brewerfan82

There's been some talk that Braun should be the odd man out on this team because of his declining performance and inability to stay in the lineup. I was wondering if this is overblown, so I took a look at some stats over the past 2 seasons amongst MLB outfielders: WAR ('16-17): Yelich (5th - 9.0 WAR in 1354 PAs) Cain (15th - 6.6 WAR in 1079 PAs) Braun (32nd - 4.8 WAR in 989 PAs) Santana (50th - 3.2 WAR in 888 PAs) wRC+ ('16-17): Braun (16th - 123) Yelich (17th - 123) Santana (21st - 121) Cain (40th - 109) Def ('16-17): Cain (15th - 12.4) Yelich (67th - -2.9) Braun (109th - -12.8) Santana (134th - -22.4) BsR ('16-17): Yelich (13th - 9.2) Cain (37th - 4.7) Santana (69th - 2.0) Braun (109th - -0.6) AVG ('16-17 min. 400 PAs): Cain (8th - .295) Yelich (17th - .290) Braun (19th - .290) Santana (47th - .271) OBP ('16-17 min. 400 PAs): Yelich (8th - .373) Santana (11th - .363) Cain (23rd - .353) Braun (25th - .353) SLG ('16-17 min. 400 PAs): Braun (9th - .516) Santana (25th - .486) Yelich (41st - .460) Cain (70th - .427) Games Played ('16-17): Yelich (4th - 311 Gs) Cain (43rd - 258 Gs) Braun (61st - 239 Gs) Santana (67th - 228 Gs) Games Played ('15-17): Yelich (16th - 437 Gs) Cain (34th - 398 Gs) Braun (41st - 379 Gs) Santana (95th - 280 Gs) *obv affected by him not being in the majors all year in '15 First off, those are 4 VERY good players and if we can get them all in the lineup somehow, that's pretty exciting. That said, from a performance standpoint, I don't think there should be any doubt that when he's available, Braun should be in the lineup and if you put Cain and Yelich 1-2, Braun should be 3. From a "not being able to stay in the lineup" standpoint, considering there are ~90 starting outfielders in the majors, his games played seems pretty in line with your normal player over the past 2-3 seasons. I think the real question is are they experimenting with the wrong player at 1st? Considering Domingo's worse in the outfield, would be a bigger target at first, and Braun is already creating some concern that playing 1st may actually be harder on his body than the outfield, it seems like they may have picked the wrong guy. Then again, first base is pretty involved throughout the game and maybe they just don't want Santana being near the ball that much if they can avoid it.

Can we have a new rule that people only post tweets from verified twitter accounts?

Not to mention the account was JUST created last month in the middle of all the HH madness when copycat accounts were being created all over the place.

I think it's important to note that Keon still has 5 full years of affordable control which could make him attractive to *any* team. He could be a good match for a non-contending team that has a MLB asset we could use. Perhaps someone has a C, 2B, or RP that costs more and has fewer years of control left that they would be willing to swap our way.

Here's the link on MLBTR: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/03/latest-on-jake-arrieta.html

Luckily not everyone views him as lowly as you do. Yes, he has a high strikeout rate and a low OBP, but despite your opinion on his defense, most think he is a very good centerfielder and in just over a season's worth of at bats in his career, he has 29 homers and 45 stolen bases. That's a pretty rare combo these days and someone has a chance of catching Carlos Gomez: Part 2 for a couple years if they give him a chance to start full time. I actually like him quite a bit as a 4th/5th outfielder on this team (depending on what happens with the whole Santana/Braun situation), but he should be more valuable for a rebuilding team that can take a chance on him as a starter. He still doesn't hit arbitration for another two years and has five years of control left overall. There should be quite a bit of value in that and I definitely wouldn't want to just give him away, but if someone gives up something that has the potential to be valuable on the MLB team someday it should definitely be considered, in which case Phillips slides into that 4th/5th outfielder role perfectly as well. As a sidenote, I haven't seen anyone interpret the Haudricourt tweet as if Broxton is *worth* more than Santana, just that more teams are interested, in part due to the fact that he would come cheaper.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Sorry, can't get past this. What do you think this word means? Seems like he's using the word in proper context.

http://midliferocksblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/pillow-talk.gif

I'd argue "not working out well" would be trading Knebel and then not being able to sign Holland. Signing Holland and then not being able to find a trade partner for Knebel would just leave you as a better team. And I don't agree that a player's trade value decreases based solely on "leverage". If a team is willing to give up package X before adding depth, then they'll be willing to give up package X after you add depth, that doesn't change their assessment of what they're willing to give up to get a player and if they just want to hold out and "screw you over" at that point, they don't get the player they wanted.

It'd have to be a pretty big package, but if the right deal was there, I'd do it. So many relievers are so unstable from year to year, if you get a Thornburg for Shaw/Dubon/Pennington/Coca type deal but with even better talent coming back, it'd be hard to turn down.

It probably needs some tweaking, but I kind of dig the idea. In addition to motivating teams for the last two months, it encourages teams to at least put out a passable team to begin the season as well because if you're just flat out the worst team in baseball and can't beat out teams at the end of the year, you're not going to have a chance at getting that #1 draft pick. You can still rebuild, trade away MLB players to increase minor league talent, etc., but you better still fill out your MLB roster with some decent players via FA as well. It should provide a little better experience for the fans of teams rebuilding and it could help with the free agency freeze that's happening this offseason as well. To avoid teams "pre-tanking" at the August deadline (or teams not quite making the 8 just becoming the new tanking teams), maybe instead of it being flat out the worst 8 records, the 8 teams are determined by an NBA-like lottery system involving the bottom 16 teams and the results aren't revealed until after the season so teams don't know if they are playing for nothing or not. And anyone outside the bottom 16, should be battling for the playoffs, so there's no worry about them losing on purpose at that point.

Gotcha, thought there must have been more than just my box score lookup

This is based off him being 1 for 8 with a couple strikeouts?

By the same logic: Braun hasn't played a single inning of 1B in his major league career. If the plan was for him to be the regular 1B, he'd be playing there full time this spring. He isn't. A major OF trade is imminent. Aha!

I wasn't able to find it Googling, but I think one of the beat writers posted something last week saying Braun wouldn't be in any games for the first few days while spending extra time at first base on the practice field. Sounded like it was in the plans to not rush him in. In-game experience is going to be huge if he pulls this off, but I'm sure he's got a lot of grounders to take and footwork to fine tune before they throw him into action anyways, so in the meantime they can also give some extra playing time to some guys competing for spots (ie. Choi).

I am ready for these guys to stabilize the rotation. Tomorrow marks 1 month since the Yelich trade/Cain signing and I haven't gone a waking hour since without checking here, Twitter, MLBTR, etc., to see if the follow up rotation move has been made, lol. At first I thought a Santana trade was a for sure piece of the original series of moves, but obviously that never materialized and if they can pull off a Braun move to first, this offense has a ton of fire power. With that said, the rotation is simply unacceptable. If you're not going to lead your staff into the season with a true ace or a couple number ones, you can't have the mess we have battling for the 5th spot. Get Cobb and use the beginning of the season to let Chacin and Woodruff show what they can do in the 4/5 spots until Nelson gets back. If Woodruff shows he's too good to demote, move Chacin to the pen at that point. Otherwise, send Woodruff down to the minors for more seasoning. Once the trade deadline comes around decide if it's worth exploring a trade for a TOR arm to make a real playoff push this year. So please go get Cobb now. Once that's taken care of see if any other lingering free agents come at a deal too good to pass up to really solidify the roster at 2B (Walker), C (Lucroy), or the pen (Holland).

Totally valid thread. IT'S SPRING TRAINING. The ONLY reason it's a little early this year is because of the wacky free agency market this offseason, but even with that said, teams are 90+% what they're going to be at this point. Here are my completely useless predictions, it'll be interesting to see if any remaining moves affect anyone's perceptions: AL West: Astros AL Central: Indians AL East: Yankees AL Wildcard: Red Sox AL Wildcard: Angels NL West: Dodgers NL Central: Cubs NL East: Nationals NL Wildcard: Cardinals NL Wildcard: Brewers

Say some combination of the following pitchers becomes available late in Spring Training or at the trade deadline: 2018 ZiPS Projections Ranked by WAR [pre] ERA IP WHIP K/9 BB/9 FIP WAR 6. Chris Archer 3.27 195.7 1.18 10.6 2.7 3.10 5.2 11. Carlos Carrasco 3.19 183.7 1.08 9.9 2.0 3.35 4.6 12. Marcus Stroman 3.54 190.7 1.25 7.8 2.5 3.48 4.5 13. Jacob deGrom 3.38 181.3 1.16 9.5 2.4 3.31 4.4 21. James Paxton 3.22 134.3 1.18 9.7 2.5 3.05 3.7 43. Michael Fulmer 3.94 162.3 1.24 7.1 2.3 3.96 3.0 (I'm not a big fan, but he's been mentioned a bit on the forum)[/pre] What kind of package are you willing to put together to see if a team will bite? I think I could live with something like Phillips, Woodruff, Peralta, and Dubon. Depending on the other team's needs and if they're willing to add something back, I may consider swapping Santana in for Phillips, but otherwise, the offense stays scary stacked without giving up Domingo (and Hiura still in the pipeline) and we still have a couple talented, young starters coming up in Burnes and Ortiz (not to mention Hader waiting his chance in the bigs too). That seems like it should be a pretty good set of talented, young, controllable players at or near the big league level for a team looking to rebuild and if no teams think that's enough, they can get bent What's your limit before you say it's not worth it?

Just clicking through some other former Cy Young winners between 2008 and 2012, you've got these guys who fared fairly well in their 30's: Cliff Lee (5.4, 4.8, 8.6, 4.5, 7.3 bWARs ages 30-34) Zack Greinke (4.3, 9.3, 2.3, 6.0 bWARs ages 30-now) RA Dickey (3.6, 3.6, 5.8, 2.0, 2.5 bWARS ages 35-39) Justin Verlander (4.6, 1.1, 2.2, 6.6, 4.5 bWARS ages 30-34) Roy Halladay (3.5, 6.2, 6.9, 8.3, 8.9 bWARS ages 30-34) And that's practically every Cy Young pitcher from those years that's even had at least 4 years in their 30s to consider.

Sorry if this starts a semantics war on TOR again, but I just don't understand how people are undervaluing Archer still. I guess it's looking purely at ERA? Otherwise if you look at just the pitching leaders for the past two seasons (the two that people consider down years for Archer) he still ranks the following amongst qualified MLB starters: 2016 - 2017 MLB Ranks WAR - 9th (7.7) xFIP - 8th (3.38) FIP - 11th (3.60) K/9 - 5th (10.78) Even your more traditional stats are pretty good, ranking 38th with a 4.05 ERA and 34th with a 1.25 WHIP in a tough AL East. At worst, that puts him at a very, very good number 2 pitcher. And these don't even include his previous three "good" seasons where his ERA was in the 3.22 to 3.33 range. I can see the argument for not being an "ace", but he's definitely a top of the rotation arm and would be by far our best pitcher.

Just for a stats/non-nostalgia based reference: [pre]2018 ZiPS Projections Player Age PA AVG OBP SLG OPS wRC+ zWAR zWAR / PA Lucroy 32 482 .298 .365 .449 .814 98 1.7 0.00353 Pina 31 339 .248 .299 .386 .685 76 1.2 0.00354 Vogt 33 405 .259 .314 .450 .764 94 1.1 0.00272 2018 Steamer Projections Player Age PA AVG OBP SLG OPS wRC+ WAR WAR / PA Lucroy 32 414 .270 .344 .424 .768 102 2.4 0.00580 Pina 31 214 .251 .307 .389 .696 79 0.7 0.00327 Vogt 33 220 .257 .318 .442 .760 94 0.8 0.00364[/pre]

Here's the whole Broxton quote for those interested: Reading the whole thing it's pretty obvious he's not slighting them by calling them "solid". He flat out says they've been better players than him throughout his entire career and that obtaining them "definitely makes the team, as a whole, a lot better." He knows obtaining them pushes him out of the outfield, not sure how it's interpreted otherwise.

It's not always good to offer an extension to a player if you're not sure they'll continue performing at a high level. See Jonathan Lucroy. In all seriousness, Lucroy and Gomez were great sell high (or at least sell before they plummeted) moves by the Brewers. We got a ton of talent back before those guys lost their value.

Obviously a lot has changed and the free agent market hasn't played out as expected since November when the article was written, but MLBTradeRumors had him predicted for 2 yrs, $24M: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/11/2017-18-top-50-mlb-free-agents-with-predictions.html I would agree that I think he's not getting close to that at this point, but just pointing out it doesn't take nostalgic, Brewers goggles to presume he gets something in that range.

Yes. Kemp has been significantly worse than Braun. [pre]Kemp 2015 .265/.312/.443/.755 0.6 bWAR 2016 .268/.304/.499/.803 0.0 bWAR 2017 .276/.318/.463/.781 -1.3 bWAR Braun 2015 .285/.356/.498/.854 3.8 bWAR 2016 .305/.365/.538/.903 4.4 bWAR 2017 .268/.336/.487/.823 1.2 bWAR[/pre]