And That

2080 Baseball will have their Brewers system review, including discussion of quite a few Brewers prospects, up in the very near future. They will also have a podcast about the Brewers system.

Chris Crawford's top 20, which is in his PDF book that you should definitely look into buying: 1. Brinson 2. Ray 3. Ortiz 4. Diaz 5. Clark 6. Hader 7. Dubon 8. Erceg 9. Phillips 10. Diplan 11. Bickford 12. Lopez 13. Burnes 14. Lara 15. Ponce 16. Woodruff 17. Williams 18. Kirby 19. Cordell 20. Nottingham Again, get the PDF. It's $1.99 and has detailed scouting reports on all 20 guys.

Brandon Woodruff is Keith's Law's 100th best prospect. No other Brewers in the #81-100 post today. You will need Insider to view.

Pleskoff generally strikes me as too effusive of the talent he writes about so I usually take his reports with a few grains of salt. That said, this report on Dubon seemed to contrast the good with the not so good pretty well. Still left me feeling good about Mauricio, but without feeling like I'd just been sold a used car.

As nonplussed as I am about the Feliz signing, glad they went with him over Casilla.

I cited Fangraphs defensive WAR exactly zero times in the post you quoted. Fan scouting reports are reports compiled by asking people who watch the player play, what they think. I believe these have been around since before Fangraphs in some shape or form. Tom Tango came up with them, IIRC.

Aaron Wilkerson from the Aaron Hill deal.

That's not true. There are literally people employed as scouts who have posted here.

No doubt. If you were referring to my statement, I meant getting AAAA depth to put after Wilkerson/Hader. Wilkerson's shot in 2017 largely depends on what happens with other players, though. If the Brewers feel Hader, Lopez, or one of those guys is ready, they probably get in line in front of him. And actually, not having a spot on the 40-man right now might work against him a little.

I could see the argument for Walker over Scahill/Cravy/Rivera, though clearly they didn't value him over those other guys the first time.

The Orioles have DFA'd Walker. If the Brewers want him back...

In terms of keeping pitching depth, it works against Nelson, Anderson, and Jungmann that they all have options remaining. The Brewers could theoretically stash all three in AAA if they went with Garza-Davies-Peralta-Guerra-Milone at the outset. Not saying I think that's a good idea, just that if the Brewers wanted to keep some of their promising young pitchers out of Colorado Springs (Woodruff, Ortiz, Lopez, Ventura, etc.), they wouldn't have to go to a bunch of AAAA guys to fill the AAA rotation after Hader/Wilkerson.

Thank you for starting these threads. I think it might be more of a tossup between Bandy and Susac. They have almost the same amount of career PAs, though Bandy obviously had more last year. He's also the better defender of the two. Susac has the better bat and probably has some upside left, even at 27. The great news for Manny Pina is that at this point he looks to have the roster pretty close to made already IMO. I think the Brewers will probably want both Susac and Bandy playing full time, so whichever is not the Brewers starting catcher will likely be the Sky Sox starting catcher. Pina reaps the rewards. He's really the only realistic MLB backup catcher currently in the organization. He's also out of options, so if he's not the backup, there's no guarantee he's the AAA catcher either. I think he's talented enough that losing him at this point isn't necessarily a great idea. Edit: Should add, the Brewers should have some pretty impressive arms in AAA next year so it might be beneficial to have them throwing to a MLB-caliber catcher who also could be their catcher once they make it to MLB.

Per Jeff Passan. It's a $5.35MM base salary with incentives that could max the contract out at $6.85MM, according to Chris Cotillo. Brewers 40-man is now full. Feliz has two options left, but he also has enough service time to refuse an optional assignment.

Spring training numbers are unreliable, though: 1)Teams rely on spring training performances to some degree anyway; 2)Pitcher peripherals in spring training have been shown to carry over into the regular season - so if a guy is walking everyone or striking out everyone in spring, they'll probably still be doing that when it counts. If Nelson throws 20 innings, and walks 15 guys, it's a small sample and it's spring, but it's still a demonstrably bad sign.

Not surprisingly, the Brewers are not among the 20 worst farm systems in baseball according to Keith Law.

From the blurb on Nottingham: "He's a slugger who's still figuring out the nuances of making consistent contact and cleaning up his defense." I think his defense is slightly further away than "nuance" right now. He still needs to put in quite a bit of work into blocking pitches at the very least.

Relatively small sample, but Shaw hit LHP a lot better than RHP in 2015. His career OPS vs. RHP is still .010 lower than vs. LHP. I'd like to think that the analytically-driven Brewers would be above the "he's left handed so he shouldn't play against lefties" stigma. But maybe not.

The name that initially jumps out at me on that list is Michael Pineda. He seemed to pitch a lot better than his ERA indicated and his FB was back up to 94 last year. Then again, if he performs well enough this year to warrant a nice FA contract, the Yankees certainly have the resources to sign him to an extension. Tanaka might well opt out. Perez has a four pitch mix and throws hard enough, but results have not been there. If he repeats his 2016, I guess the Rangers pick up the option? It's certainly not exorbitant for back end starting pitcher with some potential upside remaining. Chatwood gets lots of ground balls. Lots and lots of ground balls. All the time ground balls.

FWIW, FA pitchers after the 2017 season currently include (with ages, courtesy MLB Trade Rumors): Jake Arrieta (32) Clay Buchholz (33) Madison Bumgarner (28) — $12MM club option with a $1.5M buyout Trevor Cahill (30) Matt Cain (33) — $21MM club option with a $7.5MM buyout Andrew Cashner (31) Jhoulys Chacin (30) Tyler Chatwood (28) Jesse Chavez (34) Wei-Yin Chen (32) — Can opt out of the remaining three years, $52MM on his contract Alex Cobb (30) Bartolo Colon (45) Johnny Cueto (32) — Can opt out of the remaining four years, $84MM on his contract Yu Darvish (31) John Danks (33) R.A. Dickey (43) – $8MM club option with $500K buyout Nathan Eovaldi (28) Marco Estrada (34) Yovani Gallardo (32) — $13MM club option with a $2MM buyout Jaime Garcia (31) Matt Garza (34) — $13MM vesting option/$5MM club option (can become $1MM club option based on DL time) Gio Gonzalez (32) – $12MM club option, vests with 180 innings pitched in 2017 Miguel Gonzalez (34) Jeremy Hellickson (31) Derek Holland (31) Ubaldo Jimenez (34) Ian Kennedy (33) — Can opt out of the remaining three years, $43MM on his contract John Lackey (39) Francisco Liriano (34) Jordan Lyles (27) Lance Lynn (31) Wade Miley (31) — $12MM club option with a $500K buyout Mike Minor (30) — $10MM mutual option with a $1.25MM buyout Matt Moore (29) — $9MM club option with a $1MM buyout Ricky Nolasco (35) — $13MM club option with a $1MM buyout Martin Perez (27) — $6MM club option with a $2.45MM buyout Michael Pineda (29) Clayton Richard (34) Tyson Ross (31) CC Sabathia (37) Anibal Sanchez (34) — $16MM club option with a $5MM buyout Hector Santiago (30) Chris Sale (29) — $12.5MM club option with a $1MM buyout Masahiro Tanaka (29) — Can opt out of the remaining three years, $67MM on his contract Chris Tillman (30) Josh Tomlin (33) — $3MM club option with a $750K buyout Jason Vargas (35) Chris Young (39) — $8MM mutual option with a $1.5MM buyout

Gideon hit 7 of his 17 HRs (41%) to CF or RF - center/opposite field power often portends to continued success in hitting home runs. Incidentally, one of the few Brewers minor leaguers with more than a couple of home runs and a higher COpHR% was Isan Diaz, at 60%. He hit 20 HRs, 3 to center and 9 to left.

BABIP takes about 750 PA to become reliable, so within the confines of a single season I think luck has a lot to do with it, unless like you said he was injured somehow that didn't make it onto a medical report while he was still playing. His career BABIP is .319, which is a bit above average, and something we'll hopefully see production of in the ballpark going forward. Also wanted to note that his age has been brought up a few times. I do agree he's probably a little old to be an elite prospect, but relative to other players, he's really not old. Age relative to league since he began his pro career: 2013: -0.2 2014: +0.2 2015: -0.3 2016: +0.3 In other words, almost spot on average for his league(s).

His ability to play CF well will at the very least keep him around, unless his bat drops off the face of the earth.

As for Sickles, I've always used the following translation to go from his letters to the standard 20-80 scouting scale: A: 70-80 A-: 65 B+: 60 B: 55 B-: 50 C+: 45 C: 40 Your mileage may vary, but that's what has usually seemed to line up with other prospect lists.

Per his Fangraphs chat today, Eric Longenhagen will have the Brewers list after the Cubs list (which will be up in the next day or two). So probably early next week. He said about the Brewers, "That system is fun."