monty57

The reports I have read on Gasser was that he wasn't high on the prospect charts largely because of a FB that topped out around 90 MPH. During the 2020 Covid lockdown, he committed himself to working out and that added velocity and tightened up his slider. He now throws 93 regularly and can hit the mid-90's, and he has a "plus" slider, with a change-up that could turn into a plus pitch. This year, he has thrown 90.1 innings, and has a 115:28 K:BB ratio (4.11 K's per every BB). I've always like this ratio for pitchers, as K's are really helpful to pitchers, while walks are really harmful. Kelly has thrown 91 innings, with a 119:52 ratio (about 2.29 K's per BB). For better or worse, the Brewers seem to be looking for hitters that make contact, play good defense, and have good eyes at the plate, and pitchers with good command and the ability to strike guys out. Melvin liked hitters with one "plus, plus" tool (usually power), and pitchers with big arms with questionable command, Stearns does not. Kelly would probably have been more of a "Melvin guy," trying to harness the big arm and fix the command. Gasser is more of a "Stearns guy," already having the command and polishing up his game. It doesn't make one good and one bad, but Stearns is the guy pulling the strings these days. They are both prospects, so their is risk to both. I don't follow prospects closely, so I have to rely on what reports say, and yes, I have to have faith in the Brewers. Stearns called Gasser something to the effect of "the best pitching prospect in baseball," so that was kind of surprising. This goes beyond simply talking a guy up. Stearns inherited a franchise that looked doomed to a long rebuild process, and quickly turned it into a playoff contender, and he has been slowly turning a bad farm into a good one. It looks like he feels Gasser has a better shot at helping the Brewers at the MLB level than Kelly does.

Good point. Davis has 0.6 WAR, proving positive offensively and defensively in somewhat limited playing time this year, so he has helped the team.

There were rumors that Narvaez was being discussed, so I think you’re correct that they only held onto three catchers to see if they could get something for one of them at the deadline. I will also be interested in seeing what they do with Hiura. Does he have value or doesn’t he? I hope he tears the cover off the ball and proves he belongs. Either way, he can answer some questions regarding his future with the Brewers.

I don’t mind it if the prospects are good. Calling up Frelick or Ruiz is different than calling up a AAAA journeyman.

I don’t know the extent of Lamet’s injuries. They may have been more certain that Suter could make it through the season. Someone mentioned that Suter’s over 5 years’ service time, so we’d probably lose him if we tried to send him down.

Someone said this earlier. We may have needed him in the dugout yesterday in case of a blowout. It didn’t make sense to add Peralta until his start, so might as well have an extra reliever around.

We received “assets” as well. I think you are greatly overvaluing Hader specifically, and relief pitchers in general. Plus, you are glossing over the fact that we received Rogers, who over the course of his career is only 0.31 WAR/season behind Hader. He’s really good, and we don’t have to pay him this year because the Twins are covering his salary (money has value too). I’d take a free Rogers over a $10M Hader any day of the week. Hader is going to get something like $15M next year in Abby, so he gets very little “surplus value” for his final year. After what Ruiz and Gasser did this year, if they were in our system already, people would be calling them untouchable. Any prospect has risk, but I think we got pretty good value for one season of a relief pitcher. Will everyone who dislikes this trade feel better if Ruiz and Gasser are in some reporters’ Top Prospect lists to start next year? I guess time will tell.

This might be going out on a limb, but maybe the Brewers like the prospects we got back, and maybe they put more into evaluating them than simply doing a quick scan of BA’s Top 100 list. The difference between Rogers and Hader for less than half a season is negligible. Sterns values six years of Ruiz and Gasser as being more valuable than one year of Hader, so much so that he was willing to eat a $5M “negative value” salary to make the deal happen. Also, we needed some payroll relief for next year, and we now get the roughly $15M we would have spent on Hader to use elsewhere. Stearns’ knowledge of these guys is far more than mine, so I am very excited to have Ruiz and Gasser in the system. My only real question in this whole thing is “why isn’t Ruiz in Milwaukee?” I want to see this kid play and Davis shouldn’t be holding him back.

“To help balance the deal” means that Lamet had negative trade value. If we hadn’t taken him, we would have had to settle for less than Ruiz & Gasser. I guess they could’ve said they’d pay $5M of Hader’s salary and it would’ve had the same effect.

My guess is that the Brewers had to take some salary back since Rogers is almost fully being paid by the Twins. He was successful before the injuries, so there is hope that he's back and will provide some positive value to the Brewers, but there's certainly a chance that he's just someone who's there to offset salary and the Brewers will DFA him as soon as the dust settles. Or, if they don't think he's ready, but still like his talent, they might be banking on him being ready to help out next year when they will also be pushing for a playoff appearance/World Series.

I doubt Soto will stay in San Diego. First, he's represented by Boras and just turned down a monster deal, so it's pretty likely that he is going to go year-to-year and test free agency. Second, it's hard to say what the Padres are doing, but they're losing an awful lot of talent over the next couple of years and have traded away most of their prospects. I don't care how good your middle of the order is, you can't win by paying your 3-4-5 hitters most of your payroll and surrounding them with guys you pick out of the independent leagues. It will be very interesting to see what their roster looks like in a couple of years.

Good for them I guess. I like signing guys to early extensions, but only when the team gets a significant discount. These are the type deals the Brewers can't do.

I had some interest if the Yankees were just going to give him away to someone who would pay his salary. Not interested in giving up a prospect with any value to get him.

That's one of the things I like about Stearns. He doesn't take a "play for now" or "play for the future" stance. He plays for now while still keeping an eye on the future. We need some help to win this year, but we will absolutely need players three years from now when some of our current players will be gone.

If San Diego paid most of the contract (like, all but league minimum), this might not be the worst idea. They're probably about ready to DFA him after today, so maybe the Brewers could get him for nothing. If they don't want him after this year, they can cut him and only be on the hook for around league minimum for a couple more seasons. If not, then at least Hosmer can enjoy the nice San Diego sunshine while all of the Padre fans boo him every time he comes to the plate.

I'll add that usually when a team is adding someone like Hader, they are replacing the worst guy in their bullpen, the former closer becomes the set-up guy, and so forth on down the line. That gives them a good chance of "winning," or having a better bullpen in the immediate months following the trade. That makes this trade somewhat odd for the Padres. They are obviously "going all in" for this year and next year with the Hader and (potential) Soto trades, so they probably understand that the upgrade for this season isn't a "sure win," but their bullpen will no doubt be better next year as they wouldn't have Rogers, whose contract is up. They needed Hader in 2023. The Brewers have to be looking at next year as well, and from their perspective the prospects plus the money saved has more value to them than one more year of Hader. They'll need that $15M or so to get some upgrades elsewhere on the field, with Williams closing and the newly-acquired Bush adding to the talent pool for the setup role. They didn't need Hader in 2023, their bullpen should be fine without him. So I'm still on the "roughly 50/50" on who does better this year, but the teams have completely different outlooks on what's best for their team for next year.

I always go back to how much value the Brewers lost when they decided that he was too important to the playoff chances for the team four or five years ago by keeping him in the bullpen, so they gave up on trying him out as a starter. I thought his upside could have been Randy Johnson, but instead they settled for "Closer value." But that was a long time ago, so it's all water under the bridge by now. We know what did happen and don't know what could have happened, so can't argue the counter-cyclical.

Plus, San Diego wasn't giving up any of their top prospects, because they needed them for the Soto deal they were working on at the same time.

Maybe so, but there was no way the Brewers could have equaled this value in prospects. They would have had to add Burnes or Woodruff, and even then, the Nats aren't looking for expensive players already in their arby years. They want guys with lots and lots of team control to go along with tons of talent.

For a reliever, Hader has been pretty consistent, but relievers have such a small sample size (especially for a trade deadline acquisition) that I think the chance of one of them outperforming the other is closer to 50/50 than 80/20. Even if he pitches well, all it sometimes takes is a misplayed ball or a short outfield fence to make the numbers look bad. Plus, this isn't Hader vs "random replacement level guy," this is Hader vs a good, proven reliever. Even if Hader outperforms him in FIP, he could still have worse "real world" results. Put it this way, how accurate do you think a prediction would be over how a hitter will perform in his next 30 PAs? Which Brewer will be the next one to go on a hot streak (or a cold streak) for a week? Will the stock market go up or down on a random day? Small sample sets make predicting nearly impossible, and we're looking at trying to make a prediction over 20 or so innings pitched. I'd say it's pretty much a "crapshoot," giving a small advantage to Hader. Which one will perform better over the next six seasons? I'd put my money on Hader with a good degree of confidence.

Yeah, that's why the thoughts of the Brewers getting Soto were a pipe-dream. The Nats wanted young talent and the Brewers don't have enough of it to compete in a deal like this.

Washington is going into rebuild with the Hosmer, Corbin, and Strasburg contracts on the books. Even with a lot of good prospects, they're probably looking at a few seasons to get through those contracts before they really expect to put any money into trying to be competitive. With Gore and Abrams already up, and some of their top prospects still only teenagers, it'll be interesting to see how they work things.

A short while back in a different thread, someone posted that the Brewers are going to have a lot of 40-man/Rule 5 decisions to make this offseason. Kelly is talented, which is why the Rangers wanted him, but the Brewers can't use too many of their 40-man spots on promising prospects who are a few years away from the majors. I would guess that was a big reason they were willing to part with Kelly, and may have some other guys today that they are willing to trade away. Our current bullpen is certainly strengthened by the trade. Pitching is a strength of this team, but we have still had 115 innings (about 13% of our total innings) pitched by guys with a FIP over 5 and a negative WAR total. Plus, we no longer have Hader, so another "back of the bullpen" arm is welcomed. 36 is old for baseball, but hopefully he holds up and can help out for a couple more years. So, with some alleviation of a potential 40-man roster crunch and maybe an extra game or two won because we're using a good reliever instead of a bad one, I'm fine with the trade.

And yet, his best season yielded a 2.6 WAR, and he has 9.4 WAR in his career. Relievers just aren’t that valuable relative to starters and position players.

MLBTradeRumors said that both Ruiz and Gasser were among the top ten prospects for the Padres. MLB.com had Ruiz as the Padres' #28 ranked prospect, and I think that's part of the reason some people are worried about the return. Has anyone seen any updated lists that have Ruiz ranked higher in the Padres' organization? Is MLBTradeRumors basing it off their "insiders?" Is it a typo? Here's the article I'm referring to: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/08/brewers-trade-josh-hader-padres.html