monty57

I guess we disagree about the current state of the franchise with the emphasis on current. It's apparently not nearly as bad as it looked back in May. 2015 was sabotaged by a terrible start, lack of hitting and poor pitching by the veteran well paid starters, and by injuries, but the core of the team is fine. A very good case could be made that this team is an ace away from being a top contender. Not this year certainly but in 2016, even if they do decide to deal Gomez, provided they get something back that's useful in 2016 as part of the deal. And they were "sabotaged" in 2012 and 2013 by bad starts, and in 2014 by a bad finish. Every time the team plays poorly, people think they're horrible, and every time they play well, people think they're a contender. Maybe the teams are just being "sabotaged" by being moderately talented and extremely streaky, and fans should stop basing their opinions on the extreme hot/cold streaks we've had for the past four seasons. Since 2012, we have been a roughly .500 team that has played very well during stretches and very poorly during others. We're not a contender now, and we won't be a contender next year, but as long as the team can keep fan interest high, the team will turn a profit and Attanasio will continue to operate like the 1970's Cubs.

The Giants are known for how well they develop their pitchers. If the Giants can't fix these guys, I don't think the Brewers have a chance.

He's also in single A and not doing very well there. At this point he is looking like he is at least five years away from being close to major league ready. I have no idea what effect it had on Wang, but I think the whole Rule 5 process can really screw up a player. You take a kid who isn't ready for the majors, force a team to keep him there, give him very little playing time during which he is ridiculously overmatched, potentially destroying his confidence and leading to him changing how he goes about his whole game. Throw in that neither the fans nor his teammates think that he deserves to be there and probably let him know it, and I don't think the whole process does the player any favors. Hopefully Wang can get it together, as he does have the tools to be a major leaguer.

You're probably right. The top guys coming out every year would get a ton of money, while the guys a few rounds down would probably make less than their current "slot value." Could you imaging the bidding war on a guy like Strasburg or Harper if there wasn't a draft? I'd guess they'd have been signed to a $100MM deal immediately. This will never happen, but I wouldn't be totally against it, as it would be a way for shrewd management would be able to allot more money to this group and find a bunch of cheap talent to stock up the farm since most teams would still max out their MLB payroll. Small markets wouldn't get the super-hyped guys (the few guys on the cover of national magazines while in high school like Harper), but could stockpile a whole bunch of first round talent if they chose to put the money into doing this as opposed to adding on some free agents at the MLB level. I could see teams like the Pirates and Rays figuring out how to take advantage of this, while the Brewers would probably abandon the whole process.

Pittsburgh is doing a very nice job right now so maybe there is some hope. Yet what they have done so far isn't any more than we did over a five year stretch when our team was in it's prime. Time will tell if they can hold it together. If they can they would be the model we look to if we want to maintain success without going through rebuilds every five years or so. The difference, and why I am interested to see where Pittsburgh goes, is that over the last few playoff seasons, Melvin/Attanasio would have traded guys like Cole, Taillon, etc to give themselves a better shot at winning in one year. Pittsburgh got a lot of flak for their refusal to trade away their top minor leaguers, but that decision is why they still have a good farm system with elite prospects while they are maintaining a playoff-caliber MLB team. I doubt the Pirates will ever "go all in" or play for a "window," which is exactly how I wish Milwaukee would have done things back when they were in that situation.

You don't think having more money to put into anything they want helped? A lack of resources does hurt minor league player development and amateur drafting. Hard to expect a team who has half the resources of another to produce the same results. We can put more of our resources into it but that comes at the expense of putting it in other areas. When virtually every team has more money than you they can outspend you at any front they choose and there is nothing you can do about it. I could very easily see a team like the Brewers skimping on international scouting if they thought they couldn't land any decent prospects anyway. So we were at a disadvantage right there with nothing that could be done to help it so they invested in other areas. That can offset some of the damage done but it isn't the same as spending more on both. Now that the rules have changed we are starting to see them add a presence in some of those countries. But if that comes at the expense of scouting here in the US or player development is it going to help? That has to be especially tough when the major league payroll is maxed out by trying to maintain a competitive team. Which goes back to the problem of whether we can actually manage to continually field competitive teams without going through a rebuild phase. Just because the Cardinals can do it doesn't mean we can. We simply may not have the resources they have to pull it off. The reality of the situation seems to suggest we may have to change the way we look at building a successful franchise to fit the reality of what our team can realistically do. While its true the playing field isnt level, had we just not signed Lohse and invested his money in the scouting and development and the draft pick was used correctly, we would be much closer to being competitive. Without doing a bunch of research, I'd say we probably have 10% of our payroll every year tied up in "dead money." That's probably not all that uncommon in today's MLB, but with the competitive disadvantage we have as a small market team, we need to be more efficient than our competition if we want to have any chance at sustained success. Simply changing Attanasio's cell number and not giving it to Boras would go a long way in that regard, as we need to get away from signing aging free agents and paying them for their past performance and not their future potential.

You may not be worried about payroll/attendance, but I'd bet the Brewers/Attanasio are. I guessed going into this year that even if things went really bad we wouldn't be below the low 2M mark in attendance, because fans were still riding high and buying tickets based on the "152 days in first place" marketing plan, and the assurance that Attanasio was pissed off and making some changes, so everything would be okay. Attendance in the second half is going to be lower, as those are the tickets that weren't bought up in the past offseason, but I'd still say we'll be well over 2M, which is probably fine for an $80-90M payroll. We're at around $104M, which IIRC was a little over budget going into the season, probably because they figured it would be easy to shed a lot of money by simply trading off "proven" guys like Ramirez and Lohse. That hasn't worked out for them, so it will be interesting to see what they do. Since it's easy to say "it's not my money, so I don't care," remember that it is somebody's money, and they do care. If the ownership group has to dip into their own pockets to cover some payroll, they are going to want to recoup that money in future years by making more profit. If they have to take a loan, that means some of the future revenues will be tied up paying off that loan. With ticket sales likely down, that could mean payrolls in the $70-80M range. When we're used to $90-100M, that's a 20-30% decline in payroll without a strong farm to give us top-tier pre-arby guys. This could be cured to some extent by taking advantage of the few good trade chips we have and turning them into a number of good prospects. I hope they go this route, but if I had to bet, I'd say they aren't going to make too many meaningful moves, and are going to go into next year with a substandard team, trying to convince the fans that they're still a playoff-caliber team. I think this is the one way they will get Wisconsin fans to turn their back on the team.

I think you may be a little over. I have: Braun: $15M Lind: $8M Gomez: $9M Rodrigurez: $7.5M Lucroy: $4M Maldonado: $1.1M Garza: $12.5M Deferred salary owed Lohse: $2.33M Ramirez's deferred is $3M in each of 2017 & 2018 Broxton: either a $1M or $2M buyout (Cot's says $1M in one spot, and $2M in another) That puts guaranteed payouts in 2016 at around $61M (assuming Lind is picked up and Broxton is not, which would seem likely if no trades are made). That's for seven players Then you've got Segura, Peralta, Smith, Schafer, Dominguez and Thornburg in arby (all first year). I'll just say $8M for those 6 players. Now we're at $69M for 13 players. Finally, you've got Davis, Gennett, Fiers, Nelson, Jeffress, Blazek, Perez, and whoever takes Lohse's spot all pre-arby. That's 8 players, around $5M, for 21 players at $74M. Therefore, without any moves, we should be able to field an $80M or so payroll. With the presumed decline in ticket sales from coming off a terrible season and not making any changes other than replacing free agents with pre-arby guys, the team could probably still make a little money with an $80M payroll, even thought the roster doesn't look good enough to win. That doesn't answer how the owners will come up with the $10-20M they could lose this year if they are unable to dump useless salaries like Lohse, Garza, Broxton, and Ramirez. They are structured as an LLC, so if the team is going to lose money, if they don't have that much money sitting in an account somewhere, they will either have to borrow the money, or the owners will have to pay it out of their own pockets. Assuming they take out a loan against the equity of the team, which is the likely route they'd take, that would probably deduct around $1M per year from team salary for the next 20 years. Obviously, the best course of action now (after they backed themselves into a bad situation by going over budget on team payroll to put together this group) is to shed payroll. Unfortunately, the "easy" choices to shed are playing so poorly that no one would take their salary. That leaves us with Parra, who is almost assuredly going to be traded just to shed salary, and Gomez, who has been injured and under-performing all season. This is the problem the Brewers face, and this is why they don't care to trade Lucroy and Segura... that doesn't help the problem they are most worried about, which isn't baseball, but money. They probably think that holding Lucroy and Segura will help them sell tickets next year, which will make up more revenue than trading their salaries would save them. It's an ugly situation, and I'm not sure what they're going to do. Probably take the loan to cover their current losses and slash payroll going forward to make sure the owners make money even if fans decide not to show up. It's situations like this that force teams to either do something like the Diamondbacks did in this trade, or to go into a "rebuild" without a strategy of how to ever get out of it.

I don't know anything about the Diamondbacks' financial situation, but this is my concern with this year's Brewers. If the owners are facing a situation where they may have to either dig into their own pockets or borrow money to meet payroll, they can do some strange things. I'm sure they thought it would be easy to trade away big money guys like Ramirez, Lohse and Garza, but with the way things have turned out, they're kind of stuck... especially if Gomez remains hurt and underperforming. I really hope they don't have to get "creative" like this in order to keep Attanasio and his crew from having to dip into their own pockets to meet payroll.

On the bright side the rumor of looking for CF prospects should quiet the "Melvin is going to extend Gomez to some ridiculous deal into his mid-30s" talk. There's worry that Melvin will extend Lucroy into his mid-30's, but I don't think there's ever been any chance of extending Gomez. The question with him is just whether they'll trade him while teams can still offer a QO, or whether they'll go into next season with him and trade him at the deadline, diminishing his return. As to the K-Rod rumor, is this coming from the Toronto side, or the Milwaukee side? If Milwaukee is in discussion on trading K-Rod, it would be a good sign that they aren't going to try to patch together a "competitive" team in 2016.

It was (mostly) a joke based on my complete inability to understand why the Brewers are refusing to trade Segura. He's not that good (average defense with a sub-.700 OPS) but rumors hint that teams are willing to give up a decent haul to get him. Meanwhile, we have Sardinas who can step in now, and Arcia who should be ready in the next year or two. Why the refusal to even listen to offers on Segura? To me, he's an obvious trade candidate. The way the Brewers are approaching this really screams to me that they aren't looking to rebuild, the ownership group is just worried about losing money as ticket sales dwindle as the year goes on. They're trying to dump useless salary, and will only look at trading anyone who is not going to be a free agent (other than Garza, who they realize was a mistake) if they can't shed salary any other way. It doesn't take a huge leap from there to believe that they are going to try to put a "competitive" team out in 2016, which really won't be competitive, but they'll try to sell that to the fans to keep ticket sales up. In that scenario, what better way to "show they're trying to win" than by getting a big name by trading away a no-name (to the casual fan) prospect? It shouldn't happen, I don't think it will happen, but it's not out of the realm of possibility when we're being led by a guy whose biggest concern is losing fan interest/ticket sales.

Proven major league talent is just that, proven. Which is why veterans like Garza, Lohse and Ramirez never have bad seasons. Of course prospects fail, but so do vets. The theory is to stockpile as many good prospects as you can, because while some fail, some also succeed, and that is where major league players come from. The good thing is that when trading "proven," you are usually able to get multiple "unproven" prospects. If you are trading one year of a "proven" guy for three "unproven" minor leaguers, you only need one of those three to pan out to make the trade successful, as you are getting six years of that guy for one year of the guy you traded away. If two of the guys pan out, you've hit a home run. Regarding your dislike of the Medeiros pick last year at 12, you need to understand the "draft pool" of money to figure that one out. He was expected to be a late first round pick, but by picking him earlier, the Brewers were able to sign him for under slot value. That allowed them to draft Harrison and Gatewood with the next two picks and use the money saved on the Medeiros pick to sign them. So yes, he was drafted earlier than expected, but at least there was some reason for it, and in a system in big need of high upside talent, we ended up with three guys who fit the bill.

i was just talking about their rotation this year and the randomness which can happen in baseball for a number of teams in each given year. A baseball season for many teams is often both predictable and unpredictable, with luck/randomness playing varying degrees of influence. So that's a factor why some teams end up doing quite a bit better than most expected and some are quite a bit worse. That's what made Attanasio's "baseball's easy, you just put the names into a spreadsheet and they perform" comment so comical. Well, comical if he was the owner of a different team. Worrisome if he happens to own your favorite team.

Segura's trade value is more likely to rise in the next 1-2 years than it is to fall. He's still only 25. That's why he's not going to be traded anytime soon. Therein lies the reason he has trade value right now. He has potential, and some GMs will pay for that. If he "clicks," then he may be worth more in a year or two. If he maintains a sub-.700 OPS, with average-ish defense, his value will go down as he gets more expensive and his "team control" diminishes. If we didn't have a logjam of shortstops, I would not want Segura traded. However, Sardinas is MLB ready now, and Arcia is very close. We don't have room for all of them, so Segura seems to be a logical choice to trade, assuming we get good value in return. Arcia looks like he will be head-and-shoulders above the rest of the crowd, so really all holding onto Segura does is keeps Sardinas (our recent "big" acquisition in the Gallardo trade) on the bench (or in the minors) behind Segura and then Arcia. He has enough potential that I'd like to see what he has before he gets relegated to "utility IF." This once again leads back to the discussion about the direction of the team. I like the Dominguez pick-up because he has upside and could be a great "buy low" candidate that can get playing time on a team going through a rebuild. But then it doesn't look like Segura will be traded, even though he won't be around on the other side of the rebuild and we have another high potential guy in Sardinas who could easily step in and get some playing time to see what he's got before Arcia is ready. We're trying to dump Garza for salary reasons, which will leave us with a shortage of starting pitchers next year, but then we refuse to even listen to offers on Lucroy, who (once again) won't be around on the other side of the rebuild. This team needs to decide if they're going to rebuild or not. Going half-in is just going to keep us in purgatory and make the eventual rebuild even more painful.

I would rather see Segura traded while he seems to have some decent trade value. Then we could put two guys with upside potential (Dominguez and Sardinas) on the left side of the infield during our down years to see if either or both of them live up to their potential. If so, well, that's great. If not, Arcia is probably the answer at SS in a year or so and will be around when (hopefully) the Brewers are once again ready to compete. Giving him more "seasoning" in the minors and holding him for another year of his prime seems like a better idea than rushing him to the majors now when it's meaningless. We suck this year and are not likely to be good next year. Why not take a flier on a high upside guy like Dominguez? As far as Ramirez, he's a known quantity, so if we're not getting anything in trade offers now, his value probably won't go up with a hot streak. Therefore, I'd use him as a bench bat and make Dominguez the starter. It won't happen because Ramirez is making $14M more than he's worth, but I'd play the guy who has some upside potential and could help the team in the future.

Unfortunately, while Melvin will likely step down as GM after the season, he is probably going to stay on in some weird new role that will have him "advising" the new GM. Since Attanasio has seemingly unlimited faith in Melvin (except when he's bypassing him to sign a 30-something FA), the new GM will be a puppet getting his strings pulled one way by Attanasio and another way by Melvin, with no real authority of his own.

Rememeber this is really the first flop with little future outlook. I'd say that was 2012. 2.3 or 2.4M is still pretty solid for a small market. Not many teams would draw 2.3M or 2.4M for the second worst team in baseball. I've written on this several times since this offseason, so I won't "show the math" here. I doubt that even during a rebuild we would go below 2M as long as the team did a good job explaining their plan to the fans. Wisconsin fans are extremely loyal and have stayed loyal through some bad Packer/Badger teams. The only time I can remember them turning on a franchise is when they felt the Seligs were screwing them over. Therefore, I think the best way the Brewers can lose their fans is to get the fans thinking that the owner is only worried about making money and not about winning.

With me, it's not that no moves have been made, it's that while the Brewers seem to have been "shopping" dregs like Ramirez, Lohse and Garza, they have said Lucroy is unavailable and that they are not likely to move Segura. It looks to me like they are just trying to cut salary, and are looking at fielding a "competitive" team next year. Of course, the team will not be competitive, and all we will have done is wasted the opportunity to restock the system by trading some guys who right now have tremendous trade value. I don't know in a year or two if we will have anyone with the trade value Gomez and Lucroy now possess, so this opportunity may not present itself in the future. This team seems to be run in large part in fear of a drop in ticket sales, which doesn't seem to be the best way to build a winning franchise. I don't want to watch the current Brewers become the 1970's Cubs, putting a few "name players" on the field to keep fans interested enough to buy tickets so the team remains profitable without any realistic chance of winning anything now or in the future.

I'd guess the information garnered didn't help the Cardinals at all, but you are likely to see jail time for the executives involved coming from the FBI, and severe penalties for the organization coming from the Commissioner's office.

And yeah, that 2017 lineup tells you why Lucroy and Braun should be traded. Those guys would be the best bats in the lineup by a country mile unless Arcia really blows up Throw in that the other teams in the division (notably the Cubs) will likely be better as their prospects develop into their prime, and that lineup would probably have us at the bottom of the division. That's only 3 teams to me that are selling and 27teams that are contemplating buying. Garza is going to be a trade target under that circumstance for sure. Lind ought to be a decent trade target as he's going to be a DH thought as well. I expect better returns for Parra and Lind than what Milw gave up for them since that reason. KRod too will be a trade idea for many teams. Segura is 11th currently for all MLB SS in OPS with 145ABs or more. That's a lot of franchises that stand to improve at that position, for some years to come. Those are the 4 I expect decent trades coming up soon before the deadline. Gomez or Lucroy would be Blockbuster deals that I feel are more likely in the offseason. Braun would be that way as well, and I just don't feel he's a trade chip to let go for the franchise. Maybe I'm just being impatient, but I really think those who are hoping for some big moves (myself included) are going to be disappointed. I think the Brewers are going to try to shed salary, and if they can get anyone to take Lohse, Garza, Ramirez or Broxton off their hands for nothing they will pretty much stand pat from there. Parra will also be traded as he will be a free agent, and he'll be the only guy bringing back a prospect, but it won't be a good one. I don't believe Segura, Braun, Lind, K-Rod or Lucroy are going anywhere, and the only way Gomez gets traded is if they can't shed salary in one of the aforementioned salary dump trades. They'll extend Lucroy, who won't be very good as he gets into his 30's, and they'll trade Gomez at next year's trade deadline, when his value will be significantly less, as the receiving team will only get half a year with no chance at making a QO. I also wouldn't doubt that Arcia will get traded at some point as he'll be stuck in AAA with Segura and Sardinas in Milwaukee. I'm sure he could net two years of a proven vet who will help the team climb above .500 for a season. I had hopes that this horrid start would finally get Attanasio/Melvin to change tack, but the constant murmur that Lucroy is completely off the table and Segura is not likely to be made available have me believing that this team's management is beyond hope. Hopefully it's all a "smokescreen," but I doubt it.

I've been thinking this for a month and nothing. I'm guessing to this point teams have been trying to lowball Melvin. As the deadline gets closer teams will have to put their best deal on the table and Melvin will have to choose one. I think it's a money issue. They have a team record payroll and with the slow start, they started worrying that they would lose money. They don't want a "rebuild," so they initially put their garbage on the table hoping someone would take it off their hands and save them enough money that they wouldn't have to trade their better players. You can't really "lowball Melvin" on players like Ramirez, Lohse, Broxton and Garza, as they have negative value at this point. If we move them at all, we will either take back another bad contract, or pay most of the salary just to save a couple million. They've made it clear that Lucroy and Segura are not getting traded, but if we cannot shed enough salary through salary dump trades, it becomes possible that Gomez gets dealt. That is the only chance we bring anyone of value back in a trade, while also shedding some salary. Don't get your hopes too high on much else happening, and don't be surprised if we don't just end up salary dumping Lohse and Parra and standing pat with everyone else, gearing up for our "big free agent signings" like Juan Uribe this offseason so we will "be competitive" in 2016. It just depends on how ticket sales look going into the second half and how much salary they think they need to shed in order to break even. It's not about bringing in loads of talent so they'll be better in a couple of years. They're too worried about losing fans to do that.

Ramirez played his bluff this past offseason, acting like he wanted to sign a 2-year deal somewhere and Melvin, thinking he could save $4MM by exercising his option, bought the bluff. Had they not exercised the option, they would have owed $4MM and Ramirez would have retired. Now they're stuck with a massively overpriced contract and the distinct likelihood that the team will lose money. They've thrown all their garbage on the block (Garza, Lohse, Ramirez, Broxton) hoping someone will save them from their own mistakes, but no one is going to give them anything of value back. The best they can hope for is some salary relief, and that may (as in the case of the Mets) require the team to take another bad contract back. The only way the Brewers will get salary relief and get something decent back is to offer up something of value, such as Gomez or Lucroy (although Lucroy doesn't make much to offer "salary relief," which would mean he'd bring even more talent back). I think the Brewers are trying to stick with the "Attanasio game plan," and if someone would be dumb enough to take on one or two of our bad contracts we probably won't see any of Gomez, Lucroy or Segura traded. But, if no one "saves us from ourselves," the ownership group will probably be in the situation of either trading one or more of those guys or losing millions of dollars, and that is where I could see Attanasio finally caving in and making a meaningful trade.

Just no Blockbuster to get done under the circumstances. Gee for Ramirez and saving 3-6million is a plus at this point. Ramirez is at .648OPS being paid 14million on the season and retiring. It's not a good trade chip for anybody. Yep. Ramirez has little value. Saving sine money is about the best we can hope for. Good point on Gee helping get through the season without putting out young guys well beyond their IP limits. Sounds kind of like the Mets want them to take Neise to get rid of the bigger financial obligation, and if it's Ramirez for Gee, the Brewers would have to kick in some money to help even out the money owed. I don't know that it's worth it if we don't save a few million. Might as well just let Ramirez play out his time in Milwaukee and get some goodwill while he does his farewell tour through the NL Central.

Age a factor? Could be. Velocity is easy to measure, but sometimes the body just doesn't do what the mind thinks it can when you get older and your body doesn't recover like it used to. He had the outside corner locked in but body couldn't adjust and deliver off the inside corner when the mind wanted it to. Well put. Age does a lot of things, like limiting flexibility and causing some aches where there didn't use to be aches. Lohse has defied age the past few years in large part because the Cardinals taught him how to pitch without relying on velocity. That doesn't allow him to pitch forever, and in a world where 1/4 inch can be the difference between a pop up and a home run, even a slight age-related slow-down can mean the end.

Reading the rumor, that appears to be exactly what the Mets are thinking. They can do what they've been trying to do for a while, which is to get rid of one of their "expensive" veteran pitchers, make room for their talented prospects, and get a short-term fix for their third base situation. Meanwhile, the Brewers get what they're trying to get rid of... a semi-expensive back-of-the-rotation veteran starter. I dislike it, so it's probably exactly what the Brewers will do. So many up-and-coming teams are doing what I think is the right thing. When you have a good prospect, hold onto him and trade the guy on the MLB team that's in his way. Even though you have a playoff spot, don't trade away the future for today. I highly doubt they will even think about trading away their young pitchers, and if it costs them this year, so be it. They realize that having a ridiculously strong rotation for the next 6+ years will give them a good shot at making more playoffs down the road. The person who mentioned Addison Russell was on the mark. If the Mets were to offer up one of their young pitchers, the Cubs would be a far better trading partner than the Brewers. "Potential superstar MLB ready position prospect" for "potential superstar MLB ready pitching prospect" is more realistic than any deal involving Segura or Ramirez. I'd love to see us trade Segura for Matz, but that's not realistic. Segura is an average fielder who hits around .700 OPS in a hitter's park. He'd be a slight upgrade for them, and is about to start getting expensive. He's not worth an MLB ready potential top of the rotation ace, and the sad thing is that the rumor says the Brewers are the ones who are not interested in trading Segura. I sure hope that's trade posturing.