adambr2

I think you could probably get around this pretty easily, just negotiate in the trade that the Yankees will pay X dollars, say half of the 2021 salary if it vests which would leave us on the hook for $8.5M. Which we'd want to do anyway if he was lights out, we wouldn't want to manipulate his time to get out of it.

Now in no way shape or form am I saying they should have signed Gausman(yuck)...But i'm wondering, so far you have said "pass" on just about every FA signed this year. You realize the Brewers have 8 40 man spots to fill yet and about 40-$50 million to spend, right?? Who exactly would you like to see them spend it on?? It's an honest question, because I don't know. I would have been happy with Didi at the 1/14 he got and I indicated in the Didi thread that I was interested in him. I also expressed interest in the Happ thread at acquiring him and his contract if the Yankees made it worthwhile. I've also expressed that I would love to sign Ryu or Donaldson and said last night that Kris Bryant would be a perfect trade acquisition for us if it wasn't the Cubs involved who would be unlikely to deal him to us anyway. If you think I've said pass to every single option to spend our money, you aren't looking in the right places. I'm opposed to spending the kind of stupid money on long term deals for guys in their 30s that is 95% guaranteed to look regrettable in 2 years.

Pretty surprised he didn't do better than that in this market. But, we don't know that he would have come here for 1/14 too.

Yeah, hard pass for 9M. We already have our own power arm high strikeout guy who got rocked every time out to try for ourselves in 2020 without paying 9M for one.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/12/giants-acquire-zack-cozart.html This is basically the same principle as the Brewers would potentially be looking to apply if they traded for Happ. Giants take on a bad contract and get a really nice prospect in doing so with Will Wilson. Don't see deals like that too often, I wonder if you'll start seeing more of it with high rolling teams looking for creative ways to get under the luxury tax.

Well, never mind on that. Not a big deal. Wasn't a pressing need anyway.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/12/brewers-corey-knebel-avoid-arbitration.html Don't see terms yet. Here's hoping Knebel will be ready for the start of 2020 and back in form as a late inning weapon.

The Yankees shouldn't expect anything substantial at all for Happ regardless of whether they kick in salary or not. And no team is taking Happ and his full contract off the Yankee's hands for free. His potential vesting option only complicates things further.

Nah, I get the point. I am just really not much of a fan of such a move when we are in the midst of competing. Unless we are getting a future All Star type player I am just not really a fan. I don't care to grab solid, but not great prospects when it is a huge negative on the current team. The odds those players are worth it someday so much so it was worth wasting a ton of money while competing is unlikely. Of course if we don't waste $17mil or double that on Happ, what are we doing with it? Is it going to be put to use on the team or not. That obviously makes a difference. There are so many moving parts to an idea like this it is hard to judge without a real proposal. Maybe they are taking on the salary and then flipping the prospects...I mean who knows. That's kind of what I was curious about as to if that is their potential angle. If you could get assets that would potentially be used as bait in July when you're looking to fill the gaps in for a pennant race. Right now our trade chips to use for any major midseason deals are pretty nonexistent. Maybe Turang but you'd like to keep some of these guys too.

Yeah I don't see it. You're going to force teams to IL a player with a possible legitimate day-to-day injury?

I think some are missing the main point of making a deal like this. You aren't doing the deal because you're excited about paying JA Happ 17M, you're doing the deal because the Yankees make it worth your while to do so in what else they can include. The hope on the Happ rebound is just a bonus if it happens. If it doesn't, nothing says you're locked into a rotation spot with him and can't move him into the deep area of your pen as a long man if things don't work out for him starting and you have better options. Obviously, you only do this if the other inclusions make it worthwhile. The possibility does exist that the option could vest and that needs to be factored into negotiations with the Yankees.

I hope they make an absolute mockery of it. Claudio throws ball 4 to his lefty and immediately grabs his arm, is fine the next day. How are you going to enforce it and tell him he didn't actually have arm discomfort in that moment?

I'm going to copy my post from another thread since it directly relates to this and explains why I'd be in favor of taking on Happ and his salary if the prospect benefit is sufficient: 1) Worrying about the future is always necessary. You can't solely focus on the 3 year Yelich window. 2) Just because you trade for guys that aren't going to play in that 3 year window, doesn't mean they can't help you in that 3 year window. Whose to say DS doesn't have a bigger plan to turn around and use the new prospects from the Yankees as buying ammo either at the deadline or this time next year? We don't have much for trade chips right now. Someone like Dominguez could see a substantial spike in value in the near future and be worth a haul before we know it. 3). Happ isn't far removed from being a really really good starter and still has great K numbers. At worst you plug a hole in the back of your rotation and at best you could have a really good rebound candidate. I think if it's short term, the prospect(s) are right, and you don't want to get heavily involved in an overpriced FA market, it's potentially a creatively useful way to use some of the extra money available.

I tend to agree with this. Taking on bad contracts for prospects makes sense for a team like the Tigers or Orioles or Marlins or Cubs, not the Brewers. Exactly. And one thing that almost fits our window perfectly is all these teams handing out these massive 5-7 year deals. We are in a window to be competitive for 4-5 years and could enter a rebuild at that point. Trading guys like Urias, Hiura, Lauer, Woodruff possibly in there, guys like that. At that point, we can take on those deals like a final year of Wheeler and adding some prospects, an ugly Bumgarner contract with a year or two left, things like that. I thought of this recently with all these huge deals being given out again this year like years past that they almost fit our window perfectly where we could do a very quick turn around in a year or two span from taking on some of these likely ugly contracts a few years down the line. I disagree for a few different reasons: 1) Worrying about the future is always necessary. You can't solely focus on the 3 year Yelich window. 2) Just because you trade for guys that aren't going to play in that 3 year window, doesn't mean they can't help you in that 3 year window. Whose to say DS doesn't have a bigger plan to turn around and use the new prospects from the Yankees as buying ammo either at the deadline or this time next year? We don't have much for trade chips right now. Someone like Dominguez could see a substantial spike in value in the near future and be worth a haul before we know it. 3). Happ isn't far removed from being a really really good starter and still has great K numbers. At worst you plug a hole in the back of your rotation and at best you could have a really good rebound candidate. I think if it's short term, the prospect(s) are right, and you don't want to get heavily involved in an overpriced FA market, it's potentially a creatively useful way to use some of the extra money available.

I'll take Jasson Dominguez off their hands if they want us to take on Happ. It doesn't need to be an MLB ready prospect. Any value on the farm helps.

I overstated saying Gold Glove caliber, that's not true anymore. He was a gold glove finalist in 2015, improved in '17 to a little better than average, but never really returned to gold glove form after his TJ surgery. However he still hasn't played any other position in 5 years. I do stand by saying if they sign him it's to be our starting SS.

I guess it would depend on if there is a team out there that is attaching extra value to Gregorius simply because he can play SS. But his value might be quashed a bit simply because there doesn't seem to be many teams looking for SS help. I think the Brewers are interested in Gregorius because they see a guy with a decent left-handed stick who is a good fit for the lineup and may be looking at a short-term deal. The fact that he can play a competent SS is a bonus. Well, Didi has a really good glove at SS. Near gold glove caliber. I don't see that personally as a bonus, I see that as a huge selling point. Being such a premium defensive position I think if you sign Didi you definitely are doing it large in part for that defense at SS. He hasn't moved off that position for even an inning in 5 years. Just my speculation of course, but I think a Didi signing you could almost certainly pencil him in as the everyday starting SS. After that, I have no idea. Hiura trade? Urias to AAA? Urias to 3rd? Any number of ways they could go.

I wouldn’t mind having him, but his value lies in being able to play SS, which the brewers no longer need. I guess there aren’t many competitive teams looking for SS help other than cincy, but I see him getting more than his production would be worth as a 3B I think we need to get past attaching values to positions. It's a matter of putting the best lineup together. As long as you can throw them out somewhere on defense and they don't embarrass themselves, you should be fine. The fact that there aren't many teams looking for SS help plays right into the Brewers' lap in this case. Last year there were a lot of teams looking for 2B help, including the Brewers. There weren't many looking for 3B, though. So the Brewers signed a 3B with solid offensive production, and played him at 2B, where his production became elite. I doubt that mattered to the Brewers, though. They just wanted Moose's bat in the lineup. It was thinking outside the box. We may just see it again. I think you have to attach value to positions. No team, for example, would have paid Yasmani Grandal 72 million to be their first baseman. You could do it, but the value in his bat is the position that it comes from. Now when the season begins and your roster is set, I agree, you play the guys in the positions where you think it can be most cumulatively beneficial to the team, whether the bat plays or not. If you start the season with Hiura, Urias and Gregorius as your infielders, you play them wherever you think they fit best. But when assembling the roster, I do think you want to try to have above average bats at a position when possible. If you go into the season with Urias as you starting 3rd baseman, you should go in with the knowledge that his bat will likely be well below average for that position.

Yes. Any way you look at it, the LOOGY is dead after this rule is instituted. Yes you can bring him in for a lefty with 2 outs, but if he doesn't get his guy, and now you've got righties due up, you can't do anything, you are just screwed. So you've taken away a manager's ability to manage his pitching staff. 1-2 batter outings for a pitcher are actually going down, not up. One batter appearances for pitchers are at the lowest point they've been in 13 years. They are attacking a problem that doesn't even exist. The only way to really speed up games is to enforce a pitch clock. Period. All this other stuff is just stupid and does more harm than good. Either enforce your pitch clock and deal with the fallout or deal with the fact that 3 hour baseball games are just how it is.

It's really a shame that Kris Bryant plays for the Cubs because he would be an absolute perfect trade target for the Brewers. Huge righty bat at a position of need, can play the OF, 2 years of control at probably 40M.

Well! Case closed on my extremely radical position of "none of us should pretend to be smart enough to know whether the front office thinks Hiura could move to 3B or not" I'm not sure where you are trying to go with this. None of usknow that they aren't thinking of moving Ryan Braun back to 3B for 2020, either. But we have strong evidence that it will never happen. That same evidence exists for Hiura at 3rd, too. Numerous scouting reports have limited him based on his arm strength. He was a DH in college, he's almost certain to struggle to field hard hit balls down the line and you simply cannot have a liability for an arm at 3rd. I don't know what you are expecting Statcast to tell you that we haven't already seen in scouting reports. His arm strength is below average. I thought that was obvious just from the eye test, personally. I'll almost never say "this will never happen", but yes, I personally think that Hiura has about the same chance to see meaningful innings at 3rd base for us as Ryan Braun does.

God help the hitter who doesn't follow the letter of every unwritten rule that ever existed when that battery is out on the field.

I really hope for your sake that there are not credit card companies out there monitoring the tendencies and behaviors of posters on Brewerfan.net. Your mailbox will be flooded with offers.

I'll take the over, but I'll put the over/under at 95% that this contract turns out horribly for the Nationals and take the over.

If he was the same pitcher he would be far out of our price range. I do think that winning a Cy Young at any point in one's career nullifies any Jeff Suppan comparisons, as others were making He's definitely a far better option now than Suppan was when we signed him. Probably around what Lohse was at the time we signed him. Lohse shouldn't be compared to Suppan either. He was a really good signing for 2 years. Just ran out of gas in the 3rd which illustrates the danger of these long-term deals to starters in their 30s.