monty57

Ishikawa filled his role as well as could be expected this year, but we need a RH bat with more defensive flexibility on the bench this season. I'm sure that Ishikawa will have no problem finding a job after his 2012 with the Brewers. As to Loe, he's fine for his one specific role, which is getting RH batters to hit the ball on the ground. The problem is that his specialty is too specialized. It's acceptable to be a LOOGY, but not a ROOGY. I do hope that whatever team he goes to has a bullpen catcher who will inform the manager when Loe's sinker is not sinking. He should never be used in that situation, and I blame the coaching staff for putting him in games when he's not "on"... then he's like hitting BP.

I like this guy because he seems to have some control to go along with his "stuff." The theory of "find guys with good stuff and see what sticks" too often means "find guys who can throw the ball through a wall, but have a hard time hitting said wall." That approach leads (in the extreme) to Turnbow situations where you can get lucky for a while and have the pitcher dominate when their head's screwed on straight, but then the player turns around and blows the whole team up while he's trying to remember how to throw strikes. Veras, Parra and Axford are all examples of this (although not to the Turnbow extreme). In other words, this is the theory which caused us to go into the season thinking we had a dominant bullpen, but leading to a failed season. In the prior season, we had strike throwers (Saito and Hawkins) who had injury concerns. When they were healthy, the bullpen was great. Why can't a pitcher throw strikes? It's either a mechanical issue, which is possible to fix, but not always permanently and sometimes leads to lesser "stuff." Or, it can be a mental issue... how do you fix that? If I have to choose between option A or option B, I'd take the pitcher with a decent arm who can throw strikes over the one with a great arm who can't get a pitch over the plate. Olmsted seems to be a good find because it appears he has the stuff and the command. Good find, Doug.

I would be very interested if one of our minor league gurus would take the time to put together a run-down of our minor league pitchers, noting their projected ceilings and when they should be ready for the majors. I believe that after 2013 we will have more MLB-ready SP than we have rotation spots, which is why I'm an advocate of signing someone to a one-year deal. I don't want a 34-year-old middle-of-the-rotation guy getting paid eight figures when we could have a similarly talented youngster taking his spot for league minimum. However, I am far from being an expert on rating our minor league guys. I may be off on how I see the future. If someone with some knowledge on the subject would be so kind, please post how our SP prospects project to "play out" assuming of course that we don't trade for anyone else or trade any of our guys.

That's perfect because that was exactly my concern. I have to believe that someone will offer Gonzalez a starting job, so the only way he returns to the Brewers is if Segura is either on the bench or in AAA. As long as Segura can handle the workload, I would like to just go with Segura as the starter with Bianchi (or some other pickup) as the backup, and it sounds like that's Melvin's plan. Spending around $1MM total between the starting and backup SS opens up a lot of room for shoring up more glaring holes. We could have Segura, Bianchi and a good setup guy for what we paid Gonzalez in 2012. Good pre-arby guys are wonderful.

I don't see how we will afford to pay $10-$15 Million a year for whatever SP we sign and $20 Million a year for Hamilton not to mention a whole new bullpen. That's exactly why I wrote that the only way I see a Hamilton signing would be if they traded some money away (most likely Hart/Gomez). They could save the money owed the players traded away, and probably land a cheap, young SP for Hart and a cheap, young reliever for Gomez. Deals involving multiple moving pieces are hard to pull off, so I don't think it'll happen. By "hard to pull off," I mean risky. Let's say they sign Hamilton with the intention of trading Hart for a young SP. Now every team knows they need to shed salary, so no one offers as much for Hart as they would if they didn't know the Brewers needed salary relief. If Melvin refuses to trade Hart for limited return, then he's stuck with no money for SP/RP help, so we go into the season with several starting pitchers that can't pitch 200 innings, and a whole lot of question marks in the bullpen. However, if fantasy becomes reality, and we strike a quick deal to trade Hart for a young, top-of-the-order-potential SP and Gomez for a young-back-end-of-the-bullpen reliever, then we've shed around $13-15MM (depending on what Gomez gets in arby) from next year's payroll, and added two talented guys who will be inexpensive for the next 5-6 years. We'd probably run into some financial difficulties in 2014 when Braun, Hamilton, Ramirez, Yo, and Weeks are all expensive, but maybe (again in fantasy world) the signing could work if we were willing to trade away some other guys. I don't think it will happen, I'm pretty sure I don't want it to happen, and it certainly won't happen if he demands 7 years / $175MM. But, for sake of message board pondering, it could be feasible if he's ends up with something south of 5 years / $100MM.

Haren made more sense getting in trade. Now he's going to command something like 4/60 or 5/75 or more. Maybe, maybe not. The Angels ate $3.5MM for him not to pitch there. I'm sure they tried to work a trade like they did with Santana so they could get something, and didn't get any takers. Maybe the market for Haren isn't at the point where someone will offer him more than a one-year, incentive-laden deal. If that's the case, he'll either have to accept that deal or sit home and watch other people get paid to play baseball. Or, you could be right and someone will offer him a bigger deal. The Angels not being able to trade him may mean there are lingering issues, but if he's cleared to play, I hope Melvin at least contacts his agent about an incentive-laden, one-year deal. I see them staying away from long term big deals and waiting to see what bigger name might be had near the deadline. I hope you're right here. In my opinion, signing a mid-tier (Lohse-type) guy to a multi-year deal is a bad idea. He'd help this year, but by next season he'd just be an expensive guy blocking similarly talented young guys who would play for league minimum.

There has to be something about Jackson that does not make the media that keeps him from sticking with a team and keeps teams from signing him for more than a year at a time. That leads me to guess he has some "issues" (physical or otherwise) GM's don't want to take long-term risk on. I will be interested to see if a team gives him a multi-year deal, and if it's the Brewers, I hope I'm wrong. So the Angels bought out Haren for what $3.5 million? If I read this right we could have had Haren for basically $12 million and we trade a prospect (something is better than zero for the Angels). What am I missing here? Yeah, I was hoping we could get Haren cheaply in a trade as well. Probably just hopeful thinking, but maybe we could land him on a one-year, incentive-laden contract.

If I'm trading Hart, it's not going to be for a 1 yr contract like Hudson/Maholm. The Brewers need to start focusing on long-term, sustained success. They need to cycle talent in for the long-haul, not just thinking of stopgaps. I'd want at least 3 years of control, maybe settle for 2 depending on the pitcher. With all of their young pitching, the Braves fit that bill, and if Melvin decides to shop Hart I'd guess Atlanta would be one of the first phone calls made. I've pretty much resigned myself to the belief that Hart will play for the Brewers for one more year and will then leave as a free agent. If they are able to trade him for a good, young, top-of-the-order-potential starting pitcher, I will be happy. Rumor has it that Hamilton's asking price is 7 years for $175 million. Good luck with that, Josh. After last offseason, I could see someone doing it. That "someone" will not be the Brewers.

I'm fishing for something here... maybe one of the scouts noticed a mechanical flaw they think they can fix?? 4.7 BB/9 is pretty horrible. I think we'd need to get Lucroy a net to catch this guy.

I've said that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Hart could bring back a solid young pitcher. Yeah, I think signing Hamilton would require a few dominoes to fall. Hart gets traded for a young starting pitcher who can go 200 IP (eliminating the need to spend money on a veteran FA SP). Gamel becomes the everyday 1B with Morris waiting in the wings in AAA. Gomez is probably traded for young relievers to help out the pen (eliminating some of the need to spend money on veteran relievers). Braun, Hamilton, Aoki are the starting OF with Schafer as the #4 OF. C Lucroy ($750k) 1B Gamel ($481k) 2B Weeks ($10MM) SS Segura ($480k) 3B Ramirez ($10MM) LF Braun ($8.5MM) CF/RF Hamilton ($20MM) CF/RF Aoki ($1.25MM) Total position players $51,461,000 SP Gallardo ($7.75MM) SP Pre-arby guy traded for Hart ($414k) SP Fiers ($414k) SP Estrada ($1.5MM ? arby guess) SP Rogers ($414k) *I don't know who will win out for the rotation spots, but they're all league minimum Total SP $10,492,000 That's around $62MM locked up in the starters. Our bench should be mainly filled up with pre-arby guys, and trading Gomez for a reliever should allow us to stay pretty cheap in the bullpen. I would say it's doable, but it certainly brings risk to the table, may hamstring us in the future as other guys get more expensive (if we don't continually cycle talent) and requires a lot of moving pieces. I agree that we couldn't pull it off without trading Hart and probably Gomez, but trying to move all of those pieces doesn't seem like a Melvin-type move. That's more of a thing the Marlins do and it ends up blowing up on them. We'd really need to have the Hart trade in the bag before we'd sign Hamilton. Fun to ponder, but it sounds too much like fantasy than reality.

This has been my thinking for months now. If they're going to sign someone that is only a #4, they might as well go with the youngsters and save the money for a mid-season trade if they're in it. Greinke, Sanchez and Jackson are the only free agent starters that qualify. Greinke is obviously going to be beyond our budget. Sanchez is reportedly looking for a C.J. Wilson type deal (5 years, $15M per), which might leave the Brewers out. Jackson might, MIGHT, be able to be gotten on a three-year deal for $13M per, but the reports are he wants a four-year deal at $15M per. Haren might match up, but anyone thinking he'll sign a deal for only $5M is deluding himself. The injury concerns will limit the length of the deal, not the money. He'll end up getting $9-12M for a one-year deal. Remember, Sheets got a $10M one-year deal three years ago and he hadn't pitched at all the previous season. I'm still in favor of trading for Shields. Gamel, Khris Davis and (insert pitching prospect here). The Brewers are deep enough in pitchers that one can be dealt without crashing the entire system. If we're signing a multi-year deal, I absolutely agree that it would need to be a top-of-the-rotation starter and not a middle-of-the-rotation guy. If Melvin is looking for a veteran because he's worried about innings limits, then a one-year deal to a middle-of-the-rotation guy wouldn't be that bad. As to Haren, no one thinks he'd sign a one-year, $5MM deal. He has one more year for around $15.5MM on his deal with the Angels, who are apparently trying to salary dump some SP to free up cash. If they are willing to take on some of the salary and/or accept little in return (in terms of prospects) for a team that will take on salary, then Haren could potentially be had fairly cheaply. I really like the thought of trading a mid-tier prospect and eating half the contract or so in order to land Haren. We'd probably have to give up a little more than KC did for Santana, but they gave up so little that "a little more" still wouldn't be that much. If we could land Shields for a so-so group of prospects, then I would also be all over it. However, I think the deal starts with Peralta and Morris, and I don't want to give up our best young talent for two years of a SP. If we don't make that trade, then in a couple of years, we should have enough pitching talent that we can be the one getting other teams' top prospects for 1-2 years of our starters.

Maybe he's not worth what he'd get in arbitration, but I sure would take him back to compete for a job. That's an interesting note. Arbitration will guarantee a certain raise, so the Brewers could decline arbitration on any of their relievers but still re-sign them as free agents. Not saying they're going to, but the option exists. It will be interesting to see how the reliever market plays out this season. If there is a glut of so-so relievers out there, I wouldn't mind bringing Veras back for $1MM or so... I just don't want them to pay him the $3-4MM he'd probably get in arby.

I hope that Melvin looks at the minors and realizes that signing an aging vet to a three-year deal would only serve to block the young arms who are near-MLB-ready now and will be MLB-Ready in a year or two. I hope he sees that a one-year "stopgap" is the way to go. I don't care whether this is aquired through a FA who needs to rebuild his value and is willing to sign a one-year, incentive-laden deal, or through a trade for someone like Haren, but I hope we don't go more than two years on whatever veteran Melvin picks up this offseason.

Thanks for the link TLB. That article was written on July 5. Here are Haren's pre- and post- All-Star Game splits. pre- 17 GS, 103.2 IP, 122 H, 24 BB, 1.415 WHIP, 86 K, 7.47 K/9, 3.58 K/BB, 4.86 ERA post- 13 GS, 73 IP, 68 H, 14 BB, 1.123 WHIP, 56 K, 6.90 K/9, 4.00 K/BB, 3.58 ERA I know, small sample size, but if it was indeed his sore back causing his bad first half, it could be his back got better, leading to a second half more in line with his previous two years' numbers.

I hadn't really checked Haren's numbers, and going off of some of the posts here, I was expecting a monumental failure from him in 2012. Here is his line: 2012: GS 30, IP 176.2, ERA 4.33, WHIP 1.29, K 142, BB 38, HR 28, K/9 7.23, K/BB 3.74 GB/FB 0.70 Career (season avg): GS 28.6, IP 188.2, ERA 3.66, WHIP 1.18, K 158.5, BB 39.5, HR 21.9, K/9 7.60, K/BB 4.01 GB/FB not tallied, but always in the 0.70-0.90 range He is a flyball pitcher, and he gave up a few more HR than normal. His numbers were certainly down from his previous two tremendous seasons, but not nearly as bad as I was expecting. If there is something out there that doesn't show up in a stat line (i.e. he got hurt and lost a lot of velocity) then I can see the trepidation, but if the Angels are trying to dump him in order to shore up money to sign Grienke, and we could land Haren cheap, I'm all for it.

Mass Haas, I trust your memory on anything pertaining to contracts, MLB rules, etc far more than mine. Good to know that if the Brewers do test the market on Hart that they will be able to field offers from all potential suitors.

And now per Tom Haudricourt, several BBWAA voters, the same sheep who had no problem voting for Barry Bonds and his pumpkin head when it came to MVP, are now going to feign moral indignation in excluding Ryan Braun from their ballots even though he WON his appeal. Yep. It's a shame, but Braun's successful defense could lead "professional" writers to give him more of a cold shoulder than the legions of players who couldn't successfully defend themselves. They'll look at him as cheating twice, once because they believe he took PEDs, and once because they believe he skirted the system and got off on a technicality. Of course, this is exactly what MLB wants, which is why they attacked the decision so vehemently when it was announced. I'd be surprised if Braun wins another "vote-in" award when the voting is done by "professionals." He'll still get voted into the All Star game regularly by the fans. This of course will be used against him in Hall of Fame balloting (he only won one MVP, didn't get any Gold Gloves, didn't get enough Silver Sluggers, etc). Thankfully, I think Braun's the type of personality who will say "in that case, I'll just need to put up numbers so good no one can doubt I should be in the Hall of Fame."

I believe Hart will only accept a trade to a team who plays Spring Training in Arizona (his wife's family lives in California). That said, whether or not the offer is "too slight" or not simply depends on what others are offering. Tampa may not accept an offer of less value than they want, but if no one offers more, then they either have to take the offer or hold onto the pitcher. Using Marcum and Grienke as proxies, I think Melvin may shoot too high on his offers. That worries me about possibly targeting someone like Shields. I think Melvin would give up good, young MLB ready talent (i.e. Peralta, Rogers, Schafer, Gamel, Morris) when I would much prefer that if he's receiving two years of "MLB proven" he give up guys like Gomez/Estrada/Hart. There's a reason Tampa would not want the guys with 1-2 years left on their contact, and would instead ask for guys with 5-6 years of "team control" remaining. There's also a reason Tampa can continually compete with a limited payroll in the toughest division in professional sports.

I definitely don't want to jettison Gomez at this point to just hand over the starting CF to Logan S. right away leaving no back up plan for a rookie who has had injury problems. I tend to agree, but there's always the caveat that someone may call Melvin with a ridiculous trade offer. If that happens, I hope Melvin makes the trade. I'd say the "backup plan" to Schafer in CF would be moving Aoki to CF. If we were to trade Gomez, I'd hope Melvin would find a veteran RH corner OF as a bench bat, and he and Gamel could platoon in RF if Schafer gets hurt and Aoki moved to CF. Otherwise, I agree with Logan82 that Schafer can "get his feet wet" as the 4th OF in 2013, possibly becoming a CF platoon as the season progresses, with the plan of allowing him to take over CF full-time in 2014

There are a lot of things that draw me to the idea of signing a one-year stopgap pitcher. Let's look at someone like Haren. Let's assume (as an earlier poster postulated) we are able to get the Angels to "give" him to us if we take on around $5MM of his salary, akin to the K-Rod move in 2011. Our downside risk is basically set at the salary we're paying (around $5MM). We don't give up any player of significance, and we aren't locked in for multiple years. If he fails, we're out some cash that is well within budget. Signing him would allow us to start Rogers (who we'll lose if he's not on the MLB roster) at #5, where he could be skipped every so often to keep his innings down, and we could start Peralta in AAA where the coaches could keep him on an innings limit. By montioring these pitchers' innings, we won't have to shut them down in September during (hopefully) a playoff run. Again, if Haren doesn't pitch well, there's no problem dumping him (we'd only be out the money) and bringing up Peralta or someone else from AAA. But there's also a good chance that he will not fail. If he succeeds, the upside is huge. First, at his best he's good enough that he could be the piece that gets us to the playoffs, and sets us up nicely with some good pitching matchups in the playoffs. That, of course, is the ultimate goal. However, even if we aren't making a playoff push, if Haren is healthy and pitching well, we could pull off another "Greinke-style" trade and bring back some good young talent, so if he pitches well, we would be a big winner, whether the team is a playoff team or not. Then, going into the 2014 season, we will have a lot better read on what we have in our young pitchers. We could easily be looking at a situation where we have "too much" good, young, MLB-ready pitching. That's low-risk, high-reward, which I think is a really good option this offseason when we already have at least five MLB-ready pitchers. There's no reason to go high-risk (long-term and/or big money deal) in our current situation. Finally, if we are able to get a one-year, lower-money (or incentive laden) deal, we will be able to use some money to fix our biggest weakness, which is the bullpen. We saw this season that even with good starting pitching, you're still at the mercy of a bullpen blowup. Again, I don't want to go long-term in contracts, but we'll probably sign a couple of $4-5MM guys to put at the back of the bullpen, and we'll finally have a some guys like Henderson and Kintzler who will have options available to give us some roster flexibility, which has been a major problem for the past few years. Like our starting pitcher situation, I think we will be able to fill our bullpen with guys from the farm in a season or two, at which point we will be able to stop signing $4-5MM free agents, but we're not there yet.

Nate, I hope you're right that there are an excess of average starters on the market waiting to be signed and that the bullpen is a buyer's market. After reading Attanasio's comments, I believe that far and away the Brewers #1 priority this offseason is rebuilding the bullpen, with picking up a veteran SP the #2 priority. If you are correct, they should be able to pick up some bullpen arms early and then sign one of the remaining "average starting pitchers" to a one-year deal, solving the innings problem turborickey illustrated and not tying us up long-term, as we (hopefully) will have an excess of starting pitchers in a year or two. We're probably looking at a payroll in the $80MM's, so I don't expect a big shock like the Greinke trade this offseason. Having a "name" pitcher willing to sign a team-friendly, short-term deal would be great.

I agree Briggs. Unfortunately, the extra wild card game kept fans of teams like Milwaukee and St Louis watching the regular season games until the end, so it accomplished what baseball wanted it to accomplish... it made money. Maybe that's just short-term and in the long term, it may alienate fans, but I don't see it going away. That's too bad, because even though it gave the Brewers a legitamate shot at the playoffs this year, I hate that they added a second wild card team.

This is probably the biggest reason the Brewers are looking for a veteran starting pitcher. If the Brewers go with Yo, Fiers, {vet SP}, Estrada, Rogers, they could occasionally skip Rogers early in the season to keep his IP down, and start Peralta in AAA, where they could keep him on a pitch count to keep his innings down. This is why I'm a proponent of signing a one-year "stopgap," as we shouldn't have these concerns going into 2014, and I don't want to get stuck into a multi-year deal for someone who will not be better than the young guys coming up. My guess is that Melvin will either: A) Sign a one-year deal to a guy coming off an injury or down year. B) Trade some mid-tier prospects for a average-ish vet with one or two years left on his contract. C) Trade a decent MLB player (Hart, Gomez) for a good, young SP who we'll control for 4-6 years. D) Trade a bunch of our prospects for a good vet with 1-2 years left on their contract (Greine-style trade) It will probably be A or B, we'll get someone that won't really excite anyone, but will fit in as a #3/4 starter and eat up a lot of innings, which will solve the problem you illustrated. I'd be okay with C if the return is good enough. I hope we don't go down path D.

If the Giants decide to trade him, they will have to determine what will get them the "least bad" return. If they can't find anyone willing to take on the whole salary, even if they don't ask for anything in return, then they will have to see how much salary they will have to "eat." If eating half the salary would get 26 teams into the bidding, then they may eat a good portion the salary in order to get a good player in return. Really, the baseline is how much would you pay Lincecum if he was a free agent right now. I'd bet a lot of GM's would gladly pay him a one-year, $11MM deal, so I think you're right that it's too much to believe that we could get the Giants to pay half the salary and accept nothing in return. More likely, there would be some trade-off of how much salary they'd eat vs how good a player we'd have to give up. I think getting a vet on a one-year deal is what the Brewers need, as they just need a short-term bridge to get to the point that they have a full stable of MLB ready guys from the farm, but they're probably not going to pay $22MM for one year of Lincecum. If they could get the Giants to eat some of that salary, and in return they give up a moderately talented AA guy, I could get behind the deal. He potentially could pitch to his Cy Young form, which could either push the Brewers to the playoffs, or allow them to trade him for a "Greinke-style" return at the deadline. If he falters, they're out money, but haven't given up a major prospect in trade. The question is whether or not they could fit $15-18MM into their 2013 budget, which Attanasio recently said is going down from the 2012 levels. Secondarily, could they fit him into the budget and still rebuild the bullpen, which is the #1 priority this offseason.

Thanks for the post Markedman5. Here's the link: http://www.jsonline.com/sports/brewers/brewers-thinking-about-small-changes-0t7c4b3-176060731.html As many here have stated, regardless of any new TV deals or any other assumed new revenue streams, we will probably see a payroll in the $80-90MM range to start the 2013 season. In the linked article, it also states "Melvin said he did not expect to be involved with high-priced free agents this winter, and Hamilton fits that bill." I'd have to guess that Greinke also fits that bill. Attanasio stated the #1 priority is fixing the bullpen, and Melvin would like to add a veteran starting pitcher, but that will be hard to do: "We're just not adding any veteran. It has to be the right move for us. I know Doug and his staff would like to add another veteran starter. I don't know how or where that's going to come from. We've got a lot of good young pitchers coming up from the minor leagues, so we may find our answers there."