Jopal78

In his only full season as a starter, Vogelbach hit 30 homeruns and drew nearly 100 walks. Additionally he’s 27 years old and is a former Top 75 draft pick. Pedigree, prior success at big league level, youth and cost controlled. If this isn’t the type of player you take a shot with in filling out a roster, who is?

Look around the league, when Kyle Schwarber is cut loose over 8 million dollars, and Eddie Rosario is cut loose over ten million dollars, does Cain, even as a defensive wiz, have any trade value at 17 million? Of course not. His contract is dead weight on the payroll at this point, so you may as well pray that the extended time off from opting out saved some wear and tear on his body allowing him to play at a high level.

It doesn’t make sense that the Brewers would be waiting on some player who is exposed to Rule 5 draft. These teams have an idea ahead of time which players exposed to the draft from which organizations are likely to be selected. More probably true than not, if Knebel makes the Dodgers 26 man roster they probably have an agreement on a player coming back to Milwaukee. If he’s not all the way back and ends up getting released the Brewers probably get cash.

I made the above alteration to make this a bit more accurate. If your point is that it's crappy that the Dodgers can take an $800k chance on him with little thought and the Brewers can't, I agree. We literally saw the same thing last year with Nelson, and it stunk back then too. But the other stuff is just stuff. There's always a chance that the 'they saw something in him' stories are correct, but I view that stuff similarly to the 'Player X is in the best shape of his career' stuff that we see every spring. What team is going to come out after an acquisition and say, "Hey, he used to be good, so we're just going to see if he's toast or not?" 227 total innings out of the pen for the Brewers, 12.8 strikeouts per 9 innings. 3:1 strike out to walk ratio, and a 1.23 WHIP. What else could anyone want. I think you're knocking Knebel and implying he somehow was no longer good because he had TJ surgery (which 25% of all pitchers undergo at some point), missed a season, then rehabbed at the major league level in a start stop fashion due to the pandemic. I guess it's all minutiae anyways. Is there more or less talent on the Brewers roster than there was last week? Indisputably the answer is yes, why is there less talent on the roster, its also indisputably because they didn't want to pay the money to retain it. It could mean nothing, maybe they have their eyes on a player who will add more to their aggregate talent than Knebel. Then again, teams who view themselves as contenders don't typically give away good players to their rivals.

Or, they wanted the opportunity to evaluate him at a closer level right now, gave up little to do so, and can cut him in the spring and only pay a few hundred K of his salary if they don't like what they see.... Exactly, but the Brewers could have done the same thing: rendered him a a contract and see how spring training went and then cut him if they didn’t like what they see. My point is: by any metric Knebel was a fantastic pitcher for the Brewers, and they swapped him off to the competition in a cost cutting move. If that is a harbinger of things to come, there maybe a lot of aging bandaids in the daily lineup again come 2021

Talent costs money. Obviously the Dodgers, who have proven they are amongst the Top organizations in the game in terms of talent evaluation, feel Knebel is worth the 5 million dollars in pay. I get the fact the Brewers have depth with Topa and Rasmussen, etc and didn’t seem Knebel an essential roster piece.. However, it doesn’t bode well for the rest of their potential offseason moves if the Brewers are trading away All-Star level talent to their competitors because of cost.

Outright waivers would remove him from the 40 man roster immediately, maybe the Twins have waiver claim or claims that are pending, and this way they prevent teams in their own division like Detroit and Kansas City from improving simply by claiming him.

He's projected to earn in excess of 18 million dollars, and is determined to elect free agency. Also, the Cubs may have been one of the hardest hit teams in terms of revenue loss in the '20 season. The restaurants, bars, and hotel they own around the stadium all sat vacant. Their television network got off to a rocky start with Comcast (the largest provider in the area) not carrying until right before the start of the July 2020 season and Dish TV (the 3rd largest provider) never coming to an agreement to carry their network. The Cubs likely are looking to pare back payroll and Bryant makes sense because of the above two reason. Of course, the Cubs would love to trade Bryant but that is also problematic. 3/4 of the MLB teams will have no interest in Bryant due to his likely 18+ million dollar contract. There is no guarantee at this point the typical big spenders will fork over piles of money this offseason either. Moreover, will teams make the determination that 18 million dollars to improve their team for 162 games is preferred as opposed to, for example, spending that money on two cheaper players to improve their team across multiple seasons. Even if teams were all over Bryant, what would be the value? A great player, but he has missed 101 games over the last three years with injuries (by comparison Ryan Braun missed 80 games the last three seasons), and he will certainly be a one year piece. The reality is he may not bring back much in a trade if the perception is the Cubs are determined to move him, and the interest in acquisition is tepid.

Tampa already had Garcia and made no effort to resign him. Why would they want him back?

The CBA limits how much you can reduce a salary by. It is 20% of the previous season or 30% of the average of the previous 2 seasons and he could still challenge in arbitration. Any decrease more than that and they would have to non-tender him first and negotiate with him as a free agent. I also think there probably is a fair bit of resentment if a team non-tenders a player because they don’t want to pay what the player is owed pursuant to the mutually agreed upon CBA, and then attempts to sign them as a free agent at a lower price. Money talks, but if they non-tender Knebel he won’t be coming back as a bargain priced free agent

The Brewers have one player (Mitchell) in the Top 100 prospects. Moreover they do not have any minor leaguers who project as contributors in 2021. That alone tells you they are not a match for Tampa (or really any teams looking to swap veterans for minor leaguers). Sure, they could try to trade Hader (their best trade chip) for Snell but that only subtracts from the bullpen in order to add to the rotation which isn’t really an area of need in the first place, making it incredibly unlikely.

But would he have been a huge help this year? I've read here that our hitting coach was terrible at his job & that's why our hitters drastically underperformed across the board. Or is Grisham so good that he would have transcended Haines's apparently lacking instruction? Simple fact is, at this point in time, 60 games have happened, so the Padres have won less than 10% of the total window of team control covered by the trade. The only thing HUGE & GIANT is the remaining five years that will play a much larger role in determining who actually won the trade. The Padres are currently up about 4 wins on the deal, if that is a fleecing what would you call the 20 wins we are up on the Yelich trade so far? But it is more complicated than that. What is Urias's role on the Brewers in 2021.... undetermined at this time. What is Eric Lauer's role on the Brewers in 2021... undetermined at this time. Neither one of those players helped the Brewers in 2020. On the contrary, what is Grisham's role with the Padres in 2021, he will be their everyday centerfielder. What is Davies's role with the Padres in 2021 he will take the ball every 5th day as a cog in their rotation. Grisham made 57 regular season starts, and played in 59 of 60 before starting all 6 playoff games. Davies lead the team in innings pitched in 2020 and made a start in each post season series. Its fair if one wants to give Urias and Eric Lauer a mulligan for the Covid season, but the fact of the matter is Grisham and Davies not only outperformed their two counter-parts in the trade, their performance in 2020 has already solidified their roles going forward in San Diego. Meanwhile in Milwaukee, it's still a wait-and-see approach to find out where Urias and Lauer ultimately fit on the roster.

Howie Kendrick is not basically Ryan Braun. He sure has been some sort of monster at Nationals Ball Park, but prior to his arrival in Washington he was a career .291/.334/.421 hitter. Braun, by contrast, has never had an OPS of below .769. As for baseball reference projecting a 37 year old player coming off injuries to produce offensively well above career norms, is dicey. The Brewers went down this road already signing a bunch of aging vets coming off bad years to one year deals, and we can all agree it blew up in their face, so I don't see why they would want to go right back down that road with Kendrick for 2021.

Look no further than Ryan Braun, and there is your answer. His move to first base consisted of 12 starts in 2018 (and only 7 completed games at that ) and he never played an inning over there again. True, these guys are professionals, and in a pinch they can probably fill in anywhere on the diamond. But for there to be professional level competency, its substantially more complicated than simply saying "viola, outfielder is now a corner infielder".

Longoria is in San Francisco solely because Tampa Bay wanted to get out from under his contract 3 years ago (so badly in fact, that the smallest market team sent the Giants 14 million dollars in the deal) Since his "mythical age 27 season" in 2013 Longoria has hit .260/.314/.440; yet he's being paid an AAV of in excess of 20 million dollars per year. It's a terrible contract for a player who is mediocre to slightly below mediocre. In this scenario not only is Cain the better talent at this stage of their respective careers (.294/.355/.422 since age 27 season), but he's also the less expensive talent as well. The Brewers would be foolish to consider this trade. Moreover, the Giants are currently a second rate team and are looking to get younger, so Cain really isn't a match for them. In fact, the Giants would probably give away Longoria if they could get young talent in return.

Interesting that you spend any time on this site if you are now anti-brewers. I wouldn't use the term anti-Brewer. If I were a Dodgers fan, I wouldn't be buying Dodger products. If I were a Marlins fan, I wouldn't be buying Marlins products. A better description would be anti-MLB after the events of the past couple of days. I just don't like hypocrites, and it's very hard to swallow that MLB gets on their platform about doing the right thing and have no problem firing no-names for saying the wrong thing and grandstanding about it, but at the same time welcomes someone like Steve Cohen in their ranks. I never, ever thought I would side with Jerry Reinsdorf on anything, but he's one of the few who got it right here (probably for all the wrong reasons, but he still got it right). The Diamondbacks, Angels and Reds were the other 3 teams that were a no vote on Cohen. Seriously? Aren't most of the team's owned by either Hedge Fund guys: Attanasio, Ricketts, Bill DeWitt, John Henry, Jim Crane, Stuart Sternberg (TB), Greg Johnson (SFG), Bruce Sherman (MIA) or 1%er industrialists: Dick Manfort (Col), John Stanton (Sea), John Fischer (Oak), Bob Simpson (TEX), John Middleton (PHI) Liberty Group (Atl), John Sherman (KC)? You should know sports teams owners, and especially this group aren't going to look down on a guy like Cohen. In fact, they probably see him as "one of the gang" and probably as a victim of overzealous prosecution as opposed to a criminal. Not to mention, with 2.6 billion dollars at stake, the owners can't really stand in the way of who the Wilpons want to sell their team to, unless they want to throw millions away in attorneys fees and costs in litigation over the sale.

It's completely subjective to try to grade a base coach. Sure, if Yasmani Grandal is chugging into 3rd as Jason Heyward has the ball it's probably not the best decision to send him. But I bet, Sedar did that hardly ever. If it's Yelich coming towards 3rd, and Vlad Guerrero has the ball and Yelich is ultimately out by a mile, what can you do? 99% of coaches would likely send their best guy as well.

When a player is sent from third and whether they score isn't determined by solely by the coach waiving them around. I'm sure there is insider information on whose arms have to be respected and who you can run on. But even in those situations, sometimes a fielder gets off an excellent throw with perfect aim and the runner is out by a mile on what should have been a run scored. Or the cut-off man saves a run with an excellent relay play. They get no credit and take all the blame, but a 3rd base coach isn't just some guy out there waiving them around subjectively as he sees fit.

The award doesn't mean much in and of itself. But for a team that values defense and versatility, it looks like the Brewers traded away a young home grown player who fits that bill, AND can hit a little bit.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/story/2020-11-03/trent-grisham-gold-glove-center-field-national-league%3f_amp=true Grisham Won a gold glove for San Diego. Ouch

I have no idea how much the Brewers were spending on the social media team, but it has to be peanuts compared to an average MLB player's salary. This is not a good sign at all. Granted, every penny counts, but it takes A LOT of cuts like this to make up one Eric Sogard. I'm very nervous for what the 2021 team will be. If you have been paying attention this has been the effect of the shortened season with no fans, teams have been shrinking their non-player personnel and costs. These type of contractions do not affect wins and losses on the field and are apparently much more palatable than dropping talent from the roster and going from a playoff contender to an also ran.

I'd cheer if that happened. Bring Gyorko back for 3B and I'd be thrilled. I'm just unsure if this team can pay those salaries given the financial restraints right now. Since the Brewers declined Gyorko's $4.5 million dollar option for 2021, absent extenuating circumstances, he's probably not going to then take a pay cut to come back to Milwaukee.

I'm sure there are independent firms that provide "social media services" and it's better for a team's bottom line to simply contract for these services than to have the expenses involved in producing the content, travel expenses, etc. plus the associated costs (healthcare, 401(k) etc.) for the workers on the payroll doing the social media posts.

I've followed young Mr. Gatewood since he was drafted, I thought he had turned the corner in 2018 until that knee injury derailed him and 2019 was a rather uninspiring return. I see he's a free agent this year, I sincerely hope that the team resigns him. In all honesty, I would rather see the Spanbergers, Gatewoods, Ercegs, and Rays given a shot if the plan is just to sign vets like last year. At the very least, we see what we got in them and it either works or doesn't. I think you'd be really disappointed if that actually came to pass. Erceg, Gatewood and Ray have trouble with AAA pitching and even AA pitching. I suppose Ray will get another chance being a Top 5 draft pick. But as an advanced college player still spinning his wheels in the minors coming up on 5 years after he was drafted, it doesn't look good. Gatewood and Erceg just don't profile as major league players anymore at this point. From a competition standpoint the team would actually be better off with a band aid veteran free agent than using young homegrown players without major league ability.

Knebel, when healthy, is a difference maker. Knebel's salary is projected at 5 million dollars. I don't see where they get another difference making player for the 5 million dollars. As such, I think they'll tender him.