monty57

As to JBJ it's not that complicated, its about the AAV which he allowed the team to spread out over multiple years. In the unlikely event he declines his 2022 player option, he will have played for the Brewers for one season with an AAV of 13 million dollars ($6.5 was up front and $6.5 buyout if he declines the option and its spread out over time). If he elects his player option for 2021, he will have been paid the 6.5 million for 2021, 9.5 million dollars for 2022 and there is an 8.5 million dollar buy out on his 2023 mutual option. A total compensation of 24.5 million (an AAV of 12.25) again spread out over time. From Cots: 2 years/$24 (2021-22), plus 2023 mutual option signed by Milwaukee as a free agent 3/5/21 21:$6.5M, 22:$9.5M player option ($6.5M buyout), 23:$12M mutual option ($8M buyout) $3.5M of 2021 salary is deferred, payable $333,333 on Jan. 14, 2022 and $3M on Jan. 13, 2023, and $166,667 on Jan. 12, 2023 $6.5M of player option would be deferred, payable $333,333 on Jan. 13, 2022, and $6.167M on Jan. 12, 2024 $6.5M buyout for 2022 would be payable $3M on Jan. 14, 2022, and $333,333 on Jan. 13, 2023, and $3.167M on Jan. 12, 2024 $8M buyout for 2023 would be payable $1M on Jan. 12, 2024, and $7M on Jan. 15, 2025 So, he was paid $3M in 2021. Assuming he picks up his option, he will be be paid $333,333 on 1/13/22 from the 2022 option, another $333,333 on 1/14/22 from the 2021 salary, plus $3M of 2022's salary during 2022. He will receive $166,667 on 1/12/23 from his 2021 salary, $3M of his 2021 salary on 1/13/23, and $6.167 of his 2022 option on 1/12/24. Assuming the mutual option for 2023 doesn't get picked up, he will get $1M on 1/12/24, and $7M on 1/15/25. No, not confusing at all :-) Bottom line, he got $3M in 2021, and will likely get $3,666,666 in 2022, $3,166,667 in 2023, $7.167M in 2024, and $7M in 2025. Sorry if this is kind of derailing the thread, but it shows how JBJ's contract will effect current and future payrolls. As much as people hate paying him now, they'll really hate it in 2023-2025 when he's eating up a total of $17,333,167 of payroll space for what he did in '21 and '22. I think we'll be pretty tight on funds in 2024 (Woodruff, Burnes, Adames, Lauer, Hauser & Tellez all in final arby year), so that $7.167M going out to JBJ could really hurt.

I would think so. He has a really weird contract that pays lots of different deferrals over lots of different years. Looks like he'd get a $6.5M buyout if he opts out of the $9.5M contract, but he may give up the $8M buyout on the mutual option for 2023 if he opts out now. Most of his money appears to be deferred over the next several years, so the '22 contract shouldn't have too much effect on the '22 payroll, but will affect future years' payrolls through deferrals. I think Stearns and Bradley's agent may have been enjoying some beverages when they put together this deal.

I said that because Reynolds is on the same track as Burnes, Woodruff, and Adames. If all of those guys continue playing well, they will continue to get more expensive. He would fit in nicely as an inexpensive addition in 2022. Trying to keep everyone would start to get tricky by 2023, and would probably be impossible by 2024 as these guys could make $60-$80M in addition to Yelich's $26M while we'd have no good pre-arby guys because we traded them away. Then we fall off a cliff when they leave as free agents. I think that if we make a move like this (obviously we are interested, as Stearns was already making offers), the plan would be to have all of these guys together for a year or two and then start trading them off before they all bust our budget and then leave for free agency. Since the group that would be free agents around the same time would include Burnes, Woodruff, Adames, Reynolds, Urias, Hader, Suter, Peralta, Tellez, Lauer and Houser, that'd sure be a lot of talent to lose, especially if the plan is to trade away our good "near MLB-ready" prospects like Mitchell and Small. Stearns has always preached "sustained success," so it would seem odd of him to put everything into a short "window" and then be stuck with a franchise that would be pretty much devoid of much talent at any level. Hence, why I think a trade for Reynolds would be a shorter-term plan of having a lot of talent for a couple years before flipping a lot of the roster for younger talent.

Reynolds will be in arby year 1 (of 4) next year. It makes a lot of sense to go for players with a lot of team control remaining, but what I keep thinking is that we're getting a lot of guys who will get expensive at the same time. Adding someone like Reynolds should make a lot of sense, but there is no way we could afford all of our guys in a couple of years, especially if we're trading away all of our good prospects who are nearly ready to start helping out (for league minimum) at the MLB level. We'd essentially be trading away our "near-MLB ready" prospects for guys entering arby, see if we win next year, and then start trading our arby guys for "near MLB-ready" prospects. Maybe that makes some sense if we're looking to get a "free" year of Reynolds before trading him for a haul equal to what we gave up. I guess we'd have a little bit of time to see what happens and how guys play before deciding the strategy of trading them away. At least these guys should retain trade value, so it'd be better than getting locked into big, untradeable contracts. I guess there would be worse problems to have than to have so many high value arby guys that you can't afford all of them, so you have to trade some of them for a boatload of prospects. But, I still don't think I'd trade away the farm for him.

I don't know if trading Mitchell and Small would be considered "emptying the farm," but it would securely notch us into the position of "worst farm in baseball" without many (any?) "difference makers" coming up. As it stands right now, we're looking at falling off a big cliff in three years. If we trade away our top guys just to try to "win now," we're setting ourselves up to be in much worse shape than the Cubs are in right now. We'd probably be looking at losing 100+ games a year for an extended period, and I highly doubt that Stearns (who preaches "sustainable success") would stick around to get us through that mess. Mitchell is the heir apparent for CF when Cain and JBJ are off the books, giving us good production for league minimum which can allow for us to retain some of our more expensive players. Meanwhile, Ashby and Small give us some hope that we will be able to maintain a good rotation when Burnes and Woodruff are traded away prior to losing them to free agency "for nothing." I believe that's the only way we avoid the aforementioned "big cliff." Trading Mitchell and Small would basically be doing a Marlins-style strategy to put everything on the table for one year and then blow it all up. Note that if Burnes, Woodruff and Adames continue to play at their current level, they'll each make $20M+ in their final year of arby. Throw in the "big time bats" you're looking at trading for, and there is no way the Brewers could afford their players in a 2-3 years, so the "Marlins blow up strategy" would be after next year, or maybe 2023 at the latest. That's putting way too much risk on the table for me. I think we need to hold onto our top prospects, go into next year with a slightly modified version of the team that won 95 games this year, and move forward with a "sustainable success" strategy and not one that pretty much guarantees us a decade-long, painful rebuild.

I don't think our salary constraints are as bad as people think. Cain and JBJ are only under contract one more year and that will clear $30m from the payroll in 2023. There will be arbitration raises between now and then but they could backload a deal. The problem is that the arby guys will start getting really expensive by then. I hope Burnes, Woodruff, Adames, etc. continue to play at high levels, but if they do, those three could be around $20M each in 2-3 years. We'll still have Yelich, so we could have four players taking up $80-90M of our payroll. That alone probably isn't realistic, let alone adding another high salary player.

I guess the solace to be found is that the team was built on pitching and defense, and that got them 95 wins and a division championship. We knew this going into the season, and it worked. We'd all like to see more runs scored, but I'd hate to veer too far from a strategy that netted us one of the best teams in Brewer history. The Braves got hot, and that has pushed them past us and onto a lead over the Dodgers in the NLCS. I'm sure that Stearns knows this team better than we do, so he knows it's strengths and weaknesses. He made some moves mid-season to improve the offense, and I hope he doesn't overreact now just because the team got ice cold at the wrong time. If they had gone on a cold streak in August and got red hot in late September/October, we'd still be cheering them on in the NLCS. That's baseball. If having a few of the best hitters netted you a championship, the Angels would be hanging a banner this year. We have a solid team going into next year, and even if we don't make a move, I think we're the favorites to win the division. I trust that Stearns will do something to improve the roster, and I'm sure it will be something that none of us will predict in advance. I just don't expect it to be a "big money" deal, as I don't think we have "big money" to spend.

My guess is you add another $5.5M to the Adames and Burnes pair. That really isn't the way arbitration works. Those guys will be going through it for the first time, and will be limited on how much they can make, regardless of how productive they are. Not perfect comps, but Max Fried and Mike Soroka were first year arby in 2021. They earned $3.5M and $2.8M respectively. Jack Flaherty got $3.9M. Walker Buehler signed a 2-yr/$8M deal for '21 & '22 for his first two arby years. Our own Brandon Woodruff got $3.275 in his first year of arby. For Shortstop, Dansby Swanson got $6.0M. Cory Seager's path through arby was $4.0/$7.6M/$13.75, while Baez was $5.2M/$10M/$11.65M and Lindor was $10.5M/$17.5M/$22.3M. Most of these are one-year deals signed to avoid arby, which I guess will happen with the Brewers and their players. Plus, we had the Covid effects, so no idea how much that may have altered things. With Beuhler and Flaherty (both Cy Young caliber guys) getting under $4M, the estimate of $4M for Burnes could be very close. Adames could be anywhere, depending on who they see as a comp, but if these few examples I looked up are good for anything, I think Adames could be more expensive than Burnes, even though Burnes may be the better player. Whatever the final tally, we have a lot of deserving players who are going to start getting a lot more expensive.

It also means that fifteen new "lineup spots" open up, so demand for position players / hitters goes up, and therefore the price goes up. Not to mention that some of these teams are bigger spenders who may not have been in on a player, but now will be. Since you mentioned Aguilar, he could be a prime example. Maybe the demand for first basemen is low, but now he may be in high demand with the extra DH roles which he could fit perfectly. I agree with your thought that as far as the Brewers are concerned, this could be a bad year to add the DH. If the competition's offense gets better, and ours stays the same, in relative terms we've gotten worse.

Since we're still in that time of year that we can dream, Bryant would be an ideal fit. He's got MVP potential at the plate, plays all over the field, and the Cub fans would hate seeing him in a Brewer uniform... but I don't really think he's an option. I think the Brewers will be in a bit of a cash crunch and won't be able to add too much salary, but I'd really like to see them pick up someone who can mash against LHP as the Brewers really seem to struggle against lefties.

According to Cots, 20 MLB teams (2/3 of the league) had an opening day 26 man roster under $150M this year. I guess very few teams are serious about winning these days. Of the ten teams that were over that threshold, half of them (the Mets, Phillies, Nationals, Angels and Padres) all failed to make the playoffs, the Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals and Dodgers only made the Wild Card. The one division leader with an opening day payroll over $150M was Houston. The Brewers ($99.3M), Rays ($66.7M), White Sox ($128.7), Braves ($131.4) and Giants ($149.5) weren't even trying, and they still took five of the six divisions. I guess "being serious about winning" isn't strongly correlated to actually winning. Or maybe it's just that teams all have budgets, and while spending money can help, and being in a big market is definitely advantageous, there is more to "being serious about winning" than simply spending yourself into the red. Anyone who is "serious about" being successful in any business is certainly "serious about" being financially sound. I'm glad Attanasio is, and I'm also glad that he's enough of a fan that when he really thinks there's a deal out there that will put them over the top (Moose/Grandal, Justin Turner), he is willing to go over budget in an effort to make that deal happen. He's just not crazy enough to go too far overboard.

If your fantasy scenario came to exist, then yes they would fold up, as would the Rays, A's, Royals, and others. Of course, baseball will never do this because the bigger market teams need to have someone to play, so they can't implement a rule that would bankrupt at least a third of their franchises. Now, if they were to make all the teams share their TV revenues equally, then they could implement a "floor," and I'd be all for it. But I don't see that happening either.

However, it does work for some teams (Dodgers) so obviously, if you have stupid money to spend, and you spend it in the right places, it can work... When "the Magic Johnson group" bought the Dodgers, they threw out "stupid money" and didn't win. When they realized that that strategy didn't work, they went out and signed the best GM in the game in Andrew Friedman. This was the guy who took Tampa, a team with one of the lowest revenues in baseball and continually beat up on the Yankees and Red Sox. Give Friedman a basically limitless revenue stream, and you end up with today's LA Dodgers. So the Dodgers did not get where they are by spending "stupid money." The Orioles got where they are by spending "stupid money," and as long as Angelos is the owner, I never see them getting better. The Dodgers got where they are by having a large payroll and spending it smartly. They probably draft & develop as good as anyone, they just have the luxury of extending their guys, and not having to worry about doing things like trading Hader because he could make $10M next year (which is the theme of this thread). They don't have to discuss whether or not the owner should dig into his own pockets for our viewing pleasure, because their TV deal pays them more each year than they can spend under the luxury tax. As we saw with Turner last offseason, if we decide to "go into the red and make a big splash," they can just outbid us and it doesn't hurt them at all. What do we do then, spend big on the next guy (JBJ) just to show that we can spend? The big market teams will always be able to outbid us, even if Attanasio decided to drive himself and the Brewers into bankruptcy. I think we have a good owner and a GM who knows how to win within his budget. The biggest thing that could derail the Brewers is if they try to spend too much money, and get themselves in a financial mess that keeps them from competing for an extended period of time. Stearns has made a lot of good decisions, and a few bad ones. The bad ones, like the Yelich extension or the JBJ signing, get magnified because of our payroll limitations. There is no doubt that there is an advantage to the teams that can spend more money, and it's unfortunate that the Brewers can't do that. That said, I'm happy that the Brewers' finance office understands the situation and doesn't do something that could cripple the team.

It is highly unlikely that any ownership group is going to be willing to guarantee that they will lose tens of millions of dollars a year for a period of time just to slightly increase the odds of going farther in the playoffs. Even if we shocked the world and raised payroll far beyond team revenue by signing a couple of players to big deals, we'd still be spending $50M-$100M less than most of the other playoff teams. Note that these players probably wouldn't sign one-year deals, so we'd be sitting on some ugly contracts for quite a while. Detroit's owner (I believe his name was Ilitch) did this a while back, but only because he knew he only had a few years left to live and he didn't care how much of his estate he lost before he died. His kids are still working their way out of that mess. Oh, and he never did get to see his team win the World Series. Spending gobs of extra money and destroying the franchise for the foreseeable future didn't guarantee a championship but it did guarantee years of futility. I don't think it's productive or healthy to get mad at the owner because he's not doing something that no one would (or should) ever do. Attanasio has brought winning baseball to Milwaukee, which is defying the odds since he is at a significant competitive disadvantage because of MLB's revenue structure. Hopefully, by continuing to field competitive teams while practicing fiscal responsibility, we will see a World Series winner in Milwaukee. But yes, I do use the term "hope," because nothing will guarantee a championship. Just ask the 20 teams that had a higher payroll than the Brewers this year, only one of which will win it all. I choose to be happy that we got Attanasio as an owner. He has given hope to a previously hopeless franchise.

A lot of teams dislike taking players to arbitration, because in the meeting they basically have to berate the player and say why he doesn't deserve the extra money. I'm sure there are a lot of players who have had animosity towards their team after arby hearings.

I don't buy the theory that "you can't be serious about winning" if you ever trade a good player or if you fail to spend a ton of money on a guy. The Brewers are a small revenue / small payroll team. They are at a significant disadvantage to teams that can spend a lot of money, so they have to be very smart with things like team control and player cost. Few small market teams have ever shown "sustained success," but the two who have shown some success are the A's and the Rays. I would argue that both of them "are serious about winning," and both of them have traded away good players as the price tag gets higher and the team control gets smaller. Trading away a guy like Hader hurts in one area, but can help in others. They will get young talent back from the team they trade Hader to, and they will not have to pay Hader, so they will have some money to either acquire other players, or to help them afford the pay raises to other guys on their team. I think Stearns has earned some trust from the fans, and if Hader is traded, there is a good chance that they could end up being a better team... certainly in the long-run and possibly even in the short-run.

The thing about trading Hader is not only would you get the younger, cheaper player(s) back in the trade, but you would also free up around $25M in payroll over the next two seasons, which could allow you to add even more talent. Me either. Not this offseason. I would like to see them traded prior to departing for free agency, but I wouldn't trade them this offseason. I really don't want to go with this strategy. We would be utterly horrible for at least a decade if we trade away all our prospects now and hold everyone to free agency. No thanks. We certainly don't have to trade Hader this offseason, and if the return isn't there we shouldn't trade him just to trade him, but I would certainly put him on the market and see what people offer.

I agree, and I keep telling my son that to back him off the ledge. In my previous post, I was just wondering if the Brewers' end-of-year strategy might have backfired a bit by cooling off a hot team. Of course, the hottest team going into the playoffs was the Cardinals, and look what that got them.

Since the "bad contracts" are sunk costs that generally hurt the team and there's not much you can do about them, the big thing is whether or not any lessons have been learned. Big, long-term deals can hurt small revenue teams a lot more than they hurt big market teams. When we start discussing what to do with the next star player who is coming to the end of his "team control," remember that we always seem to be wishing that we could get out from under the last bad contract we signed. Once a player is into his arby years, the options are generally: A) Sign the player to a big money, long-term contract before he hits free agency. B) Trade the player before he hits free agency. C) Keep the player on the team until free agency and let him walk "for nothing." Just my opinion, but option "B" is usually the best option for smaller revenue teams.

Thanks, I'm uncertain about the deferred money thing as well, but I agree that if you're going to count Yelich as "only" $22M for 2022, then you have to count Braun's payouts against this year's payroll. Conversely, if the money for Braun was put away in the years he played, then the money for this year's deferrals should be counted this year and Braun's shouldn't. For next year's roster building, the big thing for me is how many pre-arby guys we'll have in order to fill out the "extra" spots. If we can fill most of those spots with league minimum guys, then we could possibly sign an "Avi Garcia-type" deal. Something like 2/$20M to fill a hole, getting us to around a $115M payroll. If we even have to spend $1M-$2M on a few of those spots, our payroll is going to fill up pretty quickly, and we might have to look at a $6-8M player as our "big addition." Of course, what we do with Hader is going to have a big impact on the 2022 roster, but that's probably best left for its own thread.

Maybe there's nothing to this, but around the time they clinched the division, they didn't necessarily "play to lose," but they certainly didn't "play to win." They rested (over-rested?) a lot of their starters, kept guys on the IL with things that they normally would play through, took their starters out early in games, etc. This was around the time everyone stopped playing well, they lost a lot more than they won, and it's carried over into the playoffs. On one hand, they stayed healthy (Williams' injury wasn't an in-game thing) which really seems to have been their main goal over the final stretch of the season. On the other hand, baseball is full of routines, and when you take guys out of their routine it can throw them off. It's just a thought, maybe it's all just coincidence that they started losing when they changed the way they did things, or maybe their strategy backfired. It certainly couldn't help their confidence that they were getting kicked around by everyone for the last couple of weeks. Anything can happen in a short series. Hopefully today they come out swinging and send the series back to Milwaukee.

Couldn't they just not reset the clock if the pitcher steps off?

According to Cots, including Garcia's $2M buyout, we're committed to $71.027 next year with Cain, Yelich, Bradley, Wong, and Peralta under contract. For sake of argument, let's assume we have a DH and Maile and Gustave are the only non-tenders. That puts us at $23.675 + $71.027 = $94.702MM. That covers one catcher (Narvaez), 1B/DH (Tellez, Vogelbach), 2B (Wong), SS (Adames), 3B (Urias), three OF (Cain, Yelich, Bradley), one bench player (Peterson), all five starting pitchers (Woodruff, Burnes, Peralta, Houser, Lauer), and two relievers (Hader, Suter). So 17 of our 26 players are covered. There are some obvious pre-arby guys in Taylor, Williams and others. If all of our nine open spots average around league minimum (I'll say $600,000 average for easy math), that would be an additional $5.4M, putting us at $100,102,000. This could be a little off, as I believe some of Yelich's and Bradley's 2022 money is deferred.

I think a big thing about this offense is that there isn't someone who you absolutely wouldn't want coming up in a big situation. In past playoff years, we had more "big names" that you'd want to be up in certain situations, but the back of the lineup had some "black holes." I like that we don't have that this year.

According to Cots, we have $71,027,000 tied up next year with only Cain, Yelich, Wong, Bradley, and Peralta under contract. Hader, Woodruff, Narvaez, Suter, Vogelbach, Peterson, Burnes, Tellez, Adames, Urias, Houser, Gustave, and Lauer will all be at some stage of arbitration next year while we'll lose/need to replace Escobar, Norris, Anderson, Pina, Boxberger, and Strickland. Olson is making $5,000,000 in year one arby, so he'll be in line for big raises over the next two seasons of control. Financially, we're closer to the point of trading away arby-eligible players for prospects/pre-arby guys, than we are of trading prospects for expensive players. It's fun to think of how we can keep our team together while adding other stars to the roster. I just don't think it's realistic. We need young, inexpensive guys to fill out the roster in order to be able to afford some of the older, more expensive guys.