brewers888

If I was the GM I would know that this is at best the 5th or 6th best team in the National League and plan accordingly. That means trading Burnes, Woodruff if healthy, and Adames if the offers are good. Hopefully Arnold doesn't give away great talent like Mr Met did last deadline when he traded Hader for peanuts. With this lousy lineup I see no good reason to trade prospects for short term gains and think the time has come to trade our soon to be free agents unless of course we can sign Woodruff which we seem to have no interest in doing. Nobody wants to hear this but this is just not a very good team and is only in contention due to a lousy division but pretending this team has what it takes to win a championship would be foolish.

You are conveniently ignoring that Hader has been the nest reliever in baseball over the last few seasons and using a sample of a few weeks to lower his value. No way is a probable 4/5 starter and a likely 5th outfielder a good return for the best relief pitcher in baseball.

Watching these playoffs makes it all the more obvious that we didn't get enough for Hader. Its hard to believe that teams like Toronto, Seattle, and the LAD were not interested in Hader and wouldn't trade more than a probable 5th outfielder, backend starter and awful veteran reliever with an expiring contract for the best reliever in baseball. As for Lamet it was all financial as the Brewers didn't want to pay his contract so the DFA was all about saving money.

The first order of business is to either sign Stearns long term or let him go. The guy has been terrible since the 2021 trade deadline and we cannot trust a lame duck executive to do whats best for the future of this organization. If Stearns wants out let him go and get a proven winner like John Hart or Jeff Luhnow instead of handing the team over to Arnold who is unproven. Luhnow and Hart are both guys with extremely long and successful track records. Luhnow is who I would hire since Hart is probably closer to retirement but if he wants in he should be considered based on what he did in Cleveland and what his Atlanta teams have done since he was forced out.

Offense, defense, and pitching have all been bad but saying the offense has been good is ridiculous. This team has not been good at any phase of the game this season and its why they won't be a playoff team. No McCutchen was not a good signing but this was not a playoff team regardless so it really made no difference.

A big problem is that we never had any position player prospects to supplement the strong home grown pitching staff which forced us to sign free agent scraps like McCutchen.

There is this new thing called trades to get better players but since I am not a GM I do not know who was available. Just as Adames and Rowdy were acquired in trades there were probably guys available that we don't know about and never will but the job of a GM is improving weaknesses and we didn't do nearly enough to improve a lineup that was not nearly good enough to support what looked to be a championship level pitching staff going into this season.

This season was doomed last offseason when ownership went "over budget" to bring in McCutchen thinking that was a move to put us over the top. The lineup was never going to be good enough and then the pitching and defense regressed leaving this a mediocre to bad team.

This team is not a true contender for the rest of the time that we have Burnes and Woodruff under contract so the time has come to move one or even both next offseason. I just hope that either Stearns signs long term or leaves this offseason because we cannot have a lame duck GM making moves that will affect this franchise going forward.

The first order of business this offseason is to either extend Stearns and if he is determined to leave and go back home to the mutts let him go as we cannot afford to have a lame duck executive making moves for the future of a franchise he has no intention of being a part of. If Stearns leaves which I fully expect I would go after Luhnow who has paid enough of a price for what he did with the Astros. Mark A will of course go the cheap route and just let the unproven Matt Arnold run things which could be good or awful as we just have no idea whatsoever what kind of top executive he will be. I would move both Burnes and Woodruff if we can't resign either which is a longshot at best. Hopefully we can get big packages for both specifically some pitching as the system is lacking in good young arms ( stay away from trading for more outfielders as we clearly have enough on the way plus the albatross Yelich who is going nowhere). The window has clearly closed for this group due to ignoring the lineup which pretty much wasted the best starting pitching in team history. If we can do well in the deals for Burnes and Woodruff maybe we take a step back for a year and are ready to contend again by 2024 but the cut and paste short term nonsense signings of guys like McCutchen have to end. Its a shame that we wasted this rotation and the back end of a bullpen with Devin and Hader but we have. Too bad we didn't have all these intriguing position player prospects to compliment the pitching but unfortunately the timing just didn't work out. As much as Stearns has done a good job with this organization he failed miserably at the last seasons trade deadline as well as last offseason and this deadline was another mess. Its time for an overhaul which means its time for Stearns to commit or leave.

Hiura was the teams best hitter against righties so he was slighted when he was demoted. I find it funny how much many fans hate Hiura but go out of their way defending others because they have high exit velocities on their ground balls. Again maybe Kestons numbers were unsustainable but his counting stats were very good and he should have had the opportunity to keep hitting but he isn't a veteran with 10 yrs of experience so he gets sent down while we keep three catchers.

Not interested unless the price is shockingly low which I very much doubt to be the case.

Not interested unless the price is shockingly low which I very much doubt to be the case.

Or maybe the strikeouts will come down and his numbers will improve on what has been a good season for him so far. The bottom line is Hiura put up good numbers and deserved to stay in the lineup till those numbers fell and he was not given that chance. Definitely better for the team to keep a third catcher than our best hitter against right handed pitching.

Any player hitting as well as Hiura has this season deserves the opportunity to keep it up or get sent down if he can't but Keston was not given the opportunity to continue hitting .

All we hear is about unsustainable his results are and if that is indeed the case Hiura will stop hitting and then he can be demoted. At some point actual results matter and Hiura was hitting as well and in most cases better than anyone in this lineup. When analytics overrides actual real life statistics it is going too far and the player in this case Hiura should either keep hitting and only be sent down when his stats go down. Meanwhile other players who aren't doing nearly as well stay in the lineup because they hit 1000 mph ground balls. This organization has shafted Hiura and I hope for his sake he gets traded somewhere and keeps crushing baseballs while we play inferior talent who don't strike out as much but has the greatest exit velocity on ground balls. Its an absolute shame that we sent down the guy who was our best hitter against righties because the analytical geniuses have decided he can't keep it up.

Yelich to me gets a C for getting on base at a good level but no higher due to his complete lack of power and bad defense. Taylor deserves a C for being decent defensively and coming up with clutch hits but I can't go higher due to his awful OBP McCutchen gets a C- for being completely mediocre and the fact that he was our "big" acquisition and he is just not good enough to be playing everyday in the middle of the lineup. He doesn't set the lineup so its obviously not his doing but he is just not an everyday player or middle of the lineup bat for a contending team. Renfroe gets a C for his power and decent enough defense but he's been hurt too much and is another on this team not getting on base enough to receive a higher grade. The outfield overall has been better than the infield but when you consider how much money we have tied up in it the production is not nearly good enough.

These grades are obviously all subjective but this infield as a whole just hasn't played well at all.

Thats fair enough because Buxton is a gold glove caliber center fielder but my comment was about Tellez who is bad defensively and isn't getting on base.

If you have an OBP around .300 you don't get higher than a C in my view.

Don't take this the wrong way but the grades are beyond generous. Rowdy with his .305 OBP and below average defense deserves at best a C and no way a B+. If Wong doesn't get an F I don't know who would but I won't argue too much with a D. I like Adames and appreciate the power and defense but I can't give a grade higher than a C for a player with a .220 average and OBP below .300. Urias deserves a D as he should be a high average, high OBP guy and he has been neither. The infield as a whole deserves a D as not one of these guys has outperformed and Wong in particular has been completely awful.

If they think he is a potential star I get it but how many outfielders does this team need to draft or sign from Latin America. I admit that I haven't seen any of these guys play so its hard to form an opinion about any of these players but I find it hard to believe that the best player available is always an outfielder when the Brewers pick. Pitching is always a need so no issue with picking an arm with big upside and we really need a third base prospect in the worst way so if its a close call I would hope they pick someone other than another outfielder. This organization has been pitiful when it comes to drafting position players which is proven by the fact that we don't have one homegrown everyday starting position player in our lineup. Yes we have Chourio and some other promising guys in the system but this team has done far better drafting pitching and thats the way I would go in round one.

Unless the team feels the player is far and away above the other available talent I would hate to see the Brewers draft yet another outfielder.

Sounds way too much like Ethan Small who apparently at 25 isn't good enough to beat out the likes of Alexander and Chi Chi so I would pass with seemingly limited upside.

Admittedly I only saw a few games with Melendez but he looked like a really good hitter not just a power guy. He's an older college player but its hard to ignore the numbers he put up this season.