monty57

In his two top years, Winker's wRC+ was in the 140's. That would put him in the Julio Rodriguez/Juan Soto/Pete Alonzo range. If he does that, I doubt the Brewers trade him. It would, however, go a long ways to getting us the division title and hopefully a good run in the playoffs. As to Turang, I'm fine if he starts, and I'm fine if he's held down to gain a year's service time. The only scenario I don't want to see is him taking on "the Jace Peterson role" as a utility guy off the bench. That would not be worth making him a free agent a year early, losing a year's service time when he's in his prime. To the guy in the title of this thread, I don't see a problem with him starting at 3B, probably getting some bench time in favor of Brosseau when a lefty is on the mound. He plays decent defense at the position and there's plenty of reason to believe that he could be a good bat again. If not, then he's served his purpose by buying us another year of Turang's service when he gets called up and Anderson gets relegated to bench duty or DFA'd. For one of the cheapest free agents signed this offseason, we have become a better team than we were before the signing. Urias gets to move to his natural position, Adames stays at SS, Anderson/Brosseau man the hot corner with Toro/Miller as the utility IF. We (hopefully) start Mitchell and Frelick in the OF, and now we don't have to start three rookies from day one.

I would refer you to Exhibit A: Carlos Correa. He will have a physical, but on a one-year / $3.5M (plus incentives) deal, it won't be looked at quite as closely as Correa's.

Opening day is still a ways away, but this move seems to point to Turang starting the year at AAA to save a year's service time. He's our "replacement in waiting" for SS when Adames is gone, so it isn't a bad idea to preserve an extra year at the position where he provides the most value. 3B/OF isn't your typical utility guy, so Anderson doesn't really fit that role. I guess that he will be the opening day 3B, with Urias moving to 2B where he's been a better fielder and should be the most valuable. The OF flexibility is nice, in that Counsell likes to pinch-hit, so there will be situations where Anderson will shift to OF after someone gets pinch-hit for. Plus, it allows them to only have four OF (Yelich, Frelick, Mitchell, Taylor) on the roster. Urias came up as a 2B, and is below-average defensively at 3B. Turang is a natural SS who hasn't played much 3B. It will be nice to have an actual third baseman playing 3B on a regular basis. I just hope that his bat bounces back. It's a $3.5M signing, so you can't expect too much "needle moving," but this move makes sense. On a one-year deal, there isn't much risk.

That's a pretty good compilation of "Brewers' most valuable assets." Put another way, if the Brewers traded for a prospect of Chourio's level for someone like Winker, Tellez, Lauer or Houser, Arnold would immediately go down in GM folklore. Heck, if he could trade Tellez for someone on Frelick's level he'd do it in a heartbeat without regard to the 2022 first base situation. It's also kind of funny that Urias, the guy so many people are clamoring to replace, is one of our most valuable assets. I'd prefer he play second base, but he's not someone we should be looking to turn into a utility infielder.

Ha. I hope we didn’t trade for a guy who’s career consists of 11 plate appearances at La Moyne College.

Agree. If we were to sign one, I would set my sights on Woodruff. But honestly, I don't think we'll extend any of them, and I think that if we do, it won't be long before the "how can we get out of this contract" talks would start. Burnes' contract will be in the $40-50M annual salary range, so he's out of the discussion. Adames was so-so with the Rays (couldn't hit at Tropicana), had a good partial season once traded to the Brewers, and had 4.7 Fangraphs WAR season in '22, but still ended with an OBP under .300. If he wasn't a Brewer but was a free agent, I doubt people would be clamoring to sign him to a long-term deal for $20-$30M/season. That leaves Woodruff, who would be great to sign if we could get him for a couple of his free agent years. My concern is that he'll be 31, and will know that it will be his one chance to sign a big money deal. He'll probably want 4-6 years of free agency bought out, and I think that's too risky for the Brewers. A four-year ('23-'26) deal would be perfect, and could fit nicely into a couple of years where they have a lot of pre-arby guys and could afford Woodruff and Yelich on big-money deals, after which guys like Frelick, Mitchell, etc will start getting more expensive.

Agree. If we were to sign one, I would set my sights on Woodruff. But honestly, I don't think we'll extend any of them, and I think that if we do, it won't be long before the "how can we get out of this contract" talks would start. Burnes' contract will be in the $40-50M annual salary range, so he's out of the discussion. Adames was so-so with the Rays (couldn't hit at Tropicana), had a good partial season once traded to the Brewers, and had 4.7 Fangraphs WAR season in '22, but still ended with an OBP under .300. If he wasn't a Brewer but was a free agent, I doubt people would be clamoring to sign him to a long-term deal for $20-$30M/season. That leaves Woodruff, who would be great to sign if we could get him for a couple of his free agent years. My concern is that he'll be 31, and will know that it will be his one chance to sign a big money deal. He'll probably want 4-6 years of free agency bought out, and I think that's too risky for the Brewers. A four-year ('23-'26) deal would be perfect, and could fit nicely into a couple of years where they have a lot of pre-arby guys and could afford Woodruff and Yelich on big-money deals, after which guys like Frelick, Mitchell, etc will start getting more expensive.

I'm not a fan of signing extensions to players once they're already in their arby years, as it's basically a free agent deal (very little discount) and the Brewers can't build their roster on long-term free agent contracts. If they are to do one, I think it should be to a game-changer, like Braun and Yelich were when they signed. I think Adames is a fine player, but he's a guy who will get a few All-Star appearances, not a guy who is regularly vying for MVP titles. Even if we didn't play in an economic structure that is slanted against us, I'd have to think long and hard about an Adames extension. He has had an up-and-down career, and his replacement is already in-house and MLB ready. Even if the contract were smaller, I think the best bet is to let Adames play for the Brewers this year, and trade him away after the season for a nice group of young players with a lot of team control, letting Turang take over SS in '24. If we're looking at anything close to $300M, there is no way the Brewers should consider it. I'd be hesitant to give that to Burnes, and he's far more worthy of that contract.

I'm not a fan of signing extensions to players once they're already in their arby years, as it's basically a free agent deal (very little discount) and the Brewers can't build their roster on long-term free agent contracts. If they are to do one, I think it should be to a game-changer, like Braun and Yelich were when they signed. I think Adames is a fine player, but he's a guy who will get a few All-Star appearances, not a guy who is regularly vying for MVP titles. Even if we didn't play in an economic structure that is slanted against us, I'd have to think long and hard about an Adames extension. He has had an up-and-down career, and his replacement is already in-house and MLB ready. Even if the contract were smaller, I think the best bet is to let Adames play for the Brewers this year, and trade him away after the season for a nice group of young players with a lot of team control, letting Turang take over SS in '24. If we're looking at anything close to $300M, there is no way the Brewers should consider it. I'd be hesitant to give that to Burnes, and he's far more worthy of that contract.

Right, which is why he did not sign the contract. The Brewers need to be disciplined, and it appears they have been. As @Robocaller said, these deals should only be done if the player takes a significant discount. I said that the Brewers should offer these deals to all of our good pre-arby guys. I understand that many of these guys will not sign them. Some players will see the benefit of signing a guaranteed extension for a discount, others will want to maximize their earnings by going year-to-year. Early extensions are just one tool for the Brewers to use. They aren’t a panacea. But, they are an important tool for small revenue teams to try to keep players for an extra year or two and control their cost in a world where they can’t compete with the big markets in free agency.

If Hiura had signed the Peralta deal, he’d be making $2.25M this year, which is probably what the Brewers will owe him after agreeing to arby, and would be guaranteed about $10.5M over the next three years. Even if the players don’t work out, the deal still isn’t going to hurt too much. There’s risk in anything they do. If they stick to the math, and only sign the guys who will agree to their deal, they can control the risk. That Hiura, Villar, and Hall didn’t sign means that the Brewers do stick to their guns. If they player demands more, then no extension is done. We have not regretted any of the early extensions we’ve done. We have regretted most of the late extensions we’ve done.

I want to add to this that successful early extensions greatly improve trade value. Woodruff is undoubtedly a better pitcher than Peralta, but according to Baseball Trade Values, Woodruff's value is 50.5. while Peralta is 63.8. Woodruff will be 30 next year, has 4.161 years of service time, is a free agent in '25, and is expected to get $13.25M in '23. Peralta turns 27 next June, has 4.09 years of service time, will not be a free agent until '27 (per Fangraphs, Cots has him a FA in '26, but I think Fangraphs is right), and will make $3.735M in '23. Both of these guys have nearly the same service time, but we could field of guys on Peralta's contract for around $97M, while Woodruff's final arby year will be close to $20M, and Peralta will still be under "team control" for two years after Woodruff hits free agency. How are these deals bad for the Brewers, and why shouldn't we be offering them to Contreras, Frelick, Mitchell, Turang, and every other good prospect shortly after they hit the majors? Even if half of the prospects flamed out, we would still "win" if all of them accepted. Of course they all won't accept, at which point we will know who will be long-term pieces, and who are "year-to-year" guys who won't be extended.

Not only did it move quickly, the Mets blew the expected price range for free agents through the roof, then the other teams with extra money to spend followed suit, pushing prices up on everyone. All the other rich owners have to be trying to decide what they're going to do if Cohen and the Mets do this again next year. If they decide to compete with the Mets if they do it again, the Brewers' days of signing free agents will be history. I thought we'd make a push for a "setup guy," but at this point, I'm not sure. I'm glad we have young depth for the 'pen, but would like another "proven" arm or two for the back-end of the 'pen.

I look at it as transferring risk, much like the insurance industry. The team is assuming the injury/bad play risk, so the player has to accept less money than they may get if they maintained the risk and went year-to-year. Risk transfer has been calculated by insurance companies since the days of Columbus and Magellan, and they do pretty well with it. Well run baseball organizations can as well, as long as they stick to their math. To me, there is no reason for a team to sign an extension in the arby/pre-arby years unless the player agrees to a substantial discount. The farther out from free agency, the deeper the discount. This is essentially the player "paying his premiums" for the transferring of risk to the team. Once a player gets into their arby years (where Burnes, Woodruff and Adames currently sit), the team is basically signing a free agent deal with very limited discount. The Brewers can't live in this arena, at least for their star players. They should try to extend every good pre-arby player they can to a discounted deal that gives them 1-2 extra years of service time. These are the Asnby/Peralta/Lucroy/Braun (first deal) type of deals. There is risk that the player doesn't pan out. But, let's say Ashby is never better than a middle reliever. With his contract, he won't be that overpaid as a veteran middle reliever, and he certainly won't be the main reason the Brewers can't make other moves. Even if he completely flames out, the team won't be that bad off. If a player opts to go year-to-year rather than accepting the early (discounted) extension, that's fine. It's their right to do so, and they are maintaining most of the risk. The Brewers need to accept that they are year-to-year players, and they shouldn't grow too attached. Trade them when it makes the most sense, which will normally be around 1-2 years prior to their hitting free agency. It's a business. "Math nerds" are taking over the front offices, and from their standpoint early extensions should be very appealing.

I get what you're saying, and making sure fans continue to buy tickets is always a consideration. That said, any team that makes it's decisions based on appeasing the "casual fan" is not going to be a successful organization. With the guys they have, they are still long-shots to win it all. Keeping them to "go for it" one more year doesn't assure them anything... they might not even make the playoffs. We don't have the resources to quickly rebuild the major league team through free agency. Losing the potential guys we could get in trade would lead to a long downturn, and would be a fatal error by Brewer management. The fan base will be fine as they see the newly acquired players putting up all-star seasons for half a decade while Burnes is playing out a $40M+/year contract. At the end of the day, it is "the name on the front of the shirt" that fans cheer for. Shortsighted fans will be upset by the trades, but the good thing about shortsighted fans is that they will remain shortsighted, and will be happy when the new guys start playing well. Trading Lucroy and Gomez allowed the Brewers to turn things around much more quickly than most thought possible. No one is bemoaning the fact that we didn't extend Lucroy and Gomez. Trading Burnes, Woodruff and Adames will be what allows us to continue on as a playoff team for years to come instead of taking one long-shot chance and then suffering through a rebuild. Then the following year we'll trade Peralta, and so on. Extending players early in their career and trading them before they hit free agency is the way for a team like the Brewers to remain "continually competitive." Fans will get used to it, or they'll migrate to a big market team that doesn't have to operate under the constraints put on the Brewers.

Since they extended Peralta and Ashby, I would assume they made similar offers to other players as well. The further along a player's pre-arby/arby schedule a player gets, the less "team friendly" the deal gets, so I fully expect them to make offers to most, if not all, of their talented young, pre-arby guys soon. Contreras would be included in this. Some of them will see the value in guaranteeing life-altering money, while others will choose to take some risk and go year-to-year in an attempt to maximize their earnings. The Brewers will have to act accordingly. In our current case, that means they get some extra time with Peralta (who accepted the offer), while trading away Burnes and Woodruff who went year-to-year. 2023 should be a fun year watching the loaded rotation, along with what will hopefully be an improved lineup. It will also be a year where some guys who will be "core" players for the next half-decade get some much needed experience, as they'll be heavily relied upon after Burnes, Woodruff, Adames, Lauer, etc are traded away prior to 2024. I'm excited to watch this year, and I'm also excited to see what we'll receive in trade after the year is done that will hopefully build our future playoff rosters. In his short tenure, I think that Arnold has shown the willingness to trade, and some aptitude in getting a good deal. We'll need that moving forward.

Here's an article about the Reds being loaded with young infield prospect talent, and looking to trade for young OF prospect talent. I know that teams oftentimes don't want to do inter-division trades, especially prospect-for-prospect as that could end up looking bad for a long time. Other than that, this seems like a perfect scenario. Chourio and De La Cruz would be staying where they are, but this could be a swap of ready-to-contribute "Top 100" guys like a Mitchell-for-Marte type deal, a blocked MLB-ready prospect deal using Wiemer or Ruiz, or a lower minors deal like Lara-for-Acosta. Both teams would be dealing from an area of depth for to an area of need. What are everyone's thoughts? View full rumor

I'll have to disagree. If Stearns had "made a serious run in 22-23," that would have meant selling long-term assets for short-term assets, and maybe signing a deal or two that would be good for a couple years (when Stearns was here), and then bad for a couple years (after Stearns left). That would have "screwed over" the Brewers and Matt Arnold. He'd be taking on an aging team with no farm and some bloated contracts, leaving him with little to work with. Instead, Stearns rebuilt the farm while they were winning at the MLB level. Arnold is left with a much-improved farm system with talent at all levels, multiple star players at the MLB level who can either be extended or are phenomenal trade chips to add more young talent to the roster, and only has one big contract on the books, offering him financial flexibility going forward. There seems to be a lot of short-sightedness on this site lately. Setting someone up for one decent year and then a massive rebuild is what many exiting GMs do, and they get out the door before the collapse. That is screwing over a franchise. I think Stearns set Arnold and the Brewers up very nicely, and look forward to winning baseball in Milwaukee for years to come.

@Redd Vencher hit most of the points I had when I read the article. I think the base premise is off, in that I don't think the goals listed were necessarily the goals of the front office going into this offseason. 1) They aren't clearing money to extend guys. They're clearing money because they were over budget last year and were hit with a significant reduction in ticket sales. They probably going to have a lower budget this year until they see that ticket sales come back. The two moves have combined to clear around $10M from the '23 budget. 2) I guess this depends on the definition of "firepower." As has been noted often, the offense in '22 was in the top third of MLB (near the bottom of the top third, but still above average). The problem as I see it was that they had too much "all or nothing" which made them streaky. I think they're trying to get more consistent, which could be done by getting guys who strike out less and get on base more. 3) I'll add one. I think they want to get their rookies on the field. First, they're talented and deserve to be there. Second, they're pre-arby, so they'll play for league minimum. Third, they're facing a big turnover in the roster soon as all of their arby guys are traded or become free agents, so they need their young guys to get some experience before this exodus. Finally, and probably most importantly, the rookies in question are all lower K/higher OBP guys. Brandon Nimmo just got a monster deal after stars who are much bigger than him signed even bigger deals. We have a group of guys who are above-average MLB players offensively (based on things like wRC+), so we won't be able to bring in upgrades to our position players by outbidding other teams on the open market. Thankfully, we have a group of MLB-ready guys who are ready to step in to complement our pitching. If we had to pay open market prices for Frelick and Mitchell, we already wouldn't be able to afford them this offseason. The pitching, which is supposed to be where we dominate, is the reason we just missed the playoffs last year. If they're healthy and play to their ability, we're going to be a playoff team in '23 as long as our position players continue to be around average, and they're a little better than that. So, the front office has trimmed around $10M from payroll, while holding onto their pitching, maintaining a roughly equal offense "on paper," upgrading the defense, and opening room for the rookies. All this while other teams are signing players for $20-$40M/year to try to get better.

To be fair, @Robocaller said that projecting a 3 WAR season would be "optimistic." He didn't say "far-fetched" or "impossible." I think that banning the shift will help Yelich, who hits a lot of hard-hit grounders and liners to the right side of the infield. I'll agree with the term "optimistic," but I don't think it's far-fetched at all to believe that he could be a 3 WAR player this year. It will be a lot less possible if he gets moved to full-time DH, but at the plate Yelich is still an above-average MLB player. I like him at the leadoff spot. I just wish we didn't have to pay him $26M/year for his production. It will be fun watching this team if he stays at leadoff and one of the young, high-avg/high-OBP OFs earns the #2 spot.

Any pitcher is always one throw away from Tommy John. It is probably more likely that Burnes will have TJ over the next 5-6 years than that he won't. I would never expect a long-term contract with a pitcher to be injury-free. That said, I would love to have Burnes for a few more years. At his age, anyone would love to have him. That's why he's going to get a contract that is way out of the Brewers' league. We might as well expect that we'll sign Aaron Judge this offseason. Even with some sort of discount for signing him while he's still in arby (the discount wouldn't be too much at this late stage), he's still going to be too expensive, especially with the Yelich deal on the books. I know that I keep saying it, but small-revenue fans can't think like big-revenue fans. It sucks that we can't keep our guys, but it is generally not a good idea for a team like the Brewers to guarantee huge sums of money for a long period of time to anyone, even if he's really good. In fact, being really good might make it a worse idea, because great players are a lot more expensive. If we can't win with a 28-year-old Burnes making $6.8M while pitching like a Cy Young candidate, then how will we win with a 32-year-old Burnes making $40M? How will we do when he needs to take a year and a half off for TJ surgery, but we still have to pay him? Our next extensions should be to guys like Mitchell, Frelick, Turang, Chourio and the top prospects we bring back when we trade away Burnes, Woodruff and Adames. I find it ironic that I'm writing this in a thread titled "Do the Brewers Need to Trade Yelich," with the notion that we'd probably have to add Adames and Burnes to a trade or eat most of the contract just to get a team to take Yelich off our hands. And this is happening while Yelich is still an above-average MLB player!! Big, expensive contracts are really bad for small-revenue teams.

This season's rookies of the year (Julio Rodriguez and Michael Harris) came from playoff teams (Seattle and Atlanta), neither of which are small-market teams who only play rookies because they can't afford to hold onto veterans. These guys played major roles that helped their teams win a lot of games. Sometimes your best option is a rookie. Talent sometimes beats our experience. If Seattle wanted to trade us Rodriguez for Renfroe at the start of last season, I'm sure Stearns would have been pretty happy, regardless of the fact that Renfroe had a lot more MLB experience. People act like veterans are a guaranteed success, while rookies are guaranteed to struggle. That's not true. Everyone has their ups-and-downs, but the more talented player will generally do better over time than the lesser-talented player. Frelick is the most talented option we have. If we wanted to trade him, we'd get a better package than Taylor/Ruiz/Perkins in return because he's worth more than all three of them combined.

First off, welcome to the board. I don't think they'll have the payroll room to extend both Adames and one of the pitchers. They will probably have a hard time fitting one of them under budget with the Yelich deal on the books (they could do it, it'd just keep them from doing other things). That said, the Yelich deal is a good example why you shouldn't use the logic "You can't turn away Burnes who is a Cy Young candidate..." Yelich was coming off of two straight MVP-caliber seasons, and we are talking about trading Burnes along with Yelich for nothing just to get out of the contract. Big money, multi-year contracts are very risky for any team, but they are especially risky to small revenue teams like the Brewers. We are far better getting pre-arby guys to extend, like we have recently done with Ashby and Peralta, and trading away players when they're getting close to free agency. It may not be fun as a fan to see your favorite players traded away, but it's the reality of baseball with the system they have in place.

Or Juan Soto. Cherry picking one player doesn't prove a point. I don't like rushing prospects, but as has already been noted, Frelick was a college pick who was expected to move fairly quickly through the system. He's a "bat to ball" guy who has put his bat on the ball at every level he's been at. AAA isn't a parking spot where good prospects spend a lot of time. Many of your best prospects spend little to no time at AAA. It is filled up with lesser-talented prospects trying to prove themselves, and guys with some MLB experience trying to get back to the show. The biggest step in the minors is the move to AA. If players dominate after making that jump, they're probably MLB ready.