monty57

http://thefieldsofgreen.com/2014/10/02/how-much-value-does-a-postseason-appearance-hold-for-mlb-franchises/ From the article: Long story short, it pays off to make in the playoffs. On average, about $20-$30 million worth. This is why teams are willing to add payroll mid-season if it looks like adding a player and his salary will get the team to the playoffs.

Doesn't happen often, but with all of the collusion talk and the union setting up a separate spring training for the loads of unsigned free agents, this isn't a normal year. If players and agents think the teams are lowballing them, I think some players and agents will "make a statement" and Boras will be leading the charge. Teams tend to get really stupid mid-season when they think it will help them win. If you're willing to trade away the top prospect in baseball for a rental closer, why wouldn't you sign a guy who's just holding out for money? Plus, pitchers get hurt all the time. Let's say a big money, World Series hopeful team loses a key starter to a season-ending injury in April. Does that change things enough for them to give Boras a call? Holding out into the season may not be normal, but this offseason has been far from normal. I guess my thinking is that Boras/Arrieta aren't going to sign a deal that they think is far below what they want just to be signed by opening day. If the hopes on this board are that the Brewers are going to get a huge discount for his services, I don't think that will happen. If they want him, they'll have to sign him to a long-term deal for #1 starter money, and I don't think that would be a good deal for the Brewers. If I'm wrong, and they're able to get him cheaply, then I'd change my tune. I'd love to have him on a 1-2 year deal, or on a deal that pays him a relatively low AAV, but I don't think that's realistic.

I think that if teams don't come up to Arrieta's price tag, Boras will have no problem holding out until mid-season, at which time teams in contention will probably cave in and sign him to a big deal rather than trading away prospects for a rental. If we are to go 5/125, then where is the "deal in a down free agent year" people are talking about? We would be paying #1 starter price for a guy who is probably a #2-3 right now and will probably be at best a #4-5 by the end of the deal. I'm not against signing a big free agent to improve the team. I just don't think any of the guys out there are good enough to justify the contract they'll demand.

That was how I was going to divvy it up as well. Since some teams have multiple "#1 guys" while others throw a "#4" out as their opening day starter, I think it's better to look at the top 30 pitchers instead of the average stats for each teams' #1, #2, etc. All told, the Brewers rotation is not nearly as bad as many are making it out to be, especially if Nelson comes back strong. That's why I don't think we need to go overboard on spending for another starter. We could use someone else, but we don't need to mortgage the future on him.

I can see the thought of maintaining a bit more flexibility for the trade deadline or next year, but at some point, we're going to have to make a plunge. Maybe Santana-for-Salazar is all we need to be a serious contender. I'm not buying that, but of course it's possible (not suggesting that that is your preferred method). The issue is that say you make that Santana (the rest of your list has very little value) for controllable starter trade...that probably still doesn't move the needle. I very much get your idea of seeing how that goes and then maintaining flexibility to make one more move...but that one more move is going to be the same thing: either overpaying someone like Arrieta or dumping half of our prospects into someone like Archer at the deadline. I like the idea of Arrieta or Lynn or Cobb now. It's an overpay, but we now have placed our last chip on the table right now. We can always shuffle the deck with some trades, but now we can go into 2021 with only short Cain/Arrieta (in this example) contracts remaining. We are effectively going "all in" without messing with our prospects and if we have to reconfigure and try this all over again in 2021, we will not have a bad long-term outlook. Moves that "don't move the needle" (like Thames) along with trading away proven guys and letting "unproven" guys play are what got us to playoff contention in 2017. Then this offseason we made two big "needle moving" moves in Yelich and Cain. Stearns has continued to add talent to this franchise since the day he joined. Of course there are always going to be other players out there on whom we could spend out capital, but eventually the capital dries up and we end up starting Yuni B at shortstop because we are out of resources. Right now we have a decent team, but should get someone else who can fill out the rotation. There is risk to any move, but I'll take some performance risk from a young, high-upside guy over the risk of tying $60M+ per year into three aging/declining players. This year is not more important than next year or the years after, and I don't think the marginal improvement this year of signing Arrieta is worth the potential negative he could have on future years if he continues to decline while eating up 20-25% of our max payroll. He gave the Cubs 2.4 WAR last year, and is projected (Fangraphs) to post 2.8-3.0 WAR in 2018. Salazar gave the Indians 2.2 WAR last year and is projected for 2.2-2.3 with an expectation that he'll work as both a reliever and a starter. If they're right (they're only projections after all), then he should be able to match Arrieta if given a full season's worth of starts. Even Cotton, who had a bad rookie season, is projected to post 1.3 WAR. So is Suter if he were to get the projected 26 starts they're listing for him. If Arrieta was younger, and we knew the next three years would be as good as the last three, then I'd be fine signing him to a multi-year deal for 1/4 of our payroll. Unfortunately, he's aging and declining. Signing him might feel good and make us look like we're "trying to win," but I don't think the signing is going to turn out well for the team that gets him. A big money team can afford that mistake, the Brewers can't. If he's fully recovered from TJ, I would be more in favor of signing Lynn than Arrieta, assuming he'd sign for less years and less money. But the fact that he and Cobb are still unemployed lead me to believe that those guys won't be as cheap as many are expecting. Of course, if the price comes down enough it would make sense to sign one of these guys. But in no way should we sign a guy just to "make a plunge." If we are going to commit the resources we're being asked to commit, then we had better be darned sure that player is a true difference maker. Being projected to be a game better than Brent Suter doesn't scream "must have" to me. For the $20M+ annual difference in salary, I'd just stick with Suter if those were truly the only options out there.

It sounds like Archer would cost pretty much our entire farm, and the 31-year old free agents on the market are looking for long-term, nine figure deals. That sounds like a "king's ransom" to me. If we get a ridiculous deal on a free agent, then fine, "strike." If the FAs were looking at signing for ridiculous deals, then they wouldn't still be unemployed. I want the Brewers to add a starter because they need someone else to fill out the rotation. I don't want them to do something that will hurt them in a couple of years just because they feel the urge to "win now." The Braun contract isn't going anywhere, and we just signed Cain. If we add Arrieta, we will have three 30-somethings taking up over half our probable max payroll for the next half-decade. That could get really ugly. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what you're saying here is that you're basically hoping the brewers don't do anything until the end of these contracts they already have on the books? Any decent starting pitching on the free agent market is going to be pricey, whether that's now, or 5 years from now. In 5 years actually, you'll probably be paying more for worse pitching, therefore putting the brewers in a bigger hole. If you want to attempt to trade for pitching, you're gonna be giving up a lot in your farm system in the off-season, and even more in the middle of the season. Cobb and Lynn are commanding a salary pretty similar to Arrietta I'm sure, otherwise they would've signed already. This free agency period is probably your best method of signing a pitcher, so which do you want to take? They'll all have similarish contracts, Cobb, Lynn, or Arrietta? I'll take Jake No, since the Brewers decided Hader would stay in the 'pen, they need to add a starting pitcher. I would prefer we do something along the lines of a Santana-for-Salazar trade, and I even like the rumored Cotton pickup if the price is right. That might not be as big of a "win now" move as signing an expensive free agent, but I think it would allow for us to still be competitive while maintaining some flexibility for future years. Adding another expensive 30-something could hamstring us if they decline and we're paying $60M+ per year to three anchors. Trading for someone like Archer sounds great, but I think the prospect cost (in addition to what we gave up for Yelich) would gut our farm too much. So I think the best move when considering both now and the future is to trade from the group of Santana, Broxton, Thames, Aguilar to find a young, controllable starter. Not looking for a star, just someone who can give you decent innings this year with some upside potential going forward.

It sounds like Archer would cost pretty much our entire farm, and the 31-year old free agents on the market are looking for long-term, nine figure deals. That sounds like a "king's ransom" to me. If we get a ridiculous deal on a free agent, then fine, "strike." If the FAs were looking at signing for ridiculous deals, then they wouldn't still be unemployed. I want the Brewers to add a starter because they need someone else to fill out the rotation. I don't want them to do something that will hurt them in a couple of years just because they feel the urge to "win now." The Braun contract isn't going anywhere, and we just signed Cain. If we add Arrieta, we will have three 30-somethings taking up over half our probable max payroll for the next half-decade. That could get really ugly.

Cotton (or someone like him) could be a great pick-up for the Brewers at the right price. I think Stearns has a pretty good eye for young talent, so if we can get a good deal on a talented youngster because he had a down year in his rookie season, that could be a big value play that could help the team a lot going forward. I was perfectly content going into this season with Woodruff and Hader in the rotation. Since the Brewers have decided to keep Hader in the pen, I would be perfectly content finding another "top prospect" to insert in the rotation. I like young, talented, inexpensive guys more than I like old, expensive, declining guys. I also think we'll be better off with all of our current pitching prospects plus Cotton than we would be by trading off most of our pitching prospects to get Archer. Archer would be great, he'd just cost too much in prospects to acquire, so I'm fine with something like Cotton if he can be had for a decent price.

This is the way I'd like to go as well. I hope we can get a high-upside guy with team control in trade. I know some people want us to go all in to win now, but I'd rather have a good young pitcher under team control at a reasonable price for years instead of emptying the farm for a guy like Archer or tying up 1/4 of our payroll for another 30-something year old for half a decade. I'm not saying to punt on the season. I'm thinking of trading from the group of Santana, Broxton, Thames, Aguilar to get a young, MLB-ready starter who is "unproven" at the MLB level but who Stearns thinks can be a good MLB pitcher. I don't want them to sign Arrieta, unless they somehow got him on a 1-year deal which is not going to happen. The Brewers can't afford to have a 5-6 year contract for $20M+ / year blow up on them in a couple of years. That may help us this year, but it could cripple us for a long time, and I'm not ready to make that trade-off.

While this helps the Cubs, I think those that are saying that we might as well pack up our ball and go home are overreacting a bit. Everyone knew the Cubs were going to add pitching, and Epstein said early in the offseason that paying for one of Arrieta/Darvish wouldn't be their first choice. Considering what FAs got in recent years, they got him for a decent price, but they still committed $126M+ over the next 6 years to a 31-year old. They got their starter and they're a good team. We added a lot of talent and are still very likely going to add one more starter before the season starts. With another starter, we can start looking at the Brewers as a "good team." The Cubs are probably better "on paper" going into the season, but that doesn't mean they're going to run away with the title, especially considering that they have nothing in the minors to help them out in case of injury or to use as trade bait for a mid-season upgrade. When one of our starters goes down, we have a stable-full of young guys to step in. When their starters hit the DL, they start asking fans in the stands if they can throw a couple of innings. Sure the Cubs are the favorites, but I'm still looking forward to see who we add to shore up our rotation and for the season to start to see how good our team can be. I'm sure not writing off the 2018 Brewers' playoff chances before the season starts just because the Cubs signed a starter when we all knew they were going to sign someone.

As to the Darvish signing, it obviously makes it tougher for the Brewers to win the Central, but it should make it tough for the Cubs to spend much (beyond arby raises) over the next few years without going over the luxury tax. They'll be tough, but they don't have much "injury insurance" in the minors. A couple injuries could really derail them. The Brewers still have to worry about what the Brewers are doing, not what other teams are doing. We should have another SP in the next few days, and with that we'll have a solid team. After that, let the games begin.

I am sure Boras will tell his players to hold, but what is the market for Arrieta? Brewers, Twins, and ? Arrieta has a better chance waiting for the first week or 2 of spring training and see if a big market team loses a pitcher to a significant injury then Boras can swoop in. I think chances of most, if not all, of Boras clients not going signed into spring training just went up. $100M contract on the table or holding out for better is a big risk to take for any player. p.s. how do I get the username whom I am quoting added to the quote? Tx. Newby. Just click the "quote" button in the bottom right instead of the "reply" button. That, or (in brackets) type quote="username being quoted" before the quote and (in brackets) /quote at the end.

Agreed, and I think to be fair to Braun (who isn't the world's best defender) he needs to be given one position and not moved around from game to game. I'm really warming to the idea of holding onto Santana and our prospects and simply signing a free agent SP, ideally one who will sign a 2-3 year deal so probably Lynn or Cobb and not Darvish or Arrieta. If we can get a solid young SP for Santana then do it, but otherwise there is no harm in holding onto him and making lesser deals for Aguilar and/or Thames to free up first base for Braun. I wouldn't get too warm with it, he's probably still gone. I'm fine with that too, as long as it's for a good price. No need to dump him just to open up a spot. If we can get a good young MLB SP or a good package of prospects, trade him. If not, then we get to hold onto a good young player who can help us win this year and still have plenty of team control to make him appealing in trade in the future.

Agreed, and I think to be fair to Braun (who isn't the world's best defender) he needs to be given one position and not moved around from game to game. I'm really warming to the idea of holding onto Santana and our prospects and simply signing a free agent SP, ideally one who will sign a 2-3 year deal so probably Lynn or Cobb and not Darvish or Arrieta. If we can get a solid young SP for Santana then do it, but otherwise there is no harm in holding onto him and making lesser deals for Aguilar and/or Thames to free up first base for Braun.

If Santana can't bring back a young MLB pitcher with team control, then I think I'd sign a free agent SP, trade Thames/Aguilar for prospects and go into the season with an OF of Yelich, Cain, Santana with Braun at first base. Santana may not be a perfect fit for the "Stearns mold," but he's still a valuable player. I like the thought of Cain, Yelich, Braun, Shaw, Santana as our top five. Meanwhile, while we need another SP, we don't necessarily need two. Sign Lynn or Cobb, see how Nelson's rehab goes, and make a deadline trade if necessary.

That's the problem. The moves the Brewers are making means they fully intend to be "gunning for the playoffs" for at least the next couple of years. We are going to have the same arguments next year as we have this year as to why Hader should remain in the pen. The way the Brewers have handled Hader do not make me believe that he will someday be a starter for them. If that's because they don't believe he can be a starter, that makes sense, but it seems like it's because the desire to win now bears more weight than the desire to get the most out of a potential star.

I don't know if this has been thrown out yet, but how about Hader? We apparently don't see him as a starter, so why not trade 5-6 years of a good reliever for 4 years of a good starter? We'd still need to trade an OF, so we then trade Santana for bullpen and 2b upgrades since he doesn't seem to be valued high enough to headline a trade for a good young SP. As others have said, we're pot committed at this point. If the Rays see Hader as a starter, he could go a long way towards landing Archer without our having to gut the farm.

I don't think any projections coming out before rosters are set should be taken too seriously. But regardless of what projections say, we wouldn't have signed Cain if we weren't going to address pitching. We'd have just let Phillips get the starting role. Rotation-wise, we wobbled through September last year because we had an expanded roster so we could do things like start Jeffress and do a bunch of games where we knew we would use loads of pitching. That won't work for a full season of baseball. So, let's see what the next move is, and once we have another "proven" starting pitcher on the roster we'll likely be expected to win more games.

They've already announced that he will start the season in the bullpen. I think it would take something unforeseen happening for him to start the season in the rotation (injury to someone, or Stearns' plans on acquiring another starter completely falling flat).

Here are Hader's IP by year: 2012: 28.2 2013: 107.1 2014: 123.1 2015: 103.3 (year he was traded to Milw) 2016: 126 2017: 99.2 Last year would have been the time to keep him starting in the minors to get to 150+ innings, but of course things played out as they did and he ended up with limited innings. Really my only concern with him being in the pen in 2018 is that he will probably get <80 IP. If he then gets put into the rotation in 2019, how much could they reasonably expect him to pitch? I'd think 150 would be the max, and after two years of sub-100 IP, even that might be pushing it by today's standards. Does anyone really think that next year at this time, when we're likely still in "go for it" mode, that we'll put him in the rotation knowing that he'll only be able to go a partial season when we know he can help the team for a full season out of the bullpen? Every player has some issues. We've nitpicked Hader to death on why he might not be 100% ready, but he has so much potential and I see us limiting the total value we'll get from Hader because we want to maximize today's value when we're chasing the playoffs today rather than looking at total value and how much more he could help us in future playoff runs as a top-of-the-rotation starter. And of course, that's assuming the naysayers are correct. There is also the possibility that Hader could have a great season as a starter as soon as this year, but that we will never know.

Love Cain, wish we had never traded him away. My concern is that just like we wish we could trade Braun now but can't, we will be in a similar situation in a couple of years with Cain. I have an aversion to signing guys into their mid-to-late 30's, and I am skeptical if analytical study is able to predict which guys will "age well." Insurance companies have been using math in an effort to try to do that for years. They have some success when putting people into large groups, but would never assume to be able to figure it out on an individual basis. The theory that "he'll pay for himself in the first few years and underperform in the final years" seems to be what every team in baseball is getting away from. That just means that we're looking to do well for a couple of seasons and will then likely have another anchor on our performance a few years from now. That would be a little more palatable if we were the proverbial "one player away from the World Series," but I don't think we're there yet. His best seasons may be when we're not quite ready, and by the time we're ready he'll be hit by the "age bug." Smoltz is about as "old school, union guy" as there is. Last night he was saying that when he was playing no one got deals more than 3-4 years, and he understood why teams were acting the way they are since so many of these deals fail miserably. Granted, he was talking about $100M deals, but let's be honest, an $80M deal to the Brewers is riskier than a $100M deal to a bigger market team.

Alright, let's move on. Please keep the focus on Hader and the decision to put him in the bullpen to start the season. That's all. Go Brewers!

I don't doubt that he will be a good bullpen arm, just like I don't doubt that Santana would make a good bench bat. I just don't think it's the way to maximize the player's value to the Brewers. I do think having him in the pen this year and signing some 30 year-olds to long-term deals will make the 2018 Brewers better. I just don't think it's the best thing for a couple of years from now. I'm a financial planner. I constantly talk with people about where they'll be a decade or three from now, so I'm wired to worry about future ramifications of current moves. I know it can be annoying. I'll still enjoy this season even if I worry about some of the teams' moves.

Does every team over-scrutinize all the negatives about their top prospects as much as we do? Good gracious, guys in the low minors are untouchable, but once they get ready to play at the major league level there's always major reasons why they're not good enough and we need to sign someone to block them. Hader is the best starting pitcher prospect we've had in a long time, possibly ever. Unfortunately, he will never get the chance to see if he can cut it because short-term desire to win outweighs long-term desire to get the most value out of him. I know I shouldn't use "never." If the Brewers decide in the future to move him to starter, we will get a couple partial years of him starting before he gets his innings built up right around time for us to trade him or lose him to free agency.

I hope he can keep it up, but man have we quickly changed from the "continue to add young, controllable talent" stage to the "we want to win now so sign old guys until we max out payroll" stage. I keep bouncing back-and-forth as to whether I like or dislike what we're doing. This deal is fairly small in the grand scheme of things, but I don't like relying on old guys to defy nature and continue to play at a top level when they're at an age where most players have retired. Here's to defying the odds. Dilly dilly!