monty57

I think your post is good, but Albert Belle came down with a congenital hip issue and is still able to walk, yet the Orioles were able to collect insurance money on his contract for several years since it was determined he could no longer play baseball. No doubt he could still swing a bat, but certainly he was not able to play baseball. IIRC, the O's had to keep him on the 40 man roster for the length of his contract in order to collect the insurance payment. ... Yeah, everything depends on the language of the contract. Teams wouldn't take out a policy if there was essentially no way to collect, but insurance companies would make sure the language was such that it would be difficult to collect. I would at least think the insurance company would necessitate multiple opinions by doctors who are not on the Yankee's payroll. I'm no doctor, but since Rodriguez's surgery was arthroscopic surgery to "repair a torn labrum, bone impingement and the correction of a cyst" I wouldn't think it would be a degenerative condition. It sounds like something which should be correctable and from which he should be able to play again. Even the doctors doing the surgery estimated he'd be back in 4-6 months. The Yankees said the surgery on his left hip "will be similar but not identical" to the procedure he had in 2009 on his right hip, so the insurance company could use their own words against them... he played after the 2009 surgery, so why can't he play after this one? If the rehab kept him out all season, the Yankees might be able to collect insurance for the year, but they may have a hard time convincing the insurance company that scoping a hip and removing a cyst knocked him out permanently. (source: ESPN New York website) I'd guess that it's reporter/fan speculation, and not team speculation, that the Yankees will get out of this with an insurance payout. The Yankees are probably hoping that he can come back healthy and play well enough next year that some team will trade for him if the Yankees pay most of the contract.

Trading for Bogaerts would seem to mean that Weeks or Ramirez would be traded. Next season, Weeks will have 2 years / $22.5MM on his contract and Ramirez will have 1 year / $20MM. In a perfect scenario, we could get something like the return Nate is suggesting in a Gallardo trade. We'd put Bogaerts at SS, moving Segura to 2B, and trade Weeks for a package which would include a 3B prospect to take over when Ramirez's contract is up. Barnes projects to be a top-of-the-rotation starter and all of our SP prospects will have another year of development, so hopefully the rotation would be a plus even though it would lack the "proven ace." With so many pre-arby guys, we'd have plenty of money to spend to fill in holes. Some would consider this a "massive rebuild," and trades which include multiple moving pieces are hard to pull off, but if it worked out, we could have a large core of young, talented, inexpensive player to complement Braun and Lucroy. Lock Bogaerts, Segura and others up to Lucroy-type deals and that core could be together for a long time.

Gennett might be a throw-in in a bigger trade, or could be involved in a trade like the Komatsu-for-Hairston trade, but if Melvin told every GM that Gennett was available right now, I don't think his phone would be ringing off the hook. The Brewers are probably better off holding onto him, as he's one of the very few position prospects the Brewers have who even make the list of "possible MLB role-player." I'm interested to see how the Brewers' pitchers develop, but I think the ranking is about right. The Brewers certainly can't rely on their current system to keep them competitive into the future.

MLB.com has posted their Top 100 prospect list. The only Brewer prospect to crack the Top 100 is Peralta at #64. Top 10: 1) Jurickson Profar (SS Tex) 2) Dylan Bundy (SP Bal) 3) Oscar Taveras (OF StL) 4) Wil Myers (OF TB) 5) Taijuan Walker (SP Sea) 6) Travis d'Arnaud (C NYM) 7) Jose Fernandez (SP Miami) 8) Zack Wheeler (SP NYM) 9) Gerrit Cole (SP Pit) 10) Tyler Skaggs (SP Ari) http://milwaukee.brewers.mlb.com/mlb/prospects/watch/y2013/

It is likely that this is simply an East coast writer making stuff up, but there is certainly the possibility that as soon as next offseason the Brewers will have an excess of starting pitching. They could look to trade Gallardo because they have other quality options playing for league minimum, and Gallardo could bring back a return like nate82 listed above. That's really the epitome of "cycling talent" and "trading from strength" that many on this board wish the Brewers would do more often. When I looked at the MLB sites, the title on the Brewers page was "Peralta cracks top 100," while Boston's site beamed "Red Sox system loaded with six top prospects." Our best guy would be around #4/5 for Boston. We need this to change if we want to be competitive going forward, and something like a Gallardo trade mid-2013 or in the offseason prior to 2014 could bring back phenomenal talent. It's probably more likely that we'll keep Gallardo while moving promising starters to the bullpen, but it's fun to think that we could take advantage of a strength and land a couple of Top 50 prospects for someone we could replace in-house.

I can't imagine he'd walk away, forfeiting $114MM. The Yankees just have to hope that either his injury does prohibit him from ever playing again, or that he comes back 100% so they can get some value from the contract. I would imagine that it will be very tough to get the insurance. A-Rod probably won't end up in a wheelchair, so as long as the insurance company could show that he could physically swing a bat, he could play baseball. He doesn't have to be able to play at his previous level, just play... otherwise every team with an overpaid player would claim he was injured and collect insurance. The worst case scenario for the Yankees is that he'll come back with a bum hip which affects not only his running, but also his swing, making him a pedestrian DH or even a pinch hitter while collecting his mammoth paycheck.

Is LaRussa coaching Mexico?

I know many people would like to see Ramirez play first base. I've seen it mentioned several times, but he is not going to play first base, even for a game or two. If Gamel needs a day off, and Green or Gonzalez is subbing in, Green or Gonzalez will play first base, even if they are better defenders than Ramirez. You don't move the star player off his position to play a position he isn't familiar, you put the bench guy in the position to potentially fail at an unfamiliar position. The only way Ramirez starts playing first is if the team thinks he's not holding down 3B, or they somehow end up with a better, younger third baseman, and they decide to move him over to 1B permanently. That move would probably happen over an offseason, so Ramirez would have the offseason to prep himself for a position move.

This is why I liked the idea of someone like Rivera who hits RH and can play 1B/corner OF. He backs up/platoons at 1B while Hart is out and then backs up corner OF (or platoons in RF) once Hart's back. When he's not starting, he's a solid RH bat on the bench with some pop. Of course, I just checked and saw that the Yankees signed Rivera to a minor-league deal, so he's off the table.

and he certainly is no Rodgers Don't get me wrong, I love Rodgers, but his stock slipped to the point that the Packers got him late in the 1st round, he then sat the bench for three seasons behind Favre, and finally became a starter when he was 24 years old. He knew the system completely by that time and was ready to hit the ground running with a Super Bowl-caliber team. The Packers played it perfectly so that Rodgers was set up to succeed. This is how QBs used to be handled in the NFL prior to the mega-contracts they now get forcing teams to start their QBs basically from day one when many are not really ready. I think it has lots to do with why lots of highly-touted QBs flounder, while lower draft picks succeed when finally given their shot. Who knows, if Rodgers had been drafted by the 49ers and Alex Smith dropped to the Packers, their careers may have been reversed. Lawrie just turned 23 and he's already got 1.5 seasons as a MLB starter under his belt. I don't know if Lawrie will play to his potential or what his career will look like, but he's still very young and should continue to get better and better. He certainly has a lot more "potential future value" than Marcum, so in that light, we did "trade away the future to just get in the playoffs." Prior to the Greinke and Marcum trades, Melvin shopped Hart and Fielder and didn't find the return he was looking for. Therefore, he changed his mind from looking to rebuild to looking to build a playoff team. He extended Hart and decided that he'd go for it in Fielder's final season. If we hadn't made the Marcum trade, we probably didn't make the Greinke trade. Without those two moves, we would have had a good offense with no pitching and would've been pretty hard-pressed to make the playoffs, thereby "wasting Fielder's final season." Therefore, we traded "the future" (Lawrie, Odorizzi, Cain, Escobar, Jeffress and whatever we would've got in trade for Fielder and Hart) for a short window to make the playoffs. He then "traded more of the future" by signing Ramirez to a back-end loaded deal to try to make the playoffs in 2012 (Greinke and Marcum's last season), knowing that they were going to have to cut payroll in 2013-2014, when the Ramirez contract would hurt the team's financial flexibility. I will be honest here with the Melvin era, there are parts of the story we just don't know about almost for sure. Are some of the more oddball signings because of the owner and not the GM like some of the background stories suggest? Is the reason we pushed our prospects up faster than we should have been part of the rebuilding the fanbase movement or a misjudgement by Melvin? How much of the win now mentality is Melvin going for it and how much is directed by upper management/ownership? How on earth did we ever hire both Yost and Macha? They are such complete opposites that the same guy hiring both of them makes no sense. While baseball fans are normally only interested in one goal... winning, the team has to be focused on two goals, winning and turning a profit. I agree that many of the moves in the Melvin Era have been done to help build up the fanbase, and I'm sure that the decision to hold on to Fielder and go for it in his final year, and the decision to sign Ramirez had a lot to do with making the Brewers seem relevant and building a rabid fan-base. I just worry that the image they wanted built is just a facade, and we really can't be big spenders, but that we need guys like Lawrie playing for league minimum and then signing a Braun(first deal)/Lucroy-like extension keeping him here for eight seasons. Pulling in the reigns now is probably a smart financial move and will save the franchise from having to make bad personnel moves in the future. Hopefully, it won't sour many of the fans, and we won't see diminished ticket sales from fans who think "we're not doing anything to win." The Brewers should be sometimes entertaining/sometimes frustrating to watch this year. They'll have a little more knowledge of how their pitching will shape up going into 2014, and will be over the man-made "financial hump" going into the 2015 season. Hopefully we'll have a defined course of action going forward from there, and hopefully it will be centered on signing Lucroy-like extensions to the young "core" guys. But it would sure make things easier if we had a talent like Lawrie locked up cheap for the next six or seven years.

EDIT: In response to WTP's post above mine regarding RR's potential tendencies to sit Segura in favor of Gonzalez....I don't think there is anything to worry about. Earlier in FA, Melvin originally spoke directly to that situation. He said Segura is their guy, period, and let Alex Gonzalez and his camp know that. They were upfront with him about how many AB's he would/wouldn't be getting, as Segura is the starter. I hope this is correct. Melvin seems to be pretty "hands off" when it comes to who's starting and who's sitting, and Roenicke (like many managers) seems to have an affinity for veterans. I don't really want Segura to play with the concern that one slump or screw-up will land him on the bench. Other than sharing WTP's concerns over what RRR may do with SS throughout the season, I think picking up Gonzalez for $1.5MM as a bench player is a good deal and should help the 2013 Brewers without hurting the 2014+ Brewers at all. As to the final bench spot, Bianchi will probably be in the running, but his ability to play SS won't give him as much of an edge over someone like T. Green as it did prior to this signing. With Hart hurt, it opens up a spot, so he could make the club out of ST allowing the club more time (until Hart is hurt) to decide what to do. Having another MLB-caliber SS in the system isn't a bad thing. That said, the best bet still may be to sign a RH 1B/corner OF like Juan Rivera to platoon at 1B while Hart's out and be the backup corner OF when Hart returns (there's another thread dedicated to this, so I don't want to hijack this thread discussing this).

Maybe if Boras could promise that the Brewers could sign one of his highly-ranked draft picks in the second round for slot money, it'd be worth giving up the 1st round pick. Since that's not happening, I'd prefer the Brewers stick with what they have at starting pitcher, and keep their draft pick. This is all probably being way overdone, as Attanasio's statement was something like "We haven't completely ruled him out... we haven't completely ruled anything out." That's kind of like the scene in Bull Durham about how to answer questions without offending anyone. If the follow-up question was "Are the Brewers bringing Hank Aaron back?" Attanasio could've responded "People of Milwaukee love Hank, and we haven't ruled out bringing him back."

The Brewers just ran a net loss last year. I don't know how much more track record you need to know that Mark A. isn't going to pocket any profits and not use it in future years. And really he has no incentive to. He may lose $5M/year on net operating, but if the value of the franchise goes up $10M he is still in a better position. Mark A. knows finances and sees the big picture. I agree that he "knows finances," but he's not rich enough that he can afford to lose millions per year simply because the value of the franchise is rising. I believe his net worth is in the nine figures, not the ten figures like many owners, and his personal liquid net worth (not including things like equity interest in TCW) is almost certainly not in the "hundreds of millions" category it would need to be in for someone to be able to withstand losing $5MM/year from a single investment. That said, the Brewers are a partnership, and Attanasio is the managing partner, so all profits and losses are shared according to ownership interest. Even with that, the owner group will likely not be willing to lose money on a regular basis. It seems that they are willing to risk losing money now and then when it really looks like they can win it all (which is nice from a Brewer fan perspective), but this offseason makes it seem like the loss year will be followed up by a period where the owners want near certainty that they are going to pocket some cash.

As most here, I'm against a Lohse signing. Rivera would be a good pickup, as he played a lot of corner OF for the Dodgers last year, so he could play some 1B while Hart's out and be a RH-bat off the bench/backup corner OF, or possibly even platoon with Aoki once Hart's back. The question would be whether he's open to a back-up role, when there's probably some team willing to give him a shot at starting (or at least a lot more PT than he'd get with the Brwers) at either 1B, LF or RF.

Re: Lohse Even if we got him at a good $ deal, it would still likely be for three years, and we'd have to to give up a 1st rounder. By 2014, the Brewers could have five other MLB-ready pitchers with more talent than Lohse, so even on a low-money deal, I wouldn't want Lohse for multiple years, nor would I want to give up a 1st rounder. Throw in that "low money" probably means at least $10MM/year, and I want no part of it.

I dunno remember who posted it but at least one person thought he had HOF type potential. That would be me. However, I think you understand the difference between "Hall-of-Fame-potential" and "Hall-of-Fame-player." HoF potential means really high ceiling. To be a HoF player, you have to have HoF potential, and pretty much live up to it from day one (like Braun has). Every year there are a few top prospects that are Hall-of-Fame-potential. Lawrie was a top prospect (very high ceiling), and two years after the trade, we still don't have anyone in our system that would register as "top prospect" or "HoF potential." Our best prospect now is almost 24 and may grow into a low-end #1 / high-end #2 starter in his prime. True top prospects are really hard to come by, and in my opinion, if a smaller-market team like the Brewers are going to trade one away, they should get more than 1.5 years of a good-but-not-great player in return. I believe that was precisely the point I made in the post you're remembering. I think it shows how barren the Brewers' history has been that many posters are jubilant about losing a really good young player because the trade got them to one NLCS (not a World Series ring). How would Packer fans feel if they'd have traded away Aaron Rodgers when he was "just a bench player" and the veteran guy they got back for a season helped the team make it to one NFC Championship game loss? I hope someday Brewer fans won't be happy just making it to the playoffs. That day may never come, and will almost certainly never come if we continue to trade away players with the potential to be very, very good in return for a player that will make us a little better for a season or two.

This is a long thread and I haven't read any of it. Probably for the better, as it originated in March 2009. The poster who bumped the thread seemed to be asking if a move to 3B is an option down the road when Ramirez is gone. We don't currently have a ready-made, in-house replacement, and it is possible that Weeks will be forced to move off of 2nd if he starts to slow down, which is possible over the next few seasons since he's built like a truck and not a sports car. He certainly has the arm for third, and I think if he loses a step or two, he could settle in to third base, especially if Gennet or someone else proves to be MLB-caliber at second.

I agree that Gomez is "questionable" for offering the QO. I'm on the side that doesn't want the Brewers to make the offer, so I think their best move would be to find a team that would like to offer him a QO and trade him to that team prior to this season. They'd get more in trade if the receiving team would get the opportunity to make a QO. As to the "fairness" of the new QO rules, one thing I always hated about the old rules was that the worst team in baseball got the first overall pick, but with all of the "compensatory" picks, the first pick in the second round was really more like a third round pick. Better teams (who traded for soon-to-be free agents mid-season) often got multiple picks before the worst team in baseball made their second pick. Now, one team loses a first rounder, and another team gains a comp pick, so the worst team in baseball gets the first pick and the 31st pick, the way it should be.

On principle I agree with you. However, with the QO value set at $13.5MM this year and presumably going up every year, the value for top players at any position goes up. If any reliever is worth a QO, then the baseline pay is at least the QO. More & more closers are going to get paid greater than the QO amount. Plus, there is the whole money disparity thing. I may find it crazy to pay $100,000 for a car, but Jay Leno has a fleet of cars worth well more than $100k. The value of $100k is different to me than it is to Jay Leno, in the same way the value of $14MM is different to the Brewers than it is to the Nationals. I hope that the Brewers do what you're preaching, which is build up a bullpen (and starting rotation) from the farm, and trade away guys as they begin to get expensive, replacing them with more good, young, inexpensive guys from the farm. Let the big money teams give us prospects for our "proven closers," who they'll extend to eight figure salaries. At the same time, I understand how this helps the Nationals (who on paper are already one of the top teams in the National League) get a little stronger and therefore have a little better shot at winning it all.

The only one who benefits from this is Gamel, who gets another chance to shine, and I hope he makes the most of it. If he stumbles, Morris will probably leapfrog him as the leader in the race to be the Brewers' starting 1B in 2014. Hart certainly loses. No one knows how a surgery will go, so it's not out of the question that he will never be 100% again. Even if he does come back strong, he will miss time this year, which will mean his chance at 30 HR/100 RBI plateaus are slim, and that's meaningful going into contract talks, plus he'll have the "injury prone" tag to contend with, which will lessen his value. The Brewers lose because they're losing a key offensive player, which will hurt their chances to win. Plus, Hart's trade value is zero right now, and will be less at the trade deadline than it would've been had he not gotten injured. It does open up the chance for an interesting scenario. What do the Brewers do if Gamel starts off the season on a tear and Aoki is playing well as the leadoff hitter? They wouldn't be able to trade Hart until he could prove that he was healthy, so the likely scenario would be that Gamel would be benched, but that would be hard to do if he's hot, especially when Hart is going to walk at the end of the year and Gamel will be your starter. I guess that would be a best-case scenario, because at least it would open the Brewers up to the idea of trading Hart once he's proven he's healthy.

I think they're trying to get some competitiveness to areas (like Italy) which are starting to embrace baseball, but don't stand a chance against some of the other teams out there. MLB is using the WBC as a marketing tool... it's pretty exciting for the budding Italian players to play against MLB superstars, but it's kind of nice if the score isn't 100-0. Not that a Vinny Rottino will do that much to offset a Ryan Braun, but every little bit helps.

I doubt they'd sign a guy for $14MM/year and give up next year's first rounder only to trade someone away. I think they are going all-in this year and want to put as much talent on the field as possible. I don't necessarily like that strategy, but it's not uncommon for GMs to go overboard when they're shooting for a World Series. Plus, it's not essential to have defined roles in the bullpen. It's pretty much set in stone that someone will have to be named "closer," but it's nice to have three really good players who on any day can pitch in high-leverage situations. In a one-run game where the starter only goes five innings, you can basically have a closer come in in the 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th. In other games, you can use the rested guy in the 8th, keeping the bullpen fresh, and if they have another injury like they had with Storen last year, they will be even better prepared. It's not a luxury most teams have, and I agree with TLB that it's an overpay, but the Nationals are a better team now because of the pick-up. I don't want the Brewers doing something like this, but the Nationals are fighting with Atlanta as the team to beat in an otherwise weak NL East this year, and they could be the team to beat in the NL. We saw last year how a bullpen implosion can derail a team, and I doubt the Nationals will see that type of implosion with the talent they have in the 'pen. I didn't realize this until I just looked, but the Nationals had the best run differential in baseball (+137) last year. Now they have Strasburg all season and their young guys have another year of "seasoning." They're certainly a strong contender for the NL crown.

I don't think it would be quite that bad. That would mean Gallardo is a 10-13 WAR player. Theoretically. {Knock on wood before typing} There may be a "compounding WAR." If Gallardo were out for the season, he would need to be replaced by the #6 guy, most likely Narveson or Rogers, and Narveson/Rogers would be replaced by some other guy. You'd "lose wins" going from Gallardo to the #6 guy, and "lose wins" going from the #6 guy to the #7 guy. Additionally, if the rotation lines up Fiers, Estrada, Peralta, Narveson, Rogers, I would guess that there would be a lot of "bullpen burners" when a couple of starters failed to go more than five innings consecutively. A worn-out bullpen can have disasterous effects on a season, and even with Gallardo, we don't have that "stopper" who can be relied upon to throw 7-9 innings on a regular basis. Add in that any other injuries to starters throughout the season (or one of the "question marks" in the rotation not playing well) would mean dipping further into our AAA depth, and it could get ugly if the #7,8,9 guys get a bunch of starts. No one player is that important to a team, and saying we'd be lucky to win 70 may be a stretch, but losing either Gallardo or Braun for an extended period would pretty much destroy our playoff hopes, which are already slim. That said, I like the World Baseball Classic and think it's good for the game. It just adds a little bit of extra chance for players to get hurt or (more likely) tired out going into the season. MLB thinks it's worth it, and the players generally jump at the chance to represent their country, so I will enjoy watching it. I'll just cross my fingers when Gallardo is pitching into the fifth inning when he'd be pulled after three in a ST game, or when Braun or Lucroy are going all out in the ninth inning when they'd have been out of the ST game early.

Yeah, especially when this is at a time of the year when players' bodies aren't ready for a full workload. Even after Spring Training, most teams baby the starting pitchers through the first few weeks. I think there are (MLB imposed) limits in place for how much a pitcher can be used, but the managers are going to do whatever possible to win.

Plenty of games where weather would leave seats empty. Plenty of games where horrid teams and fan discontent with ownership would leave seats empty. In the County Stadium days, other than Opening Days, I never purchased tickets in advance, and I live an hour and a half away from the stadium. If we decided to go to a game, we just jumped in the car knowing there would be plenty of tickets available at the gate. The Brewers' attendance was normally in the teens-to-lower 20's, and it's awful hard to get All Stars when the only way to vote was ballots at the ballpark.