And That

The difference between #3 and #5 in the draft is quite significant from a bonus pool perspective.

Susac's contract was selected in July 2014, and he was not first optioned until the following March. He was optioned again in 2016. Unless there are missing transactions from 2014 on his MLB page, he should have one option remaining going into next year.

Updated formatting a bit, and added notes about the three players who will accrue enough service time to refuse optional/outright assignments in 2017.

Stop.

I'm not sure I've seen anyone say that? I think everyone pretty much everyone acknowledges that 2B is the easier position. My reason for questioning Villar's ability to transition is because he has the physical ability to play SS and 3B, he has the arm, and his mechanics aren't even that bad. He's a bad defender in large part due to mental lapses. The same mental lapses that cause him to make jarringly poor base running choices from time to time. The thing about mental lapses is that they can happen at any position, second base included. He might cause less damage there than on the left side of the infield, but that's about all I'm convinced about. If Villar is the only bad defender the Brewers had, that would probably be fine, but when you have poor defenders scattered around the field, Villar only makes the problem worse.

Carter is awful. Villar has not shown himself to be not awful at either SS or 3B. No reason to think he'd be average at 2B all of a sudden. Calling Braun average would be a stretch. Santana is awful. Gennett is not good. Using your lineup and assuming Santana is in RF, I count three huge defensive liabilities (Carter, Villar, Santana), two average-ish guys (Maldonado, Perez), a below average and not getting any younger LF (Braun), and two potentially above average players (Arcia, Brinson). That's still not good. Edit: You're also putting in Brinson to replace what might be the Brewers' best defensive position this year, CF. Nieuwenhuis and Broxton have both been pretty good there. Not sure exactly what the upgrade from Broxtenhuis to Brinson is worth.

Fixing the defense would go a long way towards improving the team's record next year. Even getting to a respectable defensive level could mean a 5-6 win improvement. Now how you do that with many of the same deficient players returning next year is a great question.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B86F-cCNo5RxMVBoRmdLWHF5ZGs/view?usp=sharing I have been using a version of the linked file at home for quite a while, but thought I would share it with you all. The first tab is an organizational depth chart for the Brewers, with players highlighted by 40-man/Rule 5 status. The second tab is an (at this point absurdly early) forecast of the 2017 rosters, from Milwaukee down through Wisconsin. I apologize if the formatting needs some work - going from my Excel file to Google's interpretation of my Excel hasn't been extremely smooth, but I am working on it. I think the color coding is pretty clear anyway. Position players are assigned their position (1B, 2B, etc., or one of the four utility slots) based roughly on where they've played the past season or two. If a guy played 500 innings at third and 20 innings at second, I have him as a third baseman. If he played 260 innings at each position, he's listed as a utility IF. Pitchers are listed as starters if they have been starters (straight or tandem) for the most part. Just a note about the forecasts, I make no assumptions about players being released or traded. So anyone who is currently on the 40-man and who will be out of options next year has the 2017 MLB roster made. I fully realize that this will not be the case, but for right now I think it's easiest to make as few assumptions as possible. I also don't think there is too much of a trickle down effect into the minors - there will be 25 players on Milwaukee's roster come next opening day, and very few of them are currently playing in the Brewers' minor league system. I have been pretty good about keeping this updated at home, so hopefully that will continue now that it's available to all.

According to the Brewers' site. I am slightly surprised to see Jungmann back, though he seemed to be more good than bad lately in Biloxi. No word on any 40-man additions just yet. Cecchini, Reed, Wilkins, and Goforth all finished in AAA and are still on the 40-man, but were not recalled at this time. Probably bad omens for some of them.

The Texas League's days of being an offensive haven have long passed. In terms of AA run scoring per game: Eastern League: 4.34 runs per game Texas League: 4.12 Southern League: 4.09 The Texas League had fewer runs scored per game than the following affiliated leagues, besides the Eastern League: American League - 4.57 National League - 4.43 Pacific Coast League (AAA) - 4.78 California League (A+) - 5.00 Carolina League (A+) - 4.53 South Atlantic League (A) - 4.20 Northwest League (A-) - 4.81 Three of the four Rookie-level leagues, and it was tied with the fourth (the GCL) OTOH, it had more runs scored than just five other affiliated leagues. It had 0.08 more runs per game than the dreaded Florida State League. If you want to drill down further, Frisco, which is the Rangers' Texas League affiliate, scored exactly 4 runs per game.

Just pretend they traded Bradley for Kyle Wren.

It's unlikely, but Gideon stands at least some chance of passing Isan Diaz for the Brewers' minor league HR lead. That's crazy. He's on pace for 40+ HR over a full minor league season.

Exactly. There was about a 0% chance that Jeffress was going to get arrested for DWI in Texas if he hadn't been traded. Who knows if he ever put himself in the position to be arrested for DWI in Wisconsin, or if he had, if he would have been caught.

Who had Tayler Scott in the AFL pool?

Jack Finnegan was transferred back to Helena from Maryvale. Finnegan started the year in Helena, but after a 1/3 IP, 10 ER debacle on July 4th, he was sent back to Arizona.

A player with less than 3 years MLB service cannot refuse their first outright assignment. After the first outright and/or accrual of 3 years MLB service, any outright assignment can be refused, and the contract voided.

Dunno if it means anything, but Brinson is not in the Sky Sox' lineup.

I believe Middlebrooks has enough minor league service time that he'll be a FA at the end of the season.

I've mentioned it before, but I really wish they'd move Santana to 1B and have him play there next year, whether it be in the big leagues or AAA. His outfield defense sucks, but I still believe in his bat. Agreed Brinson is probably not going to be the CF out of the gate next year, and Broxton builds more value by playing there. So my opening day outfield next year, as of this moment, would be Braun/Broxton/open competition between Liriano/Perez (if he's not playing third like he should be)/Reed/Wren/scrapheap.

Always.

MLB catchers collectively have an OPS of about 700 this year. Maldonado's OPS is about 670. Not that terrible.

Assume Milton Gomez is actually Jose Gomez, just box score error. Milton Gomez had TJ surgery earlier this year I think?

In play, yes. Base hit, bizarrely no. http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/split.cgi?t=b&team=MIL&year=2016 Check this out - the Brewers are batting .000/.948/.000 in 3-0 counts this year. Edit: Evidently not that weird, looking at some other teams. Misunderstood the stat.

Santana has been awful in the field, arm injury related or not. His long term home might be first base. At 6'5, he certainly fits the physical profile. Certainly can't be much worse than Carter defensively. So if Broxton and Brinson keep on keeping on, I think we could see a permanent Braun-Brinson-Broxton outfield in the not too distant future.

BP has him a little negative this year, but he's always been positive at the major league level before this season. I don't know what an appropriate sample size is for pitch framing, but I would venture to guess sample size error is part of the reason for the BP calculation's negative take on him so far. I think it is probably fair to say he's not doing as well this year as he has in the past, but I do not think it is fair to say he's all of the sudden bad at pitch framing. The conclusive evidence of that seems to be lacking.