Jopal78

I don't see any incentive on Nelson's part to agree to a club option. He's already 30 and inching closer to where free agents don't get multi-year guarantees. Second, he has missed nearly two years with injuries. With huge financial consequences, I'd assume he is going to want to bet on himself in hopes of cashing in on a strong 2020 season. If the Brewers don't tender him, I'm almost certain he'd choose to go to a team where he has a clear shot to make the rotation (not necessarily the case with Milwaukee if he took a NRI). Funny thing about Nelson, I was convinced he was finished as a Brewer, then there was that last appearance against Colorado wherein he looked dominant: mid-90s fastball, struck out four of the six hitters he faced. Its the ultimate small sample, but I'd almost be tempted to take a 3.7 million dollar gamble. As for the rest, I assume they will pick up the options on Anderson and Pina. I think they will tender contracts to: Knebel, Claudio, Shaw, Spangenberg, Davies, Guerra, Arcia, Gamel, Suter, and Austin. Shaw was a disaster in '19, but his career OPS with Milwaukee is still .790, he plays solid defense at 3B and has 2 more years of team control, you give those type of players another shot before moving on. Austin will platoon with Thames at 1B and play against LHP. Career marks of .253/.345/.539 against LHP. I've always like Hernan Perez, but players with his skill set are readily available for less than 3 million per.

Makes a lot of sense for the Brewers, at 36 years old Hamels is not going to command the long term high dollar contract the Brewers never give out. As evidenced with Grandal the Brewers are willing to offer a high salary on a short term contract. An established veteran like Hamels would also slot into a young rotation: Woodruff, Hamels, Davies, Houser, then one of Anderson/Nelson/Suter/Peralta/Burnes/Faria. Plus from the stats above he is a killer in the division with his worst numbers in the division are against the brewers

Baseball is so hard for teams to win, especially consistently. A professional sports league where a super star cannot single handedly carry a team. The Angels have a once in a lifetime player, but for all Trout’s skills the rest of the Angels players aren’t very good so they struggle to compete. Unlike the NBA or NFL drafting talent doesn’t have an immediate impact; so there’s nearly a third of MLB teams where the cupboards are barren of talent and have zero chance of winning at the beginning of the year. Then, some teams that have the horses to win it all come out and get all banged up with injuries or flat out lay an egg like the Red Sox and Cubs. Besides the immediate sting of a come from behind loss I don’t see how anyone could feel any disappointment with how this Brewers season turned out. September was a blast especially after the ho-him season to that point, and the WC game was intense as well even if it was a loss.

What about the other Cole.... Cole Hamels? His overall numbers for his time with the Cubs are really good: 218IP, 217K, WHIP of 1.28, FIP of 3.86, these numbers even account for after he came back from a strained oblique and pitched poorly. 36 years old at the start of 2020, could be had on a two year deal. Would add veteran presence to a young rotation.

David Stearns knows he has to develop starting pitching from within to have any chance of competing year in/year out. Thus I'd speculate the 2020 rotation lines up like this: Woodruff Davies Houser Anderson with Nelson, Burnes, Peralta, Faria, Suter competing for the 5 spot. A different realistic option would include resigning Lyles, trading or even declining the option on Anderson: Woodruff Lyles Davies Houser Nelson, Burnes Peralta, Faria, Suter A third possibility would be signing a secondary market starting pitcher to a short term free agent contract: Woodruff Hamels/Kyle Gibson/Roark/Miley/etc Davies Houser Anderson with Nelson, Suter in the pen, Burnes and Peralta starting in the minors and Faria (0 options remaining) out of the organization. The Brewers certainly aren't going to throw a multi-year 25mil+/per annum contract to a starting pitcher. Odorizzi is likely to cash in on a career year as the 2nd place trophy for the teams who miss out on Cole (and Strasburg, assuming he opts out).

In professional sports when you let an opponent hang around when you have a chance to put them away you end up losing most the time. Brewers had 12 LOB and hitters 3-5 combined to go 2-12. Hader and Grisham blew it, but they should have cruised to a win before it got to that point.

Hader at 26 pitches isn’t going to be able to finish whatever happens

He struck out in a third of his at bats and was on pace for over 200 strikeouts in a season. It’s a legit criticism despite the OPS

He struck out in a third of his at bats and was on pace for over 200 strikeouts in a season. It’s a legit criticism despite the OPS

Yeah I can see that, but Grisham is a former first round pick and the pundits would say he still has “upside”, but who knows

Pretty even trade I guess: Gamel saw time at all three outfield spots. By all accounts is a good base runner, but not much power and struggles to make contact. He played this year as a pre-arbitration eligible player. With the emergence of Grisham, Gamel heading into arbitration; as much as I thought he was 'ok' in 2019 I wouldn't be surprised if his Milwaukee tenure is one and done. Santana bad defender, struggles to make contact, but can work the count some what evidenced by OBP being 75 points above his batting average. Santana suffered some sort of injury in July as he collected just three singles and no extra base hits after July 31st and missed 37 games across August and September. This was his first arbitration eligible season. That Keon Broxton finished the season on Seattle's roster indicates they have plenty of need for outfielders. Despite Vogelbach making the all star game, his OPS was .780 to Santana's .770 so Domingo could have a future in Seattle as a DH too. Zavolas had a nice year in A ball. As a pitcher who didn't strike many batters out, time will tell if he will be able to keep it up against better competition.

You lost me with your comments on Williams Barnes. Although they are wonderful low leverage, mop up pitchers. Point being; it’s been a rare mistake by the team to keep Albers around all this time. There are at least 50 pitchers floating on the fringes of MLB that even if they put up an era of 5.00 would have substantially put pitches Albers

Stearns hasn’t made too many mistakes as GM, but god Albers’s contract cannot be up soon enough. An era of nearly six across 94+ innings. Could’ve got better results from Taylor Williams or Barnes and at least have potential upside

As Sandy Alderson(12th ranked GM of all time)said on Brian Kenny’s MLB now show 2 weeks back, I am paraphrasing > “A large market team with today’s analytics only needs a smart GM and they will win forever, unless changes are made.” Which is exactly what I’ve been saying for some time. If things stay the same, 3 4 5 7 9 years from now, it’ll be the large market superteams vs everybody else. Goliath vs Goliath yearly for the World Series, with the very rare appearance by David. I don’t know if that’s true at all. Playoffs since 2009: Milwaukee 2011, 2018, 2019 Pittsburgh. 2013, 2014, 2015 Cincy: 2010, 2012, 2013 St.Louis: 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019 Oakland: 2012; 2013, 2014; 2018, 2019 Cleveland: 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018 Kansas City: 2014, 2015 Tampa Bay: 2010, 2011, 2013 Executives on a market teams play a different game than the large market counterparts: finding bargains, churning the roster, etc. But there are multiple teams from baseball’s smallest markets making the post season each year.

Tyler Austin is 3 for 9 with a double and 2 homers at Coors Field. If Thames needs a rest, I'd think Austin would get a start at 1B.

I always hate it when people talk about players “wanting to stay”. They play for money so whomever offers the most money usually gets the player. Just today, Yelich said he’d like to be a Brewer forever, but “the business side has to work out” ie the money has to be right. Pro ball players are a fraternity and when you’re a 1%er living in the lap of luxury the members of the fraternity you go to work with and the city you work in 90 days a year are less important than the money. Grandal could improve at least a half dozen clubs with aims of contending in 2020. It will be tough winning a bidding war for him. I can picture Moustakas coming back but whomever loses out on Josh Donaldson would surely engage Moustakas as a fall back option Grandal had at least one multi-year deal on the table but chose Milwaukee. It doesn't ALWAYS just come down to the dollars although I agree that often it does. If you look up the articles from when Grandal signed with the Brewers. He took the one year deal because of the average annual value was in line with what the top earners at catcher are paid. You are correct, Grandal's deal wasn't the most overall money he could have received, but his contract with Milwaukee was the most money per season that he was offered. In so far as resigning Grandal and Moustakas, they kind of have to resign one of them (if not both) or they'll have some pretty big holes in their lineup going forward. 62 Homers, 55 doubles, 162 walks, 162 RBI, 158 Runs scored. There isn't anyone on their 40 man roster that they can conceivably plug in and get that level of production from.

Schwaber's OPS of .864 this year would be among the top 25 of ALL hitters in the American League. 2nd among DH's behind Nelson Cruz. His 37 homers would be good for 6th overall in the AL as well. This characterization that the Cubs have a collection of bad players etc. just isn't true. Like a lot of teams, they have really good talent on their roster and didn't play well in 2019, after not playing well down the stretch in 2018, which is why Maddon will be elsewhere next year.

I think you have drastically under estimated how much the cubs have already committed for 2020. They have over $150M committed to 14 players and that doesn't include Almora, Contreras (arby1), Baez (arby2 eligible/current salary $5.2M) - Schwarber(arby2 eligible/ current salary $3.4M) and Bryant (arby3 eligible/ current salary $13M). They also have Bach in the minors making $5M. With those guys the cubs payroll will easily be in the $190's. Exactly - lots of payroll coming off the books this year but most of it will be offset by raises to their own players...plus that still leaves them with holes all over their roster that need filling from outside their organization if they want to make any drastic improvements to their club's 2020 outlook, which would be expensive. All I'm saying is don't count them out for a rapid rebound. Rizzo, Baez, Bryant and Contreras are all tops at their positions within the NL Central, and are top 5 in the league. Hendricks and Darvish are both really good pitchers and Quintana isn't bad either. They have 223 million in salary committed this year, but 116 committed for next year. Even with arbitration raises if they toe the line on total salary they'll have plenty of room to maneuver. As previously mentioned they have plenty of trade capital. Schwarber for his defensive short comings still averages 36 homers a season with an .827 OPS and comes with two more years of control. Caratini is a good player who won't be eligible for arbitration until 2021, David Bote is versatile and can swing the bat can be controlled through through 2026 etc. etc. The Cubs failure this year has a lot of causes, one of the primary ones is luck. Their record in One Run Games: 19-27 (FWIW the Brewers record in One Run Games: 27-16). They also have 10 "Walk Off" losses (Again the Brewers have 4). I am enjoying the autopsy of the 2019 Cubs so far, but I don't think that Theo/the Cubs are in any way 'over'.

Aren’t the wild card games usually late afternoon? 4:00pm or so?

Or, Theo & co are gone, and the new GM re-tools. Ricketts is not happy. Epstein has 2 years left and is the highest paid executive in baseball. I don’t think theyd pay him to sit home for 2 years, especially when his team is a major disappointment yet still finishes with a winning record. Theo will do what he does best, sign a bunch of free agents then trade for Corey Kluber or someone of that ilk

The Cubs will be back next year. I would expect Epstein to go hard after Pomeranz to add a power lefty to their pen. They have tons of contracts expiring which will give them room to sign even more free agents: Hamels, zobrist, Morrow, cishek, kintzler etc. they also have some nice pieces to trade if they go that route : Schwarber, Happ, etc

You all realize the Cubs have lost 9 in a row playing all their starters. Now all the players are checked out; so it doesn’t really matter who plays over the weekend; they all just want it to be over at this point Maddon included.

Re-reading this thread in the light of the subsequent 7 weeks of baseball, and tonight's playoff-clinching win, has been enlightening. To paraphrase one poster, so many in this thread posted opinions as facts. I'm glad I never attended the "funeral", makes this run all the sweeter. Go Crew! I was amused to learn that there is at least one person who misses Ned Yost as manager. Which is absolutely hilarious. I also posted that Yost was a good manager, not necessarily that he was 'missed'. Whatever bullpen decisions he made that irked folks here, he won two pennants and a world series. Which places him in pretty exclusive company with three likely hall of fame managers: Bruce Bochy, Joe Maddon, and Terry Francona all having won multiple pennants and a title. Managers that have survived in the industry as long as Yost is also limited: Bochy (25), Francona (19), Hurdle (17) and Bob Melvin (16). If both success and longevity don't equate with being a good manager I don't know what else would. As for the Eulogy, I knew if I was wrong I would get grief, big deal. It was my opinion at the time based on what I saw. It was like the people that posted about projections, nobody knew this team had a miracle run in them, but I'm glad they did as it has made the last month of the season the most fun to follow. Also a big shout out to BrewCrew 92 not only was he a devout believer the team had a September run in them and specifically cited many of the players who have got the job done for Milwaukee.

So if the Brewers clinch but lose out on the division, do they rest Hader, Pomeranz, Woodruff etc for the wild card game? And lean mostly on Faria, Nelson, Albers etc for the Rockies series?

I always hate it when people talk about players “wanting to stay”. They play for money so whomever offers the most money usually gets the player. Just today, Yelich said he’d like to be a Brewer forever, but “the business side has to work out” ie the money has to be right. Pro ball players are a fraternity and when you’re a 1%er living in the lap of luxury the members of the fraternity you go to work with and the city you work in 90 days a year are less important than the money. Grandal could improve at least a half dozen clubs with aims of contending in 2020. It will be tough winning a bidding war for him. I can picture Moustakas coming back but whomever loses out on Josh Donaldson would surely engage Moustakas as a fall back option