adambr2

August: .221/.274/.382/.656 Sept./Oct: .257/.325/.286/.611 This is just flat out not getting it done. If Luc was out there for a 1year deal, even at $12M, he’s well worth the opportunity that he returns back closer to his all star form. Shaw had a .698 OPS in August. Thames . 691. It happens. For picking out the two worst months for a defense first catcher, those numbers aren't even really that bad. There's no doubt Lucroy rebounded in the second half, but I'm always skeptical of guys who rebound big in Colorado. There's a chance Lucroy could rebound to his All-star form. I hope he does. There's a chance that Vogt could, too. I still remain unconvinced that a guy who may or may not even end up being an upgrade over Manny Pina is worth a 12M dollar investment with other needs that require more urgent attention. Lucroy will very very likely return to Colorado.

If you’re signing Lucroy, he’s your starter. Pina was a nice story but caught 100 games and really fell off last season. He really could be your #2 and a very good one at that. Also, spending $12m on a catcher wouldn’t stop you from spending $20m on the pen. Not really. He had a .287/.328/.786 line in the first half and a .265/.325/.705 line in the second half. The only thing that really fell off was his power. If he produced that 2nd half line for all of next year that would be perfectly acceptable with his D. 12M alone won't stop us from spending on the pen, but eventually, you throw around $12M here and there, and sooner or later you're stretched all the way on budget space. Hypothetically if we spent $20M on pen upgrades, $12M on Walker, and traded for Abreu -- well, you're already pretty much tapped out at that point. And if you still have $12M to spend by then, I wouldn't want to spend it on a catcher that is older, coming off a worse year and costs 25 times as much as the one we have. I think Bandy will bounce back to some extent next year as well.

I can understand both sides. No doubt that Hader was an extremely valuable asset out of the pen, and at the same time if you believe he has Chris Sale potential in the rotation, it would be a shame to hold him back from that. Perhaps a good compromise would be to go out and sign a guy like Mike Minor, so you still have your power lefty in the pen and free up Hader to move to the rotation. Heck, you could sign all of Minor, Neshek and Swarzek for about the same annual price tag as Arrieta or Darvish, and certainly for less years, too. There's going to be some uncertainty in the rotation in 2018, and if Hader joins it, we'll have to watch his innings. So it will be more important than ever to build an elite pen that can shorten games. The market is pretty saturated this off-season with late inning guys. It's a perfect opportunity to spend some money on the pen.

He might be best served looking for a Greg Holland type deal to mitigate the risk that he doesn't rebound. 1 yr/$10M with a $15M player option for year 2.

There is no doomsday scenario left where we'll win out and not get into the playoff. Just not happening.

I don't think Pina is a guy who had a fluke year so much as he is a guy who just never happened to get a shot until last year. His numbers were more or less in line with what he did in the minors, and a lot of experts thought he could be a pretty underrated rookie backstop last year, which he was. Certainly his age will limit how many more effective years he can produce, but that could be somewhat mitigated by the lack of wear and tear on him. I see no reason he can't continue to be very productive for at least 2-3 more seasons.

It's not that Pina wasn't deserving of a vote, it was just the wrong year. Bellinger just blew everyone else out of the water.

$12M for a backup catcher? I realize we have money to burn but I think we can find more efficient ways of using it than that. Heck we could probably land both Swarzek and Neshek for about the same annual amount, maybe up to $15M. I am not a big Vogt fan and his defensive issues were a problem but for the 50 or so starts he should be limited to I'd rather just pay him the $3-$4M or so and invest that extra money in the pen. Vogt at least was better to some degree after coming to Milwaukee. It should also be noted that he was never considered a poor defensive catcher until 2017 so its certainly possible that he improves back closer to his career norms next season.

White Sox said today they will take offers for Jose Abreu this off-season.

Yeah, a Lucroy reunion makes no sense IMO. He isn't even an upgrade from Pina. It would just be money down the drain.

Lacy too.

Yeah, I don't think it's a cop out. You still have to produce results -- Not saying otherwise. Teams like Seattle have gotten plenty of great defensive players from lower round picks. But if you go by the draft value chart, which isn't a perfect science but gives you a pretty good idea of value, a team that picks #8 holds the same amount of total draft value in just that 1st round pick than every single pick of a team that drafts at #25. So it definitely makes a difference.

I hope he's more Pickett than BJ Raji. Post 2010-Raji was not good at all. One of the most overrated players of the last decade.

Capers had 3 years to pair Clay Matthews with one of the best pass rushers of all-time who is still one of the top sack leaders this year back at Carolina in his late 30s. Perry had 11 sacks last year and was kept. Daniels in prior years was one of the better pass rushing 3-4 ends in the league. Regardless of who he's had Capers has still failed time and time again to field a successful defense.

In this scenario UW most definitely drops to #11. All about the $$ New CFP after this scenario: #1 - Miami #2 - TCU #3 - Georgia #4 - Alabama Sadly, this is probably not that far removed from what reality would be.

Yep, there are plenty of young, bright assistants out there that understand the modern NFL and who are going to get a shot at something more at some point. Why not be the first to get there? I find it head-scratching that some people still use the argument "He's not the one missing tackles or blowing assignments", which could literally be applied to every DC in NFL history and adds nothing to an argument. It's crazy to think that good coaches and coordinators can't make a significant difference. Look at the remarkable job that Sean McVay is doing for the Rams this year. It's revolutionary. There can't be anyone outside the Jeff Fisher family that thinks that things would be going exactly the same for them this year if Jeff Fisher was still in charge. On that note, it blows my mind that there is an NFL head coach that was born in 1986.

MM does a lot of things that drive me nuts. I hate how cavalier he is about his timeout usage, as you mentioned, and it often seems to come back and bite us. And as Peavy mentioned, the loyalty to Capers; it's just gone too far. But aside from that, I think he runs a good offense and has the pulse and respect of his team, which are the two main things I'm looking for out of him. I'm not calling for his head -- yet. But if he insists on continuing to stand by Capers, he had better be prepared to go down with that ship. I go back and forth on TT. I think he's drafted more talent on defense than he gets credit for. I think this is a pretty talented defense with a coordinator that doesn't have a clue how to properly use them.

Yes, and there's a whole lot of ways that can happen. Nelson doesn't pitch at all. Anderson returns to norm, Knebel could be traded, platoon at 1B may really fall off, Braun could really fall off. A whole laundry list of things could happen, and it wouldn't take very many of them. I mentioned 6 names, still dependent on 19+ more players. In general I find this obsession some fans have with tanking for the high draft pick to be quite sad. Especially in our current situation. A young team surprised MLB and missed the playoffs by a game, and now this guy wants to tank for a draft pick? If we are 100 games into the season and 40-60 with veteran players and not young up and coming talent...fine, might as well tank for the draft pick. That's not even remotely the situation we are in. I'm not exactly sure what situation this dude would need to concoct to want to compete versus tank for the high pick. Tanking for the high pick in general is sad and dishonest. I'm really confused here. What are you addressing and whose comments specifically are you talking about? No one from what I can tell said anything even close to resembling tank talk.

It's incredible to realize that this is now the 7th consecutive year of MM tolerating mediocre to bad defensive play with the same man in charge. It's been a revolving door of personnel, while we continue to watch guys from our defense leave and flourish in other systems (Hayward, Hyde). The excuses should be long since over. It's been a (relatively) healthy year for the defense in comparison to league average injuries. Pro Football Focus ranks 8 out of our 11 starters individually as anywhere between "average" (Perry, House, Clinton-Dix), to "above average" (Matthews, Martinez) to "high quality" (Clark, Burnett, Daniels). So the excuses are gone. They haven't been scraping by with 3rd stringers. They have some high quality talent. Every year, we pump numerous draft picks into the draft at the expense of our offense, throwing Aaron a bone every few years with a tackle or WR early, but other than that just focusing on defensive drafts and telling Aaron to do his thing. And yet, here we are. With yet another poor defense. Failed adjustments. Watching our defense repeatedly get gashed up and down the field as our DB's stick to their assignments of a soft vanilla zone and give 8-10 yards off the line of scrimmage, predictably resulting in failures to get off the field on 3rd and 4th down time and time again. Dom Capers is the Jeff Fisher of defensive coordinators. A holdover from the "good ol' boy" days, stuck in an era of football that he doesn't fully understand and that he hasn't been able to adjust to. He's been a deer in the headlights ever since Kaepernick gashed his defense for almost 200 yards rushing in the 12-13 playoff matchup. Modern offensive coordinators are running circles around him. A single successful Super Bowl defense has bought Capers 9 years of goodwill, despite the fact that his poor regular season defenses are further exasperated by historically bad defensive games in the playoffs (51-45!), (45-31!) (44-21!) (37-20), not to mention when the defense finally put together a great playoff game in Seattle, it was completely imploded in mere minutes by a stunning collapse in the final minutes. Until we fire this man, more of the same is inevitable.

I think to start 2018 having Hader as a pen arm would be extremely crazy and not a great use of the best arm in our organizations. 2018 is a great year to begin to figure out if he can start or not. Heck 2018 & 19 should be given to him to figure it out. If after two years of starting he's just okay, then put him back in the pen and let him do what he does. What I can't understand is how people don't want to give an electric arm like that the opportunity to start. We finally have a guy that could be, maybe he won't, but could be a legit ace. Let's not waste this opportunity because we might be able to win another 85 games next season. Because the stakes are very high if it doesn't work. Your bullpen will suffer and so if it isn't a slam dunk success in the rotation this is something cumulatively that could put 2018 in the toilet. You know he's an elite reliever, you don't know what he will offer as a starter. This isnt 2016 anymore, we're competing just as much as experimenting. It isn't just about having an electric arm. Many scouts just don't think Hader has the pitch mix to make it in the rotation. I'm sure the Brewers have a better idea of this than we do one way or another and I'll trust their call either way, really. But if he can't command his change and slider, he's not going to make it in the rotation regardless of how effective his fastball is. I do truly see your side of it. If you really think his odds are good to turn into a Chris Sale, obviously that's huge. But if our scouts believe that has a small chance of happening, it isn't worth burning 2 years of your best pen arm and a rotation spot on something with a low chance of happening when you're contending now. Like I said, I'm sure our scouts have a better beat on that than we do so I'll trust their judgment with whatever they go with in 2018. Honestly, I'm surprised to see you taking such a strong stance on this when, correct me if I'm wrong but you've been beating the drum of just how crucial a strong bullpen is and how damaging it was to us in 2017 to lose so many games with the pen. More innings would obviously be great, but high leverage innings are also very valuable. Losing what Hader did for us in the bullpen will definitely have some ripple effects.

Except that Hader is a starting pitcher...... His success at this level is strictly as a reliever. I think his future is certainly open for debate and far from a black and white issue. I know the consensus is that Hader should at least get a crack at the rotation and with his upside I can certainly understand why. What I can't understand is why people think Hader is inevitably a starter no matter what and that it's crazy to even consider him for the pen. Hader brought exceptional value to our 2017 pen and there are many , many scouts that believed before last year and probably even moreso now that Hader has a much better chance of success in a bullpen role.

I'm going to expand on this a bit while also taking it in a different direction of sorts. Suppose WE signed Davis to that deal, kept Swarzek at 2/14 and signed Neshek at 2/12. While also keeping Knebel and keeping Hader in the pen? Would this be the best pen in baseball? Overkill? Would someone like Brandon Morrow for 3/24 be a safer choice than Davis? What would this strategy do for us in terms of net results in 2018, thinking of all the games that the pen coat us in 2017? I'm not necessarily advocating for this approach, just kind of spitballing.

If those players all have great years and we win 10 less games, something sure went very wrong elsewhere.

Won by 28 in Indiana and dropped 2 spots in the AP poll. Better put up 80 against Iowa or they'll be dropping us out of the top 10. It's also cute of the AP writers to adjust their voting to try to more closely match the CFP rankings. Because Notre Dame rising from 5 to 3 after giving up 37 points at home to unranked Wake and winning by 11 while we drop from 4 to 6 after beating Indiana by 4 TDs on the road makes total logical sense and has absolutely nothing to do with the coincidence that it now more closely mirrors the CFP.

Glad to see Peralta start to deservedly get some recognition. Medeiros as the big faller was a bit surprising to me. I realize his results weren't great, but I do think he showed some signs at times in 2017 of finally starting to come around. I think they need to ditch the starter path for him in 2018 and concentrate on developing him as a full time reliever.