monty57

Not really. The Rays were willing to trade Adames because they had Franco ready at AAA. Players are often traded because they're getting close to free agency. There are lots of reasons teams decide to trade players. The Yankees have money, and are probably looking to sign a free agent first baseman. I think wntrtxn21's point was a valid response when Voit was compared to Pete Alonso. If Voit is really that good, why are the Yankees trying to trade him so they can sign someone else? My guess is that they're looking to make a run at Freeman, who is an upgrade to basically everyone, so if they're looking to sign him to a mega-deal, then clearing some salary would make sense. I'd just hope that the Brewers would be able to pick him up cheaply because the Yankees just want to get rid of him and clear some payroll. In that sense, it would be kind of like the Adames trade where we'd get a good player who just happened to not be as good as the guy the opposing team is replacing him with. The injuries are certainly worrisome, so I wouldn't want to give up too much, but if we could get him cheaply he'd be worth the risk. He has a ton of upside, but it would get very frustrating if the injury issues persist.

I think the problem isn't that we couldn't add this year, the problem is that we will have significant arby raises over the next few seasons, so we probably don't want to add a big, multi-year contract. If we can nab an upgrade on a one-year deal I think we'd do it. If the CBA negotiations drag out, I think the odds of finding a guy willing to sign to a one-year deal could increase.

I think that's all fair. But, I guess my point is that if the 2020 Brewers were willing to pay 29-year old Garcia $10m that offseason coming off a 'good' year, and expected 2-2.5 WAR out of him, they're probably pretty solidly ok with the thought of paying Renfroe $7.5 million with perhaps a more realistic expectation of the same WAR. I agree, and like I said, I'm happy with the trade. I was responding to JosephC's quote wondering why teams haven't been able to get a good return in trade for Renfroe. I think the power/SLG are out of favor right now, so that could make "power first" guys good value targets in trade. I think Renfroe's skillset fits well with the Brewers' current makeup. Dumping salary will help the Brewers make another move. I'm not sure you'll see a "big move," depending on how big you're looking for, but I expect Stearns to use the savings to do something else to improve the roster. Unfortunately, they're spending $26M on a "difference maker," but he's currently wetting the bed. They're spending another $18M on a second "difference maker" who is hurt a lot, and when playing only makes a difference on defense. The Brewers are small revenue team, and that $44M is a huge chunk of the team's payroll. It's possible that in this CBA-influenced offseason, a good hitter will have a hard time finding a home, and will settle for a one-year deal. I could see the Brewers going over budget for a one-year deal, but I doubt they'll sign a high AAV, multi-year deal with anyone. There are too many arby raises in the near-term future for them to make a big commitment.

That's one of the unfortunate things of the financial disparity that MLB chooses to allow. The Red Sox could cut JBJ today, pay him the money owed, and not think twice about it. The Brewers don't have that luxury. Even $8-$10M a year in dead money seriously hurts the Brewers' chance to compete.

Here's an interesting thought: If Yelich bounces back and has an MVP caliber year next year, how many posters who today are willing to trade away our top prospects just to get out of the deal will still be calling for Stearns to trade him away while he's hot and he might actually be able to get out of the deal?

This is from the opening post. I think everyone would love to get out of the contract if we could just snap our fingers and make it go away, but as others have said, we would probably have to trade our top 20 prospects along with Yelich and may still have to pay extra cash or take on a bad contract, so it's pretty much an untradeable contract. But that leads me to the sentence I quoted. After realizing that the Yelich contract could cripple our team for most of the next decade, if somehow we were able to get rid of that deal, why on earth would we jump right back in to the fire? Most long-term deals end badly. Yelich is kind of unique that it started badly, but we can't really afford to have large chunks of our meager payroll sitting as "dead money" on a washed-up player. If there is one silver lining from the Yelich deal, it would be that Brewers' management realizes that they should not sign anyone to mega-deals. They would be much better off if they had traded Yelich when he was a year from free agency rather than signing the extension, and I hope they take that path with future star players. The only extensions they should be signing are ones done when players are still in their pre-arby years and they can get a Lucroy, Braun (first extension, not second), or Peralta type deal. If the player isn't willing to sign at that point, then be prepared to trade them when they're down to a year or two of control remaining. As far as free agent deals, we're probably best sitting in the 2-4 year, or maybe even 1-3 year range. We're not going to win by trying to outbid the big money teams for the superstars, so we have to maintain financial flexibility and stay away from the big, crippling mistakes.

It does bother me that the metrics have Renfroe as looking like a fairly valuable player, meanwhile the Rays couldn't swing any deal for him after the 2020 season and had to DFA him, and the Red Sox dealt him in a deal where it looks like the other side's biggest motivation was to unload a bad contract. If MLB GMs see him as a "real" 2-2.5 WAR player, one would think he would bring a much better return if put on the trade block. While chicks may dig the long ball, recent trends seem to show that GM's aren't all that keen on "power first" (or more appropriately "power only") guys. Renfroe isn't as "power only" as a Chris Carter or Daniel Vogelbach, but his offensive value skews to power over OBP when the baseball world is more enamored with OBP over power. I'm happy with the trade, and I think his power and ability to hit LHP fit nicely in our current roster, but I certainly wouldn't want a team full of sub-.300 OBP guys.

In looking at it that way, we have Renfroe instead of Garcia. Somewhat of a wash in offense, and a downgrade in defense. We also get a full season of Adames. Tellez (.814 OPS) will get a lot of the PAs that went to Hiura (.557 OPS), Vogelbach (.730 OPS) and Shaw (.616 OPS) last season, while Taylor (.778 OPS) will likely get a lot of the PAs that went to guys like JBJ (.497 OPS) and McKinney (.619 OPS). Meanwhile, Urias won't have the pressure of being the starting SS, where he floundered (OPS of .697, wRC+ of 88, -8.0 career UZR/150), and will be at 3B (.809 OPS/117 wRC+/6.3 career UZR/150) or 2B (1.044/176/-0.3) where he seems much more comfortable. It will be interesting to see what happens once the CBA issues are figured out and the offseason can resume. I'm sure Stearns isn't done tinkering, especially since he now has a little more money to work with, so we won't know what the finished product looks like until the offseason's over. And it's good to remember that even after giving up for the final two weeks of the season, we still won 95 games last year. So, if all we do is replace what we lost, we still have a pretty good team.

Avi Garcia and Renfroe are about as close as one can get for comparison and Garcia just got a 4-year $53M deal. If that's a soft trade/free agent market then we have an answer as to why we traded for Renfroe. Offense Avi: 3,749 PA, .270/.325/.431/.756, wRC+ 104 Renfroe: 2,161 PA, .237/.297/.490/.787, wRC+106 Defense (RngR, ErrR, UZR, UZR/150) Avi: Total -9.2, -2.5, 6.2, 1.1 RF: -7.1, -2.8, 6.0, 1.2 Renfroe: Total 1.0, -7.4, -0.9, -0.4 RF: -0.9, -7.4, -1.3, -0.8 Steamer projects Avi for 2.2 WAR, Renfroe for 1.3 WAR Renfroe provides better power and has better range in the field. Avi is better at getting on base and is a significantly better defender overall (he's a positive defender, while Renfroe is negative). I think it was a good move on Stearns' part to pick up Renfroe, and he's certainly not "garbage," but I don't think he's as good a player as Avi. Acquiring Renfroe makes the '22 (and probably '23) Brewers a better team, and the trade saved them money to make another upgrade.

It could be possible that he ends up signing a one-year deal, but I think he'd sign with a team that would guarantee him a starting shortstop job. Shortstop is a premium position, so putting up the numbers he does at shortstop will get him paid more than putting up the same numbers at third base. So, the question would be whether we'd sign him to a one-year deal and move Adames to third for a season.

I'd also like to add that while Bradley is a negative value player, the money in the contract is much less worrisome to a big revenue team like the Red Sox than it is to the Brewers. A bad player is a bad player, but if the Red Sox really like the prospects, they can easily eat Bradley's contract, while the Brewers were hamstrung by it.

I can see both sides of this. I like the idea of stockpiling prospects, and I believe that small revenue teams need a steady stream of young players making their way onto the MLB roster. I also think that we needed to get some help on the MLB roster, and don't have a lot of free cash to sign people. Renfroe has warts, but to get him for a negative value player and two prospects who are far from the Top 100 lists seems like a good deal. The way the Brewers use their outfielders, the 4th guy is going to get a lot of PAs, and I don't think anyone wanted to see those go to Bradley. Our MLB team should be better after this move, and we didn't have to give up any of our top prospects to do it. One of Stearns' talents seems to be spotting talent at a young age. I'll trust his judgement on letting Binelas go. He has a lot of power, but he also struck out in 1/4 of his PAs as an "advanced college bat" playing in the low minors. I wish him well, but I think he's a long shot to ever be an MLB player, so I'm not going to lose sleep over him being traded away in order to improve the MLB club. If we trade someone like Mitchell, Ashby, Small, or Turang, then I might worry a little, but not Binelas and Hamilton. This isn't a slam dunk, and when trading prospects there is always a chance that five years down the road it will look like a really bad deal, but right now this looks like a deal that is in the Brewers favor. Just getting out of the Bradley contract makes me happy, and getting a passable MLB starter that helps strengthen a couple weaknesses (RF, good against LHP) is icing on the cake.

I'm worried that the expanded playoffs is the big thing the owners want this year, while the union would like to see less team control for young players, so what we'll end up with is expanded playoffs with one less year of "team control" at the start of a player's career. In my opinion, this would water down the playoffs, while hurting small market teams who need the cheap, early years of team control in order to remain competitive against teams that can pay $40M+/season to star players. Plus, it would mean our young guys (Woodruff, Adames, Burnes, etc) would become free agents a year earlier... but at least the owners would make more money off of the additional playoff games, and the TV networks would get more big money teams in the playoffs each year.

That makes sense. Putting two power hitting teams in a little league stadium won't lead to enough offense, so let's juice the ball.

I don't know, but two "analytically-driven" teams have given her a job, so she's probably got a pretty good head on her shoulders and probably has a good future in the game.

It'd be interesting to know if they were completely random or not. It's bad enough to use two different baseballs, but it's a whole 'nother level if they, for instance, used one ball when a certain pitcher was throwing, or when certain teams were playing.

Yeah, injuries suck but they are a part of sports. Curtiss should have been a nice, cheap bullpen arm to help us not only for the '21 playoff run, but for several years into the future. Then he blew out his arm. I guess it's better that it happened to a player in his pre-arby years than to one that we have a committed salary to, but it still hurts. I hope they can sign him to a minor league contract and hold onto him, but I understand why they non-tendered him. While it's easy to cheer for a slugging home run hitter, non-tendering Vogelbach makes sense. He's around average for 1B bats, but any positive he has there is negated by his defense. While Tellez may not be a world-beater, he's a better player than Vogelbach, and there's really no reason to have both of them on the same roster. We're better off to find a RH bat that can play 1B on days Tellez sits, and hopefully some other positions as well. Of course, that's assuming we aren't going to find a big upgrade via trade or free agency. If we do that, then we really don't need two LH, 1B-only guys sitting on the bench.

Yeah he was my only hope for a higher profile bat on the free agent market. Not gonna happen though. It’ll have to come via trade. I'm not getting my hopes up, but Rizzo seems like a much better fit for us than Bryant in terms of high-profile bats. Much cheaper and could end up being just as good for us. I bet Rizzo is going to be one of the later major signings though, since he will probably wait for the 1B market to resolve around him (Freeman signing, Olson possibly traded, etc) With his versatility and RH bat, Bryant would be a great fit for the Brewers, but I don't think there's any way they have the money to sign him. Rizzo is probably more realistic, especially if he's unsigned later in the offseason and starts to get a little nervous.

Contreras is in his final pre-arby year, so they should either extend him as "the guy they're going to build around," or they should trade him this offseason. Catchers are most valuable when the pitching staff has a full season to work with, so he'd bring back more now than he would at the trade deadline. Signing Gomes seems to show that Contreras will be traded rather than extended. Gomes seems to be a perfectly adequate guy to provide a veteran presence during the ugly first couple of years of a rebuild, while showing fans they're "doing something" by signing a veteran name they've heard of. He helps guide a lot of young pitchers for a year and a half, and they hope they can flip him at the 2023 trade deadline.

Castellanos is looking for a seven or eight year deal. No chance the Brewers are in on that long a deal. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/11/nick-castellanos-rumors-seven-eight-year-deal.html

Teams will always be willing to trade tomorrow for a better chance of success today. If they teams show any unwillingness to do so, the fans and media will get up in arms about them "not trying to win." As long as teams do this, small market teams will have a chance to remain competitive, and the same fans demanding "their team" team to trade trade away the future for the present will wonder how a team like Tampa can continue to win at the MLB level while having a farm that is stocked with talent.

Maybe it's not perfect, but it's certainly better than wins, saves, and RBIs like the current system uses.

The Brewers looming arbitration situation could definitely require some tricky decisions over the next couple few offseasons, but if the A's had the Brewers stadium, ownership, fan support & payroll capability they would probably be adding to their team this offseason instead of selling off key pieces to the highest bidders. Right, but they're looking at 10 players making $57M, while in a couple years we'll be looking at four players (Yelich, Woodruff, Burnes, Adames) potentially making around $86M, with a lot of other guys (Urias, Lauer, Houser, Williams, etc) in arby and very few (if any) good, young players making league minimum. Oh, and we'll still be paying JBJ, Braun and probably a few others their deferred salary. If we add Olson, we're basically trading for him for one year, and will look to trade him (and Hader) away next offseason before they leave for free agency. I can understand that strategy, but I'd prefer it if Stearns can pull of some of his "magic" and find a guy with 5-6 years of control left, who will still be around for a few years after we've had to start trading away (or losing to free agency) guys like Woodruff, Adames and Burnes. These would be guys like Adames, who will get the board sarcastically saying "our big acquisition is a guy hitting below .200, print up the World Series tickets now," only to be saying "this guy should be MVP" a few weeks later. Another example would be Urias, who has turned a lot of doubters into fans. I know I ask a lot, but Stearns and his team seem to be pretty good at finding young guys who turn out to be pretty good players. I doubt he's going to do what everyone expects, like trading young talent for a "big bat" with limited control. I think he's more likely to trade away one of our starting pitchers (Lauer, Houser) for a young position player with a lot of control.

If MLBTradeRumors is correct, and the asking price at the deadline was for a package centered around Julio Rodriguez from Seattle, then we're probably out. We would probably need to include at least one good player from our MLB team in the deal, and I don't see us doing that. Honestly, I don't see Pittsburgh doing that either, as they want elite prospect(s) for Reynolds and we don't really have any elite prospects. Unless they come way down from their ask, which is centered around one of the top 2-3 prospects in the game, I don't see him coming to Milwaukee. I have high hopes for Mitchell, but he doesn't have close to the value of Rodriguez. I know that some people have a problem with BaseballTradeValues.com, but they have Reynolds at a value of 85. Mitchell is at 22.2, Turang 18.2, Urias 33.5, Ashby 16.9, Adames 48.9, Frelick 16.3, Houser 19.2, Lauer 9.2, Small 6.6, Williams 40.5. Those are the names that would be headlining a trade for Reynolds, and it would take several of them to make the trade. If we're not going to put someone like Adames in the trade, then we'd be handing them our whole farm, playing for the next couple of years and being godawful for a decade or so. I we do include Adames, then why make the trade? If Stearns makes this trade, I'll assume he's "going all in" to win a World Series before he leaves for the Mets and lets the next guy sort out the mess. Unfortunately, even if we brought in Reynolds and maybe some others, the Vegas oddsmakers would still have us behind at least the Dodgers, and possibly some other NL teams to even make the World Series. The saving grace would be that after the first year or two, we could blow up the major league team (a la the Marlins) and that would go a long way towards re-stocking the farm.

Since the Brewers could have three players making around $20M each in arby in a couple of years, does anyone else see the Brewers being in a similar situation to the current A's team before long? Wouldn't this problem just get worse if we trade some of our MLB-ready young talent to acquire more players who are already in their arby years? Rather than trading away Ashby, I think we'll look for more guys in Ashby's situation (just breaking into the majors, but may be blocked by current star players). Or, we'll look for an Adames-type situation of a talented young player with some MLB playing time who is set to lose his position to an up-and-coming prospect. Bottom line, we need more guys with 5-6 years of control. We do not need to add to the glut of players who will be free agents in 2-3 years.