monty57

reilly, your line of thought is what I (and many on here) would like. I think it's well past time that ownership realizes we need to rebuild, and trading guys like Gomez, Lucroy and Lind is the quickest way we could get through a rebuild. The past few years I hoped the Brewers would make a few moves for the future so that a complete rebuild wouldn't be necessary, but I think that ship has sailed. We don't have the horses to win this race, so we're at a point that if we don't trade guys while we have them, we won't have guys to trade in the not-too-distant future. If we keep Gomez and Lucroy to free agency, who are our trade chip that will quickly turn the farm around? I don't really see anyone other than potentially Nelson. The longer this drags out, the uglier it gets. However, if I had to bet, I think a lineup like superfly listed above is much more likely. We'll trade away the guys who will be free agents (Lohse, Parra, Ramirez) for anything we can get at the trade deadline, even salary relief. None of those guys will bring back any useful talent. We'll use the money saved from those contracts to sign a couple free agent vets next offseason - my guess is Uribe (3B) and Lackey (SP) - and try to sell the fanbase on our "revamped playoff team." This won't work, and I hope it doesn't happen, but I bet it will.

Not to mention Zimmermann would really have to want to play for the Brewers because there's not a chance we're going to be offering him the biggest contract. ...or the best chance at playing for a winning team

However, if he continues to struggle it's time to go to Braun after the season ends and ask to renegotiate his contract. If he refuses, there is the nuclear option. Cut him, don't pay him, and let the courts work it out. That could take years. My guess is that if the Brewers were serious about doing that, it would bring Braun back to the table to renegotiate. Would he be willing to not get paid while it's in the courts, risk losing and getting nothing, all the while having your name dragged through the mud again? No, that's not remotely a possibility. If it were, the Yankees would have stopped paying A-Rod a few years ago. Braun will be paid by the Brewers until something like 2031 unless somehow the Brewers find a GM dumb enough to take that contract off their hands. Even if he plays well, he will not play up to his future contract, and the Brewers owe him for many years after he's done playing. but why the world would he sign the 2nd extension? According to all reports out at the time, Braun was a big cheerleader for the team in telling everyone to sign extensions offered to them. He probably just looks at money differently than most. Guarantees are huge, and getting a guaranteed $145MM is enough that it's not worth risk of the numerous scenarios that could play out in which without the guarantee he would not get paid. Some players want to take the risk to get top dollar, while some would rather give up some potential in order to eliminate the risk. Either way is fine. If it's me, I'm accepting the extension for the guarantee. It's the same reason I buy insurance... risk transferal from myself to someone else.

Lots of good comments, so I'll just add: -Most of our farmhands should be kind of "untouchable" in that we shouldn't be trading prospects for MLB help. Unless it's an add on to a Gomez or Lucroy trade, our minor leaguers should just be held on to and allowed to play to see who pans out. We just need to find ways to add to the talent pool we have. -Gomez and Lucroy should be traded, as they are the best way to bring back talent for the future. Gomez will be too expensive for us to extend, and Lucroy's everyday play will put enough wear-and-tear on his body that I don't want to extend him into his mid-to-late 30's. -I wouldn't actively look to trade Nelson or Peralta. Both are young and have team control. I'd be willing to trade them if someone made a big enough offer, but I wouldn't actively look to trade them. In fact, I'd consider offering extensions (like Lucroy of Braun's first deal) since they're good and in their pre-arby years. We don't have a lot of talent worth these extensions, but Nelson and Peralta probably are worth it, even in rebuild years. -Segura should be traded at some point if he builds his value back up. We have young talent behind him, and he has been unwilling to sign an extension, so he's expendable. The question is whether he'll rebuild his value and when is the best time to trade him. Arcia looks to be the future at SS, but Sardinas is also talented. Hopefully one or both of them will be part of the next good Brewer teams. -Davis and Gennett are nice "placeholders." Keep them until either a prospect forces his way onto the roster, or they're nearing the end of team control, and then hope to get some prospects back in trade. So, to the question of who is the "new core," I'd say a core isn't as important during a rebuild (if we rebuild), but will be very important when we eventually come out on the other side of the rebuild. For now, Nelson and Peralta can be something of a core, as having two decent pitchers at the top of the rotation for a few years will at least give the fans something to cheer for. Sardinas and Arcia are close enough to the majors to have some hope that one or both could be long-term answers in the middle infield. And of course we'll have Braun for a long time. Hard to say more, since most of the rest of our hope lies in the low minors, so hopefully we get a lot of talent back in trade, and continue to target "high upside" in future drafts and international signings.

I look at the second extension in and of itself when discussing whether or not "it" was the worst contract. Of course you can't use his pre-arby years and buyouts of his arby years when comparing him with a free agent signing for whom we did not receive the benefit of the "cheap years." With baseball's salary structure, far and away the best value any team can get comes from pre-arby guys, and the next best value comes from extensions done during the pre-arby years. A good free agent deal can't come close to a player's pre-arby years, and even mistakes made in pre-arby extensions won't show up in "worst contract in history" discussions. What this does showcase is why we need a lot of pre-arby guys, and why it's smart to extend good players during their pre-arby years rather than waiting until they're nearing free agency.

I don't think Braun is done, but I doubt he'll be a .950+ OPS guy again (few are). I think he'll play out kind of like Soriano in Chicago where he'll still be an okay player, but fans will blame him for all the team's woes due to the contract. Of course, the contract goes so long that he really could be a .500 OPS guy by the time the contact is over, and if that's the case then it truly will be the worst contract in team history. I really hate the deferred money part, as that will basically save the team money during the next few rebuild years, but makes him pretty much untradable late in the deal, and will hurt the team for years after he's gone. I don't care if it's "only" 3-5% of payroll, as that could be a key piece we can't sign because we're still paying a retired player. Deferred money sounds like a good deal from a present/future value standpoint, but in reality, with GMs always maxing payroll, it's more like a person using a "90 days same as cash" deal to spend above their means. Eventually, the bill has to be paid, so the deferred money deals help you today but hurt you in the future. I guess if the team cuts payroll for some kind of rebuild over the next few seasons (still far from a certainty), the team could take some of the money not spent and put it in an interest-bearing reserve fund to pay for the deferred years, but in that case, they would have to pay a lot of taxes on the profit, so they'd need to save something like $8.93MM in revenue for every $5MM they'd put in the account, as it would be seen as profit until they'd get to write off the expense in the deferral years. Not really a profitable venture.

Part of being the boss. You get the credit and the blame. If the Apple Watch has a fatal flaw in it, it will be Tim Cook, and not the engineer at fault, that will be grilled for the error.

Good post. I fully understand why the Brewers did what they did in going for it in 2011, and I too enjoyed the playoff seasons. It's just seemed really obvious since then that they needed to go a different direction, and their actions have made our eventual rebuild deeper than it probably could have been. Ownership is awake. They just aren't doing what you want them do. Jumping off the bandwagon and not supporting the organization is not only "not the best way to fix things", it shouldn't even be a consideration. As I write this, I'm planning a bus trip for clients to a Brewer game this year. Not only am I not planning on "jumping off the bandwagon," I'm so long vested into this organization that I don't think "bandwagon" should even be in the vernacular. Many fans however will jump, which is why I think we'll see attendance drop. I don't think we'll go below the low two millions, but that's still a significant drop from last year's nearly 2.8 million and even from 2013's 2.5 million. It may be sad, but I think the Cubs are a good illustration for this organization. For years they played with the philosophy that as long as they put enough talent on the field to get the fans to show up, they would turn a profit and it didn't matter if they usually stunk (by the way, during this period they had more success than the Brewers have had in their existence, so I can't rip them too much). It took some empty seats (and a White Sox WS) for ownership to decide they needed to "go for it." Their path in this "go for it" period really mirrored the Brewers' recent history. Then, as the winning stopped, fans once again stopped showing up. That is what made ownership (granted, new ownership) get introspective and realize what winning teams are doing in this "new" age of baseball. They didn't just rebuild, they rebuilt in the "modern" fashion that I believe will make them very good for a long period of time, not just a "window." Attanasio seems to me to be motivated by ticket sales. I understand this, but I also understand that what is good for ticket sales may not be the best "baseball decision," and this line of thought could lead us to a long period like the aforementioned Cubs, where it's more about putting some "names" on the field so that fans will have someone to cheer for so they continue to buy tickets, and not really about winning. Or, they could do what the Cubs recently did, bring in a GM that knows how to rebuild in the "modern" style, and sell out to that style. A hit to the wallet would force them to make a choice, and one of these paths is the likely outcome. If you think the Cubs are not a good example because of their market size, we don't have to look any farther than the Pirates. They're in the early stages of success for their "modern-style" rebuild, but they seem to be die-hards, unwilling to give up the future to play for a "window." It'll take a few years, but I am very interested in seeing how it works going forward. A concern is that they're both in our division, and it really appears to be shaping up that we have the "Yankees" (Cardinals), "Red Sox" (Cubs) and "Rays" (Pirates) forming in our division, and we're kind of floating down the river seemingly without a paddle. Hopefully we find our "paddle" soon, and steer the boat in a good direction.

It's kind of arguing the details, but I don't agree that he's looked very good prior to this year. Everything's relative. What I'm used to right now is the 2015 Brewers, so compared to that pre-injury Thornburg was very good :-) Seriously, I think you are correct, but that would make him a capable back-of-the rotation starter, which is still much more valuable than the "long man" role he's been stuck in. Or, how about working Thornburg as a Starting Pitcher. With the intent to maybe replace Fiers and/or maybe prepare to trade a starter by June. Just as a depth move, it makes sense. Even before the horrendous start, one of the biggest concerns for the Brewers was the lack of rotation depth. I wonder if this was the plan from the start: get through the rotation a couple of times to make sure they're stretched out and a "long man" is less necessary, and then send Thornburg to the AAA rotation. It may have been a harder sell if the Brewers were winning and Thornburg looked sharp, but I thought he should be in the AAA rotation from the get-go so he was ready to go in case of an injury to an MLB starter.

He has to show he hasn't hit a cliff before we'll be able to trade him. It looked like he was one of those few "ageless" guys right up until the season started. Hopefully he's in a rough patch and starts pitching well, but if he doesn't straighten things out, we won't get anything for him. Had we traded Lohse a month ago, we probably would have got a decent prospect, but as it stands right now I think the best we'd get from trading the group of free-agents-to-be (Lohse, Ramirez, Broxton, Parra) is salary relief. I don't think we'd get much if we shopped Garza, and no one will touch Braun. I think the only players we may think about trading that could bring anything back would be Gomez and Lucroy, and I highly doubt Lucroy will be traded. If we went for "best package" and not "best MLB ready package," trading Gomez could bring in a lot of talent. We just might have to wait a couple of years for that talent to reach the majors. Most likely scenario: -We trade away whatever we can of Lohse, Ramirez, Broxton and Parra for salary relief and some minor league filler material. This will allow for the owners to not lose money this year, so they won't be too upset with things. -We hold on to Lucroy, Gomez and Garza. -We use the money that comes off the books to sign a couple of free agents (as much as we like our ex-Cards, I'm looking at John Lackey as a SP, and Juan Uribe is a free swinger, so he'll fit right in at 3B) -We will field a team of Lucroy, Lind, Gennett, Segura, Uribe?, Davis, Gomez, Braun with a rotation of Garza, Peralta, Nelson, Lackey?, Jungman/Fiers -Fans will be fed the line that "we've made some moves and now have a good shot at the playoffs" -We will once again hold this same conversation next year, as we have for most of the recent past.

I think that was more to Ennder's comment. Complaining about the Marcum trade or how we didn't trade Ramirez 2 years ago isn't productive to the discussion about how to fix where we are now. Okay. How we fix where we are now is to stop making the type of moves that got us here. It's not one or two specific moves that will "fix" the franchise, but rather a fundamental change in how things are run, which has to come from the owner's desk. Probably the best way to fix where we are now is for fans to stop buying tickets, as that will be what wakes ownership up and causes this change.

...along with still looking for our first playoff appearance in 30+ years? We made the playoffs in 2008 prior to trading away the farm for Greinke and Marcum, so no we would not still be looking for our first playoffs in 30+ years. In addition to the above, we could also have players received when trading Fielder and Hart, along with a good portion of the World Series contending Royals' roster. We'd still have Gomez, Braun, Lucroy, Davis, Scooter, and a lot of other guys, and that $100MM or so we didn't spend that I mentioned... that could've helped fill in some gaps. There is a good possibility we'd have seen the playoffs multiple times since the 2010 offseason, while still having a promising future. We will never know. All we know is we won one playoff series at the cost of their future, and for some reason that is acceptable to many Brewer fans, who would not accept that from their beloved Packers, who always look to the future and have created somewhat of a dynasty in large part by showing a willingness to give up "name" veterans for young, unproven players (including but not limited to Hall of Famer Favre for injury-prone, unproven Rodgers for those who say the only way they win is because they have a QB). You don't really present my argument very accurately, so I'll just simply say that I believe the future always has to be considered, as does the present. When, for a prolonged period of time, a team makes every move for "today," and no moves for "tomorrow," tomorrow will still come, and it will not be any fun. When a team, especially a smaller-market team, plays for a "window," there will be a lot more down years than up years, as it takes a complete rebuild to get you to the stage where you mortgage the future for your "window," and since you mortgaged your future, you need another complete rebuild. Complete rebuilds take about a decade, whereas your "window" is usually only a few seasons. Teams like the Brewers need strong farms far more than big markets do, as that is the only way they can get years of inexpensive control out of players, whether they're MLB average, good or great. All "taking advantage of a window" does is give you a slightly better chance in one year, while pretty much guaranteeing that you will be forced into a nearly decade long rebuild. There is no "perfect recipe," other than maybe having triple the payroll of everyone else like the Yankees had for a while. Other than that, all plans have faults. I just believe that with the way baseball's payroll works, the only way for the Brewers to have any chance at sustained success is to continually have good pre-arby and arby players, which allows for them to also have a select group of higher-priced players on the roster. The only way to do that is to have a good farm, and you can't have a good farm if your management, for a prolonged period of time, makes every move for "today," and no moves for "tomorrow." So why is this important in a thread about the future? Because playing for the "window" in 2011-2012 (didn't win us a World Series in 2011 and sure as heck didn't work in 2012) has naturally forced us into a rebuild. We should have started a few years ago, but we didn't, because the owner wanted to try to keep the "window" open for a few more seasons. Now, since even the proverbial blind monkeys are starting to see that a rebuild is inevitable, what are we going to do? I sure as heck don't want us to go through all of this again only to once again destroy a promising future. Unfortunately, Attanasio knows that there are a lot of fans who seek immediate gratification and believe we should trade "tomorrow" for "today" at any chance we get, so I'm sure that given the opportunity (and he's the owner, so he is certainly given the opportunity), he will continue to run this franchise in a way not suited to a smaller-market team. Heck, in today's age, his methods probably aren't suited for any market, but they sure aren't suited for Milwaukee. I like reilly's ideas, I only wish they had been instituted several years ago, and if by some miracle they are instituted today, I hope they are a model for how we run things going forward.

Maybe he'll go into the booth and rant about how upset he is and how changes will be made, only to do nothing. That worked really well at the end of last season.

We really only have a spot if Garza is traded, which is a definite possibility. Peralta, Nelson, Fiers are cheap with team control, so while they could (maybe even should??) be traded, I don't see the team doing it before next season. Then you have Thornburg and Jungmann. While not "proven," unless we net something better in trade, I'd say both of these guys should be in the rotation next year to see what they've got. Both are "MLB ready," so it's not like we're taking one of our promising guys from A-Ball and throwing him to the wolves. Plus, everyone else in the minors will be one more year advanced from where they are today. I'm not totally against signing a guy like you're talking about if we have an injury, or if one of the above-mentioned guys gets traded, but as it sits right now, even if Garza is traded I don't think we'll have the need to do that if we indeed are in rebuild mode. Note, I'm still not convinced we will be in rebuild mode.

Let's not get bogged down talking about PAST trades. This thread is to discuss the FUTURE. Yes, but those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it. I'd hate to go through another grueling, 5-10 year rebuild only to have management once again play for a short-term "window," so we'll once again be forced into another long, grueling rebuild. I'd have a hard time sticking with the team if that's the cycle. That would be like rooting for beta or Colecovision to make a big comeback.

By not having Aramis Ramirez on the team, that's another $10-$14 million a year. Aramis Ramirez has played in exactly zero playoff games for the Brewers. That was one of the most pointless/foolhardy signings ever. Let's not forget that in his first year as a Brewers (the one year he was injury free and productive), when the Brewers were out of it and the the Dodgers were just bought and wanted to "make a splash," they wanted to trade a couple of young pitchers (I believe Eovaldi and one other) for Ramirez. Melvin basically laughed and said "I just signed him, and I didn't sign him to trade him in his first season." Odorizzi, Eovaldi, Peralta, Nelson, Fiers/whoever... yeah, I'd take that right now. No need for Lohse or Garza signings and therefore around $100,000,000 saved when you include that we would have traded Ramirez. Where we are as a franchise right now was not a foregone conclusion. There were many different paths we could have ridden.

And since some prospects fail, you greatly increase your odds of building a "homegrown core" if you have a lot of talent on the farm. The Brewers are a business, and in any business the person at the top (CEO, president, owner, whatever) has to always think five years down the road. When the person at the top starts saying things like "sometimes you have to think about the future, and sometimes you have to give up the future to do well today," you know that the organization is going to be in trouble in the future. Could you imagine the CEO of Pfizer saying "we're going to trade all of our drugs in development in order to get another year of patent protection on Lipitor?" There sales would be great for one more year, and then they'd collapse. I understand baseball isn't like some other businesses, or the Brewers would have been put out of business many years ago, but that doesn't mean basic business principles don't apply. This is not at all saying that you need to give up on today, just that you always have to know where you want to be in the future. I can't fathom what Attanasio has been thinking other than in this one aspect of his life he lets his "inner fan" beat out his "inner businessman," and shoots for immediate gratification over long-term success. I highly doubt he runs his other businesses this way, and if he does he's the luckiest person alive.

I know it's a small sample and all, but it's pretty sad that the in one game our bench warmers and AAAA guys have done more offensively than our "stars" have done all season.

I know Thornburg has looked bad this year, but so has almost every Brewer. He did look very good at the MLB level prior to this year, so hopefully he gets into the rotation in AAA, pitches well and the next time he comes up it will be as a starter. If he can cut it as an adequate MLB starter, it will help the Brewers a lot over the next few seasons, as they'll lose Lohse (either via trade or as a free agent) and it would probably be a good idea to shop Garza to see what value he has. With limited SP depth, Thornburg has much more value to the team if he can start. As to the reliever selected, at this point I don't really care too much. Maybe they're trying to save time on Knebel, who looks talented, or maybe they're trying to see if Wooten is worth a spot on the roster going forward, or if he should be jettisoned. Heck, maybe they realize the ship is sinking and are trying to see if anyone can build up their trade value. Right now, they could bring up a young Mariano Rivera and it wouldn't turn this into a playoff season, so might as well look to the future as much as possible... hopefully that's what they're doing.

Attanasio has offered Melvin a contract for life, to which Melvin said he wanted to see how he felt as the season progressed. Attanasio then said he wants to get a decision, as he wants to have a successor in place when Melvin decides to go. Attanasio won't fire Melvin this year, but the way things are going, I could see Melvin running for the door, so it is possible that they hire someone soon who will be an "assistant" this season and step into the GM position next year. I'm not sure if teams are allowed to talk with guys who are working for other organizations and hire them mid-season, but if they can, I hope they're making some phone calls.

Put a keg at 2nd base and every time a player reaches, he has to slam a beer. I figure by the third inning the other team will be drunk and the Brewers will be sober, so they can stage a comeback.

I wonder if the drafting was at least in part due to a team strategy of looking for "low ceiling/high floor" guys who they thought could get to the majors quickly and help the team during it's "window." The recent drafts seem to be better received, since the team seems to have changed tack and started going for the most talented player available, of course taking into consideration the old "signability" factor.

My post was just a joke. I need humor when it comes to the Brewers these days.

That was pretty much the offseason for me as well. They had some good, young talent, and I figured they had to trade Fielder and Hart to bring back a ton of prospects to keep growing from within, which is what had transformed them into a respectable franchise. Instead, they insisted on MLB talent back for Fielder and Hart, and when (understandably) no playoff hopeful team was going to trade a bunch of young MLB pitching for one year of Fielder or Hart, they went the route they did. At that time, I figured that we were in it for one or maybe two years, but they'd better be quick to trade away vets, or everything was going to go downhill, with less talent each year as good players were replaced with lesser players, eventually leading to the need for a complete rebuild. To LouisEly's post, I'd say that the poster's response has merit only if you look at everything year-to-year, and assume we were somehow fated to be in the situation we were this offseason. I don't believe that. The Brewers rebuild started during the Dean Taylor years, and started to bear fruit when guys like Fielder, Weeks, Hardy, etc stepped into the majors. The moves made (and not made) since then are why we are where we are, not just what we could have done this past offseason. From that point until we were forced to trade Greinke, every move was made to win "now," with no regard to the future. There has been some change over the past year or so (trading Gallardo, drafting younger guys), but that's way too little, too late to recover from years of "win now." Actions / decisions have consequences. Deciding to maximize "today" at the expense of the future naturally leads to a lesser future. Attanasio acknowledged in interviews that he willfully traded away the future for the present. To some, it's probably nice to hear the owner say he's going to give up the future in order to try to win now. I'm a planner, so to me that is about the worst thing I could ever hear an owner say. He bought the team in the perfect situation, with loads of young, pre-arby talent, a new stadium with a swelling fan base, and a low team payroll with plenty of room for growth. He added revenue streams, allowing even higher potential payroll. In this scenario, it was almost impossible not to make the playoffs once or twice. We didn't have to sell out the future, we could have stuck with the strategy that brought us from basement dwellers into respectability, but that's not the route Attanasio chose, and now we are seemingly destined for the massive rebuild I've been dreading for a few seasons. That is what saddens me. After years of ineptitude, I got really excited when Taylor laid out his rebuild plan, and for the first time I started paying attention ot the minor leagues, watching our future stars tear up the minors, and knowing that in the not-too-distant future the MLB team would be good. Then the MLB team started to get better, and I got even more excited thinking about what the future could hold... we could be good for a long time. This strategy works, so why couldn't we continue to be good by simply showing a willingness to trade away guys who are nearing free agency and keeping our farm stocked. It's not easy, but it's something the Brewers can do to finally show some success. Then they decided they wouldn't trade Fielder unless they got two young MLB-ready pitchers, and the rest is history.

I know which one you mean. Hearing guys who are sucking up the field in 2015 talk about how upset they are about sucking up the field in 2014 is hard to stomach. They could always start talking about building a new tax-payer funded stadium to replace their aging facilities. That usually gets the discussion moved away from what happens on the field.