And That

Assuming that they do not have to protect Braun and that 2015 draftees do not have to be protected, here are the 15 guys I would protect: SS: O. Arcia, I. Diaz, G. Lara, J. Villar OF: L. Brinson, D. Santana, B. Phillips, K. Broxton SP: Z. Davies, J. Hader, P. Bickford, B. Woodruff, L. Ortiz, M. Diplan, F. Peralta RP: T. Thornburg If they did have to protect Braun, I'd drop Peralta.

Manfred has said on a number of occasions that expansion if off the table until the A's and Rays' stadium situations are resolved. That said, expansion is inevitable. I agree with sveumrules about the support from the players and owners. Have to think owners would happily pocket the franchise fees in return for risk of losing the 16th best player in their organization. Finding the right fanbases is the biggest test, because fanbases aren't a given to be a success in the long term. MLB doesn't need to be in a hurry to expand, and once the Oakland/Tampa stadium issues are resolved, I imagine MLB will be methodical about finding the appropriate places to expand. My guess is that expansion doesn't happen for 6-8 years at the closest. But it will happen.

Salt River Rafters 9, Glendale Desert Dogs 4 Box Score Game Day The Rafters move to 3-1. Jacob Nottingham was the lone Brewer in the lineup. He went 2-5 with a double, RBI, and run scored. His average is up to .357, OPS at .786. Opposing base stealers were successful in both of their attempts against him. There were also two more wild pitches on his watch, though still no passed balls. One of those wild pitches belonged to Josh Uhen, who was the only Brewer pitcher today. The Oshkosh native threw 2 innings, allowing 1 run (earned) on 2 hits and a walk, while also recording a strikeout. The AFL has Sunday off. Salt River next plays Monday afternoon at 2:35 CDT.

Would Braun be eligible for the draft? Not sure how his no-trade clause would affect that.

Salt River Rafters 5, Peoria Javelinas 2 Box Score Game Day Brett Phillips goes 1-4 with a strikeout. As mentioned below, Isan Diaz hit his first long ball of the AFL campaign. He also struck out once in 3 ABs. Diaz' OPS is at an even 1000 after 8 PAs. Phillips is at 906 after 13 PAs. None of the Brewers' pitching contingent entered the game.

It's not a given that the Brewers would have been able to sign Hammel and Lackey to those deals. May well have taken more years/money for both.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2016/10/giants-rumors-offseason-closer-melancon-chapman-jansen.html The Giants are actively looking for bullpen help, though the article notes they might try the FA route first, namely Mark Melancon.

The history of the shift. I did not know about this.

Salt River Rafters 5, Mesa Solar Sox 7 Box Score Game Day As Greenleaf mentioned, Diaz had a ringing double to the right center field gap in his first plate appearance. He would go hitless in his next four ABs, though he did generally square on the ball. He did not look overmatched at all, despite being the fourth youngest player in the AFL, and youngest on his own team. Jacob Nottingham went 2-4 and struck out once. He was behind the plate for two wild pitches, take that for what it's worth. I saw one of them, I believe on what was Tyler Spurlin's second pitch of the game. He didn't have a great chance at it, as it bounced about a foot outside, but he didn't square his body up much at all, and tried to spear it with his mitt. I'd give him a pass due to Spurlin's delivery, but they were teammates all season in Biloxi. Speaking of Spurlin, he's a side-armer with an especially low dip in his delivery, though he does throw harder than most side-arm/submarine pitchers. He was 90-93 with his fastball and mixed in curves and sliders. I only saw him pitch once or twice in Biloxi and didn't come away terribly impressed, but he looked good here. 2.1 innings pitched and nothing but a strikeout. 5 of his 6 in-play outs were grounders, not surprisingly. His delivery looks to me to be incredibly difficult to repeat. I wanted to see Tayler Scott but did not get the chance. I never saw him at Biloxi either, unless I'm forgetting. He throws in the low 90s, maybe a tick faster than Spurlin. He went 2 innings, allowed 2 hits, a walk, and a run, with two strikeouts. Hope to see him before the AFL season is out as I'm still trying to figure out why the Brewers sent him to the AFL. Nothing against him, it's just a 24 year old signed off of an indy roster midway through the season who proceeded to put up very pedestrian numbers out of the pen isn't exactly someone whom you would think would pique the Brewers' interest enough to send him to the AFL. We shall see.

Salt River Rafters 6, Scottsdale Scorpions 4 Box Score Game Day Rafters remain undefeated after 2 games. Only two Brewers participated in this one. Brett Phillips played RF again and again had a productive day, going 1-2 with a 3B, 2 R, RBI, 2 BB, K. Javi Salas and somewhat surprisingly threw 3 scoreless innings, allowing a hit and two walks against 1 strikeout. When Salas is right (which hasn't been often this year, unfortunately) he gets ground balls, and he did in this game, inducing 5 ground ball outs versus 2 fly ball outs. The Rafters are back in action on Thursday, and the game is being streamed on MLB.TV! Game time is 2:35 CDT.

Broxton had 14 days of service going into the season, and I have him at about 124 days of service this year, give or take a few days. Anything above 2.130-2.135 days of service usually is a decent bet for Super 2. That also assumes he's not demoted in the next two years.

Good catch! Updated. I also never realized before how exactly staggered the Lohse (2016-2018), Garza (2019-2021), and Braun (2022-2031) deferrals are.

Harrison probably gets moved up to Carolina with a good spring training. Not ready yet for Biloxi.

I put the link in the lowest payroll thread as well, but I have the Brewers at about $66 million in salary for next season. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B86F-cCNo5RxdzlTdkxzbk9GVVE/view

FWIW, last night I threw this spreadsheet together, and I have the Brewers at a total payroll spend of approximately $55,307,000 in 2016. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B86F-cCNo5RxdzlTdkxzbk9GVVE/view?usp=sharing The $63 million number (from Cot's) includes the deferred portions of Braun's and Garza's deals, which my version does not. Aaron Hill's number is a little bit of a swag, but I think it's pretty close. There's also a breakdown by position. Taylor Jungmann missed a year of total service time by a day, at least by my calculation.

Carter made $3 million in 2016, just to be clear. His base salary was $2.5 million but he reached all his performance bonuses, which were based on plate appearances. He got an extra $500k for that.

The Salt River Rafters and their contingent of Brewers prospects begin play tonight, game's at 8:35 CDT. Nottingham and Phillips in the starting lineup: Box Score Game Day Peoria Javelinas 7, Salt River Rafters 7, 11 innings Tie baseball. Uhen 95-97 with his fastball in his first inning, which was clean. Second inning, velocity down a little and control seemed to evade him as he's pulled after 1.1 innings. 3 hits, 1 HR, 2 runs, 1 walk, 2 Ks. No other Brewers farmhands pitched. Rafters offense: Nottingham: 1-5, RBI, K Phillips: 0-3, 2 BB, K, SB, 2 R Salt River in the late game again tomorrow, 8:35 CDT. Javi Salas is the probable starter.

If the Brewers feel Carter is worth spending $7 or $8 million on in arbitration, they will pay him as such if that amount fits into the payroll budget structure. It's not throwing money around if they feel he's worth it. None of us know what the Brewers' feelings on the subject are, though. We will find out soon enough.

No, nothing is wrong with it, but the Brewers have probably built in assumptions to their budget about Braun and Garza being traded. They also could take on payroll in a deal similar to the Dbacks deal last offseason. They could sign Ivan Nova. They have a number they probably won't go over but are willing to spend, and they will likely be under that. But it has little or nothing to do with Carolina.

The Brewers' payroll budget is x. Whatever player or group of players the Brewers pay to play first base must fit within x. The rest of the Brewers' payroll obligations would be budgeted as x-first base payroll. At the end of next season, the Brewers will have an actual payroll expenditure, y. I'd assume there is a directive to keep x>y unless the Brewers find themselves in contention in late July. There will be a difference in x>y. Let's call that difference z. For budgeting purposes, z is incidental. The Brewers would probably prefer it to be a happy (positive) incidental, and it might end up being a large incidental, but regardless of sign or magnitude, it is incidental. The difference z could be given back to the owners or rolled into the 2018 master budget. If the Brewers had wanted to wind up at z, they would have budgeted z in the first place. Anything to do with the Carolina franchise in the coming year for all intents and purposes takes place outside of the Brewers' 2017 payroll expense. If their payroll is dramatically under the budgeted amount, they could roll money out of it mid-year into other projects, but the Brewer are probably good enough with budgeting that things won't get that out of whack. At this point in the year, they know what they want to spend on payroll, and they know what they want to spend on everything else.

Forgot to mention, the Brewers have in all likelihood set their 2017 payroll budget for next year. It's not a matter of paying Carter $8 million or $5 million, it is a matter of fitting that into the budget they've already established. Assuming the payroll budget is in the $65-$70 mil range again next year, that's doable. Basically, paying Carter $8 million does not increase the budget by $8 million. They're not extending their budget for him. It is just $8 million less to spend on other guys. Personally, I don't think he's worth $7 mil or $8 mil. But I can see why the Brewers would keep him.

If you're talking about bumping your payroll up from $65 million to $90 million or $100 million, sure. However, paying Carter $8 mil vs. paying him $5 mil vs. paying a group of other schmucks $3 mil isn't going to move the needle anywhere else within the organization. It's within the variance of where they are likely comfortable going with payroll. My guess is the only thing paying Carter will do to next year's payroll budget is, perhaps, preclude them from signing a reliever to a couple-million dollar deal. But I even doubt that is the case. There's also the possibility the Brewers have other plans for first base. Who knows.

That's because it's not the case. The Brewers' payroll decisions this year have little to no effect on their payroll decisions a few years from now, obviously except for anyone that's signed to a multi-year contract. That's the beauty of arbitration and non-guaranteed contracts.

One of the bits I'm struggling with in the calculation that generates the list is weighting production vs. potential, namely at what point do you say, OK, this guy has all the potential in the world, but he's just not getting it done. High potential/low production guys seem to tend to linger on the back end of prospect lists for longer than they should, I think because people don't want to give up on them. I'm trying to create a calculation that doesn't let players linger too long. Is the 80s way too low for Harrison? Yah, probably, but that's where I am with the formula and one thing I forbade myself to do is adjust the calculation because a guy isn't where I think (in my gut) he should be. Down in A-ball, where I have Harrison playing (again) next year, the calculation is weighted heavily towards scouting info, so his struggles and inability to stay on the field aren't magnified a lot yet, but they count for something. I do think pitching is a little heavily weighted, which is one of the things I'll look at before next spring.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/eric-longenhagen-prospects-chat-fall-league-eve/