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Well he's likely unavailable today so a fresh arm. Plus doesn't STL only really have Carpenter and Wong as lefties, whereas almost all of LAD is lefty. So a 2nd lefty specialist seems redundant. That would be my best guess. CC's bullpen and starters are a train wreck right now. Pen and the starters are the 2nd worst in NL. Dinger after dinger after dinger allowed. Even Hader has been bitten by the HR bug. Hart is a LOOGY at best and horrible against RH hitters. Barnes ERA of 8.00 and is completely unreliable. Petricka is an AAA pitcher at his peak. Williams already sent down, Albers 6.23 ERA and 3 HRs in less than 9 IPs. Wilson 7.20 ERA and 1.7 WHIP, Wilkerson 6.23 ERA and 11 hits allowed in 5 innings. The young starters giving up 5 or more runs per start. Houser certainly wasn't the answer, allowing 2 more HRs for the league leading Crew and failing to get past the 4th inning. Brewers as a team in the NL: Most HRs allowed -- 2nd worst in: runs allowed - ERA - Walks - Total Bases given up. CC is getting shell-shocked watching the nightmare unfold. Imagine what this team could do with just average pitching!

Exactly... get through the tough part, be on top of the Central... then we take the damn title, and make a playoff run. Hiura will be up at some point. So might Erceg if he keeps it up. Brewers deadline moves could very well be moving a Moustakas/Shaw/Aguilar type to make room for the kids. Right now CC has to find some pitching to take some of the pressure off the offense. They need to score 5-6 runs every game to overcome the HR barrage his pitchers are giving up. I'd hate to rush Hiura or Erceg to the majors because the offense can't overcome the pitching woes.

Thames is hurting his chances by striking out every other at bat. He is HR or K. However, with Aguilar-Shaw-Braun and Moustakas stinking out the joint, he may be as good as CC has for 1B.

Assuming this is somewhat directed at me and that's fine I've brought it on, it's self-inflicted. But I never said that what we saw in September/October was sustainable, nor the plan going forward. Remember, they were using pitchers for one out, one inning, and one trip through the order. That's not at all what I envision going forward. I talked about pitching staffs with undefined roles where eventually everyone pitches an average of 2-4 innings every 2-3 days. No more 1 out guys, no more 1 inning guys, and no more reliance on someone to go 6-7 innings every 5 days. I also said it could take years, perhaps even a full decade to set in. The best way to combat someone you disagree with is to misrepresent what someone says. And there are a couple posters (not you JMB) who continually attach the Sept/Oct model to what I said. The entire objective is to limit pitchers from exposure to that 3rd trip through the order. There are ways to do that which look nothing like the Sept/Oct usage we saw. And if people look close enough, not only are the Brewers doing it now, they've been doing it for some time. They won't be able to fully implement this usage until they no longer have 1 inning specialists they're heavily relying on. No doubt ... I fully expect them to use the same type of model this year from August-September on. It was pretty innovative, and ended up working awesome. I think we'll see it more too in select games and series against their biggest rivals during the year as well. Just having that flexibility to go that route is a huge advantage. If this team's management has proven anything, its that nothing they do is concrete or "by the book". Yeah, right now they seem to have set roles in place. That will change throughout the year, and that's cool. The biggest problem with 2-4 inning staffs is what happens when a pitcher gets killed early and can't get outs. Just one or two of those types of outings destroys the concept. Every pitcher on the staff would be throwing at least 110 innings. That puts a tremendous amount of strain on pitchers' arms when they have to throw multiple innings every couple of days. Unless MLB increases the rosters to 27 or 28 it's not sustainable.

You're correct. Braun is nowhere near a 3-4-5 type hitter anymore. The problem is that the Brewers just don't have anybody hitting other than Yelich-Cain-Grandal. Perez is at about .265. Braun (below .190) - Shaw (below .200) - Moustakas (around .238) - Arcia (.217) - Pina (.222) - Thames (below .250 and whiffing almost 50% of ABs!!). It's amazing they have won as many games as they have with little contribution from all but 3-4 guys and the pitchers giving up HRs at an alarming rate (2nd worst in MLB and second worst in BBs).

CC was trying to show the three young guys he had confidence in them from the start. It's not a case of giving Burnes more opportunities. He would just get crushed again. He needs work on his mechanics, work he can't get in the majors. CC was right in showing he had confidence in Burnes, and he's correct now in sending him down to get work things out.

Not at all. It sounds like the Brewers have had conversations with Burnes and all agree his LONG future is as a starter. He cannot really work on things in the majors, so the result is 2-5 games in the minors is the goal (they said 2-3). Sometimes a pro golfer needs to take a weekend off and just work on the game. That's basically what they're doing here. It's not like their angry and punishing him by yanking him from the rotation. They're giving him the best chance for success. They're not REPLACING him in the rotation, they'll be FILLING IN for him. Very careful word choice He faced the Cards twice, Cubs and Reds.... probably top 10 offenses once everything plays out. Burnes is a top pitcher for us and needs tweaking, not a bunch of moves back and forth between AAA and majors. When a guy gets lit up like Burnes did, he needs more than tweaking. His FB is pretty straight with little movement. His mechanics need adjusting so he can get the ball down. Plus he needs to look at a two seamer a little more to get more late movement. Every HR but one was hit off a 4 seam FB in a bad location and up in the zone. It may be as simple as his stride is too short or his arm angle is too low. He needs time in AAA to work on things w/o the added burden of losing an MLB game.

Anderson Houser/Wilkerson Woodruff Davies Chacon Houser tomorrow, Anderson for Burnes, Wilkerson to pen. Surprised that Houser wasn't brought up. Instead they got Hart who is another Claudio type lefty. Last year he stunk against both LH and RH hitter (over .300 BAs and over .415 OBPs) Righties smoke him throughout his career (.313/.362). I can't see the Crew carring two LOOGYs for very long.

Your plan, as good as it is, would be my plan B My plan A: Sign Kuechel AND Kimbrel. Trade Kuechel at this year’s deadline Trade kimbrel at next year’s deadline Kimbrel massively improves our pen for this year, and next year till knebel and Wahl are back. Keuchel gives us a big time quality starter till Nelson and or Burnes re-establishes themselves in our rotation. Prospect haul could be massive, at worst more than what we’d lose with lower round draft choices givin up. If we backload Kimbrel’s contract, we could have use of both for this year at 20-22 mil Or do plan B > Gio and Kimbrel for 13-18 mil Stearns is not going to risk $30-40M just to try and trade them. Too many things could go wrong, or if the Brewers are in the thick of things, he wouldn't want to trade either one. Since nobody wants Keuchel now, who is going to give up any prospects to get him ( and his contract) later?

Neither Shaw nor Aguilar are platoon players. Shaw has consistently driven in runs (101 - 86) and hit 30+ HRs the last two years. IF Hiura was to come up, either Thames would have to be cut or Aguilar would have to be traded.

Gattis has played a total of 5 games at 1B since 2012. There is a reason for that; he's a butcher on defense at any position. He is strictly a DH who is unwanted by any MLB team because of his horrendous performance last year. He would seriously harm the Crew's defense that's already weak at 2B.

Valencia was not picked up by any MLB team including the extremely weak O's. The Brewers don't have room for another guy like Thames who plays only against certain pitchers. Perez hit .277 against lefties last year, plus he is the backup at numerous positions. Valencia would have to take his place. Gamel is the only lefty on the bench and can play all three OF positions. Valencia doesn't fit into many teams' rosters, including the Brewers. The Crew isn't going to give up on Aguilar to pick up an unwanted journeyman like Valencia.

The way Burnes is going (11 Hrs in 17.2 IPs - ERA over 11) it's time for Anderson to start and Burnes to the pen. CC cannot keep running him out there just to give up dingers and put the Crew behind. Today he gave up 9 hits, two more HRs, and 5 runs total in only 3 innings. Maybe even send Burnes down to work on his location and try Houser.

Peralta with another horrible outing tonight. The trio of young starters have been awful, and getting progressively worse. The pitching staff is giving up HRs at an alarming rate. Another 3 given up tonight. The pen has been horrific with the exception of Hader. JJ is not himself coming back from injury. He got tore-up in AAA ball and his velocity was in the 80's in his second inning of work. Right now the offense is overcoming the pitchers giving up HR after HR after HR. They can't make a playoff run with pitching as bad as it is. Stearns and CC have to make something happen quick.

Freitas is an extremly weak hitting catcher. He looks to be either AA or AAA backup material.

Braves definitely took advantage of him though, not saying that is wrong though. They saw a player desperate for money and got him to take a deal well under what other players have gotten. That is what happens when one party has little to no leverage, but wants to get a deal done no matter what. How do you know Albies was desperate for money? He made over half a million dollars last year and is scheduled to make more this year. Pretty darn good for a guy from Curacao. Albies had ALL the leverage. He could say NO and wait for a huge pay day. However he could also get hurt and suddenly become a liability. He set himself up for life with the contract. Plus he'll earn a lot more after this contract expires. Not bad for a kid from a small island country.

There's always a reason to make a trade, every day of the season, as you can always get better and there will always be a player out there better than the worst player on your roster who can be had for a price you can afford. So yeah, in that sense there's a reason. But specific to the current situation? Honestly, I'd argue not really. Not yet. Unless the kind of opportunity shows up that you'd take any day, even with a good bullpen. Only 13 games into the season, bullpen pitchers have between 1 and 7 IP. 2/3 of the bullpen have ERAs way, way above their career numbers. Brewers bullpen currently has a 5.45 ERA. The 9 guys who have so far pitched out of the pen have a 3.66 ERA between them (equally weighted), which for Anderson and Guerra is mostly as starters. That would put them ~12th in the majors as thing stand now. Which isn't amazing, but it's slightly better than average. So you have to ask yourself, is there anything that suggests they won't pitch more in line with their career norms going forward? xFIP (4.18, 91 xFIP-) and SIERA (4.01), the two best publicly available predictive metrics of the kind until DRA is up and running would suggest that improvements are to be expected. It's early days with small sample sizes for those metrics too, but at this point they're still much, much, much better than using current ERA. I don't know what their internal metrics show, but unless they're alarmingly bad I'd have patience. There are still internal replacements to be evaluated, whether in the form of JJ, Nelson, Burnes/Woodruff, Fields, Hart or younger guys like Olczak, Sanchez, Brown. Give it some time to filter out the worst noise, and to try the options that can be used without having to release/waiver anyone or give up any prospects. Another reason to do that is that the market in April is bad. Yes, trades can be made. But it's very much a sellers market; only the teams that have already given up on the season will be shopping relievers. Others will have to be absolutely blown away by the offer, and that's something we shouldn't be doing. Even the teams perfectly willing to sell will be hesistant, as there will be greater demand later in the season. There will also be an increased supply eventually, as teams drop out of the playoff hunt, but demand will increase earlier than supply does. It's not that wins in April matters less than at any other point of the year. It's that with these small sample sizes, and the factors unique to March/April (Weather, offseason rust, adjusting to new environments etc) it's much harder to know what's what. Stats and wins and losses are so heavily influenced by individual blowup outings, by the quality and handedness of hitters and pitchers faced, by whether fly balls hit just above or just below a yellow line on a wall, by umpire performance (Could you really read much into the numbers for a pitcher, in either direction, if he'd made his debut with last night's Phil Cuzzi strike zone?), by weather, by which ballparks played in, by not being in the right place mentally after a breakup or the loss of a pet or whatever. Or by many, many other reasons that can be classified as luck or chance or temporary circumstances. Any money or prospects spent now, is money and prospects not available to use later. None of us knows how much budget room there is, but with an already record payroll I think it's safer to lean towards the lower part of the spectrum than the top end. The later in the season a trade is made, the smaller the prorated part of the salary taken on is. At that point you also know your needs better. While one can argue about whether farm system rankings are too low on the Brewers, it's still not exactly a top system after recent trades and graduations. That needs to be managed properly. A reliever acquired at this point needs to be a "sure thing". It needs to be someone who will frequently see high-leverage situations even when/if the likes of JJ, Nelson, Burnes join the bullpen; improving the performance in low-leverage situations does very little to get more wins. There aren't many of those available out there. And for those who are, thier teams hold all the cards. I would certainly put up a high asking price and not waiver one bit on that until at least June if I was them. Overall I'd argue that we need to wait a couple of weeks at least before making any moves involving actual prospects or any real money. 1 month is still a very small sample, 1 month of March/April baseball even more so, but at least you can glean *something* from that. At that point we'll have a better idea of where JJ and Nelson are, if some of the early-season struggles are just that or indicative of something else, of which teams might be willing to trade, and about many other things. In my opinion the only problem with your well written thesis is the patience you preach. I would argue the following: 1.) the toughest stretch of games for the year starts today, and by May this team could be 5+ games out by then. With our pitching at the PRESENT time, who will we be favored against? 2.) we don’t need to wait till May to know outside of Hader , 0 high leverage arms. And I’m including jeffress. JJ gonna need more time to regain last year’s form, IF he’s able to at at all this year. 3.) we don’t need to wait till May to know that Petricka Barnes FOR SURE shouldn’t be in this pen. Albers Wilson are major ? Also. 4.) the crew is courageous to put our young guns in rotation, but especially this early in their big league starting careers, growing pains would be describing it quite mildly. It would be one thing to have a tor amongst the other two, but we don’t. Chacin at best a 3 and Davies a 4-5, which in turn puts tremendous pressure on a bottom of the league pen. What to do now? STRENGTHEN THE PEN 1. Call up Houser today and Brown on Sunday, to replace Petricka Barnes. 2.) Leave jeffress in AAA till velo up where it should be for him to have a good chance at success. 3.) trade for Greene or givens or Watson giving us 2 high leverage pen arms going into next weeks homestand. If we have to give up a better prospect because it’s april so be it. Lose the battle win the war. If you're talking about Shane Greene, NO thanks. Career ERA of 4.78 - more hits than IPs. He stunk last year and has already been on the DL this year. Givens from the O's would be nice, depending on what they'd want for him. He's making $2.15M and is arby eligible again. FA in 2022, so he would be a nice pickup. Watson would be a heck of a lot better option than Claudio, but again, what would it take to get him from the Giants?

Yelich strikes me at the kind of hitter who, barring injury, would age well. If the Crew could get him to defer money - and sign a relatively team-friendly deal as Braun did - I think it would be good. Yah, so was Braun when we extended him. Now he is made of glass and I think he uses his bat as a cane walking to the plate. In all seriousness did we seriously not learn anything from the Braun extension? We extended a guy waaay before he would even hit free egency and it turned into a bad idea before that extension even kicked in. He had his little PED fiasco and then after that died down he had the thumb problem (among other constant injuries). All this before that extension even kicked in. I don't think that contract will be an albatross, where his play doesn't even warrant a roster spot, but man we likely would have been way better off without the extension happening. If we didn't have him extended Khris Davis would still be here or Domingo Santana would still be roaming our OF. If you don't like either of those guys I am sure we could find someone to put up average offense for a lot less than $20mil a year. I don't mind having Braun on the team and since he at least hits somewhat decently it isn't a painful extension...but pretty hard to argue we would probably get better production for half the cost or less elsewhere. Whether a different addition or someone we had, but traded away because we didn't have room. Lorenzo Cain for example had a similar cost through FA. I want nothing to do with a Yelich extension this year, next year, and probably never. It just probably isn't a good idea. Braun's contract had nothing to do with the Brewers letting K. Davis walk. Davis was the absolute worst defensive LF in all of baseball. He is a DH, period. The Brewers couldn't afford to sign him to be strictly a PH.

I think voters look at where he played the vast majority of his career; Colorado.

They're all wearing different shirts. By the numbers this seems for an AL pitcher to be really good bullpen signing. He doesn't come with a high K rate but has low BB rate. 3.23 ERA for a career RP and has experience finishing games? This isn't like a one year wonder followed by next year blunder. Then a wonder again. Consistently below 3.40ERA 4 of last 5years. Surprised he's up for grabs that we could get him! Wilson isn't a game finisher RP. Only 4 saves in his entire career. Generally a guy used in the 6th-7th innings to get to the late inning guys. There has to be a reason every other team in MLB passed on him though. At least they say he is a ground ball type pitcher.

"Went well." You mean CC didnt say "Hes just not looking good, its panic time around here!" When are we ever going to ignore these generic comments?? For those looking for info, the lack of any comments, even generic ones, is obviously the issue. Ditto the other poster's hope to hear Stearns comment about Kimbrel negotiations, even though anyone who pays regular attention knows that Stearns doesn't comment about any specific FA negotiations unless the FA's destination is confirmed, MIL or elsewhere (and much less likely if it's elsewhere). As to the question several posts back about the lack of answers and the insinuation or assumption that all 4 main MIL beat writers are poor at their jobs because they don't have the answer at the same instant that it's known/realized/formed in the GM's head . . . . In cases where there's a set "media availability time" (which probably would be less rigid in ST if it exists at all), you just know the reporters are wanting to ask the questions we want the answers to, too, but there can be limitations as to when they can have the opportunity to ask the questions. In today's case, the Knebel news broke during the time the Brewers' coaching staff (at least) likely wasn't available due to the media due to game prep. Once the game got over, interviews could happen and answers could trickle forth. I hope that poster also realizes how quickly our beat writers tend to tweet stuff out once they're able to interview Stearns, Counsell, etc. It sure seems a waste of time to report "no answer available yet" to the questions they haven't been able to ask yet. Sorry to linger in the tangent. On topic, with the Knebel developments, I'm all the more wondering if Stearns has another move (or more, if a Kimbrel signing actually happens for MIL) coming since he's made a late-ST addition to the bullpen each of the past 3 years. Petricka & Williams have their plusses, but I have a hard time as of now envisioning them pitching so well that they don't have a minor league option used sometime during this season. What is the plus on Petrika? Awful for the last two years (98 hits -79 IPs -Whip of 1.67) and now going to a more hitter friendly park.

If no Kimbrel. Replace Barnes with fields please. And Albers with houser. Package the two in a trade for lottery ticket Albers was very good before getting hurt last year. If he can return to form he is vastly superior to Houser. You're right about Fields, except he should replace Petricka, not Barnes. I don't see how a guy like Petricka, who has been absolutely horrible for the last two years, could be on the team ahead of Fields.

I don't even see Petricka being on the 25-man roster, much less a closer. He hasn't had a save in 3 years and was horrible the last two years. 71 IPs - 98 hits allowed - 49 runs - 22 BBs and 6 HBPs - a WHIP of 1.67..... He is awful and getting worse.

I was too surprised Gio didn't get a better deal. I thought the Crew might re-sign him, but if Severino or Sabathia are hurt worse than the Yankees think, Gio could make quite a bit more than the Brewers were offering.

Yes, Great pick-up. Stearns said AAA to start, won’t be there long IMHO, any one of Petricka Barnes stumble........maybe even Albers, but I doubt it. Petricka has looked pretty good as well. Power arm and closer experience, although last couple years have been rougher. Still averaging roughly 1 K per inning, which is decent. I think he probably makes the team. Barnes can still be optioned, which is a good thing given his inconsistency. I don't see Petricka being anything other than an AAA filler. He has been awful for the last three years. 79.1 IPs - 30 BBs and 6 HBPs - a monstrous 107 hits and 54 runs allowed. A horrible ERA of 6.13 and an awful WHIP of 1.73! Nothing in his past says he'll do better, especially in a park like the Brewer's. Even Barnes is a better option. I think Fields makes the team ahead of Barnes and Petricka.