coolhandluke121

I'm not ready to talk myself into believing in them. There's just way too many guys with too much history of imploding, and who knows if Jeffress will bounce back fully. Look how long it took Matt Harvey to bounce back after a year of over-use. I'm not going to argue the point much more than I already have, and more power to you if you can remain optimistic, but right now I honestly think it's absolute trash. I did a little exercise where I pretended I was not a Brewers fan but just a fan of some random AL team that isn't really a rival, and it was eye-opening to realize how bad this bullpen could be. I'll grant that a few guys will probably do reasonably well just by random chance, but beyond the impact Hader provides, there's almost no lower limit to how bad they could be. And there's not much upside beyond a few questionable guys ending up surprisingly "serviceable".

With this new offense, I think you can make a case that there's still a place in the rotation for a low WHIP/high FIP guy like Chase was last year. He could still eat 5-6 ip's per start and give up 2-3 runs in most starts and it wouldn't be as unacceptable as it was last year when the offense was scuffling. You could argue that he's better suited to starting because his mistakes have a chance to even out, whereas giving up homers in the pen is often disastrous. Then you could move a more reliable leverage guy back to the pen and use last year's formula more reliably. I may be grasping a little here, but I think the bullpen needs to be stabilized and I don't think Chase has proven un-startable yet. Also, you would not have to worry about innings limits for whichever young guy moved to the pen, and you could switch him back to the rotation and move a different young guy to the pen later (so they both stay under their innings limits).

This bullpen is going to be hot garbage outside of Hader.

I remember him bombing pretty hard at least once. I don't remember how late he signed in other seasons, but PED's helped. The point is that even in his case, that kind of acquisition has a pretty low success rate. For every time it works out (Clemens a couple times, Arrieta last year), it seems there are 2 or 3 times it fails, sometimes miserably. Spring training is really important, especially in the post-PED era.

Not trying to call you out, I've heard this before from other posters too, but I'm just curious what's different about the Brewers that makes this true for them and not other teams? I know you didn't ask me but I think there is a viable explanation. Supposedly a lot of agents have anonymously said that Stearns is a great guy but that he's among the most strict in all of baseball in terms of having a price that he's willing to meet and sticking to it. So if Kimbrel is waiting for teams to improve their offer, that means the Brewers are probably out. We can debate the merits of that approach all we want ("they need him more now, so they should increase their offer") but there are long-term negotiating benefits that go with earning that reputation.

I disagree. If he’s not going to get the contract he wants, then I think he is willing to pull a Roger Clemens and wait until the right offer and the right team become one. I think teams remember how that worked out for the Yankees, and how all the super-late pitcher signings bombed last year. I think he's playing his cards wrong, but would also buy the theory that he's hurt.

Nobody is undefeated in arguments since spring training began either (minimum 5 arguments).

No thank you!

Not sure where you heard that, but they're 40-16 in their last 56 games. They went 12-5 during Paul's injury. That's pretty good, albeit in a small sample and not all of it against the toughest part of their schedule. The trouble with this sort of debate is that it's easy to come off as overly critical of a great player when really it's just a matter of Giannis setting the bar so high that any little thing you can nitpick in other candidates is magnified. Giannis is neither the best offensive player nor the best defensive player in the game, but he's close on both ends and that's extremely rare. The Bucks have the best drtg and #3 ortg, and it starts with him on both ends. Tied for 5th all-time with 45 double-digit wins, with an outside chance of being alone for 2nd place with 4 games left. Tied for 15th best scoring differential ever. Individual stats hurt by so many blowouts and the reduced minutes, when really that should be a notch in his favor. And all of that with a grand combined total of TWO all-star berths (and both of those borderline ones) for the rest of the team. I don't think I'm being unfair to Harden when I say there's really not a controversy in my mind. Giannis is that good. If Paul was healthy all year, Harden would be just as efficient but wouldn't have such gaudy stats, and nearly everybody would be saying "yeah, Harden is the best offensive player in the game, but I have to give it to Giannis because he's so great on both ends of the court."

I'm not dismissing what he's doing. There's no shame in finishing a distant second in the MVP race when the winner is starting a long run as the NBA's preeminent player.

Good. That's the kind of impulsive move that got them in this situation in the first place. It's not going to get them out of it; it's just going to prolong it. I hate to say it, but I think you have to ride the young arms pretty hard early in the season to buy time. They'll hit innings limits early, but that gives you time to make other plans for the stretch run (Nelson, Jeffress, trades, maybe some AAA guys like Brown). I'd easily take that option over backing up the money truck for Kimbrel.

Yes, or there would be more guys doing it. Currently there is 1 guy doing it. But it's not a great formula for a team success. There aren't guys who could do what he's doing with the same green light he has, but no contender is going to give anyone the green light to play that way anyway. What I'm getting at is that this is a qualifier to his greatness. "We're in this situation where we have to use a flawed approach to winning, and Harden can execute this flawed approach better than anyone, so we have to give him the MVP." It makes being on an inferior team an asset, when a better team would reduce his usage and he wouldn't have the gaudy stats to make the MVP race a serious contest in the first place. And by extension, it makes Giannis being on a much better team a hindrance to his case, when it's already too much of a hindrance because of how blowouts keep his minutes and volume stats down. That doesn't add up for me. Blowouts should strengthen his case, not weaken it. Giannis has been the best player in the league at his position, on both ends of the court, all season long. He's also playing like an all-time great at both ends. We haven't had that since Lebron was in his prime with the Heat, and I'm not really sure he was the best defensive sf. The last guy who was clearly that (best at his position on both ends) was probably Jordan. You could make a case for KG, Duncan, Olajuwon, Robinson, or Shaq at various times. You can make a case for transcendent offensive stars like Curry or Harden in the absence of a guy like that. But when a great two-way player leads a team without a true second star to the best record in the league and a historic scoring differential, I can't get with that at all.

That was me and I agree. It was kind of out of place in the Yelich thread but that's where the conversation went when I compared the type of prospect-for-rental-veteran trades they used to make to the Yelich trade. Love the shift in organizational philosophy - don't hug your prospects too much, but don't give away surplus value for rentals. Small markets just can't operate on expensive rentals and negative surplus value. Yeah, some of those trades will work out in the short term, but if that's your M.O., then you're all but assuring mediocrity or worse in the long run because you will lose some of those trades badly. I do love this trio but I'm not ready to bet on this top be a top NL rotation yet. It would be extraordinarily unusual for a trio that young to not hit some rough stretches.

I don't like the hyped up MVP debate. I don't think it's that much of a controversy. The Bucks are one of the best teams in the NBA on both ends of the court, with Giannis leading the way. They also have one of the ~15 best scoring margins of all time, and I think they're in the top 5 all time for double digit wins in a season. So Giannis plays <33 mpg because of all the blowouts, and that's why he doesn't put up the gaudiest stats. He could play more minutes and pad his stats and the team would still win over 50 games, but without his unselfish approach allowing every supporting cast player to contribute on offense when they have the best scoring opportunity, they wouldn't be as good. So it's dumb because stuff that's used against him in the debate (namely individual stats) should actually be arguments in his favor.

Top 3 NL rotation in talent I could buy. In overall trade value, I think they're already there, just because team control at low prices means lots of trade value. But I don't buy top 3 in performance for a rotation with Davies, a guy recovering from a torn labrum, a guy with a career FIP over 4, and 3 young guys who have less than a year's worth of combined starts between them and with innings limits. They've all earned the right to be here, but it's not like they were ever blue chip phenoms or anything. I think the rotation is going to be an above average strength of the team, but I think the offense will have to carry them if they're going to replicate last year's success.

Couldn't tune in at work at all, but glad Peralta did great. I've always said he reminds me of K-Rod after his peak. That's not to say he should be a reliever; it's just to say that there can be some extended unhittable stretches mixed in with waiver-worthy stretches. K-Rod tended to alternate great seasons with terrible ones after his prime, but I think inconsistency can affect reliever stats differently than starter stats. I think one thing they have in common is just so much movement and unpredictability on their pitches that it can hurt them as much as it helps. K-Rod didn't always seem to be able to throw strikes when he needed to, but so many of his pitches looked like strikes before they moved that he still got tons of K's. I see a similar dynamic with Freddy. ETA: I know K-Rod had more plus pitches. That's not the crux of the comparison though.

That's not the actual quote though, it's just the closest thing I can find right now. I'm almost positive he talked about not making short-sighted trades anymore. I think the way they've been operating for several years shows that he's tacitly acknowledging that he needed to be more patient. I do know that he talked about not being able to let the farm system get so weak again, especially as a small market team, and it's reasonable to infer that this would change his perspective on that sort of trade. We haven't seen them do much stuff like that for a while. Like I said, I'm not even saying those were truly bad trades, but I definitely think they're contrary to sustainable small market success, which is his goal. I don't want to see them build up great farm systems and only get two years of playoff contention (with one year as a legitimate contender) out of it before another 5-7 years of mediocrity. There is way too much uncertainty but small markets can't just be giving up all their young talent for rentals. Sustained mediocrity is an almost inevitable result of that, even if you get a couple good years out of it. I think the moves they've made (and more importantly, not made) in recent seasons speaks volumes about their new philosophy. Take Machado for example - I don't know exactly what their offer was, but it wouldn't have taken as much as they gave up for Sabathia. And if they had made the move, they would have made the playoffs (they did anyway) and many people would say it was worth it. But then maybe Burnes or Woodruff produces 12-15 WAR for the Orioles over the next 5 years at rock-bottom price (Cain, Brantley) and they start making the playoffs because they're now doing what small market teams should do (again, all hypotheticals)... so does the fact that the Brewers make the playoffs in 2018 prove trading for Machado was a good idea? Not to mention the fact that another opportunity like trading for Yelich might come along and you now have a lot less to offer because you squandered a really good young pitching prospect to rent Machado. I don't think so. It's all speculation, but in the long term small market teams maximize their wins and playoff appearances by avoiding win-now trades like that. They save their prospects for themselves or for better surplus value opportunities like Yelich, not rentals like Greinke or Sabathia that they'll never be able to keep. And since it's hard to know who will be a Sabathia and who will be a Marcum, it's best just to err on the side of keeping your prospects most of the time.

Not about those three trades in particular, just about the overall philosophy of how they had run the team in a way that was not sustainable. I'm looking all over for the comments, but he's commented on the team so often over the years that it's hard to find the one you're looking for. I know it was when they were bottoming out and he talked about how he had to examine his role in leading the team to that point. It was also around the time when "tanking" was slowly becoming an accepted necessary evil in the media. I think it was probably around the time of the Stearns hire as well, with the change in philosophy that was anticipated to coincide with Stearns' arrival. I found some similar comments here, but this is not nearly as extensive as the comments I'm remembering, which were more specific about depleting the talent pipeline too much. “Where we failed, and this starts with me and the zeal to compete each and every year, is we got into the middle and stayed in the middle. If you’re a .500 team, you’re competitive, and that’s not what we’re trying to do, simply be a consistent .500 team.” https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/sports/baseball/brewers-new-gm-looks-to-change-story-line.html

Walker was a RF and it looks like Yelich will be playing a lot of RF for the Brewers for some time. I think the implied player comparison is reasonable (arm strength being the obvious difference), and it's not surprising that some people ended up debating Walker's place in baseball history when debating the merits of a "Brewer for life" extension for Yelich. Obviously it's a few degrees of separation removed from the original discussion, but it's not like a bullpen debate somehow weaseled its way into this thread.

But the reason they weren't as deep and talented is precisely because of the mortgage-the-future philosophy they implemented almost the moment Mark A bought the team. My trump card is his own comments acknowledging the flaws in that approach. I'm having trouble finding those comments, but I distinctly remember him openly admitting that he had to re-evaluate his philosophy and stop depleting the young talent pipeline. He admitted that his moves were consistently short-sighted for years. It's also the draft picks they gave up to sign free agents and all the times they turned up their nose at a chance to trade an aging player for something of value when they weren't a contender anyway, choosing instead to keep him until he was just dead weight on the payroll. He himself all but explicitly said those kind of moves just make the franchise worse in the long run. I respected those comments and I'm glad he openly learned his lesson instead of excusing his failures, but that doesn't mean he made good decisions in his first 10 years. I once did an analysis of the talent he inherited when he bought the team, both in the minors and in the majors, and I found it impossible to conclude that they did anything but underachieve in the Fielder--->Braun era. As for Gomez being better than Brantley or Cain, which someone else mentioned, that's reductionism because they could play other positions or be traded for someone who's not just a rental. The point is not that you can't trade any young players; just don't trade them in short-sighted moves. It could have been a logjam for a little while, but look at the so-called logjam at OF/1B last year. We all know how that played out. Good asset management carried the day. It's fitting that the Royals made the playoffs several times and won a title after trading Greinke away, and that's the type of thing the Brewers should have been doing - not the exact opposite. Sorry, this is the Yelich thread, but the underlying point is still that you should save your best assets for opportunities like that, not for rentals like Sabathia. They are doing that now and never buckling to temptation, and for this reason the success they are having now should be sustainable (with some luck), unlike the fleeting success of 2008 and 2011. And this method has worked with much less blue-chip talent to start with (this team has some roots in great minor league depth, but Weeks, Hart, Braun, Fielder, Hardy, and Gallardo were all big-time prospects).

Can they scrap his current deal to give him more money now, with the trade-off being him making a much longer commitment at a well below market price? Still doesn't seem necessary or timely, but it might pay off.

Michael Brantley would have been a big help at a very low price for several years. Same goes for Cain departing in the Greinke trade. I personally think the Brewers lost more chances to make the playoffs than they gained by making those two trades, and I think what they're doing now reflects the fact that Mark A learned his lesson (he has even said this, in so many words). If it's a last-gasp effort to win a title, by all means pull out all the stops, but they were doing this stuff when they had a great young core and a chance to have sustainable success. They weren't terrible trades or anything, but I think they were kind of short-sighted. Now we don't see them giving up much value for short-term patches. Moustakas, Schoop, Claudio? Fine. But they aren't giving away excessive surplus value for short-term rentals anymore, and I'm very glad for that. The Yelich deal is exactly the type of opportunity you hold out for.

When people talk about how great the pen was last year, they are talking about after the stretch run. Saying Burnes and Woodruff weren't there before the stretch run does nothing to diminish how important they were in making the bullpen the strength of a championship contender last year. The bullpen was struggling before Knebel returned in top form and Woodruff/Burnes joined the pen. They were in danger of missing the playoffs completely before the bullpen took over in August/September. It's totally fair to say they lost Woodruff and Burnes from the bullpen, because the bullpen was the positive difference in a lot of wins last year and they contributed to many of them.

Is it okay to point out how good Hill was last night? Not gonna say anything about the off season, but he has showed multiple times this season that he can step up and still be the Utah version of himself when the team needs him to, but can also fade seamlessly into a perfect veteran stabilizer/glue guy role when needed. I think the lack of big games like last night can make people question his impact, but I think it's actually better to be able to wear so many different hats than it is to just be a guy who scores 15 per game but doesn't have as much impact outside of scoring. His defense is especially crucial. I think all contenders need multiple players like that.

Burnes and Woodruff are leaving a pretty big hole too. Bullpen fortunes are whimsical and they could revamp the pen quickly, but the Brewers are on the wrong end of things in a big way right now IMO. Honestly though I think they just have to weather the storm until closer to the trade deadline, cliche as that may sound. They should be able to score a lot of runs.