monty57

Pretty much agree with that. Vogelbach will only hit around .200-.210, but he takes walks, so his OBP should be around .330, and he has some power, hitting 30 HR in his only full season (2019 in Seattle). He shouldn't play defense, and he will strike out about 1/4 of his PAs, but he should be a slightly above-average bat if we have a DH this year. He had a 111 wRC+ in 2019, surrounded by 98 wRC+ numbers in his partial seasons in 2018 & 2020. Plus, he's cheap. He's a "filler" player, not a "core" player, but getting positive value out of inexpensive guys could give Stearns some extra cash to find a good corner IF. All bets are off if the NL doesn't have a DH. Vogelbach should not be our everyday first baseman. His poor defense pretty much negates his positive offensive value.

Not surprising. I can't imagine MLB would continue in its current state if 2021 played out like 2020. There would be some legal action (bankruptcy?) that would occur before the owners would continue to lose billions while paying players huge salaries. Thankfully, vaccines should be available in mass quantities around the start of next baseball season, so hopefully we can have a normal season next year. Fingers crossed.

By that logic, you should probably never trade for prospects, because you will always lose that trade in a HUGE, GIANT way in the first year or so. However, teams make trades for future potential all the time. Urias is 23, Grisham is 24. This season was 60 games. Grisham had 252 PA, and Urias had 120 after suffering through a broken bone and Covid. No one can make a valid judgement on which of these players will have the better career based on that. I bet next season someone will hit a home run on opening day. We all know that doesn't mean he'll end up with 162 home runs. Any player can get hot or cold over a 60-game stretch, so we shouldn't get too worked up over this year.

And some people deal with small samples differently. This year seems to be worse than most for people basing opinions off of small samples. Gyorko's great, Garcia sucks, etc. Last year at this time, posters were clamoring for an upgrade at shortstop because Arcia was the worst shortstop in baseball. Lots of stats were thrown around to "prove" that. When this trade was made, it was pretty much unanimous that we "fleeced" the Padres, as we picked up the young guy with the most potential, and exchanged one middle-of-the rotation starter for a younger one with more team control. Now, after a pandemic-shortened 1/3 of a season, Arcia is just fine at shortstop, and we got fleeced in the trade because Grisham is going on to great things while Lauer and Urias are trash. I hope Grisham does well, and maybe we did lose the trade, but these guys are young. A lot can happen, and we won't know the true outcome of this trade for years. Urias and Lauer both have track records that show they should be better than they looked this year, but time will tell. I'm not going to lose any sleep knowing that Grisham had a decent 60-game stretch.

Pfizer's vaccine news today sure helps. It would seem a lot more likely that we'll have full stadiums next year if there's a vaccine available.

I have no idea how much the Brewers were spending on the social media team, but it has to be peanuts compared to an average MLB player's salary. This is not a good sign at all. Granted, every penny counts, but it takes A LOT of cuts like this to make up one Eric Sogard. I'm very nervous for what the 2021 team will be. If you have been paying attention this has been the effect of the shortened season with no fans, teams have been shrinking their non-player personnel and costs. These type of contractions do not affect wins and losses on the field and are apparently much more palatable than dropping talent from the roster and going from a playoff contender to an also ran. Plus players signed a guaranteed contract prior to the season, so the team had to pay them even if they cut them. Other employees probably didn't have that guarantee. Like it or not, when a business has no revenues, employees are going to be let go. If baseball were to go with no fans again next season, you could see some teams filing for bankruptcy. As far as payroll, the teams have to gamble as to whether or not they're willing to bet on having fans in the stands next year. Teams willing to take the risk could get good deals on players next year, but if they're wrong they'll be stuck paying salaries with limited revenues.

I think/hope that these options are being declined because Stearns believes that players like Gyorko will be available for less than the option value, not because it means that the Brewers don't have $3.5M to spend on a corner IF. This is the same reason he used for declining Thames' option last year and we ended up with Justin Smoak. And Thames signed for $3M with Washington, so Stearns was correct that the Brewers' option was well over market value. The Brewers can't afford to pay players twice their market value. They need to find ways to pay people less than market value, not more. If it's true that payrolls are going down, it will be the journeymen that feel the most pain. The top guys on the market will still make a lot of money, but guys who would normally sign for $4-6M will probably be getting something like $1-3M. Maybe it's a pipe dream, but I'd like to see the Brewers sign some "$10-15M talent" for well under market value. Fill the holes with better players without raising payroll. Probably more likely that payroll gets cut, but it'd be great if the Brewers could take advantage of a down market.

I think/hope that these options are being declined because Stearns believes that players like Gyorko will be available for less than the option value, not because it means that the Brewers don't have $3.5M to spend on a corner IF.

It might not mean a lot to some people, but a shortened season would make it a lot tougher to hit milestones, like a 50 HR season, or 200 hits. Also, over a long career, 12 games a year would take over a season's worth of games off a player's career, making things like 3,000 hits that much harder to reach. Plus, I like having Brewer baseball on every night. Taking 12 games off that just makes the offseason two weeks longer.

If they had "warts", then what did the 21 teams with a worse wRC+ at 1B over those years have? wRC+ is an offensive stat. In the sentence you quoted, I said "including being butchers in the field." As I said, I like those guys, and they filled a role on the team. First base is always going to be an offense-first position, but a poor-fielding first baseman makes your whole infield defense worse, so it would be nice to find someone at first base who can hit and field. I understand that those guys get expensive, but my ideal offseason would be one in which Stearns could find at least one solid corner IF (hitting and defense).

Payroll will be based on projected revenues, not franchise value. "Dipping into franchise value" means taking on debt, just like taking a home equity loan. If a team takes on debt to increase payroll, then they will have to pay back that debt, thereby lowering the amount of money available for future payrolls. Since payroll will be based on projected revenues, what a team will spend this offseason will largely be based on whether they think they will play a full season next year, how many fans will be allowed into the stadium, and how willing will people be to go to a game, even if they are allowed. It's a guess, and finance guys and gals don't like guessing. Some teams will probably cut payroll substantially, while others will "roll the dice" and sign some deals that would be well "below market" if the Covid stigma wasn't hanging out there.

It's amazing how people think that Thames and Aguilar were terrible, and don't remember that, for all of his strikeouts, Chris Carter had a .821 OPS (and wRC+ of 113, and hit 41 HRs). I like Thames, Aguilar and Carter, but they had "warts" including being butchers in the field. Thames and Carter were both let go because the money the Brewers would have had to pay them would have been more than they were worth, and they both signed contracts elsewhere for less than the Brewers would have had to pay them. Aguilar was just having a really bad season, so they traded him away as he was hurting them in a playoff run. The Brewers have several holes to fill, the most notable to me being 1st and 3rd base. It may make sense to put more emphasis on 3B, but it would be nice to have long-term solutions at either or both of these positions. I don't know if we have the resources to make it happen, and I don't want to fill one hole by opening another, but the corner IF spots should be their point of emphasis. To the topic of DH, it would hurt to have one more year of no DH before instituting the DH in the new CBA. I would think that would mean that one of Arcia, Urias or Hiura should be traded when we could probably use them in 2022. Arcia seems to be the most obvious choice of the three, but if Hiura nets us a long-term solution at 3B, then we could move Urias to 2B and keep Arcia at SS.

I hope that they make a decision on whether or not the NL will have a DH sooner rather than later, as it puts NL teams at a disadvantage in the offseason not knowing how they should build their roster. Assuming they go with the DH, I think the Brewers' most pressing need is to find a good corner infielder. If they do that, then Urias can move to 2B and Hiura can DH. If Yelich and Hiura can get hit like we expect them to, Cain returns, and we add a good 1B, our offense should look much better than it did this year, and our defense should be pretty good with Yelich/Cain/Garcia in the OF and Gyorko/Arcia/Urias/"real first baseman" in the IF.

Brewers can still do that, unless the contract they signed with Gamel that included that option says differently. Eric Thames had such a provision in his contract, he was at 4 years service time when the option was declined last year, or would've been at 5 if he had been kept on, but Brewers couldn't have offered him arbitration. If I remember right, when they signed Thames, he had something in his contract that specifically said the Brewers wouldn't be able to offer him arby if his option wasn't executed. I believe that if they do not execute Gamel's option, they could offer him arby. If MLBtraderumors is accurate, then that may be the way the Brewers go.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com made a list of projected arby numbers for 2021, and here are the numbers for the Brewers: Method 1: Applies model directly with actual statistics from this 60-game season Method 2: Extrapolates all counting stats to would-be 162-game totals. One home run becomes 2.7 home runs. Method 3: For non-first-time eligibles, finds the raise they’d get in a 162 game season, then gives them 37% of that raise Brewers (11) Dan Vogelbach – $1.4MM / $1.9MM / $1.4MM Orlando Arcia – $2.7MM / $3.8MM / $2.8MM Alex Claudio – $2.0MM / $2.3MM / $2.0MM Ben Gamel – $1.7MM / $2.1MM / $1.7MM Josh Hader – $4.5MM / $6.8MM / $5.1MM Ryon Healy – $1.0MM / $1.0MM / $1.0MM Corey Knebel – $5.125MM / $5.125MM / $5.125MM Omar Narvaez – $2.725MM / $3.1MM / $2.9MM Manny Pina – $2.1MM / $2.3MM / $2.0MM Brandon Woodruff – $2.3MM / $4.5MM / $2.3MM Jace Peterson – $800K / $900K / $700K Thoughts?

If Yelich and Hiura lived up to expectations this season, we're easily ahead of St Louis and Cincy and possibly would've won the division. Heck, if Cain hadn't opted out, we might have been second in the division. He made a couple moves that didn't pan out, but with a whole lot of things going wrong, we still hovered around .500 all (short) season and made the playoffs. He got rid of Thames and built a team that had platoon splits and flexibility before it was announced that we'd have a DH. Finally, this was a 60 game season, which normally would have us sitting at 29-31 at the end of May, two months before the trade deadline with 102 games to go. There are always strange things that happen in a 60-game stretch. Unfortunately, we had a few more negatives than positives, but again, we still made the playoffs, and we still have a lot of talent on the roster. For a team that had only made the playoffs four times in the 45 years prior to David Stearns being hired, I'd think a guy that inherited a 68-94 "rebuilding" team and got three playoff seasons in his first five years should get a little bit more credit. Especially when the complaints are that we "only" made the Wild Card in a 60 game pseudo-season played when the world is experiencing an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Good point. Yelich, Cain, and Peralta are the only longer term guaranteed deals I can think of that Stearns has committed to. It seems that he likes to add young, "controlled talent" any way he can to build a core, and I expect he will look to extend young talent when it makes sense, mainly using free agency to fill in the gaps with short-term deals. He's also shown the ability to make the tough decision to cut ties with players when their cost exceeds their value. Free agency is the most expensive way to add talent, where you only get the player if you are the highest bidder, so smaller market teams can't survive long if their main source of talent acquisition is free agency. Short term deals are by nature going to be hit or miss. If they were "sure things," they wouldn't be signing a one-year deal. Brett Anderson pitched well, and Gyorko played pretty well, but the rest of the short-term signings fell flat. Unfortunately, so did our "sure things" in guys like Yelich and Hiura, which highlighted the fact that many of our "fill in the gap" one-year deal guys weren't playing well. I still believe that Yelich and Hiura are good players who will be the center of our core for years to come, and I believe that one-year deals to vets can help the team without the chance of hurting us long-term. Stearns and Melvin are two of the most successful GMs in Brewer history, but they have very different ways to build a team. I personally like Stearns' style better, as I think it has a better chance of maintaining success in a smaller market year-over-year without having to tear down and rebuild. That we didn't have a long rebuilding period as we transitioned from Melvin to Stearns is a minor miracle, and I think that in itself should give Stearns a lot of "leash." Then there's the three straight playoff appearances for the first time in team history. Finally, we only lose one player to free agency, so Stearns holds the cards as to which players he wants to retain and which ones he wants to replace this offseason. Even though we had some down years in this crazy 2020 season, we still have a lot of talent on this roster, and I'm looking forward to see what moves are made this offseason.

I'll agree with the OP, and add that he was hired after a 68-94 season in the belief that he would be guiding them through a rebuild. The only Brewers 1st round draft picks that were on the roster were Ryan Braun and Jeremy Jeffress from 2005 & 2006, and payroll was getting cut nearly in half in his first season. If you had polled Brewers fans at the end of the 2015 season as to when they thought the next winning season would be, they would have guessed at least 3-4 years, and most would probably have laughed at the notion of three straight playoff appearances in 2018-2020. The prize most people thought we'd get was a string of top 10 draft picks. As Madtownhawk said, it will be interesting to see if he can continue his success in the coming seasons, but for his first five years, he has to get a resounding "A" grade.

Me too, but I'd guess that our resources will be spent on offense this off-season.

You know who also nearly doubles that? Javy Baez at 32.9%, with a batting line of .198/.233/.348/.581. Kris Bryant is at 28.3% K rate, with a line of .195/.283/.301/.584 Meanwhile, the Giants have one of the best offenses in baseball, and the Marlins will probably be in the playoffs while the Nationals watch from home. Small sample sizes in a crazy season like this aren't very meaningful.

Bellinger is hitting .239/.325/.454/.778 for the Dodgers, so he's obviously lost it as well. I'm sure the Dodgers are ready to give up on him, so maybe we can get him for a couple of A-ballers with upside. Joking aside, people are putting way too much weight on this year's limited data in an upside-down world. In a normal season, we'd be ending May about now, with around two months to go before trade deadline. Throw in that no one got a spring training, the umpires look like they're closing their eyes and guessing, and everyone is concerned to varying degrees with what's going on in the world, and I'm pretty much ready to give a big mulligan to players this year. I'm happy to have baseball to watch, but I'm not giving up on a talented player (or putting too much into a good season by a journeyman) based on what's going on this year. Hopefully things will be much more "normal" next season... and maybe we'll get automated strike zones, but maybe I'm asking for too much.

Stearns makes a lot of moves for guys with borderline MLB talent. By nature, these guys are going to be up-and-down, so sometimes you get them at the right time and get a good season out of them, and sometimes you get them when they're "off" and the move looks like a bust. Case in point, I'd say that Gyorko is still a crap-shoot for how he'll be next year. I'm glad we've had a good season from him, but I wouldn't bank on him for the future. The key thing is that we get a solid core of guys who are pretty consistent. Like it or not, we don't have as much to spend as some other teams, so we'll never have consistency at every position. I figure it's best to be happy when we get a journeyman's career season, and I won't get too upset when a journeyman is signed and doesn't work out. I'm fine as long as Stearns doesn't lock up too much money for too long a time in erratic players, and it doesn't really look like he's doing that.

I didn't like the way the Brewers handled Burnes last year. Lots of young players have a tough time when they first come to the majors. I thought they should have just sent him back to AAA to work some things out. Instead, they have a bad habit of sticking every good young starter into the MLB pen, and that just made things worse for Burnes. Thankfully, it doesn't look like it had permanent effects, but it might have cost us a year's service time of a potential Cy Young candidate in a few years. On the positive side, if he and Woodruff can keep this up, that's a good 1-2 punch for the next four years, with a lot of other talented players to fill out the pitching staff. That can go a long way towards getting us some more playoff baseball over the next few years.

He's 26, so even if he's never better than a 4th OF, he's still a good guy to have as a cheap 4th OF through his prime. If he "clicks," then he can be an inexpensive starter, allowing the Brewers to spend their limited resources on other positions. I don't expect a superstar, but if he can be an MLB average player through pre-arby/arby, he's a valuable addition to the team. I also wouldn't say he "completely stalled at AAA." His past three years' OPS are 2017 .865 / 2018 .825 / 2019 .804. It was 2015-2016 in Biloxi when he "stalled out" for a while. I'd take a high-.700s to low .800s OPS CF for league minimum, and that's what he's shown for a few years in AAA and his limited time in the majors.

I hope the plan is to give Taylor as much playing time as possible through the end of the season. I don't have a lot of faith in Gamel, so this is a good opportunity to see what Taylor can do, even if it is only for a few weeks. A lot can happen in an offseason, but right now Taylor has to be the favorite for the #4 OF spot next year.