Lathund

Wow. Taken individually none of them are too shocking, but I'd have expected one or two to be tendered. Given the many players coming off the 40-man roster, it makes it even more surprising that there was no room for someone like Zack Brown, despite his struggles. One would think/hope that this also means moves are coming, that there has been a purpose to this pruning of the roster.

So then they all play great in ST and all are kept. Unless you're suddenly willing to go $15 million over budget, that money committed today most certainly affects how you spend money in free agency. That's why I say, the out in ST is great but not the safety net some here are making it out to be. Sure it's cool that you can save some money if a player flops but the downside is you now have a huge hole with no way to fill it. If they tender Shaw, Nelson, and Guerra that's $15 million out of the budget no matter the fact they can cut their losses later. Like I said, you don't tender these guys under the assumption they'll fail. Because if they don't and you spend elsewhere under the premise of these outs, then you're suddenly way over budget if none of them flop. You're the only one talking about committing to being $15m over budget. You're also the only one who has mentioned tendering them under the assumption they'll fail. You tender them (Or more likely just one) under the assumption that they'll succeed, and you budget accordingly. And yes that affects how you spend money going forward, just as signing any player to a $5m 1-year deal would. If it works out and the player is kept, it's like any other contract. If not, you have $4m more for in-season acquisitions. Which is, again, why you do this if you believe in the player in question but there's some lingering doubts. It could be waiting to see if an injured pitchers' velocity is back to normal ST levels or not. Or perhaps with Nelson it's seeing if the command issues are still plagueing him. If you're assuming they'll fail, then you don't tender them in the first place. It's simply a risk-management tool from a teams perspective. Again not dissimilar from signing a player to a 1 year contract with a team option vs a 2 year contract.

From the article: "Trading Josh Hader would be precisely that type of counterintuitive move for the Brewers, yet the left-handed reliever is indeed available, according to major-league sources. “We listen on a wide variety of players throughout the offseason. A lot of players get discussed,” Brewers general manager David Stearns said, while adhering to his policy of refusing to comment on specific players in trade conversations." (That's the only Stearns quote in the article) To me that reads as Rosenthal reaching out to Stearns for comments after hearing about it elsewhere, and that being Stearns reply. It could of course also be a case of Stearns leaking it off the record and then giving an on the record "response" too. But it's not a given that Stearns was the source.

True but you don't budget the rest of your offseason around a player not panning out. So allocating 5 million here, 5 million there, and 5 million there cuts into what you have left to spend. If you're anticipating cutting these guys in ST why bother? It's not about budgeting around them not panning out or anticipating cutting them, you wouldn't make that decision for someone you thought unlikely to prove worth it. It's the other way around, it's if you believe in a player but there's some questions about them, or you want more time before making a decision, want them to prove something. So you anticipate spending $5m, but can cut your losses down to $1m if it doesn't work. 2017-2018 Shaw is a steal at $5m, if the team thought it was a fixable issue it could be worth the $1m committment to see if he looks like his old self in ST or not.

After a shaky start I quite liked what I saw from him so I had hoped he'd be back. However I suspect that the money in Japan (Where he already has made a name for himself with three very good seasons) would be better than the likely league minimum (Or less, if he was optioned) he was likely to get in MLB. Good for him if so.

Agreed, no surprise on this one. Now tendering any of Shaw, Nelson, or Guerra would be a surprise to me. I think all 3 are gone. I have been expecting Nelson to avoid arbitration by signing a contract below the arbitration estimate, perhaps with an option. The kind of contract that happens when both sides know a non-tender is the alternative. But it hasn't happened yet and time is running out. However it's always worth remembering that arbitration contracts aren't fully guaranteed. If a player is released before opening day, the team pays something like 1/6-1/4 of the amount depending on when they're released. So think of it like having a $5m option with a $1m buyout, where a decision has to be made in spring training. If the team is feeling hopeful about Shaw and/or Nelson, that could be one rationale behind offering them arbitration.

I'm not. I saw two routes with Arcia; either trade him or keep him. If there was no real trade interest, it didn't make much sense to just release him. I don't have much hope of Arcia ever finding "it", but I also don't rule out the possibility. I believe he still has option(s) remaining, so won't create a 25-man roster issue. As a defensive sub for Hiura (With Urias moving to 2B), a backup plan for Urias or trying him out in a utility role it makes sense. Ideally for less than $2.2m, but it's not too bad. Definitely last chance saloon though, another season like this and it's at best minor league contract time.

There's the same pattern every offseason (or around the trade deadline). The same people panicking every time another team makes a trade. The same people clamouring for David Stearns' head because he doesn't have the balls to make moves and "scared money don't make money" repeated ad nauseum. The players involved change, the specific circumstances change, but the posts remain the same. The Brewers chances for contending were over at the deadline in 2017, 2018 and 2019. And every offseason inbetween because of not signing player X or player Y. Sometimes it just gets so stupid that it hurts. The ignore feature is great, but doesn't prevent you from seeing other people quoting them. It's pretty simple, I don't panic because I trust in this front office. I don't know what the plan is, but I know that there is one. If certain players don't sign it's not because they are scared or clueless. There is a reason behind it. Will every move or non-move work out? No, of course not. But they have a good enough track record that I'm going to sit back and watch, and trust in their ability. If the roster looks the same on March 2nd I'll join in for some light panicking, but not before then.

Not matching/beating $64m over 4 years is the correct move. But I'm still going to miss Moose, I liked the guy. Happy for him that he finally got paid too, just wish it hadn't been in the division.

I'd do that in a heartbeat. Solves two of the biggest holes on the current roster for minimum salary. Frees up $4-5m to spend on pitching (or a catcher) to go with the $40-50m already there. Whatever Peterson ends up doing is just icing on the cake. But I also think that's an unrealistically good trade, one that not even the Mets would make. The ideal trade partner, as needs match up, would probably be the Dodgers. The issue there is that they've not shown any kind of willingness to trade any young player they believe in. But let's imagine they're flexible on that for the sake or argument. With Urias here Gavin Lux is probably not an option anymore. But they have pitchers May or Gonsolin (Wouldn't be the headliner, but a useful addition to a better prospect), catchers like Will Smith (Probably untouchable though) and Keibert Ruiz. Makes a lot of sense on paper. Generally I'm very much in favor of checking out the market for Hader. With a high asking price of course. Hader is one of the best relievers in the game, but relievers are volatile and they impact at most 5% of innings pitched (Even if those innings tend to be high-leverage ones). That's not to say they're not important, but it should still be the last area you focus on. If you can use a reliever, even a really good one, to fill two immediate needs elsewhere, you do it. However I think it'll be a struggle to find a partner that matches up. Dodgers were discussed above. Astros kind of fit the same mould. But beyond that? Would the Mets really do that kind of deal again? Yankees seem to be collecting every reliever they can and they have the ammunition, but at some point even they will say enough is enough. Anyone else seems like a real long shot. Braves? Padres? If the White Sox really are serious this year? I think ultimately no team meets the asking price, and Hader remains a Brewer.

Probably getting a lot less than people would expect in return. Fangraphs and baseball Prospectus' versions of WAR have him at 8.3 and 6.3 WAR respectively for his career, due to his horrendous pitch framing. And will start to get expensive. Now if you believe that the electronic strike zone is coming in 2021, then he's suddenly a lot more valuable.

Reading about this trade, I haven't really seen any neutral parties say anything other than that the Brewers look to have gotten the better of this deal initially. Usually with the (rightful) caveat that it's too early to tell, that Urias might not be an ideal fit at SS etc. Padres' fans aren't too happy about it either in general. But fans tend to try and rationalise moves by their team, and the ones doing it for the Padres are really going all out for it. It's kind of amusing (Even though I suspect it's not all taken out of thin air; they did watch Urias and Lauer this past year) how there are some people who seem to refuse to acknowledge the possibility that the front office that gave Eric Hosmer $144m might be capable of misjudging things... Speaking of which, were there even any other real suitors (Publicly known anyway), or did they give him $144m while bidding against themselves? I seem to recall the Padres being the one team talked about in relation to Hosmer almost from the start. And in the past few years, is the Hosmer contract the clearest example of a deal *everyone* (Except the Padres FO) could see was bad? And I don't just mean deals where you expect the last few years to be bad, but where you'd expect a few good years before that. But where you give $144m to a player who put up ~10 fWAR in almost 7 full seasons. Someone at the bottom end of the defensive spectrum to boot. Hats off to Scott Boras for that one tbh.

Hernan Perez and Tyler Austin were both waived as well. And of course Jeffress was released toward the end of the season. Could add Jhoulys Chacin to that as well.

77 K's in 83 2/3 innings doesn't say can't miss bats to me. With how the strikeout rate keeps increasing, that is actually below the league average (7% below actually. K% is only 3% below). Walk rate is above the league average (117 BB/9+, 122 BB%+). In other words, that K:BB ratio is not very good at all. Junior did do a good job of limiting hard contact this year, but even that doesn't really fully explain his extremely low BABIP of .218 (Career best by far) which is what he relied on to keep runs off the board. 2018 Jhoulys Chacin was similar in a way, the relatively poor K/BB numbers and a career low BABIP and lower than usual HR/FB rate. These are both stats with a lot of fluctuation, fluctuations that are much bigger than what a genuine change by the player can achieve. When a single-season ERA improvement is the result of swings in numbers like that, with K/BB numbers actually getting worse, one should absolutely be wary of them. What the Brewers will have to decide is whether the improved batted-ball profile for Junior was a result of the changes he made (ditching the slider for the curve, increased velocity from the bullpen), or if it was fluky. I'd probably still tender him, as there is so much upheaval on the pitching staff already, and arbitration salaries aren't fully guaranteed anyway. But it'd be borderline, the $3.5m projected salary is a lot for, at best, a middle reliever. So it's not surprising at all if he's non-tendered.

They could include a rule 5 eligible player in the trade right now if they wanted to. I think the issue is that the player would still be eligible for the rule 5 draft as a Brewer, and the Brewers would have to add him to the 40-man roster to prevent that. Which, considering what a scarce resource those spots are for a team that cycles through as many players as the Brewers, they might not want to do. And also don't want to risk losing him. So if he isn't selected in the rule 5 draft, the trade gets finished. If not, it'd be #2 on the PTBNL list (or cash). That's assuming that rule 5 was the reason behind the PTBNL; It might very well not be.

According to Baseball Reference, Lauer isn't arbitration eligible until the 2021 season & free agency for the 2025 season. That would be 5 years of control That would be 6 years of control, he hasn't reached a full year yet. Of course that can all change with a new labor agreement. Lauer is just shy of 2 years of service time (1.160). So in 2020 he'll be pre-arbitration, and as a very likely Super 2 player he'll be arbitration eligible for 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Or in other words 5 years of team control remaining.

Also worth noting with Lauer: He has a 19 ERA at Coors in 4 starts. So just keep him away from there and the overall numbers immediately look better

He is pretty much Chase Anderson, slightly worse thus far in his career. Which is kinda strange why the Brewers would go after him as they hated Anderson's profile. Maybe they think they can improve something in him. At worst he is a cheap #5 starter. Is it really strange though? Lauer has 5 years of team control, 2 of them for minimum while Anderson had two $9m option years. Lauer is 24, Anderson 31. So they get a cheaper Anderson(ish), and believe he can be better.

He pitched to 3 or more batters 54 times in 2019, with the ability to come in to finish an inning, I don't imagine his usage will change all that much overall in 2020. Despite struggling at times (Especially that 4-game run in late May where he gave up 1/4 of his ER for the year) he ended up being an above-average reliever (110 ERA+). I wouldn't want to have him as our closer or our fireman, but there's absolutely no reason to be scared of him simply being in the pen. I expect his 2020 will be closer to his Rangers days than it will his 2019 numbers anyway.

To me this is right around the upper limits of what I'd have been OK with. Would've been the kind of deal that carried a lot of risk towards the end, but I'm confident Grandal will be a very productive player for at least the next two years alongside Yelich so if the club is trying to win in 2020 and 2021 it'd have been a good deal still. However now with Grandal, Moustakas, Anderson, Thames all gone, it'll be exciting to see what the team does with all this payroll room. I don't expect a Rendon or Cole or anything quite like that, but could see some pretty good players signing. Let's first see what they do at catcher. Manny is a good catcher, his issue has been a lack of playing time (Through minor injuries or by virtue of Grandal being there), but on a per rate basis he's an above average starter at the position. So there are different ways they can go; spend big at catcher, or just get someone who complements Manny well and instead focus on 3B/SS/SP.

Not a fan of the navy road uniform so far. But apart from that I really like other uniforms as well as all the logos. Looking forward to seeing how they all look in action.

Why is it surprising? Tatis played a similar amount, and was a better hitter, baserunner and defender than Hiura. Even without him you could make a case for Chris Paddack, Bryan Reynolds and maybe some others to be ahead of Hiura. Which isn't to say those guys are better or will have better careers than Hiura, but they were more productive in 2019.

I also don't think we should expect him to start declining from his 2019 production. Statcast numbers were right in line with earlier years; he even hit the ball harder than in 2018. And that's with the lingering thumb injury and the other injuries he had. He got a bit lucky offensively in 2019, and a bit unlucky in 2018. He's neither as good or as bad as in either year. So he may very well decline over the remaining three years, but I think it'll be from a higher level than in 2019 and so will still be a productive player who will live up to his contract; that monstrous 2018 alone goes a long way towards that. The one wild card here would be injuries. A somewhat healthy LoCain is someone I expect to be a good player, but if any of the injuries turn out to be chronic then that could change things. Trading Cain now after a poor season would see a very poor return; even if other teams believe in him, they can point to his 2019 and the contract and lowball the Brewers. So to me the right move is to ride it out. Despite his struggles at the plate the GG defense had him rate out as a league-average starter (2.8 bWAR, 1.8 fWAR), which is also around what his average AAV would be expected to get you on the open market. Performance is what matters most, but if you were to take in popularity, club house presence, charisma, entertainment value etc. then Cain is one guy who should get more leeway than most. So I'd say there are two scenarios where the Brewers should consider trading Cain (Assuming that the return wouldn't be great here): One is if the Brewers have very strong reason to suspect that he's truly "finished" and will only deteriorate. That is something specific, not just the general aging trends. Which I find unlikely. The other one would be if the payroll savings can be directly translated into significantly strengthening the roster. Talking Cole/Rendon/Strasburg (Or a Grandal + Moustakas + pitcher(s)) type of deal here. Which also strikes me as very unlikely.

I wasn't expecting the Brewer to pick up the option, so not very surprising. Hard to justify that pricetag when he's someone who either can't or isn't trusted to go beyond 5 innings (Sometimes not even that). Good luck to Chase, seeme like a good guy who had some good games as a Brewer.

The answer to the question of where to bat your best hitter shouldn't be "Where does our best hitter get the most RBIs?". That's one part of it, but the problem with the analysis above is that it ignores the on base ability of the best hitter and the RBI opportunities it creates for others. Yelich is both the best hitter for batting in runs as well as the best at getting on base for others. So he's simultaneously the best leadoff man and the best cleanup hitter. So it's the balance between maximizing the RBI opportunities overall, or getting fewer overall but trying to get them at more opportune times. The former is important because this is not a zero-sum game; Yelich leading off will result in the team having the most baserunners (as in hits + walks mostly) and thus the most opportunities for RBIs overall. It will of course also mean benefitting less from his power, and seeing him have fewer of them. For every spot you move him down the order, the team as a whole will have fewer baserunners and fewer RBI opportunities. Where to bat your best hitter also depends very much on who'd be in front of him, both their quality and their profile. If your second and third best hitters were of the Grandal variety (As in deriving their overall high value largely from walks and HRs rather than singles and doubles) i would make sense to put them in front of a Yelich and have him 3rd. But consider a situation where your 2nd and 3rd best hitters are instead of the Moustakas or Javy Baez variety (i.e low OBP but high slugging) you'd want them behind, and not in front of, a Yelich. So if you in that situation wanted high OBP guys at #1 and #2, they'd be worse overall hitters and you'd not only have to factor in that Yelich gets 17 fewer PAs, but that if the guy you're now batting leadoff is someone like 2017 Eric Sogard (An excellent .393 OBP, but a 109 wRC+ which would rank 7th on the 2019 Brewers) you'd be giving him 102 more PAs by moving him from #7 to #1, and giving not only Yelich but everyone else better than that 109 wRC+ 17 fewer PAs each. Yeah, Yelich gets more RBI opportunities, but does the team score more runs because of it? That's harder to answer. Then there's also the fact that not every baserunner is created equal. Looking for example at Fangraphs UBR metric (Which is baserunning, as in going 1st to 3rd on singles or 1st to home on doubles etc, not including stolen bases which is separate) Yelich was worth 8 runs more than Grandal as a baserunner. 13.5 runs more if we include SBs. Whether the size of the differentiial is 100% right or not, the eye test wouldn't disagree that Yelich was the far more valuable baserunner. Now I didn't mind moving Grandal up because I still think that was the best fit, but one still needs to take Yelich's ability to manufacture runs on the basepaths into accoun; you're more likely to score a run with Yelich on base than with almost anyone else. Which ties into another reason to emphasize the OBP ability of great hitters like Yelich: You need a successful outcome of a plate appearance to get on base, but you don't need a successful outcome to drive one in. Now a run scoring *is* of course successful in and of itself, but what I mean is that there is no such thing as a productive out with nobody on. Whereas even a GIDP can score a run. Most of all I'd argue that whether Yelich bats 2nd or 3rd (I don't really see a case for putting him anywhere else) overall makes very little difference. Bat him 3rd and he gets a few more RBIs, bat him 2nd and he scores a few more runs (i.e others get more RBIs). But to settle that argument, one needs to look at a lot more than just RBI opportunities for one player.