what we'd like but that doesn't seem to be happening.

I'd really like to see what Pina can do, with either Susac or Bandy as the backup to start the year, then just let those 3 figure out who deserves the most playing time. I'm all for trying to sign and flip at positions of need (Hill at 3B, Feliz at closer), but at some point you have to give the new guys a chance.

I think De Leon is not valued lower by the Dodgers, I just think when you're looking for a trade partner, they're going to look at where your depth is and what you can most afford to lose, so De Leon is a great prospect but at an area of depth for the Dodgers so they can more easily get rid of him. So basically everyone will ask for De Leon and if you want what they have to offer you have to be willing to deal him or someone better and they didn't want to deal someone better. In a similar vein, everyone knows we're done with Gennett after trading for Shaw and moving Villar to 2B, so he has absolutely no value on the trade market. You could probably sign a guy for relatively similar cost and performance, so at this point we'd be trading Gennett as a salary dump (which is fine by me) since he won't get enough playing time to try to re-establish himself anyways. Not entirely sure why they even tendered him a contract (or made a deal before they had to) since the writing seemed to be on the wall already that Villar would move to 2B. Gennett might have some value as an add-on in another deal (Guerra?) if you can find the right team with a need at 2B. Maybe it's like the housing crisis where if you package enough of these bad assets together (Gennett/Garza package anyone?) you can send them back to the ratings board and get them AAA-certified (hopefully I'm not the only one here who saw The Big Short).

Apparently there's a club option for 2018 as well according to Twitter. Baseball Reference has a typo or something as it says it's a 2017 team option, but in his salary history at the bottom there's a row for a 2018 option, maybe it doesn't update that until the 2017 option is selected although I'm assuming that happened already so maybe they're just slow to update. 2 years of Forsythe makes a LITTLE more sense than 1 year but this still seems like a dramatic overpayment. Dodgers have so much pitching depth that this doesn't hurt them that badly right now I guess.

1 year of Forsythe for De Leon seems like an absolute steal for the Rays. Also shows how desperate the Dodgers were for a 2B. Really bummed about this.

Nieuwenhuis's role will almost certainly be less than last year. Take his reduced playing time in September/October as a sign of that. Now that Broxton/Santana have shown that they deserve first chance at starting roles to begin the year, and Brinson is knocking on the door as well, Nieuwenhuis should only serve as a replacement for regular days off, and wouldn't likely get much playing time in the event of an injury. Perez also figures to get some of those opportunities against lefties and on the road (unless he settles into a platoon role at 1st or 3rd if Thames/Shaw can't hit lefties, which is honestly pretty likely for at least one of them). Ryan Cordell could be up later in the year too and could take even more time away from Nieuwenhuis. All that said, I'm glad we have him at least to start the year. As people have repeatedly said, finding a cheap 4th OF that can play all 3 positions and have a .700 OPS is not as easy as it might seem. If he continues to kill it at Miller Park then he could have a bench role for a few years yet.

Our problem is really that we have an excessive depth of slightly below average pitchers. We need to use this year to see which ones can stick and perform at an above average level, otherwise we need to give their spot to someone who can. Peralta/Nelson/Anderson are going to need to start showing improvement pretty quickly I would think. Garza gets cut if we can't trade him, I'm guessing. They'll all obviously get a lot more leeway if nobody is knocking on the door from AA/AAA, but with Jungmann/Hader/Lopez/Burgos/Wilkerson all potentially ready (assuming they are pitching well), I would think there's going to be a LOT of turnover this year for pitchers. Having a hard time finding a place for Milone since we already presumably have an abundance of guys who could do long relief in the bullpen. We should at least have a good amount of options for the bullpen to start the year. Normally I'd say that stuff like this works itself out, but I'm a little worried that guys with ML experience who may not be good enough to help us get to the playoffs are going to take precedence over giving younger guys who are ready a chance.

Very hard to predict the rotation right now given all the options, but Spring Training will definitely help clarify this decision. I think right now of the 6 most obvious candidates, Nelson is on the outside looking in, but his upside is a strong #2/#3 guy and we'd hate to give up on that, but sending him to Colorado seems like a bad idea too, and sending him to AA seems like dooming him to failure. I'd go with Guerra/Davies/Garza/Peralta/Anderson, and let Nelson be the long man in the bullpen to start the year. Garza will either prove his worth and get traded or not and get cut (similar to Randy Wolf or Jeff Suppan in the past, Melvin was never afraid to cut a guy in his final year of a contract, I'm guessing Stearns would be the same). Nelson will definitely get a chance in the rotation next year at some point, he's got too much upside to abandon without one last long look. I think Millone needs to wow some people in ST to have any sort of chance in the rotation, and the bullpen honestly seems kinda crammed right now. I'd love it if he would agree to a AAA assignment. I have to think that Stearns is planning some trades between now and the Trade Deadline for starting pitching given how thin the market is, but a lot of his assets there still need some polishing before any team will give up anything of value for them (Nelson, Peralta, Jungmann, Garza). If Guerra weren't such an anomaly he'd be the easiest to move for a decent return right now, but obviously that market hasn't worked out otherwise he'd be gone already. At least the pitching situation this Spring will be interesting to follow....

I agree with reilly, this pick isn't so much about getting an expensive closer when we aren't going to compete, it's more about providing a buffer for our young guys to establish themselves in lower pressure situations and work their way up. In addition, the Brewers need to field a team that doesn't look like a joke in 2017 and can actually win some games, and relying on an entire bullpen of young guys who will likely have some inconsistencies all year is something that, if it goes wrong, could end up costing the Brewers a dozen games over the course of a season. Having a veteran presence to close and also mentor the young guys is really important. I'm very high on this 2017 team, and glad to see moves like this that will help our team get gradually better every year, while not committing any money to future years.

I know we couldn't have gotten quite this much from the Marlins for Guerra, but I wonder if Brewers/Marlins had talks before they decided on Straily instead. Either way this kinda sets the market for Guerra. Either take away the bottom prospect from this deal or replace him with a lesser one, I'd think that Stearns would be expecting that kind of package for Guerra.

Peralta gets $4.275M, no word yet on what Torres gets. Chase Anderson is now the only unsigned arbitration-eligible Brewer for 2017.

Can't remember much about this guy but now the Angels have claimed him so I believe that puts the 40-man back at 39. Embedding the tweet didn't seem to work, but info came from Adam McCalvy via @LAAngelsPR