adambr2

http://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-preview-2016/original-teams Not the greatest rotation in the world, but that would be one stacked lineup.

Cappy has some intangible value. A familiar, nostalgic face will be appreciated by some fans in the wake of a rebuild. This year, does that last bullpen spot really matter? Nah.

Whats a lousy package? If we can only get a top 50, that's better than letting him walk after 2 years, IMO. I don't worry too much about his absence affecting the development of our young pitchers. We have a coaching staff for that. Lucroy calls a good game, but he's not a pitching coach.

Olt is almost 28, so it's hard to look at him as an upside acquisition anymore.

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/national-league-central/milwaukee-brewers/ -2018 option vests at $13M if 2) has 115 innings in 2017 Bullpen calling Garza's name next season.

I agree that Texas' farm system is the ideal match for us for a Lucroy trade. I have a hard time seeing anything happen before July at this point, unfortunately.

I think it'll be Pint. But that's just a hunch. I see his signability as a question mark though, which scares me.

I was never questioning that Medeiros still has upside and breakout potential. Since we were playing 'shoulda woulda coulda', my point could be simply boiled down to one question. If Turner for Medeiros was on the table right now at this moment in time, would we take it? Of course we would. Value-wise, we'd be crazy not to.

I'll take my shot with Kodi Medeiros. We need pitching. Badly. And he did a pretty solid job last year and the Rattlers had high praise for him. And he's 19. Eh, we do need pitching, and he certainly still has a shot, but his numbers wouldn't really qualify as solid last year. He's a long ways off and has a much better shot than Turner to never put on an MLB uniform. I'd certainly take the already top 10 MLB prospect over the lottery ticket arm right now.

Trea Turner over Kodi Medeiros would look pretty good now too.

It's possible that when we are in position to contend again, we may also be in a financial position to make a huge splash signing in free agency like the Diamondbacks just did with Greinke and add an ace that way. But it's tough to count on something like that and I'm sure the plan (and the better plan, for sure ), is to develop our own.

If you set the over/under for our win total at 68 this year, I'd probably take the under, but it's in no way ridiculous to suggest we win 68+, and I dont believe our chances are 'very, very small.' So many things can happen throughout the course of a year. Peralta and Garza both had poor years, they could rebound. Arcia could be called up mid-summer and rake, or struggle. Anderson over 2015 Lohse is a big upgrade. Maybe Santana hits 35 HR with better D than Davis. Maybe Luc looks like an MVP candidate again and then gets traded at the deadline. We just don't know. All of these are possibilities, among other things both positive and negative. Look at the 2005 Brewers and tell me that team had 81 win talent. I don't know whether this team will win 55 or 75 games, my guess would be somewhere in the middle of that, but nothing in that range would surprise me.

Unless I missed something significant, I think Jungmann is a lock for the MLB team.

The notion that Stearns did the Davis deal out of motivation to make the 2016 team worse and therefore improve the 2017 draft pick is ridiculous. It's all about the big picture. Our team goals at this point fall over a longer span than 162 games. Davis, for all his power, has enough warts to be a 1.3 WAR player. The difference between him and Santana in the W/L column this season is very nominal, and frankly, irrelevant.

Yes, and there were some pretty good players on that team. Lucroy will be a huge factor in if they lose 100, pretty much every position is average or below average offensively and defensively. I have watched a lot of Brewers baseball and looking at this team it is right up there with the worst Brewers teams no doubt. The future is much brighter but it doesn't change the current major league team and how horrible they will be. There is no way the 2016 team is worse than this team. http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIL/2002.shtml The lineup might be similar but the pitching staff should be far better.

First of all I think your projections are really on the extreme side. Carter is the only guy to ever even hit your 'likely' mark, and he did it one season 3 years ago. Santana has never even hit 150 in his full seasons, and you're projecting him for 200. Projecting Gallo to shatter the current MLB record by 27 strikeouts is really over the top. Secondly, without diving too much into the 'strikeouts vs outs in play' argument, I don't understand the worry over having an abundance of strikeout hitters in our lineup, especially in a rebuilding year. There's very little correlation between W/L and strikeouts. The Cubs led the MLB in K's by a mile last year. Next was the Astros. Both were playoff teams. Guys like Chris Davis, Mike Trout, and Paul Goldschmidt were near the top of the MLB strikeout list last year. If you're OPS'ing near .900 and hitting 40 HRs, I can live with 200 Ks. I'm not saying we have players of that caliber, but a contact hitter certainly isn't a prerequisite for a valuable player.

People penciling us in for 100 losses, you do realize that has only happened 1 time before in our not so illustrious history? It takes a really bad team and some bad bounces to lose 100 games. I'd day last year's win total of 68 is a pretty good benchmark. I think we still have too much talent to finish dead last in MLB . A top 5 pick in 2017 is very possible, a top 10 is very likely.

They were top 100 guys kind of by default, because generally speaking the 2000, 2001, and 2003 drafts were some of the weakest drafts years in the modern era. The talent pool was shallower back then. Over the last five years more multi-sport stars have been taking the sure money and choosing baseball out of HS instead of football, and the concussion/CTE issues in football have likely pushed more talent into baseball. The top 100 now is better than the top 100 back then. Also, teams are smarter about developing pitchers now (not having HS kids throw 140 heavy innings their first full year of pro ball), so you aren't seeing as many pitching prospects flame out. Funny, for as much as the Brewers were criticized for making Krynzel the 11th overall pick in 2000, he actually has the 11th highest career WAR (according to BR) of every player picked in the first round of the 2000 draft. Yeah, they missed on Utley and Wainwright, but Krynzel has a higher career WAR than eight of the 10 players drafted ahead of him. Only five players from the first round that year have a career WAR >10, one of them just barely. I was stunned to see Brad Nelson aa high as #23. I don't remember a ton about him, but I don't recall him generating a ton of pre-MLB hype. Don't know if he's a guy who would have even cracked the top 100 on a list today.

I thought I remember hopes being pretty high for Hendrickson when he was finally called up. IIRC he was completely shelled in his MLB debut and just never recovered.

Wow. The fact that they were top 100 guys doesn't really reassure me about our current top 100 guys. Here are all our top 100 guys since Melvin was hired,, some were top 100 in multiple years, so I'm only going to list their top respective rating: 2003: Brad Nelson (23), Mike Jones (56), Ben Hendrickson (90), Corey Hart (91) 2004: Rickie Weeks (5), Prince Fielder (10), JJ Hardy (19), Manny Parra (69) 2005: Jose Capellan (25) 2006: Mark Rogers (44) 2007: Yovani Gallardo (16), Ryan Braun (26), Will Inman (91) 2008: Matt Laporta (23) 2009: Mat Gamel (34), Jeremy Jeffress (100) 2010: Alcides Escobar (12), Brett Lawrie (59) 2011: - 2012: Wily Peralta (56), Taylor Jungmann (70), Jed Bradley (71) 2013: - 2014: Jimmy Nelson (96) 2015: Tyrone Taylor (93) 2016: Orlando Arcia (8), Trent Clark (49), Brett Phillips (57), Jorge Lopez (59) That's 27 guys in the top 100 since the Melvin era began. If I rank these on the basis of: A - Elite, top level MLB player B - High echelon during prime, not elite C - Average MLB player D - Lower level MLB player F - Bust I - Incomplete (too early to say) I count 2 A's, 3 B's, 1 C, 3 D's, 4 F's, and I gave 9 I's starting with Peralta. The rest were used as trade bait at some point. So the good news is most of our top 100s made it in the bigs. The bad news is only 5 out of 13 became better than average big leaguers. I had Braun and Prince as my A's, Yo, Hardy, and Hart as my B's, and Weeks as my C, and I do believe every one of those guys was an All-Star at some point, so that's good. However, keep in mind that our system has produced some really good big leaguers who were never top 100 guys. Lucroy especially comes to mind, and also guys like Davis. So while 100 is a nice round number, having depth in 100-200 range is nice too, a lot of good players still come from that range.

Well first, I think you're selling Santana short. No, he's no Prince, but he was the 71st best prospect in baseball at this time last year. In the mode we're in, he absolutely needs to get full time ABs st the MLB level so we can see what he has. He might struggle, but again, he's 23. What he has proven at the MLB level so far is irrelevant. He will get plenty of opportunities to prove now which he should. I also think you're overselling Davis , who is also no Prince Fielder. He has one asset; a very good one, but his flaws are many. It's telling that a guy with as much power aa he has with an OPS north of .800 is barely a 1 WAR player. I also don't think he would have been worth more after this year, entering arbitration, barring a big breakout year which I think is unlikely given his skillset.

When Nottingham makes it to the bigs, his nickname has to be the Sheriff, right?

He wasn't really THAT bad IMO. A .659 OPS isn't good, but for a SS who was still very good with the glove that year, it wasn't an albatross of a down year. He was worth about 1 WAR. I think his demotion had a lot to do with gaining that extra year of club control, no matter how much Melvin may have denied it.

So is post-2009 Hardy a comparable return to what we should expect from Lucroy? Post 2009 Hardy had 2 years remaining of inexpensive control, and was coming off a down year in 2009. Granted catcher is a premium position, but shortstop isn't far behind if at all.

I don't think their rebuilding 'goal' was to ever be a consensus anything by anyone's standard. I think their goal is to put this team in the best possible position to win a World Series when the time is right again. So absolutely, they should continue to trade off players who won't be around when that goal becomes a realistic possibility again. I don't know that it makes a difference whether they're top 5 or top 10, a farm system is something that can always be improved, whether you're #1 or #30. There is no level of 'too many prospects. ' And your statement of 'no guarantee of future success at major league level' illustrates that point perfectly. Yes, like any system, we are going to have prospects that flame out. But the more we have, the larger our margin for error.