badger3034

I still find it entertaining if someone posts stuff like that haha. It's more entertaining than what the last 4 weeks have been for the brewers

I for one, can say that I'm currently not ok with what they have right now, if they're planning on attempting to compete this year. If their plan is to attempt to sign free agents in the future, then that's a different story. That would make less sense to me because the price of pitching is going to be higher than it is currently in years to come. Will I break down because they don't sign somebody? No, I will continue to support them and cheer them on, but would I agree with how they handled the off season if they don't sign a new pitcher? Not necessarily

What do you think the odds are that only 2 of the 3 (Arrieta, Lynn, Cobb), or less, sign before the season starts? I think I'd start my line at 7-1

Well played if that was the case. The original poster might've gotten us all and we didn't even realize it

You know they're joking right? You know they are? Brew was. Refer to the post above mine

Kyle Davies is the mystery man of this rotation, who knows what were gonna get out of him?

Need a trade partner for Santana first

Thanks for the insight on the potential for the games for position, I wouldn't have had that much motivation haha. Even in that scenario, I'd still rather run an 8 man bullpen. That's just going to open a door for Braun to get less playing time. If he's healthy, you want him playing as much as possible

Ok you've lost me already, I'm sorry I didn't really take much of the rest of your post seriously. When are we signing Cobb AND Arrieta? I can understand one of the two, but obviously we've gone almost 5 months without signing a single one of the two, what makes you think we're going to acquire both? If that's your logic behind trading Davies, you need to have both signed first. If you trade Davies before that happens (which he is pre-arb, and not even in the REALM of their price tags currently), you're trading away your current #2 pitcher, with very little starting pitching depth. I'm sorry that I can't take your argument seriously for this scenario, I wish I could see your point of view Here's my take on how this could work. Assume this optimistic (but plausible) scenario takes place: 2018: -Sign Cobb to 4 year deal. -Open the season with Anderson, Cobb, Davies, Chacin, Woodruff. -All five do well (Anderson <3.0 ERA, Cobb, 3.5 ERA, Davies 3.75 ERA, Chacin <4 ERA, Woodruff ~4 ERA). -Nelson rehabs well and performs great for half a season after someone (let's go with Cobb) gets hurt, Burnes impresses in AAA. 2019 -Trade Chacin for an ok prospect. -Open the season with Nelson, Anderson, Cobb, Davies, Woodruff (all five continue to do well) -Burnes gets about 8 weeks in the majors to fill for injuries (let's say Woodruff). Ortiz impresses in AAA. 2020 -Trade Anderson or Davies to clear a spot and get back stud prospects. -Open season with Nelson, Anderson/Davies, Cobb, Woodruff, Burnes. -Ortiz gets a half season to fill for injuries. Next round impresses in AAA (let's go with Kirby, Ponce, and Zach Brown). 2021 -Continue the cycle. Trade a SP for a stud prospect (let's go with Cobb or the other of Anderson/Davies). -Now the stud prospects you acquired are the next wave to step up. That is the scenario I'd like to get at. What you need is 5 expected starting pitchers and a top prospect in AAA. This becomes a continual pipeline of talent allowing you to extend a true rotation anchor and trade the rest one at a time after they perform for 2-4 years. Some years you skip because no-one stepped up or someone flames out. Some years you can work more than one prospect in because the farm is stronger. But overall, once you shoot for bringing up a rookie pitcher each year and extend one every 3-4 years so they are here for ~8 years of control, you will almost always have an extra pitcher to trade away. We aren't there yet (but could have been if Nelson didn't get hurt) but we are one year away from churning a starter every off-season and two years from trading starters for top-100/top-50 prospects every year (assuming some good breaks/production). Hopefully someone on this board can correct me, but I don't think that there are very many teams in history fielding a 5 man pitching staff with a sub or 4.0 ERA. This is including a guy you signed for a very small contract, and a "rookie," with a small amount of big league experience. Davies hasn't pitched under 4.0 ERA in his career, and Anderson only pitched like an ace for one year. I think Anderson will be a good pitcher this year, but don't expect him to be Kershaw level. Now back to your previous point before your last post, where are we signing Cobb AND Arreita? Or was that just a typo? Everyone wants them to sign EITHER Cobb OR Arrieta, I don't think anyone would really have any complaints if we landed one of them. My whole point to you was the fact that your plan was to sign both, when neither have been signed by any team in all of the MLB this late into the offseason. I doubt we would sign both, and that trading Davies would be dumb, unless we did sign both

Well thus far, their main trading piece who has big league time, big league control, and a cheap contract, is not getting the value he should get. This argument is about trading away starting pitching, which I don't find even remotely useful. Santana is an excess piece of this team, and I highly doubt anyone would argue against him being traded....... if he were to get a good value. The Diamondbacks traded for Steven Souza who batted .239 last year, when the Brewers were rumored to be in trade talks with them. I know batting average isn't much to go off, but the guy really isn't good for much more than HR's, and Santana has a bigger potential than that. Stearns is valuing Santana higher than what other teams are, and that's a good thing. Don't expect a Santana trade until maybe mid season in my opinion

Sorry again, what makes you think that Broxton is going to be that huge of an improvement over Santana defensively? I absolutely know, no need to throw stats out there, that Santana is horrible defensively. But out of curiosity (someone on this board can probably help me out here), what makes you think that Broxton would be good in RF? I love Phillips, and he will be a very good player, but I think you need to wait for Santana to be traded before he gets regular playing time. Right now, hes the PREMIER 4th outfielder, I don't know how many teams have a better 4th outfielder than him. This frees Perez up to focus on the infield and potentially go towards playing 2B primarily, and playing other positions secondary. Broxton is no where near Santana, they are literally in different ball parks Edit: stats might say differently, but I don't think Broxton is even good in CF defensively

Ok you've lost me already, I'm sorry I didn't really take much of the rest of your post seriously. When are we signing Cobb AND Arrieta? I can understand one of the two, but obviously we've gone almost 5 months without signing a single one of the two, what makes you think we're going to acquire both? If that's your logic behind trading Davies, you need to have both signed first. If you trade Davies before that happens (which he is pre-arb, and not even in the REALM of their price tags currently), you're trading away your current #2 pitcher, with very little starting pitching depth. I'm sorry that I can't take your argument seriously for this scenario, I wish I could see your point of view

I guess my theory on it all is you should build a big farm with a lot of talent, and pick and choose pieces from the farm to trade away for major league talent when you're getting ready to compete, while not getting rid of the guys you really see as part of your future. The only time I see trading big league talent away as a viable strategy is when you're tanking, as Joey said, or if you have a major surplus at a specific position. Right now, starting pitching is by far the weakest department we have currently, and trading away for prospects isn't a very good idea.

I don't see how the 2 are related. Santana is going too start as much as usual, Braun is a part-time player now. I'd guess Aguilar gets traded by the end of camp. Braun, when not hurt, is still a very good player. Aguilar, at any time, is a very average player. Braun, as the roster is currently constructed, will get much more playing time than Aguilar

Guess I'm not sure where the Stanton comparison plays in here. Largest contract in history with only a couple of teams able to take him on, and only a couple that he wanted to go to. Obviously that's going to yield a small return, even if he is really good. Santana is on a league minimum contract with team control... That being said, the reasons teams don't want him is because they think he's reached his ceiling.

I'm open to including Burnes in a deal for a TOR pitcher, but that trade has to involve not trading Arcia, Santana, Hader or Hiura. This obviously isn't going to happen, so I'm not open to trading anything other than that

I very highly doubt that happens, Perez is the exact type of the player the Brewers have always had. One of my favorite Brewers ever was Jerry Hairston Jr., now Jerry better than Perez, but very similar players. They like having the primo utility player, which I would consider Perez a top 10 utility player that can play any position in all of the MLB. Definitely wouldn't make any sense

When those trade rumors first came out, I was initially excited, then I looked into it more, and I realized that would've been an awful trade. I definitely don't want to trade Santana at this point. Every team that may have expressed any interest went a different route. It has become evidently clear that no team in MLB values Santana like we thought he had at the beginning of the offseason, he's gonna pull a much smaller haul than we would want. Archer is gonna take a lot of the farm to be able to pull, and he is definitely not worth it anymore.

I love this, pick any 3, maybe 4, of anybody not named Burnes or Phillips and you have a deal with me for Archer, if you can sign Cobb and Walker along with it. Let's get it done Obviously I'm meaning Santana + prospects

If Braun is playing 1B full time, Aguilar or Thames will be gone, probably Aguilar. Don't think it really matters to them if its a trade or release

Thing is, if you have Suter as your #5, you're probably not even competing for a wild card spot. The bullpen is good, but the starting rotation is utter garbage outside of Chase and (kind of) Davies No its not utter garbage. Chacin is far from utter garbage. Woodruff is a top 100prospect SP, better than Davies was ever considered. Nelson wasnt garbage before 2017. While he likely comes back from his '17 I'd hope its what he was before 17 and not garbage. You add Cobb it gives 5 solid pitchers&Nelson to work with. Consider this squad garbage, what was your description for them heading in to last season? Generally speaking the Brewers have had garbage pitching for them. If you're going to call this rotation garbage, I have no clue how youve lived being a Brewer fan? For what it's worth, I predicted the brewers to have 83 wins last season. I thought they were massively under rated, and could compete for a wild card spot, and I was right. However, the things that I thought would happen with their rotation, wasn't exactly correct. I thought Guerra was going to be solid, Peralta had a chance to redeem himself, and Garza was going to pitch for another contract, but I didn't expect him to be very good. You know what you have with your rotation this season. Cobb still hasn't signed anywhere, and we're no closer to signing him than the beginning of the off-season. Going into a season with your 5th starter being a spot starter who doesn't have very good stuff and can maybe make it 5 innings is pretty bad. Davies will start off slow like he always does, and woodruff will probably get shut down later in the season due to it being his first full year. You don't know what you're gonna get with Jimmy or when he's coming back. There's so many question marks around the starting rotation. That being said, I love their bullpen and their offsense is incredible. I don't get how you question my validity of being a brewer fan when I criticize a part of their team that I think is very weak.

I've been attempting to sneak pitching stuff into the thread, instead of just talking about the cubs. FTC

Exactly. Darvish and Quintana in the NL is a huge upgrade. Montgomery goes from being their 3rd-best starter to their long reliever. It's easy to upgrade a bullpen, and I think they did enough there. I will concede that depth and injuries could derail them, but they're absolutely loaded. The Brewers were living on borrowed time when they were in first place in the central most of the year, and the Cubs made mincemeat of that race when they got Quintana and woke up from their doldrums. Maybe it was post-title complacency, but whatever it was, it was a total fluke. I think one could make the argument that the Brewers offense, as currently constructed, with Braun playing 1B everyday-ish, is as good if not possibly better than the Cubs offense. Only difference is the starting rotation. I'd argue the Brewers bullpen is better

Thing is, if you have Suter as your #5, you're probably not even competing for a wild card spot. The bullpen is good, but the starting rotation is utter garbage outside of Chase and (kind of) Davies

It isn't about Woodruff, I'm pretty sure at this point it's guaranteed he's going to have a starting spot. You need another starter, unless you're going to roll with Suter, which would be pretty ugly. He had a good half season last year, but no teams had seen him very much up to that point. They have a scouting report on him now, and he's gonna get hit..... hard. Anderson Davies Chacin Woodruff I like Davies, but I don't think he would be a #2 on almost any other team in baseball right now, that's pretty ugly. You need another #2/1 starter, otherwise this season is just going to be a wash, unless Jimmy comes back early and is as good as he was last season. Every other team chasing the wild card has plenty of their own problems, except possibly Arizona if Greinke ages well and they get a RF - neither of which is a given. I'm not comparing the Brewers to the Dodgers, Nationals, or Cubs, because there is no comparison. The Brewers had a TON more warts going into 2017 than they do now, and still won 86. That's a testament to the fact that you don't need to hand-out multi-year, 8-figure salaries to compete for wild cards. Upgrades through free agency are very often marginal and disappointing. I'm not feeling any pressure to make win-now moves if I'm not really enamored of the players involved, and in the case of Cobb and Arrieta I'm not. It's not the same as punting on this season. It's just recognizing that having more payroll flexibility to make a move like this in a couple years will probably have a better pay-off. What makes you think you can't compare the Brewers to the top teams in the NL? I doubt that most of the players on the team were flukes, and they actually improved quite a bit. If Braun plays 1B, they probably have a top 3 offense in the national league. As a small market team, you need to make moves to improve yourself immediately when you come close to contention. They have a small window, and their best players are going to regress quickly compared to other teams (Braun, Cain). If you think that the young pitchers like Ortiz or Burnes are going to come up and help this year, you're mistaken. I don't know the years/control dealio with those guys, but putting that issue aside, they'd end up getting put on an innings count, and wouldn't even end up pitching into the post season. They'd be shut down much sooner than that. Free agents are only going to get more expensive since theres no limitations on a single players salary, and there are even better players coming up in free agency that big markets are going to bid for. Not to mention the salary cap going up. There isn't going to be a cheaper time to add a free agent than right now, the price is only going up. You can't be scared to take a risk as a small market team, you're going to give up one 3rd round pick for Lynn, Cobb, or Arrietta (I'd prefer Jake), and how often does that pick even pan out? These guys are proven professionals who have been in the league for a long period of time. Another poster mentioned how horribly the Brewers pitching draft prospects have done in the past, you can't bank on that. Young pitchers can always decline contracts from small market teams in the draft, and elect to go back to school and pitch until a larger market selects them, hoping that one day they can get to the ML and sign a much larger deal than what they would've gotten in a city like Milwaukee. I seriously believe in the fact that when you're a small market and you can take advantage of the opportunity to get a big name free agent, much less pitching, you need to do it. Especially when you have a window to make the world series like the Brewers do