adambr2

Exactly. The Dodgers wanted him. Insiders much more credible than some of the ones we've had here said the Dodgers got cold feet about the prospects. Puig + McCarthy should have been more than enough. The Brewers looked a gift horse in the mouth and here we are. Yep. Playing hardball is great when you can afford to but when it's 11:30 pm and you've got 30 minutes before the window closes on your last chance to make a big decision, sometimes you've got to make concessions and get it done. They had agreed on Puig, BMac, and 1 prospect. They couldn't agree on the second one. That was the time to swallow your pride and say "Let's get this done. We'll settle for the 3 we've agreed to."

Where exactly? He isn't starting over Yelich, Cain or Santana. So if he can't hold up for 5-6 games a week at 1st we don't have many options.

Amen. I could not agree more with anything that's been said here this offseason. Everything positive and joyful last season was made possible by moving on from the past and embracing a new way of doing business, but keeping Braun was the most back-to-bad-habits thing they could have possibly done. And that's before you even consider the stigma of his PED scandal. I love the new front office, but they should be ashamed of themselves over this one. So are you proposing they should have just released him? It's been widely reported that Braun will only approve a trade to the Dodgers. Stearns clearly tried to do that and it just didn't work out. There's really nothing else they can do other than release him. No. I would have made damn sure that he became a Dodger on 8/31/16 when the chance was there.

My main issue with it is just being attached to "the face of the franchise". You have to make tough decisions in order to stay ahead of the game. I don't like the NFL, but one thing they have right is that they have a culture of doing what's best for the team no matter whom they end up having to cut. There's also the fact that they appeared to be a few years from contention, so it didn't make sense to keep Braun. Not to mention the fact that he was less than a year away from his 10/5 rights and now we're stuck with him. I still have hopes that it could happen. The Dodgers have surplus LHB 1B guys like Rios and Beaty, who have no place on LAD with Bellinger there but could be ready to take over for Thames in a year or two. They also have some halfway decent bullpen or 4/5 starter prospects like Jordan Sheffield and Trevor Oaks. Maybe the Brewers could include a prospect or two of greater organization need for LAD (seems they might need a Dubon in case of injury, or an MLB-ready reliever like Williams) in order to improve the return. A catching prospect like Will Smith or even Keibert Ruiz would be great. Not sure if they'd have any interest in Broxton or Villar, but they might? I really like the idea of freeing up more payroll in fall 2019 by swapping out Braun's contract for Kemp's, and it should be worth enough to LAD to entice them to offer something in return. Yeah, franchise faces come and go. I guess the tangible part about that for the FO is concerning drops in attendance. I don't really buy into that -- I think people show up at the park for a winning team. I think we're long past the point where people are showing up at the ballpark to see Ryan Braun. Maybe not, I really don't know. To me, he's a fairly lousy franchise face to have anyway now, especially for a smaller market franchise that may rely more on a franchise face than bigger markets. I know some won't like that opinion and will disagree with it, and that's ok. But I would have preferred us to distance ourselves from him when we had the chance to, rather than further cementing his status as a Brewer.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2016/09/13/ryan-braun-yasiel-puig-dodgers-brewers-trade/90311414/ Here's a better source right from USA Today: Braun was being traded to the Dodgers, who would pay the entire $76 million in his contract, for outfielder Yasiel Puig, injured veteran pitcher Brandon McCarthy and prospects.

Sure we do, other than we don't know who the prospects were, but as I pointed out it wouldn't have mattered who they were to make the deal a big win. https://reviewingthebrew.com/2017/08/19/milwaukee-brewers-braun-puig-deal/ Side note regarding this article, I love Stearns but if it ever comes out that Bellinger was one of the prospects, I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive him for it.

Yep. I still think it was actually amazing they had any chance to get rid of him in 2016 when the Dodgers wanted him, and I can't believe they didn't take that opportunity. The Dodgers backed out, but the Brewers could have lowered their asking price. His inevitable decline in the outfield, no-trade clause, injury history, and PED history, not to mention the team's glut of outfield prospects, should have made dumping him one of the easiest decisions a team could possibly make. Silver lining: maybe this is a precursor to a Kemp + prospects deal? Well, we know it was for Puig+McCarthy and 2 prospects and the hangup was the prospects, so just for fun let's see how that would have worked out. Puig is a nice, reliable 3 WAR or so corner OFer, albeit with some character concerns. He's far more tradeable than Braun, although with corner OFs so devalued in this market I don't know if you'd get much. But at worst you could get him off the books and free up the logjam. Or you could keep him. He's primarily a RF but much more versatile than Braun -- you can get by in a pinch with him in LF or CF. So he'd be a much better and cheaper 4th OFer than Braun and you don't have to try to force him to play 1B. McCarthy is far less reliable but would have been a perfect short term bridge to getting Nelson back or Burnes up. He would have eliminated any real need to pursue someone like Cobb. The short term salary gain would be about $2.5M this year and last year and then we'd have all of it off the books after 2018, and L.A. would be paying Braun. The prospects would just be gravy at this point. It doesn't really matter if they were Dubons or Laras. So yeah, Stearns really whiffed on this. It would have been a fantastic trade and a really good fit for where we are now. And that happens, I get that. Stearns is a great GM and will hopefully learn from it -- sometimes situations arise in which standing your ground may not be the right move.

I hear ya. I just think it’s way too early in the process to really know. It’s good to hear he’s playing well and he might just have some unrealistic expectations for himself. Even if he could start twice a week at 1B, that should open up enough at bats to all their players. I just believe he has very high standards for himself and doesn’t want to look stupid and that’s where a lot of this comes from. Seems like a guy that needs to hear he’s good every once in awhile. Well I certainly hope things work out for best case. DH can't come to the NL soon enough. Evem if we didn't have Braun we'd benefit from it.

Unfortunately the process of getting comfortable is only part of it. If it's a position that is going to frequently cause his back to flare up, for a player who already deals with frequent nagging injuries, it's not likely to end up being a successful transition. Maybe he can start there once or twice a week. I'm highly skeptical that he can hold up at 1st on a more regular basis than that.

This alone makes me want to say scrap the 1B experiment, make Braun the 4th outfielder getting around 100 starts while giving the other 3 days off in RF/LF for rest and the inevitable injuries, and let Broxton/Phillips battle it out for 5th. Then keep the Thames/Aguilar platoon. It's not like Braun's going to start 150 games if the starts are available anyway, and now we're apparently wearing down his already fragile body. I have to agree. There doesn't seem to be a position at all that he can perform without flaring up something, so let him come off the bench. PH nearly daily, DH when possible, and shuffle Yelich to CF when Cain needs a day off and I guess to RF when Santana needs a day off. He can probably get 400-450 PAs this way.

Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun‘s attempt to play first base this spring isn’t going all that smoothly, even though it has been “enjoyable,” he explained Saturday (via the Associated Press). “I definitely don’t feel comfortable at all,” the 34-year-old admitted. “I’m doing the best I can with it. Guys have to make sacrifices. I think ultimately if we want to get to where we want to get as a team, based on the roster we’ve put together, it obviously helps make us a better team if I’m able to play multiple positions.” Interestingly, Braun added that because of the bending and squatting that are required for playing first, his new position has been “a lot harder” on his back than lining up in the outfield. So basically if Braun can't play 1st, we're in complete roster purgatory with him. Like him or not, Braun is a horrible fit for this roster right now.

No, he's not, but the average casual fan and the media that cater to them arguably are. I'm not real sure what you are trying to get at. 100% of baseball media says we need pitching. It's likely that 95% of the hardcore baseball fans who post here agree. I mean there's not really much of an argument from anyone that the rotation is good to go. Perhaps Stearns is more comfortable with the rotation than all these people are. I know that the best GMs don't listen to outside noise. But at this point, it's gotta be pretty deafening. If they don't add to the rotation, and the offense proves playoff-worthy, but doesn't make it because of the rotation, the second guessing is going to be severe. It's also possible that Stearns believes a number of the following possibilities: - Guerra will rebound closer to 2016 form - Miley will be a big bounceback candidate with DJ - Nelson will be good to go by June - Burnes will be ready for this rotation by June - Suter can be a more than serviceable back end starter. I'd be pleased with a Cobb signing, but I can also understand if they are comfortable with what they have. People forget this was already a very good rotation last year. It wasn't some bottom feeder pitching staff that just missed the playoffs because of rotation problems.

When he called the Yelich thing it was already being widely reported that the teams were talking. He made an educated guess. The second thing about stinging, that should have been obvious. Just re-read the first three posts in this thread. Thank you. This is what I mean about history being rewritten to fit the narrative we want. If you go back and read the history, when the Yelich rumors became well known, the first thing he said on it was 'news to me.' So at that point he shifted and said "95% Yelich to Brewers," when he and everyone else already knew Yelich had a very good chance of going to the Brewers. Here were other things he said: - Santana to be traded to an AL team - Brewers prioritizing Kipnis, then Walker - Smaller trade in the works - Brewers talking to Arizona about a deal - Brewers still to make multiple moves (after acquiring Yelich/Cain) - Brewers pushing hard to get Darvish (was revealed after the Cubs signed Darvish that the Brewers never really made an aggressive offer) I don't know if it's human nature or what, but people seem to remember the ones he hit and forget the ones he missed. It's pretty easy to look like an insider when you make sure to let people know when you called something that had a very good chance of happening anyway, and then chalk up the misses you have on "things change."

He has plenty of teams interested, good corners are really pricey and there is plenty of cap space to go around in the league. No idea how many years he gets but I'd be shocked if he came in at less than 10M a year. That didn't take long, 3 years and 39M.

Hard to ever be calling a 1-2 year bargain deal a 'disaster' even if you're not that high on Lynn or Cobb. Unless you're just really high on some combination of Woodruff, Miley, Guerra and Suter.

Still a very good chance it happens! Just would be nothing to do with HH.

Yes, read Homers' post, 3rd post on page 1.

Excellent post. I log on daily but this right here is why I don't bother posting much. This is also why Louis is one of my favorite reads. Always very well thought out posts. No disrespect intended but if you don't post much because you don't find the board to be polite enough, I'd hate to imagine what you think of the rest of the Internet. I've posted on many Brewer boards (ok, like 5) over the years, and this one is by far the most heavily moderated and least confrontational.

I'm with TPlush, luke, and Trwi7 on this one. I don't believe that what you're describing ever really happened -- or certainly not moreso than any other poster has experienced. If there was ever really an incident, I missed it. Other than that, I saw nothing other than people scared that others would scare off the "source" if they didn't walk on eggshells with him. I've certainly experienced (and unfortunately probably been guilty of) worse than anything HH was subjected to. That doesn't make it ok, and I totally get that conduct is a big part of what makes this board what it is. That said, there's expecting courtesy and respect and there's just being totally thin-skinned. When we get to the point where questioning and disagreeing is not even okay anymore I think we've crossed that line.

You'd think that with all these guys signing 1 year deals, the already loaded 2018-19 FA class will be bordering on insanity.

Yeah, it is. People started rewriting history to fit the narrative that HH was an insider. It was odd. He'd take something that was well known fairly likely to happen, run with it, and take credit. Darvish to the Cubs. Sometimes, the story and narrative would change to fit, so 'Big trade coming with an AL team' somehow became 'HH called the Yelich deal!" It's how psychics make money. Throw something vague and general out there, get a bite, run with it, and if need be, change the narrative to fit.

I'm guessing they are leaning no. Bulaga doesn't have a huge cap number for a starting tackle and if healthy he's worth the price. Maybe if Spriggs had looked serviceable so far, but in mind he hasn't.

To get back onto Cobb while still touching on the 'insider' thing: Let's realize right now that we all know that there is a very good chance Alex Cobb will be a Brewer. Like we can all probably guess 3 teams that he could wind up with and we're one of those 3. I just think this is something we should bear in mind if Cobb does actually sign here so that this stuff does not come up....again.

He has plenty of teams interested, good corners are really pricey and there is plenty of cap space to go around in the league. No idea how many years he gets but I'd be shocked if he came in at less than 10M a year.

There's a pretty massive yin to this yang that you aren't mentioning. It's all about showing respect for other people, regardless of if your opinion differs or you disagree. I don't disagree with you. I also don't think I was ever deliberately disrespectful to HH. Which was difficult at times when you think someone is full of crap, but I never came out and said that publicly. I just didn't care for seeing good posters sucked in over and over again by someone just making stuff up for attention who knows no more than you or I.