And That

LHP Aaron Ashby and C Payton Henry have been promoted from Wisconsin to Carolina. OF Tristen Lutz has been promoted from his temporary home in the AZL to Carolina as well. LHPs Jake Drossner and Christian Trent have been activated off of Colorado Springs' 60-day DL and transferred to Carolina. LHP Brendan Murphy, INF Tucker Neuhaus, LHP Drake Owenby, C Nate Rodriguez, and C Robie Rojas have been activated off of Carolina's 7-day DL.

OF LG Castillo, INF Yeison Coca, RHP Max Lazar, RHP Joey Matulovich, and C Kekai Rios have been promoted from Colorado Springs to Wisconsin. RHPs Drew Rasmussen, Matt Smith, and Andrew Vernon have been activated from the AZL's 60-day DL and transferred all the way up to Wisconsin. INF Kenny Corey, LHP Blake Fox, RHP Jayson Rose, and RHP Austin Rubick have been activated off of Wisconsin's 7-day DL.

OFs Micah Bello and Joe Gray, and INF Korry Howell have been assigned from the AZL to Helena Colorado Springs. RHP Harold Chirino, SS Antonio Pinero, and RHP Nash Walters have been activated off of Helena's Colorado Springs' 60-day DL. INF Julio Mendez has been activated off of Colorado Springs' 7-day DL.

Yi and Kou assigned to the AZL roster (with future contracts); as noted above, Parra assigned to the DSL co-op roster.

Rodriguez has been assigned to the AZL roster. Additionally, LHP Luis Cordero has been activated from the AZL's 60-day DL.

17yo SS Daniel Castillo and 17yo RHP Wilber Diaz, as well as 19yo RHPs Alexis Ramirez and Dantel Ramirez have been promoted from the DSL to the AZL as they participate in instructional ball stateside this fall.

The Brewers have signed RHP Juan Chourio. No other info available at this point, besides the fact that he was born 4/22/02. Chourio, as with fellow recent signees Jesus Parra, Sebastian Burciaga, Oscar Castaneda, and Edinson Gonzalez, were all signed to "future" contracts and have been assigned provisionally to the DSL co-op roster. LHP Starling Javier and C Luis Valderrama have been assigned from the DSL main roster to the co-op roster. C Eduin Lugo and RHP Wellington Nunez have been assigned from the DSL co-op roster to the DSL main roster. 2B Luis Manon has been activated from the AZL's 60-day DL and transferred back to the DSL's active roster. RHP Nestor Batista has been activated from the DSL's 60-day DL. RHP Cristian Sierra has been activated from the DSL co-op's Restricted List. Joel Munoz has been converted from a catcher to a pitcher, and has been reinstated from the DSL co-op's suspended list.

Yep, Lyles has been good for the most part. Has above-average stuff. I would be surprised if he's not back next year. And Houser is out of options - he'll be part of the Brewers' staff next year unless he's traded or injured.

It wasn't Jeffress' velocity, it was his command that was off last night. Was catching way too much of the plate, maybe most notably on the 0-2 pitch to Arrenado. As for availability, didn't Counsell literally say they weren't going to operate the same way they did in the regular season? I would absolutely expect Hader and Burnes to be options today.

Going by DRS, which I think is the best defensive metric ahead of FRAA and well ahead of UZR, Shaw was -1 in his time at second base, which translates to -4 over a full season. Not great by any stretch, but that’s a level that teams are comfortable sticking with. For comparison, he would have ranked slightly ahead of Jason Kipnis and Yoan Moncada. And well ahead of Brian Dozier and Cesar Hernandez.

At this point in time, what I would do: Jeffress: Offer Knebel: Offer Soria: Exercise option (don't know if he would exercise his side or not) Cedeno: Offer Jennings: Decline to offer Lyles: Exercise option Davies: Offer Nelson: Offer Santana: Offer Shaw: Offer Moustakas: Exercise option (don't think he would exercise his side though) Perez: Offer Saladino: Decline to offer Schoop: Decline to offer Guerra: Offer Pina: Offer Kratz: Decline to offer Vogt: Decline to offer Albers: Release Regarding Schoop, I just don't think it's a worthwhile enough gamble at this point to bet $10 million that he'll have a big year in 2019. Just think there's too much risk in his batting profile. I'd rather they went out and get Marwin Gonzalez as a FA.

Guerra has an option going into next year, yes. He spent less than 20 days in the minor leagues this season.

Yes, the time to acquire Corbin would have been last winter. If he was even available. Foresight is a lot more valuable in baseball than hindsight.

Slightly different way to look at this class, using 2018 DRA, xwOBA-Against, and WPA/LI. This is assuming Bumgarner/Carrasco/Kershaw/Price/Sale (options), and Morton/Iwakuma (retirement) do not become available on the open market, and also eliminates Miguel Gonzalez/Santana/Tillman due to lack of innings: [pre]Name IP DRA- xwOBA-A WPA/LI Clay Buchholz (34) 98.3 83.5 0.314 2.23 Trevor Cahill (31) 110.0 77.6 0.319 0.95 Bartolo Colon (46) 146.3 142.3 0.380 -1.51 Patrick Corbin (29) 200.0 61.3 0.294 4.61 Marco Estrada (35) 143.7 160.1 0.348 -1.90 Nathan Eovaldi (29) 111.0 72.2 0.298 0.91 Doug Fister (35) 66.0 148.7 0.371 -0.78 Jaime Garcia (32) 82.0 140.1 0.350 -0.98 Gio Gonzalez (33) 171.0 93.2 0.336 0.70 Cole Hamels (35) 190.7 100.2 0.347 -0.04 Jason Hammel (36) 127.0 139.0 0.385 -1.19 J.A. Happ (36) 177.7 87.8 0.315 1.77 Matt Harvey (30) 155.0 104.7 0.334 -0.09 Jeremy Hellickson (32) 91.3 93.6 0.331 0.98 Derek Holland (32) 171.3 85.0 0.326 0.21 Dallas Keuchel (31) 204.7 86.3 0.303 0.92 Francisco Liriano (35) 133.7 119.8 0.366 -0.83 Jordan Lyles (28) 87.7 118.1 0.308 0.16 Lance Lynn (32) 156.7 114.2 0.316 0.28 Wade Miley (32) 80.7 92.2 0.314 1.39 Matt Moore (30) 102.0 156.3 0.382 -1.84 Martin Perez (28) 85.3 163.3 0.372 -2.12 Drew Pomeranz (30) 74.0 176.4 0.384 -1.48 Garrett Richards (31) 76.3 83.4 0.324 -0.25 Tyson Ross (32) 149.7 112.5 0.339 0.83 Hyun-Jin Ryu (32) 82.3 54.7 0.283 1.43 CC Sabathia (38) 153.0 98.2 0.300 0.27 Anibal Sanchez (35) 136.7 61.5 0.285 1.85 Hector Santiago (31) 102.0 150.3 0.344 -0.43 James Shields (37) 204.7 121.6 0.364 0.23 Josh Tomlin (34) 70.3 153.5 0.395 -2.64 Adam Wainwright (37) 40.3 84.5 0.316 -0.47[/pre] In general, lower DRA- is better, lower xOBA-A is better, higher WPA/LI is better. I'd rather look at 3-year stats for starters, but this is what I could do over lunch. If nothing else, this tells me that retaining Lyles is pretty likely.

Here is Fangraphs' 2019 draft board at this point. Which will provide little indication of who will be around come next June for the Brewers at 28. Brice Turang was still in the top couple spots on most draft boards at this point last year.

At some point, the Brewers are likely to convert to the President of Baseball Operations/General Manager setup that quite a few organizations now have to keep top talent in-house (the Cubs with Epstein/Hoyer and the Twins with Falvey/Levine are first ones that come to mind). Still, it is likely the Brewers will lose a few of their top guys to other teams in the near future. Montgomery, Arnold, Minasian, Shawn Hoffman, and Dan Turkenkopf among them. It's the price of success.

The San Antonio result is disappointing. The park stinks, and as far as I'm aware there's no interest in replacing it because San Antonio wants to be an MLB city, not a AAA city. There's only so much they can/will do to fix it up. The Brewers have once again managed to scrape the bottom of the AAA barrel. If I were a betting man, I'd put some money on the Brewers' AAA affiliate being in Wichita in 2021.

The San Antonio ballpark is awful - would much rather be in Fresno if those are the two choices.

Not about politics at all - it's a fact that current tax law for real estate is extraordinarily favorable. And has been for quite some time. And probably will be for some time. I work in commercial real estate finance. I'm kind of attuned to this. So yes, given the current tax environment, it would be a favorable time for the Brewers to think about making capital investments such as this.

There should be a number of tax advantages for the Brewers to purchase the Timber Rattlers, especially in this, uh, favorable current real-estate investment environment that the current Congress and administration have afforded for such-minded people. Also, have to remember that Fox Cities Stadium is almost 25 years old and in the older 1/3 of stadiums in the Midwest League. At some point in the next few handfuls of years, it will need to go through some major refurbishment, if not replacement. The Brewers would be better equipped to take care of those issues than the current owners.

The Brewers should just purchase a controlling interest in ownership shares. Which I had no idea was a thing with the Rattlers until just now.

I'm slightly surprised the Brewers haven't just outright purchased the T-Rats at this point. It's such a perfect spot for their A-ball team, I don't see the Brewers (or the Rattlers for that matter) moving on from this relationship for a long, long time.

The Brewers' players will only be in their AAA home city about half of the time, and there's often not a need to get a player to Milwaukee within 12-18 hours. In fact, they'll often fly guys in to be with the Brewers as a just in case. The emergency "need to get a guy to Milwaukee NOW" thing almost never happens. The direct flight thing is almost a complete non-issue.

Assuming he gets recalled as soon as he is eligible, Williams will have spent 20 days in the minors. Beginning of the regular season (3/29) through 4/7 (10 days), and these most recent 10 days.