adambr2

Keith Law has the Brewers in his top 5 farm systems.

I doubt Braun ever uses again. There's zero financial incentive now as his paycheck is now already set til he's 37/38, at which point his career will likely be over anyway. He could hit 75 HRs this year and he still wouldn't gain a penny. Conversely, he could end up banned and forfeit the rest of his contract if he's busted again. The risk/reward is just too great. He has no reason not to just sit back, be quiet, and try to do the best he can as Father Time eats away at his numbers.

Yeah, unless we have a master plan to bank on him being a star and deal him for a haul after a year, it doesn't make much sense to invest a pricey long term deal to a guy on the wrong side of 30. Would have made a lot more sense a year or two ago.

Wasnt Coulter drafted as a catcher? What happened to that?

Wouldn't having a true 1, 2, 3, and 4 give us an average rotation, not a top end one? I would think we would need two guys to develop aa aces (Nelson and Peralta being the most likely IMO) to really have a top end rotation.

San Francisco won World Series titles in '14 and '12 with some pretty bad defenses. St Louis did the same in '11. I'm not saying defense is overrated, but out of pitching, hitting, and defense, its probably the least important Its the easiest deficiency to make up for if your pitching and hitting are good enough.

That's the thing, Lucroy's value is completely and totally dependent on his ability to catch. As a catcher, he's worth a top prospect. As a first baseman, he's completely worthless. Not saying he's a terrible first baseman, just that first basemen with his numbers are a dime a dozen, catchers with his numbers are rare.

What is a targeted approach? To me, instead of bringing in a half dozen guys for CF to see if you can correctly identify the right one in Spring Training, always a risky approach, you get one player with a better known floor and concentrate your resources elsewhere. Instead of getting a half dozen arms and middle infielders in a series of trades, you combine the resources you traded away and target a AA third basemen with a reasonable floor. Realistically, the Brewers only have so many roster spots, with Arcia, Phillips, and others clearly part of future plans, that a lot of these fringey middle infielders have no real future with the team. I don't think there's anyone here that wouldn't rather have a solid third base prospect out of all the wheeling and dealing done than all these 4th outfielders and utility middle infielders. We're too far away from seeing the results to judge whether the offseason actually found any future contributors or not. But, I think it's safe to say that Stearns concentrated on quantity with bigger risks and higher upside than he did on minimizing risk. It's very possible we'll be wondering about the future at third base and first base again next off season. Is that progress? IMO we're far too early in the rebuild for that targeted of an approach. I think that's more appropriate in a few years when we're nearing contention. For now, concentrate on getting the most upside regardless of position, and look to add talent at every level of out system. That is what I see Stearns doing. It's entirely possible that we'll be wondering about the future at 1st and 3rd next offseason. Really, we might be wondering about the future at every position besides SS. And that's okay.

Agreed. Where Stearns will show his mettle will be in the the draft and international. I'd say that how Stearns handles getting valuable returns for Lucroy, Davis, Braun, and Smith are his first true test. He has to get guys that will contribute for them. Plus he has to be able to stay the course during losing and falling attendance. Those are near term tests. The good news is I think going to a Brewer game has become a lot more trendy in recent years,. I don't think they'll come close to 90s level attendance even during a rebuild. I think they'll still clear 2M fairly easily and maybe approach 2.5.

If you're going to get a contract based on a tiny sample size, you're going to get lowballed. The team gets a market friendly contract for taking a big chance on an unproven player, and the player gets taken care of for life. Regardless of how Segura may or may not feel about his comparison at that time to his peers, $40M is enough for him and his family to live off for the rest of his life. He chose to pass that up and bet on his abilities, now he's got to deal with the consequences of that, being that his value has plummeted since then. Just the way it is. Sometimes it works out the opposite, like it did with Lucroy.

Yes, Brett Phillips and possibly some other prospects would have made the top ten, but the voting was limited to players on the Brewers current 40-man roster which is why Phillips wasn't eligible for the list. The list was limited to the 40-man roster for simplicity and to avoid submissions filled with only prospects. It is a valid question though where the cut-off would be on the list for a player that could bring back a prospect to an equivalent talent level of Phillips. Ah, missed that, thank you. That'll teach me not to skim through the original post.

Taylor Green is a strange career case. You don't see too many guys look as amazing as he did in the minors, hit a wall in their mid 20s, plateau and then never recover. It's possible the hip injury in 2013 was a factor but that still doesn't explain 2012.

Late to the party, but I have to question how Brett Phillips, who is a top 50 prospect, doesn't even crack the top 10. Surely not everyone listed in the top 10 would return a top 50 prospect. I would have to think that the centerpiece of a trade that cost us Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers at least belongs in the top 5. If Stearns was offered a top 50 straight up right now for either of Davis or Smith I'm sure most would agree he should jump at it.

Yah to be honest winning is everything to him after all. Not to mention trying to take out the team option would all but assure him to not be traded. That would kill a huge portion of his value and the Brewers would then just hold onto him or trade him somewhere else. If you ask me I think I would want to go to the Nationals if I was him. Solid roster built to be successful. It's still the only leverage he has. He might prefer to be traded but at his age and with his team friendly contract he might want to use that leverage. I don't suspect that the Nationals will be willing to waive Lucroy's option year, because a lot of Lucroy's value is from that extra year of club control. But I wouldn't be surprised if Lucroy asks for a few million extra tacked on to the option to agree to the trade.

Peralta is absolutely a guy I would look to unload if he rebounds and puts up a sub 3.00 ERA or so in the first half. I think he probably carries more value as a trade chip than he would in his 30s coming out of a rebuild. Anderson, same. I think we still need some evaluation on what we have in Jungmann and Nelson, but I think it's premature to assume either profiles as a future #1/#2 for us.

Fangraphs has some pieces on the trade. Good stuff in there on Anderson and Diaz. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-brewers-quiet-upside-play/ http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/howie-kendrick-jean-segura-and-arizonas-latest-mistake/

The key to enduring a rebuild as a fan and seeing the good in it is finding enjoyment in things other than the MLB team winning. No, winning the World Series is not a realistic goal this year. That doesn't mean the season can't be fun. A World Series is still the end goal, it's just something that they're now looking at on a longer timeline, which I firmly believe in. Personally, I find this part of baseball to be very enjoyable. Guys like Braun and Prince didn't show up one day as stars, they were developed through our farm and became stars. I find that to be a very fun journey to watch, in seeing who our next stars will be. If you're near Appleton I'd highly recommend trying to make it to some Timberrattlers games. That team should be pretty good, and there's a few guys there who have a shot at being Brewer stars one day. Not to mention the Game Day experience is going to be a whole lot cheaper than going to MP. But even if you'd rather stick to MP anyway, there's a lot of things to watch for this season. We get to see whether guys like Nelson, Jungmann, Santana and Broxton can take a big step in their development. There's guys on this roster right now that could turn out to be really good players. We might get to see debuts for Arcia and Phillips. That part is a lot of fun. Even in '05-'07 when we just weren't quite there yet, remember how fun it was to watch guys like Hardy, Weeks, Fielder, and Braun come up and mash? It's been a long time since we've felt that kind of excitement about a Brewers prospect coming up the bigs, and it's going to be happening a lot again in the coming years. I'm excited to see what the season will bring.

The thing that keeps coming back to me is that no matter how much energy and patience is put into a rebuild, the best that can ever be expected for this franchise that can't go after big money FA or hold on to it's stars beyond 6 years is to field a "a playoff plausible roster". Stearns has acquired talent that projects to be around in 4-5 years, at which point many on here will be contemplating what 2025 prospects they can get back for Arcia. Nelson will be gone by then as well and they'll be counting on young untested arms. I'm fine with a "playoff plausible roster" every year. That's reality for a franchise like the Brewers. Duplicating what the Cubs did is fantasyland. They could have fielded one in 2016 but deliberately chose not to. Sorry but that irritates me. Now .500 gives Counsel a shot at manager of the year. I disagree on several things. First, this was never going to be a 'playoff plausible' team next year. Not any more so than the sense that absolutely everything would have had to go right to even have a chance. They used the 'playoff plausible' approach from 2008 to 2015 and just ran out of talent. The farm was so weak by 2011 it wouldn't have supported contention during 2016-2109 on the previous approach. Sorry, but you're just not going to build a contender around guys like Nelson and Jungmann, and Arcia is just one guy even if he turns out to be a star. 6 years is a good long time to control a player as long as you're smart about controlling his service time, which it looks like we are doing with Arcia. It's also not true that we can't get big name FA or keep our own guys past 6 years. Mark A has certainly shown a willingness to write checks when the time is right. Braun, Lucroy, and Gallardo were all contracted here past the 6 year mark of their career, and it's feasible with some future stars to buy out FA years early.

Farm wise, we've come a long ways from Hunter Morris and Scooter Gennett being our top prospects. Or as Michael Hunt referred to them, our 'can't miss' prospects.

I'm hopeful he'll at least start the season at Appleton. The only experience he has is Rookie Ball. It'd probably be a mild disappointment if he doesn't finish the season in High A, though. That's asking a lot out of a kid who is only 19 and struggled the first time in rookie ball I don't think so. He'll be 20 in May. If he can get a taste of High A this year, head to Biloxi summer of next year, make it to triple A the following season, and make it to the big leagues in June of 2019 at age 23, that seems like a realistic timeline to me.

To me, what Aaron Hill brings us is insignificant, even irrelevant. I doubt his coming here boils down to much more than something we did for the D'Backs in return for Diaz.

Random thought: Remember 10 years ago when we signed Jeff Suppan and how big of a deal it was and how big of a contract he got? Now years later in a minor trade we get a guy, Anderson, that is younger, cheaper, and projected to probably put up better numbers than what we could have realistically expected from Suppan, and yet this is really just a rotation filler. Crazy, I guess pitching has just gotten that much better over the last 10 years.

I don't think that is going to be the plan. $25M is a tough pill to swallow of dead money, that's basically half of the original contract. I think they will put Garza in the rotation and attempt to salvage something out of him, even if that just means dumping him at the deadline for a minors filler and eating half his remaining contract. I agree Anderson is a good add. He's a cheap rotation filler who should occupy a rotation spot for most of the rebuild for cheap. That's all we need him to be. He's also a guy you could alternatively re-flip at the deadline to a contender looking for rotation help if he has a career year.

It's also clear from his comment that Arcia will be up at 12:01 a.m. on June 1st that he has no idea how Super 2 eligibility works and is just sort of guessing at it.

Yes, absolutely. He was a 4 WAR player at SS in 2013. Players have off-years. Past performance is not a fool-proof way of predicting future results, however yes absolutely I could see Segura being a 3+ WAR player at 2B. I really wanted the Brewers to keep Segura and convert him to 2B. I'm thrilled about Diaz though, and am very happy he is a Brewer. Segura was fantastic for the first half of 2013 and has been a replacement level player since then. Far more likely that the aberration was the first couple months of 2013 rather than the 2 1/2 seasons since then.