Ron Robinsons Beard

I agree there's a strong chance this is what it is...and I find it gross. I've found lindbloms stuff to be very underwhelming, and hitters seem to find it very hittable. And I've made my stance on Anderson extremely known. I hope those 2 find their way to the bullpen by mid may I think hoping that the couple starters pitch poorly is an odd stance to take if you're hoping for the team to have success this season. I somewhat understand it more if you say you don't have faith or you think it might happen, but hoping?

That's what I think it's going to end up being as well, and I'm good with it. It is good to see that Peralta is making noise, but I think he'll stick in the pen as a high-leverage set-up guy until Knebel is ready to come back. I think Burnes is in the AAA rotation to start, and is the first guy up when one of the first 5 need a replacement.

It isn't really surprising, though. He's at the age where the Packers typically let free agent OL walk. That practice has pretty much always been a good plan, too. When was the last time the Packers gave an O-lineman a 3rd contract? Clifton maybe?

He's playing his age 25 season. Either he breaks out and puts himself on the map this season, or he never will.

I was thinking the same thing yesterday. Dontari Poe makes a ton of sense. Would be a similar situation to a decade ago when the Packers had Pickett and Raji up front.

Keeping Gamel or Morrison as the 26th man frankly doesn't really matter to me either way. They both bring potential value. It's going to come down to whether the Brewers value Gamel's strong defense in the OF late in games versus Morrison's power bat late in games. But the fact that Gamel can be safely optioned to AAA, while Morrison has already said that he's gone if he doesn't make the roster out of Spring Training, likely does play a huge role. And I'm saying this as a fan who really likes Gamel. It is also entirely possible that the Brewers break camp with both Morrison and Gamel on the roster, and only carry 12 pitchers. That actually does make some sense, considering all the off days at the beginning of the season.

Except that Counsell has given no indication, at least so far, that Houser's rotation spot is in jeopardy. In fact, as of the interview he had with Michaels yesterday, he's considered one of the sure-thing rotation guys. Houser certainly hasn't shown anything that would put that spot in jeopardy, either.

yeah, Gyorko is a lock as the RHH side of the 3B platoon. Morrison only fits as a pinch hitter and LHH 1B option against tough righties. But we all know that the Brewers love LHH power in Miller Park, and other than Yelich, Narvaez and Smoak, that aspect is lacking. They really have no LHH power on the bench. That's why Morrison could make it, at the expense of Gamel, who would be optioned to AAA. He doesn't, this Logan Morrison stuff is getting ridiculous. He had 15 good at bats in the first half of spring, many against non-mlb caliber pitchers. He could mash for 2 more weeks and would still be very unlikely to crack the roster, because small sample and he has zero versatility. It's way more likely the Brewers are talking him up and hoping to trade him for anything of value 2-3 weeks from now. I don't know about that. The guy is pretty much starting every game. I don't think they would have signed him, knowing his feelings on not going to AAA, if he didn't stand at least a legit shot of making the team. I'm not really a Morrison fan. Pretty indifferent on him, to tell you the truth. But the tea leaves are starting to point to him making the squad out of Spring Training.

Me too. Really odd though that YouTube TV isn't releasing a list of those Sinclair RSNs that they'll continue to carry. All they are telling people is that if they are losing their RSN, they'll receive a notification via their YouTube TV app.

Kinda hard to project stuff when you only know what half the pen will be. I believe that if this team wants to put its best foot forward it should be like this. Woodruff, Anderson, Lindblom, Peralta, Lauer (in AAA until 5th starter) Hader Houser Suter Burnes (piggy backing Peralta Lauer) Rasmussen Phelps Claudio Black (show up or shuttle out when Knebel is right) Pick 1 random (in MLB until 5th starter is needed) Counsell said in an interview again today that the known four (Woodruff, Houser, Anderson, Lindblom) have rotation spots pretty much sewn up. The competition is for #5 between Lauer and Peralta, with Burnes and Shelby Miller on the periphery. I know you don't agree, but I think it's pretty obvious by now that they see Houser as a starter going forward.

Because a poster tried to make an apples-to-apples comparison in the deals based on 2019 WAR numbers of a 35-year-old Braun compared to a 29-year-old Heyward. When comparing the value, you have to look at the value providing over the lifetime of the deal compared to cherry-picking one season. Since Heyward signed his deal before the 2016 season, he only has 4 seasons to draw conclusions from. It makes sense to compare those numbers over four years to the first four years of Braun's big-money extension, which began in 2011. Braun's big market extension began in 2016, not 2011. I'm not comparing Heyward to Braun but again, those MVP/near MVP type prime years for Braun were well within his first early extension and had nothing to do with the later big money extension that he's playing under now. The "lifetime of the deal" for the Braun deal everyone refers to ran from 2016-2020. Fine. Heyward 2016-2019 (ages 26-29) - 7.1 WAR, with a big defensive bump Braun 2016-2019 (ages 32-35) - 8.5 WAR, with a big defensive deficiency Unless you put a huge value on defensive stats in the OF, Braun has been a much more productive and valuable player during that time period, despite the 6-year age gap. Unless Heyward sees some sort of career resurgence, chances are he won't even be in the league for his ages 32-35 seasons, as the Cubs will just dump him, essentially paying him to go away. That's where things are trending.

Because a poster tried to make an apples-to-apples comparison in the deals based on 2019 WAR numbers of a 35-year-old Braun compared to a 29-year-old Heyward. When comparing the value, you have to look at the value providing over the lifetime of the deal compared to cherry-picking one season. Since Heyward signed his deal before the 2016 season, he only has 4 seasons to draw conclusions from. It makes sense to compare those numbers over four years to the first four years of Braun's big-money extension, which began in 2011.

2019 War Braun- 1.8 Heyward- 2.0 Braun since signing his big extension in 2011 at age 27 - 29.8 WAR (9 seasons) Heyward since singing his huge deal in 2015 at age 26 - 7.1 WAR (4 seasons) Braun put up 17.5 WAR in the four years after signing his deal, which includes his injury and suspension-ravaged 2013 and 2014 seasons. Comparing these two based on the WAR Braun put up in 2019 as a 35-year-old versus what Heyward did as a 29-year-old just isn't a good, or fair, comparison.

My issue was not so much that he was cheap but that he seemed to be crying poor through his mouthpieces like Haudricourt when there was plenty of evidence to the contrary. This extension actually proves the point that there was money available to keep last years team essentially together. Nobody knew Yelich would take a deal without testing the market. When they refused to pay a guy like Thames a couple million more than his worth or hold on to a very useful bullpen arm like Guerra neither of whom would break the bank, it certainly seemed they were being cheap. They must have been pretty confident that extending Yelich was doable. He never said anything like this, you and many others projected this onto him. There was NOTHING in what he said that suggest this is true, nothing at all. The same people that listed to the Stearns interview yesterday and said it meant Yelich was never going to be signed to an extension. The same people that are convinced that the team is going to ask for a new publicly funded stadium soon for some odd reason. Fans have a nasty habit of doing this. They hear something, decide it means something with no real proof behind it and just go with it. We got an upgrade over Thames and Guerra's peripherals never matched his results so he is a tricky guy. I think he is probably a 4.00-4.50 ERA reliever. Mouse and Grandal both got overpaid, maybe they could have signed one of them but Grandal signed so early I'm not shocked they didn't match him. Mouse is not very attractive at that contract imo. What Stearns did this offseason was not take on contracts that probably weren't good deals. All of this is 100% correct, but it unfortunately isn't going to stop the complaints that the Brewers didn't spend money just to spend it. Both Stearns and Attanasio have been asked if they have any regrets on how things played out this offseason, and both said they only free agent there were really upset about losing was Grandal. They did, however, manage to acquire perhaps the closest offensive clone to Grandal that exists in the majors in Narvaez. The fact that Narvaez makes pocket change compared to Grandal because of his lack of ML experience is simply how things work in the league. I keep seeing fans upset because the Brewers' payroll has decreased on paper. Did it ever occur to any of those people, though, that the Brewers just didn't see enough on the market worthy of giving big bucks to to maintain the 2019 payroll? Throwing money around for the sake of it is never the answer.

Barker has looked pretty solid in his limited opportunities so far in Spring Training, and certainly had a terrific year last year. But the fact that he wasn't even a non-roster invitee to ML Spring Training this year is probably a pretty good barometer on how the organization views his potential, I would imagine.

Pen has been fine, and will continue to be fine, because they are good at putting solid pieces in place. They've accumulated enough depth in that area that if one piece doesn't work, there are multiple options to switch them out.

My issue was not so much that he was cheap but that he seemed to be crying poor through his mouthpieces like Haudricourt when there was plenty of evidence to the contrary. This extension actually proves the point that there was money available to keep last years team essentially together. Nobody knew Yelich would take a deal without testing the market. When they refused to pay a guy like Thames a couple million more than his worth or hold on to a very useful bullpen arm like Guerra neither of whom would break the bank, it certainly seemed they were being cheap. They must have been pretty confident that extending Yelich was doable. Or maybe this was a team that underperformed and hovered around .500 most of the season before getting scorching hot in September, and the changes were needed and warranted. I think when it's all said and done, no one is going to lose any sleep over not retaining Thames and Guerra.

Next two years stay in place salary wise. The 7-year, $190 million extension kicks in for 2022. It only bought out the option year.

With the team's strong front office, this move solidifies the idea that the team likely won't me looking at chopping things down and rebuilding any time in the near future. Yelich has to know what the future holds. There's no way he signs this deal if they are going to tear things down in a couple seasons. We are likely to have some seasons in the next decade that won't be great, but the idea of looking at full teardowns and AAAA rosters, like we saw in the early 2000s, I believe is a thing of the past. That's how big this is. The Brewers are playing with the Big Boy clubs now.

I agree. Roughly $24 million/year for the next nine years. Yelich must really like Milwaukee, because if he would have played out his contract and got to free agency after 2022, there is no way he isn't a $30+ million/year player.

I would argue that it never should have begun. It should stop immediately ... but it won't.

What??? Yelich is exactly the type of player and body type that can sustain at a very high level into his mid 30's. The long term deals that have become albatrosses for other teams are the ones where the player has been pushing 40 at the tail end. People will say "but what about Braun?" but that doesn't really work, either. Braun has been a very productive player for the life of that deal. Not MVP level, but a very good player.

I think it'd be weird to NOT buy out the last two years but who knows. A few sources saying 9 years, $280 million

I mean, are you expecting a World Series roster with 34-year-old Yelich window making $30 million? The window is probably still 3 years just like it was before. Just like Braun's window in 2010?

If they tear up his current deal, and he's making $30+ million in 2020 now, it will put the payroll up around where it was last year. So yeah ... some crow may need to be dined on around here.