monty57

I really hope they give Burnes and Woodruff/Peralta a shot at the rotation, so we have Chacin, Nelson, Anderson, Burnes, Davies, Woodruff, and Peralta, so we probably don't need to go overboard looking for more starting pitching. Nelson is a question mark, but I would hope at this time that the Brewers have a decent idea where he stands. Even with Burnes and Woodruff moving to the rotation, the bullpen should be strong, and we should have minor leaguers to bolster it. I could see us looking to add a veteran if Stearns can find someone that he thinks is a good deal. I would look to trade Thames. I like him, but Aguilar has taken the everyday role at 1B, and Braun, Shaw, and Perez can fill in his off-days. I don't expect MLB talent back in trade if someone takes on his salary, but I'm fine with Stearns trading him for young minor leaguers and salary relief. Assuming Vogt is healthy, we have three catchers, so one of Pina, Vogt, or Kratz will be gone. It would be great if we could get anything in return, but I'd guess we'll just non-tender someone so we don't risk getting stuck with the salary. I don't really have a pecking order, but memories of Vogt skipping the ball to second base makes him my odd-man-out. If we could get good return for Santana or Broxton, we could trade them, but I'm fine with holding them as the #4/5 outfielders. That makes more sense to me than holding Thames as a second first-baseman. Santana has a good bat, and Broxton is a good defender with power. Both have value to a playoff-hopeful team. So, my position player roster would be: 1B: Aguilar 2B: Schoop SS: Arcia 3B: Shaw C: Pina LF: Braun CF: Cain RF: Yelich Bench C: Kratz Util: Perez Util: ? maybe Saladino OF: Broxton OF: Santana I guess the big thing here is that we probably shouldn't look for any big changes this offseason. We don't have a lot of extra money to spend, and we should have most of the 2018 playoff team back.

I think those of us that think he should get the chance to start aren't sure either but you'll never know if you don't give him a chance. If he's just an average starter, then sure he's likely more valuable in the pen. I just don't like the "What If", in the back of my mind. What If: he's the next Jacob DeGrom. You'd have a hard time convincing me that Jacob DeGrom would be more valuable from the bullpen over the course of the regular season. I also don't really buy into the way the Brewers organized their pitching in the last month as being the new norm or a trend that will be sustainable for the entirety of the regular season. Plus starting pitching will still win games; I still think we need some TOR arms. Agree. I believe that the Dodgers and Red Sox are fairly "stats driven," and I don't see them taking Buehler or Sale out of the rotation for 2019 to put them into the "Hader role" in the pen. The same can be said of every other team in baseball who has a good, top-of-the-rotation starting pitcher. That is arguably the most valuable commodity in baseball.

Not like we accepted it and he declined. I am guessing there was no chance we were picking up that option at $15mil. That is very possible. I highly doubt the Brewers would have made the Schoop trade if they thought Moose had any chance of being back in 2019.

I think Hader's maximum value would be for him to become an ace starting pitcher, and I think that he could. That said, I do not see any way the Brewers will ever move him out of the bullpen. He has the potential to be Randy Johnson, but we will max out his potential at Andrew Miller. With that in mind, I now turn my attention to Burnes, Peralta, Woodruff, and any future guys who have good potential as a starting pitcher. We can live with limiting the potential of one potential ace, but we need to put some of these guys into the rotation and stick with them through the ups-and-downs. I still like the thought of giving young guys a shot in the rotation and moving them to the pen only if they fail as starters far more than the thought of paying for "good enough" older starting pitchers and putting our good, young arms in the pen. I hope that this year was an anomaly due to the situation, and it doesn't become the norm to say "we think he's a starter, but we need them in the pen for the playoff run," only to be followed up by "he's too valuable in his current role to take him out of it." We need some of these young guys to fill out our rotation for the foreseeable future, as we can't afford to pay the cost (in dollars and/or prospects) for starting pitching over the long-run through free agency and trades.

I agree with that sentiment Joseph. I think that Moose might be wishing he'd have taken the $15m before the offseason is over. He's well-known because of his playoff exposure, but he's not a good enough player to receive the kind of contract he seems to think he can demand. He's an MLB regular, not a star.

Cots estimates $109,275,000. Attanasio knows this team can contend, so they could probably do that, but you're right that it wouldn't leave much room for anything else. They probably won't keep three catchers, so one of Vogt ($3.75MZ*), Pina ($2M*) or Kratz ($2.25M*) will not be around. As you mentioned, Thames ($6M) is very likely to be shopped, and Anderson ($6.5) is another option. There are moves that could be made to free up enough cash to make some moves, and they shouldn't need a lot of cash if the plan is to use some combo of Woodruff, Peralta, and Burnes to fill out the rotation. I don't expect the Brewers to be big players this offseason, but I'd look for another Chacin-type deal. The plan when trading for Moose and Schoop seems to be that Moose was a rental and Shaw would move back to 3B in 2019 with Schoop playing 2B. The question is whether or not his play at the end of the season is enough for them to change that plan and try to find another option. I'd guess that they'll stick with the plan and go into the season with an infield of Aguilar, Schoop, Arcia, and Shaw. * means it's Cots' estimated arby number

Thank them both for helping us to a division title and NLCS, and use the $25M to help build a champion in 2019. They're both good players, but I'm not upset to see either of them walk at those prices.

Mike Petriello at MLB.com did a nice write-up on his thoughts for the Brewer rotation. It's in the Brewer team news feed on their site. https://www.mlb.com/brewers/news/brewers-pitching-plan-against-dodgers-in-nlcs/c-297498996 He puts a lot of thought and numbers into it, and ends up with Chacin, "bullpen game," Gonzalez, Miley followed by Guerra or Peralta, then "Wing it/who knows what will happen" for the final games. Nice point by Fear the Chorizo a couple of posts ago. "Bullpen game" is used in kind of a derogatory way, but the bullpen the Brewers are using has guys who were "Top 100" minor league starters over the past few seasons (Burnes, Woodruff, Hader, Peralta) as key pieces. Starting Woodruff, Peralta or Burnes may be called a "bullpen game," but there is a good chance that they will all be starters after this season. That we have talented young starters in the bullpen is the reason Counsell can manage the pitching staff the way he does. It's not really a repeatable strategy for most teams, and probably won't be for us beyond this year, but it's working well in 2018.

There are strategies to avoid the need to sell assets to cover the estate tax cost, and I'm sure the Attanasio's have paid a good estate planning attorney to do just that. As to the 2001 tax cut, it wasn't technically reversed. Any time a tax cut is put into place, if it is not at least "neutral" (meaning that the taxes received by the government are expected to be less than previous), then it needs more than a simple majority vote or there will need to be a "sunset provision" where the tax cut eventually phases out over time. This was the case with the "Bush tax cuts," and it is the case with the recent tax cuts as they pertain to individual tax payers. From the day the 2001 cuts went into place, there were attorneys talking about 2010 suicides as a viable plan for elderly wealthy clients. To topic, I'm glad to hear that Attanasio isn't looking to sell. Like anyone, he has his faults, but he is a vastly superior owner than Selig and probably most other owners out there.It's not an accident that 60% of our playoff appearances have occurred in the relatively short time he's been here, nor that we look to be set up pretty well for the foreseeable future. For better or worse, the direction of any business is a direct result of the actions taken by the person at the top and Attanasio overall has done a good job.

While I am eternally grateful that Selig was able to bring baseball back to Milwaukee, I think he was pretty horrible at managing the team. Once free agency hit, he was lost. Attanasio has his faults, but he has been a much better owner than Selig, and it's showing up on the field. I still see St Louis as our model. They are another Midwestern town that's pretty close in terms of size to Milwaukee, but they have been managed well for decades, so they are always competitive. It can be done in a "small market," and I like the current vision of team management to help re-form Milwaukee in the long run.

I get the Schoop trade, and to some degree I get the Moose trade. I just don't get doing both the Schoop trade and the Moose trade. We're often told that it's hard to get into any kind of rhythm with sporadic playing time, but our roster is set so that everyone on the roster except Cain and Yelich are basically guaranteed sporadic playing time. I invest money for a living. Different sectors do well at different times, but they generally perform to their averages over time. Two of the main reasons people generally fail to match the markets are chasing the hot sector/security, and market timing. I believe that for the most part, this is also true in baseball. With all the data at our fingertips, we generally know which players are better than others, so the best thing to do is generally to put the best guys in the lineup and ride out the highs and lows. As soon as you think someone is never going to produce, they start hitting and vice versa. Over 162 games, most guys will end up somewhere around where you expected going into the season. Unless there is an injury or some other factor, trying to determine when a player will be hot and when he will be cold seems to me to be a lot like chasing the hot sector and/or timing the market. The makeup of the Brewer roster kind of turns Counsell into a market timer, trying to decide which of his group of good hitters to play and which to sit on any given day, certainly with some emphasis on "who's hot." To me, this seems likely to cause the total offensive production to be less than the sum of its parts look like it should provide, much like the "average investor" almost always failing to perform as well as most/any of the individual sectors.

I agree, but I'd say that it doesn't solely have to be the draft. If we continue to have a strong farm, whether that's through drafts, trade, international, or any other means, then "overpaying for an aging player" shouldn't have to happen often. But the good thing about that strategy is that if we always have a number of pre-arby guys on the books (and guys who sign "team-friendly" extensions early), we will be able to afford some expensive players when and if it makes sense.

I am generally in favor of extending young, pre-arby guys to extensions like the one Yelich is currently on, that add a couple of reasonably priced years onto the usual six years of "control." I am generally against signing extensions that take moderately expensive players (guys nearing the end of arby, or guys who have already signed an extension) and pays them into their 30's. Therefore, as good as Yelich is, I don't want to see us sign him to a relatively expensive contract into his declining years. Once players get past 30-31, they decline. Some decline quicker than others, but I don't like risking a lot of guaranteed money on guys in their decline years.

He seems to have gotten his walks under control, so he could be a good "shore up the rotation" type. As long as he doesn't cost much (if anything), he should be a decent mid-to-back of the rotation guy to help us through September. Nelson is out, Suter is out, Davies is setback after setback, Miley has repeatedly gotten injured this year, and Peralta is at 130 IP when his max is 120 last year, so he may need to be shut down after a few more starts. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing them add Harvey.

Since this thread has kind of jumped from Daniel Murphy to the future state of the Brewers vs Cubs, I'll give it a shot: Both of the teams have had injuries this year, and with that they are within 3 games of each other and have had two of the best records in the NL all season. At this time, while the Cubs players are much more well known, the MLB talent isn't that far off. They're fairly evenly matched, and both teams have most of their current roster returning next year. Both of the teams made significant off-season deals to the point that neither should have that much salary room to make big, expensive offseason acquisitions. The Cubs did structure a few contracts (Heyward, Darvish, Zobrist) to lower after this season, probably in preparation of some big arby increases. That may give them some room to add salary, while the Brewers may not have a lot of room to add, especially if they retain Schoop. Note that the Cubs' limits are mainly due to the luxury tax. They could always go over the salary cap, but most teams seem to be doing what they can to keep below the tax level due to stricter penalties including potentially losing draft position. The Brewers have more firepower coming up from the farm. Many of their better prospects are at or near the MLB level, while the Cubs have traded away a lot of talent in the last couple of seasons. The Cubs' biggest risk is probably that their starting pitching is getting old, and they don't have in-house replacements if they falter. The Brewers' biggest question is probably whether their young pitching will step up. I expect that the two teams will be competing for the NL Central title (along with the always competitive Cardinals) for the next few seasons. I'm glad that the Cubs traded away a lot of talent because they probably could have dominated the Central for a long time and now I don't think they'll be dominant, but they'll still be strong competition. I think the Cubs have been and will continue to get a little weaker every year as some players under contract get beyond "useful baseball age", while the Brewers are on the rise and should continue to get better as their prospects hit the majors to replace some of the holes in the current roster. If that plays out, the Brewers could be the favorite going into 2020-21. But a lot can happen by then.

Yeah, hopefully his poor play was injury-related and he can come back strong for us down the stretch.

The Cubs made themselves better at little cost. That seems to obviously be a good move for them, and will make it a little harder for the Brewers to catch them. The Cubs have sold off a lot of future talent over the past few years, but this move isn't in that category. It's hard to criticize picking up MLB talent for next to nothing.

Or he won’t even play against a lefty starter. If they sit the right-handed Schoop against LHP in favor of left-handers Shaw and Moose, then they really have lost faith in him.

This sums up my thoughts pretty well. I love OBP guys, but it's okay to have some power guys batting behind them in the lineup. Schoop was very hot right before the trade, so Counsell penciled him into the cleanup spot, but he probably should be a few spots down in our lineup. If he can put up his career average .741 OPS for the rest of the season, it will help us in our playoff run.

Throw in that we have Shaw, Moose, Schoop, Arcia and two catchers. We could have a hard time trimming our MLB roster to 13 position players. We could simply not exercise the options on Moose and/or Schoop, but that would be giving away talent for nothing. Rather, I think we'll see a pretty busy offseason with a few of our MLB guys being traded away. Even guys like Perez have too much value to simply cut loose. It is nice that we're getting to a point where we have a surplus of talented players. It's much better than most of the Brewers' history where we've had a few guys who deserve to be on a MLB roster and a bunch of filler. And rarely in this team's history have we had to worry about having more than 40 talented guys that needed to be protected. The Schoop deal may turn out to be good or bad, but overall this franchise is light years ahead of where it has been for most of the past 48 years.

I'd guess that Stearns believes he has more than 40 guys he'd like to protect this coming offseason, so some he's using some of the "iffy" guys in trade to acquire players who can help this year's team in their playoff run. I love that we have a lot of pitching talent in the minors, but the reality is that if we don't move some players, we will have to leave some of them exposed to Rule 5 where we will lose them for $50,000.

Thanks. I wish Quick Pitch could come on earlier when I wasn't half baked, half asleep. But now I remember it was you guys that played the Bucs and won a toughie, 1-0. Did I dream it or did Caine make another insane catch at the wall to save the game? The Brewers played the Dodgers, and yes Cain made a great catch. The Cubs played the Pirates and lost, allowing the Brewers to bring the "games back" to zero, although the Cubs are still percentage points ahead in the standings.

If the Brewers had a way of relieving themselves of his salary obligation for the next couple of years, they would jump at it, and there would be no backlash from the fans over losing a $20M bench player. But, it's not going to happen so the point is moot. He'll easily clear waivers, but that won't matter because the Brewers won't waste the effort trying to trade him. I guess some justification can come from the idea that we will finally have another "player for life" whose number can deservedly be added to the rafters in a few years. Yount is the only other player in team history who played his entire career in Milwaukee who deserved to be honored.

One bad half season doesn't turn a good/great player into a bad player. He was in the MVP discussions last year. Plus, he's heated up lately.

Yeah, start the games with 3B Moose, SS Schoop, 2B Shaw. Finish the game with 3B Moose or Shaw, SS Arcia, 2B Schoop. Nothing else about the 2018 Brewers has been conventional. Why start now :-)