monty57

From MLBTradeRumors: "Rival teams say the Dodgers are looking for a starter, a lefty reliever and a bat." As is typical with the Dodgers, they have some interesting pitching prospects. Their #2 prospect, Nate Eovaldi, is up now while Lilly's out (pitched against the Brewers) and has an upper-90's fastball. He's a Top 100 prospect, but not an "elite" prospect, so he may be a realistic target for Marcum/Greinke. He could step right into the rotation now and stay there for the next five years. Zach Lee is their top prospect, but he's probably two years out. He's having a bit of a tough time in High-A, with a 4.37 ERA, 1.27 WHIP and 7 HR, but he's got 49 K and only 9 BB in 47.1 IP.

It is good to see Morris doing well in AA. I'm interested to see if they bump him to AAA this year. 1 Tyler Thornburg 2 Jimmie Nelson 3 Taylor Jungmann 4 Wily Peralta 5 Jed Bradley ...and this shows why we spent our top picks on hitters this year.

First time at age 37 - pretty sweet. Isn't that pretty young for a knuckleballer

Thanks cvollbrecht. Even "average" defense with "average" bat would be a lot better than we've seen at SS in a while. Add "potential upside" and 5.5 years of inexpensive service time, and I'd be happy if we got him. Agreed on Green. I thought there was a chance he was going to be our starting 3B going into this season, and now he can't find playing time over a bunch of minor league retreads (Ishikawa, Ransom, Maysonet, Conrad, Izturis). I still like him and wish he'd get a shot, but it doesn't look like his future with the Brewers is much more than a bench/utility player.

That said, there is no way that Marcum will come cheap. Barring major injury or extended playoff-esque meltdown, he's going to get a three or four year deal for eight figures per, easy. Agreed, which is why someone would trade for him. I can't believe that GM's would line up to sign Marcum to a 4 year / $50MM deal, but no one would want him for a playoff run. What I was saying (maybe poorly) in the sentence you quoted was that if the market is so down on him that no one would trade for him, then he ought to be able to be signed cheaply and we should jump on that. I don't think that's the case. I've said before that I would be leery of signing Marcum to a 4- or 5-year deal, but I'd say that about pretty much any pitcher on the other side of 30. If Greinke was 30, I wouldn't want to sign him to a 4- or 5-year deal either. I wish Melvin would've extended Marcum this offseason when the price tag would've been cheaper and the years fewer due to how he ended last year. Now that he's pitching well, he's sure to go to free agency and sign a big money deal. Really, the reasons Greinke is valued so highly are that he had one year that was one of the best years by any pitcher in recent history, and he strikes batters out. He will probably be paid as if he pitched every year like he did in 2009, but that isn't the case. Someone will pay for a 1A+ and get a 1B/2A. But, sometimes perception becomes reality, and if Melvin can get someone to believe that he is trading for Cy Young, then we should take advantage of that.

Either way, I'm sure there would have been players that were more valuable than Robin Yount in 1978, 1980, but it's hard to put a price on have a guy grouw up with a player, haveing young kids get to watch that player play their entire career for the Breweers. Have kds who are 10 now watc hh him for the next 8 years. Pretty awesome. Time to look to a 3 year extension for Yo for 45 million IMO. I was fretting explaining to my 6-year-old (who idolizes Braun) why he wasn't playing in the first 50 games this year. Thank God I didn't have to do that. It's great that he will grow up knowing Braun as a Brewer the way I grew up knowing Yount, Molitor, Gantner as Brewers. Having a "face of the franchise" who is with the team for his whole (hopefully Hall of Fame) career is almost priceless... especially with a franchise without much Hall of Fame history.

I'd have to agree with this. To the poster who mentioned this earlier, was it that people "in the know" believe that he is not good enough to be a MLB shortstop, or is it that Simmons is going to be a better SS, so Pastronicky wouldn't have a place as a SS for the Braves?

I guess it depends on the definition of Major League-ready. If you take it to mean a young player who has already gotten his feet wet and is pitching well then yes the team will go with them. If you take it to mean a guy in AAA who is probably ready to pitch in the majors, but has never been tested, then the team may rather have a "proven" guy to get them to the playoffs. Using Atlanta as an example, Beachy is Major League ready in the former sense. He's young, but he's proven to be really good at getting MLB hitters out. There is no way Altanta would trade Beachy. However, Delgado, Minor and Teheran are Major League-ready in the latter sense. They're talented, but have not yet proven themselves at the MLB level. With the way Minor has pitched so far this season, if the Braves are shooting for the playoffs, they may be filled with enough urgency that they would trade the talented young Minor for a proven vet. That's just an example, and I don't want to steer this to an "is Marcum going to get us Minor" thread. Turn this around and ask: If the season had gone differently and the Brewers were healthy and in 1st place and a SP went down, would Melvin/Attanasio call up Peralta or Fiers, or would they go out and trade for a veteran? If a proven ace were on the market in that situation, would we trade Peralta to get him, even if its only for three months? I don't know what return to expect for Greinke or Marcum, but I'd bet we could get a decent prospect back... especially if the trade happens in June rather than late July. As to my comparing the stats, I guess I'm just frustrated with posts (not yours) that treat Greinke like a savior without whom we're a perpetual bottom feeder, while Marcum is treated like dirt. Marcum is almost as good a pitcher as Greinke, and if the market treats Greinke as a far superior player, then we should trade Greinke and sign Marcum to a cheap deal. If any GM takes the time to look at the numbers Marcum has put up since his surgery, they will jump at the chance to get him for a playoff push.

I just started with Corey Hart and went down the list to pick out other outfielders starting with "H" Corey Hart 6'6", 235 lbs Bryce Harper 6'3", 215 lbs (I'm sure he'll fill out, and will remain an OF when he's 235 lbs or so) Chris Heisey, 6'0", 220 lbs Eric Hinske, 6'2", 235 lbs Matt Holliday, 6'4", 235 lbs Torii Hunter, 6'2", 225 lbs Why would 6'5", 240 preclude someone from playing the OF? It seems pretty common for MLB OFs to be big and tall. Besides, he's played enough outfield in his minor league career that baseball-reference lists him as "first baseman and outfielder." I doubt he wins a gold glove, but he probably won't embarrass himself. He's certainly had a hot start to the season, and no one should expect him to put up those ridiculous numbers for his career, but he does have raw power, is not overmatched by MLB pitching and is in his rookie year so he's inexpensive and has 5.5 years of MLB service time remaining. As I mentioned, I wouldn't pay what I'm sure the Cubs will ask but he would be an upgrade for our current team. He will most likely be a corner OF for the Cubs when Rizzo comes up... they just need to clear room for him by trading DeJesus or giving away Soriano.

Pastornicky could be a realistic target, as Simmons seems to be the clear-cut choice as Atlanta's SS of the future. I honestly don't care how he'd play this year, as he'd be getting his feet wet in what appears to be a lost season for the Brewers. The important thing is that we'd have a talented young player for five more years in a position in which we are woefully thin throughout the system. I would probably try to have him as an additional piece in a bigger deal. Maybe something centering on Hart, Greinke or Marcum for one of their young pitchers.

Everyone says Greinke is pitching like a Cy Young candidate this year. Here's his line: 12 games, 7W-2L, 3.13 ERA, 72 IP, 72 H, 25 ER, 18 BB, 81 K, .261 OBA, 1.25 WHIP, 128 ERA+. Pretty impressive, so we should be able to get some good prospects for him, right? So where does Marcum stand? Here's his line: 11 games, 4W-3L, 3.39 ERA, 69 IP, 60 H, 26 ER, 21 BB, 66 K, .232 OBA, 1.17 WHIP, 118 ERA+. So he's pitched one less game, but only 3 less innings so he's pitching more innings per game. He's only given up one more run than Greinke, but given up less hits, and has a better OBA and WHIP. Like Greinke, he's pitched really well this year. So lets look at how they've compared in recent history. Marcum was injured in 2009, when Greinke had his Cy Young year. 2010 Marcum: 31 games, 13-8, 3.64 ERA, 195.1 IP, 181 H, 79 ER, 43 BB, 165 K, 1.147 WHIP, 115 ERA+, 3.8 WAR (Baseball-reference.com) 2010 Greinke: 33 games, 10-14, 4.17 ERA, 220 IP, 219 H, 102 ER, 55 BB, 181 K, 1.245 WHIP, 100 ERA+, 3.2 WAR 2011 Marcum: 33 games, 13-7, 3.54 ERA, 200.2 IP, 175 H, 79 ER, 57 BB, 158 K, 1.156 WHIP, 111 ERA+, 2.9 WAR 2011 Greinke: 28 games, 16-6, 3.83 ERA, 171.2 IP, 161 H, 73 ER, 45 BB, 201 K, 1.200 WHIP, 103 ERA+, 1.4 WAR So basically, Geinke had an unbelievable year in 2009 while Marcum was injured. Since then, Marcum has been a better pitcher. I wish we had used the bad few weeks he had at the end of last year to sign him to a cheap 2 or 3 year extension, but we didn't and now he's pitching himself into a really nice free agent contract. He would certainly be a valuable pick-up for any team that has playoff aspirations.

As I've said before, I don't think that there are any dominant teams in the N.L.. Of the two primary concerns to the Brewers, St. Louis is falling apart, and Cincinnati was handled by Pittsburgh last night worse than the Brewers were over the weekend. For the Brewers to win the division, they will need to outplay all of: Cincinnati by 7 games, Pittsburgh by 5 games, St Louis by four games, and Houston straight up for the remainder of the season. If none of them plays better than .500 for the rest of the year, we will still need 85 wins to take the division, so we'd need to go 61-46 (a .570 win percentage). It will probably take more like 88-90 wins to make the playoffs, even with the second wild card game. It's not impossible that it could happen, but it's getting more and more unlikely. As your example shows, even if one of the teams falters, another wins (Pittsburgh beating the Brewers and Reds). We'd basically have to play the final 2/3 of the season at the pace the Rangers have played the first 1/3 of the season while hoping none of the Reds, Pirates, Cardinals or Astros play much better than .500. It follows that I think that this selling talk is a bit premature, because there is a lot of baseball left to play. I doubt the Brewers will sell early, because they don't want fans to feel they've "given up." However, they will get a better return by sellig early. Melvin knows this, as he bought early when he traded for Sabathia, and made the exact same arguement I'm currently making that teams pay more for an extra few starts from a pitcher. I'm just saying that as the odds of playoffs get more remote, they might want to maximize their return. I also don't get the concept of selling in every season that you don't make the playoffs. If it's obvious you're not going to make the playoffs, you should do what's best for the franchise. That doesn't mean you sell every season, just that you sell when it makes sense. It's starting to look like selling in 2012 makes a lot of sense. Yes, there are free agents to be, but outside of Greinke and Marcum, they will have little value on the market. Greinke and Marcum themselves should bring back quite a bit of talent from a playoff-hopeful team which could help us a lot in the future. As to the rest, "little" is better than "none," which is what we'll get if we hold onto them and let them walk as free agents. K-Rod may bring back a decent prospect if a team (like the Yankees and Red Sox) have playoff hopes and injured closers. Even if he only brings back salary relief and a high-upside A-baller, that's money we can spend this offseason and a prospect we wouldn't have if he walks. I also don't buy the talk that Greinke is as good as gone because the Brewers are not a lock to be competitive. Bottom line, money talks with these players, so the Brewers had better prepare a big offer for him unless they want to start a rebuild. I agree, but at this point there is no reason for him to give us any kind of a discount, so we will be paying him free agent money regardless. We might as well trade him for some good, young talent and if we want to pursue him on the free agent market, do it. I think his eventual salary is going to be the reason he won't be a Brewer, not his desire to play for a competitor. Frankly, for all the 'sellers', I ask why not look into dealing Gallardo and/or Braun? I like to hold onto a core and build around them with talented young players and occasionally with a free agent signing. This keeps our playoff hopes at least alive while maintaining fiscal discipline. Gallardo and Braun are both signed to not-too-expensive deals for a number of years, so they are the heart of our "core." If we were blown away (i.e. if someone gives us two or three top prospects for Gallardo), then we should look into it, but I wouldn't openly shop the "core" players. I also don't agree with the argument that trading Greinke does not equal a rebuild. You say that this team is not good enough to compete this year as it stands, but you think that it will be next year minus Greinke? Please explain. There are a lot of moving parts in baseball. Players get injured, a ".300 hitter" hits .280 some years and .320 others, balls "bounce the right way," etc. This year everything has gone wrong. We've had significant injuries, Weeks and Ramirez have forgotten how to hit, our pitching has been worse than expected, and so on. Coming into this year, we had playoff hopes, but with everything that's happened, those hopes are dwindling. As to next year's team, I have said that I don't think Gallardo + Greinke is that much better on a year-to-year basis than Gallardo + Marcum. The first pair gets us maybe an extra win or two a year for a significantly higher cost. If we had extended Marcum for a much lower price (in $ and years) than Greinke, I thought we could go into next year with a team which could at least be as competitive as it would have been if we'd "broke the bank" to sign Greinke. Now I think the "window" to extend Marcum is pretty much gone, so we could very well lose both Greinke and Marcum. If we lose both Marcum and Greinke, don't exercise Wolf's option, and Narveson can't pitch, we are going to have a big uphill battle. But that doesn't change the fact that we sat down at the table with Greinke and after Cain signed he got up and walked away from the table. He's going to test the free agent market, and at this point that makes a lot of sense for him. That's where things stand. The way to "ease the pain" somewhat is to get something back for the players who are going to leave anyway, which includes Greinke, Marcum, Wolf, K-Rod, Loe, and Veras. We may not be a playoff team next year regardless of what we do, but we will 100% certainly be better if we get something in return for these guys than we will be if we don't. We can always try to sign Greinke or Marcum as free agents, whether we trade them or not. *When I say "he's going to test the free agent market," here's why I think that. If the Brewers tell him tomorrow they'll match or even beat Cain's contract, he weighs the risk and thinks "all I have to do is pitch 15-20 more games and then I can use the Brewers' offer as a starting point in talking with other teams." His potential risk is not that great compared to the potential upside of hitting the free agent market. When a player has multiple years before hitting free agency, the risk is great. When that's down to half a season, it makes sense to just take the risk.

I'd say "probably" the Brewers aren't going to sell now, but not "certainly." Every start Greinke or Marcum makes for the Brewers lowers his trade value a little bit, because he can't make that start for another team. Right now, teams would offer more in return for four months of a player than they will offer at the end of July for two months of that same player, and that's not even taking into consideration the risk of injury to a player, rendering him untradeable. Melvin knows this, because it's the exact reason he traded for Sabathia early so he could get a couple extra starts. Without considering the effect on ticket sales, fan morale, etc, then I'd say right now is absolutely the time to start shopping players. Of course, ticket sales and such has to be considered, and teams don't want to look like they're "giving up," so it is likely that you are correct that if the Brewers do sell it probably won't be for another month. It will upset me a bit if in a future interview Melvin says something like "We got a number of calls about Greinke and Marcum early in June, but we were still in the race, so we held onto them. We couldn't get what we wanted in July, so we held onto them because we knew we could get some good draft picks and that." Few owners want to sell, but few GMs want to be the guy who missed the playoffs and watched their star players leave for nothing, so it will be interesting seeing how this plays out. With the way the Brewers have looked this season, I would be happy to see "Breaking news" that the Brewers had traded one of their "chips" for prospects. I'd be more excited to watch the prospects coming up to play than I am watching Greinke pitch with a AAA team behind him while being sold a line of "we still think we've got a shot at the playoffs."

I'm sure the Cubs would consider trading LaHair, but he can play corner OF, so I'd guess they're most likely to trade DeJesus and pay someone to take Soriano so that they can have Rizzo at 1B, with Brett Jackson and LaHair in the OF. Campana, Jackson, Castro, Rizzo, LaHair is a decent and inexpensive top of the order. If we were to trade for LaHair, I would guess he would man 1B this season, but would go to RF in future years with Gamel at 1B and Hart traded. I don't hate the idea, but the Cubs would probably ask more than I'd want to give up.

Yeah, the MLB.com guys said he hits 100 MPH but it's straight, so "when he throws it over the plate even college guys hit it." Good natural ability, but if he doesn't add a secondary pitch and/or get some movement on the fastball, he will be very hittable.

We may exercise Wolf's option Please, please no. $10M option with $1.5M buyout, which really makes it an $8.5M dollar option. I like to look at possible options this way. If Randy Wolf was a free agent, could he get a 1 year, $8.5M deal right now? No chance. After last year? Probably. Yeah, that's why I followed that with "...but he's not pitching very well... I doubt we'll have four rookies in the rotation, so what do we do?" IF we don't exercise Wolf's option (which isn't looking promising at the moment), and IF we've missed the window to extend Greinke and Marcum (which is getting more & more likely), then our options have to be to either: 1) "Sell" this year and try to bring back some pitching, 2) Start next year with 3 or 4 rookies in the starting rotation 3) Hit the free agent market this offseason looking for starting pitching. This could include going after Greinke or Marcum as a free agent. I just doubt that at this point we will see them sign a "team friendly" extension. Since we've let it go this far without extending Greinke or Marcum, and we'd probably need to play something like .600 ball the rest of the season to make the playoffs, I believe that we should look to start selling soon, with our targets set on picking up a SP who can be in the 2013 rotation and a young SS.

Is it that Wolf likes throwing to Kottaras or just that he dislikes throwing to Lucroy? If it's the latter then Wolf should be fine with Maldonado, as he's known for his defense.

What interest is there going to be out there for a backup catcher? You will be lucky to get a Cuttery Dykstra type prospect back in return for Kottaras which isn't even worth even discussing a trade with a team for a return like that. What is wrong with Maldonado going back to AAA once Lucroy is healthy? Offensively Kottaras is better than Maldonado by a lot. I would rather have Kottaras on the bench and playing once every five games as the offensive drop off from Lucroy to Kottaras is not all that much compared to the offensive drop off from Lucroy to Maldonado. The only thing that you are gaining is some defense behind the plate. The offensive loss is like going from Damian Miller to Chad Moeller (with just a little bit better defense behind the plate for Maldonado). I really do not see why there would be anything bad of Maldonado going back to AAA once Lucroy is back. As we just found out, it is good to have depth at a position. The only negative I see would be for the future. Are we going to offer Kottaras arbitration and potentially pay him $1MM to be a backup catcher next year? If so, then we should just send Maldonado back to AAA. If our plan is to release Kottaras after the season and go into next year with Lucroy / Maldonado, then it would be worth it to look into trading Kottaras, even if we only get a low-ceiling AA prospect back.

Melvin would've looked bad if he had extended Marcum this offseason (after his late-season collapse last year) and Marcum had went out and laid an egg this year. However, since he wasn't extended then (and Greinke hasn't and probably won't be extended) then that makes for some interesting times ahead of us. As it currently stands, we have Yo locked into the 2013 rotation. We may exercise Wolf's option, but he's not pitching very well right now. Narveson will get expensive and may not be able to pitch, so he's a huge question mark, and Estrada's a fringe MLB player. I doubt we'll have four rookies in the rotation, so what do we do? We could trade some guys this year, but Attanasio seems hell-bent against that, which leaves us with the option of signing one or two free agent pitchers next offseason. At this point, I consider Greinke and Marcum to be part of this free agent class. We may sign one of them, but I doubt we get any discount. It would have been risky for Melvin to have extended Marcum for 2-3 years this past offseason, but I wish he would've done it.

Signability. Haniger went to the same HS as Logan Schafer and is friends with him, so it sounds like he wanted to be a Brewer (i.e. will sign cheaply). It's nice to see us get some good position player prospects into the system to mix in with all of our young pitching. If Coulter sticks at catcher, it could take a few years before he's MLB-ready defensively, so that should work nicely with Lucroy's contract. Roache is a power-hitting college corner OF who the Brewers hope will play in instructional leagues this season. They could've got a steal if he heals to 100%. If healthy and able to make the instructional leagues, how quickly does everyone think he'll be able to move through our system and make the majors?

Winning the Dodgers series or losing the Pirates series doesn't really change my opinion except to give us fewer games to make up ground. This is key. We're now 24-30, which means we have 54 games down, 108 to go (exactly 1/3 of the way into the season). To reach 90 wins, which is probably the minimum # of wins we'd need to be to win the division, we'd need to go 66-42, a .611 winning percentage. The Nationals, Mets, Marlins, Reds, Dodgers and Giants are all on pace to win 90 or more games, so even with the second Wild Card team, it's still likely going to take 88 or more wins to get a Wild Card berth. To do that, the Brewers would need to go 64-40, a .593 winning percentage. That's exactly the winning percentage we ended with last season, when we broke a Brewers' record for # of wins. It's possible we make the playoffs, but unless we hit a big winning streak soon, the odds of us making it are getting slimmer and slimmer. The odds of us making it with Lucroy, Gamel, Gonzalez and Narveson gone and Braun and Ramirez banged up seem really, really slim.

We'll see how this plays out, but I think Melvin may have missed his chance at extending Marcum, at least to any kind of team-friendly deal. In an article from earlier this season, Marcum said he wanted to re-sign with the Brewers, but was disappointed that they hadn't contacted him. I may be wrong, but I'd guess that Melvin's plan was to try to sign Greinke and have Marcum as "plan B." This past offseason, it may have been possible to have signed Marcum to a 2-3 year deal with team options. Now that Marcum was "slighted" and is pitching very well, it'll probably take 4-5 years and a lot more money to sign him. I personally wouldn't go 4-5 years out with a 30-year-old pitcher. At this point, our two options seem to be either to trade Marcum and Greinke away for a really good return, or to let them pitch through the season hoping they both remain healthy and good enough that we can offer them a one-year $13MM (or whatever) deal and get the draft picks. The former option will be "giving up" on this season, but get more advanced prospects, while the latter will let us "go for it" this season, but have a lot of work to do to get a team together for next year. Both options have benefits, but both also have risks. Of course we could get in the bidding war to sign either of them as free agents this offseason, but at this point in the season, our exclusivity is probably pretty much meaningless, as I doubt either of them will forego the chance to test the free agent market when they're only half a season away and pitching like aces.

Oh sure they could make the playoffs. That's just my expectations. I'm setting them low so that I can be pleasantly surprised if they make the playoffs, but won't be as disappointed if they don't. Either way, I'm going to be pretty sad watching all their players leave for free agency knowing that next year's rotation is going to be made up of Melvin FA signings and rookies. I think the opportunity to extend Marcum is even closing now. An earlier article quoted Marcum who sounded kind of sad that the Brewers weren't talking with him about an extension, and now he's pitching his way towards a really nice free agent contract. That really bugs me. Things have taken a very different route since Mark bought the team. Which was fine when we had a nice built up minor league system. Not so good now though. I think Attanasio's book of "how to achieve sustainable success with a major league franchise" was written while watching the New York Yankees. Unfortunately, the Brewers cannot build a franchise the way the Yankees can. We have to grow a championship team, we can't buy one.

I highly doubt that the Brewers will be sellers. I think it's far more likely that they trade away someone like Gindl or some of our "second tier" minor league pitchers for a rental player or two to upgrade this year's team. They'll miss the playoffs and lose Greinke, Marcum, K-Rod, Loe, Veras, etc to free agency, hopefully getting draft pick compensation from Greinke and Marcum. With the money freed up from losing everyone, we'll shop the free agent market for a couple of starting pitchers, a shortstop, and a new bullpen. Finally, we'll try to sort through Hart, Gamel, Morgan, Gomez, and Aoki to figure out how we're going to position CF/RF/1B next season. I can't imagine we'll be any good, but at least we wouldn't have given up on the 2012 team.

Attanasio grew up a fan of a team who could always have a "win now" mindset. He doesn't own a team that can always have a "win now" mindset, and I hope he understands how painful it can be to be stuck with bad long-term contracts and no farm system from which to call up cheap, young talent. My biggest worry about "having a buyer's mindset" this year isn't so much what we'd forego in not trading away some of our "chips" (although it is a worry). My biggest worry is that the only "chips" we have to trade if we are buyers and really want to upgrade this team are guys we're going to need for future teams, most notably our young pitchers. If we trade them away in an attempt to "win now," then we could be really screwed for the next decade.