monty57

Unless Weeks gets hurt, or the Brewers find a way to trade him, he will be the second baseman at least until sometime next season. He has talent, and they owe him too much to give up on him with 1.5 years left on his contract. It would be nice Weeks could play well enough for the remainder of the year that he makes himself tradeable this offseason, allowing Gennett to man 2B starting next year. Gennett won't be a star, but he should be good enough to merit playing time while he's young & cheap, and knocking Weeks' salary off the 2014 books would be very helpful.

To answer the question, there would be a strong market for Lohse, if the Brewers were willing to deal him. He's a good pitcher, and those have always, are always and will always be in demand. Except apparently this past offseason, when no one other than the Brewers were willing to give up their first round draft pick for him. Since no one was willing to sign the deal and give up a first round draft pick, I don't see why anyone would assume the deal, while losing the best performance and least expensive season, while giving up value equal to or greater than a first round draft pick. Let's use a non-baseball analogy. If someone is selling three gizmo's, a big one, a medium sized one and a small one (with bigger being better). I win the auction for $10 for all three gizmos. Now I keep the biggest gizmo for myself, and put the other two gizmos back up for auction. Who in their right mind would give me more than $10 for the two remaining gizmos? Lohse is at an age where most pitchers begin to regress significantly. Therefore, this season is likely to be better than next season, which is likely to be better than the third season, when there is a good possibility that he will no longer be a MLB-caliber pitcher. Not only were the Brewers the highest bidder in the auction that is free agency (meaning no one else was willing to pay as much as the Brewers at that point), they also are right now living through the best season Lohse is likely to have of the three-year deal. Because of the way the contract is structured, it is also by far the least expensive year of the deal, so his value is degenerating with every start. The third year of the deal probably has significant negative value, and the deferred money is all negative value. The Brewers would probably have to pay $18MM or so of the remaining contract in order to get a valuable piece back in trade, and that to me does not constitute a "strong market."

Hawing, it looks like the PNC scoreboard crew spent the weekend watching a Saturday Night Live marathon.

I agree with your post, but there are 28 days before Hart will be eligible to come off the DL. A lot can happen in 28 days. An injury could happen, a trade could occur, or someone could go from extremely hot to extremely cold (or vice versa). It would be nice if they'd able to trade Gonzalez, freeing up a space for a non-SS on the bench. But we really don't have any top hitting prospects, or even any non-prospects in AAA with a hot bat, who are forcing their way to the majors, so barring injury, you're probably right that unless something unforeseen happens Gonzalez will be a Brewer until Hart gets back, at which point he'll be let go. On a side note, it is good to see Ramirez (nearly) back. Hopefully they let his knee get fully healed this time, so he isn't back on the DL in need of surgery in a couple of weeks.

But guys with 5runs/gm run support meaning there would be enough wins going around on #5SP lines. I know Lohse is the #2/3 and he's likely to win us games at 1-3runs of support as well as the 5runs starts. Throwing it out there that to trade Lohse as a #2 and say a 7-4 record in his starts missed vs. inserting a AAA #5 and the team's ability to score runs I feel a 5-6 record. I believe what you are saying here is that since we have a good offense, we'll score so many runs that we don't need quality pitching. That's the type team we had over the past 6-7 seasons in the years in which we did not make the playoffs. In the two seasons we did make the playoffs, we had quality starting pitching. The "beer league softball team" strategy doesn't usually work well in the MLB. It's not a big loss on 2wins this season vs. attaining a player who may net quite a number of wins down the road. And the 11mil no longer spent? Not having a #2 aging Lohse next season? Well, obviously that money can be used on another SP if our 'In House" guys don't do the job. Again it's all based on the prospect that is offered to the team. After Segura's success today/Trout/Harper last year, the fans I'm sure are high on what a prospect can do. They wouldn't run out mass exodus over a move that rids the team of Lohse when the next Segura may have just acquired. Unless we trade Braun, we don't have the trading chips to bring in a Trout or Harper type of prospect. However, if your strategy is to trade a SP in order to bring back a good (not elite) prospect, I think you have to look at Gallardo, not Lohse. As I mentioned, since teams weren't willing to give up the draft pick to get Lohse, I don't think they'd be willing to give up more than the draft pick's value to trade for him, especially since they won't get all of presumably his best (age 34) year of the contract. Unless both things happened, i just don't see any chance Lohse would get traded. It's not how either of Melvin/Attanasio operate to trade a quality veteran player before a season starts if they have any belief that the team can at least compete for a playoff berth. Agreed. Look no further than the Ramirez-to-the-Dodgers situation last year for proof. The Dodgers wanted him, apparently were offering some of their best prospects for him, and Melvin basically said "I just signed him, so I'm not looking to trade him." That was a similar aged player signed to a similar contract in a similar situation to the one being discussed in this thread. I'm not saying I wouldn't like an aging, expensive veteran to be traded if we're out of it. I would. I just don't think the Brewers will do it. The most likely to be traded would seem to be Hart, but with his knee issues, I don't think he's very tradeable. Therefore, I'm just sitting back enjoying this recent run by the Brewers and hoping they have enough gas in the tank to make it to the playoffs. They'll lose Hart this offseason, and they can decide then if they're going to trade other aging, expensive guys to go into next year.

I read an article recently which made me believe the Brewers want to get Davis back to AAA to get some PAs, as he isn't getting them now. Ramirez coming off the DL will probably knock Davis to Nashville, giving us a bench of Maldonado, Schafer, Lalli, Prince and whichever of Yuni/Gonzalez is not playing 1B that day. I agree with Briggs that they'll probably keep Bianchi in the minors as long as they can. You never know when an injury will happen, so that offers some injury protection, and it gives the Brewers time to see if a team would give them anything in trade for a backup SS.

Sample size matters! Weeks "horrible" 2012 ended with an OPS of .728. That is .043 points higher than Betancourt's career OPS. Yes, you heard that correctly. Given any significant sample size, at his worst, Weeks is significantly better than Betancourt. Don't make rash decisions (like cutting/benching Weeks in order to give more playing time to Betancourt) because of one month's performance. Anyone who can make it to the majors can have a good month, and even great players can have a bad month. I don't think Weeks is the player he once was, and he certainly never became the player he could have been, but given a season's play, he is a better player than Betancourt. I would love for the Brewers to be able to trade away Weeks' contract for something of value while finding a good, young, inexpensive player. I don't love paying Weeks his salary while letting a proven bad player like Betancourt start at 2B. We have been fortunate that Betancourt has been hot when we needed it. I hope he stays hot a while longer. This hot streak doesn't outweigh a career's worth of subpar play.

I think losing a draft pick and the corresponding pool money was a bigger deterrent for most teams than the money Lohse received. If they weren't willing to give up the draft pick, why in the heck would they trade anything of greater value than said draft pick to acquire Lohse in trade? The draft pick compensation was obviously a concern, but so is Lohse's age. Just look at how many starting pitchers there are who are in their middle 30's. It's not very many. Take out Hall of Famer talent like Maddux, Johnson and Holliday and knuckleballers like Dickey and Wakeman, and the number of starting pitchers over the past decade who have made it to age 36 is very slim. It is a tremendous risk to guarantee an eight figure salary to a pitcher through his mid-30's. Any team trading for him would be accepting the riskiest years of the contract, while the Brewers would get the lowest risk year. Throw in that this year is artificially cheap relative to the future, and that makes it less palatable to trade for him. I still hold out this hope and I'd have an open ear throughout the season on any offers for Lohse whether in contention for playoffs or not. Of course the more in contention the Brewers are, the better the offer should be to want to remove Lohse from the Staff. Again, this is a club with a number of AAA SPs projected as back-end starters and that is today. Not in 2seasons so Lohse can be replaced. I also do not think that Lohse will be one of the Brewers' top five starters in two years, but there is zero chance that he will be traded this year. But I'll play along. Assuming the Brewers are at the top of the NL Central in July, please tell me which of our AAA starters look good enough that you think they'd be able to step into the MLB rotation this year to replace Lohse. Burgos is the only SP from AAA that was putting up good numbers, and he's now in the MLB rotation. Thornberg and Hellweg sure aren't looking like they could come up and put up #2/3 starter numbers in the MLB rotation right now. Fiers has been demoted, and we'll have to see how he responds. Nelson is the only guy looking like a stud right now, but that's in AA. Most of our SP prospects (other than Peralta) figure to top out as middle-to-back-of-the-rotation starters, so when they're at their peak, they probably won't be as good as Lohse is this year. I think they'll be better than Lohse in two years due to their progression combined with Lohse's regression due to age, but that's in the future, not now. I share the worry for the future, but whether it makes sense or not, Lohse isn't getting traded this year if the Brewers are out of the race. He certainly isn't getting traded this year if they are in the race. That would get Melvin fired and cause a fan exodus.

The Brewers can take Weeks' salary and use that to bolster the pen or pick up another starter if necessary. No they can't. They owe him that money, even if they cut him. The only ways for them to get out of paying him are either to trade him or for him to retire. I don't see any other team relieving them of that obligation in trade, and he's not going to retire. The Brewers are not very likely to get out of paying Weeks, so they're either going to (A) play him, hoping he "finds it" and they get some value from him, (B) sit him down and pay him to be a bench player, or © cut him and pay him to not play. I think they're going to give option A as much chance as possible to work before they move on to options B or C. Weeks still has talent. Maybe he won't be an .800 OPS guy anymore, but he's better than he's playing, and he's not going to end the season with his current .527 OPS.

I hate to be a pessimist, but I'm not sure I can buy into these two statements right now. Although I hope I'm wrong it's not probable that the Brewers contend for this division with their inexperience at pitcher and their propensity for injury. I think a better statement, unfortunately, would be "I think something would have to go horribly right for the Brewers to end up contending." Second, you can't even pawn-off Weeks' struggles to injury recovery anymore. I just don't see how he's going to turn this around to make him worth his contract. The money would be better allocated elsewhere. I think things would have to go horribly wrong for the Brewers to sell (like losing every game from now until the trade deadline), and things would have to go horribly right for the Brewers to make the playoffs. The Brewers have some talent, but it would still take a lot to make the playoffs. However, since they don't have a "must trade" player like Greinke last year, I don't see them selling even if they're seemingly out of it. I think they'd be more likely to trade some prospects to fill holes on the MLB roster.

The Brewers really need some prospects to take that next step this season, and early on Nelson seems to be answering the challenge. If he keeps this up, how long before he gets bumped to AAA?

I don't want to see a bench that consists of Bianchi, Yuni and Gonzalez. Cut Gonzalez, trade Yuni, do something, but don't have three backup SS on the bench. Of course, you know they're going to do it.

I agree with those saying it's not going to happen. I see almost zero chance the Brewers trade Lohse this season, no matter how out of it they are. That said, in regard to what value he'd have, I don't think it would be all that much. I don't think teams were too concerned as to how good he'd be this year... they were concerned about how good he'd be next year and the year after due to his age. Unless he really, really wanted to live in Milwaukee, the Brewers were the team that offered him the best deal, which could also be read as no one else was willing to pay him what the Brewers were willing to pay him. From MLBTraderumors.com: "Lohse will reportedly earn just $4MM in 2013, followed by salaries of $11MM in 2014-15. The contract contains $7MM worth of deferred money that will be paid out from 2016-18." Therefore, anyone trading for him (teams not willing to pay what the Brewers paid) would be paying most of the contract, while receiving the least productive years of the contract. So, if they weren't willing to give up a draft pick to get him for all three years, they wouldn't be willing to give up more than the draft pick when they're losing the cheapest and most productive year. My guess is that there is no way we will trade him this year, he'll be a solid contributor for a while, but by the third year we'll wish we could trade him, and from 2016-2018 we'll be mad that we're still paying him.

This offseason, I got slammed for being too negative about the future, but unless we make some trades we are pretty much guaranteed to have a $100-110MM+ payroll next season and will still be too reliant on mid-tier prospects getting too much playing time. One of the things I hoped for was for Weeks to have a good season so that he could possibly be traded to ease the 2014 financial burden. Unfortunately, all of the guys who made sense to trade are pretty much eliminating any trade value they may have had. Weeks (the subject of this thread) is probably untradeable unless we eat most of his contract. Ramirez is now an injury concern and will be owed $20MM for one year. Axford will probably get $7-8MM next year... we could cut him to avoid the cost, but probably won't be able to trade him. So, we could look at it this way: Because we have to pay Weeks and Ramirez, we may have to trade someone we don't want to (Gallardo, Lohse, Gomez and Braun are the high-priced guys who will probably have value). Or, we will have to have some significant roles played by guys who probably shouldn't be playing significant roles because we don't have the money to "fill the holes." So yeah, I'd like to be able to trade Weeks, and hoped that we could get someone to pay his salary and give us a good prospect in return. Now we're treading into that territory that we'd have to pay most of his salary and still get little in return. Since we don't really have a great option to replace him, we're probably just going to trot him out there hoping his "hot streak" outweighs his "cold streak" and he provides positive value to the team. At some point he may be "shut down" to avoid the automatic option from exercising, and then we just hope the Brewers win the greivance hearing.

H&T, I think we're pretty much on the same page, and "arguing" the fine points. I think Segura is a fine player, and I actually wouldn't be surprised if at the end of their careers Segura ends up having as good or better a career than Tulo (because of injuries/missed time) and/or Castro (lack of drive holding back his physical capabilities). At this point, I don't think he's anywhere near as highly touted as either of them were at this point in their career, so he could probably be signed to a deal which will look like a complete steal if he lives up to his potential. I've been saying since this offseason that we should look to extend Segura next offseason, and I'm not changing my mind either way because of his play over a few weeks. I don't think it's necessary to sign him right now, when he's had a really hot start, because he will very likely "come down to earth" at some point this season. I'm not really concerned either way (sign him now or this offseason), and really just hope we extend him early to a deal which will pretty much guarantee his financial future, while giving the Brewers a big discount and extra service time from a good young player.

Yuni's defensive skillset (good glove & arm, but terrible range) should play well at a corner IF position. The problem is that over the course of a season, his bat historically has not been good enough to merit playing time at a corner IF spot. We should be glad that he has hit well in our time of need, but we should not believe that he will continue to hit well enough to man a corner IF spot long-term or that his defense has improved enought that he should get significant PT in a middle IF position. If somehow his hot play over a short period has convinced another team to trade something of value for him once Ramirez is back in the lineup, we should feel like we've won the lottery.

Hopefully there is some truth to the rumor that other teams in need of SS help (Yankees) are asking about our guys. As guys start to get healthy, I'd love to be able to flip Gonzalez or Yuni for something, even if it's salary relief and an open 40-man slot. Bianchi and whichever of Yuni/Gonzalez doesn't get traded act as the utility IFs, Maldonado backs up C & 1B, Schafer and Davis/Prince/Gindl are our backup OF. We'd also have two open 40-man slots (one from Yuni/Gonzalez, one from Green going to the 60-day) to add players as needed.

I agree that any extension should be discussed this offseason and not right now, but the fact that Segura isn't in the Tulo/Braun category is why I don't think it would take 8 years / $40MM to extend him. He's not an elite player, but he and Peralta are by far the best young players we have. There's not even a close third. Barring something unforeseen happening, we aren't going to have many other pre-arby players who are worthy of an early extension for quite a while. Assuming he stays healthy and looks decent this year, if we can sign an extension which would buy out a couple of FA years and would give us a discount for assuming the risk, I'd do it.

All this talk of benching, platooning and DFA'ing Weeks just reminds me why I hate waiting until the final year of arby before extending someone. It's expensive, and if it takes six years to decide, then the player probably isn't worth extending. Injuries and extended periods of bad play while everyone waits for him to "live up to his potential" is the reason they didn't extend him earlier. Is it a surprise that he suffers injuries and extended periods of bad play after the extension?

I agree that if a team was trying to find an infield position for him, 3B might be the best bet. I think that pretty much nails it. I'm glad that Yuni's annual hot streak has occurred when we needed it most, but he's got enough history to make me doubt that he'll continue to hit well all season. He's fine as a backup, but my worry is that his hot start will give Roenicke justification for giving him too many starts once everyone's healthy, which would mean taking PAs away from Hart, Ramirez and Segura.

I have to give Roenicke some leeway in that his top options for the cleanup spot are injured, so going with the guy who is supposed to be one of your better hitters isn't a bad decision. That said, I'd move Weeks down since he's looking pretty bad at this point, and while there isn't an ideal candidate, as I mentioned earlier, I'd put Gomez there until Ramirez is back. As to your last sentence, I doubt Segura is a .900 OPS hitter, and I doubt that Weeks is a .540 OPS hitter. Segura will cool off some, and Weeks will heat up some. It's just the nature of baseball. I don't know if Weeks is still an .800 OPS guy, but at his age I find it hard to believe he's fallen over the cliff. It's possible his injuries have added up and "aged" him, but then it would be hard to explain his 2nd half of 2012. All in all, Weeks is a streaky player who goes through really bad spells and really good spells, but he usually ends up with acceptable-to-good numbers. In that aspect, he reminds me of Jenkins, and it's probably why both of them cause(d) a lot of fan angst. He's signed to an eight-figure salary, and we don't have any good options to replace him, so he's not going to get traded unless he really steps it up (when people would say he shouldn't be traded), and he's going to get a significant amount of playing time, even if he continues to struggle. Getting Hart and Ramirez back will ease this some, as he (hopefully) will get moved down in the lineup. As I said earlier, I think if he's a #8 hitter, he'd post a .400 OBP and rack up quite a few RBIs with Lucroy and Gomez in front of him.

Instead of looking at "is Gomez worth the contract," I looked at it more as a relative value between paying Gomez $9MM/year vs playing Schafer in CF for league minimum, or Aoki in CF with Davis/Roche/Gindl, etc in RF for league minimum. I figured that over the next few years, the difference between Gomez and Schafer wouldn't be worth $8.5MM/year. But, the contract is signed, so I'm glad to see Gomez playing well, and I hope he continues to play well.

Gonzalez's primary value comes from his ability to play good defense at SS. He's just been mis-cast as a starting 1B/3B this season, making his poor offense look really bad. Since we have numerous SS's on the roster, I hope the Brewer Brass is at least open to the idea of discussing a trade, especially in the scenario (as the author mentioned) that the trade would occur after Bianchi or Ramirez returned. If we could get any kind of decent prospect, along with saving some money, I think it'd be worth it. We're going to have to dump someone anyways, so we might as well get something in return.

In Tulo's case he got his contract extension on year 5 of service time. IIRC, Tulo's contract tenure is similar to Braun's. He signed a deal early on and then re-worked that deal. Otherwise, I agree with the sentiment of your post. Segura shouldn't be looked at in the same light as Tulo, who is an "elite" player. We should look at getting a savings vs what a "good" player would make. The savings would be because of the transferrance of risk by the Brewers guaranteeing the contract, so on a long-term deal, it should be fairly substantial.

With the injuries, it's hard to get too upset about Weeks batting 4th. It would also be hard to get upset about him getting bumped down so that "the hot bat" would hit 4th. I guess if I had to choose, I'd put Gomez there, as his hack-tastic approach is better served in an RBI spot in the order. Gonzalez is a waste of space, so since he's going to be there everyday, he probably should be hitting 8th (at least he may take a walk when pitched around unlike Yuni or Gomez). That would mean Rickie would be 6th (Lucroy 5th), as I couldn't put Yuni in front of him. Once everyone is back, I agree that Weeks should probably hit 8th. His 3-year average line is .255 avg / .349 OBP / .443 SLG / .792 OPS, and he's still only 30, so I don't think he's "lost it," but he may be slipping some...only time will tell. It's a testament to the strength of the lineup that Weeks probably makes the most sense of anyone to bat 8th. Hitting in front of the pitcher, his OBP could hover around .400, as pitchers would walk him often, his power would allow for him to knock in quite a few runs, and his patience would allow Gomez (7th) to steal some bases. I'd guess you'd see a lot of Gomez stealing second, Rickie getting walked, pitcher getting cleared. His high OBP also allows the pitcher to bunt him over. At the end of the day, it probably comes down to whether you want to keep Segura at #2, and with the way he's hit there, I can't see moving him. Then, it comes down to whether Lucroy or Weeks should hit #8 (Gomez is not a good option for #8). At this point, I'd opt for Weeks at 8 and Lucroy at 6: Aoki, Segura, Braun, Ramirez, Hart, Lucroy, Gomez, Weeks. Overall a pretty good lineup.