monty57

Me too. I'm cautiously optimistic that we could be there in a couple of years, but we're not there yet. Signing an MLB starter who can be a middle-of-the-rotation or better guy to a shorter-term contract makes a lot of sense to me. Don't break the bank, don't sign a 30-something to a long-term deal, just make a relatively low-risk signing to bridge the gap to what I hope will be a bright future for Brewer pitching.

I'm with you TJ77. I think that a true lead-off hitter would help stabilize the offense (make it less streaky), and I would love to see them find a high-OBP second baseman to fill that role. Bringing back Sogard shows me that Stearns understands that we need some low K / high OBP guys to mix in with all of our high K / high power guys. Sogard makes a good option at utility IF, but I'd rather have a full-time 2B/leadoff hitter with a "professional approach." This is also why I think Perez will be traded. He's helped out the team over the past couple of years, but getting a player with his approach more PAs is not what this team needs.

If Hader stays in the 'pen and gets 70-80 IP, he will likely never be a starter, and we will have passed up on our best shot at a home grown ace in a long time. As it stands right now, he'd probably need to be the #5 starter so he could be skipped every now and then, or he'd need to be shut down when he hits around 150 IP. Keep him in the pen all year, and I don't see him becoming a starter in the future. If he does, it would be just in time for us to prep him to be a solid starter so we could trade him off before losing him to free agency. I understand that relievers have become more valuable in "today's game," but a dominant reliever is still far less valuable than a dominant starter.

From MLBtraderumors.com Shohei Ohtani has already narrowed his list of potential landing spots to seven team, according to multiple reporters (with Jim Bowden of MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM the first to tweet the final seven). Only the Dodgers, Giants, Angels, Padres, Mariners, Rangers and Cubs will receive meetings with Ohtani. While Ohtani has three weeks to negotiate with teams, ESPN’s Buster Olney tweets that Ohtani could make a decision well before that point, noting that he could be introduced by his new club at next week’s Winter Meetings. Of the remaining teams in the fold, the Rangers still have the most money to offer Ohtani, at $3.535MM, though his signing bonus seems increasingly to be a secondary consideration in where he ultimately signs, especially after last week’s reports that Ohtani could top $20MM in annual earnings in marketing endorsements. Certainly, his list of finalists reflects a preference for West Coast teams and a proximity to Japan, though the presence of the Rangers and Cubs indicates that he’s not quite locked into that mindset just yet.

Clancy, I'd prefer Hader to Suter in the rotation based on upside. Suter's ceiling as a starter is probably a #4/5 guy, while Hader could be a #1. Hader could be valuable out of the pen in the "Andrew Miller" role, but he has the potential to be one of the better starting pitchers in the game, which would be infinitely more valuable than any role he could have as a reliever. I think Suter will be very valuable to the 2018 Brewers, but I like him as the "swing man," kind of like how the Cubs have used Montgomery. Suter can act as a LOOGY, go multiple innings, go one inning, and make spot starts when needed. Hader is better (higher upside) than Suter, so put Hader in the more valuable role (starter) and Suter in the role of "swing man."

If you could find someone who can go 7+ every time out, that's a Godsend for your bullpen, but those guys are extremely rare and we're not going to afford one in free agency. I'm interested in getting five guys who can go 5-6 innings every time out, with an occasional push into 7-8 innings on their good nights. A bullpen can stay fresh on 3-4 innings/night when they occasionally get a night off when one of the guys goes 7+. The way we ran things late in the season was only possibly because of the expanded roster. There's no way a bullpen holds up when several of your starters are going less than five innings regularly through a full season. It is good that we have a number of guys who could go multiple innings in the bullpen, and the depth of our talent is a big plus. That said, with Woodruff and Hader likely getting two spots in the rotation, I'm most comfortable finding a guy from outside the organization who has the capability of going 5-6 innings most times out, and keeping Suter and maybe even another guy like Guerra as guys in the pen who will get a lot of multiple inning stints.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to laugh or shake my head. The Brewers don't have that much money, so they can't spend that kind of money. This isn't a situation of "the owners won't make as much money," this is a situation of purposefully losing $30M+ on an annual basis, driving the franchise to bankruptcy. The other owners would force Attanasio to sell the franchise if he did something like that.

We're at a projected payroll right now of around $65.5M. You'd drop around $7M and add around $79.4M in salary, putting us somewhere around $138M in payroll in 2018, and that would go up substantially in the next few seasons with arby raises. There's no way we could do that.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/marlins-told-giancarlo-stanton-accept-trade-theyll-deal-everyone-else-005323854.html This story makes it sound like the only way they're going to trade players like Yelich is if Stanton insists on coming back. Sounds like they're really just trying to get out from under his contract, but if he executes his no-trade clause, then they will trade away other higher-priced players to bring the payroll down.

Santana is probably a reasonable starting point, but I agree with bcd80 that the Marlins would be looking for prospects, not guys who are nearing arby. They would demand Brinson as the starting point, with a few more prospects added on. At that price, it doesn't make sense to me to make the trade, as we are already sitting pretty good in the OF and we are going to need good prospects transitioning to the majors if we want to remain competitive over the long haul. I'd rather use our extra cash to get some pitching and go into the season with Braun/Brinson/Phillips/Santana in the OF. Yelich is a good player, but the marginal upgrade from what we have to him isn't as big as the marginal upgrade we could get by adding a couple free agent setup guys and another SP. If we trade our star-potential prospects for more expensive guys at the same position with less control, we will eventually end up with an expensive roster and a weak farm. We need to promote our star-potential prospects and trade away the "surplus" guys who are talented but don't have a clear path to the majors with the Brewers.

Good points made. I think "gone" means either DFA'd or traded for minor league roster filler. That makes the question whether we should hold Perez and dump Villar for nothing, or hold Villar in hopes he regains some value while trading Perez for something. I personally don't see a ton of PAs for this spot on the roster, and we have minor leaguers like Dubon who could be called up if Villar fails. Therefore, I'm leaning in the direction of trading Perez for something of value with the contingency that we're willing to dump Villar and bring up a prospect if he doesn't show life at the start of the season. Of course, this also assumes that we will bring in a 2B from outside the organization. If we are not going to do that, I would probably rather see a platoon of Perez/Sogard than Villar/Sogard, although neither looks overly appealing.

I would not want that Chen contract on the Brewer books. That would eat up way too much of our free cash flow over the next few years, and could hamper some other things we may want to do. If the Marlins would only do a deal if we took that contract, I would walk away. Otherwise, Yelich is a great player, but the only way it really makes sense to do something would be in YoungGeezy's scenario where we could get Yelich in a deal not including Brinson, and then we used Brinson to land a good young pitcher. That seems like too many wheels turning for it to be likely to come to fruition, so the best bet is probably just to go with Phillips/Brinson.

So you're saying the Baez-for-Archer rumor won't happen? My Cub fan friends will be crushed :-)

Low risk signing for a guy who has a chance to have a role on the 2018 MLB roster. Stearns makes a lot of seemingly minor moves through the offseason, and sometimes they pay dividends. I like guys with good K:BB ratios, so I like the pickup. He'll probably be AAA depth, but maybe he can be a guy Counsell can call on who won't come in and walk his way into a tough situation.

All I said was that I doubted you could bet on an "over" of 68, or get 50:1 odds of the Brewers making the playoffs. I don't think that's "rosy." I also questioned how a team can have a 97 win projection when at this point they only have three starting pitchers and no closer. It has to be assumed that the authors are making guesses as to what each team will do in the offseason and making "projections" off of their guesses, so saying "when the numbers don't agree" is assuming "the numbers" aren't flawed, which it seems these numbers are. You were a big proponent of the "tank for a draft pick" strategy going into 2017, and if that happens this offseason then maybe these numbers are justified. However, since Counsell already strongly hinted that payroll is going up considerably next year, the odds of the Brewers punting on this season are pretty much zero, so I think this article is pretty meaningless and is not something anyone should use as "the numbers." I could see the Brewers falling back some this year, and it's easily within reason to believe that they could be a sub-.500 team. I just think that putting the expected win total at 68 is borderline absurd. If you put a standard deviation curve on that, you'd say they have as good a chance of being a 60-win team as they do of winning 76. Really?

I think the Brewers are going to bring in someone to be the starting second baseman. Assuming that happens: With Sogard re-signed and likely to be the primary utility IF, and at least two of Phillips, Brinson and Broxton on the roster, one of Perez or Villar is likely the odd man out while the other is pretty much the 25th man on the roster. I think someone would give us decent value for Perez, as teams are now looking for versatile players. Therefore, I would trade Perez and hang onto Villar as the second utility guy with a chance of working his way into more playing time if he can show signs of life. If Villar doesn't do much, then by the end of the 2018 season/start of 2019, we should have a prospect who can fill the utility role for league minimum, so we would then say goodbye to Villar. To the question of what we could get for him, I'd say not much. I don't even think we'd get a "lottery ticket" teenager. At best, I'd expect a non-prospect roster filler for Biloxi. If I'm right on that, we're better off letting him get sporadic PT to see if he can show some life.

Yeah, this is the one that confuses me. I guess the theory is Rizzo, Bryant, Russell, Baez, Contreras, Happ, maybe Almora all having lofty WAR projections as they are all established (except Russell maybe) and that adds up to a pretty high number. The one thing is that if any of these guys get hurt, they're out of replacements. Or even if Lester is still in good form but gets hurt, they have no one to dip into the minors for. I think a 97.1 win projection probably assumes too much health. I think they have to be assuming that the Cubs will sign a couple of good starting pitchers and re-sign Davis. That doesn't make this a true "pre-hot stove" projection. As they stand right now, the Cubs would be putting Montgomery as their #4 and a AAA pitcher as their #5. They'd also have to move Edwards to closer, and that leaves them with a bad bullpen. Of course they're going to do something so this doesn't happen, but why do projections assume the Cubs will make good moves to make them better while the Brewers will do nothing and fall apart?

There is someone (a place actually) where you CAN actually do this you know ; ) I know, but do you think Vegas would give you 50:1 odds on the Brewers making the playoffs? Seems pretty steep. ESPN doesn't have to pay out, so they can throw anything they want out there. I think Vegas would be a bit more careful with their numbers.

Good. If the MLB wants to have its rules followed, they have to be willing to lay the hammer down. A lot of new rules have been put in play to try to even out the playing field, and GMs and agents will be a lot less enthusiastic about find a way around the rules if they know they can get lifetime bans for doing so.

How are the Cubs set to win 97.1 "pre hot stove" when right now they have three starting pitchers and no closer? They have to be making some assumptions on what will happen in the offseason, right? While I would certainly bet the over on their win projection for the Brewers (68.9), I do like this comment: "You would hate if the Brewers went nuts with spending this winter, though you can understand the temptation." As to the 2% chance of making the playoffs, if someone would give me $50 for every $1 I put on the Brewers to make the playoffs, I'd take it and I'm not a betting man.

I'd say if everything is rosy you'd trade away one of Darvish/Arrieta for a package including a pre-arby MLB guy at a position of need and some prospects, and someone like Burns can step into the rotation. Or you at least trade away Nelson who would be a short-timer and would hopefully be able to bring back a lot in trade as he's still in his arby years.

That's about what I've been thinking, and that will allow us to add $20-$30 million to a team that was one game out of the playoffs this year. To the opening post, it's not realistic to think that could happen unless we went "Marlins model" and blew up the team when the season was over (or at trade deadline if it wasn't working out). The question with that would be if we would be able to trade away Darvish and Arrieta after the season, as we would be giving them a contract that would assume the final few years of the contract will probably be overpay and we would use up one of the good years in our 2018 playoff push. If we gambled on being able to flip them after the season and then we weren't able to flip them, we would be in big trouble as our payroll started pushing to levels where the ownership group would be losing $20-50 million a year. We'd have to start a fire sale with our tradeable guys who are making some money (like Davies, Shaw, Anderson) which would leave us with $50M/year sunk in two aging starters and a bunch of junk to surround them. Or even worse, we'd trade them but have to eat a lot of salary, so we'd have around 20% of our payroll going to players not on the team, making our max payroll for the next half-decade around $80-90M. I'd prefer we just use some free cash to add a couple of solid setup guys and a reasonably priced SP, giving us a better team "on paper" than we had last year and allowing us room to add at the trade deadline. Edit: If I had a terminal disease and knew this was the final season I'd have, I would love to see the Brewers do what the opening post suggests. I'd get a chance at seeing the Brewers win a World Series and wouldn't have to live through the repercussion in the following years.

To me it's hardly relevant. I would actually be less inclined to target Archer if Nelson were healthy. Hader needs a shot in the rotation, we have 3-4 quality arms at the upper levels of the minors that should be ready in the next year or so. We are already going to have issues making spots for these talented arms without Archer. I agree. I think Hader should be in the rotation, so the only reason I'm advocating looking at another SP option is because Nelson is injured. If he was 100%, we'd have our rotation set. As it stands, we could fill that "hole" with Suter or Wilkerson, but I would prefer we get a reasonably priced alternative. That could be a free agent, who would "only" cost us money, or a trade that won't "sell the farm." I am elated that we have quality arms at the upper levels. While all of them won't work out, hopefully those who do work out will allow us to trade some of our "proven" MLB talent in the future as they force their way onto the MLB staff.

We have a whole lot of good OF throughout the system. Braun isn't going anywhere, so we will eventually trade some OF for help elsewhere. Everyone should be on the table, but obviously the return has to be higher if we are trading our better "chips." I would trade Brinson or Santana in the right situation, but it would have to be a lot coming back. We still have another season or so before we'll be forced to do something, and a lot could work out by then, but I wouldn't put the "don't trade under any circumstances" on any of our players. If we can land Archer in a deal centered around our lesser OF prospects, then we should jump at that deal. I just don't see that happening. I don't think Archer is a big enough upgrade to justify our trading away several of our top prospects at this point, when we could sign a FA or go with the guys we have and hold onto the prospects.

Stearns' biggest strength is supposed to be evaluation of youngsters, and he loves bringing in young talent. I doubt he'll be in a rush to trade away high-upside young talent that he thinks could be part of future Brewer rosters until we get to a point (like the Astros were) that we'll start losing good talent to Rule 5. I don't want to see us trade away much of our farm at this point. We have 1-2 rotation spots to fill. I'd like to see us move Hader to the rotation, and probably sign a FA if a decent option is available (Chatwood). If that option isn't available, I'd either go Clancy's route and let Suter/Wilkerson take the final spot, or try to find a reclamation project or aging vet to a one-year deal to eat some innings. If we are going to give up a bunch of talent, it needs to be something transformational. I would have been okay trading Brinson to get Quintana last season, which probably would have been enough for us to beat out the Cubs for the division, and we'd have him for several more years. If Archer is really a low-end #2/high-end #3 guy and the Rays want a huge return, then we should pass. If Archer is not traded, he's pitching very well, we're in first place by 5.5 games at All Star break in 2018, and Brinson is not a big part of that success, then I may change my mind and get behind trading him for Archer at that point. Right now, we have other options that will not cost us a ton of prospects. Let's try one of those options and hold on to our prospects.