Jopal78

Pitching talent is scarce; that’s why Woodruff likely will have a new home in 2026. Fading vets Charlie Morton and Verlander each still got a 15 million dollar guarantees this past season. Woodruff at nearly ten years younger will certainly get a multiyear deal and for likely well above $15m per season. The Brewers have nothing to lose by picking up their half of his mutual option and offering him the QO if he declines.

You got it right, should read “will never happen”

A salary cap and full revenue sharing will never happen. For 3 main reasons: 1. Players will likely never give up the right to sell themselves to highest bidder. If they were not willing to do it in 1994 when the largest salaries were 6 million per year, why would it be given any consideration now when the average salary is approaching 6 million per year. 2. The large market teams have no interest in Kansas City, Cleveland or Milwaukee being on more even financial footing and potentially making the competition stiffer. It wouldn’t expand their market, improve their market share or tap into any new revenue sources. 3. Small market owners would never agree to a salary floor (a condition precedent for both full revenue sharing and salary cap). The thought of being forced to spend money on talent when in the down side of a success cycle, instead paring payroll to the bone is as repugnant to those owners as a cap is to the players. Maybe 30 year ago they had a shot at this, but the strike and intervening CBAs since then have made it impossible.

The straw man is back! Too bad I didn’t say Ohtani or Sasaki would’ve stayed home. What you continuingly fail to recognize is players play for money. Already earning millions of dollars a year in Japan, their players typically do not come to America just “for the love of the game” or “to play against the best”, they’re coming here to make even more money. I’m willing to bet not a single one crosses the pacific without first having a guarantee that they’re making much more than they could in Japan. Plus, whatever costs are required to get the Japanese team that holds their rights to give them up. Unless you believe superstar ball players don’t generate revenue in Japan like they do here in the States. You’re the one with the idea for an international draft. How do you get a player who’s making millions of dollars a year to give it up to come to the US and play for a team or city they don’t want to when they always have the option of staying in Japan and continuing to get real paid? Even assuming for the sake of argument, MLB has an international draft. Who is going to use their choice to secure the rights of a Japanese player should they ever choose to come to America and play when they can select a kid from the DR who would jump for a six or low seven figure bonus. Or how do you do an international draft where salaries for international players are cost controlled for the teams without players from wealthy foreign leagues scoffing at it. Back to my original premise there’s no practical way to do it. And I don’t know why you keep bringing up European league basketball when they’re paid pennies on the dollar compared to NBA salaries. That’s a better analogy to baseball players from the DR or Mexico. Of course, they’re going to come to the States the minimum is more money than nearly all are making locally.

Why do Americans who don’t cut it in MLB go to Japan, because they’ve always wanted to play in an inferior league? No, they play for money. Don’t confuse the highest paying league with the best league. Players come to America to play for the money, not for the cache that comes with being able to say back home that they played for the KC Royals. And of course they’re going to give the rah rah PR lines: want to play against the best, for the love of the game, etc. etc. That’s marketing. More importantly it takes two to tango. I suspect to most involved in Japanese baseball the system is not broke so why fix it? A Japanese superstar nears the end of team control, team posts him and gets a huge infusion of cash when they ultimately sell them off, player ostensibly gets to select where they play in America and for how much. What’s not to love?

You’re wrong for a couple reasons. First of all NPB team control a players rights for 9 years. They can agree to post them earlier like Sasaki but are not required to. So the number of Japanese players worth drafting in an international draft format would be incredibly small (More Nori Aoki’s than Yamamoto’s). Next, you’re not realizing star players in the NPB like Yamamoto, Ohtani, even Imanaga already made millions of dollars during their years playing professionally in Japan. Do you honestly believe a millionaire Japanese born baseball player is going to come to America and play for a salary, team or city that they have no say in? Maybe you’d get a few again like Nori Aoki or Tadahito Iguchi, but there’s a reason nearly every star player from Japan has ended up on the West Coast, New York or Chicago. And that’s why it’s apples and oranges with kids from the Dominican who are not bound to local clubs for almost a decade and are looking at their first ever big pay day when they sign a contract as a 17 year old.

Williams got lit up for ten runs in his first 10 innings with the Yankees, yet still wound up with his H/9, BB/9 HR/9 K/9 at or near his career marks and pitched a career high number of innings. He won’t need to take a pay cut from the 9 million he made in ‘25 or play for incentives, and will almost certainly get a hefty multiyear deal somewhere not called Milwaukee.

Nothing practical can be done. Even if they made an international draft or put caps in place, star professional players in Japan are well compensated compared to the other foreign leagues. Therefore, the next Yamamoto or Sasaki could decide there’s too much culture shock in Milwaukee, or not enough chance to win in Minnesota, etc., and simply refuse to come stateside and play if selected by a team they do not prefer or wait until preferred destination becomes possible. I suppose teams could set up a baseball academies like in the DR and start scouting amateur Japanese players and beat the NPB to the punch in contracting them, but that sounds quite expensive with no guarantee of it ever being worthwhile.

Anyone who was in favor of the last labor deal should’ve known it would be bad for teams like Milwaukee. It’s been a double whammy. Prices Since for even mediocre free agents have reached 10+ million dollars a year. Leaving teams like Milwaukee to bargain shop in February when the free agent class has mostly been picked over two or three times already. Then with the prices being what they are, even the big dogs recognize with the costs of talent acquisition they need to have a pipeline of young cheap talent and don’t trade blue chippers. As for a salary cap, there is no reason for the Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, Phillies to want a salary cap; they’re more than satisfied playing an opponent on unequal footing most nights. I’m not convinced small market owners in KC, Cincy, TB, Milwaukee etc, want a salary floor either. In rebuilding seasons where they don’t have the horses on the roster to win they want to retain the ability to pare salary down to the bone and not sign 10 million dollar a year free agents simply to meet a floor.

Back up catchers don’t play much if at all in the playoffs, they’re basically there to avoid catastrophe if the starting catcher must leave the game; that rules out pinch hitting them except in extreme desperation scenarios. Milwaukee seemingly had either Bauers or Vaughn pinch hit late in games when they were desperate. Hard to say Jansen who hadn’t played much with the Brewers (only 25 out of 54 games after being acquired) would have been more likely to deliver a miracle.

Some heavy revisionist history there. Selig isn’t a “used care salesman” he was the CEO (and the son of the founder) of Selig Executive Leasing- a company that leased fleets of commercial vehicles and has/had annual revenue streams in the tens of millions of dollars. Major league baseball was at nadir in 1968, attendance was down, MLB expanded in 1969 in the face of diminishing attendance and had a team actually go bankrupt for the first and only time. Selig and his wealthy business pals from Milwaukee recognizing an opportunity purchased the team out of bankruptcy for 10 million dollars and moved them to Milwaukee. He and his partners were flush with cash and Milwaukee had a ready to go major league stadium (lack of liquidity and a pro stadium is why the Pilots went bust in the first place). Selig’s group’s purchase was at a time coincidentally (maybe?) that coincided with the explosion of franchise value (Yankees sold in ‘74 for 10 million dollars, Texas Rangers sold in ‘80 for 20 million dollars). When franchise values exploded and players were granted a larger share of the pie in terms of salary, Selig and Co. didn’t keep up and made the franchise irrelevant on the field and for a whole generation of would be fans. He sold his stake of the team for $223 million dollars, which conservatively adjusted for inflation is about 34 million dollars in 1970 money. Nominally, Selig’s Brewers investment grew twenty-fold: an elite result. In real dollars, it roughly tripled, which still comfortably would beat long term US Treasuries for the same time period. So yeah, great he moved a team to Milwaukee, but mythology aside he’s really no different than Attanasio (or any of the hedge fund folks that own most of the teams today): a wealthy businessman who invested in professional sports as an elite alternative asset for long term growth that also comes built in with some local power and prestige. They don’t trot out the prior owner of the Phillies, Padres, Blue Jays etc. because nobody cares. Why should it be different with the Brewers?

Logically, why would they pull the plug on Joey Ortiz anyway? The glove plays, pre-arbitration salary in ‘26, has already demonstrated some hitting ability in the majors in ‘24, BABiP suggests he was unlucky this year when the league average was 30 points higher than his. Second, for a club that doesn’t sign free agents to multi year deals very often to begin with, it seems unlikely they would break character to replace a player like Ortiz.

Yeah, need length guys and they bring along the dude coming of TJ surgery who’s pitched 5 big league innings in the last year and a half

You and I both know they’re going to start Misiorowski on Saturday he’ll be all over the place, and it’ll be over before they can give him the hook.

Peralta with 70 pitches in the third. Get ready to ride the pen hard to finish this one only to go into an elimination game with a bullpen game.

Again, I know what the result of the variables numerically is supposed to represent. OPS+ includes park factor. Nobody here knows how to calculate a park factor so it’s relying on some website that publishes them and the methodology that each site uses to do it is not uniform.

Where do you get the offensive upside from? PCA was the better hitter in the minor leagues, and true he is almost 2 years older than Chourio. But you’re comparing a 21 year old and a 23 year old. Maybe you’ll ultimately be right and in 8 years Chourio will be the far better player, but you’re just guessing right now. I’m not hailing PCA as the next super star player, just pointing out the raw numbers indicate that they’re pretty even offensively to this point in their major league careers, and certainly Chourio isn’t regarded as the defender Crow-Armstrong is.

I’ll give you a pad, pencil and stat sheet for the 2025 Brewers and 20 bucks if you can calculate wRC+ or OPS+ for the players on the Brewers. Even giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you knew the actual formulas as opposed to merely what the result of the equation means, it’s still a sucker bet because not one of us could do the calculations without being provided variables computed by someone else. Further those variables and how they’re calculated differs between the sources that publish them such as Fan Graphs, Statcast, and Baseball Reference. Thus there is inherent subjectivity in all those metrics based on the source one uses for park factor, league averages, run environment adjustments etc. Which is why I initially said I don’t care about wRC+ because there’s a metric to support nearly any argument one wants to make. However, when you look at plate appearances, hits, extra base hits. Chourio and Crow-Armstrong have been quite similar to date in their careers.

I don’t really care about weighted runs created plus because there is seemingly a complicated metrics formula to support any argument that one wants to make (For example, PCA’s career bWAR (8.2) is more than 25% greater than Chourio’s (6.0) in nearly the same amount of games played). I’m looking at the raw counting numbers, they’re nearly identical. Chourio: 293 hits in 1162 PAs. 110 XBH PCA: 234 hits in 1076 PAs. 101 XBH. The real difference is PCA is an elite defender and Chourio is not.

Ever look at PCAs stats through 1076 PAs and Chourio’s through 1162? Eery similarities: PCA: 50 2B, 10 3B, 41 HR, 64 SB, 53 BB, 260 K Chourio: 64 2B, 8 3B, 42 HR, 42 SB, 69 BB, 242K. It’s really the defense that separates PCA as the better player of the 2. Moreover, PCA is not quite 2 years older (3/25/02) than Chourio (3/11/04).

Hoskins will be on the post season roster. There hasn’t been much reason to keep him since he came off the IL except to be the late inning power bat off the bench in the postseason.

To be eligible for a team’s post season roster the player must be in that organization, not necessarily the major league team, by midnight on August 31st.

He wasn’t playoff eligible for anyone but Milwaukee after 9/1

But what’s left of that 18 million? A million bucks? He’s had 3 MLB at bats since July 5th. Just seems weird they’d let a guy rot on their bench, for the final weeks of the season. In suppose between Hoskins, Seigler, Lockridge and Berroa (the other hitters on the 40 man, there’s no reason to not

Just a thought: is there a reason the Brewers haven’t just released Hoskins? Are they going to burn a spot on the playoff roster for a non-contact hitting pinch hitter, who hasn’t received regular MLB At bats in months?