adambr2

Good: Brinson leads off with a double! Bad: He got picked off.

Cordell had a very nice game. Good to see Broxton just rip that double in his 3rd AB, not showing any affects from the wrist.

Isn't there a way to increase your bonus pool up to 50% with trades? I wonder if we've ever considered trying to take that approach in a certain year with a top guy or 2 that we really want to land. Would be nice to outbid the rich teams!

1st inning vs. Dodgers. Jett Bandy gunned down Ether at 2nd.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/02/nl-central-notes-villar-lemahieu-cubs-pirates.html?fv-home=true&post-id=86315 Supposedly Villar's offer was for a 3 year extension (presumably after this year, buying out his arby years). If that's the case I'm shocked he didn't accept basically 7M a year for his arby years this early. That's a lot of coin to leave on the table without having to sacrifice any of his free agency.

Well, you are passing up on a very young promising controlled outfielder for a lot of guys that may never even pan out at the MLB level. Even if you want to assume Brinson is a sure thing, Ray is years away and none of Phillips, Cordell, Clark, Harrison, or Demi O may ever even make it at the MLB level, or may only make it as 4th/5th outfielders. If they do show that ability, fantastic. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. There is no such thing as too much depth. Even if you have it, it makes for very good trade bait later, like the Cubs showed with Torres last year. There's absolutely no reason to think that teams are going to somehow demand an extra trade premium from us just because we have the outfield depth to trade. Sellers just want the best package, they don't care what the rest of our farm looks like. No GM is going to take a lesser deal from someone else for a guy we want just because we wouldn't back down when they demanded an extra guy like Phillips. I hate the idea of ever passing on the best available players for a trade, but especially right now in a rebuild when talent acquisition is number 1. Obviously it'd be great to add a #2 pitcher, but we're not in a position of major leverage with Braun anyway. Don't you think if we had an offer for a #2 starter prospect for Braun on the table, we would take it?

Maybe with the fact that Mazara is a long term starter, Broxton, Santana. Brinson in the waits. Phillips, Ray not far behind. They left Michael Reed, Ryan Cordell, Phillips, Niewhenwuis, Brinson all on the 40man. Mazara would make them all pointless complete non-starters only backups. You literally have to trade away 4 bodies to clear up room for this overstocked and growing OF in the organization. We'd have traded Braun,Lucroy and Jeffress for 1pitcher and 3 OFs. 2 of which won't be starters. But gave up 3 starters to get 2 starters? Where we'd be at is a poor trade position because, we MUST trade away OFs. So when you ask for guy like say Quintana because of current need to remove these OFs. They'll force multiples to be included in the trade vs 1. What may have been something like Brinson and Woodruff to get him, they say add Brett Phillips or Corey Ray. We're talking about being 10 deep for 3 everyday starters. So you can part with one of them. Nieuwenhuis and Michael Reed being on the 40 are non-factors. These guys are pure roster fodder with no real value other than the depth they bring. If you have a chance to acquire a player like Mazara you don't worry about guys like Nieuwenhuis or Reed. You trade them if you can, waive them, outright them to AAA if you can, release them, it doesn't really matter. I am not at all worried about having too many talented OFers or being in a bad trade position because of it, which I don't think will happen. These things tend to work themselves out. We are still at the point of the rebuild where talent acquisition is the most important thing. Also, wouldn't trading Braun for Mazara be a 1 for 1 OF for OF trade anyway? Braun's NTC is about to kick in, and he has few league suitors. We can't exactly shop him around or get picky about good offers now if we want to make a deal. Again...this is all hypothetical. Braun for Mazara isn't happening. But if it was (assuming a reasonable salary eat on our part), we would be crazy to say no to a 21 year old MLB OFer who was a top 15 prospect.

I don't have it live on Directv. 8 pm replay tonight.

Not that there is anything to this rumor, but Mazara for Braun would be fantastic regardless of our OF situation. Not sure how anyone can paint that as potentially disappointing .

Cameron was like a 4-5 WAR player for most of his career. If either Broxton or Brinson copies his career, that would be great.

I'll be the guy to say it, but Brinson isn't sniffing the opening day 25 man no matter how good of spring he has. He's only got 2 months of AAA time under his belt here, so they've got more than enough reason to take their time with him. And, elephant in the room, its best not to start his service time clock til at least midseason.

I've never been a big Scooter guy. He never had a great tool and even though we're trying to disguise him as something else, he's always been a one position player, which would be fine if he was better than mediocre at that one position. It's nothing personal, he has been kind of okay at times. He seems like a nice enough guy. I think it just stems from my own annoyance about an era in which Scooter Gennett and Hunter Morris were our top prospects. Well, he turned out better than Morris, I'll give him that.

OBP and OPS wise, Scooter vs. Captain Kirk is basically a wash. If Scooter has any offensive advantage in this matchup, it's not nearly big enough to justify playing time in the outfield for a likely defensive butcher over a plenty serviceable (defensively) outfielder.

Darn, thought I might have found a rule loophole in a 150 year old game.

I thought the rule was that if you throw your glove at a ball it an automatic triple, or was that during BP? Now I have to look that up. Totally hypothetically speaking, if this occurred with 2 outs and nobody on in the 9th in a tie game, and the ball was going to be a HR, 10 feet over the outfielders' head, and he could time his throw right and keep it in play, couldn't he potentially save the game this way and prevent a walkoff?

This is really overvaluing his arby year values - at least up front. Manny Machado got $5M in his first year of arby. Dallas Keuchel got $7.2M after winning the Cy Young award. If he repeats his 2016 performance, you might see $4.0-4.5M price in his first year. Do it again - perhaps $8-9M in his second year of arby. Manny Machado, one of the best players in baseball, is on pace to to probably make around $32-34M in his three arby years ($5M in 2016, $11.5M in 2017, then probably $16-17M next year (assuming nothing bad happens, and he keeps playing great). Villar can still make a lot. If he keeps playing like 2016, he probably gets around $24-25M (roughly three years at $4M, $8M, $12M). It was probably an overestimate, but part of the overestimate was deliberate to demonstrate that in the worst/best case scenario for the Brewers (depending on the perspective you look at it from), Villar is under control the next 4 years for a moderate cost, even if he kills it and becomes a perennial all star. So there's no reason the Brewers would do a 4 year deal for any large sum at all. If I had to venture a wild guess as to the offer, it was probably something like 5 years /$21.6M with a 10M team option/1M buyout for a 6th year. That would put his arby values at 3/4.5/6 and a FA year bought out for 7.5M. It's obviously a lot lower than he'll make if he stays productive going year to year, but it's a pretty good tradeoff and balance of security and risk.

I know you can't take much from spring training, especially against a college team, but Brinson has just killed it ever since we traded for him.

Why would we pay him $5M in a season that we can literally pay him any amount we want to? He will make near league minimum this year, just like every other 0 to 3 year player. Take that away and you have 6/41, which makes some sense if you really believe in Villar, but there's really no motivation on the Brewers part to take on that much risk when again they can literally have him for probably 4/30 at the worst just going year to year even if Villar remains productive. Being payroll-lite shouldn't be a factor in what we should or shouldn't pay anybody. Value, not price.

It's really not a lowball, though. It's the sacrifice of some long-term riches for security. They would never offer him 4/34 or 4/38 right now. If the Brewers do nothing they'll probably get him for 4/$30.6M in a best case scenario for Villar (600K or so this year, and $8M, $10M, and $12M in 3 arby years.) But that's a projection that assumes Villar remains as productive as he has been last year. He would need to take a lower amount to compensate for the risk of course, thus the lower offer.

When McGehee had his big year, he struck me as someone who would likely take a long-term deal. I know he has a special needs child and so for someone like him I would have thought the long-term security would be more important than breaking the bank. And I'm not saying it wasn't or that he should have settled for much less because of it -- I have no idea what the extent of his negotiations were with the team and I don't think any of us do. The good news is he still made 10.5M in his pro career, not including whatever he got in Asia. So I would think he's doing just fine. For me, I'd like to think if I get a chance early on at 20M, I'm taking it. Whether I make 20M or 200M in my career, it's going to be life changing. I don't think I'd like to run the risk of flaming out in my 0-3 years and never even seeing a MLB offer again in my career. But I can understand why some don't see it that way. And I would think that they may be under some pressure from the MLBPA to ensure they don't sell themselves short.

Why? He's coming off a 5 WAR season and is 2 years from FA. Even if he regresses some he's still likely to break the bank when he becomes a free agent.

Hard to know what to think of this without knowing how long the deal was for. My guess is 5 years, 20M, which would buy out his arbitration plus a FA year. A good idea. I can understand why Villar passed on it, but he's betting high on himself.

Wieters contract doesn't even make him a very good flip candidate. Absolute best case scenario if he has a huge year, he's going to opt out after 2017, making him just a rental in a sell. A Lucroy-like return wouldn't happen regardless of how good he was, as a lot of Lucroy's value was from the low salary team option this season. Much more likely, he's going to continue to be as good as he has been the last few years, which is very average, and bring back an Aaron Hill type return at the deadline. Looking to flip him for that kind of return isn't worth a $10.5M-$21M investment, especially when it blocks our existing trio of catchers and prevents us from learning anything more about their future in the midst of a rebuild.

Prediction: One of Bandy, Susac or Pina posts a higher WAR than Wieters in 2017.

But he won't get half a million playing in AAA. He would be on a split contract, MLB minimum if in the majors, something like $15K or $20K (if lucky) playing in Colorado Springs... That is very common for players (pitchers and position guys alike).. prior to the last collective bargaining agreement, i believe there were minimum minor league salary requirements for players on the 40-man roster. as a player burned each option year, the minimum went up. i don't recall the amounts, but i seem to recall that the amount increased significantly after burning one's second option. It's the $82,700 amount quoted by Logan. Small potatoes compared to an MLB salary on the 25 man, but still well more than most of his Milb counterparts. He'd be crazy to walk away now $82,700 is still a better salary than most professionals, and he's a phone call away from a half million a year salary. He'll get his shot from someone, one would think us. Personally I think he's on the 25 man to open the season and this is all a moot point. Guessing it's Susac and Pina, with Bandy having his last option burned.