adambr2

Recently, particularly with the Braves, we've seen a trend of long-term extensions for extremely young players. It makes sense for an organization like the Brewers, who certainly would want to keep their own homegrown talent but lack the capital to keep superstars if they are allowed to hit free agency. While extending guys into their mid to late 30's isn't something I'm particularly fond of, locking up 22 year old players for the prime of their career is different. I'd also add that with a new CBA coming up in the coming years, there may be more of an urgency to lock up core players now, not knowing how control of these players will look later. If someone like Ronald Acuna and Ozzie Albies are willing to do so, would a player like Keston Hiura also be interested? If he is, he probably is looking at the 8 year, 100M extension for Acuna as the baseline for an extension for himself. Of course, Acuna is a well more complete prospect than Hiura, and I think the Brewers would be looking for something closer to the Ozzie Albies deal. That's a fairly significant gap, but perhaps there's a middle ground here. Something for Hiura might be structured along these lines: 2020: 1M 2021: 2M 2022: 3M 2023: 8M 2024: 10M 2025: 12M 2026: 17M 2026: 20M team option with 5M buyout 2027: 20M team option with 5M buyout The bare minimum guarantee to Hiura in this deal would be $63M over 6 years, with a maximum value of $93M over 8 years. Why it might work for the Brewers: If they believe Hiura is a core player and his performance so far is indicative of what he can bring, it's a great value. They never go over 17M without an option, and the buyouts are reasonable if things go south. In no way is this a crippling deal. Why it might work for Hiura: Simply put, 63 million dollars, bird in the hand. If Hiura has any concerns about his long-term defensive ability or his elbow, why not cash in now? He gets paid more than a traditional 0-3 player in his first 3 years, and can earn nearly the full 100M in this contract if he is anything close to what they expect. Trent Grisham is an entirely different situation, and with him, maybe it's just too soon. If you're signing Grisham long-term, you're looking for a substantial discount -- after all, he's been in the big leagues all of two weeks, he wasn't considered a top prospect coming into this season, and there's really no rush. Still, if you look at him as a building block and can lock in significant savings now, it's not a bad idea. Grisham would resemble much closer to a Lucroy type extension than a Acuna one. Off the top of my head, I'd guess a reasonable offer right now would look something like: 2020: 1M 2021: 1M 2022: 1M 2023: 4M 2024: 6M 2025: 8M 2026: 10M team option with 2M buyout 2027: 11M team option with 2M buyout In Grisham's case, it's either a 6 year/$25M deal, a 7 year/$33M deal, or a 8 year/$42M deal. So if this is such a lowball, why would Grisham do it? Well, this is a guy who entered this year in AA Biloxi and many felt his MLB dreams were starting to fade. Now that you're here, if you have a chance to cash in on it and take care of yourself and your family for life, is that opportunity too good to pass up? $25M, guaranteed, with a signature, to a kid who had never played above Class AA before this season. In any event, these are just my thoughts, I'm sure some will believe that I'm off on estimates, or that it's far too early for either to even consider. But I think it's an idea at least worth kicking around for the organization -- investing in your young talent is something that not only often proves to be a worthy investment, but generates fan excitement to commit to keeping players here for the primes of their careers.

Hands down. The biggest disappointment of the year More than Shaw If I could know that it would have made the difference in 1 game in the NLCS and put us in the World Series, I would gladly have given up Burnes now to get Machado like the Orioles wanted. I hate that I just said that.

Going to be an interesting race. It's basically a race for the NL Central and then a 5 team race in the East and Central for two WCs.

Great job Albers.

Huge

Don't forget about the 87 or so runs we left out there in the early innings.

BA: "They don't make it easy, right?" The Rangers, or our pen?

Nah, he's just here to put the leadoff man on.

I would guess Albers for the 9th...because who do they have, really? Maybe Peralta?

Sure would have been nice to have Grisham hitting there. 3 for 3 and a walk gets you double switched out?

You must have forgotten about Choo tattooing that ball into the seats off Pomeranz before the not being able to throw a strike thing even happened.

Man did Odor ever just bail Pomeranz out.

Pomeranz...EXACTLY who he should be going with. Like I said...there's no magic formula.

Who would have thought that a guy with a 6 ERA wouldn't be a great addition?

Umm, you can probably go get him, Craig.

THIS is why I said we miss Houser in the pen. Not because I think he's a bum who can't start. Because the rest of our pen is terrible without him.

It's pointless to argue over which option Counsell should go with, let's be honest, without Hader he has no good options. Just gotta try to match up the best we can and hope we get a good day out of the ones we use. There's no magic formula.

I don't know, why don't we see if the pen that lacks him can hold the lead without him, since that is part of the narrative? Houser was 0-5 with a 6.82 as a starter and had a 1.47 as a reliever entering play tonight. One single outing is hardly going to change anyone's mind.

Feels like we should be up at least 8-0 today.

Grisham is really fun to watch. Everything he does just resembles a veteran, not a guy with under 2 weeks of MLB experience. Baserunning instincts, plate discipline, and a pretty sweet swing and lots of hard contact. While I don't expect him to match Hiura as an MLB hitter, I see no reason to think he isn't going to be a very good player in this league.

I don't think it's about prospects in general being overrated, I think it's probably a lot more the very limited value the league obviously places on Dubon.

Is it just me, or did Rock get a little testy when BA joked that he was saying the Brewers are better without Yelich?

There are no gravy games. Everything counts the same over 162. We needed every single win we got last year to win the division.

My two cents on today -- 1) Houser's absence is just killing this bullpen. It's just had so many effects, and is causing them to lean heavily on Hader, which is probably not helping with his struggles. Before, they at least had one more reliable bridge to gap the late innings. Now they have no one -- they can matchup lefties with Claudio, but other than that, it's just straight winging it after the starter leaves. Houser isn't a good enough starter to justify how much his loss to the pen has hurt us. They've got to find a way to get him back in the role he excels at. Faria is not the answer. Pomeranz has been fine, but he's clearly not a guy they want to lean on. They can lean more heavily on Devin Williams, they can call up Black, these are options, but to be clear, they are just lottery ticket moves. Just because Williams and Black have great stuff does not mean they will automatically translate into late inning options. They need Houser back in the pen. 2) On that note, I really don't know how they're going to be able to hang in there with this pen the rest of the way. I can't imagine that guys like Suter and Wahl are really going to move the needle much. They really need a guy to step up in a big way. I'd say Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta, and Jimmy Nelson have the best chance of making that happen, but I'm not holding my breath on any. Two weeks ago I thought we finally had another late inning guy in Peralta, and now he's taken a step back. 3) Thames seems to have a knack for the big late inning walkoffs. Well done. 4) Somehow, it's a 4 game winning streak. We'll certainly take it any way we can get it, no style points at this juncture of the season.

Thames likes those August walkoff homeruns. I was at it last August when he did it. Well for a 9 inning game with no delays, this was certainly one of the longer ones I've ever seen.