monty57

The Brewers essentially "control" him for three non-guaranteed, below market value, one-year deals. If they do not get a substantial discount for signing him to an extension, there is no reason for doing it. If they are going to pay market rate for him, then eliminate the risk by going year-to-year in arby and then re-signing him (or a similar player) as a free agent in three years.

More than likely will be Hiura who goes down when Cain comes back. I hope so. Hiura needs more at bats. Even though Jace and Rowdy are both lefty sticks - Hiura doesn't hit lefties anyways, so be pretty disgusted if he isn't the one sent down. I don't understand the platoon they're currently using, since both Tellez and Hiura have reverse splits, but they're using them in a traditional platoon. Might as well just let Tellez play everyday and see what he can do.

Baez is the cautionary tale here. What if the Cubs had extended him after 2018? He was 25, coming off an 881 OPS season, and had three arby years remaining. Sounds familiar. Yes, during Baez's pre-arby years, he accumulated 2.2, 2.4 & 5.4 WAR, helped win a World Series and was coming off a year in which he ran 2nd to Yelich for league MVP. Cub fans were probably more excited about Baez's future at that point than Brewer fans are about Adames right now. Since then, he posted 4.4, 0.0 and is now sitting at 1.9 WAR for this season. He has taken a significant step back, but still feels he should be paid as if he was still playing like he was a few years ago. Adames is on a similar track to Baez's early career in that he's having a great season in his final pre-arby year. While hindsight is 20/20, no one has a crystal ball. Will he continue on and be a perennial All-Star / MVP candidate, or will he regress? From the team's perspective, they can't offer a contract assuming that the outlier year is the "new normal," and that he will be a superstar every year going into the future when he's only had one "superstar year" so far. As has been said, both sides would have to agree to do an extension. The Brewers would offer significantly less than he could get if he remains a star player and goes year-to-year since they're assuming the risk. Adames could feel that the guarantee is worth it, or he could be willing to take the risk in order to maximize his potential earnings. If they agree to an extension, then the Brewers will pencil him in as a core player for the foreseeable future. If not, then they can't build around him, as they'll have him for a couple of seasons and then they'll trade him before he becomes a free agent. Or, he regresses and none of this matters, and the team and the fans would be glad they didn't extend him. Another big question may come down to how much money the Brewers will have. If they can't afford to offer multiple extensions, they may have to choose between guys like Adames or Burnes for who gets the extension offer. Lots of big questions, so Stearns and Attanasio have some big decisions to make.

Right. If he goes year-to-year through arby, there will be more data as the years pass and he will get paid accordingly. If the Brewers were to offer an extension now, they would have to go based on his expectation for the next 3-5 years, and his past history would definitely come into play. Then I'm sure they have a formula for the discount they'd expect for taking on all the risk by guaranteeing a huge sum of money, and they'd have their offer. I very much hope that he continues to be a 1.000+ OPS guy, and if he does then he will end up making tons of money. At this point in his career, he's been a little less valuable (based on WAR) than the guys I mentioned earlier (Turner, Baez, Story), so it would seem that he would get a little less money than them. Well have to see how "baseball inflation" goes, as the past couple offseasons can't really be considered normal. I tried to find guys who were still in arby, so the numbers shouldn't be too far off from where they will be for Adames.

Don't want to derail a thread about Adames, but Cots says "20:$575,200, 21:$1M, 22:$2.25M, 23:$3.5M, 24:$5.5M, 25:$8M club option ($1.5M buyout), 26:$8M club option (no buyout)" for Peralta's contract. If '25 and '26 are pure team options, that changes things, and could turn out to be one of the best contract extensions a team has ever signed. Goes to show how much discount a team gets when they offer extensions to players when they are in their pre-arby years.

Sure, you don't want to pay market rates for a player years away from free agency, but by the same token when Adames is 6 months away from arbitration where his pay will grow exponentially he has no real reason to sign an extension with the Brewers. He, his agent and the Brewers F.O. know if he plays well he'll likely make 25-30 million dollars over the next three years. What are the Brewers going to do; offer him 3yrs/45 and ask for a club option for a 4th year? That type of deal doesn't make any sense for Milwaukee, and offering anything less doesn't really make any sense for Adames (unless he doesn't believe he can continue to perform at this level, or is afraid of a catastrophic injury ruining his career). Do you really think he'll get that much in his three arby years? That seems high for someone who hasn't been a superstar from Day 1 in the big leagues. Guys like Javy Baez ($24.25 in arby), Trevor Story ($28M) and Trea Turner ($22M) are in their final year of arby (Note that I doubled the 2020 actual pay since they got lowered salaries for the year). Marcus Semian actually came up as a "similar batters through age 25" on baseball-reference, and he made $22.25M through arby before signing a one-year / $18M deal with the Jays. Adames has been great as a Brewer, but I think $25-$30M is a bit high as an expected range if they were looking to make an offer today. But, even if I'm wrong and he is expected to get the $25-$30M you suggested, why would the Brewers offer 3 yrs/$45M? If they were to make an offer, they would be taking on the risk, so they should get some sort of discount for the arbitration years, and what he could expect to make if he remained a good player and hit free agency. If he wouldn't agree to taking a discount, then there is no reason the Brewers should take on the risk of injury or underperformance by guaranteeing him a contract when they already have him under "team control" for three more years. I'd think your $45M would be closer to the five year total than a three year total for an extension offer (discount the arby years to around $18-20M in total, plus around $14-16M for each FA year). At the end of the day, it would be his call as to whether or not he'd be willing to give up some potential future earnings in order to get a guaranteed contract. If not, then we have plenty of other players we could consider extending, and we'd look at Adames as a guy we might have through 2023 and then look to trade him away before his final arby year. We can't get too emotionally attached to any player, especially if we're only basing it on a partial season since the trade was made.

I know it's still only July, but it's nice that the Brewers have a big lead at this point in time, and some of their division rivals may be in sell mode soon. That allows them to do what they think is best health-wise for their starters without as much worry that losing one game could cost them the playoffs.

They have a .589 win % right now, and 162 x .589 = 95.42 wins. Of course, that doesn't take strength of schedule into things, but they're on pace to be close. Exactly. The Brewers don't want to end up with the #1 seed in the NL, as the Wild Card winner will be San Diego, Los Angeles or San Francisco, while the #2 seed will end up getting home field advantage against the winner from the East.

You can't just take super team friendly deals you make up in your head and compare them to actual deals signed by players and say they're better. Of course they are, but that has nothing to do with anything. If Adames is signing an extension at this point you'll probably have to pay him a market rate into his mid 30s. It would be like trying to sign Freddy to that deal right now after he's already an all star. Not gonna happen. When a team signs a pre-arby or arby player to an extension, they are transferring risk from the player to the team (much like insurance), so they should get a discount for doing so. The closer the player gets to free agency, the less the discount. The cheapest contracts are done early on, but they also bear the most risk to the team. Think of it this way: The Brewers could have offered Burnes an extension when he was a rookie and looking terrible, and right now they'd look like geniuses. On the other hand, they could have offered Hiura an extension when he was a rookie and looking like a stud, and they'd be regretting it. That's the risk the team is taking on, so they are heavily compensated for it by getting a significant discount to what the player would reasonably get if they went year-to-year through arby and into free agency. Yelich had signed an extension with the Marlins, and since he played well it looked like a steal. When the Brewers signed him, there wasn't any need for him to extend because he'd already made tens of millions of dollars, so he didn't need to give much of a discount. Adames to this point in his career has made roughly $1.5M. Not chump change, but not enough for him to retire comfortably if his career were to suddenly end. Next year, he'll probably make a couple million, and that will gradually increase until he's out of arby and into free agency. If we are going to offer an extension, I'd do it soon, as his discount is getting smaller and smaller the longer we wait, and in a year or two we'd basically be paying him full market value and the Brewers can't afford to pay too many good players their full market value. Some players will be willing to give up potential future earning for the security of a long-term guaranteed extension, and some won't. I'm a proponent of offering extensions to good pre-arby guys, along the line of those signed with Peralta, Lucroy and Braun's first extension, and building your core around those players. Once the players get into their arby years, it's pretty much a free agent contract, and the Brewers are not going to be able to win continually if they're building their core with free agent deals. As it stands right now, the players who will be free agents after the 2024 season include Woodruff, Peralta, Burnes, Adames, Lauer, and Houser. It will be interesting to see how they play things. Will they stack the deck and try to add as much talent for a few years as they can before blowing things up, or will they extend some of these guys and trade off others as they near free agency?

Yeah, it will be interesting to see what the Cubs get for Bryant. If the Brewers could pay lower in prospect capital by taking on all of the remaining salary, it would be one thing, but if they have to take on all the salary and give up their top prospects, I don't see it happening. Right now, the Brewers are set up to have a very good rotation for the next three years, with some guys hopefully ready to move to the top of the rotation when the "big three" are nearing the end of their team control. If they trade away guys like Ashby and Small for short-term rentals, they will slightly increase their shot at a World Series this year, while seriously hurting their future. Summed up, I'd rather see Ashby and Small as our #4/5 starters behind Woodruff, Burnes and Peralta, giving us five "top-of-the-rotation" guys for the next three years than see them used to bring in a rental player in a year where we are already way up in the standings with much of the competition selling off talent. If we could get Bryant or Rizzo by paying the remainder of their contract plus some mid-tier guys I'm all for it. Any trade that would require any of our top guys, I'd shy away from and just look to add to the 'pen.

https://www.mlb.com/news/lorenzo-cain-returns-to-brewers-after-season-away This is McCalvy's article prior to Spring Training: "And his legs? Cain grinned. “The legs are coming,” he said. “They’re not where I want them to be, but they will get there before it’s time to play.” From a physical standpoint, Cain concedes he is in nowhere near as good a place as this time last year. His running consisted mostly of chasing his three boys, who have celebrated birthdays Nos. 3, 5 and 6 since the end of a Brewers season which Cain followed via television and FaceTime with teammates. Due to pandemic restrictions, the baseball facilities at OU were closed to outsiders -- even Major Leaguers in possession of a World Series ring -- so Cain didn’t see much in the way of live pitching before Wednesday, when he planned to stand in the batter’s box and track pitches during live batting practice. This was before he got injured early in Spring Training, and again and again after that. He went into 2020 in great shape, then Covid happened, and he decided to stop working out. Kind of sounds like he's cashed out and is ready to retire and spend more time with the kids. Unfortunately, the Brewers are paying him a lot of money whether he works out or not, so he'll still be on the 40-man until the contract is over. I think this is the biggest reason the Brewers felt it was necessary to sign JBJ, but that obviously hasn't worked out well. Up until this offseason, I had always liked the way Cain played and the leadership he brought. From the time of the trade, I wished we hadn't sent him (and others) to KC for Greinke, and I was excited to see him play as a Brewer when he re-signed. But now it just looks to me like he's now a guy who's ready to call it quits but needs to keep going to work for a while before he can retire. I don't expect much from Cain, and at this point I'd like to see what Taylor can bring as an every day CF.

Looking through the raw stats, Tellez and Vogelbach are remarkably similar players. One thing that I think may skew things in Tellez's favor is that he's not a platoon player. Vogelbach hits righties a little better than Tellez, but he needs to be sat down vs LHP, whereas Tellez has actually hit LHP a little better than RHP over his career. Having to platoon your first baseman forces you to build your roster differently than you would if you don't have to platoon your first baseman, so if I had to choose one of them right now, I'd take Tellez. Fortunately, that decision doesn't have to be made right now, and the Brewers will get the rest of this year to see how he looks. The decision that needs to be made now is what to do with Hiura. A platoon doesn't make sense since both Hiura and Tellez hit both handed pitching around the same (leaning to reverse splits for both of them). They obviously don't have a lot of faith in Hiura right now, or they wouldn't have sent him to the minors twice and then traded for Tellez. It would seem that one of Hiura/Tellez will be sent to AAA so both of them can be everyday players.

OK, are you ready to slot him in as an everyday MLB contributor prior to 2023? I really didn't mean for this post to get nitpicked away. I do know these things you guys mention but I think the point is fairly obvious that the Brewers have a loaded front-end of their pitching staff, Hader/Williams, and some vet bats all for roughly ~3 years. What was missing was extra help in the lineup and they won't have a ton of money to spend. I think you're spot on. The Brewers won't have much money to spend in the offseason, so luckily they have their roster pretty much set at every position for the next few seasons. Anderson will be replaced next year by someone like Lauer, and we'll have some other starters pushing for a spot in the MLB rotation, with others filling out the bullpen. Meanwhile, on the offensive side, we hope to have Mitchell replacing Cain/JBJ when their contracts are up, but other than that we don't have a lot to bank on. Hopefully Taylor can help make up for the loss of Garcia (who probably won't exercise his part of the option). The additions of Adames and Tellez, along with Urias starting to play up to his potential, mean that we have every other position filled for at least one more season. As it stands right now, we have C (OPS .874), 3B (.726), SS (.930), 2B (.830), RF (.749 Taylor), LF (.792). If Tellez can just be okay and we get anything from Cain/JBJ, we're not in a bad place going into next season. For the rest of this year, put Garcia's .764 in RF and Taylor in CF, and we don't have nearly as bad an offense as people make it out to be. I'm excited to see how Tellez does going forward. The biggest question for me is whether Hiura goes back to AAA or if they are ready to trade him away. He's really not suited to sit the bench, as he's not hitting well, and he doesn't play good defense. At the time of his last demotion, it seemed best to leave him in AAA for the season. Since he's been brought back up... we'll see what the Brewers decide to do. I get the feeling that they're ready to make him part of a trade.

No problem. He's still a good prospect. Now send him down and let him work on what he learned in his initial outing as a big leaguer. Personally, I'd put him back in the AAA rotation, as his problems seem to have started when he was bumped to the bullpen, and we may need him as a starter again before the end of the season. But, however they use him, today should not be looked at as any kind of precursor to what we should expect to see out of him in the future.

He also had a nice single to the right-side of the infield (against the shift) scoring the runner from second. He has plenty of raw power to hit home runs without trying to hit home runs. It's a very small sample, but it seems like he's focusing more on making solid contact and going with the pitch rather than trying to hit monster home runs.

In other words, it's a long season, so baseball fans shouldn't overreact to small samples. We're almost to the halfway point of the season. Our pitching and defense have done pretty well, and our offense is right around league average in runs scored, leading us to a four game lead in our division. We've had good stretches and we've had bad stretches. That's baseball.

Sometimes a person just needs to get out of the pressure cooker and get a reset. It's why people need vacations. We'll see how he does going forward, but he's off to a good start and I sure hope it continues.

Not an answer. "There must have been in my opinion as a fan" doesn't mean there was. And who are the Brewers trading away to acquire said player? And were you calling for Cron back in February, or is that with the benefit of hindsight? I'd suspect you wouldn't have been thrilled with them signing a guy that hit .190 last year at the time. Sorry, the 'must have been able to do SOMETHING' without knowing what 'something' was doesn't seem fair on my end. Stearns is the GM and its his job to improve the lineup whether through free agency or with trades. I couldn't have possibly suggested trading for Adames because I would have no idea he was available but Stearns did and he made the move. Just as the GM gets credit for putting together a good pitching staff he takes a hit for a lineup that is flat out terrible. Stearns is the GM, and it's his job to put together a team that wins ballgames. They have been to the playoffs three years in a row (a franchise record) and are currently in first place in their division, all while battling the "uneven playing field" that is the MLB financial structure. To win, you need your offense to score more runs on a given day than your pitching and defense give up. Stearns has put more weight into pitching and defense than he has offense, and the team is winning. To me, that's much more fun than watching the Brewers put up runs in a losing season.

I don't know if the expectations were too high. Hiura had a .950 OPS in the minor leagues, and was initially called up because he had nothing else to prove in the minor leagues. However, since then, teams have found out how to exploit his timing where they can throw him strikes and he can't get the bat on it, or doesn't hit it hard, and Hiura has been unable/unwilling to make a counter-adjustment. It truly is an unknown if he will be able to make an adjustment or not. MLB is littered with players who had 350 amazing at bats and were never heard from again as well as players who eventually figured it out. The Brewers are in a tough spot with Hiura. They're not going to hold the door open for him any longer, especially when they're trying to compete in their division. Then again, I'm sure they don't want to pull the plug on a player who has hit 33 homeruns in 180 big league games. I completely agree with this. My statement on the expectations being too high was that after his 2019 season everyone (myself included) just penciled Hiura in as a middle-of-the-order guy for the foreseeable future, without regard to the possibility of a "sophomore slump," or pitchers figuring him out and him taking some time (maybe in the minors) to adjust. Much of our offense was centered on he and Yelich being All-Star caliber hitters, and there wasn't much of a "Plan B." But yes, he has to produce, and the Brewers are in a tough spot in dealing with him. Hopefully he figures things out, but I'm glad the Brewers are to the point as an organization that everyone, regardless of pedigree or contract, has to "put up or shut up."

I believe it was brought up simply to show that he's still young, and most of the guys in his draft class haven't even made the majors yet. Some posters are saying he's a bust, or that he's washed up when he's still more advanced than a lot of his peers. It's relevant in that fans tend to forget that players, especially young players early in their careers, can struggle. Many players get sent back to the minors at some point, and it's not because the team is giving up on them. I agree that the Brewers' concern is where he goes from here, but his youth should grant him some patience, and there's plenty of reason to believe that he can get back on track with an extended stay in the minors. It really comes down to what is a "fair return?" I'd argue that the Brewers need a high-potential 1B prospect in AAA more than they need a mop-up guy for the bullpen, and that's probably the most they could hope for in trade for Hiura right now. If somehow they can get a solid MLB corner infielder for him, then I'd agree with you that he could be traded, but I think his greatest value to the Brewers at this point comes from sending him down for an extended stay in the minors to get "fixed." I think that if we stop looking at Hiura in terms of "he should be our cleanup hitter mashing MLB pitching," and look at him as a young prospect with a lot of potential, then a lot of people here would probably give him more of a break. He may be the victim of having too much success too soon. The expectations got set way too high, probably by himself as well as the team and the fans. He's had success, so we know it's in there. Hopefully some time in the minors will allow him to get his head on straight and make some adjustments that will allow for him to regain his success at the MLB level.

I don't get the rush from those wanting to trade Hiura for "whatever you can get" right now. He has options, so he can work out his issues in the minors for an extended period. If he didn't have options and we needed to keep him on the MLB roster, then I could understand the idea of trading him, but we lose nothing by keeping him in AAA. It's possible that he's a bust, but it's also very possible that he goes down to AAA, figures out what he's doing wrong, and goes on to have a good MLB career. There is absolutely no reason to give up on that possibility just because he's lost at the plate right now. Give it time.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/06/major-league-baseball-to-crack-down-on-pitchers-use-of-foreign-substances.html Looks like they're going to try to do something. We'll see how effective it is.

With Taylor in CF and Urias at 3B, 7/8 of the Brewers' position players now have an OPS .746 or over.

Narvaez adopted a big, uppercut swing last season and all offseason there were posts about how the Brewers should cut him. He worked with Haines this offseason, changed his swing to stop trying to hit home runs every time up, and is having his best season ever. It's fixable. Uppercut swings leave a huge hole for high fastballs. The "launch angle" craze is a big reason why pitchers have started throwing high fastballs so often. Some hitters have revitalized their careers after modifying their swing for "launch angle," but obviously it hasn't worked for Hiura. Send him down and tell him he won't be back until he listens to his coaches, gets rid of the "softball" uppercut, and cuts his K's down to a respectable (for 2021) level. Maybe he'll never figure it out and he'll be a bust, but it's way too early to give up on him. Heck, if some posters were in charge, we'd have cut Burnes, Narvaez and Garcia within the past couple of seasons. Sometimes guys go through rough stretches - sometimes really rough. If you have hope that someone can be a part of your future, you need to give him a chance to get through these stretches, and thankfully Hiura has options so he can figure things out in AAA.

It's certainly a pipe dream, but it's all I've got :-) My hope, I guess, is that the Brewers will play the player they think gives them the best chance of success. Cain appears pretty washed up, and I think that taking last year off and sitting around the house just made his end come sooner. I hope he hits the offseason workouts hard when 2021 is over so that he can provide some value in 2022, but I don't expect much out of him going forward. Bradley should be better than he has been, so there is hope that he will snap out of it and get hot, but he's been awful so far. Taylor has been the best of the three this year, but my worry is that they will continue to play Cain and Bradley because they're paying them a combined $30M this year, and will probably have to pay them a combined $29M next year.