TJseven7

I don't disagree. At the same time I don't want Burnes starting anywhere but AAA to start this year. I want to see him dominating at that level before I plug him back in the starting rotation. For a number of reasons. I think Lindblom Houser and Lauer all get first crack over him in 2020.

We are deep then. Might as well trade Woodruff, we can just replace him with Roegner. That's the entire point of the model. You don't need rotation aces if you avoid trash. Add 10 options who you believe are solid. Shuffle until the dependable ones are in the top 5. Collect a sub 4 era from your starters inexpensively. Wash rinse repeat.

Couple of things...you're right, at best he's a solid 3/4...the problem is and has been, Stearns signs guys that should be NO better than really 4-5 guys and one of them has to be a 2. He's been playing russian roulette with the rotation and so far it's worked, but it's not sustainable. The problem is also the definition of #2 starter. A couple years ago one of the guys here showed the pitchers rankings league wide based on ERA. 4 ERA rated much higher than you'd expect. DS has done a great job of having a guy who comes in early on tier 2 and and number of 3s. When this staff is working it has a 2 and 4 3s. You don't need a 1 to overcome the 4s and 5s if you truly don't have any. I'd suspect that Gio Davies and Woodruff were cleanly 2s. Houser and Anderson were 3s. Lyles pitched like a 1 for MKE. There are a lot more Chacin's throwing in the MLB than you think. We just assume everyone has guys throwing 3.0 ERAs. Fun with numbers. What do you want to see? Pitchers under 4.5 era with 20 starts min by team. I'm taking requests. Spoiler, you'll be stunned where Woodruff and Anderson show up on the list.

My assumption on Donaldson is that it's not going to be about dollars, it's going to be about years. DS hasn't been shy about paying big dollars for short term sticks. I'd also assume you'll never see a big FA pitcher. Between the college arms in the draft and the length of FA deals for top pitchers, it just seems outside the team philosophy.

He's completely right in saying that too. It's filling in nicely. It's not done quite yet. Woodruff is the guy Anderson Lindblom Houser Lauer are absolutely going to get a shot to win a starting 5 spot. 2 missing pieces. Suter Peralta Burnes are built in depth in the event people flame out. I wanted Gio or Hill instead of Anderson but the difference isn't massive. Same type of guy. In my opinion they still need 2 more. Hill or Gio and a Taijan Walker does the trick. Then you shop for 1 more guy you can stash in AAA to start the year. Jimmy Nelson or Junior Guerra vol 2? That would bring us to 10-11 options before we look deeper into the minors for other fixes. 10-11 options at starting pitcher seems about the norm for them. They are 2 away from done and it doesn't require a whole lot to get there.

It's not just the pure numbers, it's the entire profile that has me worried. It's one pitch from a goofy, gangly delivery from a funny angle. He throws hard, but not completely overpowering by any means. If his slider becomes just a hair snappier with a little better control or he uses his changup more effectively then I'll completely change my tune but right now I have a difficult time seeing Hader maintain his dominance. If he is traded to the AL he is FAR more likely to continue dominating as well, since they've barely seen him over there. If I were a contending team in the A.L I'd offer the Brewers a big package to get him and I'd be happy to have him. He just seems like a perfect trade candidate for everybody involved. I get the concern over his 1 pitch profile and his wild nature. Thing is the guy had a spell where people started to say that the league figured him out. Then he mowed people down for another a much longer stretch. He got wild again around the playoffs. His extension to the plate, release point, and velocity makes for one amazingly destructive pitch. Any gained control, especially on the slider would make his incredible results that much more dominating. If the slider gains more movement same story. He's already dominant and he has a few ways he can improve. I'd bank on that over people figuring him out. When he's on with his FB location alone he makes the best of the best look stupid. You have to understand what he is and let him go 1 when he's off and let him ride when he's on. Don't make him a closer and protect him from his off days and he'll be that much better. It's not the opponents figuring him out, we all see when he's on and when he's off. He gets tagged in sprees when he is off. 1 batter in we know where he is on any given day. The only way I'd consider dealing him is if MKE got back a player of his equal caliber plus pieces. You don't trade a stud for pieces. You don't trade a stud pitcher for 1bs 3bs and LFs. Those are the easy cheap spots to fill. Even if he's 5 war and you get 4 pieces who add up to 7 WAR you still lose out because you don't have 1 piece that pulls 5 by himself. It's just a bad idea. It's even worse if he shows any improvement.

I hope we land him and I don't know why people look at him as simply the 4th OF. The reason I'd be very excited about him is that he plays a solid RF. Yelich is a GG LF. It's time we get the most out of his talents offensively AND defensively. You sign Garcia you play him in RF 120 games. Braun splits his 110 between 1b and LF. Yelich gets a lot more time in LF. Our 5th OF can be a guy like Broxton because subbing for Cain is his main responsibility. Gamel gets broken off for a prospect. Garcia and Thames would set 1b and OF. Fairly cheap as well. 3b would be the main issue left on offense.

No this is people with a "level head" saying "I'd trade Hader for the moon." That's not a discussion. I'd sell a kidney for a million dollars. Let's discuss. You simply do not remove that from this team and sustain our level of success without a miracle. It's no different than trading Yelich. The last thing you want to do is trade your best players. They are insanely hard to replace. I see a lot of people proposing yahoo FF trades where MKE gets 3 lesser non important pieces for 1 star. Or people saying they'd sell their kidney for a million dollars. That's not reality.

I can't wait until a year from now when we have a thread bemoaning the fact that Anderson just signed a 3 year, $40 million deal elsewhere. Guy's coming off a great year. He looks around and sees Gausman get 10 mil and Roark get 12/2. He was better than them last year. Clearly his market didn't develop the same way or he wouldn't have taken this offer. I can see why he would want a prove it deal. He does 2019 again and he could get nearly double what MKE paid him. But hey, I'm sure if we dangled some shiny beads in front of him and his agent that they'd sign off on a multi year team friendly deal. Suckers.

My biggest beef is that this was just a one-year deal. I'd have gone two years with a club option, maybe even three. Again, you assume players would except a foolish deal for them to accept. Club option, right. Why sign a 5/3 when you can get a 5/1 that could be a 7 when you believe your last year wasn't a fluke. On the flip side, why would MKE sign a multiple year deal on a 32 year old pitcher who is injury prone. Players tend to bet on themselves. Well run franchises are adverse to risk. You are beefing about fairy tale scenarios.

Well let's clear something up before I answer this. 4 ERA guys aren't back end of the rotation but if you are going to call them back end of the rotation. How many do we need. 6-7 and we currently have Houser Lindblom Anderson Lauer, if you want to count Burnes/Suter/Peralta as option 7 8 9 I'm good with that. We need 2 more. When do we address the front end? Woodruff is all you need if he can be a 3.5 guy and he is trending that way. I had this money earmarked for Gio or Rich Hill. It'll be interesting to see where they go and what they get. Brett Anderson is an interesting option and if he can stay healthy he's basically a left handed Chase Anderson with a better FIP, for 1.5-3.5 mil cheaper, and we get Chad Spanberger. I'd say that's coming out ahead.

The thing is, Hader 2020 may not replicate that production either. There was something last year where there was some level of him getting figured out or him tiring or a tell on his pitch. If we get a good package, I am all for trading him. I love this narrative that's been created within MKE. He had 2 spells of roughly 5 games where he gave up a few HRs. He was a 2.6 ERA in 75 innings. Garrett Cole was a 2.5. Maybe the leagues figuring him out too. "Full year of Rasmussen and Suter in the pen could probably get close to it." Cuz it's just that easy right?

And if you put those maybe's happening on top of Hader, where are you? I'm with you to a degree. Knebel back would be huge. Burnes could turn into a bullpen ace. So could Peralta. That would make trading Hader a heck of a lot easier in 2021. Not knowing that and trading Hader would be a gigantic risk. You should do everything in your power to replace the players that make you go before you send them out the door. Woodruff and Hader could make the entire staffs life very easy. Be a 4ERA guy and we are all good. Until we have that guy who can yank down the team ERA, you can't break off Hader.

Trading Hader would have a disastrous impact on our pitching staff. I'm stunned that people are so flippant about it. I really don't understand why people are in a rush to go back to the dark days. We have a 3 year window open with a once in a decade controlled value contract and a once in a decade star reliever. They tip the scales. We can also hope Hiura and Woodruff are 2 more guys who tip the scales and they look the part. On top of that, Narvaez and Urias sure look interesting. Yet, well if 2020 is going bad let's just toss it in the wood chipper and hope 2024 is bright? The window is open. Why do you want to close it? This team has some youth and could crescendo in the next 3 years. The Astros went to the playoffs, missed the playoffs, won the WS. You want to trade away MVP caliber stars in the hopes of getting other ones? You want to take the top off this team in the hopes of being more solid throughout? Solid is what this GM does best. Stars are the hard part. You don't trade stars away when you have a chance to contend. Y'all wanna be the Oakland As. A rich mans, farm team.

This logic doesn't work folks. So you are trying to tell me MKE should have locked Moose up long term in 2019. Hiura was on the way and Shaw had been outperforming him up until that point. Where would he play? Second, what deal would he take? The market deflated on him. He took a prove it deal. You think 12 mil per 3 years was going to do the trick? I don't. You see it all across sports. He was wise to take the prove it deal. MKE got him inexpensively for that year. MKE won, Moose won. You have no idea what it would have taken to push him off a prove it deal and you had no idea Shaw would implode. This is hindsight and operating on information you simply can't know. Then this trade Hader stuff because we have Andrews and QTC. Do you think the entire MLB is stupid? The entire MLB sees Hader as the best RP in baseball. Every metric puts his value through the roof. QTC didn't even get rule 5ed. By this logic I could just as easily say, "Hey guys we should trade Yelich. After all, we have Taylor and Gamel to take his place." I'm intrigued by QTC. He isn't Hader. Everyone sees Andrews as a solid RP option in the near future. Everyone knows Hader is a monster. He is the 2nd most valuable player on this team. Ahead of Woodruff and Hiura to this point. You don't just replace that with guys and no matter how many times you repeat it, it's still completely wrong. His 70-80 innings around 2.5 ERA (in high leverage no less) is one of the key pieces in keeping the teams ERA south of 4. They can't afford a Strasburg or a Cole. Due to that, they need Hader. Cuff the 2 together for the next 3 years. Yelich and Hader are mandatory to the success of this squad. Neither can be replaced with some middling prospect and trading an nontraditional ACE pitcher so you can fill 3 low spectrum value positions is a horrible idea. Even when Hader is deep in Arby and expensive the big payroll teams are going to fight over him. They see what he can do and they won't care about his price tag ($s).

Spanberger 1b in AA Fry 1b in A+ That works for me. I think we can add 1 more if they should start off in AAA. Gatewood can be someones backup somewhere.

And we haven't seen numbers on Knebel but usually avoiding arby is a cost saving measure. Either way works for me. My additions are roughly 44 mil.

The Brewers obviously don't see Fry as a catcher and probably never will he is a 1B/3B only and not a catcher. I loved seeing what Fry was doing last year. My opinion on him as a catcher has a lot more to do with how MKE handled him. At his age I kept thinking, time to move him up. Let's go already. I wanted Feliciano bumped to AA to make it happen. They held back on that. To me that says they don't see him as a catcher. Moving him to 1b/3b clears his path and this is a very nice 13 game sample. I'm much more interested in him than the 3b 1b options we have in the system. I also think it's pretty telling that Kahle got the call to A+ when Feliciano got bumped. I think the MiLB catcher group is Feliciano Henry Kahle and Nottingham in no particular order. 1b 3b is a wasteland. I hope Fry uses this as a springboard to start off in Carolina at 1b/3b and ends the year in AA.

Obviously having more elite pitchers is a positive but I think you are letting last year taint 2018. Our playoff run was Chacin Gio Miley Woodruff Burnes Hader Knebel and some Peralta. You have to look past the starters with this team. You can't really say the starters in 2018 failed their job. Nor did they fail their job last year when MKE had the lead vs the WS champs with the ball and game in Hader's hands. Currently you have Woodruff Hader Peralta a question on Knebel, a role to be defined by Houser and Suter and a lot of pieces to add. The expensive guy was a Chacin at 8 mil. I think Rich Hill and Gio could fill the Miley Gio role. I think McHugh could fill the Burnes role (and clearly Burnes and Rasmussen have a shot at that as well). There were a lot of problems that arose last year. Chacin falling flat and Knebel missing the year were the biggest two blows to this team. Burnes and Peralta starting poorly in the early season were the other major factors. It didn't pan out in 2019. It wasn't special in 2018. It just worked. Basically, yeah more = better but flexibility and multiple pieces has let them cobble together the results you'd get from a 35 million dollar ace for a fraction on the price.

Had me at splitter too. Did anyone else notice that he stalls his leg kick on a few of the highlight pitches. I believe I saw 3 out of the full wind up. If he alters his tempo to home on top of being able to locate a splitter and spike a splitter, he's going to be fun. That's enough to be a 3 mil pen guy by itself.

I still can't believe we are getting more in this deal. Both pieces I'd have taken straight up. Lauer's control. Urias's prospect status and positional value. Win win win

To this point I couldn't be happier with the off season. That's not blue. I think we murdered the Padres and we got Narvaez on the cheap. I wasn't thrilled with the Anderson return and in hindsight the pitching market has been a little steeper than people expected. I won't go values on all of them, but I want: Collin McHugh at/under 6 AAV 2 years. 2.67 ERA out of the pen last year. 2.76 career reliever. I see him as a 2 IP option and the in case of Knebel emergency closer. It's time for him to embrace his future in the MLB. That's a big time pen piece. Cishek 6/1. SU. Look at his stats sway back and forth every other year. Pattern says 2020 is a good year. My hope is that MKE will lock down a traditional 8 9 combo with Cishek and Knebel and everyone else in the pen will be a 2 IP guy besides Claudio if he sticks. Taijuan Walker 2-3 mil incentive laden for 6. So much upside. Rich Hill I'd assume around 5-6 mil 1 year. Yes, he'll spend time on the IL. Plenty of it. 36 37 38 39 he has put up 20 25 24 13 starts. His ERA has been a flat 3. Secret ERA weapon. If MKE opened the season healthy at pitcher and all options looked good I'd be tempted to tell him to stub his toe and we'll see you in June. I want him healthy in the playoffs. Gio Gonzalez I'd assume 4 mil since he got 3 last year. Has pitched fantastic for MKE. This means one of Walker Hill Gio Lindblom will start in the pen or IL. Woodruff Hill Gio Houser Lindblom Claudio optioned Lauer optioned to stay stretched out Burnes getting sorted out. Black Walker Peralta Suter McHugh Hader Cishek Knebel I want to believe in Houser the starter but I'm not there yet. Out of the pen, I'm sold. I want Lauer and Walker just in case and also due to Gio and Hill being very likely to miss some starts. Offense Thames back on a 1 year deal under 5 mil. Wilmer Flores around 4-5 mil aav 2 years. I'm on board with this idea. 2B is going to be a huge boost over what MKE has seen. They can survive a moderate bat at 3b. The lineup is solid and I'd prefer another low K guy. He's only 28 and last year's numbers in AZ are eyebrow raising. Late bloomer? Brock Holt 4/2. Versatility. OBP. A RH 1B power bat *ideas welcome* OR if MKE wants to spend a little and play Braun at 1b Avisail Garcia 7/2. Allows MKE to opt out of Braun after 2020 and put Yelich back at GG LF. Garcia isn't a great RF, but Yelich really isn't special there either. *ducks* High side 44 million added to the current roster. Only McHugh Flores Holt and Garcia on 2 year deal. None on 3. Tons of starter options, low financial risk. Narvaez Pina Thames (60 games from Braun) (Holt can play 1b due to injury) Hiura (Holt spot starts) Urias Arcia Flores Holt Yelich Cain Braun Garcia (120 starts in RF) Gamel (subs Cain, coming around on the idea of trading Gamel and keeping Broxton afterall) RHP Cain Yelich Hiura Thames Garcia/Braun Narvaez Flores Urias LHP Cain Yelich Hiura Braun Garcia Flores Pina Urias

I'd be interested willing if: They got him down to 60/3 (eat 36 mil min) I got another 15 mil in prospect value. Net cost 15 mil a year. I see that as reasonable. Mata Flores take away some of their past INT spending They'd have to be pretty desperate for me to play along. That's the point though.

I'm happy we lost. Nothing against Roark but I would have not liked that price tag. I feel like we could get McHugh and Cishek for that price. Maybe not seeing how FA has gone thought.

Is that Canadian millions? They didn't actually give a guy who has been well north of 4 ERA each of the last 3 years 12 mil AAV. Right? His innings load wasn't even impressive last year. I don't get it.