monty57

I've seen the argument that standing pat is the easy thing to do, the safe thing, even the "cowardly" thing to do. That DS doesn't have the guts to make moves. I would say it's the other way around: Making these trades is easy. It's what the mainstream fans and mainstream media wants. It's what the owner wants. It feeds the perception that action, any action, is a sign of strength. The hardest thing to do is sometimes to do nothing. To have patience. To stick to your convictions, stick to your plans. That's not to mention the short memories of anyone questioning DS guts. He non-tendered the reigning NL HR champion. To make space for a guy who left for Korea because he couldn't hack it in the majors. Very good point. It's really hard for anyone to put together a long-term plan and stick with it because long-term plans don't often satisfy short-term desires. This is magnified for public figures, who not only have their own wants, but also those of the masses.

Getting the Lucroy and Gomez deals signed right before both of them broke out was probably the biggest reason we hopefully won't suffer an extended rebuild period. I'm almost always for signing low cost deals to young guys who you think could be good. The downside won't hurt the franchise too badly, and the upside is tremendous.

John, remember that the Cubs' rebuild took a long time. We're far ahead of where they were at this stage of the rebuild, when they were starting a string of 100-loss seasons. I get the frustration, as it's tough to see the Brewers sinking while the Cubs surge, but we can't destroy a multi-year plan to chase a short-term goal. If the Cubs had an odd year during that string where they were playing over their head and other teams were down, and they traded away Bryant and others to "go for it," (maybe holding onto some of the pieces they traded away to land guys like Rizzo, Russell, etc.) they never would have won a World Series. Stearns made a solid offer on Quintana, which I'm sure upped the price tag for the Cubs. A comparable offer from us would likely have been something like Brinson, Ortiz and Diaz. Those three could be the heart of our multi-year playoff run before too long, and was way too much for the Brewers to pay at this stage. The Cubs have a young MLB core who just won a World Series, and an infinite money supply. They are at a stage where they feel they can "gut the farm." The Brewers have shown that they are more talented then many thought, but they still have too many holes to make it sensible to "gut the farm." Stearns (with the help of some moves from Melvin late in his tenure) looks to have turned a 5-10 year rebuild into a rebuild in which one 72-win season is our low point. That's borderline miraculous. I still hope we can right the ship and win the division this year, but regardless of what happens, we will have a lot of positives to build on going forward, with a lot of talent coming up from the farm to supplement the young core we're already building. It hurts to see our inflated hopes lose some air right now, but I'm still very excited about where this franchise is sitting relative to where it was not too long ago.

No, because if they claim him they'd have to pay the rest of his $4M+ contract.

Markets have bubbles and bursts all the time. I'm just glad Stearns was able to take advantage of the crazy reliever market when he did. That helped shorten up the rebuild period.

MLB.com just updated their top 100 prospect list. They have Jimenez at #7 and Cease at #68. Ortiz is #82 and Ray is #69. These lists are just opinions, but in the opinion of the people at MLB.com, the Brewer's alleged offer was not nearly as good as the Cubs. Even replacing one of the guys with Brinson wouldn't have matched the Cubs' offer, although it would have been very close.

Peralta has to be done after this, right? Blazek should still have a decent future, but I don't want to see Peralta in a Brewers uniform any more.

That's not a bad package, but not close to what the Cubs gave up. I'm glad we didn't try to match the Cubs' offer. They have a lot of young talent at the MLB level and an unlimited check book, so they can make that deal. The Brewers couldn't afford to pay that much in talent, so kudos to Stearns/Attanasio for understanding that would have been a big overpay for them.

We don't need starters. Our rotation has been really good lately. One implosion in a spot start doesn't mean we need starters. The way he's been used is the equivalent of bringing up Brinson to get one pinch hit per week. That may be an important PA, but he's much more valuable playing everyday. Since young pitchers need to gradually increase their innings, bringing Hader up to the 'pen when they did (after giving him 2 inning starts at AAA) means that he will not get nearly enough innings to be a full-time rotation candidate next year. Keep this up, and the Brewers will have greatly decreased the value of one of their most potentially valuable players. Is the immediate term value they're receiving by putting him in the 'pen this year and using him for a couple of innings per week worth seriously diminishing the total value we should get from him over the six years of team control? I have agreed with most of what the Brewers have done over the past couple of years, but I don't agree with them here. They should have just kept him as a starter, or at least let him pitch more when he was at AAA to get his innings up before bringing him to the MLB pen. The guy could be dominant, and instead of seeing that for 1,000+ innings over his career as a Brewer, we'll get much less.

Agree. I don't like how they've used him this year. I hope they put him in the rotation next year, but he'll have to be shut down early. Davies and Nelson are already around 120-130 IP, so he'd probably get shut down sometime in August if he stayed healthy. That's fine if we're not competing, but it'll hurt if we really are a team that can compete. By the time he'll be ready to go a full season (assuming they don't just keep him in the 'pen, which would be a waste), he'll be ready to start collecting big paychecks.

Agree. He's been up 49 days and has only 13 appearances and 17 IP. He had 52 IP in AAA. At roughly 1/3 IP per day, he's on pace for around 93 innings for the year. He should get around 150 if he wants to be a Brewer starter next year. As much as I disliked watching the 8th inning last night, I'm much more concerned that the best starting pitcher for a franchise that has had tremendous difficulty developing starting pitching, is going to end up a reliever. I don't care what Kansas City did, Hader will be far more valuable to the Brewers as a starter, so if they feel the need to have him in the bullpen this year, then they need to give him a lot more innings than he's getting.

They are alone in first place 2/3 of the way through the season. They may not have as much talent as the Cubs, but if they win more games in a defined 162 game period they get to go to the playoffs. By definition, that makes them a "playoff team" regardless of what "the analytics" may say. Also, they are five days away from the deadline, so I doubt they made a trade for him simply to flip him in for a "large prospect package" when they just got him for Cordell. To start the year, I didn't think they would make the playoffs, but right now they are in position to make the playoffs and Swarzak will hopefully make them a little better. As unlikely as that may have seemed a few months ago, can't we just enjoy this run and hope it ends up with a division title?

I love the idea of getting controllable talent, but not every single move has to be for controllable talent. Sometimes moves like this make sense. A reliever with multiple years of control would probably have cost Phillips instead of Cordell. We're still in first place, and this move should make us better. If I had to bet, I'd say that at this time next year we will be on the opposite side of these trades, adding more controllable talent to the minors. For the present, we improved our biggest area of need, and we likely opened up a 40-man spot to protect someone more highly regarded than Cordell going forward. The only way I could spin this to a negative is if there was a better move that now will not happen because Cordell was going to be a key piece. But for that, I'll just assume that Stearns knows more about the potential trades he has on the docket then I do. If this move would keep him from getting that stud starting pitcher with 4-5 years of team control, then I'd guess he wouldn't have made this trade.

After the Gomez trade, I spoke to an Astros-fan friend of mine (who is a former GM of a minor league team so he has some clue what he's talking about), and he said something to the effect of "we have to trade talented guys away, or we'll lose them to Rule 5." I think the Brewers need to be mindful of that. Stearns has done a great job of stockpiling the minors, and I expect him to continue to do that. Meanwhile, as the guys make their way through the minors, he needs to determine which of the prospects to keep, and which ones to use in trade. Sometimes it makes sense to trade the veteran and replace him with the prospect, and sometimes it makes sense to trade prospects. We have a boatload of outfielders throughout the system. Dipping into that pool to help the MLB team, especially if it's for a guy with team control, could be a good move. But it has to be strategic. Emptying out the farm will probably never be something Stearns will do.

Note that the article was written in February, before anyone thought the Brewers would be in a pennant race. At this point, it's entirely possible he's on the 2018 opening day roster for $5M. Assuming he continues to be a decent pitcher for the remainder of the season, it's also possible that he could be traded this offseason.

Don't forget that Mike Ilitch was willing to lose millions of dollars a year in order to try to win a World Series before he died. He died in February of this year, so the new owner (Mike's son Christopher) probably isn't as willing to lose millions of dollars a year. Therefore, shedding salary is probably a pretty high priority right now to try to get out of the red. That doesn't mean that he shouldn't take the best package offered, but a deal was probably going to be done regardless of what the best offer was. Plus, doing the deal a couple of weeks early would save quite a bit of extra money on Martinez's $11.75M deal. Regardless, he's going to have a tough road ahead with all the terrible contracts the team has on the books going forward.

Threads like this should be brought up whenever the argument for signing a veteran because "prospects are too risky, so we need someone who's proven themselves" comes up.

I was at the Myrtle Beach Pelicans game last night and wondered why Jimenez was on the "temporarily inactive" list. I guess now I know why :-) This certainly hurts the Brewers' chance of holding off the Cubs this year, but we'll just have to see how things play out. We still have way more OF than we need. Maybe we can find a good upgrade using some of our non-Brinson OF prospects.

We should have a couple of starters and most of our future bullpen covered with what we have in the minors, so I'd hate to part with much of our MiLB pitching. We have a surplus of OF and middle IF, so if we were to make a trade, I'd hope it would be from these groups. No one is "untouchable" if the right trade is offered, but it would take a really good player with quite a bit of team control remaining to pry away any of our top guys.

Note that I'm not a huge fan of making a trade right now, and would be fine if we stand pat. I just realize that we have an over-abundance of outfielders, and would consider trading from that depth to get a top-of-the-rotation starter who is controlled for 3.5 more seasons. We'd have him for the run this year, and at some point in the future will be able to trade him away to recoup much of the prospect capital we paid to get him.

Again, the only pitchers (per Fangraphs WAR) who have been better than Quintana since his first full season in 2013 are Kershaw, Kluber, Scherzer, Sale, and Price. He's tied with Lester. He's been better than Bumgarner, Arrieta, Greinke, Archer, Strasburg, Verlander, Wainwright, Hernandez, Hamels, Keuchel, etc. His 4.5 seasons (20.1 WAR) are better than the Greinke's five seasons (18.4 WAR) prior to our trading for him, and a little under Sabathia's 2003-2007 seasons (21.3 WAR but again five full seasons). Please quantify what "elite" or "ace" means, because being one of the top 6-7 pitchers in baseball for your career would seem to qualify.

Per Fangraphs, Quintana has the 7th highest WAR in baseball from 2013 to 2016. He's had a huge spike in HR this year, so I'd hope the Brewers would look into this before making a move, but I think some posters are being a little rough on him. He's a good pitcher.

I wouldn't "get into a bidding war." I'd just figure out what I'd be willing to pay and not go over that. If another team decides to pay what Stearns feels to be too much for Quintana, or if the Sox just don't feel that our best offer is enough, then we don't get him. Brinson is an awfully good prospect who is major league ready. If him along with some lesser prospects isn't enough, then I probably don't want to make the trade. The only reason I'd consider trading him is the abundance of outfielders in our system and the fact that we could probably trade Quintana again in a year or two and get back some prospects at that time.

Since Braun looks to be a Brewer for life, we have an excess of OF. As much as I like Brinson, and as much as I like stockpiling prospects, I wouldn't mind seeing a package for Quintana built around Brinson if that means we would have to give up less pitching in the deal. We'd get Quintana (I believe) through the 2020 season. We'd probably use him the rest of this season, and to open next year. If we were still winning, we'd keep him. If this season is an anomaly, and we're not in the race next year, we trade him away for similar talent to what we'd give up this year. Only, we clear up a little of the logjam at OF we currently have, and hopefully get top talent at a position of greater need. I agree with others that Gray should only be in the same conversation as Quintana if it is: "The Brewers would give up top talent for Qunitana. If they can't land Quintana, they would give up significantly less talent for Gray."

If you extend Arcia (or anyone else) during the pre-arby years, you expect to get a substantial discount to market value. That makes the player very valuable on the trade market if a solid replacement is ready in the minors. Look at the Lucroy and Gomez deals to see what teams are willing to pay for a good player signed to a "team friendly" contract. I hope that we are able to keep good players coming up through the system, allowing us to trade guys who are more expensive with less team control. That's the only real way I can imagine that a smaller-revenue team like the Brewers can hope to sustain success for longer than a "window." If done correctly, you can actually get better when the vet is traded, as we would have a strong replacement and could use the trade to add talent in an area of greater need.