brewerfan82

I love Turang, but I think this is the main issue. By the time Turang is a free agent, he'll be going into his age 30 season and getting very expensive. We'd be paying more for his (theoretically) post-peak years. At the same time Made and Pena will be going into their age 23 seasons, along with Pratt and Jett going into their age 25 and 26 seasons. Hopefully by then some combo of those players will be proven enough to cover the middle infield for a lot less money and the money that could be spent on a Turang extension can be used more productively elsewhere, whether that's to fill holes on the roster or extending younger guys to Chourio/Peralta-type contracts. For a team like the Brewers, I think any extension is better spent on younger players to hold onto them through their age 27-29 years, not to pay for their 30+ years.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mitchga01.shtml#all_batting_st

Here are the most recent BTV values I could find for the players mentioned: Your Luke Adams+ evaluation is much closer, at least according to BTV:

With the discussion about grading the offseason, I was thinking how this whole offseason may have been different if Woodruff hadn't accepted the QO. It could have been something like this: Hold onto Peralta to lead the staff and plan on getting compensation from him next year Without getting Jett Williams in the Peralta deal, does that keep our infield depth shallow enough where a Durbin trade doesn't happen? With $14M saved keeping Peralta at $8M instead of Woodruff at $22M, are we bigger players in free agency? Is there another trade we might have been in on that would have taken on money? All that adds up to something like this difference between what happened and what may have happened: Woodruff -> Peralta Williams -> Durbin Sproat -> Woodruff compensatory pick Harrison -> Peralta compensatory pick Drohan -> Myers Hamilton -> Monasterio Rengifo, Sanchez -> Whatever we do with the extra ~$19M ($14M saved with Peralta over Woodruff + $3.5M from Rengifo + $1.75M from Sanchez) If Woodruff not accepting the QO was their plan A, I think they did a good job pivoting this offseason. How do you think the offseason would have played out differently? Do you think we "accidentally" ended up in a better position with Woodruff accepting the QO? Of course they may have still traded Peralta and also not spent any of that "extra" money too! Who knows! Just thought it was interesting to think about!

So 2/3 of the players were older than him too... Wilken's ranked the 9th best 3B prospect in baseball on MLB.com (https://www.mlb.com/milb/prospects/3b/). I don't think people are arguing that he's the next coming of Mike Schmidt, just that he's a good prospect that doesn't "suck" (not your words, just where this convo started to ramp up) and if healthy has a good chance of making it to the big leagues sometime this year.

2025 MIL production from 3B: Rengifo/Hamilton should outproduce the Dunn/Capra 3B combo from earlier in the season and the Seigler/Mona utility combo later in the season. Rengifo: Hamilton: And hopefully one of the prospects is able to force their way onto the ML roster at some point and replace Durbin's production. Williams: Wilken: Throw in adding a couple of nice LHP arms to the system in Harrison and Drohan and I think this makes the Durbin trade look like a pretty solid move.

Thanks! The exchange about 3rd base was: Tom Verducci: "Well give me an idea of what you're looking at at third base for instance." Pat Murphy: "I don't think I could tell you the full picture right now because I don't think it's over..."

Fyi, not sure if/when there might be a video available online, but I just saw Murph interviewed on MLB Network and when asked about the third base situation he started off with something along the lines of "I'm not sure I can answer that yet because I don't think it's done yet but..." 🤔 He went on to praise the current players and the young guys on the way, and that intro could have totally just been about the prospects still on their way, but I thought it was interesting and if someone can find a clip to post, it was an interesting interview and relevant to this discussion. Edit: It's also possible he said that because he doesn't know if the Durbin trade is officially done yet too? But regardless it'd be fun to hear others' interpretations if we can find that video :)

Can't that be said about all teams? Are you expecting him not to get signed by anyone at this point? Things change, strategies are adjusted, plan A's move to plan B's and C's.

I agree, but I think $5M is on the high end of what guys like Urias and Rengifo will be getting, especially at this point in the offseason.

This is why I suspect if they do pick someone up it'll be someone like Rengifo or Urias that has positional flexibility. It would raise the floor for 3B with a veteran player to start the year while not blocking anyone as they can shift to a utility role if/when needed. They lost a lot of major league ready depth in that trade, so grabbing someone along these lines would go a long way in restoring that.

Assuming there's not a big splash made, I'd be down for signing someone with defensive flexibility like Ramon Urias who can start the year as the third baseman and then can shift to a utility role if/when one of the prospects is ready to come up.

He is and I'd love to have him, however, I don't envision the Brewers going over $10M on anyone. So I removed him ($18M crowd source proj. AAV), Valdez ($28M), Gallen ($22M), and Giolito ($18M) from my list of guys that might drop into our discount bin.

First, I just wanted to link to the FanGraphs Free Agent Tracker as a point of reference: https://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/free-agent-tracker?pos=sp&sign=unsigned Next, I took that list and weeded out players by a number of factors: <0.5 proj. 2026 WAR, <200 IP past 3 years, <100 IP past 2 years, >5 xFIP past 3 years, $18M+ crowd source proj. AAV That leaves the following 15 free agent pitchers still available (2023-25 stats): I think it all comes down to price and there's a good chance at this point in the offseason they can snag someone at a discount they like. Even if it's just to have as competition/insurance going into Spring Training.

Fun comparison even if you don't give any credence to BTV:

My understanding on a couple of those fronts is (and I'll admit these are VERY murky): 1.) The main benefit for the organization is they have flexibility in how the deferred money is secured. I'm not clear on how that works, but basically they don't need to secure that money in cash each year, they can do it in other ways including guaranteeing it against their credit. So they have some extra flexibility in how much real cashflow they have year to year and additionally if they think they can invest the money with a higher rate than whatever standard the league is using to calculate the deferred discount amount, they can come on top that way as well. 2.) Part of Ohtani's advantage to deferrals is he may be able to get some tax reductions on those payments if he's no longer in California when he receives them (sounds like he can't completely dodge them, but could get some sort of reduction). But yes, I think the fact that the Dodgers don't care that much about the luxury tax penalties and the referrals help with their real cashflow, and the fact that Ohtani doesn't need the money right now, is part of why he wanted to help the team by deferring a large portion of his contract. All that said, my point is when it comes to the actual luxury tax implications, I think it's pretty well thought out in a way that isn't giving the Dodgers a huge advantage on that front. Now, the fact that they're still willing to go like $170M OVER the threshold might indicate the real issue is the penalties for going over still aren't strong enough, and that's something I can get on board with.

This is incorrect, because if they didn't do the referrals they wouldn't have offered him $700M for 10 years, they would have offered him $460M for 10 years and the luxury tax hit would have been the same. The teams, players, and agents all understand how referrals affect the value of a contract and their offers, acceptances, and the luxury tax amounts all reflect this.

The luxury tax hits are immediate during the length of the actual contract. So for Ohtani, they're incurring the $46M hit for each year of his actual 10 year contract.

I don't believe deferring the money is dodging any luxury tax. Like you said, agents aren't stupid, the overall guarantee of the contract to the player is the same if you heavily defer a $680M contract vs paying a traditional $460M contract without deferrals (ie. it's not like the player had an option of $680M without deferrals and is just allowing the Dodgers to defer it). That's why the luxury tax hit is $46M either way, based on present-value calculations.

Just curious where you heard this? It seems like a lot for the O's to give up, so I'm surprised to hear they think that would be fair. It'd be interesting to see the conversation around it if it came from a fan forum or something. Mountcastle also seems like a redundant piece with Vaughn already on board (both RH, 97 vs 98 wRC+ the past two years, 28 vs 27 yo) and at $7M basically negates saving anything on Freddy's salary. So he only makes sense if including him allows the rest of the package to be better than without him.

If a team extends the player after the trade, any additional value the player gains by having more team control is cancelled out by the fact that you are extending them at current market value. His value comes from the fact that he is expected to outperform his $8M contract. If they tack on another 5-7 yrs at $125-175M (or 2-3 years for $50-75M, whatever it ends up being), they could just go get a FA for the same price without giving up any prospects. Long story short, it absolutely matters that he only has 1 year remaining on his team friendly contract.

You haven't been following this team very long I guess

I agree, I miss it, but I think it's just so easy to communicate other ways now that you're just not going to see a huge increase in activity just because everyone's physically in the same location.

Let's hope Joey's okay, he's been great since the deadline! (link)

He's already there and doing very well! 🙂