MNBrew

When your average decent name-brand t-shirt is $10 more than it is at mlb.com, which itself is more "market norm" but still overpriced, there's a glaring integrity/profiteering problem.

I think you have to go back to 1987. Wegman, Nieves, Bosio + Higuera (older but a solid #1). Plesac and Crim in the bullpen. Don August, Knudsen and Birkbeck were up and coming. Unfortunately all that talent still did not get us to the world series.Of those, Nieves was by far supposed to be the biggest deal but arguably did the least other than his no-hitter. Higuera was a stud until injuries shelved him and afterward undercut his effectiveness, though overall he was a really awesome Brewer. Looking back, that Trebelhorn era was better than we may have realized at the time. Only 1 season in 5 with a losing record. Decent teams with lots of good players. Too bad those young pitchers didn't all live up to their promise, esp. at the same time!

Having a plethora of strong rotation options is normally what other teams have, not the Brewers. Woodruff, Burnes, and Peralta didn't get a lot of big-time love on a national scale for the majority of their ascent through the minors, but they've proven themselves quite well and I'm so glad they're part of our cache of good, young arms.

^^ Exactly this. Maybe he rebounds. Maybe the offseason helps clear his head & maybe gets him to actually improve his approach..... Or maybe he's just as lousy as last year, you know it after a month, and you're stuck paying him for the next 5 months to do nothing or go away. I'm habitually an optimist, but I'd far rather just move on from Schoop.

I really like this. $1.2M for your veteran backup catcher whose game is what Kratz's is is a pretty decent deal. Yeah, he's going on 39, but we'll likely have more money blown w/ guys on the DL anyway than if we're paying Kratz $300k in AAA. You had to figure there would be at least one other catcher beyond Pina with some meaningful MLB experience on the 40-man (in other words, someone else besides Nottingham). Kratz is nothing flashy but he knows the team & the team knows what he can do & what he's about, and there's something to be said for the combination of those factors and the very reasonable cost for them. It may be a moot point, but I'd still be up for giving Stephen Vogt the same money (maybe slightly less) but on a minor-league/NRI/make-good deal, too.

I don't know if the bolded part is directed toward my remarks or someone else's -- and not that it really matters. Personally, I was already too wary of his 2018 production when we made the trade -- he was only the reigning AL Player of the Week, not like he was having anything near a good year -- and his performance in MIL for the balance of 2018 did nothing to elevate my trust in him. If it's my call, I non-tender him or find a way to move him to another team who might value him more (or who might be better equipped financially to stomach a $10M-ish mistake). Yeah, he might become this year's Scooter. Or he might be this year's version of disaster averted (like Villar thankfully rejecting that 5-yr./$20M-ish contract a couple years back). Offering him arby then cutting him by the end of ST is indeed a lesser risk -- one I might be willing to take -- but the accompanying risk of doing that is having very limited options available at the end of March compared to what may be available in the first half of the off-season.

^^Right, but there's no guarantee any of those options are any better than the revolving door options we kept trying last year with such poor results. In a nutshell, it's potentially as much of a risk not keeping Schoop as it is keeping him. $10M-ish for potentially horrid results on one side of the scale, 2017 MVP-race caliber results on the other side. If our crystal ball had the answer, this decision would be a no-brainer. In the spirit of the old '70s game show, To Tell the Truth, "Will the real 2019 Jonathan Schoop please stand up?"

I haven't looked at all into the prospects in these deals Clancy proposed, but I like the spirit of them: getting something with some future value, even if it's lottery tickets, in return for reducing eventual 25-man logjams at a couple positions. To me, Anderson & Broxton are the two guys with the most potential value to the Brewers. Trading Schoop rather than tendering/keeping him has a chance of Gennett-style backfiring, but as long as a remotely decent replacement is found, I think I'd pull that trigger. ... The Brewers aren't lacking in team-controlled depth, and there's just not room for all of them on next year's 25-man. Whether it's these guys clancyphile set forth or others, my hunch is that overall there will still be an interesting quantity of Brewers transactions this winter involving guys with respectable MLB service time.

At first blush, I like the idea of Josh Harrison. However... If Josh Harrison were only being paid as a super-utility guy like Hernan Perez, I think he'd be a nice upgrade (career: 20 points better BA & 30 points better OBP). Unfortunately Harrison's usually been more of a starter, even though he can play multiple positions a la Ben Zobrist (or, on a lesser level, Logan Forsythe), so he's definitely in a different pay grade. Given the latter point, I'm not sure he's a practical super-utility option for us (or even interested in a roving or bench-based role). I'm also not sure he'd be an ideal option for us at 2B cost/benefit- & risk/reward-wise, even compared to Schoop.

I think the best improvements the Brewers can make offensively are to reduce the number of all-or-nothing type hitters on the roster -- high K, low-ish OBP (or just plain don't hit much) types. I'm not sure how we get there without just letting guys go (which is possible) because their value to other teams would also seem to be limited, but the list of guys like that currently on our roster are: Hernan Perez (positionally versatile but his clutch hitting is generally lousy & he swings at pretty much everything) Keon Broxton (defensive is way good; bat this year was way bad) Jonathan Schoop (not worth keeping unless there are no better possible plans; risk/reward factor seems precariously high on this one) Orlando Arcia (if his Sept./Oct. performance can become a new norm & if he can swing at fewer crappy sliders, he could be a keeper for the next decade) Eric Thames (about 40% k-rate, drives in relatively few runs besides himself for a power-hitting/run-producing type of player (in other words, a very concerning RBIs/HR ratio) Tyler Saladino (2018's version of Sogard v.2017 -- great opening stretch & nothing but decline afterward with precious little anything good (esp. post-DL); early crazy stats made it take a while for folks to realize he wasn't good for much) Eric Kratz (nothing special offensively for a backup C; needs to walk more to be worth considering keeping around for 2019; intangible factors are high) To me, the only guy on there truly worth keeping regardless is Arcia. Kratz (backup C) & Broxton (5th OF) are maybes for me at best. Thames is solid enough defensively, but if he's not on a hot streak, he's a black hole in the lineup and we need to get away from that tendency. Perez is a better alternative than Saladino but I'd vote for finding a better backup utility IF option than either of them.... OR, looking at it from a different angle... Since the Brewers seem to like keeping 13 pitchers on the roster, and if both no-remaining-options OF Santana & Broxton aren't sent elsewhere (or non-tendered in Broxton's case), you'll either have... - 2 backup IFs (Thames & a Perez-type) & Santana, plus a backup C --> this means no Broxton - 1 backup IF (Perez-type) & both Santana & Broxton, plus a backup C --> could mean Moose or Schoop is here (or not), but for sure means no Thames, w/ Shaw also as backup 1B - ONLY 12 pitchers, and then 2 OF reserves & 2 IF reserves plus a backup C. I'd guess the 1st option is the most likely, although the 3rd option might be the case until May or until they need a 5th starter regularly. I think one roster consideration is having an IF, OF, or one of each who has an option remaining to allow for the sort of AAA player shuffling Stearns did a lot last year. While that might seem obvious, that's pertinent to my 3 scenarios above because keeping all of Thames, Perez, Santana, & Broxton means the Brewers DON'T have any position players with options left (unless Arcia does, and you normally wouldn't yo-yo your starting SS like that, making him have to stay down at least 10 days every time a pitcher is shuffled). I can't see Stearns putting the Brewers into that situation.

Maybe he thinks the Brewers just decided to let Derek Johnson go to the Reds & doesn't know they actually were negotiating hard to keep him.... and the "wake up call" bit may be what purpose he thinks Johnson's departure will serve to/for the Brewers. That's the only concrete thing I can think of. Those coaching & trainer changes are truly all they've done. Nothing else is even remotely questionable on a level even as small as letting Taylor Jungmann leave for overseas last winter. If he thinks there's anything to what he's saying, but that's all he's actually going to say, then he's truly no journalist and in the meantime he's just gotten a bunch of folks grasping for any kind of news/scoops/insights all hot & bothered over a bunch of nothing.

... because Ray Kroc, their owner, owned McDonald's. Nothing to do with the city, just their owner's main revenue stream.

No, not at all. Apples & oranges. Some teams just choose to get the non-tender thing out of the way now. They have 10 more days 'til that Nov. 30th deadline. Also, players offered arbitration can decline it, although that doesn't seem to happen that often because it changes a definite (though somewhat non-guaranteed) salary to an uncertain one from the player's standpoint. Not offering arbitration later opens roster spots for FAs, creates roster flexibility for trades, etc. No doubt they'll fill most/all empty spots by spring training, possibly through multiple types of moves.

Very very very sad! At least when the Brewers were good, they got there in a sound way. The Marlins sold their soul for a Series ring -- and of course it worked twice -- only to tear it all down immediately and totally undermine the fan base's trust in the team for many, many years.

^^^ This. How many other teams' uniforms' colors are truly about the city -- especially only one aspect of a very large & diverse city -- and not the nickname/logo/mascot/whatever?

I'm not completely opposed to clancy's idea. I think it holds water nicely. Greinke isn't his vintage self but his current self is still very good AND a higher pedigree & proven commodity than any other SP we currently have. One note: Chase Anderson's 2020-2021 seasons are team options which I can't imagine the Brewers at this point would be very likely to pick up. The main/guaranteed thing with the contract was 2 years, $11.75M, which spans 2018-2019.

No way. Yelich is exactly the type of talent we've been trying to acquire: Just entering his prime. Incredibly productive. Very affordable. He's put himself in position to be our next franchise cornerstone, a guy we build around. Just no way do you even think of trading that guy. Brandon Nimmo's got talent but isn't Yelich -- and honestly is still pretty redundant on the current roster, so at the very minimum the timing's not right. Syndergaard is high on promise but injury issues make him a big gamble for whatever the acquiring price may be.

Reaction v2.0: In the late '90s, Sports Illustrated or some similar publication rated all MLB teams' current uniforms. At the time, the Brewers were maybe 2 (of the 3) years into their 2nd version of the post-ball/glove logo (a look I liked a lot, however transitional that look turned out to be). Their take on the Brewers' unis? They put them in the "mall rats" category because the look was changing every couple years -- hardly the flattering appraisal! That all came back to mind with this new (again) Marlins look..... Except I still really like those mid-'90s looks of the Brewers (yes, even the Motre Bame logo) about a thousand times better than anything the Marlins have done since they went away from their original colors. Side note on the earlier ball/glove logo comments: I'd like the look better if it were navy & gold, not navy & yellow -- in other words, in the current primary colors. I love that logo, but I still think the current look is their best ever.

Definitely an improvement over the last uniforms, but that's not saying much. Too much they didn't get right. Bland-and-ugly "Miami" font, black M (cap) & wording (chest) on black backgrounds (did MLB's marketing division really not learn anything from the Mets' foolish and seemingly eternal fixation on black?... or Atlanta's navy number on navy jerseys?), black fish on a black baseball..... Yikes! So far the best Marlins look is hands-down within the variations of their original look -- concept, colors, a fish that looks like a fish but still works well within a baseball team logo.... about anything except the quirky sleeveless jerseys and the trendy-at-the-time black alternate jerseys with silvery-gray "Marlins" across the front (although the gray looks 100x better than the new black-on-black variation). One of the videos on the Marlins' website interviews Jeter and his wording reveals what I see as the same flawed logic of his hairbrained predecessor, Loria -- something to the effect of "We want to capture the look of Miami." The people there know where they live and see the color scheme everywhere. It sounds like they're more interested in "catching the moment & trends" than making a great, timeless baseball uniform that happens to utilize a color scheme that's identifiable with the city.

The same Sam Freeman who was a total disaster in his short 2016 Brewers run?

Miami traded Justin Bour traded to the Phillies in August.

It's a different era and some criteria are viewed differently now than then, but that already is potentially still close to better than the 6 guys we got from AZ in return for Richie Sexson, possibly better overall if we throw a nugget in there. That was Craig Counsell, Chad Moeller, Lyle Overbay, Junior Spivey, Chris Capuano, & Jorge de la Rosa. Cappy & de la Rosa had hardly seen the bigs at that point. At the time the deal was seen largely as a quantity-over-quality deal by Dean Taylor, but it did help fill a lot of spots on a needy team's roster at that point. Of course Overbay started fulfilling his potential his first run in MIL. Spivey, Counsell, & Moeller were better than what we had previously at their positions (or at least brought some improvement in their varied skill sets), though all saw their games' respective apexes elsewhere (earlier) in their careers. Capuano reached his ceiling with MIL and that was pretty good, although after his second Tommy John surgery he was never quite the same. DLR never came close to living up to the hype in MIL but obviously figured things out later in a long run for COL.

Grandal was quite the liability for the Dodgers in the NLCS. I don't want anything to do with him. (Side note: Wasn't he also one of the Biogenesis names, too?)

The Taylor move seems a little curious and it's possible he still ends up a short-timer for the organization -- or maybe he makes it next year over either Broxton or Santana since they're both out of options. I like Kyle Wren, too, and he seems to outproduce Taylor, and wonder what's preventing him from being viewed as a useful MLB piece.

Yep We aren't rebuilding.....we are going for it......he isn't going to be moved unless we acquire a 3rd baseman to replace him......which would make no sense considering how much he makes. Sign Manny Machado. Sorry, just had to say it for its ridiculousness. . . . Never mind that a) I don't think Travis Shaw's a trade candidate in any way b/c his attributes are what we're trying to accumulate more of, not trade; and b) trading Shaw & acquiring a RH hitting 3B would give us only Yelich as a LH bat in the starting lineup, and we weren't left-handed enough at all until we acquired Moustakas, which may well prove to be just a short-term acquisition only anyway.