Platoon Power

Their trade value is equal to what they are as players (other bottom of the roster types). Perkins has a slight bit of value because he's cheap and controllable where a team with a need for a soft side of a platoon might be willing to offer a reliever similar to Easton McGee. I'd rather keep Perkins just incase something happened to either Mitchell or Lockridge. He serves a purpose and there's others I'd cut from the 40 man if I needed to create room.

Any interest in Michael Kopech? I'd love to sign him to a minor league deal with an early opt out date. I know our bullpen is crowded but we could use another RHP and I'm intrigued with what our pitching lab could do with him.

Assuming health, there's not many battles for the 13 positional player roster spots. The only open spot I see is the soft side of the CF platoon opposite Garrett Mitchell. Perkins is an amazing defender but Lockridge might have even a higher ceiling with his 80 grade speed which can cover more ground. Grok told me that Lockridge posted a .269/.321/.462/.783 vs LHP line with the Brewers which compares favorably to the .271/.352/.438/.789 vs LHP line that Perkins put up a year ago. I'll take the contrarian route and go with the superior speed & defense over the switch hitter. Either way the difference is negligible. I'd divide half the starts vs RHP between Vaughn and Bauers unless Vaughn goes crazy like he did in July & September. This is more of a credit to Bauer's bat emerging than it's necessarily a shot at Vaughn. Even though the .250/.320/.375/695 line that Vaughn had in August is still fresh in my mind. The left side of the infield will be a giant pile of yuck for a few weeks. If you plug your nose and close your eyes you can wish Ortiz, Rengifo & Hamilton play like they did in 2024. I'm worried about Rengifo's wrist injury being the reason he fell off the cliff so I'm not banking on him being anything more than the soft side of a platoon at 3B until Jett is ready. If we get anything more than that from Rengifo then we're cooking with gas. Once Jet arrives, I'm fully preparing for a Hamilton / Ortiz platoon until Made *hopefully* arrives later this year. I think those 2 can cobble together close to league average production with elite defense when Ortiz plays and elite speed when Hamilton plays. I just don't think Ortiz should be in the batters box as long as a RHP is on the mound unless something dramatically changes with his approach. VS RHP C William Contreras 1B Andrew Vaughn / Jake Bauers 2B Brice Turang SS Joey Ortiz 3B David Hamilton LF Jackson Chourio CF Garrett Mitchell RF Sal Frelick DH Christian Yelich Bench C Gary Sanchez 1B/OF Jake Bauers / 1B Andrew Vaughn IF Luis Rengifo OF Brandon Lockridge VS LHP C Gary Sanchez 1B Andrew Vaughn 2B Brice Turang SS Joey Ortiz 3B Luis Rengifo LF Jackson Chourio CF Brandon Lockridge RF Sal Frelick DH William Contreras Bench OF/DH Christian Yelich OF Garrett Mitchell IF David Hamilton 1B/OF Jake Bauers

What I think the rotation will be - Woodruff, Priester, Misiorowski, Patrick & Harrison What I'd like to see the rotation be - Woodruff, Priester, Misiorwoski, Harrison & Zerpa I've been intrigued with the idea of trying Zerpa out as a starter since the move was announced. I remember what the Rays did with Drew Rasmussen and see a potential solution for our unbalanced bullpen. There's also added bonuses with retaining our depth and having the potential to maximize our return for Collins & Mears. If Zerpa can't cut it as a starter then you send him back to the pen. I just like the idea of turning a reliever and a utility player into a potential #3 starter. That's a big win from a value standpoint which you can use in future trades. Anyone know how long Harrison, Sproat & Henderson need to stay down in the minors to maintain an extra year of control? That might determine how I feel about starting Harrison in the rotation over Patrick to start the year.

#1. Garrett Mitchell stays healthy, plays great defense and posts an .800 OPS vs RHP #2. Jett Williams ends up with nearly identical numbers to Caleb Durbin a year ago but does so between SS & CF. His versatility creates a unique platoon between Garrett Mitchell & Joey Ortiz with Jett playing SS against RHP and CF against LHP. #3. Jesus Made destroys AA & AAA pitching and forces his way to Milwaukee a few weeks before the deadline. He takes the 3B job and runs with it. #4. Brock Wilken makes the postseason roster and starts at DH when we face LHP #5. With a loaded roster & farm system, the only move we make at the deadline is trading bottom of the roster players like Luis Rengifo & Rob Zastryzny for a low level prospect(s). #6. Our top 13 pitchers all post an ERA+ over 100 and we finish with the best team ERA in the entire league. #7. We win the World Series with the deepest roster we've ever had in Milwaukee!

Matt Arnold wanted to turn Freddy into 2 quality pitchers and it took 3 trades to do so. Along the way, he added some insurance for Joey Ortiz with a LH hitting infielder and reinforced the bullpen with 2 LH relievers when we run into Shohei, Freeman and Tucker on the Dodgers. Collins and Durbin were tradeable because we needed to clear a path for players with a higher prospect pedigree. OF Isaac Collins --> OF Garrett Mitchell RP Nick Mears --> RP Angel Zerpa SP Freddy Peralta --> SP Kyle Harrison & SP Brandon Sproat IF Caleb Durbin --> IF Jett Williams LR Tobias Myers --> LR Shane Drohan IF Andruw Monasterio --> IF David Hamilton UT Anthony Siegler --> UT Luis Rengifo C Danny Jansen --> Gary Sanchez It's a lot of chairs being rearranged but I believe we increased our ceiling while adding several years of control. The Hamilton / Rengifo platoon isn't very exciting but that duo is infinitely better than the Dunn / Capra platoon we were forced to watch last year. I'll suffer through those two for a few weeks until we guarantee an extra year of team control over Jett.

Didn't the Brewers move Travis Shaw to 2B after we traded for Moustakas? That's more drastic than this idea when you consider Shaw / Moustakas hadn't played 2B in years prior to that deal. This sounds like the type of creative move the Brewers would do and why they value versatility so much. I believe the sudden interest in left fielders is because Matt Arnold has a vision of using Isaac Collins like he used Ben Zobrist when he was on the Rays. Is the defensive downgrade going from Ortiz -> Turang and Turang -> Collins that significant that it would outweigh replacing Ortiz's bat with someone like Kwan or O'Hearn's? Color me skeptical with how lost Ortiz has looked once again.

Add me to the Willi Castro bandwagon but count me out of Ryan O'Hearn. We already have our Jake Bauer replacement. I'm not sending Andrew Vaughn down when Rhys returns from the IL.

I'm close to Aiden Arnett's family and I'm hearing the Brewers are showing quite a bit of interest in him. He's on their radar for one of their picks round 11 and after.

The Brewers do 1 thing great offensively as a team - They get on base. The league average OBP is something like .316 and everyone of our regulars minus Jackson Chourio and Joey Ortiz are well above that mark.

Mark says he's scheduled a bullpen with one of Boras' unsigned clients. Spencer Turnbull or Joe Kelly anyone?

Slade Caldwell is a guy that sticks out to me. All things equal, the Brewers would prefer to draft a college bat, but I don't see anyone who can stick up the middle with a plus hit tool who also hits left handed.

75 wins.

Sounds like the plot for a movie where the owner is trying to finish dead last so she can move the team to Miami.

This move tells me the Brewers aren't trading Adames and are only expecting to carry Monasterio as the lone backup infielder. If your other bench players are a backup catcher, Wiemer/Mitchell and Bauers then you need an emergency infielder to come from your outfield.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/what-if-blake-snell-asked-for-all-his-money-now/ Fangraphs says the bidding would start at 1 year $40M if Snell was willing to take a 1 year deal. Could Mark stretch the payroll another $5M or so after trading Williams and Adames to make it happen?

The big thing that benefits Mitchell is that he hasn't played much against professional pitching at any level. His K rate dropped has from 41.2% to 35.6% the last 2 years so there's reason to expect that to continue to improve. I think he can cut his K rate to around 30% where he could be a useful platoon partner with Wiemer.

Most of us here are familiar with the multiple times through the order penalty with pitchers. Why not put it into action? The way I look at it, the Brewers are running a 2 man rotation followed by a bunch of question marks. I'm wondering how feasible it is for a team to utilize a bunch of pitchers in 3 inning max stints and sort of eliminate the idea of starting pitchers? We have a lot of arms who do certain things well but have significant warts preventing them from being elite. Why not hide the negatives as best as possible and put them in a position to utilize their strengths? Jake Junis has an elite slider and is essentially a multi-inning ROOGY. He's also living proof that the more times a hitter sees a pitcher the more success they have. Hitters have a .683 OPS against him the 1st PA in a game, .774 OPS the 2nd PA in a game and a .968 OPS the 3rd PA in a game. He could be quite successful if deployed against RH heavy teams or inserting him into a game after you get past a LHH heavy point in a lineup. Colin Rea and Joe Ross are other similar pitchers who's numbers fall off the 2nd time through the lineup and have had more success against the same sided hitting. Combine them with DL Hall, Aaron Ashby, Robert Gasser and eventually Carlos Rodriguez and Jacob Misiorowski to give would give us a a deep collection of arms that can throw over 100 innings in a season. With a balanced mix of LH and RH pitchers you can attack other lineups instead of letting them react to your rotation. If you pitch these guys in 3 inning stints, on 3-4 days rest, you could get 40-54 appearances in a season, which would translate to 120-162 IP in an ideal world. The extra bonus is that It's a creative way to stretch out your arms at the major league level until there ready to pitch 180+ innings as a normal starting pitcher. The only problem I see is how the players would react to it. Josh Hader flat out rejected it because of how the arbitration process rewards pitchers. I would love to hear what you guys think of this idea and if it might be feasible?

This is the key to the deal. The DH spot should be used to keep our 2 best hitters (Yelich and Contreras) as fresh as possible throughout the year. VS RHP RF Mitchell LF Frelick C Contreras DH Yelich VS LHP RF Wiemer LF Yelich C Sanchez DH Contreras

I have to believe Snell's peripherals are making teams very nervous about giving him a long term deal, I doubt that changes in a few days.

Ideally, I would pull the Marlins into the deal, who need a cheap controllable option at SS. Maybe we could turn it into a 3 team deal, where we send one of Peraza / Turang to the Marlins for someone like Max Meyer?

You could possibily get something like this in return for Adames and Williams to go along with this idea Brewers send Devin Williams (22.4 Total Value) to the Yankees for IF Oswald Peraza (14.7) & Will Warren (9.7) 24.2 total value Brewers send Willy Adames (11.1 total value) to the Giants for RHP Mason Black (5.2) and LHPJoe Whitman (5.7) 10.9 total value. Peraza doesn't have a path to playing time in New York and would give us another guy to compete with Black and Turang for PT. Both Warren and Black pitched in AAA a year ago so they could help this year. Whitman balances the trade and give us another young LH pitcher to develop.

The closer we get to the start of spring training, the more I'm starting to think that the Brewers might be a legitimate option if Snell can't get a long term contract. The Brewers are $15M below their payroll from a year ago and can create another $19.5M by trading Willy Adames + Devin Williams (34.5M Total) Gary Sanchez was his personal catcher from a year ago who he excelled with. We have Tyler Black who could start at 3B giving us a ML ready replacement for Adames once he's traded. Whatever return you get for Adames and Williams would need to help cover any other holes the team has coming into the season. We would be pretty much maxed our salary wise by adding Snell. The defense behind him would be some of the best he's ever played with, even with Hoskins and Black starting at 1st and 3rd. We could offer something close to a 1 year $35M contract with a mutual option.

That's how I view him as well. Most of the teams that could use him the most aren't playoff contenders in 2023 and would probably prefer to sign him in the offseason. I think the Giants are the one exception to the rule and could make things interesting if they were willing to part with Mason Black as part of the deal. He would give us another near ready SP in AAA to join Gasser and Carlos Rodriguez.

OK, how about Quintez Cephus? He messed up badly with gambling but he wasn't a rapist like he was alleged to be. You would think we wouldn't be so quick to judge and wait for the process to run it's course. I'm not going to pretend I know everything about Bauers case but he's actually countersuing the 4th woman for extortion. The 2nd and 3rd women raise red flags to anyone thinking critically. If what they claim happened, why did they wait years until a lawsuit against Bauer to come out? I would hope and expect any woman to go to the police immediately afterwords if something that awful had happened to them. In regards to how he conducts himself? The main issue from what I've seen is that he's more concerned about being a social influencer and is willing to do anything for a reaction. He's a wannabe Conor McGregor in a sport that lacks athletes that stand out so he believes that any publicity is a good publicity when you're trying to build a following / brand. His entire negative persona is attached to getting clicks which is why I would only sign him if he agreed to stop it while he was with the team. He talks about it all in this interview.