Lathund

I don't know anything about these specific guys, but I agree that trading for blocked players like that can be a very good way to acquire players for many years. Trading for prospects who are several years away from needing to be put on the 40-man roster also means the cost in a trade wouldn't be all that high.

ZiPS uses fWAR, Lindblom put up 0.8 fWAR and Houser 0.4 in 2020. Extrapolate that over a full season and it's 3.2. Not too crazy. I know that Dan has also talked about some underlying metrics being part of the projection system. Like for example players with a swinging strike % much higher than their strikeout rate would indicate, might be projected to improve on that. Just to take one example, no idea if that factors in for these guys. Lindblom for example put up a 3.88 FIP, and he has experience of working deep into games in Korea. And started to look much better towards the later part of the season after settling in. If he keeps his pitch counts reasonable, he'll put up a good bit of WAR simply due to being a roughly average starter with a good chunk of innings pitched. As for Houser, I'm a believer. His main issue to me is that he needs something in his repertoire that works against lefties. He dominates righties, and if he was even a below average starter against lefties that's a 2+ WAR season right there. I hope he's the next big project of the pitching lab. Whatever it might be, adding that cutter or working on a changeup that works well with his 2-seamer or w/e, find at least something and he's a solid mid-rotation starter. Just to illustrate, this past season RHB were .219/.272/.313 against him, lefties were .336/.420/.568. ~80 point BABIP difference, but for him I don't think that's luck; his stuff just works very differently based on batter handedness. Career numbers are a bit closer together, but still with the same clear trend. They fixed Burnes issues against LHB, here's hoping they can do the same with Houser.

The 26 (or whatever it ends up being) man roster spot is the real valuable part. A team really, really has to like a guy that their current team doesn't like for it to be worth it, or be in complete tank mode. Filling up a ML roster spot with a guy who won't be a contributor (Other than in rare cases) can mean you lose out on other players, it shouldn't be done willy-nilly. With a much higher pick, maybe the Brewers go for it. It is always interesting to see the different valuations. Like the Orioles both picked two, and lost two, in the ML phase. Look forward to seeing who will be on the right end of things like that.

I don't think it does at all. I think the Brewers feel good about their ability to both develop and scout relief pitching, and while any one replacement would be extremely unlikely to be as good as Hader, I think they trust their ability to build a good enough bullpen that the overall impact of a Hader trade is a positive one.

The underlying numbers in 2019 for Cain were still good, he looked good in pre-season and the short time he had in 2020. I think he has a lot to offer still, and I don't really think freeing up that money is worth the trade-off. He'll be a good player still in 2021 the way I see it, and finding a good CF is very hard to do.

I like the decisions Brewers made with their tender offers (or non-offers). Good for the team to have signed Arcia, Piña and Narvaez cheaply. As I said in the Piña thread I was surprised to see both catchers retained and not sure what the plan was (thinking there has to be a trade), but at the same time having good players on good contracts is always a good thing.

He's not a good 1B but it's not as if he's unplayable there. Some 1B, some pinch hitting. And hope for the DH. What a wierd thing that is for me to say; I prefer DH-less baseball, but if it's inevitable (and it looks like it is) then just have the DH for 2021 already. To go DH, no DH and DH again makes no sense and creates uncertainty for both players and teams.

Wow. I did not expect both Piña and Narvaez to be retained. At all. This surely has to mean a trade is coming right; whether it's Narvaez (unlikely), Piña or Nottingham. Running 3 catchers on the ML roster tends to make more sense if they can play more than just C and perhaps 1B (And for them to play 1B they need to hit really well), but none of the Brewers catchers can do that. And then there's the Maile signing; major league deal to be 4th catcher? Seems excessive. In addition to trades, it could also be about insurance. Deals are not fully guaranteed, so they would get a chance to watch the players in spring training and release them with only paying 1/6 of their contract. Surprising, but I like Manny a lot and he seems to work well with pitchers so I'll be happy to see him as a Brewer in 2021 if that's what this means. Even if I don't really understand what the plan is.

Piña and Nottingham are both out of minor league options. So if they were to keep Piña and Narvaez both they would either need to keep 3 catchers on the roster, DFA/trade Nottingham, or keep Narvaez in the minors unless there was an injury to Piña/Nottingham. So this is a deal to have one catcher on the roster with minor league options remaining basically. They were never going to keep all three of the current catchers for the abovementioned reason of options (And probably money too). So it's not about "better", it's about having a 3rd catcher that they could send back down after stepping in for injuries. If Freitas or Piña (or Nottingham) were the 3rd catcher on a minor league deal, Brewers would risk losing them on waivers (or electing free agency, if they had been outrighted before) when they were sent down after their stint in the majors. And of course Nottingham would need to pass through waivers to even be possible to have in the minors to start the year. That's my take on it anyway. I would expect Narvaez and Nottingham to start the season on the major league roster, with Maile the backup in AAA. Some teams like to run 3 catchers, Brewers under the Stearns/CC era don't seem to be one of them. Another possibility is that it is Narvaez + Piña or Narvaez + Maile on the major league roster, and using Nottingham for a trade, but I think that's less likely.

At least the Baseball Prospectus catching metric (The one which workings I have looked into) separates the catcher and pitcher (And umpire and batter, but that effect is smaller) contribution to extra strike calls. The CSAA (Called Strikes Above Average) stat is calculated for both pitchers and catchers. Someone like Zach Davies generates a lot of extra called strikes, but it's credited to him and not the catcher. It is very much a coachable skill, but it does a bit odd that if he could pick it up this fast, that his other teams didn't do the same. Then again, Narvaez (1st), Pina and Nottingham were all in the top 25 by BPs catching defense metric, and both Grandal and Kratz rated very highly when they were here (Though clearly they were good at it when they arrived too). So it would seem that the Brewers do something right in this regard. Issue with coaching receiving skills can often be, from what I've heard at least, that the stance and techniques used to frame pitches well are often not the ones that help you block well. I think for Grandal for example, part of his issues with passed balls (Often exaggerated, but they do exist) comes from being such an excellent framer. So it can be hard to coach one without affecting the other. As sveumrules pointed out, that while there would be larger error bars due to it being a short season, it's still a stat that stabilizes quickly due to just how many opportunities there are. So maybe he truly was the 5th or 7th best pitch framer in the league instead of the very best, But I don't think there is any doubt that he truly improved, just a matter of how much.

I believe that anything above $5m would be the most the Brewers have paid for any reliever in a single year in the Stearns era (Though I would imagine that hader will exceed that too), and I think in a year like this and with Knebel coming back from injury etc they won't be paying that. Even in a normal year I don't think it's a given they would do that. It's obviously hard to judge from the outside what a front office prioritizes and not (As in we can see the moves they make and guess at the motivations behind them, but have only a fraction of the data they do), but it would seem to me that this group do not believe in spending any significant portion of the payroll on relief pitching. Even that previous $5m (Feliz) was a signing made to hopefully flip at the deadline in a year where payroll was low and they had money to spend on 1-year deals, on a team not really expected to contend.

Seems like a signing that makes sense for the above mentioned reasons. Not really a fan of the type of hitter (Power, but low OBP), but can't get everything with a low-cost acquisition like this. Besides, a bunch of the other possible names at 1B/3B/DH are high-OBP guys (La Stella, Santana or even Vogelbach (Well, in his case relative to the low BA)) so one low OBP guy won't really matter.

Figured there was a decent chance Brown was getting added, but "only" these 3 weren't at all a surprising selection. I think Henry will be safe in the draft regardless. The last time teams saw him he was in Hi-A, where he put up solid offensive numbers (107 wRC+) but with a 30% strikeout rate. Brewers were one of the teams who didn't share data from their alternate site. He seems to be an adequate defender behind the plate, but he's not a defensive wizard and his bat in all likelyhood isn't MLB-ready at all. In other words, he'll be a tough player to keep on a MLB roster for an entire season, even with a 26-man roster. Good chance he gets returned if picked IMO. I like him as a prospect, just don't think he's someone who teams will use a rule 5 pick on. IMO guys like Jankins, QTC or Barker are players I think teams wouldn't mind having on the AAA shuttle; but not having the, eh, option to option them is why so many guys like them are passed over in the rule 5 draft. Brown I expected to be taken last year and I was wrong, so not gonna predict anything.

I prefer no DH as well, but now that we've had a year of the DH and roster moves have been made accordingly, and it seems almost certain it will be implemented in the new CBA after this season, it seems silly to not have it in 2021 as well. Either way, DH or no DH, it needs to be announced officially soon.

Those all seem like things a source on the business/marketing side of things would be in a great position to find out and leak. Not sure that necessarily means they would have advance knowledge on the sporting side of things. But we'll see. EDIT: Posted while I was writing the above Ah well that doesn't have to mean Stearns is gone; he's the President of Baseball Operations and the GM. Could simply mean that Matt Arnold (or someone else) is officially the new GM. Or it could mean DS is gone, but I don't want that so I'll cling to a more positive outcome.

I'd be a bit iffy about a Baez extension, at least if he wants the kind of contract his 2018 and 2019 would entail. His skillset is defense, foot speed and bat speed, all things that don't age well. If the bat speed goes even slightly, it could get really ugly. The PR side of it is significant too though, he's immensely popular, so that would factor in as well. Would all depend on the money; I suspect there is a gulf there between the two camps or it would've been done a long time ago. But yeah they are in quite a bind with what to do with their post 2021 FAs (Bryant, Rizzo, Baez, Schwarber) and their 2022 FAs (Contreras primarily). Contreras would have the highest trade value by far, but probably also one they want to keep. Baez should get a decent haul, but the optics of that trade would be really bad. Go for one last push and fail, and they'd be in a terrible situation. Trade their valuable players (Contreras, Baez, Darvish, Hendricks) and they're looking at basically starting over with a loong rebuild. Their best bet might just be to more or less punt on being competitive in 2021 (Unless they hit on all their minor league signings), eat all the salary they can for Bryant and Schwarber (And Heyward is someone will take him...) to get the best possible return, trade Contreras (and hope for Caratini/Amaya), see if they can extend Baez/Rizzo at a reasonable cost (Like I alluded to above, I don't think those deals will be great at the back end, but with a new network, investments in Wrigleyville, the losses of 2020, I don't think they can afford the fan backlash that losing literally every fan favorite would have. And they should be good for a while still), and maybe look at extending Happ if they really believe in him. If they go for prospects relatively close to the majors, there's a route to be competitive in 2022-2023. But unless they really like their farm, and most of all produce some home-grown pitching which they've been unable to do so far (Underwood with 36 IP has the most innings pitched by any pitcher drafted or signed as an international FA under the Epstein regime), that's still a strategy that requires them to rely a lot on free agents, and make good decisions there. Not an easy task for sure. Will be interesting to see which route they take; I have a hard time seeing a total teardown this soon after, but you never know...

Woodruff and Hader are indeed the locks. One of Narvaez and Piña (Most likely Narvaez) should be almost certain. Vogelbach would seem sensible to keep if there is a DH. I expect the rest to be non-tendered, or possibly signed to cheaper deals before the deadline. I don't see the Brewers paying Arcia $3-4m or Knebel $5m.

Smyly was one of the guys I was looking at for the Brett Anderson veteran lefty starter type of role, because I found that (admittedly brief) showing in 2020 intriguing. But that was under the assumption that it'd be a lot less than $11m... even in a normal season that'd be a lot for that kind of profile. Though I do think it'll turn out to be a good move for them, under the assumption that they have more money to spend. If their payroll is limited it doesn't seem like the smartest way to spend it.

I agree that he's not a very good CF. Good enough to play there? Yes, but probably not really better than average. He's fast, very fast even, so he'll always have good overall range which gives him a solid floor. But I've heard even SD fans (Who love him in general) worry about his routes and his catches. And the arm isn't very good. So average CF, above average RF or very good LF is what I think he is. The decision to award gold gloves based on a combination of defensive metrics is one I would normally approve of, moving even further away from giving the awards to a good hitter who doesn't commit many errors as seemed to be how it was done historically. But even in a full season the sample sizes are on the small side (Combining metrics would help some with that I would think), and we just played ~1/3 of a season. One can look at Keon Broxton's 2018 or Cody Bellingers first 1-2 months in 2019 to see some issues with that; for example in terms of DRS, they racked up what would be close to GG numbers over a full season in a very short time. That reflects that they did make many plays, and probably some real high impact ones among them (I think Keon had like 2 HR robberies in a week and several other spectacular catches), but it's also very much a product of getting more opportunities than usual. The various defensive metrics use some way to categorize the plays and compare to similar plays etc, but that can suffer both from overy broad or overly narrow classifications; i.e sometimes a play is relatively routine but gets rewarded as if it was much harder, or vice versa. Point is, those kinds of things matter little once sample sizes are large enough, but in a 60-game season they can have a big enough impact (in either direction) that I would not take defensive metrics too seriously. If the metrics for Grisham show the same thing after 2021, then I'll believe he's improved.

Gonzalez is more of a better version of Hernan Perez than an actual 3B. Career 99 wRc+ (I.e just about a league average hitter) is great in a utility role, poor as a starting 3B. Also worth keeping in mind that even that number is largely boosted by a 144 wRC+ in 2017 with the Astros. I wonder why that might be. So that being said, if it's the kind of role where he is essentially a 10th starter who plays almost every day, wherever the need is, is the first replacement for basically any injury etc, and is paid as such, I would normally be fine with it. But what this team needs are hitters, and if the money is limited I would rather spend it on the best hitting 1B and 3B they can find, and roll the dice on a Mark Mathias or similar as the utility guy.

I've never understood the obsession people have with 3B coaches. First the obvious point that their gameday job of waving runners home or putting up stop signs is only a small part of their job, as coaches they'll have another job like fielding instructors or coaching catchers or assisting the hitting coach etc. What they do in their role outside of their team's offensive innings is what matters. And I understand the "windmill" criticism even less. Replace all 3B coaches with windmills for any situation that isn't an obvious stop or an obivous send, and scoring will increase. The average breakeven point for the success rate needed in order for sending the runner to be worthwhile is surpsingly low. And in an environment with fewer base hits on balls in play and more HR/BB/K it'll probably drop further. If anything I thought the Brewers were overall too conservative with base running (Not stealing, but overall baserunning) this past season. Whether that had anything at all to do with the decision to go a different direction is hard to know though. As for Haines... well, I'm again of the opinion that it's extremely hard to know from the outside what impact a coach has or doesn't have. And that different personel, different external circumstances, injuries, age decline and other things will impact what hitters do. Simply a better or worse overall triple slash for a team says little of how good a job the coach did. At the same time though, other than a very good walk rate over his two years here, I don't see much positive development on the hitting side. Walking more is good, but ideally you'd like to see that come without one of the worst strikeout rates to go along with it. So it'd be one of the "Can't be sure it's his fault, but little to lose by making a change" situations for me. But not something I felt strongly about tbh so I'll just trust the team.

Hard disagree on trading Yelich just to get rid of the contract. As far as contracts for that caliber of player go it's not a bad one at all. From 22-28 (Age 30-36 seasons) he'll be paid $22m per year, with an additional $4m annually deferred between 2031-2042. $22m then is also less than $22m is now. I also don't see him as someone who will fall of a cliff and do nothing in the later half of that deal. There is a big difference between overpaying a 2 WAR type of guy and paying Albert Pujols or Jordan Zimmermann. If someone offers a genuinely good offer, listen to it. But to trade him for peanuts, or even throw in Josh Hader? Absolutely not. Whatever one may think about big contract extensions or free agent deals for top players, it's still the case that Yelich's contract situation meant a discount to what he'd cost in free agency, and any free agents signed with that money won't come at a discount. As for offseason plan, based on what we're seeing with declined options and such, I think the best way forward is to focus on retaining and acquiring quality players at positions of need, and relying on cheaper pickups and young guys to cover the backup roles and lesser needs. So that means non-tendering pretty much everyone except Woodruff, Hader and one of Piña/Narvaez. And even then, the main purpose of tendering Hader would be for trading him. With expected cutz to the payroll, I think that kind of aggressive maneuvering is the only way to get the money needed to adress the corner infield needs. Get the two best bats you can for 1B and 3B with the money available; perhaps that's Tommy La Stella and Carlos Santana, perhaps it's someone else. If anything is left, get a veteran starter, a solid reliever, and for the rest look for the minimum salary (or close to it) veterans and non-roster invite types and try to win that lottery. Try to exploit 40-man roster crunches to get a Jesus Aguilar-type too. Anyway, the key point of my offseason plan would basically be that because the financial constraints will force the Brewers to be selective, the focus would be to address the biggest needs (1B and 3B) with the money that can be spent, and hope that the expected positive regression of Narvaez, Yelich, Hiura, Garcia actually happens. Because basically if it does not, then there are no realistic moves that can salvage the situation anyway, so might as well go for the moves that makes sense if it does. And signing a Santana on a 1-year deal or La Stella for 2 years or w/e aren't harmful in the long run. There are other ways to free up the money besides non-tenders, but i'm not a fan of a Yelich trade, and as far as Cain/Garcia go I expect them to be good players in 2021 and I also don't think there'd be much of a return for them. And it would leave two additional spots of great need to be filled with what would still be limited resources.

An old-school "unwritten rules" type of guy (For a recent example, look up what he said about Tatis and that 3-0 count grand slam) managing Luis Robert, Eloy Jimenez, Tim Anderson etc? What a strange decision. Has Jerry Reinsdorf written all over it, reports that many within the organizations are very unhappy at the hire and thet process behind it. Hahn's comments: "White Sox GM Rick Hahn: "Once it became clear that Tony was very much open to this, the process did change, the focus was how do we make it work with Tony.''. Some reading between the lines required of course, but doesn't sound like he's happy. Or how about this... White sox released this image in announcing the signing: https://i.redd.it/5cdzwq8jf3w51.jpg Take a look at the signature below "manager", and then google AJ Hinch's autograph.

It certainly looks like teams will be very stingy this offseason, declining Hand's option would confirm that. But it doesn't have to be bad news for Hader's trade market. If money is the main concern, then Josh Hader making $4-5m less (Depending on arbitration) than Brad Hand can make a big difference to teams. Haders annual salary even for 2022 should still be cheaper than that of the top free agent relievers. Hader is perhaps the best option a team has to improve their bullpen a lot without spending much money, and I wouldn't underestimate the lengths owners will go to to avoid short-term financial losses even a the cost of long-term wins.

For arbitration-eligible players there will be a lot of non-tenders and also a lot of the type of deals we saw Piña, Suter and Gamel sign. I would imagine free agent contracts will be a lot of 1 year deals with options. The 1 year will be relatively low value as teams will be very stingy, but the options will be both be expensive and have expensive buyouts. Essentially deferring money, like what the Brewers did with Moose and Grandal to help fit them into their budget, but a more extreme version thereof. It's one way for teams to save money in 2021 and for players to still somewhat get paid. Next offseason would then also have a huge amount of free agents (And with some huge names out there) just as a new CBA would kick in... that could be chaos.