adambr2

To call Yelich a cheapish All-Star really understates his value. There are 68 All-Stars in baseball every year, Yelich is at the very upper echelon of those players. Yelich is one of the top 2-3 players in baseball. He was the league MVP last year and is having an even better year this year. He will very likely go down as one of the greatest Brewers in franchise history. So you're not comparing those 4 players to a cheapish All-Star, you're comparing them to a cheapish MVP. And secondly, we are so far away from those 4 being even replacement level MLB players, much less above average MLB regulars. (And I realize you didn't say otherwise). Harrison and Diaz have had nice seasons so far after both disappointing in 2018 in the minors. Yamamoto has had one career MLB start, Harrison and Diaz have never even stepped out onto an MLB field. MLB is littered with pitchers who dazzled in a debut and then fizzled, and littered with players who performed at a high level in the minors but couldn't translate that to the majors (Lewis Brinson is one of those guys, so far). The odds of all four turning into above average MLB regulars is incredibly remote. Not impossible, but very, very remote. Just go back to our top 4 prospects from 4, 5 years ago and see how many of them turned out to be above average MLB regulars. I am not saying the Marlins did poorly in this trade, and I have no reason not to hope that all four do well in Miami. There doesn't have to be a loser in the trade. But I mean, comparing Christian Yelich to the likely trajectory of our franchise on holding the 4 prospects instead, it's not even close. We won a division title last year and came within one game of the World Series. We are highly likely to have back to back playoff appearances for the first time in ...ever? I don't know. We have a very good chance of being a perennial playoff team for the next 3-4 seasons, minimum. All of those things have incredible value to our franchise, and there's no way we're even sniffing the playoffs right now much less competing for the NL if the Yelich trade never happens. And barring the highly unlikely scenario in which one of the 4 traded to Miami turns into a star level player as well, we probably aren't getting there anytime in the next few years with the 4 we dealt.

I used to be a huge South Park fan and to me it's really tailed off the last few years to the point where I haven't even watched the series finale yet. Although I enjoy the satire, at some point it feels like they started trying too hard to constantly be making points rather than just being funny. I still enioy Family Guy quite a bit, to me that's aged better.

Holy cow, the frozen hot takes on pages 2 and 3. Not calling anyone out specifically, we've all been there.

I've been wrong on the hot takes before too as seen on the first few pages. Happens. I find the huge pats on the back and begging for more from HH19 to be more cringeworthy.

I guess, I mean if you're just going by overall prospect ranking. I'll just make 2 points on it: 1) Some here preferred Diaz to Hiura at the time as our 2B of the future. 2) If Hiura and Diaz had been swapped out in the deal -- I don't think it would have been shocking.

No way would the Brewers have simply switched Hiura out for Diaz. Their value is no where close to the same. Yes, it was. I mean no obviously not now but heading into 2018 Pipeline had Hiura as the #3 second baseman prospect in all of baseball. Diaz was #4.

Isan Diaz was probably the toughest one for me to see go, but IMO Hiura has distanced himself far and away as the better 2B prospect. Diaz has decent enough tools, but the bust possibility is real, whereas Hiura has an already very MLB ready tool in his bat. Now imagine just a simple change to that trade, Hiura gone instead of Diaz and it doesn't look nearly as good.

As a general rule I just don't get extending a guy that far out for his mid 30 seasons when you have that much control still left. For the small savings you might get, there is so much risk involved. I didn't like it at all when they gave it to Braun and I wouldn't like it now. So much can happen in 5 years. I doubt any of us back in 2011 had any inkling that the next 5-7 years of Braun would involve a PED scandal, a 65 game suspension, and chronic injury problems. To me, that's just too much risk for a small market. For long-term contracts that far out, I'd stick to young players, trying to buy out potentially expensive arbitration seasons and a free agency year or two. Such as Braun's first contract, or Lucroy's deal. Josh Hader would be an excellent candidate for such a contract now.

Nope Yeah, not a chance. I love Yelich, but I will probably love 34 year old Yelich much less. Why risk getting burned by the same deal yet again?

Brinson: .156/.202/.272/.474 Woof. The scary thing is that line is remarkably consistent for what he did in about 50 PAs for us last year. You can't write a guy off as a bust after just a couple hundred ABs, but its looking more likely that the Brewers cashed in their Lewis Brinson trade chip just in time to get value.

I am honestly a little surprised the Marlins didn't get a little more from someone. Not that we didn't pay a good fair amount but there are about 28 other teams that could have used Yelich and his value is significant.

Black Mirror (Netflix) - Modern Twilight Zone is the best way to explain it. Great show. Wentworth (Netflix) - Extremely underrated. About 10X better than Orange is the New Black The Man in the High Castle (Amazon Prime) - Very thought provoking alternate reality in which the Nazis won WW2. Handmaid's Tale (Hulu) - Some really good performances, also alternate reality type TV As you can see, I don't watch much network television. I do get into Shark tank and Superstore some.

No, it really not. As I mentioned your mortgage would be paid off which for most is a substantial monthly bill. You would also be able to supplement that money with social security once you reached your 60s. It really depends on a number of factors -- your cost of living for one. Where I live in Central Wisconsin -- 40k a year will go a long way. Obviously as someone pointed out that 40k was just an example because it worked well as a round number. Most importantly, it depends on your priorities and what they are. If you need to have that vacation home, if you need to wine and dine, yes that will be a sad retirement. If you can find a way to live within lesser means and value your time more, it can be a very happy retirement. Others brought up the idea of having one spouse retire while the other continues working for health insurance, a great idea. Ideally you could simply have one spouse work part-time, but part-time jobs with decent insurance are hard to find. Obviously insurance is the million dollar question, and not an easy one. I don't know much about the government marketplace for insurance, never had to use it. My dad retired in his 50s from a modest job. He owns his home and makes enough in retirement to live comfortably. For extra side cash, he earns $300 per month from donating plasma twice a week, which takes about an hour each time. He actually enjoys the hour to just sit there and read or watch Netflix. This plan isn't for everyone, but it works fine for him. Retirement, or timing retirement, is nothing more than a choice between time and money. Every year you have less time and more money. I won't make 45, but I won't work a day into my 60s -- I've never heard of anyone on their death bed saying they wished they had less time and made more money.

I'll give an example, albeit a rough one. Say my wife and I marry at 25 with no retirement savings and buy a 100K house. We make a combined 50K net per year and want to retire at 45. We want to live off 25 net, just over 2K a month, which is difficult, but feasible. Its more feasible because mortgage payments will not figure into this for most of the exercise. Now with cost of living it gets a little tricky; obviously 25K doesn't buy you 20 years from now what it does today. So for simplicity I'll figure in neither that nor raises and promotions. Figuring in taxes and health insurance in retirement, we want 40K a year in retirement, which is partially taxable and partially tax sheltered in a Roth. So with the 4% rule, we'll need 1 million dollars for that. My wife and I combined contribute 10K to our respective 401Ks, fully matched dollar for dollar -- some companies as Homer mentioned are even more generous. This leaves us 15K annually for other investments. We'll spend the first 7 years aggressively putting all 15K toward the mortgage in extra principal payments, guaranteeing we own the house outright within 7 years. We'll delay having children until age 30-31 so the kids and the added expense they bring hit around the same time the house is paid off. After this, we'll put the extra 15K into a Roth IRA up to the maximum limits with the extra going into a traditional IRA. Assuming 6% returns on an average for all accounts we would hit our goal in exactly 20 years, accumulating 1.08M by age 45 and retiring.

Most people with a decent income can retire early if that's truly what they want. We've been conditioned to believe that you work til you're 65, hopefully have enough then and hopefully enjoy 20 years after that, but it doesn't have to be that way. Basically just comes down to how much in the short-term that you're willing to sacrifice to slash your monthly budget to the bone and invest everything into an early retirement. I wish I had had the same financial mindset when I was 18 that I do now because that would have definitely been a goal. Now I'm married and my spouse and I don't really have the same financial vision in that regard or it would certainly be still feasible.

If you're investing for retirement and have the proper stock/bond/cash mix for your age, you have nothing to worry about. Short term market volatility is and will always be a part of the market both high and low. The key is being less vulnerable to volatility the closer you get to retirement. I lost about $7,000 in the last week or so and could not care less because I'm 35 and have about 30 years before retirement. If you're investing for the short term or day trading that's an entirely different scenario, but why 401K investors panic time and time again when this happens or carry an inappropriate portfolio mix after decades of these simple lessons really amazes me.

I really do want to be wrong on Braun. I want the Brewers to win way more than I want to be right. It does not matter what I think of him personally, if he can contribute 25 HR or so and around an .850 OPS with 500ish ABs for even 2 of the next 3 seasons with at least passable defense, I'll gladly say that I was wrong and that he was still worth having around.

I summed up my feelings on the difference earlier. Cain is a FA signing, either you pay or don't get involved. Braun we paid at a time when we still controlled him for 4 years. I wouldn't like us signing Yelich to an extension right now either. As far as WAR goes, I'm pretty confident Cain will be worth his deal. I'm far less confident on Braun's extension, although there's still a chance (4.8 WAR in 2 seasons).

Yes, exactly. I can't understand why it's ok that Braun is overpaid, because we can still do things. Ok, great, we can still sign Darvish if we want. Maybe if we didn't have Braun, we could sign both Darvish and Arrieta. I'm not saying we would, or should, but maybe we make some other moves instead. My point is there is always a limit on how much we can do, and every penny we spend counts toward that limit. Why people must try to rationalize that Braun's contract is not bad because we can still spend, I don't get. Come on, Braun would not touch 3/60 in this market and we all know it. We took a chance on his later years and lost. It's not a bad thing to admit it.

The reason it hasn't stopped acquisitions is that they've been carrying a very low payroll because of the rebuild. If they made some moves and stretched out their payroll like they had it 5 years ago, then of course it costs them that much more in buying power. Their payroll limit is whatever it is, Braun's $20M obviously contributes to that and if they approach that limit as they have in the past than that flexibility is gone. Seems like a pretty fundamental concept, but no one is forcing you to agree. But the fact that you don't doesn't make it cute, nor old, nor tiresome, nor wrong.

It’s been overstated so many times that Braun’s contract hurts us. Well it didn’t stop us from adding over $20M to our outfield for years to come a few days ago. Not only that but if 1WAR = $8M, I think Braun will probably do alright in getting the value out of that contract. Also you may want to check out who the Cardinals are paying money to over there in St. Louis. Lol Sure it does. Are you saying if we had the chance to be free and clear of Braun's contract in exchange for not having him anymore, you wouldn't take it? There would be no reason to trade Santana, you would still be loaded in the OF, and you'd have more than enough money to go after Darvish or Arrieta and still have a ton of flexibility to make other moves. Right now, they could probably still make such a move but would be approaching the limit of what they'll probably be willing to spend. Any way you slice it, $20M spent is $20M less in spending power that you have. I am not saying Braun's contract is a disaster, although I disagree that we're going to get the value out of his remaining 3 years and $61M. He's projected for 1.5 WAR in 2018 and that number is certainly trending downward.

You don't think the Cardinals have given out FA contracts knowing full well that it's going to be a bad deal on the back end? That's fine if that's your philosophy, I can certainly understand it, I'm just saying, you can go ahead and take Cain, take Darvish, take Arrieta, take all these guys off the table, they are not available to us if you're not willing to overpay on the back end. How a contract is structured, at least as far as how the money is spread out, means nothing to me. $80M guaranteed is $80M guaranteed. Their accounting department understand their budgeting process, the time value of money and all of that a lot more than most of us do, so as far as that goes that's between Mark A. and his accountants as far as I'm concerned. I do agree about the Braun contract. They still had control for 4 years, not sure what the hurry was to lock up his 30s years, and it's certainly a deal we'd rather be without now. It would be like us extending Yelich for 2023-2026 right now. Still, they had a chance to get out of it as recently as 18 months ago, and they'll likely have a chance to get out of at least some of Cain's on the back end if they choose.

But again, we don't know how much those 4 year offers were for. Could have been 4/70 and maybe he just preferred the 5th year for $10M more. Also, if you're going to use that as your definition for 'above market' than literally pretty much every FA signing ever is above market.

Exactly. The Brewers have no choice but to accept the realities of what a player like Cain costs on the FA market, or avoid that kind of market all together and stick with contracts like Chacin. Just the way it is, hope to recoup your value in the first few years and then hope it isn't a disaster by year 5. No one expects that Cain is going to be a 4-5 WAR player at age 36. I understand the desire for a safer 3 year deal for a player his age, but even if they could have pulled it off it would have definitely been more expensive on a per year basis, something like 3/60. 3/48 would have never happened.

I think some are missing the point when it comes to the Cain deal. No one is expecting him to produce 5 years at his current level. Nor is that the Brewers expectation. Stearns and Mark A. are well aware that 5 year contracts to players in their 30s rarely work out that way. They're hoping for 2 years or so of a 4 WAR player, 2 years or so of a 2-3 WAR player, and hopefully at least a serviceable bench option by year 5. That's very realistic and $80M is well worth that if it pans out that way. The contract is also structured in a way (diminishing no trade clause list) in a way that as he ages, they will have the ability to trade him to more teams). With rising costs in MLB, if they wanted to move on after year 3 or 4, as long as Cain isn't a total distaster at that time, they can likely find a taker in at least a partial or near full salary dump, especially with the short 1-2 year commitment at that time It's actually quite smart as far as FA contracts go. Cain was a market inefficiency and Stearns took advantage. Cain is 21st in position player WAR since 2015, even with lost injury time. JD Martinez, who is going to get the much larger contract, is 42nd.