Why does a contrary opinion have to be pessimism? To your point about David Hamilton, the Red Sox liked him well enough at one point to absorb Jackie Bradley Jr.’s contract in order to acquire him (They released Bradley after 290 PAs).
3 years later, the Red Sox obviously preferred Durbin and Monasterio to David Hamilton. Couple that with the stat sheet showing a career .642 OPS and it’s “realistic” to wonder if Hamilton is going to hit enough to be more than a bench player.
Pitching wins games, and the Brewers have shown a knack of being able to develop young pitchers, so it makes sense that they’re trying to acquire as many young staying pitchers as possible.
At the same time, it’s not so much that Durbin is traded it’s that on offense they have now traded away nearly 1100 PAs of above league average offense without really replacing those players. So it is realistic to wonder if the Brewers are going to hit enough especially from the left side of the their infield to win consistently, especially if their pitching staff isn’t as strong as last year with the departures of Peralta and Quintana.
However, there are plenty of unknowns at this point: Like Turang last year, maybe Chourio grew into some adult strength over the off season and hits 35+ homers, and Vaughn puts up a .500 slugging percent again, then it wouldn’t matter as much if neither 3B and SS has an OPS above .650