Matt Breen

Jungmann is likely benefiting from many players seeing him for the first time, but I give the guy credit. He has taken an opportunity and run with it. You can't ask for much more from the guy.

Way to hustle A-Ram. He just looks spent as a baser runner. I assume he'll never run hard again to protect his hammy.

I think he gets $5-6 million. Maybe two years - three tops. Guys like Aoki and DeJesus are comps. They each got about $5M a year. As noted, Parra isn't a very good CF. He can play there, but a good team doesn't want him in there full time. And let's not forget he's more of a platoon guy. He doesn't hit lefties well. Hes a good player, but he's not anything great. He needs to find a team that needs him - so free agency is good for him.

Yeah, how do you let that happen.

I'd love to get Newcomb somehow.

I'm all for letting Jungmann hang around, but I don't think it happens. The team needs to move Lohse (Garza as well, but I don't think that happens this season). We'll try and trade Lohse, but he's got to put together a little run of success for someone to show any interest. That means we have to keep giving Lohse the ball every fifth day until someone is willing to give us something. That something may be as little as an A ball reliever or half a million dollars in salary cap relief. It could be more if Lohse strings together some good starts. Remember, we can hold on to him until Aug. 31. The trade deadline may be the end of July, but Lohse is a classic type of guy who will simply clear waivers. No one will claim him and be held responsible for upwards of $3-4M (if someone does, good for us). This the point where Jungmann or another starter will get into the rotation. Again, I'd rather have Jungmann just stay up, but unless we can find a taker for Lohse, I bet the club waits. As for Garza, he's even more hard to deal because of the long term contract he has. We have to hope he turns things around, then we can deal him this off season or during next season (if he still pitches okay). Right now, we'd have to include a lot of money to trade Garza. I think Milwaukee keeps him and hope he rebuilds his value next season.

I want to be rid of Cotts (and Broxton) simply because they do not represent the future of the team. Why continue to trot out either guy when they are almost assuredly gone after the season? Milwaukee needs to start building for the future - that means letting potential big leaguers get their chance. I'd rather see Jaye Chapman, David Goforth or Ariel Pena get some big league experience rather than watch Broxton again. At AA Michael Strong and Damien Magnifico look like they could be part of the bullpen in a year or so as well. Plus there are lots of arms at AA and AAA who could be shifted to relieving. Cotts has pitched pretty well of late, but he'll never net us much. Broxton has been plain bad. So you get rid of them - eating salary as needed. Let's let guys who could be part of our next winning team start showing us what they can do.

I'm not a fan of extending players such as Lucroy as they get into their 30s, but I can understand the idea (even if I disagree with it). Tossing aside arguments of marketability, face of the franchise, etc., a big reason you extend Luc is because we have no premium catching prospects in the minors at this time. So, if the club decided to extend Luc, here's how you'd do it. 1. Shed future salary commitments. Lohse, Parra, Cotts and A-Ram are all gone after the season, so no worries there. Trade Lind, Gomez, Garza and K-Rod. Your only large salary is Braun. Segura, Peralta and (I think) Smith are arby eligible for the first time. Luc is set to make $4M in 2016 and $5.25M in 2017. The team salary would be low - probably no more than $60-65M (assuming you went with younger players to replace most of the departed guys). 2. Give Lucroy a three year extension. This covers his age 32-34 seasons. I'm not sure how much he'd get, but I'm going to take a stab at $17M annually (I believe that's what Martin got from Toronto - although he got five years). The contract awards Lucroy a signing bonus of $15M, then salaries of $12M annually from 2018-20. The bonus is paid out with $8M given in 2016, and $7M in 2017 - essentially giving Lucroy an annual payday of $12M for the next five years. Such a deal allows the club to take advantage of the low payroll we'd be employing over the next two years as the club rebuilds with (mostly) younger players by spreading out the dollars Luc is due during this time. It gives us a catcher (which is a position we lack a good player at) who will (hopefully) still be pretty good - even if declining. And we won't be forced to pay him $20M or something crazy. Instead his pay is a reasonable $12M - much more palatable. And we are still only buying him out through age 34 - certainly getting up there, but it's not like the Yankees being stuck with a 40-year old Posada. He'd be a valuable veteran asset as he broke in young pitchers into the majors. For Lucroy, it gives him a guaranteed big payday. $51M isn't anything to sneeze at. And he gets a good chunk of that money earlier than 2018. If he waits to become a FA, he may get more than $51M, but there's no guarantees. This sets him up pretty nicely - and two years earlier than anticipated. Again, I'm not really a fan of extending Lucroy, but if the club sees him as essential, this is a way you could make an extension work for the club. Any such deal would work only if the club goes into rebuild mode. He might not want to be part of that, but you never know.

I can't believe that it is coming from a major league GM. He admits that they did not "shop" Touki, so he doesn't really know what Touki's value was among other teams. If the D-Backs got rid of Touki because they didn't believe he was very good then I have no problem with that. My issue is that clearly other teams still think he has significant value so why not strive to receive the maximum value in exchange for trading him. This is kind of crazy to hear a GM talk like this. This does does not bode well for the Dbacks. I mean, seriously, the GM admitted he didn't even try to ascertain the value of a premium asset. Really weird.

Many years ago I saw an actor (Omar Sharif) on David Letterman. He talked about all the money he had lost in his life gambling - millions of dollars. As he said at the time, the house always wins. Always. They (the casinos, lotteries, bookies, etc.) aren't in business to lose money. They have a system set up so they make money, and it's foolish to think otherwise.

It really hasn't been that big of a deal to me, but I've been more in the 'let Rose in' category for a while, but this really puts me into the other camp. He'll never get in the hall now, and I don't think many will argue otherwise. Betting on games you play in is really dicey business. Lying about it repeatedly more so. Just really sad. Rose was a special player. Too bad he ended up as such a train wreck of a person.

I think people are pretty accurate when saying all the planning doesn't work when you draft poorly. To me the issue is a lack of planning for such a scenario. It seems that when most of the planning went out the window, we sort of just improvised over the past few years. Management has to have known this day would come. No one seems to have really had the stones to say so - or really do much about it.

Terrible news. Murder suicide. Apparently his partner shot him and then herself. They had a 13 month old child who was unharmed.

Perez is not a bad guy to take a look at, but I think he really profiles at 2B or as a utility guy. Looking at his numbers in the minors and big leagues, he doesn't have much power and he doesn't take many walks. The latter is not something a player usually develops. But he's not some small guy (6'1" and 185lb) - it looks like he could add some strength - so he could develop a little more pop - but that's just speculating. On the positive side, he hasn't shown platoon splits, which is nice. He looks good defensively, but that's just been a few weeks, so we need to see more of him. And if he can handle SS, he adds some really nice versatility to his resume. He's been pretty consistent - hitting from .260-.300. Upside, he could be a regular 2B - .260-.280 BA with 5-10 HR and solid defense. He likely won't walk much, so he's going to have to produce a decent batting average. Again, I would see this as the high side of things. If he could do that, he'd be an adequate big league 2B. Nothing great, but okay. He probably is a better all around player than Scooter - but Scooter really can pound righties, making him potentially a much more potent offensive player. The likelihood is that Perez provides a .250-.260 BA, minimal power, but nice glove around the infield. Nothing wrong with that. You need those kinds of guys. The best part is that Milwaukee can afford to let Perez play right now and see how he responds. We have some nice infield guys coming up (Arcia, Rivera, Sardinas) to go with Scooter and Segura, so it's not a problem to just see how things play out.

This is just painful. Bad defense, bad decisions. Garza is just throwing it down the middle because he can't hit the corners. So much wrong right now with this team.

The draft is rigged to keep salaries low, so in that context, it doesn't make sense. But this is more like an international free agent. It's basically a club paying a $10M signing bonus - although the bonus goes to AZ - not the player. If Toussaint was a 19 year old Cuban, and he was on the market, he'd probably fetch $10M easily - even with international spending restrictions.

This is the type of reason you shed salary. It gives you the financial flexibility to do deals like this. Braves bought a very interesting arm for $10 million. In the end, it might be a bad move, but it is all part of an aggressive plan.

The Tabata lean in was kind of lame, but I don't think he thought Scherzer would come inside that much, and he seemed pretty committed to swinging. 2 strikes and 2 balls - I think Tabata was expecting a strike.

Tabata had a kind of lame HBP - sort of leaned down on an inside pitch and got hit on the elbow. Ruined the perfect game with 2 outs. In his defense, I think Tabata was swinging at everything. Two strikes, two balls, and he just assumed it was coming down the middle. But it still looked kind of lame. The Nats announcer was just moaning about it.

Scherzer has a perfect game through seven inning. Just dominating.

Exactly! Just get good players. If they fill team needs, great. But just get good players. You sort things out later.

I worry suitors for Gomez will be scared off by his recent injuries, plus a decline in play. Carlos actually has a negative defensive value according to Fangraphs. Baseball Reference has just above average. I realize that defensive numbers can vary greatly, so it doesn't concern me that much, but I think it's clear he's not the same player defensively as he was two years ago. His bat has faltered a bit this year - .752 OPS - you can probably attribute some of that to his nagging injuries. His walks really worry me, however. He's got a 3.6% walk rate - half of last year. You wrap it all up and I'm concerned that clubs won't see him as a top tier guy when it comes to trading him (which I think we should be looking to do). If possible, I want to land one or two high upside players for him. I don't want to settle for second tier prospects. The good thing about Carlos is that if we don't find a taker at the deadline, we can always wait until after the season. You can hope he has a great 2nd half, increases his value, and then make him available at that time. Of course, if he plays poorly you are kind of screwed, but I think Gomez just needs to get healthy to start producing more.

With the Cubs, you can really see the money come into play with international signings. Soler got $30M a few years ago. In 2013, they spent something like $10M, signing a bunch of top guys.

Wang coming back makes me 'get' this move. I thought for sure someone would claim him. I didn't realize he had a $300,000 salary, which I'm sure dissuaded some teams. And let's be honest - Matt Dominguez is better than having Nelson at AAA. I don't think much of the guy, but he's much better.

This is the type of response that would have gotten harsh criticism several years back on the bfan.net forums. If you don't like the proposal from reillymcshane why don't you share what players that you **would** be interested in from the Toronto system? That brings more to the table than "So basically the Brewers are trading an elite centerfielder and a closer who has been pretty good for a bunch of damaged goods?". Just my $.02 "Old guy" Hammer Thank you. Appreciate it.