monty57

Don't you... just don't you even dare go getting my hopes up like this! http://milwaukee.brewers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120308&content_id=27120598&vkey=news_mil&c_id=mil When they did get to it, Greinke politely said the same thing he told reporters following his first Cactus League start on Thursday: He doesn't plan to hire an agent until the end of the season. "That's been the plan the whole time," Greinke said. "Nothing has changed." Greinke did leave the door wide open to altering the schedule if he and the Brewers engage in talks about a contract extension. He genuinely likes pitching in a Brewers uniform, calls principal owner Mark Attanasio "the best owner out there," and says he enjoys small-market Milwaukee.

As long as the test today goes as expected, it sounds like they don't feel there's any risk health-wise, and the only issue is whether his bat is "up to speed." Looks like a pretty good chance both Hart and Marcum are on the Opening Day roster, which is good news.

True, but Aramis will turn 34 in June, 35 next June, 36 in the final June of his contract. He wasn't a good defensive 3B in his younger years. Next year, a 26-year-old Taylor Green could be a better option than a 35-year-old Ramirez. In the "post steroid era," not many players stay good into their mid-to-late 30's. Ramirez will play because of his contract, but I expect significant decline before the contract's over.

I get what you're saying, and I am glad we got as far as we did. However, Melvin in the past few years has really seemed to ramp things up for this window, kind of disregarding much after this window closed. Coincidentally, without his recent extension, this ramp up for a World Series run in 2011 & 2012 would've been just as his contract ended and he retired, leaving the next GM with no pitching and expensive contracts for aging players (see Cubs, Chicago). In two years, we will owe Braun $10MM, Yo $11.25MM, Lucroy something like $2MM, Ramirez $16MM, and Weeks $11MM. That's $50.25MM for five players. Axford and Narveson (I think) will be in Year 2 arby, and Morgan will be in his final arby year. Probably another $10-15MM or so there. That's around $65MM for eight players. If we revert back to our projected $80-90MM budget we were supposed to have this year, we'd have somewhere around $20MM for the other 17 players. At league minimum, 17 players would cost around $8-9MM, so while we apparently can't trust Green and Gamel to both start as rookies in the same season now, will have to trust Green, Gindl, Schafer, Peralta and others to start as rookies in the same season in the future. We basically will have to hope that all of our prospects (from a still bad farm system) will pan out as everyday MLB players. Now we want to extend Greinke, which is probably necessary to remain good enough to keep the fans buying tickets. How does he fit into this budget picture? If we do extend Greinke, in addition to Hart, I expect Weeks to be traded either before or after next season. I also expect that Greinke's contract would have to be structured around Ramirez's contract, which could be the hold-up as to why it's not done. We'll still owe a lot in 2015, but at least Ramirez will be off the books, so a Greinke deal would have to be for a lower base in 2013 and 2014 and balloon starting in 2015, when he & Braun would make around $40MM between them... will our payroll be big enough in the future to have two players making that much? So yeah, I get what you're saying, but if you're willing to trade all of your prospects for that shot at winning the World Series, then you have to be willing to trade your stars for a boatload of prospects to reload every once in a while. This offseason probably would have been a good time to have shopped Hart, Marcum, Greinke, Wolf, etc and reload. We probably could have gotten enough in return to stay competitive now and into the future. Instead, we signed Ramirez. I really hope we win it all this year.

I'm pretty much on the same wavelength with you throughout this thread, but I don't see Green being traded. I think it's a good move to send Green to AAA to play every day now, as I'd bet he will get plenty of playing time this season when Weeks and/or Ramirez have a month-long injury. I just hope we use him as a full-time starter, and Roenicke doesn't decide to go with the vet (Izturis) and let Green sit on the bench. Ramirez is already getting old and I'd guess that before the end of his contract, Green will be a better option than Ramirez. Ramirez will be virtually untradeable, so it will be interesting to see if we play him to try to justify the contract, or let the sixteen-million-dollar-man sit on the bench while the league minimum guy plays. Either way, we'll need Green on the roster over the next few seasons.

You can't rebuild forever But you can't stop believing that young players can succeed, and you can't build a small/mid-market team as if you had a major market payroll. We always need pre-arby / arby players playing significant roles on our roster. I'm glad our team now has the mentality to take some chances instead of being conservative What "chances" are we taking other than the financial risk of not being able to sustain our bloated payroll? A chance would've been letting Green play this year. Signing Ramirez is the opposite of taking a chance. A chance would've been trading Lawrie for a younger, less "proven" pitcher. Signing Marcum was the opposite of taking a chance, unless you consider injury history. We just extended Weeks and no one thought McGehee would regress into Bill Hall. We had a big hole in the rotation, no where to play Lawrie and the last year with Prince. By adding Marcum we had the 2nd best roster in the league and ended up with the 2nd most wins. Ryan Braun was just entering his prime and Hart may be nearing the end of all-star level production. I have said several times that I had no problem with trading Lawrie. In fact, I said that the article makes it appear the rift between Lawrie and "the organization" had become so wide that a trade may have been necessary. I just think that we traded the more talented player, who also had more team control and no injury history for the less talented player who had less team control and fairly serious injury history. In other words, we could've done better. I normally don't chime in on "could of's," but it was reported that other GMs were surprised about the deal and said they wished they'd have known Lawrie was on the market. To me, that means that other GMs would have made offers, and one of them probably would have been for a younger pitcher with more control, better "stuff," and less injury history. But he wouldn't have been as "proven," so we would have had to take a bit more of a chance on him, which is what you say you want us to do. By your logic should we just wait and wait forever? Apparently you don't understand my logic. Sorry if I haven't been clear. I like that we've grown from a wasteland of a franchise to a playoff contender. However, we don't have unlimited resources, so we need to have young, cost controlled players if we want to retain players such as Braun, Yo, Weeks, etc. When we trade a lot of our good prospects for high-priced veterans and sign high-priced veterans who block the rest of our decent prospects, we end up with a $100+MM (and growing) payroll full of players on the wrong side of 30, a depleted farm system, and the few decent position prospects we have left spending their 20's in AAA. Now, since we blew our wad on two pitchers with two years of "team control," we are scrambling. We don't have enough MLB-ready pitchers in the system to hope to replace them, and we're in a bit of a financial pickle, with the percentage of our money going to a limited number of players growing over the next few years. Since we're in such a "win-now" mode, we made our financial situation much worse by signing Ramirez to a back-end-loaded deal which makes him virtually untradeable. Now we have to try to extend Greinke, as we will otherwise fall from being a playoff contender this year to a sub-.500 team next year. However, this possible extension probably means we will have to trade at least one of our other good players (Weeks, Yo, Braun), as I don't see any way we can pay these guys as much as they're going to make in a couple years and still field a full 25-man roster. Should we be aiming for forming our best core when Braun, Weeks and Hart are all 35 years old? Braun's the only one who will be on the roster when he's 35, although Weeks will be well past his prime when his contract's up. However, if we took some chances on younger players (like we did to get to where we are), we could have a new, younger core locked up as the current core ages. That way we could have continued success as opposed to what we've done the past couple of years, which seems to be leading up to a big fall-off after this season, and little financial flexibility to fix our problems in the future. Even though we lost a cheap, cost controlled Lawrie we added Ramirez who should be fine and Green is waiting behind. Barring injury, Ramirez should be fine this year, but he will continue to regress as he ages, while his contract is back-end-loaded so it will balloon when he's probably not "fine" anymore, and we'll be stuck with a $16MM RH bat off the bench as Green (who apparently isn't good enough now) will be our starting 3B because in two years we won't be able to afford to throw money at our perceived problems.

You speak as if that's a precise algebraic formula and as if the Brewers have any more money to spend. It is often foolish to spend money you don't have.

How about 8 wins over two years vs. 26 or so wins over 6+ years? I'd be ecstatic if we could get Shelby Miller or Trevor Bauer for Randy Wolf, but it ain't gonna happen. A more talented guy with 6+ years is worth more than a less talented (but still good) guy with far less service time. Arizona & St Louis aren't going to make those trades, even though it would help their playoff chance and hurt ours.

I can't remember what their end-of-year payroll was last year, but I'm pretty sure it was a little over $90MM, so they ended last year significantly below where they're likely starting this year. Plus, they made the NL Championship series last year, which isn't a certainty in any year. I believe the new TV deal kicks in this year or next, which helps, but I read an article earlier this year that quoted Melvin saying their budget for this year was between $80MM & $90MM and that they are significantly over budget. I'm sure they figure in some profit when making the budget, so who knows when they would either have to dip into their own pockets or borrow money, but they have to be close. K-Rod threw a wrench in the plans for this year, and I think Melvin was able to convince Attanasio that Ramirez was "the guy" worth going over budget. Those are one thing, but Attanasio would have to be in a state of playoff-enduced euphoria to okay spending another $1.25MM in the red for a guy like Theriot to be the 25th man. If Gonzalez gets hurt and they're in the playoff hunt, he may okay it, but not now "just in case someone gets hurt." $1.25MM may not seem like a lot when we see the salaries thrown around these days, but it's still a lot of money, especially when you're already $10+MM over budget.

I'm not saying Lawrie will end up in the Hall of Fame. I'm saying he is talented and has a tremendous amount of potential. If he lives up to his potential, this will end up being a very lopsided trade in Toronto's favor. If he fails to live up to his potential, he should still be a decent major leaguer, which will still have tilted this trade in Toronto's favor (6+ years vs 2 years), and only if he falls flat on his face will this turn out to be a win for the Brewers. Even then, he's already got 1/2 year of very good MLB play vs Marcum's one year for the Brewers, so I don't see Toronto losing this trade. We traded six+ years of a more talented (but "unproven") player for two years of a less talented (but "proven") player who also happened to have a fairly significant injury history. It's hard to win that deal on a head-to-head basis, and it really shows the premium Melvin has recently placed on "proven" over "unproven." So if the Blue Jays win the trade purely from a talent-for-talent perspective, what we have to hang our hat on is an NL Central crown, which Marcum did help us win and whatever happens this year. After that, we will have nothing to show for the trade. At the end of the day, it's about success for the Brewers, so the question really is, which scenario would have led to the greatest success for the Brewers franchise: 1) Making the Lawrie-for-Marcum trade 2) Holding on to Lawrie 3) Trading Lawrie for an "equal value" young pitcher (if that trade were available) I'll never know the answer to this one, as it's all hypothetical. Personally, I think some GM would have stepped to the plate with a deal centered around a younger pitcher, but I could be wrong. If that deal was there, I'd rather have seen that happen. But, the trade's done, we have an NL Central crown and one more shot with Marcum, and the Blue Jays have what seems like a really good young hitter for the foreseeable future.

Do you really think that getting a legit backup IF would prevent us from adding someone at the deadline? Ryan Theriot is making $1.25MM this year, so yes, I do think that adding someone like Theriot could keep us from adding another player later. Earlier this offseason, Melvin was hesitant to spend over $3MM on a bench player buceause we didn't have any money. Now we act as if there is no limit on spending. Mark A. has shown that he will go above the budget if it means adding the right guy. We're already over $100MM on our payroll because we've already added a lot of "right guys," some of whom were added at the expense of prospects as well as money, and some of whose additions blocked other seemingly MLB-ready prospects. Prospects being those guys who would cost league minimum instead of $36MM over three years. Carlos Lee was truly the "right guy" at the time, and really signified change in the organization. Extending Greinke could be the "right guy," as it would symbolize where we're going in the future. I can't force myself to believe that Ryan Theriot is the guy we need to further blow the budget over. I feel like getting a legit backup SS is a big deal. I think financial solvency is a big deal. It can lead to long-term success. If the owners have to dip into their own pockets, or take out additional loans to pay for going "all-in" this year, then they are going to want to show a profit in future years. Since we're on the line for a number of higher-priced, longer-term contracts, we've limited our ongoing payroll flexibility. Since we don't have a top-flight farm system, we won't have top-flight talent coming in. Where is this profit going to come from? Does adding a million dollar player mean the end of the world? No, but since we're already well over budget, every extra dollar has to come from somewhere. Most likely, once we reach a certain point over budget, the money will be borrowed from the future. Budgets are in place for a reason, they aren't arbitrary numbers. Every additional dollar we spend is one step closer to potentially not extending Greinke, or having to trade a good player(s) in the future because we can't afford them, or some other bad future consequence due to lack of fiscal restraint in the present.

I'm with PEM. Hart is playing in Minor League games so that they can backdate a DL stint. Sounds like he'll miss the opening series, and maybe the Cubs series if it's cold in Chicago and join the team in Atlanta. If we're enjoying the warm weather we saw through much of March, then Hart will probably make it back for some of the Cubs series. The good news is that it sounds like he's healthy, and the missed games at the beginning of the season are (a) his bat has to "catch up" to MLB pitching and (b) better safe than sorry with the Cubs series, I'd rather have him miss a couple of early games and stay healthy than go out in bad weather and re-injure himself.

One thing that really gets me about the situation is that last year Roenicke took Kottaras out of the game when Wolf left, meaning that Lucroy would never get a full day off. Plus he'd start day games after night games unless Wolf was pitching. I think Lucroy got worn down as the season went on, so I hope he's able to get some rest this season so he can remain productive. If it's really that important to Wolf, then I guess I can live with the odd matchups, but I hope they can get through it so we see more of a "standard" mix, where Kottaras would only start when a RHP was on the mound or on a day game after a night game.

We're already way over budget for the year, we've signed an aging 3B to what will almost assuredly be an albatross contract in a year or two, rather than trading any vets with only 1-year left on their contracts we're holding them all and losing them after the season, and Melvin now wants his 25th man to be someone we should all feel comfortable with starting a large chunk of the season. But we're supposed to believe this isn't an "all-in" season? Izturis stinks, but backup SS are supposed to stink. If he can't play the field adequately, then do as Briggs suggests and call up Maysonet for league minimum. If they have any money left, save it for when they really need it to bring in a player mid-season when we know what we'll need.

Nope, not that either. Nothing he has done suggests he has the type of talent to be a HOF caliber player. He would need to take a big step up in contact rate or plate discipline. You are just splitting hairs anyway, you could probably say any 22 year has potential HOF talent and find some way to justify it since it really has no meaning. While he was in the Brewers' system, a lot of people said Lawrie could be comparable to Braun with the bat. If Braun keeps hitting the way he has, he will be a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Ergo, my comment that Lawrie has the potential to be Hall of Fame caliber. I tried to be pretty careful to state that, as with any prospect, there's a good chance he won't live up to that potential. The 1/2 season helps show that maybe the reports of his talent with the bat were correct, and he's not overmatched by MLB pitching, but he still has a lot to prove. As far as saying any 22-year-old has potential HOF talent, I'd say that right now the Brewers probably have no one in their minors who has potential HOF talent. That makes trading the only potential superstar in your system for two years of "good-but-not-great" pitching hurt a little bit more. I won't cheer against Lawrie so that I can feel better about this, so all I can hope for is Marcum to pitch like an All-Star this season, helping us to a World Series, making this trade feel a lot better. A major point of my posts was that at this point in his career, Melvin seems most comfortable with "proven good" players. If Lawrie had to be traded, it was safer to trade for a Marcum than for another top prospect. I understand why Melvin did the trade he did, I just think it was shorter-term rather than longer-term thinking, and it leads to more short-term thinking like the Ramirez back-end-loaded deal and signing Aoki to fill-in for Braun rather than letting Gindl or Schafer play.

It's been said many times already that Greinke rejected a trade to Milwaukee before the Marcum trade and then approved it after and because of the Marcum trade. If that is true, then yes, Marcum caused Greinke to come. I think it was the knowledge that Prince was not going to be traded moreso than the knowledge that the Brewers got Marcum that changed Greinke's mind. However, if you are correct, who knows what Greinke would have done if the Brewers had traded for a good young pitcher instead of a good old pitcher. I'm not against the fact that the Brewers traded Lawrie. The recent article indicates that there was a big rift, and maybe a trade was necessary. I just think we probably got the short end of the deal, as we received two years of a good "proven" talent, but gave up 6+ years of a potentially great (but unproven) talent. There's nothing that will change, and we live with what happened, which was a NL Central championship season. I just look a little beyond this season, and think that we potentially have some problems with aging, expensive talent, limited payroll flexibility and a weak farm system from which to extract inexpensive, young players.

I think Melvin's done well as GM. However, I think that he'd like to win a championship before he's done, and there's a chance that this may lead to favoring "proven" over "potentially." Ten years ago this didn't matter so much, but retirement's looming, and it seems to me that he's now really hesitant to trust young players from the minors to play on a playoff-caliber team. The recent article on Lawrie (the one saying he was glad he was traded) makes it look like there was really some bad blood between Lawrie and "the organization." Maybe it was to the point that he had to be traded, I don't know. For sake of discussion, let's assume that it was, and there wasn't an option other than trading him. Melvin chose to trade him for a proven good pitcher, and that helped us win the Central last season. We will get one more year out of Marcum, and it appears he will then walk and we will probably get nothing in return. Two years of Marcum for six years of Lawrie. That's something we know. What we don't know is what other trade we could have made. Since other GM's made comments such as "I wish I'd have known Lawrie was available," I think it's safe to assume that other teams would have had interest. It is entirely possible that we could have traded our MLB-ready Top 50 position prospect for a MLB-ready Top 50 pitching prospect (or something similar). Maybe other dominos wouldn't have fallen the same if we had done this (maybe Greinke doesn't waive the no trade, maybe we don't win the Central, etc), or maybe they do. I remember Greinke saying holding on to Prince rather than trading him was the reason he decided to waive the no-trade clause, but maybe Marcum had something to do with it... we'll never know. Melvin made the trade he did, and we won the division. Therefore, at least short-term I can say he did okay in the trade. Long-term, I think that when Lawrie's career is over, people will look back on this trade, will gloss over the Brewers making a playoff appearance, and will say that the Blue Jays got a steal. Lawrie's a Hall-of-Fame-potential type of talent and Marcum is not. Many prospects fail to reach their potential, and there's no way I'll say Lawrie will be a Hall of Fame player, but I will say with a high degree of certainty that Marcum will not. Melvin chose the security of "proven good" over the possibility that Lawrie (or a young player he potentially could have been traded for) wouldn't live up to their potential. This doesn't make him an idiot, but moves like this and recent moves to bring in and retain high-priced players while trading or blocking younger players will eventually have to lead us to an unsustainable budget situation, potentially forcing us to trade off players we like while waiting out bloated contracts for aging players (i.e. a slow rebuild like the Cubs are trudging through).

I think we would be very underwhlemed in what we would receive in a Rickie deal If we'd be underwhelmed, I wouldn't do it. If we'd be overwhelmed, I'd do it. If we'd be, well, whelmed, then I'd think about it. More than any one specific deal, my major hope is that Melvin remembers that it is possible to trade good veterans for a package of young talent, especially when we have a prospect knocking on the door. You don't need to bring in old, overpriced 3B when you have a decent prospect ready to take over, you don't need to bring in a Japanese import as the 3rd CF, when potentially our best CF right now will be stuck in AAA, it is possible to trade an overproducing Casey McGehee for pitching instead of trading a potential superstar 3B from the farm, etc. I like what Melvin has done to turn a doormat of a franchise into a winner. I am suspect of some of his recent moves, which hint that he may be mortgaging the future in the hopes of getting a championship before he retires, and then leaving the next GM with an overpriced trash pile. For a recent view of this, look no further than the Cubs' previous owners. I'm for whatever it takes to keep us solvant and relevant.

Ramirez isn't going to bring back anything of value and I can't see many teams wanting to take the contract I agree, which is why I would think that if Green has another great year at AAA it would more likely be Weeks who could be shopped. However, if anyone wants to give us something good for Ramirez next offseason, I'd rather trade him than Rickie. No. I'm sorry but I just can't get behind a Weeks deal. Call it my fanboy status of Rickie but I don't want the Brewers to go all Oakland A's and trade off all their studs. WTP, I agree that trading Weeks would be tough to stomach. I love the guy, and he is a very good player. However, after this season, he will have three years on his contract, which should make him more marketable than someone like Sabathia, who we "rented" for a couple of months. I also find it hard to believe that we will be able to afford Weeks, Yo, Braun, Ramirez and Greinke in a few years and still be able to pay the remaining 20 guys on the team. If that's true, I'd rather trade someone like Weeks now "on our terms," than wait until we are forced to trade him "on someone else's terms." Think of the return for K-Rod when everyone knew the Mets needed to trade him. If Green posts another .900+ OPS in AAA, and maybe fills in at the MLB level for an injury and hits well, kind of "proving" he deserves a shot at the MLB level, and if we could get a return in talent similar to what San Diego received for Mat Latos this offseason, we could essentially rebuild and remain a playoff-caliber team by trading Weeks and using the savings to extend Greinke. Let's say we could work a trade centered around Weeks for a Jurickson Profar (Rangers) or Manny Machado (Orioles). These are both top 10 caliber 19-year-old shortstop prospects. Forget whether they're available or whether the MLB team needs a 2B - this is "in theory." If we could construct a trade involving Weeks for a young, stud SS who would be cheap and under team control for six years, we could save about $30MM on Weeks and the $5-6MM/year or so we otherwise will pay a FA rent-a-SS, and insert Green into 2B. Green is not Weeks-when-healthy-caliber, but he could be around an .800 OPS player, which is still awfully good for a 2B. If we wait until Green "proves himself" at AAA for another year to show 2011 wasn't a fluke, there would be more certainty that he'd be able to hold his own in the majors. You're probably right that one year of Hart wouldn't bring back a Teheran/Minor type pitcher, but let's say he can return a #3-type starter with a few years of service time remaining. We could have a rotation of Yo, Greinke, {Hart trade}, Peralta, Narveson, with a lineup of Schafer, Gindl, Braun, Ramirez, Gamel, Green, {top young SS}, Lucroy. There would be more question marks then we'd have if we keep signing $10MM players, but there's a lot of talent, and we'd have money to fill in gaps. Plus, we'd have a core of Yo, Greinke and Braun locked up, have most of the team under cheap contracts and could offer extensions to players who prove worthy. Note that I would only consider trading someone like Weeks if we got a phenomenal return, and with his contract and track record, I don't think I'm too far out in left field when I'm thinking something similar to the return for Latos, which was two top-50 prospects, another good prospect, and a young, high-upside pitcher, most of whom will be playing in the majors this year. Latos is in his final pre-arby year this year, so he has additional value of being young, good and inexpensive, but Weeks will have three years of control, is still not old, and has a proven track-record.

I don't think Conrad any kind of special, but he can hit LHP, which we need on the bench more than we need another LH bat. Conrad as the #1 bat vs LHP and Aoki as the #1 bat vs RHP is much better than Izturis or Gomez as the #1 bat vs LHP and Aoki as the #1 bat vs RHP with Green #2 or 3. If they do plan on giving Weeks and Ramirez a lot of days off, then I'd see additional value in keeping Green on the roster. However, Weeks and Ramirez are both averaging eight figure salaries, so I doubt they're going to give Weeks and Ramirez a lot of days off unless they're injured, at which point Green could be brought up. I'm not really sold on the Ramirez signing anyway, and if he needs a day or two a week off in the first year of the three year deal, then I'm really unhappy about it.

Here's an example of how I think we could unburden ourselves from the budget glut I see forthcoming, and yet still stay relevant in the playoff hunt: -Extend Greinke - either this needs to be done, or we'll end up overpaying a lesser SP on the FA market. It will be expensive, but probably necessary -Trade Morgan now. Let Aoki platoon in CF until the Brewers' brass believes Schafer is ready, and then let Schafer take over. Having Aoki play a couple of months will allow for us to keep Schafer another year, so I'd probably do that. Schafer's probably ready now, so we'd free up some salary and bring back some talent in return for Morgan. -Trade Hart at trade deadline if we're out of it, but more likely next offseason. See if Atlanta is still interested... they have an excess of young SP. With another year of AAA under his belt, Gindl will be MLB ready, and six years of Gindl + young SP should be more valueable than one year of Hart. -Next offseason, shop Weeks, who could bring back mega-talent in terms of prospects, or Ramirez who would bring back less. Replace the traded player in the lineup with Taylor Green, who should be able to "prove himself" this year both at AAA and when he gets extended MLB playing time filling in for injured Weeks/Ramirez. Between the Hart and Weeks/Ramirez trades, not only would we save a lot of money, but we should be able to bring back young talent in needed areas, most notably a long-term solution at SS and some additional pitching. Not including any other players we may pick up, we would have an offense of Schafer, Gindl, Braun, Ramirez, Gamel, Green, Lucroy, {young SS}, which should still be pretty good (assuming Gamel & Green show they're capable this year), and have a rotation anchored by Yo & Greinke, with our young SP's sprinkling in every year, and any additional SP we can get in the trades. There were some major trades this offseason for comparison. The Padres received Baseball America #33 prospect Yonder Alonso, SP Edinson Volquez, Baseball America #53 prospect Catcher Yasmani Grandal and reliever prospect Brad Boxberger (#12 prospect in San Diego's system per MLB.com) for SP Mat Latos. I don't know how Latos' trade value stacks up to Rickie Weeks, but if we could get an equivalent haul for Weeks, it would probably make up for us having to replace Weeks with Taylor Green. Plus, the savings would probably be enough for us to retain Greinke. As I said earlier, it won't take too much for us to remain a playoff-caliber team, but we will have to do some things differently than we have in the past few years. Trading Weeks may seem unthinkable, but I'd sure do it if it brought back a package like the one above, and kept our payroll under control.

So we plan to keep in in AAA for the next 3-4 years? I think Green's opportunity will come when either Weeks or Ramirez (or both) have their annual month-long injury mid-season. At that point, I will rather have a Green who has played everyday in AAA than one who is "rusty." As for the future, if Green proves last year wasn't a fluke, then I'd have no problem shopping either Ramirez or Weeks next offseason to bring in a boatload of young talent and plugging Green in as the everyday 2B or 3B. I doubt that he will rot on the bench anyway....with pinch hitting (especially since he's LH), etc., he will probably play in half the games minimum. As far as Green getting plenty of opportunities, he may get some time as backup 2B/3B, but I doubt Weeks or Ramirez will get many days off unless they're injured. That could really lead to less than one start/week. I also doubt he'll get many pinch hit opportunities, as Aoki will be the primary LH bat when OBP is needed, and Kottaras will get the PA's when power is needed. Roenicke used Counsell over Green last year, so he won't hesitate to use Aoki as the primary LH bat off the bench. I wouldn't look for more than a couple of pinch hit opportunities/week for Green. Meanwhile, our RH sticks are hack-and-slash Gomez and limp noodle Izturis. I'd much prefer Conrad's bat vs LHP paired with Aoki vs RHP off the bench. Guy can help a big league team now If it's all about helping the team this year, with no regard to service time, then why not bring up Peralta and Thorberg as middle relievers? I'm sure they're better than some of the guys we'll stick there. Green is one of our better prospects, and depending on how the dice fall, he could be a big part of our future. I think keeping him playing everyday in AAA will make him better when he's needed everyday at the MLB level this year (due to Weeks/Ramirez injuries) and it will save up his service time so either the Brewers will retain him longer, or he'll have more trade value if we decide to shop him. Again, I think Green is the better player, but there's no sense wasting his service time in an extremely limited role, when Conrad would probably have a bigger role (as the primary RH bat off the bench) and could fill it adequately.

What I specifically responded to was, "There was no evidence that Lawrie would have been ready in 2011", not "spring '11". Not admonishing you refining your point, just clarifying. I was replying to the idea of trading Weeks and having Lawrie start at 2B for the Brewers in 2011. That just doesn't work. My mistake, I thought I remembered Lawrie playing 2B in our minor league system prior to his being traded. If not, then we could've traded McGehee prior to last season as we surely had enough 3B talent in the minors. I think that would've turned out okay :-) Either way, the reported comments from the GM meetings where it sounded like most MLB GMs were stunned that Lawrie was traded makes me think that Melvin didn't explore all of his options, and quite possibly could have gotten a better return for Lawrie if he indeed felt that Lawrie needed to be traded. I like Marcum, but would much rather have received someone younger, with better "stuff," more team control and less injury history. Part of me thinks Melvin might be smart for taking advantage of the current over-valuation of prospects and is using it to trade so-so prospects for a championship team. He may have some grand plan for budget-maintenance and there may not be any budget crunch on the horizon. Another part worries that maybe Melvin is trying to buy a championship before he retires and isn't always looking at the longer-term future as much as he used to. To the title "Are the Brewers one year from rebuilding," I'd suggest that we could be a good team for a long time, but our recent trends (trading prospects for vets, but never vets for prospects; signing high-priced FAs to block prospects) lead me to believe that we may have to go into fire-sale mode soon. Where we sit right now, if we don't want to rebuild, we pretty much either need to extend Greinke, exercise Wolf's option, or hit the FA market for SP after this season. Our potential SP exodus may say we are a year away from rebuilding. Our contract status seems to point to 2014 or 2015 as the years where we may be forced to trade some of our high-priced vets (Weeks, Yo, Braun) for salary relief. Since we traded Lawrie for two years of Marcum, we don't have any superstars in the system. Jungman is probably as close as we come, as he has "top of the rotation potential," but he's far from a sure-fire ace. Players like Green and Schafer are good complementary players, but we're doing everything we can to block them from ever being anything but bench players or injury-fill-ins. Without these guys playing for league-minimum, we will not be able to sustain a MLB-roster and will eventually be forced into a fire sale, possibly timed for around the year after Melvin retires. We could have easily traded McGehee prior to last season, but we didn't want to take the risk of playing a rookie (Gamel or Lawrie). We could easily trade off Morgan this year, but we don't want to take the risk of playing a rookie (Schafer). We didn't have to sign Aoki, but we didn't want to take the risk of playing a rookie for 50 games (Gindl/Schafer). We didn't have to sign Ramirez to an untradeable contract, but we didn't want to take the risk of playing a rookie (Green). We didn't have to have a $100MM+ payroll this year, but we don't want to take the risk of playing rookies. Gamel's the one "exception," but how much of his starting is faith in the rookie, and how much is that we driven his trade value to zero, he's out of options and we are well over payroll budget? Nothing I've read makes it sound like the team has an overabundance of faith in him. How long is this sustainable? How long can we trade away our prospects for high-price vets or sign high-priced FAs to block our prospects because we don't want to risk giving a rookie a lot of playing time? Eventually these contracts add up, and we aren't in a big enough market to have high-priced players at every position. Things aren't dire, they're fixable. We could do a lot of things to ease the budget concerns. We will just need to change course a little bit and show some willingness to trade some vets for prospects when we have guys in-house to take over, and we have to once again be willing to give important roles to young players. If we show this willingness, I think we could stay good for a long time. It just doesn't seem to be the direction we've been heading for the past few seasons, and without some changes, I think we're going to run into a budget crunch in the not-too-distant future.

I agree that Green is a better player, but I would rather see Green playing everyday at AAA. 1) Green has long-term value to the franchise, while Conrad does not. If someone's going to "rot on the bench," I'd prefer it not to be a promising prospect who is eating up their valueable pre-arby years. 2) If Ramirez or Weeks goes down, I want Green playing everyday, and he should be more prepared to play every day if he's been getting 4-5 PA's a day at AAA rather than a couple PA's per week on the Brewers' bench. 3) If lefties Green, Kottaras and Aoki are all on the MLB bench, I'd bet Kottaras would be used when we needed a "power" bat, and Aoki would be used when we needed someone to get on base, meaning Green would rarely be used.

ie the Morgan trade last spring. That's what I was thinking as well. If Melvin wants to replace Izturis and the list of guys likely to be cut is no better than Izturis, Melvin will ship off one of his low-level minor leaguers in trade that won't even make ESPN's crawl. Hopefully it turns out to be as good as the Morgan trade.