adambr2

I doubt they have someone go 9-15 from 3 for multiple games in the playoffs. Great resilience to fight through and win. I doubt that too. Very much so. Probably not, but it sure felt like Van Vleet did last year.

I am still trying to figure out how Jackson shot out of his mind tonight. Dude has a hideous looking shot.

I guess I hit a sore spot... Wow. My point was more that what ifs are pointless. It only happened one way, regardless of whether it could've been different or not. So? It's a message board, not a philosophy classroom. I'm sure it's regretted fro Cuban's perspective all the time. The example I gave was a legitimate real life one, Nelson went to Cuban and said Giannis was his guy -- actually more than that, he was completely all-in on Giannis . Cuban said no to save $400,000 in cap space to try to make a run at Dwight Howard.

I guess things can change, but Counsell has said that Braun won't be the everyday 1B un 2020.

I think they're bored tonight. This is as sloppy of a first half as I've seen from them in a long time.

Intimidation factor, really? Love Hader, but I wish the 15 guys who homered off him in 2019 had been a little more intimidated. Or the Washington Nationals, for that matter.

Eh. A pitch to contact guy if there ever was one. They did need some SP depth, just not sure if ths is an upgrade over Anderson and I would guess it will come in around the same price that he was given what the market has been. But I could be wrong. Maybe it'll be much lower than I'm expecting.

You can do you, if you like chanting stuff like that, it's cool, it's just not my thing. I think the bigger point here is that fans tend to attach themselves to players over sentimental things that really don't mean much to the point where they are outraged when everything that was possible wasn't done to keep that player. We always have to remember, this is a business, players we have come to like will leave, and the only thing that really matters from year to year is winning baseball games. As such, of course I enjoy individual players and root for them but all the while understanding that first and foremost I am a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers the team.

People like doing Kuhn, Moose, etc., chants and it makes them overrate those players. I saw someone refer to Moose as an incredible player yesterday. I will never understand why a chant for anyone with a name or nickname that has an "Oou" sound in it needs to be a thing.

Also, Moustakas had a .256/.326/.441/.767 line in his 2 months as a Brewer in 2018. We made the playoffs by a full 4+ games. To suggest we would not have made them without that 2 month production line from Moustakas is laughable. Moustakas hit a terrible, middle middle, 0-2 mistake pitch from Adam Ottavino for a walkoff win in a playoff game and that somehow caused people to remember his 2018 for more than it really was.

That's a lot of maybe's to have to count on though. If even one goes bad, it could be disastrous. That's the thing, when you have stars, you have to "go for it". The window is so small, you have to take advantage of it while it's available. Why so many applaud the Brewers approach(though it's worked to this point), of signing guys and hoping the have a bounce back etc, is mind boggling to me. It's going to work some of the time, but it's definitely not a sustainable strategy. Look no further than Jhoulys Chacin. The Brewers got one really good year out of him, and in year two..he reverted back to being...well Jhoulys Chacin. Look at the "gamble" Stearns took in going with the three young arms in the rotation last year...yeah that didn't work so well, did it?? Hader is a known quantity, at least to this point he has been, why the rush to trade a guy and HOPE to make up the production elsewhere?? They might not. They might keep him. I would be fine with that too. No reason we can't revisit this at this time next year, it's unlikely his value will have changed much. I'm not in the camp of " trade him because his value might never be higher". It's got to be the right offer.

The thing is (and this is more of a general comment than directed at you), some people talk about this like it's so easy. We could have benefitted from having 2 more great pitchers in the postseason? Of course we could have. This isn't unique to us. Every one of the other 8 playoff teams that didn't win the World Series could have benefited from 2 more great pitchers. I don't think that anyone is suggesting the rotation is good enough just because we made the playoffs two years in a row, but rather that Stearns is doing a really good job given the limitations that he has to put a contending team out there. If you look at the top rotations in baseball, almost all are supported by either heavy payrolls or really good pitcher farm development. A team like the Rays is unique in having made a couple really savvy trades and signings recently that have happened to pan out. But they don't always. We were obviously hoping Corbin Burnes would be our Tyler Glasnow and unfortunately that didn't happen, not yet. But you just don't know. I understand why they wanted to find out. Yes, you can dabble in free agency, but the days of throwing 3/30 at a decent proven Randy Wolf type and calling it a day are long gone. These solid proven affordable starters that people want to go just go out and sign simply don't exist, which is why guys like Lindblom are such great guys to take a chance on. The Tanner Roarks of the world are getting 12M a year. That 5/80 we gave to Cain a couple years ago? That doesn't buy jack for starting pitching in this market. Not without questions and risks, anyway. We haven't been good enough in developing our own pitching over the years, that is true. But that's something that takes years, so I'm certainly not going to put that on the GM who has been here for 4 years. We'll see how his first generation of guys, Burnes, Ashby, Rasmussen, etc. turn out.

It's what the Brewers needed to do with Nelson in 2019, IMO. Turn him into a reliever. They tried. That didn't work either.

I have no problem with taking the best return, but I totally disagree with the notion that we won't be competing in 2020 without Hader. We wouldn't be making that kind of move if we really believed that. There are just too many unknown variables to say that. Maybe Knebel returns to form after surgery and replaces Hader's production. Maybe Burnes becomes a bullpen ace. Maybe Wahl becomes a stud in the pen. Maybe we sign or trade for a couple relievers yet. There are far too many other factors at play to say that trading a reliever automatically takes you out of contention. In 2017, we just missed the playoffs after a great season, a lot in part because of the performance of our ace, Jimmy Nelson. In 2018 we lost him and got even better because we made up the production elsewhere.

They were without from I think 92 to 99. Not sure why it was removed in '92. My guess is technology just wasn't good enough at the time for the NFL to really be ready for replay. I mean they were viewing these in standard definition on 12 inch screens. It probably just didn't work very well.

Jeff McNeil was an All-Star last year. He's been mentioned in this thread as a potential target. He'd be a solid fit at 3B I think. 27 years old, and broke out in a huge way last year power wise. The high-contact bat has always been there. He's be a nice part of a package. Admittedly, he makes me nervous, for MY liking, he hasn't done it long enough yet to be considered "proven" to me anyway. Maybe he'd end up being very good, but that would be too risky for my liking. Again, for me, if it's the Mets, it starts with Syndergaard, if the answer is no right away, I hang up the phone, and don't engage with them anymore. Personal preference. "Damn, he hung up. I was going to offer DeGrom and McNeil next."

As Sveum pointed out there just is no proven top end starter coming back for Hader, it just does not work that way. Best you could hope for is to get a guy with the upside to become one but who isn't there yet, like the Rays did with Glasnow when they traded Archer.

Jeff McNeil and Max Muncy were Rule 5 eligible in 2017. In the two seasons since then McNeil has put up a 142 OPS+ with defensive positional flexibility. Also, if you are holding past prospect pedigree against players, its worth acknowledging Hader was considered the third or fourth piece to a trade that brought in 4 prospects, and he had already been traded once before at that point as the throw-in piece on another deal. Players evolve and improve, I wouldn’t hold their development path from their pre-MLB days against them years later.. 3rd. Sorry, pet peeve of mine that people have rewritten history on the Gomez trade to say Houser was considered the best or second best piece when he was absolutely the 4th piece

In 339 PA at AAA last season, 21-22 year old Luis Urias hit .315/.398/.600/.998 with 19 HR and 7 SB, and held his own in the majors in a smaller sample size. He should have tried a little harder to avoid tanking his prospect value I guess It's fair to question why Urias' had such an extreme drop. I think he went from the 50s or 60s to the 20s. I can understand the adjustment because of obviously different market perception, but not to that extreme if there isn't a production drop to support it. Urias had a fantastic AAA season as you said and there was a lot of good even at the MLB level as a young player. He got on base 33 percent of the time in his first extended big league stint as a 22 year old and would have been about a 2.5 to 3 WAR player over a full season just even at what his MLB production was. There's the 6 years of control there and I think putting his value between 20-30 is underselling him.

Ok, but it's not a "perfect valuation tool" in the same way that HighHeat19 was not a "perfect inside source." Anyway nobody is stopping anyone else from posting them, but I also don't think that should stop the rest of his from expressing our opinion of trade proposals (or rather critiques of trade proposals) based on those numbers. I think they can be interesting to look at, but less interesting when the implication is "that is not a realistic trade proposal, based on these values" The HighHeat19 comparison is pretty unfair. There isn't a Ken Rosenthal of trade simulators, and the guy running the simulator isn't an Internet troll pulling the numbers out of thin air. There's reasoning and logic behind all of it, and it's your right to agree or disagree with any aspect of it. Well according to the site, Lux and May combined are worth about the same as Hiura+Woodruff which seems about right to me and which about the same as the other two. I wouldn't trade Yelich for Lux and May, but it's not a ridiculous proposal. It is just harder to measure the two values up against each other because they derive value from different things. Yelich is valuable because of his fantastic production. Lux and May are valuable because of their immense upside and having 4 times more control than Yelich.

The reasoning behind the drop for Urias has been explained numerous times. It wasn't arbitrary. We don't have a perfect tool for dollar evaluation of MLB assets and frankly such a tool would be impossible. If you think the trade evaluator is a complete waste of time no one is forcing you to use it.

I think Stearns has already proven to be anything but a traditional GM. I don't think his Rule 5 involvement makes him any more or less traditional.

Yeah I would love Jasson Dominguez. I think some people limit themselves to only wanting MLB ready talent back, which I think is a mistake. Even if you don't want to wait on someone like Dominguez, he could pretty easily be one of the more premiere trade chips in baseball at this time next year.

Brewers also lost Nate Griep, Bryan Torres and Jordan Brink in the AAA phase. 2 Thing: 1) It kind of shocks me how Stearns is all about finding value, but seems to have no interest in taking a Rule 5 guy. These guys are proven minor league talents that haven’t been given a shot. It’s a much safer pick than paying some 8th round draft pick or whatever $100,000. You get a guy already proven in the minors who could be on the cusp of the MLB. And if he doesn’t work, you get half of that back. Honestly it’s surprising he’s not involved. Even for a bullpen arm or SOMETHING! Stearns values flexibility and there is no flexibility at all with a Rule 5 pick. Yes he is value-oriented for sure but I think he prefers to be have the ability to shuffle the back of his roster as needed rather than be locked into a spot with a guy who is likely going to produce marginal results. In rebuilding years it might not matter so much but at this point I don't think we're looking for another Wei Chung Wang experiment.

I can't believe no rebuilding team took a flyer on Zack Brown for their pen. Either this is the worst Brewer farm system ever or the leaguewide view of Brown from GMs isn't even close to the publications or our fan perceptions.