monty57

MONEY SPENT: 2013: Greinke- $19m or Lohse- $11m = +$8m 2014: Greinke- $26m or Lohse- $11m + Garza- $12.5 = +$2.5m Remember that in order to fit Ramirez's contract onto the 2012 payroll, Melvin worked it so that he only made (IIRC) $6M in 2012 with a significant increase in 2013 and 2014, and deferred money. Had they extended Greinke (presumably prior to 2012, as he wasn't going to extend midway through 2012), Ramirez never would have been signed. Therefore, while we were trotting out multiple SS's at 1B, we also would have had a similar situation at 3B with no money to fix either situation. I know people want to say "Attanasio has money to spend," but it's not that simple. The team is going to be run under a payroll based on the expected revenue the team will generate. That payroll is the limit, so when you are have guaranteed obligations putting you at or near the limit, any additions in one area generally mean there has to be a subtraction elsewhere. Therefore, it will be very hard for the Brewers to ever afford two high-priced players at the same time while still fielding 23 capable players around them.

Excellent post! "Fool's gold" is a perfect way to sum up the last few seasons. Whenever the team bombs, it gets excused away, but when the team (or an individual player) gets on a hot streak, that is the new expected norm. We have had too much of our money tied up in a few players, forcing us to rely heavily on sub-par players. We are finally rid of a lot of wasted salary, and have added some promising young talent. The worst thing we could do now is to take this little hot streak to be anything other than that. If we once again allow ourselves to believe we're one or two pieces away from the promised land, we could seriously harm the good moves made recently. I agree that the willingness to make a few trades with the eye on the future has made a shorter rebuild more realistic, but they can't stop there. They are much better off making a few more trades to add more young, cheap, team controlled players, and targeting a few years down the road than they are making "win now" moves to try to contend in 2016.

Agree completely. Hopefully, we could get a decent return for Rodriguez. Then, we put Jeffress in the closer role. He'll cost a little more when he hits arby, but he would be extremely valuable should we decide to trade him in a couple of years, with two years of relatively inexpensive team control left and two years logged as a closer. Really, any of Jeffress, Thornberg and Smith would fit as guys who are nearing arby and capable of filling the role. We have guys with more team control ready to step in once the aforementioned trio is gone, so we should be able to fill the closer role (and most of the rest of the 'pen) pretty cheaply with in-house options for a long time. There's really no reason to hold on to K-Rod unless (A) we honestly think we're a playoff team in 2016, or (B) no one would trade for him. I don't think either of those scenarios are very likely, so it makes a ton of sense to trade K-Rod this offseason, coming off a very good season.

This year at the MiLb level 75/243PAs 9Hrs. Finished the last 10 games of the season at 14-36 to boost his numbers from a .724OPS to .793. Just prior to that he had 3K games in 3 of his prior 5 starts. Lucky timing for him when the season ended. I don't disagree with your premise, but power hitters are going to get most of their OPS from hitting HR's, and hitting HR's generally come in bunches. Khris Davis is another guy like this, where one minute you'll look and his OPS is in the mid-.700s and the next time you look, he's hovering around .800. Not saying Davis and Olt are the same player, but that guys whose primary skill is hitting HRs have been and always will be streaky. You dislike them when they're cold, and love them when they're hot. As things currently stand, 30 year old Herrera (.251 avg/.307 OBP/.351 SLG/.658 OPS in 521 career ABs) looks to be our starting 3B next year. Hopefully the Brewers have something else in their plans, but if they don't, there probably isn't a lot of harm doen if the pick up 27 year old Olt (.158 avg/.245 OBP/.334 SLG/.579 OPS in 273 ABs) to try him out during the rest of this year. He seems to have more upside than Herrera, so if he shows that he could provide any value, give him a shot in 2016, which should be something of a throw away season anyhow. Of course, I won't lose any sleep if they pass on him either. If the choices are between "bad player with some potential" vs "bad player with no potential" I guess I'd choose "some potential," but I'd rather search around for another option.

I look at it this way: 1) We have a maximum payroll. For simplicity, let's say that's $100M. 2) We need 25 players on the roster, so the average per player has to reach no more than around $4M. 3) Therefore, signing one guy to $25M basically means we'll need to counter that with six guys playing for league minimum. This is simplified, but for everyone we're paying over $4M, we have to have someone (or a bunch of guys) playing for under $4M. The only way to do this is to have a very strong farm, which you can't have when you trade away the farm to obtain the guy you want to pay $25M. And yes, it makes it even harder when you pay big money to bad players. The trick is to find another route that isn't either "sign a guy to $25M" or "use the same money to sign bad players." The converse to my earlier point is that for every good player you have at league minimum, you have freed up $3.5M in "excess reserve" to use on another player. The more good, young players you have, the more "excess reserve" you have. My "route" would be to find a way to stock up on these cheap players, building a solid core from there while giving myself money to fill in the roster around them with decent players.

It's true that relievers get paid for saves which really confuses me why small market teams, especially losing ones, give saves to one guy. That can be a good trade strategy for a losing team. Simply put an decent arm into the closer role, and when he stockpiles some saves, his trade value is significantly higher. You should probably do this with a guy who is already in his arby years, nearing the end of team control, as he isn't a long-term guy, would have little trade value without the saves, and you don't have to worry about artificially increasing your future arbitration costs like you would if you put a pre-arby guy into this role.

I'd have to believe that the Dodgers would have outbid anyone for Greinke's services. We can't win a bidding war against them.

Those are the only ones, right? Per Cot's, Thornberg, Schafer, and Matt Dominguez will also be first year arby eligible. Kintzler (if around, made $1.075M this year) and C. Jimenez ($575k) will be in year two arby with no one in year three. Note that Maldonado would be in his second arby year, but he's signed to a contract. He will be arby eligible in his third year in 2017. I think Briggs' numbers are pretty good estimates. Thornberg should be right there with Smith, and Schafer and Dominguez shouldn't be very expensive if they're retained. Looks like we have six guys (Braun, Lucroy, Rodriguez, Lind, Garza, Maldonado) under contract making $40.475M. Add in the arby guys (Peralta, Segura, Smith, Thornberg, Schafer, Jimenez) at around $12M and you have 12 guys at around $52.5M. Davis, Gennett, Nelson, Jeffress, Blazek, Perez, Jungmann, Knebel, Peterson, Santana, and anyone else from the minors are all league minimum. We could very easily put together a roster around $60M next year, and even less if guys like Lind and Rodriguez are traded this offseason. It will be interesting to see how the Brewers operate this offseason.

re: the domestic violence aspect, I literally never hear anyone around baseball talk about that. The only time I hear about it is from people here and on Twitter (and I mean specifically Brewers fans only). I really don't think it's as big a deal as some on this message board make it out to be. He was never prosecuted for it, so maybe it's time to let it go. Or does it have to be like Paul Molitor and someone still has to bring up his cocaine use, decades later? Not that there is ever a time for domestic abuse, but with the recent issues the NFL has had with domestic abuse issues, it is certainly a bad time to add a multiple-time girlfriend/wife-beater to a roster. Owners and GMs probably know better than to say anything outright about why they aren't signing him... they just aren't signing him or trading for him. Maybe in this instance Attanasio is fortunate that his team is in such a small media market, because it's kind of surprising that he hasn't been slammed in the media for continually signing this guy when no one else will.

It's not even so much cultural as it is sport-dependent. Basketball and football show a lot of emotion, and it is accepted/embraced to a certain point, much more so than baseball. Football completely banned celebrating in the end zone. Well, not completely, the Packers are still able to do the Lambeau Leap, but everything else is banned. It's about money. Those "old white guys" everyone hates happen to be the ones who spend the money that supports this multi-billion dollar industry. Basketball lost a lot of these "old white guys" when they pretty much turned the game into street ball after the Jordan years, and they lost a lot of money when they left. Once gone, they're hard to bring back. But, I disagree that it's only "old white guys" (which by the way is a racist statement in and of itself), but rather "working citizens of the United States." Black, brown, white, yellow, whatever, working people can't get away with these antics, so a certain "boring" protocol is adopted that just says you don't do some things in the workplace. Glorified as it may be, a professional baseball stadium is a workplace, and many working Americans don't think certain types of behavior belong there. I do agree that things evolve over time, and it is possible that fans will accept more antics from players. However, I disagree that the game has to adapt to certain players because of their culture. Workers adapt to the workplace, not the other way around. If someone from the Dominican Republic (as stated in a previous example) doesn't like the "boring" aspects of baseball in America, they are always free to go back and play in their home town... they just won't have all those "stupid old white people" spending all that money allowing for players to make millions of dollars.

Immature, out of control, unintelligent, hothead. So glad he's not on the Brewers anymore. I think a big reason the team has been so streaky over the past few seasons is that your team leader is striking out while swinging so hard his helmet falls off when there is a runner in scoring position and all you need is to make contact. I understand that he got better once Sveum told him to let loose, but there are situations where you should alter your approach. I don't think Gomez is "baseball smart" enough to understand situations... at the plate, on the bases, or in the field. This is not just on Gomez, but he was the most obvious. The team as a whole needs to get a lot smarter if they ever want to win. Getting rid of players who do not fit this profile, especially when you can get a lot of talent back in return, is a step in the right direction. As to the antics, at some point most people grow up. When you're 30 and acting like a pre-schooler, don't be surprised when the adults in the room chastise you for it. This applies to everyone in everyday life, but is magnified when played on a stage that is broadcast to a large audience. One thing we as fans miss out on is what goes on "behind the scenes." Everyone in baseball (including his teammates) say that Braun is very cocky, and seemingly every team in baseball has had some issues with Gomez. There is probably more to that than what we see while watching the game.

The good thing is that the Brewers have options. If they don't get good offers for Davis they can say, fine, we'll deal Lind and move Braun to 1B. If they don't get good offers for Lind they can say, fine, we'll move Davis. No situation like when they had to move Overbay to make room for Fielder. Good point. Even in a rebuild year, I doubt Attanasio would settle for opening the season with a total bum slated as the everyday guy somewhere, which is probably why Lucroy isn't going anywhere until at least next trade deadline. Santana gives them the flexibility to trade Braun or Lind. I kind of hope they hold on to Davis, as he's a good guy to play while they're rebuilding to see if he can put together a big year and really drive up his value. I'd guess that Phillips will be up midway through next year, so it makes more sense to me to make some trades this offseason rather than going into the season with Santana in CF. Of course, with Lind on his final year, it makes a lot of sense to trade him so this will probably settle itself out, and the question will be whether Braun or Santana will be the everyday 1B

Some argue on here that once a guy is up and proven good but it is a year or two away from FA then they need to be traded for future prospects, they would be the ones arguing against extending Braun and for trading Fielder in 09 or 10. I'm about the only one who has recently said that I think they should have traded Fielder and Hart after the 2010 season, and that I think we'd have been much better since then if they had done this. However, I'm also one of the biggest proponents of extending players. I just think it makes the most sense to extend good, young players when they're in pre-arby and we can get the best deal, as we are transferring a lot of risk from the player to the team, so the salary can be lower. I don't really like extending guys when they're almost free agents, as you are basically paying free agent prices. Building from within delivers flexibility. It helps a team avoid overpaying for average talent Exactly. Let's assume a team has a $100MM budget. Let's also assume the "core" is 6-8 players and the rest of the team is filled with what you can afford for the remaining budget. If your core is filled with pre-arby guys, arby guys, and guys extended in their pre-arby years, the entire core costs under $10MM, leaving $90MM to fill in the rest of the roster. You can do a lot with that $90MM, and that's how the Brewers were built up until the 2010-11 offseason. After 2010, the Brewers left this stage, and the core got expensive, with those 6-8 players eating up most of our budget. This coincided with our farm being weak from trading away a lot of talent while not trading for any prospect talent. That is why after 2011 we always had subpar players on the major league level and no depth. It's almost impossible to win in that situation. The offseason prior to the 2011 season was the "franchise-changing moment," and we could very well have had several playoff appearances in the past few seasons had we not went for it in 2011. Since we made those moves, we probably should have went into rebuild even sooner than we did. However, we didn't, so to take this somewhat to topic, we are where we are and we have to look forward. The trades made this year, along with the likely trades over the next year or two should give us a nice supply of young talent. We have a couple of guys in Arcia and Phillips who could be stars, a number of guys like Santana who could be average-to-good MLB players, and a group of "role players" who also provide value, especially when they're inexpensive. I like what I see in Santana. He's a guy to keep an eye on, and in a year or so if we may want to offer a Lucroy-type extension to him. Guarantee him $10-12MM or so, while buying out a couple of free agent years. We get him relatively cheaply, while he knows that he's set even if he gets hurt or under-performs. There's some risk to the Brewers for doing this, but even if it bombs, the worst that happens is you are out the price of one year of a bad deal to someone like Looper or Gagne. Get a few more of these guys and you have a nice core of young players who will be together for a long time. If we can also keep talent coming in from the farm, then you will have the luxury of trading away some of these guys when they still have some team control left, replacing them with the guy from the farm, and adding talent who will hopefully help you down the road. It shouldn't have to be "all in" or "rebuild," with nothing in between. Trading a good veteran player for multiple young players can (and should) be done even when you are "trying to win." It shouldn't come down to a situation where you have to trade everyone and rebuild. Reaching that point just means someone screwed up somewhere along the way.

The fallacy in that argument is that the people who want to recycle talent are seen as not wanting to win. That is false. The argument is that you want to recycle the talent before it gets old and expensive. That, plus that theory calls for doing the opposite of what he's saying. People who want to "win now" are ones who would call for trading away the guys he mentioned in order to add a veteran. The guys (like me) who he is trying to rip want more young, talented guys like he's saying we would trade away.

Can he throw the ball from the OF to second base without it bouncing three times... sorry, couldn't help myself :-) I actually like Davis and think he should get full time play in LF. Hopefully they can work something so that he can be the starting LF next year, with Santana getting full time play at either RF or 1B... I don't think he's a long term answer at CF.

I hope the new front office cares about defense a little bit more than the current version... This made me laugh. Being a Brewer pitcher has had to be pretty tough for a while, pitching in Miller Park with a beer-league softball lineup behind them. Why not throw a guy built like a defensive lineman into CF for a few weeks :-) Assuming he can learn to scoop a ball, I hope they give Santana a 1B glove this offseason, as his 6'5" frame would be a target even Rickie Weeks would have a hard time missing.

One or both of Lind and Braun should be dealt this offseason. If Braun is traded, it obviously frees up an OF spot. If Lind is traded, either Braun or Santana should move to 1B (note that I have not been a proponent of moving Braun to 1B in the past, but current personnel may necessitate someone moving). If both are traded, well, we're in rebuild mode anyway so I expect to lose next year. It is exciting to see Santana brought up, as he should be a mainstay with the Brewers for a long time. I just hope it's to let him play.

I agree in large part with this post. However, Rivera is our #19 prospect (according to MLB.com) and he still could turn into an MLB player. Right now, we have two guys (Arcia and Phillips) who have a decent shot at being good MLB players, we have some guys who have tasted the MLB (Santana, Cravy, Goforth, Jungmann) and will have the opportunity to prove themselves during the early stages of the rebuild, and we have a whole bunch of guys who are young with upside. Looking at that Top 30, any of them could help out at the MLB level. Of course most will not, but it shows we have some depth and we now also are starting to get some star power, which we have lacked for quite a while. Throw in that we have Lind, Braun, K-Rod and Lucroy who could be traded in the not-too-distant future and a good draft pick next year, and we could have a strong farm soon, which is absolutely necessary for a team in rebuild mode. A lot of parts will change over the next few seasons, but at least the change in draft strategy over the past couple of years and the trades made this season give me some hope for the future.

I agree on Lara, Gatewood and Harrison, but Phillips is 21 playing in AA. He could realistically be in the majors sometime next year. 'Stache's lineup does bring up the question of what we're going to do with Braun. I would love to trade him this offseason, as he has shown that he still has ability, but by the time we could be good again, he'll be well past his prime and I'd rather look at a lineup like 'Stache put together. We have plenty of OFs and I agree that Santana looks like a good 1B candidate who is MLB ready right now. Getting out from under Braun's contract while adding some more talent to the prospect pool makes the future (beyond the next year or two) look even brighter.

The Brewers started the rebuild. I just hope they finish it. I think that's the biggest hurdle for most teams. Very few teams have the guts to stick with the plan once things start to look a little brighter, and that can turn a well-crafted plan for long-term success into a short "window of opportunity." That's why I hope Pittsburgh does well. They have not given in while others have sold the farm to "win now," and maybe if they see success, the Brewers will follow this path. If the new Brewer regime does things right, we will probably be in the bottom 10 teams in the majors for a few years, but by that time, we will have very little money tied up in guaranteed MLB contracts, and we should have a lot of young talent. We won't have the top line budget as the big market teams, but we will have a lot of free cash, and that's what's important in extending young star players, and adding talent via free agency to "plug holes" in the roster. Melvin did some things well, but he was not good at maintaining some free cash, preferring to always max payroll even deferring money to future years to get more from the current years' budget. We became a top-heavy team sliding in reverse. We had/have some nice trading chips to restock the farm, which was absolutely necessary for us to have a realistic shot at future MLB success. We couldn't afford to miss that opportunity. Seeing the rebuild start, and realizing that it will be a few seasons before we can expect winning baseball to return is tough, but once we've made a few more trades, and some contracts/deferred money are purged from the books, we will have a clean slate on which to build. There is no guarantee of success, but since we're coming from a situation which has seemed almost guaranteed for failure for a number of years, I am thrilled that the team took the painful but necessary steps to begin the rebuild.

There are a few around here that very vocally (writtenly?) pine for the cycling of talent and trading away players once they near free agency/cross the 30-year-old threshold/etc. The Brewers did exactly this with Grienke... and the prospects didn't work out. That happens. Look at what the A's got when they traded Holliday to the Cardinals - two recent first round picks (Brett Wallace, Clayton Mortensen) and a recent 2nd round pick (Shane Peterson), and not one of them worked out for the A's. Yes, even Billy Beane fails on trades. This is why I don't believe in the "continually cycle talent" theory - a certain % of prospects will not pan out, and eventually the well will run dry. And they didn't trade Ramirez in his first year when he was playing well, the Brewers had barely paid him anything, and the Dodgers were willing to give up young pitching (Eovaldi and another if I recall correctly) to get him. Sometimes holding on to veterans doesn't work out either. The point is that if you trade one guy nearing the end of his contract for multiple prospects, all it takes is for one of the prospects to become an MLB player and you get 6 years for 1 year. If more than one of the prospects pan out, it's a home run. There are certainly circumstances where you hold a guy until free agency, but that should be the exception and not the norm.

To be fair, I said: "There are probably some people who would stick as the #2 or 3 guy at their current organization in hopes they'll get bumped up when the #1 guy is gone, but the opportunity to become a MLB GM is less frequent than the opportunity to step up to the plate in a World Series game, so if you get the chance, you take it."

If the Brewers were completely inept at drafting and developing, how is it that they had future all-stars available to deal? Exactly. The Brewers drafted a lot of future all stars in those drafts everyone complains about... they're just all stars for other organizations since Melvin traded them away in order to try to win in one season. I still believe that had we traded away Fielder and Hart after 2010 and not made the Grienke and Marcum deals, we would have traded away one playoff appearance in 2011 for multiple playoff appearances since then, and instead of going into rebuild mode, we would be fighting for the playoffs this year.

Your analogy of Harvard vs UWM is way off, it's more like UW vs U of IL. Why would anyone want to be just another face in the Cardinals or Dodgers organization when they could have the title of GM? Yeah, as down as I've been on Brewer management in the recent years, they are still an MLB franchise. It's not like we're the Beloit Snappers trying to hire a top executive away from the Red Sox. There are probably some people who would stick as the #2 or 3 guy at their current organization in hopes they'll get bumped up when the #1 guy is gone, but the opportunity to become a MLB GM is less frequent than the opportunity to step up to the plate in a World Series game, so if you get the chance, you take it. Since you will (at least theoretically) be the guy in charge, you should be confident that you will be able to make the franchise successful. If you don't feel this way, then you shouldn't be a candidate in the first place.

I agree it's an interesting situation with Melvin sticking around, but since there are only 30 spots available and most of those are filled, it would be pretty hard for someone to pass up the opportunity.