adambr2

Thanks much for doing this. Good listen, really cool to have an actual MLB agent that interacts with us like this. My question would be, why do arbitration panels continue to be so antiquated in their evaluation of a player (preferring old school stats like HR, RBI, etc, when in any other way, statistical analysis and evaluation has come so much further than that? In some cases, it can cause a projected arbitration figure that well exceeds open market value, (like we saw with Chris Carter last year), which may result in a player being non-tendered that the team actually prefers to keep.

And the Yankees were so impressed with Cooper that they packaged him with a pretty intriguing reliever for a 22 year old 12th round starter in A ball who is well outside their top 30 prospects. Cooper is a complete nothing burger right now as far as value goes and there was no bad deal made here by Stearns. It was two teams trading organizational surplus to try to patch a short term hole. If we hadn't traded him then he'd have been exposed in the Rule 5 last month anyway.

That's really surprising to me if true. Really doesn't make sense. The Marlins are in total teardown mode. I would think they'd want high ceiling prospects at low levels, not someone that could start opening day at the MLB level this year.

I have no issue if the Cubs want to go get Darvish, and I hope they pay big. Darvish is a nice #2 pitcher, and if he signs with Chicago it obviously hurts us for 2018. Down the line, not so much. It's going to make it very tough for them to contend for the crop of FA pitchers coming up after next season, or pursue Harper or Machado. Right now they've got a few years but eventually they'll need to pony up in a massive way to keep Rizzo and Bryant around. They're on the hook for Heyward for a long, long time. I know they have a lot of money, but it isn't an endless supply. Obviously would be disappointing for this year, but I still think we need to try to build something sustainable and not just focus on what we need to do to win the division this year.

Yeah, there's always some variance in the lists. Heck, Keith Law has Erceg in his top 70, but he hasn't cracked another. He'll have Burnes in his top 50 as well, he loves Burnes. IIRC Josh Hader was rated somewhere around 30-35 by one list last year and as a low top 100 by another. Brinson will probably be fairly consistent in both lists. Total guess but I would figure all of Hiura, Burnes and Harrison being somewhere in the vicinity of 50-60 on Pipeline.

I don't really see it that way. HighHeat mentioned yesterday that they had a few things cooking but contingent on 'Trade A' happening. As far as I can see that seems to be consistent with Crasnick's update today that they are working on a few things on multiple fronts. That doesn't guarantee it's happening but just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean nothing is. I have total faith that whatever Stearns pulls off will be a good thing for the organization.

Might want to start with your quote on your posts So judging by his new signature, maybe looking to go from more like 'cubsdie' to ' something more like 'IWishMinorButTreatableInjuryUponTheCubs.'

I saw that too. I imagine he's a borderline guy. He'll be in some lists but not others. People want to see him step up his performance. He's stagnated a bit. Was wondering this today. How many guys in our system who still qualify as prospects, were once top 100 prospects on one of the major (Pipeline/BA) lists? Brinson Harrison Burnes Phillips Diaz Grisham Ray Hiura Ortiz Lopez Taylor Bickford Woodruff That's 13, but wouldn't be surprised if I'm missing a few.

It's good to see Phillips get some recognition for still being a young prospect who showed a lot at the MLB level. I thought he deserved to return to top 100 lists, but I didn't think he would.

http://m.mlb.com/prospects/2018?list=2b Hiura at #3 and Diaz at #4 on the 2B list.

So the Brewers get the bigger contract, the Yankees get the better player, and both players have to waive full no trade clauses to go somewhere they probably don't want to be. I'm struggling to see how this makes sense at all

If they actually did get ellsbury, there’s no way the brewers are paying more than 20-30% of that stupid contract. Everything you said is true. If they are going to blow 60 million, they’d be better off doing it on any number of a handful of the free agents still available. The whole point of trading Ellsbury for the Yankees is to free up salary. Trading him just to eat most of it doesn't make sense for them. Also doesn't make much sense for the Brewers as the huge salary coming here would weaken the return for a player we don't want or need. Have to think if there's any truth to Jacoby it's designed for us to take on most salary in exchange for a good return of prospects.

Full grown adults who have obviously passed the 2nd grade at some point in their lives and still cannot figure out the correct use of the words "your" and "you're".

This thread reminds me of this:

The lack of involvement for the Brewers in the FA reliever market makes me believe several things: 1) Josh Hader is staying in the pen. (Again, just my opinion based on the evidence) 2) The Brewers are really optimistic about one or more of Williams, Lopez, or Houser making significant contributions this year. 3) The organization is buying into a Jacob Barnes bounceback season and believes he's much better than his 2017 season. 4) They aren't keen on 8M+ price tags for late inning relievers. 5) A trade for a reliever is still a good possibility.

Roenicke sucked, but Wang had no business being on an MLB roster in 2014, so he did the right thing by trying to bury him on it. As we all recall 2014 was a contending season almost all the way, so playing a man down both on the roster and the bullpen all the way up until the AS break was probably not a very smart move.

Miami has no leverage in this situation. Either they take what they can get from him or have a guy on the team who has zero interest playing there and drags them down. A guy with the upside of Yelich and a good pitching prospect should be enough to have a good shot to get him IMO. Throw a flier or two in there with upside R/R if needed to get it over the top. If it isn't, perhaps Brewer fans are overvaluing our supposed excellent farm system. They can beg for Acuna all they want but they aren't getting him. Yelich can make claims of being unhappy and wanting a trade, but I think this whole Miami has no leverage thing is wildly overblown. They have significant team control, and Yelich is a professional and isn't about to start coasting for that reason alone. It would also hurt him financially on his next contract if he did...he's not to the pujols stage of his career where he can put on bad weight and coast to the hall of fame. Miami has plenty of time to wait for what they deem to be a reasonable offer. Agreed. Miami would be stupid to sell Yelich cheap just to have him off their hands. He's really good, not expensive, and controllable. Miami has plenty of leverage. If they don't like the offers on the table, they wait. Yelich has no say in the matter. If he values his professional baseball career, which I'm sure he does, he has little choice but to show up to work and do his best while he waits. Anything less will just make it harder for him to get his trade.

That seems like a pretty fair deal, but FWIW I would guess the Marlins value Acuna far more than Brinson. Not only is Acuna the better prospect but also much younger, someone the Marlins can take their time with for a couple years in the farm while Brinson is basically at the point of heading straight to MLB.

Or the far more likely scenario is that the Brewers were going to offer a lower number, Knebel was going to ask for a higher number, and 3.65M is what they settled on.

I completely agree. The only thing I can think of to argue that is when will Dubon be ready? Is Dubon the next 2b for the Crew within the minors? I know Diaz is a few years away. I like Walker at the top of our lineup though. Unfortunately, we just can’t trust Villar. I think Stearns has been here long enough that we know he's far more concerned with the question, "Is this contract/trade a good value?" rather than "Will this contract hamstring us in the future?"

Also possible that we made a similar offer and Reed just greatly preferred Minnesota to Milwaukee for whatever reason.

It's honestly possible that Stearns has just decided, "Nope, market price for late inning relievers is $8M and up per year, I'm not paying it." He might be preferring to see what happens with internal candidates like Williams and Houser, and then if they're in contention in late July, look to patch with lower rated prospects for rentals like they did with Swarzek last year. If this is the case, his thinking is that late inning relievers are a market inefficiency on the FA market, and an efficiency on the trade market. With our organizational farm depth, he's got a lot of ammo to pull this off in the summer, and if we're not in contention he can change course.

Good off-season gift for Coach Mac. 40 guys on here to chip in a buck each?

I still disagree. You state that it gives you the option to kick the FG early, but so does doing the 2 first and being down 10. In either case, you still need a 2 at some point to tie. The only difference is under my strategy you know from the get go that you didn't make the 2 and thus need 2 TDs because a FG won't help. In your strategy you don't find it out until it's too late and can't do anything about it. Here's some analytics on this that would seem to agree with me. These guys have crunched the numbers on this much more than we have. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/when-to-go-for-2-for-real/ Going for 2 down 12 shows a small, but clear advantage.

Yes. It just seems to me that there should be rules you follow to make it easy on yourself. Kinda like going for two - if you're down five you go for two, if you're down six you kick the extra point, etc. The Eagles had two timeouts and the ball with :46 left in the half the other day. They threw a short pass, the dude didn't get out of bounds so clock is running. They decide to have everyone line up so they can run another play. 23 seconds runs off the clock and one of their guys jumps offsides probably because they were rushing to get back to the line. THEN they call a timeout. So dumb... The other thing that I just can't fathom is wasting timeouts mid way through a half because you can't get the play in fast enough. The packers literally do this once a game without fail. I'd be curious if the patriots ever do this. Seems like they always have all three timeouts under two minutes left. The one that absolutely blows my mind is the coaches that need to use their timeouts on defense with 2-3 minutes left to get the ball back and they wait until AFTER the 2 minute warning to use them. I'm absolutely stunned that this is here in 2018 and these coaches who work 80 hours a week on nothing but football still haven't figured out that this accomplishes nothing but pissing away precious seconds. Case in point yesterday: Jaguars get the ball after the failed onside kick up 7 with 2:18 and the Steelers have 2 timeouts. So inexplicably, Tomlin lets the clock go down to 2:00 after 1st down and uses them after 2nd and 3rd, after which the clock reads 1:50. Had he called them immediately after 1st and 2nd, 2:00 would have come after 3rd down, and 1:55 after the FG instead of 1:45. And lo and behold, the Steelers score to make it 45-42 with 1 second left, at which point the game is over anyway. Sure, if they had scored with 11 seconds instead of 1, the odds of them recovering an onside and then either getting a hail Mary or pass play out of bounds in FG range were still remote, but at least there would have been a chance. I am absolutely flabbergasted that the best minds in the football world cannot wrap their respective heads around this simple logic.