Lathund

Is there a real reason to bring Gamel back? Don't get me wrong, he is a sound fundamental player, versatile in the OF, good baserunner. However, he's going to be 29, is no longer a minimum salary player, and across nearly 1400 plate appearances he is a .261/.331/.388 hitter. Is the difference between Gamel and Taylor so great that it warrants bringing Gamel back? I'd say no, and for a team without a lot of payroll maneuver-ability it's probably best to move on from Gamel completely. It's not a question of Taylor or Gamel, if you have the money for it you want both. Think of it more like Gamel vs Ray/McKinney/Mathias. Only a team that gets very lucky with injuries will get by using only 4 OFs, so you want the depth of having 5 capable OFs. Only Yelich is a LHH among the 4 likely to be on the roster without Gmael. Both Taylor and Gamel have options so roster spots isn't really an issue. But as I said in the previous post, when money is an issue skimping on the 4th/5th OF is one place to save money where it might not hurt you a whole lot, so there's a good chance they will. My point is more that it's about payroll than ability; for a 4th OF his likely arbitration salary is very good value, and with noone on the farm likely to make an immediate impact they'd have to do better in free agency, which would be hard.

Yeah it seems to me like an option that would've been good value for the team had Gamel had a full season at even a slightly higher level, a way to in that case get a solid 4th OF/borderline starter but pay him like a 5th OF. As it is, with the short season and Gamel playing right around his career average, it feels virtually certain to be declined whether they plan to offer arbitration or not. We can expect payroll to come down, and unfortunately for guys like Gamel, Piña or Claudio areas like 4th OF, platoons and middle relievers will be areas where teams will save money by using as many minimum wage players as possible and they'll be at risk. Yelich, Cain, Garcia will start in the OF. Taylor surely did enough to get a shot as the 4th OF and Cain scheduled offday replacement. Mathias or some other utility guy they sign can serve as 5th OF when everyone is healthy. Veteran on a minor league deal (like Broxton this year) as depth for longer IL stints, and then depending on how well they do there's the likes of Ray and McKinney. This is before any potential moves. So yeah, it'll be declined, I'm almost certain. I think they'll try their best to trade him before the arbitration deadline too, but I'm less sure what they'll do if he's still here then. I think it depends on just how strict the mandate to cut payroll is. From strictly the perspective of making a competitive roster they absolutely should, but that may not be the only consideration.

In more normal times I think the chances of him coming back on the kind of $10m type of deal (Total of buyout + salary) were pretty good. But with the economic impact of 2020 (And/or the excuse of the economic impact to cut payroll across the league) it seems a lot less likely to me, and that the Brewers would only be interested in bringing him back for a lot less. Which I don't think Braun would be too keen on.

Thanks for finding that. A bit odd to me that he's not getting game action (yet) in either setting, but at least he's healthy so that's good.

Brewers can still do that, unless the contract they signed with Gamel that included that option says differently. Eric Thames had such a provision in his contract, he was at 4 years service time when the option was declined last year, or would've been at 5 if he had been kept on, but Brewers couldn't have offered him arbitration.

I have a very hard time seeing the Cubs non-tender either of them. Trade? Absolutely, even if the return might not be great. But just outright nontendering them doesn't seem like a great idea. I don't think it's all that realistic, but the Brewers picking up Bryant and him having success here would probably drive some Cubs fan insane, so I'd love to see that, however unlikely it may be that he'll be available and affordable.

You used Jeffress as an example of an inability to maintain talent or fix players. Jeffress got fewer strikeouts, walked more batters and gave up harder contact after leaving Milwaukee. He then lucked into better results despite that. Doesn't mean it was the wrong decision to let him go, they were right about him. Performance isn't the same thing as results; they are very closely linked, but in a huge-variance sport like Baseball it takes time for those two things to join up. The Brewers probably hadn't changed their evaluation of Brock Holt all that much from the time they signed him to when they released him. They know that a .136 BABIP isn't sustainable, and that given time and at bats his results will improve. But they also know that in a 60-game season they don't have the time for that if they want to make the playoffs. The Nationals picked him up and are a good illustration of the short-season issues. They started 19-31 last year and won the World Series. They had a similar record this year at 50 games, yet were close to being mathematically eliminated from the postseason by that point. It makes player evaluations very different. In a normal 162-game season Brock Holt would still be a Brewer (Or be given a longer leash at the very least), but in a short season where so many others were struggling too (If it's just one guy, you can "hide" him on the bench for a while) they felt they had to try something. The 80 wRC+ he put up on the Nationals is also only really good by comparison to the first half. The difference between him as National and as a Brewer is simply a matter of BABIP, again. He struck out a bit less as a National, but walked less. Plate discipline numbers are essentially the same. Yet, as so often happens in these cases, the balls bounced differently.

Pandemic shortened season is indeed the answer. Further cutting that season into smaller pieces like comparing 36 and 70 plate appearances for Holt, makes for even less meaningful samples. 36 PAs is the kind of sample where one out turning into a double would've raised his OPS by 100 points, and he had some hard hit balls straight at defenders. A few more of them go through and we'd instead be excited about the signing. There is just so much randomness involved in these tiny samples that you can't really trust the surface stats. There will be many 2020 "flops" who have very good seasons next year, and many "breakout" players who will be below replacement level in 2021. I guess the best we can do is to put some faith in the metrics that can have meaning in such small samples, but even then rely a lot on data from previous seasons. And only really trust in 2020 data when there are very strong underlying reasons to do so. And even then, the off the field situation makes that potentially unreliable too. Maybe someones poor offensive performance really was due to swinging and missing at everything and making poor contact, and not due to poor batted ball luck. But perhaps at same time the player's family and whole life situation was heavily affected by COVID-19. Was that a major contributing factor to the struggles, or did it have nothing to do with it? How can even front offices and coaching staffs truly tell with any great degree of certainty? Let alone us fans. I'd also like to point out Jeremy Jeffress there; He was by no means a top 5 reliever in the NL. His BABIP was 140 points below his career norms, despite a career-high exit velocity given up and a record high hard hit %. Strikeouts and swinging strike % was way down, and walk rate was up. He benefited from a good defense behind him, and most of all from luck. Straight up ERA without context is a poor way to judge individual reliever seasons under the best of circumstances, it's even worse when we're talking 20 innings. JJ deserved better results than he got in 2019, he deserved a lot worse results than he got in 2020.

Rather crucially though, that one game was at the MLB level. It's also actually two games; he featured in the playoffs as well. Padres clearly think he's ready now, if they had him as a 2022/2023 player they wouldn't have put him on what is bound to be a very crowded 40-man roster over the next year or two, let alone their playoff roster. He crushed A+ to the tune of 148 wRC+ as a catcher in 2019, in a normal year he'd start the year in AA, and if he started the year still hitting like that would've been quite close to the majors. Except this year all that happened behind the scenes at the alternate site. So yeah it's technically true that he hadn't played above A+, but sometimes development goes faster than predicted. Some player skip the minors altogether, rare though as it is. To call him Campusano a 2023 player is rather pessimistic for somene who already has hit an MLB HR.

There have been some changed fairly recently, IIRC the posting fee is tied to the size of the contract. So we're unlikely to see those $20m+ posting fees anymore. Still, it appears even the Yankees will be crying poor this offseason, so the bidding might not be very fierce.

Not interested in Sanchez. Offense has been alright for a catcher over the last several years (98 wRC+ over 3 years, 109 wRC+ over the last 4, 117 for his whole career), but he's not a good defensive catcher, he has had trouble staying healthy, he will be due $6-7m in 2021 and more in 2022, is only controllable for two years and in addition to all that would need to be traded for. I'd rather give Narvaez another chance. His defense improved a lot, and I won't quite yet believe that he has completely lost his ability to hit.

One name I'm missing there is Max Lazar. Can't find that he was added to the alternate site either, so is he missing through injury?

I don't know what to think about Narvaez. He had two very good offensive seasons in 2018-2019, and even before that he was decent enough for a catcher. And I would normally put a lot more weight on that larger sample than on 40 games in this pandemic weirdness. But at the same time he looked so very bad at the plate. That slow (Or at least slow-looking), long, uppercut swing looked like it could never get results. It was so hard to see the good hitter he used to be in there. I'm obviously lacking all the additional data and information the team will have on him and what went wrong, but I'd lean towards giving it another go still. And I think they will, unless the financial belt-tightening goes really far in which case I would think that saving $3-4m and rolling with Pina/Nottingham would look attractive financially.

indeed, Hader appeared in 21 games. In two of those appearances (1 1/3 IP), he gave up 6 runs and 5 walks combined. In the other 19 (17 2/3 IP) he gave up a total of 4 hits and 5 walks for just over a .500 WHIP. He's more than fine, and still one of the best relievers out there. He just had two bad outings, it happens. So I'm not at all worried about his future. However I still feel as strongly as ever about trying to trade Hader. Even more so if we're seeing another payroll cut (And we probbaly are, across baseball. Owners are probably unhappy about making a loss for the first time ever...) it makes even more sense to trade your $6m-7m reliever. While trading him will make the 'pen weaker, of course, the bullpen is still both a current area of strength, as well as one area where there's both players in the pipeline as well as an area where the front office has shown they can find players cheaply (Ironically it's the more expensive signings in the bullpen that have failed). And short of Woodruff, Burnes, Yelich (Who should all be as close to untouchable as players get) he will also get the biggest return. We need hitters who can hit. And the FA market this year isn't looking great. Hopefully we can find out Max Muncy or Justin Turner or Yaz or Urshela or indeed Aguilar from "nothing", but can't rely on that and obviously won't know if we've found it or not until way into the season. A MLB-ready infield bat (Doesn't need to be a super-high upside star, just simply a good hitter) with 5+ years of team control, a good high-upside prospect not miles away from MLB (Like A+/AA), and whatever else is needed to make it work, probably some lower level prospects with upside. If it's a team looking to revamp it's bullpen I'd be open to looking to add another reliever (Not Williams. And iffy about a few others. But generally open to it) to the package if it gets a better return.

I think he can stick at 2B tbh. Reason I say that is that physically he's fine there. He's a decent enough athlete, range is good enough, hands too for the most part. Neither aspect is great, but good enough. Issue is throwing. I'm not even saying arm; because while he'll never have a strong throwing arm, it's again strong enough to survive at 2B. Problem is more "yip-like" than anything else; so many of his mistakes are the easy throws, the ones where he has plenty of time. While I've seen him make accurate throws to complete double plays just fine. So I don't know if it's psychological, or some kind of mechanical issue where he overthrows (Missed throws usually seem to miss on Hiuras glove-side). Don't get me wrong, I still think the best we can hope for is "below average". Which is fine if he hits enough, which I believe he can. I don't know what the issue is with the missed throws, just that it's not a matter of not having the physical ability to do it. Brewers must believe it's fixable as well or he wouldn't be out there. Worth keeping in mind that he still only has less than one season worth of 2B play in the minors, and less than a season worth in MLB. Didn't play a lot of 2B in college either. So in my opinion you give him more time at 2B. If there are signs of improvement, keep him there. If there has been no improvement this time next year, then consider where else he might fit (and the future of the DH should be settled before 2022, if not sooner). Despite how poor the defense was at time, it was still the offense that concerned me this year. I'm still high on Keston, but that whiff rate needs to come down... With that bat speed he shouldn't be missing that much. And it's not as if he's getting close and fouling off a lot of pitches, he just straight up misses.

The solution I've seen that I think can work is to on one hand deaden the ball; make the same contact not produce as high exit velocity as before. Unlike increasing drag, it shouldn't have an effect on how pitches move. Deadening the ball some (Obviously not to deadball era levels!) will make selling out for fly balls less attractive, as flyballs with a low chance of leaving the park are awful. To compensate for that you need to make it so that more balls can be put into play. That could be lowering the mound, moving the mound back, or shrinking the strike zone a bit (or a combination of the three). The electronic strike zone could probably even aid with this; you'd expect more strike calls with it since it'll catch those pitches that touch just the very front or back of the 3D zone that are so easy for umpires to miss, so a slightly shrunken strike zone with robo umps might not be a huge change from the current one with humans calling balls and strikes. Of course, a case could be made that there is no need for any "fix", that it's just a natural evolution of the game. But if something was to be done, I think a two-step process like this is what's needed.

With Suter, Peralta, Houser and maybe even others going forward (Rasmussen, Small etc), Brewers are building up quite the collection of "inbetweeners". Remains to be seen how they put them to use. Not really used openers very much in the past (As in using it regularly, like the Rays have, and not just for individual occasions), and I imagine they would have if it was a concept they believed in. Simply doing short starts with an early hook tends to put pressure on bullpens and relies on the AAA shuttle a lot. Perhaps they'll make one spot a piggyback spot, like they did with Anderson/Burnes for a while. Pair Suter or Small with Houser or Peralta. If they go 3-4 innngs, it is probably doable every 4th day, so that spot could move around in the rotation. Allowing either to skip the 5th starter occasionally, or to give an extra day of rest to someone. Going every 4th day also avoid the issues of basically losing a bullpen arm like you would with the piggyback as a set part of a 5-spot rotation. These guys could of course also fix the issues that prevent them from being more traditional starters, but good to have a plan in place until they do (or if they don't).

Padres are the only team I'm missing on there, you got the other realistic candidates on there already. Though who knows how high their payroll will go. They are at ~$90m for 2021 already before taking arbitration into account. And their arbitration eligible players include Pham, Davies, Clevinger, Lamet, none of whom will be cheap. Yates and Rosenthal are free agents, so they have a need. They're certainly able to fit in his salary, but remains to be seen if they actually will.

Before going into the plans it's worth noting that there will probably be more non-tenders to players entering their later arbitration years than usual, due to the financial insecurity. Probably also more 2-year contracts (Like with Suter) agreed to by arbitration-elligible players. So the FA market will probably look quite different when it actually opens. A team willing to spend a bit now can probably do quite well. As a general strategy I'd be willing to spend on 1-year deals in 2021, since Braun is off the books and Yelichs higher salary hasn't kicked in yet, and the young pitching core will be cheap now but won't be a couple years from now. I'd be wary of contracts likely to be underwater in 2023-2024 (and onwards) even if they were to be good (or even very good) in 2021-2022. When Cain/Garcia are off the books, there's room for some spending again. Decline options on Sogard and Braun. Probably decline Gamel. Pick up option on Gyorko ($4.5m, really $3.5m considering the $1m buyout). Test the trade market for Hader (again). Look for young bats (Infield, maybe even C) or young SP in return. MLB-ready or very close to it. Depending on the return for Hader (If a trade can even be made), the need for bats may vary. Of course DJ LeMahieu or JT Realmuto would be ideal, but I doubt Brewers will be in that market. So I'll not go there. Tommy La Stella looks like a good candidate to me in terms of position (2B/3B), handedness (LHH), profile (Doesn't strike out, like at all). Shouldn't be prohibitively expensive. One issue I could see is that he gets his results not from hitting the ball hard but through other means; Brewers need to figure out how sustainable that is. Statcast data seems to support his numbers at least. Brad Miller is the opposite to La Stella in some ways. Hits hard, whiffs a lot. If we're looking at LHH who match positional needs, market looks quite thin tbh and Miller seems like one of the best options. If the DH is sticking around (Pretty sure it will) simply looking for the best bats that fit into the budget (So probably mostly short-term deals) is a good idea too. DH/PH or living with poor defense if the bat is good enough. Pitching-wise, I like where the Brewers are at and would like to see them continue with the internal development that finally looks like it might become a strength. But another veteran starter to take the Brett Anderson type of role (Could even be Anderson himself) would be great. Drew Smyly had a good year and could probably be had relatively cheap. Jose Quintana if he's healthy and his market isn't hot, though I expect he'll have plenty of suitors still. Look over the relief market for this years David Phelps type signing, i.e try to find someone who's being overlooked. No big splash, just someone or someone(s) who complements the current crop well. Another lefty would be great. In terms of non-tenders, I find it so hard to evaluate players in this weird season. Narvaez looked absolutely terrible at the plate, but he was a very good hitter in 2018 and 2019. I have no idea what to believe with him. Arcia I'm also unsure about what to do; his likely arbitration raise makes him fairly expensive for what he is. And was his solid offensive season real or a result of short-season weirdness? Knebel is going to get rather expensive for a reliever, but would like to keep him still if he truly is back to his best. Non-tender Healy, and probably Claudio (Even though I actually like him). Offer arbitration to Woodruff, Lauer, Hader for sure.

Add me to the list of skeptics on Profar. Looking at plate discipline and statcast data he's not doing anything really different from the past, simply getting better results due to a higher BABIP. Now if he was signed to take over the role that Sogard/Peterson/Mathias had this season, and the deal reflected that, I'd be very happy with that and would see the upside in it. I think he'll get paid a fair bit more than that though.

I only trust ElevatedCheese91.

Didn't Stearns already get promoted to President of Baseball Operations as a result of rebuffing the Giants approach for him? Of course he could always be promoted again, but there would be no need to do so simply to be able to turn down the Mets approach.

I'm pretty certain they don't make that determination based off just one appearance, unless there was something physically wrong with him. He had a great season up until that point, and they'll trust their overall appraisal of him. And considering they extended him, I'm pretty sure they like him. It was also his first game in a week, and comeing just a few days after what I can only assume to be a very emotional, happy but also stressful and tiring, few days after becoming a father. If they plan to go with a "piggyback" approach after Suter and not a straight bullpen game of mostly 1-inning guys, Peralta seems like the most logical choice to me. Bad outing last time out or not.

I was really impressed by Phelps in his time here, and while trading someone like him makes a ton of sense and I was in favor of it, I also thought he looked so good that the $4m team option started looking attractive so I would've been fine with him staying too. Good thing Stearns is more decisive than me!

I imagine DJ LeMahieu re-signs with the Yankees for more money than the Brewers feel comfortable with, but if the Brewers go after one big name that's who I'd want. But speaking of more realistic 1B/2B/3B players; Tommy LaStella is the left-handed budget version of DJ. His 5.3% (that's not a typo) strikeout rate stands out, and a solid 123 wRC+ over the last two years. A LHH 3B (Or at least a 3B who hits righties well) has to be high up the priority list, and there's not a lot else out there. Hard to predict the financial side of it, but he's someone who makes a lot of sense. Justin Turner is old and will be expensive, but is probably the best available bat out there. I honestly don't really know where else they should spend the money. Simmons and Gregorious are available at SS, but I would imagine they don't want to add fairly big multi-year deals there, and will trust their current and future internal options. On the pitching side, I don't think they should be very active in free agency. Maybe try to find a veteran starter or two a la Brett Anderson on short-term deals. Teams have so many more advanced ways to evaluate players than we do, there has to be some starters out there with "meh" results that the Brewers really like and think they can utilize better. It's beyond me to see who that is; could be a Drew Smyly, or perhaps even Brett Anderson again. Point is,looking at the available pitchers in FA I don't see any names to spend big on other than Bauer, and there's Woodruff and Burnes already in place at the top of the rotation. So my strategy would be to spend whatever free agent money there is (And whatever Hader returns, if he is traded) on hitters. 3B in particular, but anywhere on the infield works. As I mentioned above, I like LaStella, but there are other options. Two IF bats. A couple of veteran pitchers. And beyond that try to do what the Dodgers did in finding/fixing Muncy and Turner, or what the Yankees did with Urshela/Voit etc. I.e what some would call dumpster diving. Post-hype prospects, blocked AAA guys, 40-man roster crunches, whoever becomes expendable when Turner or LeMahieu or Castellanos sign somewhere.