MNBrew

On a lighter note, this reminds me of our Mouton-accumulating days (both Lyle & James playing for MIL). Now we're accumulating Bet(h)ancourts: - Not long ago (but too recently for most folks' liking) we had the nefarious Yuni Betancourt. - We currently have Javier Betancourt from the K-Rod trade playing IF in the system. - Now we have Christian Bethancourt to catch at AAA. It's a moot point, but I really liked both Moutons at the time even though their overall MIL performance wasn't stellar.

There's no need to release anyone on account of Bethancourt's signing since he's on a minor-league deal. However, if you're suggesting it means Bandy or, perhaps more likely, Susac is either DFA'd with the Logan signing or included in some forthcoming trade, I agree with your domino theory.

^^ This. It's easy to get prospect-crazy, but there are two truths that never go away: - Not every prospect pans out. - Not every prospect can make your MLB team at the same time. Especially when the talent pipeline is strong, there aren't enough spaces on a roster. Therefore, some of your prospects' value is, in essence, as "trade currency." So in the end, the art is in finding the right balance for what your team needs -- and how you're able to fill them adequately first with your own assets, then supplement from other sources -- and financially can support. Lorenzo Cain represents a sort of hitter/player the team doesn't currently have, so he fills one type of need. If the Brewers can or choose to trade other OF assets (for a suitable return) to make room for Cain, I'm all for it.

I don't want too many guys w/ lovely OPS's whose OPS is weighted too heavily on power. Power is often streaky and too prone to cold streaks. Good hitters that put the ball in play, guys with good OBP, those are the guys who can help the team at the plate more consistently even when the HRs go MIA.

Not for the Brewers' beat writers apparently ... If there's no news yet, there's no need for a beat writer to tell us there's no news yet. Besides, Haudricourt was on Twitter today touching on the Cain rumors. If there's indeed some trade action or other player movement eventually afoot, it's possible the Brewers would need that move (or those moves) to create roster space so making Logan's signing official and adding him to the 40-man roster doesn't mean DFA'ing someone unnecessarily. It's also possible Logan's signing could be a minor-league/NRI deal.

Rosenthal certainly would be a buy-low guy, esp. if you could come up with an incentive-heavy, "make good" deal. I was thinking about him over the past few weeks.

Cain is the type of hitter that the Brewers don't have enough of. I don't want more HR-or-nothing/high-K hitters. We have way too many of those. 32 is not a ridiculous age and a 2-3 year deal wouldn't be absurd in my opinion if it's for a reasonable-enough price. As others have said, I'd assume that such a signing would also mean getting a substantial-enough return for at least one current Brewers OF. I'd much rather have Cain than Gomez, whose skills seem to be slipping and who is quite the human windmill at the plate at times (not to mention the fact that he's also rightly drawn the ire of many here over the years for his Villar-like boneheaded tendencies on the bases and also for his at-time-fundamentally-poor defensive play in the OF (throwing behind runners, etc.)). Gomez is a good dude overall and the Brewers are the team with which he's thrived by far the most. I just don't see him as very ideal match for the current makeup of the roster.

It would take more than Domingo Santana to get any of Francisco Mejia/ Carson Kelly/ Chance Sisco/ Jorge Alfaro. Not one of those 4 plus pitching to get DSantana... Now I could see DSantana & Mejia being part of multi player packages for each side in a trade but neither side believes its a fair deal 1 for 1 or 2 for 1/ 1 for 2. These possible moves intrigue me. By all accounts, the Giants have been lurking in the shadows Brewers OF trade speculation all winter, and the Brewers definitively have OF depth from which to trade. However, re: the bolded part above, for as studious & research-based as the speculation often is on BF.net, unless you have an inside connection, I'm not sure one can state definitively what the Brewers or Indians think.

I keep refreshing web pages hoping for an update. Logan intrigues me more than this morning's Radhames Liz minor league/NRI deal.

This is interesting, and something I do not remember at all. Probably because I was in high school and there was no internet. Although, could you imagine the conniption that people on this board would have if the Brewers signed a 40-year-old pitcher? I distinctly remember reading the article in the paper and I was floored, both that future HOF'er NOLAN RYAN was sincerely interested in coming to Milwaukee and even more so that Harry Dalton wasn't interested. I was in college in MN, so it was likely either the Mpls StarTribune, which I got daily, or USA Today, which would've been available somewhere on campus (in the library if nothing else).

I'm not sure I'd give up Woodruff for Odorizzi if they're the main parts of the deal. I wouldn't have a problem dealing a young prospect pitcher as part of an Archer deal since it would give us at least 4 years of Archer.

Garza & Suppan are the obvious low-hanging fruit on this topic, more for how they ended than how they started. But I'll pick a different one that still bothers me far, far worse than those two: Craig Counsell, 2006-07 offseason Why? They'd gotten two excellent years from Jeff Cirillo in his return to MIL as a good-hitting, good-glove, team-first role player (occasional starter & bench bat), and they wanted him back and he wanted to return. The variable was Tony Graffanino, who produced well after being acquired in '06, too, and was also an FA that winter. But Graffanino was playing hard-to-get with the Brewers -- and even though they'd been in touch with Cirillo, they were going curiously slowly with him, too -- so to apply some pressure to Graffanino, the Brewers signed Counsell absolutely out of nowhere. Counsell didn't fit the roster except defensively and his assured place on the roster was a clear offensive step backwards on a very blah bench. It was a signing that made ZERO baseball sense. When Graffanino finally said yes, too, that left Cirillo without a place on the team -- a decision made all the worse when Graffanino, after a disappointing start to 2007, got injured and was out for a long chunk of the year. All they had left to show for their FA decision-making brilliance on their non-descript bench was the banjo-hitting Counsell (.220 BA). Cirillo was a professional hitter, a class act, a strong bench player, and should've remained a Brewer in 2007. Thanks to the really stupid signing of Craig Counsell, Cirillo's MIL playing days ended too soon. It would be an interesting conversation to open the "Brewers worst FA NON-signing" topic (no time-period limits). Two come to mind: 1. Paul Molitor, after 1992 (Bando's "only a DH" quote that will forever -- and rightly -- live in Brewer infamy) 2. Nolan Ryan. I think it was after 1988, his last year in Houston. I distinctly remember that he was quite interested in Milwaukee but was turned aside. The by-then-no-longer-wise Harry Dalton publicly eschewed Ryan's publicly expressed interest. Instead Ryan signed w/ Texas and immediately went 16-10 with a 3.20 ERA and 301 Ks. Good thing the Brewers didn't waste money on that! Overall in his 5 years in Texas -- his age 42-46 seasons -- only went 51-39 w/ a 3.53 ERA in 129 starts, 840 IP, 939 Ks, a 1.126 WHIP (593 hits, 353 BB), etc., etc., etc. (not to mention a nice pounding of young mound-charging Robin Ventura).

^^ In Derek Johnson I trust.

They just outperformed their PECOTA projection by ten games and missed the playoffs by a game. What are you talking about? ^^Agreed. Not win the World Series, yes. But "nothing but lose?" That's simply not correct. Not being a consistent, regular contender gets old. The winning record they've had in 6 of the past 11 years is a real thing, and even though it's at all like making the playoffs with regularity, it's surely much better than the 12 straight years of losing records from 1993-2004.

^^MVP2110, you might want to re-check your spelling.

I saw that Albers bit from Jerry Crasnick this morning and became hopeful. Whether it's Albers or someone else, I hope whomever we get seems to be at least this strong of an acquisition. I'm not interested in a glitzy move, just a smart one. Stearns is normally pretty good for that (Neftali Feliz notwithstanding).

From the JSOnline article: "The Brewers likely have reached a low-risk agreement with Gallardo that will allow them to assess during spring training if he can help their starting rotation." Given how lousy he's been the past two years, when I read that quote in a Haudricourt tweet earlier today, I wondered if it may be a non- or only minimally-guaranteed deal. If this was Yo's only major league contract offer vs. one or more minor league/NRI deals, then a one-year, non-guaranteed MLB contract still probably holds more promise than a minor league deal. I also think there are probably a couple Drake- or Webb-type guys on the roster who could be DFA'd readily enough if one or more roster spots needed to be opened for other acquisitions.

Am I disappointed there hasn't been a Brewers move? To some extent, yes. Has my diligent refreshing of MLBTR & Twitter pages gone unrewarded, at least Brewers-wise? Absolutely. But losing my patience? Not at all. (I was bummed to lose out on Swarzak, fwiw.) As others have said, few but high-quality moves are more important than a high volume of moves that turn out to be bad decisions. Last year's winning record does not ensure that we're now trading lots of prospects for top roster pieces. It could happen to some extent, it might happen in combination with trades to gain more prospects, or it might not happen at all. I trust Stearns to make right moves. I remember a few (maybe 4-5) years ago, Houston was finally building the foundation of a potentially good team (Altuve, Keuchel, etc.) yet they were trading guys they'd been developing like Bud Norris and Jarred Cosart. It made me wonder if they were so addicted to prospects rather than bona fide MLB players. Well, like the Astros, the Brewers conceivably could be wise to trade off guys with some good MLB results and still-intriguing promise who also have some more pronounced limitations (high K-rate, too-low OBP, questionable defense, etc.) -- such as Broxton or maybe even Santana -- to clear room for higher-ceiling guys (Phillips, Brinson, etc.). Moves like that may happen anyway, whether or not they trade for any high-end, proven MLB talent.

Isn't that Rondon? I thought Rendon was the Nats' 3B. I'd really like to see Swarzak back and I like the look of that bullpen.

It is if Arrieta and Anderson don't decline, Woodruff improves and Hader can manage to not go 5 innings walking 6 guys every other turn. If, if, if, if, if. . . . I love how the pessimists here expect regression at every possible turn for the Brewers, but somehow little if any time is spent considering that the Brewers could be the beneficiaries of the same regression occurring on other (potentially) contending teams. Okay, trwi7, on some level you're right, that that rotation could go seriously downhill. . . . However, until we get to the season and until we see how they're actually pitching (and are supported by the bats and gloves of the rest of the team), BestInTheWorld has as much of a chance of being correct as you do. The pessimist game does involve viable & logical thought processes, but it can be more than frustrating to follow because no argument in response is ever perceived as good enough to dissuade the naysayers. As someone has said regarding debate, it's hard to disprove a negative. To the original topic, I don't have a clue what move(s) Stearns might actually pull off, but his track record suggests there's a decent chance he'll do something pretty positive. To me, whatever that may be represents an exciting possibility. It may well not pan out in the end -- as with any move -- but at the very least he's willing to make a move that has a decent chance of helping out the Brewers this year and very possibly beyond (... "controllable young talent"...).

^^^This. . . . Lots of scenarios/options with lots of versatile talent and reasonable roster & financial flexibility. The one seemingly sure thing is that Stearns has done is NOT paint himself into a corner roster-wise.

I'm all for the bolded part. Personally, I'd sign Swarzak ASAP and then target a Neshek or Shaw or whomever from that echelon of FA relievers, too. When MLB was going through the recent phase of grossly undervaluing (and therefore grossly underpaying) closers a handful of years ago (think: post-Cordero era in MIL, so circa 2008 and the few following years), it was still obvious that the best teams had killer bullpens, and those lousy teams with lousy bullpens were all the more demoralized by poor relievers who would routinely blow late leads, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The Brewers experienced their share of that. By contrast, when the Brewers were a top NL team in 2011, that the back end of their bullpen was pretty much elite from the 6th or 7th inning on -- Hawkins & Saito, handing off to K-Rod & then Axford -- was a huge contributing factor to that success and no mere coincidence.

You don’t understand why Brewers fans would like a player who has put up good numbers over multiple years as a Brewer? Seems odd. All of his off season incidents make him a great role model that deserves to be rewarded...Not. I dont care about the past, i care about going forward with the rebuild. Jeffress wasnt that spectacular last year and will probably continue to decline. I would like to see a better player at AAA be put on the roster at league minimum and see if a better value can be created. If Williams is at AAA and Jeffress is on roster, I will definately be upset. At minimum, I think your bias against Jeffress is tainting the credibility of your argument if not also the accuracy of your remark about his character. . . .What off-season incidents? The last incident we know about happened during the season in Texas (a DWI) after we traded him, and his mea culpa attitude about that incident in the article that appeared in the paper after he returned to MIL in 2017 more than speaks to his owning up to his mistake. The previous incidents that were publicized were for marijuana in the minors that earned him his due consequences (50- and 100-game suspensions in 2007 & 2009, respectively) before he ever debuted in the bigs. In any case, whether those were in-season or in the off-season, they were 8 & 10 years ago and he's matured enough since then that I doubt that those incidents are a fair basis for a blanket judgement of his current character. I can't imagine what it would be like to screw up in such a way that the news would be reported in everyone's sports page and the bottom-of-the-screen sports news crawl across the entire country. In a country where folks who screw up and face the music for it can earn second chances, I'm not sure why Jeffress and his character aren't worthy of such a second chance or the benefit of any doubt. On topic, I like Jeffress as a member of the MIL bullpen again and the fairly minimal financial risk the Brewers bear if he performs poorly enough not to be kept around. I like Hughes and wouldn't be disappointed if he ends up back here, too, although I think he'll get snatched up by another team before that has a chance to happen.

Drake only has about 1.5 years of service time, so he's not arbitration-eligible. I liked Hughes last year. Overall he was pretty decent if not a "game changer" type -- he was at least better than half the guys they had in the bullpen. He had his bumpy days, but a 3.02 ERA and a 1.22 WHIP at year's end isn't exactly worth looking down on. Maybe his costs projected to be too high -- especially with nearly identical numbers for 2 years running -- and they'd prefer to spend more of their BP $$ on 1-2 Swarzek types (I'd hope that means Swarzak & one other).

Guys getting DFA'd or traded prior to the 40-man Rule V deadline tonight is still a real possibility, as several teams have been doing. The Mariners, for example, have been making several small moves - although w/ DiPoto as their GM, the M's never seem to stop making moves.