Jopal78

The Jets are 20-36 under their current GM, and 11-23 with Saleh as HC. Neither the GM or coach will be there much longer without doing some winning, thus it’s easy to see why they want Rodgers.

Historically the Brewers have actually done a nice job retaining their own star players: Ben Sheets, Yovanni Gallardo, Jenkins, Braun, Corey Hart, Rickie Weeks, Lucroy, Carlos Gomez, Yelich, etc. I think the landscape and it’s harder to come to an agreement with players on contract extensions than it was years ago, and there are always some players who simply want to exercise their right for free agency after six years (Prince Fielder for example) no matter what.

How many of the big stars that were contributors to the Cubs world series did they ultimately resign? The deep pocketed Cubs traded the ones they could and let all the others walk. In today's game nearly every player says "they would love to stay with X team," but that's unimportant. It's what they don't say that matters "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to stay here". None of these players (Adames, Woodruff, Burnes, etc.) are dumb or unaware what their Union brethren are getting paid in other cities. To date, I haven't heard any of them say they will do what it takes to stay with Milwaukee. The Brewers could resign almost anyone they choose to if they were willing to pay market rates. Given their history though, they're probably not going to do that with anyone currently on their roster. There are never any articles that argue to just pay a specific player market rate, it's always an argument for a reason why they should take something less than market rate, when there's zero evidence it's something that would be considered.

Plus when the starting pitcher unit breaks up over the next 12-16 months, the Brewers are not going to want to players soaking up 50-60 million dollars a year while the team wins 75 games. The same applies to Adames that Cleveland’s Dolan said regarding Lindor “Enjoy him”.

It’s Tyrone Taylor not Mickey Mantle. The difference between Taylor and the next man up whomever that may be with the Brewers isn’t that great. Taylor’s a nice player but at 29 is what he is, a solid defender with fringe major league OBP skills and 15-20 homer power. Now with a torn ligament in his elbow, even when he does come back in game shape (some players end up needing surgery even after a PRP injection) he’s probably not going to be letting her rip from deep in the outfield anytime soon further negating defensive prowess.

Unless the team goes into the toilet this year, why wouldn't the Brewers just hang on to Burnes until the deadline in '24? A difference making arm, that is a rental there wouldn't be a team in the hunt that wouldn't want Burnes. Let them bid against each other when they're drooling over that tender morsel, not when their metaphorical bellies are fat, and with no exigency.

What window? The Brewers are already in Do or Die mode. They fall off the pace by July they’ll break up the team. Moreover, if they keep the team intact through 2023, they will break it up there after, because they’re not gonna lose all those players for nothing to free agency and never were going to resign them to market rate deals. Burnes whining about not getting a big enough raise doesn’t change anything with the teams plans.

Take PECOTA projections with a pretty big grain of salt. They had Milwaukee projected to win 94 games last year, and in ‘21 they pegged the Brewers for 89 wins.

There’s a statistic out there to make any point you want to make. So you may as well go ahead and lay them on me, but McCutchen have the superior OPS superior war on baseball reference, and winker is coming off, not one but two operations. He could be healthy and back to the player, and he was with the Reds certainly a possibility, but whether you choose to see it or not, there is a risk that he remains terrible due to injury or ineffectiveness. In the bullpen they’re going with cheap inexperienced pitchers for the most part nobody has a crystal ball and yes, maybe they’ll mostly be killers, but there’s also a real risk that all those players are ineffective and the bullpen sinks their season. The Brewers have some nice starting pitchers, some good but not great hitters, and play in a weaker division. Is that a recipe for the postseason could be, but they’re certainly gonna need to have some luck in my opinion

It’s not being pessimistic it’s being realistic your refusal to even consider the notion is blinding your logic. For example, key contributors no longer with the Brewers: Hader, Boxberger, Gott, Renfroe, Wong, Suter, et al. Further, they’ve made an upgrade at DH if and only if Winker is healthy and plays, significantly better than he did last year with Seattle, where he was terrible. (I mean there is a reason a player with a 888 career OPS was available for Kolten Wong, right?) I hope you’re right, 97 wins in going wire to wire in first place sounds great to me and. Although I doubt any of the pundits are going to pick the Brewers for the playoffs based upon the talent on the roster but then again, that’s why they play the games.

Less talent on paper than in prior years, fewer games against the Reds, Pirates, than in years past, as noted above relying on a slew of inexperienced arms in the bullpen and counting on a number of players to bounce back instead of merely producing close to what they did last year?

Then again, take a look at the new relievers on the 40 man roster, whom they're presumably counting on in '24 Javy Guerra (18 IP | 76 ERA+| +.60 WPA) Janson Junk (8 IP | 65 ERA+| -0.20vWPA) Joel Payamps (55IP | 125 ERA+| -2.3 WPA) Bryse Wilson (115.2 IP | 75 ERA+| -2.3 WPA) Tyson Miller (10.2 IP | 37 ERA+| -0.7 WPA) Elvis Peguero (17.1 IP | 61 ERA+| -0.5 WPA) Of those above, four of them have barely pitched in the major leagues, so it is truly a mystery what the Brewers ultimately have in them. The other two who have pitched significant MLB innings performed quite poorly in '23 by these metrics. To keep their starting pitching staff together, they've apparently decided to go cheap in the bullpen this year with almost all pre-arbitration eligible arms outside of Williams, Bush and whomever loses the rotation battle. To me, its another example of the theme of the '23 Brewers- taking a gamble that everything will break their way and they'll be in the post season chase, alternatively if it blows up in their face it makes it all the easier to break this group up in July.

That’s where the rubber is going to meet the road right? With Boxberger, Suter, Hader, Gott pitching elsewhere, there are a lot of innings to be covered by guys who are question marks, not to mention the 120 innings or so that Gustave, Perdomo, Kelley and Rogers covered last year. Absent a late addition or two, this team could bear a resemblance to the 2012 club where the bullpen did them in despite good starting pitching and good hitting.

But I think this is a fallacy. Heightened expectations, absolutely, and winning 86 games isn't nothing, but compared to the other contending clubs in the NL, they weren't very good. They went 25-27 against the NL Playoff teams from last year. More importantly, take a look at the run differential of the Brewers and the teams above them from '22. LAD +334 ATL +180 NYM +166 SD +146 StL +135 PHI + 65 MIL +47 But for Philadelphia, they were blown out in terms of run differential by the other playoff teams. The Brewers certainly have less overall talent than most of the above teams, so they're not likely just going to roll through teams. Thus, even if everything else breaks their way ask yourself what a reasonable bounce back is for '23. A run differential of +115 (their run differential in '21)? Absent an unpredictable implosion from one of the other top dogs, even +115 probably still puts them shooting for the 2nd wild card. The Brewers an okay club, fringe playoff team, and there's a reason they play the games and don't hand out awards based on the stat sheet. But my guess is they are going to need to have some significant luck to see the post season in '23.

Look at the reality, the Brewers are taking a gamble with both of these players. The Brewers are not just asking Winker to comeback from surgery to both his knee, and for a herniated disc in his neck to play professional level baseball, they're asking him as he approaches 30 to come back from those operations and be some semblance of the guy he was when he was 27. Herniated discs are tricky injuries and the surgery isn't always a success. Peyton Manning had surgery for a herniated disc in February of '10 and wasn't game ready again until September '12. The Brewers will have no idea what they have in Winker until he gets out on the field and actually performs when the games matter, yet Milwaukee is counting on him to be a contributor this year. Contreras was an All-Star and isn't even arbitration eligible, yet the Braves swapped him out for an older, more expensive catcher with inferior hitting stats. Why? Maybe their evaluators reached the conclusion his defense behind the plate wasn't good enough for an MLB contender, maybe maybe they concluded his offensive numbers were fluky and likely not sustainable given his minor league track record, who knows? Again the Brewers won't know what they have for sure until he plays in games that count. Given what they gave up to acquire these players and where the bar is set from last year, they're not taking a huge gamble with either player, but they're gambling nonetheless that these two guys will produce. In a way, those two players probably represent the chances of the Brewers season. If they both perform at least to expectations the Brewers can probably go toe to toe with Cardinals for the NL Central crown. If both of those players flop and the Brewers fall behind in the Division race, the season will be a failure and they probably start breaking up this group in July

I was going to go through this point by point then I read the comment the Padres best pitcher would be a #3 or #4 on most playoff teams, and realized you're using hyperbole in order to dump on these teams to support your point. Yu Darvish bWAR 4.4, fWAR 4.2 Corbin Burnes bWAR 4.0, fWAR4.6. If your opinion truly is the Dodgers, Mets, Braves, Padres, Cardinals and Phillies have the same amount of questions with their roster as Milwaukee, you may want to consider laying some action on the Brewers because they're getting much better odds in Vegas than the others.

You're being too literal to argue the point, every team wants to win as many games as possible. Go back and look and see if there were any pundits who picked the Giants to win the NL West in 2021, or even be a wild card team, I bet there were virtually zero. The Giants were coming off of 4 consecutive losing seasons and running it back with essentially the same core of players; they weren't viewed as a contender. The '21 Giants were were one of those teams like I mentioned that come out of nowhere and win a pile of games. In '21 the Giants had Buster Posey in his last year put up the best year of his career since he won the MVP in '12. Brandon Crawford had an .895 OPS a full 100 points higher than any other season to date. Brandan Belt with a .975 OPS 160 points above his career average. Darin Ruf (who?) with a .904 OPS across 300+ plate appearances. DeSclafani had a career year on the mound. Nonetheless, I'll modify my point, in '21 the Brewers were the worst team in the NL amongst those viewed as potential contenders. Have they added enough talent to go toe to toe with the big boys in the NL? In my view they have not, they reshuffled the deck as best they could, but when the pundits release their predictions I anticipate the Brewers will be an also ran in the NL this year. But as the '21 Giants prove, you get a couple of hitters to come out of nowhere and get white hot for a long period of time, get some decent pitching you can win the division. I think this is what the Brewers are shooting for in '23.

See comment above that every year there’s a team that gets hot or lucky. That was the Giants only winning season in the last six years.

Braves, Mets, Phillies, Padres, Dodgers, Cardinals don’t have situations where they’re counting on guys bouncing back from horrible seasons to be pillars of their team, or banking on improved health to be able to compete.

Depth is one thing it probably helps them not back track, but the question is do they have the horses to go toe to toe with the best of their league? They didn’t last year, and I don’t think they do this year. Their roster has too many “ifs”: if Winker is healthy and last year was a fluke, if the shift helps Yelich produce more, if the rotation stays healthy, if one of their CFers can excel in the majors, etc etc. Of course every year a team gets extra lucky or goes on a timely hot streak so anything can happen, I just think that’s what the Brewers are going to need to stand out in ‘23.

I give them a D, and here’s why: they were the worst of the teams in the NL who were actually trying to compete last year, but their roster moves this off-season did not close the gap between themselves and the Mets, Phillies, Braves, Padres, Dodgers. I’m not sure the Brewers are the favorite in the NL Central either which represents the easiest path to the playoffs. By postponing the inevitable break up of their core until at least July of ‘23. When the rebuild does start, they will get less talent back for Burnes, Woodruff, Adames, etc. Their relief pitching wasn’t good in the 2nd half of last season so they’ve turned it over quite a bit but are now gambling on unproven arms to pitch meaningful relief innings. The Brewers aren’t a “bad” team but failing to make the playoffs in the expanded post season means they weren’t a “good” team either. They shuffled the major league roster as best they could without trading away key major league talent. It just seems to me like they have no direction and are spinning their wheels, hoping to beat the odds in ‘23.

Thanks for the input. I was only responding in kind to what I received. Your sarcasm notwithstanding, opining that someone is wrong, or their calculation is flawed, or that their article is merely clickbait is not being dismissive or condescending by any definition of the terms. Anyways, you can have the final word and I will move on now.

Yep, and look where those starts came in relation to where the Brewers were in the standings: Aug. 29th: 102 pitches Sep. 3rd: 110 pitches Sept. 8: 100 pitches Sept. 14: 107 pitches Sept. 19: 100 pitches Sep. 24th: 102 pitches Sep. 30th: 103 pitches. Oct. 5th (elimintated) 40 pitches. Season was on the line, and they rode their ace hard to try to get in the post season. Burnes had another string of 100+ starts in July when his rotation mates included Aaron Ashby and Jason Alexander. So again, when the starting pitching ranks were thinned by injury, the team leaned on Burnes to pick up the slack. Exactly what every manager would do in the same situation

But wait, Peralta was also in the rotation in 2021 when it was a six man rotation, as was Houser and Woodruff yet they all suffered arm injuries almost from the get-go in '22 and missed a bunch of time. I assume it will be business as usual in Milwaukee with every pitcher who is healthy. This is because, other than when he rode Burnes hard last September with the Brewer season hanging in the balance, Counsell doesn't often allow his starters throw more than 95 pitches or so.

Ok, but that sort of speaks more to him being in the major leagues at 21 years old then being a swing man his first 3 years in the majors, doesn't it? Of course you failed to notice that, until 2021 Corbin Burnes (26 years old) had zero 150 IP seasons in his professional career and had crossed 100 IP only once. Were the Brewers equally crazy for not managing his workload in '21? It's clickbait on an otherwise slow day as it gets closer to pitchers and catchers reporting.