Lathund

They show THE BAT projections on the player pages, but their Depth Charts says it's just Steamer and ZiPS there.

I enjoy seeing the Cubs projected for the least pitching fWAR of the entire league. I believe these are the combined ZiPS + Steamer projections though. And to say I'm not a fan of Steamers pitching projections is an understatement. But even so, the Cubs have a *lot* of work to do on their pitching.

I believe much of the reasoning behind drafting the athletic players who are likely to stick at C/SS/CF is chasing upside. One way to illustrate it is that Miguel Sano and Francisco Lindor have the same career wRC+ (119 for Sano, 118 for Lindor), are the same age and have the same amount of service time. Compare their stature in the game and what they're looking to earn going forward. Someone who projects to be Miguel Sano will never become Lindor. Someone with the athleticism to project like a Lindor (or Correa, Seager etc) can still become Miguel Sano. Moving away from those two, that only serve to illustrate the general point, when you draft someone who already at age 18-20 has been relegated to a corner spot despite being the most gifted hitter on the team, that's a bit of a worry. They have nowhere else to go if the bat doesn't reach like the upper echelons of the projections. So they have to be some hitter. And the "sure things" (as far as pure hitting goes) are rare, and they go off the board very early. Then there's the physical maturity aspect brought up already; you're not looking for what a draftee can do now, against their current level of competitiion. But trying to project several years forward against the best players in the world. The scrawny kid with a good feel for the strikezone and elite defense might find some more power as he grows. The slugger 1B type won't go the other direction, even if he might be a slightly better bet with the bat. So you tend to take Mario Feliciano types over Daniel Vogelbach types (Both were drafted around 70 overall), even if Vogelbach was the better hitter right then and there. One can get a sense of what the Brewers generally are trying to do: Go for upside with their position players, athletic up the middle players with high potential but risky hit tool or some other flaw (Or else they'd be top 5 picks already). Trust in their pitching development, try to find value in things like deception, funky arm slots, value guys who are willing and have the capability to tinker and adjust, and don't necessarily spend the high draft picks on them or spend free agent money at market value for pitching. Trust that you can identify and acquire the role players without spending big. But even with that, I think one can see signs that they're not rigid in this, and will go for their highest rated players regardless. Ethan Small isn't an up the middle toolsy guy, Keston Hiura was picked where he was due to being perhaps the best hitter still on the board. It's always about value. As an aside to that, over and over I keep coming back to how concepts I learned playing Poker (But are ofc in use in many other fields as well) seem to apply so well to explaining the rationale between the different ways different front offices operate. There is especially much overlap between the fundamental theories of poker and how the analytical front offices (like the Brewers) operate.

$90m/6 years is the number I see being reported. $15m per year should be very good value over the next couple years at least. And it's not a crippling number to a team like the Yankees on the back end. I suspect it's a matter of DJ wanting a certain total dollar amount. Yankees probably didn't want to go beyond 4 years, but stretching it to 6 makes the AAV low enough that it makes sense. A lower AAV in the most productive years helps them put a better team out alongside him.

I'm optimistic about Urias. I liked his defense, and with missing both "preseasons" (especially with the hamate fracture, which tend to sap power) I expect a lot more from him offensively. How much more is hard to say, but I think he will, at a minimum, hit enough for his defense to make him an average starter, or ~2 WAR if given regular playing time. His minor league performances suggest even more, but I'll stick to the lower end of what's reasonable for now.

I never understood the Jace Peterson "hate", or dislike, call it what you want that I saw last year. His 113 wRC+ made him one of the most productive offense players on the team (Sad as that is to say), and he played passable defense at a number of posititions. Was that offensive output sustainable? Would he keep walking at a 25% clip? Most likely not; but for a low salary 1-year signing that didn't matter. He ended up a useful player for us. Will he do it again? Who knows, but he's on a minor league deal so costs (almost) nothing to find out. There aren't a ton of actual position player prospects who will start the year in AAA. So filling up AAA with Lopes, Peterson, Green, Reys, Cozens, Westbrook etc, isn't really blocking any of our top prospects. Most of these guys are still in their mid 20s, and have at one point or another been high draft picks and/or have had success in the upper minors or briefly in the majors. None have had sustained success, or they wouldn't be available to sign on minor league deals, but I like the strategy (Or what seems like one anyway) of finding these guys you think have upside, and see if your player development can help make that happen. They've done so well with sorting out pitching development, hopefully we can start seeing the same thing on the offensive side at some point.

League average offense (97 wRC+) with solid defense at 2B/SS will usually get you a major league deal if there's multiple teams interested. If he played another position (except CF/C) with those numbers, probably not. As always though it's more about what the front office expects going forward rather than what has happened in the past. What that is with Robertson I have no idea, I didn't know who he was. And I thought we had signed RP David Robertson. But he's 26, and has at least some past success. Something about his game makes them think he can do that again. Or perhaps they just wanted a more experienced player to fill the utility role. This team likes to not use a 5th OF and instead have a primarily infield utility guy who can fill in there short-term. Perez, Franklin, Holt, Peterson, Mathias, Sogard are all examples in recent yearsa.

DJ won't be a Brewer, though it would be fun to see the reactions if it did happen. I saw some data a while back on his spray chart, and where he hit his HRs. Basically he benefited immensely from that short porch in Yankee Stadium. He's still a very good hitter without the extra power provided by that, but not the kind of guy you want to pay $20m to at 37. Wouldn't surprise me if that played into it, DJ quite naturally wants to get paid based on his numbers the last two years (And he cut his strikeout rate a ton too this year, so it's not as if he didn't also get better in some ways), but perhaps teams don't fully buy into it. In addition to the usual aging concerns. I'd still expect to see him back with the Yankees.

Marwin Gonzalez is a career 99 wRC+ hitter, and even that is largely due to a trashcan-aided 2017 (144 wRC+, been nowhere near that before or since). He's fine as a utility man, but 2nd in the order should be your best, or at least one of your 3 best, hitters. I hope he is not that. I think Tommy LaStella would fit perfectly at 3B as well as able to provide a LHB at 2B when needed. Fangraphs prediction was 2/17, the median crowdsourced projection there was 2/14. Probably on the high end of what the team might be willing to shell out, but well worth it IMO. In addition to that, a RHH 1B, ideally someone who can play 3B too. Cron is a good option for a pure 1B. Wouldn't mind a Jedd Gyorko reunion either; can play both 1B and 3B well. If it happens I would imagine it would have to be less then $3.5m, or they'd have kept him at that cost with the team option. If resources are limited (As I imagine they are), 1B and 3B is where I'd focus everything. I trust they'll be able to find some servicable relievers on minor league or league minimum deals (Like Yardley this year) for depth. I'd still look to trade Hader if the right deal presents itself, which might or might not fill 1B or 3B, and retaining both Piña and Narvaez makes me think a catcher trade is in order, and I'm more and more starting to think it's Nottingham. But could be anyone, their catcher moves already surprised me so I could very well be wrong again.

Agreed. No team could win the WS by signing a 3B with 93 wRC+ and so-so defense and just magically hope he gets better. Or a utility guy who put up 70 wRC+ in his first two years who even the Oakland A's sent to the minors for a whole year and then released. Or a reliever in his 30s coming off an almost 5 ERA season. No, better stay away from Justin Turner, Max Muncy and Blake Treinen. Dodgers of course had many other players who were acquired under different circumstances too, but they are where they are because in addition to having all the money in the world to sign Mookie Betts or extend Clayton Kershaw, they still look for improvements whereever they can find it. A reasonably point would be to say you can't sign "only" reclamation projects. But you can, and should, look to find the players among the overlooked and unwanted who actually can be good players still. I would say that for any team with a substantially lower payroll than the richest teams, that's what you *have* to do to even have a chance. If you only ever pay market value (or more) for established players and "sure things", you will lose to a team that does the same but spends more.

Offseason has been quiet overall. In addition to that, Brewers generally keep things under wrap until a deal is actually done. Yelich, Cain and Grandal all came out of if not nowhere, then at least deep left field in one of those old extremely large ballparks from the 19th century. EDIT: Not that I expect signings of that magnitude, just pointing out that even the big deals don't get talked much about until they actually happen. As for reclamation projects: That it didn't work once is not a reason to not do it again. It's the nature of it, if it was a given (Or at least very likely) that the player would do well it wouldn't be a reclamation project, and the contract cost would reflect that as more teams would be interested. You accept a relatively high failure rate because the upside of a success is high. I would also argue that out of the signings made last offseason, only Gyorko (After an injury-marred 2019) was a reclamation project. Sogard and Narvaez were coming off their career best seasons, Garcia off his second best one, Brock Holt was being Brock Holt. Smoak had a dropoff between '18 and '19, but that seemed largely BABIP-driven when in fact his walk rate, strikeout rate and exit velo had all improved. So he would at most be a "buy low". And the reclamation project among them was the one who performed, by far, the best.

Steamer's batter projections can be decent enough, but I'm not at all a fan of their pitching projections. They seem to just straight up regress everyone towards the mean no matter the underlying context. Which is something that, on the whole, gives low deviations since that's usually what happens overall. But it's quite useless for individual projections. ZiPS is released for every team except the Pirates (Should be any day now), that's what I'd use. PECOTA is good too, but won't be released for a while yet. ZiPS is much higher on Hader. As for J.D Davis, two things; Firstly Steamer uses fWAR not rWAR. By fWAR he had 2.4 in 453 PAs in 2019, and of course 2020 was just 200-odd PAs for any full time player. If their underlying numbers don't scream "fluke" then a 2 WAR projection with 550 PAs seems very reasonable. I agree that on the whole WAR isn't perfect for relivers. But fWAR takes leverage into account, and I believe WARP does too. And of course it *should* downgrade relievers because they don't pitch many innings, question is just how much.

I don't even know what the Wash/Negative/Positive is in relation to? Comparing the positions to 2020? Compared to replacement level? Compared to league average? Compard to the rest of the NLC? That offense has career wRC+ of 108, 103, 117, 71, 75, 102, 106 and 135. Equally weighted, that's an average of 102. That's more than last years NLC division winner had. Now of course career average isn't the same as what they'll do next year. I think it's reasonable to expect some to do better than that (Urias is my main bet) and some to do worse (Cain being the obvious one). But even so, take a projection system like ZiPS and it projects the offense (OPS+ instead of wRC+, but they're usually extremely close) as: 94, 112, 102, 80, 90, 98, 92, 135. For an average of 100. Still better than last years NLC winner. Of course this takes into account neither the bench players or any eventual signings, and it's an overly simplified analysis. But you're simply reading way too much into the very small and, due to the circumstances, very weird sample of 2020 baseball, and taking the most negative outcome from it. I certainly don't disagree with needing big improvements at 1B and 3B, but the team is in a far better position relative to the division than most fans seem to realise. That's a sad indictment of the division at the moment more than this team being good, but as far as dvision standings go only the relative, not absolute, quality of the teams matter.

If you're going to assume we'll just throw that money away and get nothing for it, then yeah make the trade. I just don't think that's a fair assumption to make. But if you don't believe in free agents, then let's trade the same prospects for the best available 3B instead. Because catcher is still the wrong spot to spend resources on, as Brewers are already league-average or better there. Spend what's likely to be the majority of the money and prospect capital we're likely to spend this offseason on Contreras, and we'll have noone on the corners. When looking at a trade you also need to look at what we already have at the positions in question, and how it further impacts the squad. Contreras simply replaces a catcher on the roster (Probably Piña). That's an improvement, but a lot less than you probably think due to how much better of a defender Manny is. And it does nothing for any other position on the field (Contreras has a combined 36 innings between 1B, 3B and LF/RF over the past three years). Adding a 3B is adding to a position where Brewers currently have Urias starting and noone with any major league experience (Or a highly ranked prospect either) backing him up. In addition to whatever effect that strictly has on 3B, it also means Urias can play more SS and 2B (which also pushes whoever would've been the middle IF backup down a notch) and that in turn means Hiura can DH (Or play 1B, tho I don't think they go that route) some more. Adding a 1B means Vogelbach can mostly DH instead, improving the production from both DH and 1B (I'm fairly certain there will be a DH in 2021. If nothing else, it would allow a platoon and a better bench). Contreras might be a 3 WAR catcher in a vacuum (He has never reached that by either fWAR or WARP, but let's be generous), but he would add less to the team than a 2 WAR third baseman would. With the knock-on effects, I think even a 1 WAR third baseman might add similar value. In a vacuum trading for Contreras is fine. In a situation where there would be money left to spend after making the trade, it's fine. When there is no other money to spend and it's trading two of the top 5 prospects in an already weak farm for a player who plays in a position that's not even in the top 5 positional needs the team has, it's not fine.

I wouldn't be interested in any of the swaps proposed on here. It's also not just about the prospects vs Contreras, you also need to take the opportunity cost of the ~$6m (And probably $8-9m at least in 2022) Contreras is due. So is two years of Contreras going to be worth more to the Brewers than the potential 12 years of Turang + Feliciano? Reasonable people can disagree, and we're all just making more or less informed guesses, but a strong case can be made for the trade just looking at it that way. However, the $6m + $8m needs to factor in too. So assuming that money is there (There would be no trade either if it wasn't), I think Brewers get more out of spending that on 1B and 3B while holding on to their prospects. Even with Narvaez' struggles with the bat, Brewers put up above average production at C, and are likely to do so again. Whereas right now, Urias and Vogelbach are the corner IF starters, backed up by, I guess, Lucas Erceg, Mark Mathias, Dustin Peterson and Zach Green. Now if we could expect the Brewers to have $15m or more to spend, then I might have a different opinion as you could strengthen both areas. But with what seems like tight pursestrings, I think it'd be a mistake to use what little money there is on Contreras. And this is from the perspective of not being very high on Turang and Feliciano. If one was to think it more likely than not that they're average starters or better, the idea would fall even sooner. I've also realised that I generally find myself not liking many trades for players with 2 years of control remaining. Seems to me like the asking price is rarely all that much less than for 3+ years, and you not only get fewer games from the player, but also pay more on average. I much prefere more longer term trades even if it costs, or opportunistic rentals. The inbetween doesn't seem all that great most of the time.

Brewers have a very good chance to win the NL Central this upcoming season. A lot hinges on what they do with the corner infield spots of course (And whatever moves, whether addition or subtraction, happens around the division), but honestly even with the rosters they are right now, I'd give the Brewers a good chance. Brewers pitching last year was very good; only 11th going by ERA-, but tied for 2nd in FIP- and T-1st for xFIP-. Combine that with the joint highest groundball % and the lowest exit velocity allowed (And Statcasts xwOBA says the same thing), and you'd expect good things going forward. Some better defense would help too. I think that pitching gives the team a very good foundation to build off, so with how mediocre the division looks in general, it should be possible to find enough offensive upgrades even on a budget to challenge. The Cards should still be pretty good (They almost always are), but the Cubs have an enormous amount of work to do on their pitching. Beyond Hendricks and Davies they have almost no quality or depth in their rotation. Their starting lineup still looks decent, but we should expect some more subtraction and even right now they have no depth. The Reds' offense sucks, and while I expect their pitching to stil be good, losing Bauer and Iglesias (And possibly even Gray if rumours are to be believed) is going to hurt.

Cubs fans do *not* seem happy about it. Public prospect rankings are what they are of course and they differ somewhat, but we're talking no consensus top 10 prospect in their system. This is after they had already traded a bunch of prospects for Clevinger, Snell and Nola recently, and with the Cubs retaining some salary. Maybe the approach of multiple lower-level guys pays off many years down the line, but it's quite easy to see why Cubs fans aren't thrilled tbh. With the trade itself, but perhaps even more so with the direction the team seems to be going, the end of an era and all that.

I don’t know, Padres farm system is very good. Maybe they could pull it off too. They seem to be all in I think it's salary rather than prospect cost that is going to prevent a Darvish move. $20m is a lot, and you'd expect some hefty arbitration salaries for some of their guys (Tatis and Lamet chief amongst them) if they pan out.

Maybe his 2019 was a breakout, maybe not. But overall he is 28, with 114 wrc+ over 4 seasons as a 1B, has two years of control left and is due to earn 5-7m (according to the mlbtr projections) for the first of them. The return reflects that. I don't think this would've been a good use of money or prospects for the Brewers.

His projected arbitration salary was $8m IIRC. Despite the HR title, he only put up a 113 wRC+. Combine that with poor baserunning and poor defense at 1B, and he was a below-average player (1 fWAR, 0.9 rWAR). Replacing him with Aguilar and Thames, for less money, was an excellent move, I suspect many GMs would not have dared non-tender the HR champion. He put up a 71 wRC+ with the Yankees in 2017 and hasn't played in the majors since.

Baseball Prospectus' Brewers Prospects ranking was released today. I believe you need to be a subscriber for the full writeups, but the ranking is 1. Brice Turang, SS 2. Garrett Mitchell, OF 3. Aaron Ashby, LHP 4. Ethan Small, LHP 5. Mario Feliciano, C 6. Tristen Lutz, OF 7. Antoine Kelly, LHP 8. Freddy Zamora, SS 9. Carlos Rodriguez, OF 10. Hedbert Perez, OF Warren and E. Garcia are the two other prospects mentioned below. The way the blurbs are written, it sounds like they feel pretty confident about what they report from the alternate site, though that could just be me reading too much into the wording. Among that is that Ashby's biggest issue, command, seems to have improved a fair bit, and that Ashby and Small were standouts there and are both given mid-late 2021 ETAs. Positive things about Felicianos contact skills; they really like his bat. They predict Perez will soar up the rankings, but are naturally cautious about a guy who hasn't played a single professional game yet. Generally, there are fewer snarky comments about how bad the system is compared to last year, so I think things are moving in the right direction!

Who even really knows the dynamics of the draft room (or rather the whole draft process)? Teams do things differently, some GMs like to micro manage and make all the picks, some delegate much of it to other people within the organisation, whether that's a scouting director or assistant GM or special assistant or w/e it may be. Some teams have very few voices in the room, others listen to many people. And so forth. Someone having or not having a certain title doesn't mean they alone deserve credit or blame for a draft. If Montgomery did a good job running the draft, then his promotion would in all likelyhood have seen him still have influence there. Anyway, from the outside looking in there's no way to really tell who does what inside a front office. We can make vague guesses based on perceived changes in strategy based on hirings/firings, but there's just too much uncertainty in that for it to have any real value.

To add to that, Justin Turner was waived by the Orioles, non-tendered by the Mets, and then signed a minor league deal with the Dodgers. Max Muncy was DFAd by the A's, sgiend a minor league deal with the Dodgers. Brandon Morrow was a non-roster invite with the Dodgers, didn't make the team out of spring training. Went on to put up a sub-2 ERA and pitch every game of the WS. This is one of the very richest teams in the league "dumpster diving" and doing it well. I'm not suggesting these guys are the next Justin Turners, just some examples of how you can find real quality too. Beyond Yelich, Cain, Garcia, Taylor there's not a ton of outfielders at the upper levels for the Brewers. So they fill a AAA spot with a 26 year old with real raw power (40 HR seasons in thhe minors with a non-juiced ball are rare) to provide depth and see if he can unlock that power. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. But seems to me like exactly the type of player you'd want to spend your non-roster invites on. Hoby Milner has put up excellent AAA numbers, including in AAA with the super-juiced ball (If people want to dismiss any hitter stats from AAA in 2019 for that reason, they should also credit a 3 ERA in that same environment), and with Claudio gone and Hader likely to be either traded or in a 9th inning role, signing another LHP for depth makes sense. Again, not building these guys up to be stars. Just to point out that every team does this, sometimes it works out really well and there's little downside when it doesn't. Yet every offseason these moves are met by the same reactions from fans. Pleasantly surprised at the ratio of comments so far though.

Pretty sure I've seen multi year minor league contracts before, in situations like this. But even if not, he can be added to the 40-man roster at the end of the season if they want to keep him.

Good decision, but surprised they actually did it. I thought they would've stopped at getting rid of Chief Wahoo. What makes you think that Native Americans pick teams based on mascots, and not in the same way that white, black, latino or asian people do? As in for a variety of reasons (Which can include the mascot), but usually due to things like proximity and family ties? It's no more "their sports team" than the Brewers being the team for all brewers or the Giants for unusually tall people. Cleveland Jews, Cleveland Pygmies, Cleveland Polynesians, Cleveland Caucasians, Cleveland Moors, Cleveland Zulus, Clevland Arabs. How do these names sound to you? Indians as a team name only really registers as different to us because it has existed for all ours lives, we've kept hearing it. But it's really not any different. It's taking a whole group/race of people to be used as mascots (alongside fish, birds and socks), for a long time even represented by a caricature of them.