SF70

Counsell thought he was smarter than the FO. He lacked the vision to see the true greatness of Stearns/Arnold and what the infrastructure rebuild meant to the future of the team. He thought instead he could go south with an inferior FO, that he could more or less control, and would be able to coach $200M+ payroll teams to a WS. He better win one this season, because the Brewers future is fantastically better than the Cubs, and it’s going to be embarrassing to have his mentor win with half his payroll.

Absolutely, credit has to go to both Attanasio/Stearns as well. The most important attributes for a small-market owner are: • Spend similarly to other like revenue teams. • Hire the right people to run the team. • Listen to those people. Attanasio has nailed all 3 and because of that gets an A+ as the owner of this franchise. Stearns created the initial vision for this team which included the massive rebuild of the team’s infrastructure, which was as bad as any in baseball. His first hire was Matt Arnold, who has helped him every step of the way in building what could be the most efficient infrastructure in the game. Arnold has taken Stearns initial vision and kicked it up multiple notches imo, thanks to his scouting background. He has changed the team’s amateur draft strategy, with Tod Johnson’s help and the team has had back to back, among the best in baseball, draft-classes, with the latest, potentially as good or better than the last 2 classes. On the international side they had maybe the best IFA class (2024) since baseball went to pool money a little more than a decade ago. Currently, the team rivals any team in the game as far as prospect-procurement is concerned. Then we have the team’s pitching development taking another leap since Arnold took over. This team, imo, has never had the depth of solid or better pitching, system-wide, that they have right now. The pitching gains made just this year alone are extraordinary, and have set the team up for an easy 5 year run of success, again in my opinion, unparalleled in this franchise’s history. Attanasio A+ owner. Stearns A+ GM. Arnold A+ GM and currently the best in baseball, bar none, which is why I stated early on in this thread, he deserves a 10 year extension, and that wouldn’t even be long enough.

Yes real quick. Power bat for 5+ years.

After the year the Brewers PDS has had, maybe he just wants in, and as quickly as possible. It’s hard to imagine a team having the system-wide pitching gains this team has had the last couple of years, but especially this year.

If Woodruff finishes the year healthy we give him a QO. He likely turns it down and we get a top 35 pick in next years draft. Win win. If he accepts the QO (unlikely if healthy) we get a stronger Woody, another offseason from his surgery, likely without an innings limit.. An ace for 1 year for what’s looking like the most talented Brewers team in many years.

The Brewers nailed their draft-class for the 3rd year in a row. Doesn’t matter who specifically signs from their 11-20, because enough will for them to have another top, among the best in baseball draft-class. The 5 LHP’s drafted, fixes one of the systems 2 glaring weaknesses, the dearth of left-handed pitching. The other weakness, at least the way I see it, OF power bats, was not addressed in this draft, not with Ragsdale, who is a puzzling pick to me, but oh well, maybe next year they go OF heavy. What’s got me super excited is the Fischer pick. Some, including many Brewers scouts thought him to be the best hitter in the draft-class, bar none. And with his plate-discipline, strength and lofted swing, a potential middle of the order bat in the BL lineup and imo, sooner than later. I think he flies to the big-leagues. But again, for the 3rd year in a row, they will likely end up with N of 10 pitchers added, not a bad strategy when the team is as good as it gets with pitching development.

Hoping against hope the team can sign one of Brock-Cadiz. This team has so much organizational pitching depth, I’m hoping they spend a lot of their excess on one of the aforementioned positionals if it means they can sign one of them.

Fischer-Ebel are great positional adds to the system with both having at least future power potential, imo, a system weakness. The pitching added looks to be similar to the last 2 drafts, so likely superior yet again thanks to their incredible all things pitching department. The waves of future pitching should be large enough to protect the team from injury and still have excess to trade from. This team’s amateur draft process Johnson & co have put together is just incredible. It’s become as well-oiled of a machine as there is in this game. I’m in awe of this team’s infrastructure.

With the addition of 4-5 LHP’s fixing the dearth of lefties throughout the organization, that leaves OF’s with power upside as the only remaining system weakness in my eyes. Fortunately, we have 4-6 years of control over 6 BL OF’s giving us plenty of time to fix that singular weakness.

I think they have at least 1M in savings, maybe more. And my guess is with senior signs and the like coming up, they should get enough cash to really have some fun adding special talent today, and most likely with their 11-20 picks, yet again.

With the current state of the team’s amateur drafting prowess (among the best in baseball) I believe they view the return on investment in this realm an advantage they have over most or all of the rest of baseball and as a small-market team, their best opportunity to become talent-laden and keep up with the behemoths. IMO, they saw a pitcher they could improve (Priester) and the cost of acquisition was the draft-pick, nothing more or nothing less than the desire to get a 6 years controlled potential mid-rotation starter into the organization.

Actually Brewers are 10th in bonus $ now, post-Priester trade. Would have been well inside the top 10 if not for the trade.

Over the moon with these lefties. And now you mention Woodward, my favorite stuff arm in our system. Wow, no words.

System weaknesses getting fixed early in the draft. Power bats. Power bat potential. LHP.

He’s a lefty. We need lefties.

There’s a power bat. Love the pick. Doesn’t chase. Great swing decisions. Super happy.

Woodruff looks to be definitely worth the QO, but not sure about the 3/60. Big difference between 1 and 3 years at 33 years old. for this small-market team, Besides i think both are moot with the industry likely to get him a 4-5 year $80-100M+ contract this coming offseason.

O’Hearn has been a good hitter going on 3 years in a row, with OPS+’s of 120-125-140 respectively. He would be an upgrade at 1B and wouldn’t break the bank being a rental acquisition.

Underrated to us but plenty of scouts have had eyes on Lara for what now, 3.5 years including last falls AFL. I think his value to 90% of the team’s around the league would be greater than it would be to us since we have 4 controlled plus fielding CF at the BL level. Lara is an easy top 10 prospect in most organizations besides ours.

Imo, Lara would be the perfect trade candidate at this years trade-deadline or offseason if the team can add a controllable positional upgrade. He’s likely not going to add power to his skill-set, which is what MKE needs in its OF, at least in my opinion, but his value to clubs around the game should be huge, with the dearth of plus speed, plus plus fielding CF prospects with a nice hit-tool.

I trust the Brewers internal evaluations of their prospects enough that if they feel the need to trade away a Made or Pena or Pratt for a multiple year controllable I’ll be good with that. IMO, the team has an opportunity to get to a powerhouse team before 2028 if they trade from their BIB farm, and that powerhouse could potentially start at this years deadline with the team acquiring the right controllable positional talent. Not expecting that to happen, but if it does, this prospect-hugger won’t be screaming about the return being prohibitive.

And at a system position of need. OF, and more specifically, power OF bat. With Handelfrey, we now have 3 potential OF’s with power potential moving-forward, all at low A or rookie league, which is tolerable, with the team having Chourio (8+ years), Frelick (4+), Mitchell (3+) controlled for the foreseeable future, along with Lara, who imo, would be a nice trade-chip. Hoping to add to this, imo, system weakness, Sun/Mon. Selfishly hoping it’s from the college realm that can get ahead of the trio, but I’ll take another power OF bat anywhere we can get them.

McCalvy reported Cortez having more soreness than normal after his rehab start, although he’s supposedly still on schedule to make his next start. Count me as skeptical we get anything more out of him this year.

This organization’s PDS will turn what appear to be back-enders into mids, and mids to uppers, I think we can bet on that. The pitching scouting staff, both pro & amateur, have done an amazing job adding arms that the PD staff can improve. Just in the last 2 draft-classes the team has added what, 24 pitchers (if we include UFA Hunt). That’s more volume than has ever been added in a 2 year period of time at least since the draft went to 20 rounds. I think it’s fair to feel “over-optimistic” regarding what this team is accomplishing with organizational starting pitching depth.

Plus more upper-minors depth with Crow-Kuehner-Hunt-Wichrowski-Hardin. And because of that depth — I’m putting Peralta up for the highest bidder and IF (IF) we can get an impact BL ready power bat + that blows the team away, I’m trading Freddy. 2026 can be a special year for this team with an already deep, controlled rotation going into the offseason, plus what should be another strong bullpen. On the other side of the ball, we get another years development from Frelick-Turang-Ortiz-Chourio-Durbin and what should be a healthy Contreras. The glaring weakness of the team is lack of power and if dangling Peralta to the highest bidder this deadline can get us a young power bat then I’m pulling the trigger.