monty57

I look at it as the money they won't be paying Burnes after he's traded. Other than Yelich, they won't have any big salaries on their team for the next few seasons with all of the pre-arby guys, so they could fit his contract in for something like the 2 yr/$36M MLBtr predicted. Again, this is just a prediction by a reputable site. They may be wrong, but those saying that there's no way he'll sign for that... is there any source stating that, or is it your own opinion? MLBtr has been a pretty good source for this stuff for years. If they're anywhere close to correct, the Brewers should be able to fit this in, and in my opinion he'd be a great addition to our current roster. If the market heats up and his price tag skyrockets, then the Brewers would be out. I don't see how a dead market is a sign that there's huge demand pushing up prices. The players are sitting there unsigned, that could be because teams aren't willing to spend much this offseason beyond the mega-contracts to superstars. We'll see, but I sure wouldn't take anything that's happened so far as a clear sign that prices are going way up for non-superstar players.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/01/mariners-to-trade-robbie-ray-to-giants-for-mitch-haniger-anthony-desclafani.html Robbie Ray going to the Giants. Don't know if this will have any effect on their potential interest in Burnes. I can't imagine we would've been going after Haniger or DeSclafani, so they still have prospects they could trade.

You may be right. I'm just going off of MLBtr's projection. The offseason has been slow, especially for position players. It's not just Hoskins waiting to be signed. At some point, there's going to be a flurry of moves. I hope the Brewers get what they want done before this happens.

Fangraphs/Steamer has Justin Turner projected at: .261/.333/.414 for a .326 wOBA and 105 wRC+ Projected fWAR 0.7 Meanwhile, Black is projected at: .240/.342/.401 for a .327 wOBA and 104 wRC+ Projected fWAR 1.2 I wouldn't sign Turner at $16M to block Black at 3B, and if I were looking at a 1B, I'd probably look at other options before Turner. If you're thinking Turner could play 3B, moving Black to 2B, here's Turang's projection: .246/.320/.371 for a .326 wOBA and 88 wRC+ Projected fWAR 1.4 His defense makes his projected fWAR higher than Black and twice that of Turner, i.e. he's more valuable even though he doesn't hit as well. Meanwhile, Santana is projected at: .239/.329/.412 for a .323 wOBA and 104wRC+ Projected fWAR 0.8. He would cost about half of what they're projecting for Turner, and should provide about equal value for a team needing a first baseman. I would target Hoskins. If he's a no-go, I'd look at Martinez or Soler, mainly at DH. If none of those happen, I'd settle for Santana. All of this of course would assume that we go the FA route. That could change quickly if/when some trades happen, which is probably what the Brewers are trying to do first.

I don't disagree with this, but I do think that we need to play our young players to see what we have. They may hold Black back for a few weeks to gain a year of service time, but we're going to have a lot of PAs going to young talent. That probably gives us a wide bell curve as to what to expect. The (non-pitcher) position where we really don't have young talent that would be blocked by a FA pickup is first base, and I guess that could extend to DH. It's probably not a big deal if Bauers loses PAs, but the young OFs will be there from day one, and once Black is up, he should be an everyday player. Turang is a bit iffy, as he had a down season offensively, but I don't really want to see him up as a bench player/utility guy.

I've been a proponent of signing Hoskins since I saw MLBtr's prediction that he'd get 2/$36M, which should be in the Brewers' range, especially if they trade Burnes. How does acquiring Hudson, which is the topic of this thread, in any way effect whether or not they sign Hoskins? We would all like to know what the Brewers are going to do. Waiting sucks, but getting anxious for the "big moves" shouldn't cloud our judgement on other moves that are made. The valid criticism of this trade that I've seen has been that while the guy we traded was a 20th round pick, it was because he's recovering from surgery. He's a talented kid who might have a bright future. Conversely, we're getting a guy who should be an upgrade to this year's 'pen, and we have a lot of team control over him. He should make us better at the big league level starting this season. Being upset because this isn't the big move you're hoping for isn't a valid criticism of this move. If you want to discuss the merits of signing Hoskins, I'm with you and think it would be a great signing, let's just just discuss it in the forums where it belongs.

They just got a lefty reliever who had a 2.43 ERA and 86 Ks in 55 2/3 IP in AAA last year, with a "get your feet wet" appearance in the majors for nothing. How does this not improve the team? This is not signing Ohtani. This is not trading for a future MVP. However, this guy is very likely going to see a number of MLB innings this year. He is probably going to be better than some other guy who would otherwise get those innings. That would be a help to the team. Not every move is a big one. Moves like this help turn fringe-playoff teams into playoff teams. Yes, we still need to make some other moves to fill other positions. What do those moves have to do with this one? This guy was available for a former 20th round draft pick, so they jumped when they had the chance. This will not have any effect on other moves the team is planning on making.

Here's their write-up (looks like they don't think he'll stick at SS): Scouting grades: Hit: 55 | Power: 65 | Run: 45 | Arm: 60 | Field: 45 | Overall: 55 The top middle infielder available in the 2018 international class, Luciano has demonstrated electric power since signing for $2.6 million out of the Dominican Republic. Perennially one of the youngest players in his leagues, Luciano has looked raw at times against older pitching but the only thing that really has slowed him was a back injury that limited him to 57 full-season games in 2022. He still posted a .798 OPS with 10 homers as a 20-year-old in High-A. Luciano's most notable asset is his lightning-fast bat speed from the right side of the plate, which produces plus-plus raw power to all fields. While he looks to do damage and can get overly aggressive, he does use the entire field and will accept walks when pitchers decline to challenge him. He'll always be a power-over-hit guy but his natural ability and aptitude for making adjustments could mean that he's a .270 hitter with 35 homers per season. Though Luciano has a strong arm and a high baseball IQ, most scouts outside the organization believe he'll have to move off shortstop. He has fringy speed and range that are better suited for third base or right field, where he could be a solid defender. His offensive game will profile at any position.

Santana is probably the move that is going to happen. We just need to realize that in the post-Covid era he's posted fWARs of -0.5, 1.0 and 1.7. He's an upgrade over Bauers, but he's not going to anchor a lineup. I think some fans have too high an expectation on Santana, and are going to be disappointed with what he'll probably do over the course of a season (Steamer projects .239/.329/.422 for a 0.8 fWAR). Your thought that adding him along with a bat-only guy like Soler or Martinez makes sense, but MLBtr has Soler projected at 3/$45 and Martinez at 2/$40, so they are both expected to make around as much as Hoskins' 2/$36 MLBtr projection. If the Brewers have that extra money, I'd be fine with signing Santana along with any of Soler, Martinez or Hoskins. Soler and Martinez would be basically DH-only, while Hoskins could split time with Santana at 1B/DH, but any of the three would be nice bats to have in the lineup. If they don't have the money to sign Santana and one of those three, then I'd go with the guy who can play 1B, which is Hoskins. While I think Santana is the move that's going to happen, I'd be really excited if they could land Hoskins.

How crazy would it be to see a trade based on Burnes & Adames for Luciano & Harrison? Trade our present for the Giants' future. I don't think it's realistic, but I could get behind some kind of mega-deal like this. The Giants would take a big step towards being competitive in their division this year, while we'd add MLB.com's top 20 & 26 prospects who are both MLB-ready.

The bolded portion is a good point. Adames may want an extension, and the Giants have the money to make that happen. That could add to his trade value, as they aren't looking at it as a one-year rental, they're a team that has been repeatedly rebuffed by top free agents that could see this as a way of getting a good SS locked up for the future. As others have mentioned, Wisenhunt seems to be the most realistic target, but what would an Adames sign-and-extension do for Marco Luciano? Would he just slide to 2B, or would he be blocked. I doubt Adames gets Luciano on his own, but if they could get him in a package deal, Luciano and Turang could be the middle of our infield for a long time. It's probably not realistic without adding another significant piece, but it would be a long-term replacement who would fill the hole created by trading Adames. And, if the Giants are really high on Luciano, why are they interested in Adames unless they don't think Luciano is ready and are just looking for a one-year stopgap? I'm certainly not opposed to trading one year of Adames for the upside of a package built around Wisenhunt. However, I've been in the camp that thinks we're still trying to contend in 2024. Trading away Adames would leave a big hole in the middle of the infield. Turang would probably move to SS, and Black can fill 2B or 3B, but not both. An Adames-for-Wisenhunt trade would free up a decent chunk of cash, but all-in-all, it would look to me like a "we're looking to 2025 and beyond" move.

I've been on the Hoskins bandwagon since the offseason started and I saw MLBtraderumors projection of 2/$36M. There may need to be other moves that happen to allow for the Brewers to spend that, but this thread isn't about the other moves. Signing Hoskins and putting his bat in the middle of the lineup would go a long ways to winning the division. It wouldn't cost prospects and would be the easiest, and probably most positively impactful move we could realistically make. Plus, it would only be for a year or two, at a point when we have a lot of young, inexpensive talent on the roster and can afford another higher-priced vet. As usual, this was a good article, as the other options are all valid upgrades over the black hole we have at first base right now. We need to do something, and I think the Brewers' offseason is being held up in waiting to see what happens with Burnes. There's still plenty of time in the offseason, but at some point the ice will break and there will be a few moves made. One of them will be adding another 1B, as a competent 1B should add a couple of wins to our current roster.

Regarding Quero, if the team thinks that he'll be the starter for the Brewers down the road, I don't want to see them wasting his service time as a backup this year. It may not be fair to the young player, but he should spend all year in the minors this year. Assuming Contreras doesn't sign an extension, you bring up Quero midway through '25, which would be Contreras' first arby year. You can then see how he looks "getting his feet wet" as a backup for a few months, and you can decide if you trade Contreras after the '25 season (with two years' service time remaining) or hold him one more year with Quero as a backup. You'd then get Contreras for '23, '24, '25 and maybe '26 before trading him, and you have Quero for a partial season in '25, with control for '26-'31. That's a long time to have catcher shored up. A lot can happen over the next few seasons, but that's the plan I'd shoot for, and hope Quero develops as projected so he'll allow for us to trade Contreras away for a big haul in a couple years. But barring injury, I would not bring him up in '24, wasting service time for 150 or so PAs.

If you were a good free agent veteran catcher right now, would you sign with the Brewers, knowing that the only way you're going to play more than once every week or so is for Contreras to get injured? Caratini was pretty good last year, and he only got 226 PAs. Any decent catcher is going to hold out for a shot at either a starting job, or at least a job where the starter isn't an All-Star who will be in the lineup every day. I'm glad they filled this hole, as it needed to be done. I'm not surprised that we didn't get the cream of the FA crop. I do hope that Haase is able to regain his '21 and '22 form. He was bad last year, but he's not that far away from being a decent player. I'm also hopeful that Contreras stays healthy and productive, making this signing pretty insignificant.

The Dodgers' TV deal allows them to do this and still make boatloads of money. The Brewers' TV deal wouldn't pay for Ohtani's AAV. Until broadcasting revenues are shared evenly, things won't change. I believe that years ago Selig put into effect that internet/streaming revenues would be shared evenly. If that's correct, then I just hope Google or Apple or someone else ends up buying the whole package and we watch everything through a national streaming service with no local deals.

All the moves still get made, and teams are set for opening day. What's the difference if the moves are forced to be done early (when fans would then be "dead ass bored" later) or if the moves are done throughout the offseason? We're still ending up with the same moves being made over the same offseason. I think "Bored" is being confused with "I don't like waiting to see what my team is going to do." It's almost Christmas. How exciting would Christmas be if all the presents were opened by the end of November and there were no presents to open Christmas morning?

Regarding the bolded portion, it wasn't just 40-man spots we cleared, we also cleared two 26-man spots. That would seem to mean that the Brewers are looking at adding a couple of players to the MLB team. Dropping guys at the bottom of the 40 man roster doesn't solve this. If we make some trades or signings that bring in talent that the team wants on the MLB roster, then without this trade you have a roster crunch. Taylor and Hauser were obviously the odd men out. I don't want to disparage two guys who have helped the Brewers out over the recent past, but it doesn't seem that Taylor and Hauser had as much trade value as some here think they did, especially if the Brewers get themselves into a roster crunch and other teams think they can just wait it out and pick up the guys for free when the Brewers release them. I'm with you that it seems the return is a little light, but I have to assume that Arnold made some calls and there wasn't a big market for these guys. Saving some money, getting the roster spots opened up, and getting back a guy who seems to project to be a regular in the MLB rotation from 2025-2031 isn't the worst result we could've had. The guy(s) they brought back had to be off the 40 man, so we weren't bringing in a major leaguer. We needed some pitching to go along with the young position players we have for the next half-decade, and Crow adds that. But let's remember that this isn't the big move. This opens up spots and frees up some cash for the moves that will fill those vacated roster spots. That's what we should be excited about.

I've got nothing against Taylor, but you know that you can't take a small sample and expect that to be the norm for the player going forward. Taylor has some power, and when he's hitting homers he's valuable to have in the lineup. However, he doesn't get on base enough to be a regular in most MLB lineups. If he could maintain his power while getting on base about .040-.050 higher than he does, then he could be a very valuable player. I don't think he'll make that change at this stage of his career. He's been a nice player in his role with the Brewers over the years. There is a logjam in the OF, and the Brewers obviously thought that trading him for what they got was a better direction than getting a better return by trading one of the younger guys.

From the Collective Bargaining Agreement: A player selected in the MLB portion of the Rule 5 Draft must spend the entire season on the active roster for the claiming team, and a minimum of 90 days to avoid the same restrictions the following season if needed to be placed on the injured list.

On the surface, we gave up MLB talent for a less-than-fair-value return. Maybe Arnold just really likes Crow, but it seems more likely that this trade was done with future moves in mind. The Brewers keep everything close to the vest, so we won't know what's going on until it happens. The final line in the article is very interesting: "It could also help the team maintain a nimble posture in Burnes trade permutations that would require them to take back more 40-man roster players than they send away, a possibility that ought not to be discounted right now." We now have two open 40-man spots and some extra money. That could mean we sign a free agent, but it could also mean that we take back a contract in order to get better prospect value in a trade. Maybe we get one year of an expensive 1B in return for an extra high-end prospect added to the trade. I'm not that upset at losing either of these guys. After 2019, I was really excited about Houser and Lauer's futures, but both fell off from there, causing the team to scamper to find guys to fill in behind the "big 3" in the rotation. I think Houser is best served in the bullpen, and Fangraphs/Steamer has him projected for a 0.9 WAR this year. Meanwhile, Taylor seems to have just enough power to make people forget how bad he is at getting on base (.286 and .267 OBP over the past two years). He's a good example of a guy who is nice to have on the roster while he's cheap, but isn't someone you want to rely on too much. Both of the guys are replaceable. It will be interesting to see the next moves to see how they are replaced.

Cain gave the Royals 20.80 fWAR in his time there. Escobar added 11.40 fWAR as a Royal, Odorizzi was part of a trade for James Shields, and gave the Rays 6.20 WAR in his time as a Ray. The only one who didn't really work out for the Royals was Jeffress. Grienke posted 3.3 WAR for the Brewers in 2011 and was traded as the Brewers disappointed in 2012. This is why I think it's best for the Brewers to trade Burnes away. He's projected to add around 3.8 WAR in 2024. You insinuated that the Brewers didn't really give up that much, but just in the Grienke trade, the Royals got 38.40 WAR (and two World Series appearances, one win) in return for 3.3 WAR in 2011. At least Grienke was able to get traded away, Burnes will not, he'll simply leave as a free agent. A bigger revenue team can make up for that by signing a big-named free agent. Those trades really hurt teams that can't build through free agency.

Thanks for that. I remember the excitement, but I guess I forgot he was that highly regarded nationwide. Shame for a team and a fanbase that really needed a boost that he had his injury issues.

This is an opening day roster. I am excited to see Black on the MLB roster, and think he will be the starter after he gets past the "service time issues" deadline, but I think he'll start the season at AAA to gain that extra year of service.

And sometimes former MVPs get extended and start playing like a replacement level player. There's risk to anything the team does. If he is not traded Burnes will be here for one more year, and then he is going to sign a monster deal elsewhere. He is not going to be a Brewer beyond 2024. When Melvin decided to hold onto Fielder, he traded the farm for Marcum and Grienke (both with two years of team control) in an attempt to "go all in" and win it all. It didn't work out, and we continued to get worse over the next few seasons as we didn't have any pre-arby guys coming up, so we had to fill out the roster with expensive older guys in a downward spiral that eventually led to Attanasio blowing things up and bringing in Stearns to go a different route. There are proponents to "going all in," and I see the allure even if I don't think it's a good long-term plan. However, if we are going to "go all in," which would seem the only logical strategy if we are holding Burnes for the year and then letting him walk, then we need to add a lot more talent than we have. We need to trade away a bunch of our prospects to get some better options for places like 1B, 3B, DH, and SP. We'll also need to push the payroll higher than it appears they are willing to go this year. In other words, we'll need to undo much of what Stearns and Co built that has led to arguably the most successful run of baseball in Brewer history in order to "go for it all" this year. Otherwise, I don't see any logical reason to hold Burnes. Your betting against the odds thinking that having Burnes this year (with the current make-up of the team) gives us a better chance of winning it all than trading him and getting a lot of prospect talent back for the next 5-6 years. Also, Neugebauer wasn't one of the top prospects in baseball. He had a big arm, and it was exciting for a team starved for pitching to finally have a guy in the minors to cheer for, but I would expect a better prospect than him in return for Burnes. I get your point that the prospect may fail, but the guys I mentioned are already MLB ready, and we'd have full 6+ years of control. That limits the risk vs trading for a couple of guys in the lower minors. Again, there is risk to anything the team does. I just think the team needs to stick with the longer-term method of team building that they implemented when Stearns was hired. It has had success for a team that doesn't have a very successful history, so I'd hate to blow things up just to hold onto a good player for one more year when logically it makes sense to trade the likely 3-4 WAR he'll provide this season for the potential of far more value than that over the next half-decade in a prospect(s) that will form the next core along with guys like Chourio, Contreras, Frelick, etc.

Holding on to Burnes is the best way to assure that we will need a rebuild period. If we don't get a top-tier prospect back from him, it'll make it a lot harder to compete in the coming years. For those who think that we couldn't be competitive if we trade him this year (getting a top-tier young MLB-ready player back), how the heck are we going to remain competitive in the coming years without him or the top-tier young player we didn't get because we didn't make the trade? I believe that we could be just as competitive with someone like Ricky Tiedeman or Kyle Harrison in the rotation from the trade, while using the money we would've spent on Burnes to sign someone like Hoskins, as we are with Burnes in the rotation for one more year with our current offense. Then, next year, we'd still have Tiedemann/Harrison playing for around league minimum, while the other team would be wondering how to replace Burnes (or paying him $40M+ in an extension). The Brewers can't spend like some other teams, so they can't just rebuild through free agency. They need to maintain a steady stream of young, cheap talent, so they can't afford to lose the value they'd get from a Burnes trade. Woodruff's injury (and the loss of ability to trade him) is a huge setback. We can't double-down and lose out on the return we could get from trading Burnes.