MNBrew

... ah, yes, the 20-day caveat we learned quite well through the J.J. Hardy demotion/FA-delaying saga back a few years ago!

He's on the 40-man, which means if he's not exclusively on the Brewers' MLB roster (or MLB injured reserve) for the entire year, then it takes using an option to get him to AAA.

Thanks for the multiple answers to my previous post.... Sorry, I should've been clearer. I get the logic of turnover, competitive windows, and future flexibility. There have been multiple posts like the highlighted portion of the one above that continue to suggest that the Brewers need to get rid of salary -- or at least that it may well be in their best interests to do so -- when in reality there's no need to dump salary. We're not the Marlins or in any kind of tough financial straits. The Brewers will have plenty of flexibility and the young guys already surfacing in the bigs are helping create intrigue about the Brewers and their future path, so fan interest remains good in spite of the crappy results last year and attendance isn't in any peril of sinking to Tampa Bay levels. . . . and if it were to sink that low, there will be at least a decent degree more revenue sharing $$ coming their way to ease any fiscal pinch.

I don't get this pervasive notion that the Brewers have to get rid of any large-salary players. Rooting for them to move established players is a whole different thought process and emotion, and it has certain merits. However, that's way different than legit financial need. And since Stearns has already said he favors a blend of veterans and young players, to hope for a total sell-off/teardown seems quite unrealistic. The Brewers don't have to get rid of anything and there's no reason to dump a player with value just to shed his contract at this point. That's simply myopic and absurd. I believe I read recently that they currently project to a $70-$75M Opening Day payroll based on the current roster, arbitration projections, etc. That's already a $25-$30M payroll drop from 2015. Between 2.5M in attendance and MLB's revenue sharing, the Brewers are in respectable shape financially. This isn't the mid-'90s Brewers. Keeping any players on large contracts in the midst of a rebuild goes counter to the trendy or stereotypical patterns of such situations, but that approach is far from a universal truth or an essential Brewers need. There's no need to shed another $10-$20M just for the sake of doing so.

Rivera wasn't exactly overly ready for AAA, but it made more sense to promote him than Arcia when Herrera got called up to MIL. I honestly think that's the only reason Rivera got any playing time at AAA this year.

I'd rather see him back at catcher, right back where they drafted him. I recall him switching to the OF but not the reason(s) why. Can anyone else fill in this gap?

A commonly shared opinion on a message board does not speak definitively for the Brewers' actual perspective. I'm not hot to trot to trade for Plouffe, but I also won't be disappointed if they do.

Do we know the Brewers were actually IN the bidding for Park? Or was it more just a matter of lacking confirmation by those doing the snooping that the Brewers weren't in it? Some folks hated that Melvin was usually quite good at guarding his hand and often took it as an angst-inspiring sign that the Brewers weren't active in trade or FA discussions. Especially if the answer to the above questions isn't known, I'd love it if Stearns routinely proves to play his cards closer to the vest than Melvin! Here's the other thing. There was no failed attempt to re-sign Lucroy. Lucroy approached the Brewers and THE BREWERS weren't interested in those talks at that time.

Stearns talked about young, controllable talent which could be acquired in any number of ways. Park's not young but he would be controllable. I'd still be surprised if the Brewers are serious contenders in this race. It's possible their not being ruled out is because their potential involvement could be seen as way beyond even being a reach. That said, we don't know how Stearns will or won't operate with proven/veteran international guys like this.

Perez's good glove counts for plenty but not nearly enough to outweigh his approach at the plate, which is atrocious. He's superfluous and very easily replaceable. He wasn't good at all the bigs for Detroit, who wasn't exactly a good team. I'd guess Daniel Fields was mainly an emergency grab when the Brewers' OF depth was in rough shape, which makes me wonder if he's the next to go. If he wasn't good enough for Detroit, it's not like they're talent-rich compared to MIL these days.

This was a no-brainer for all the reasons stated above. If he becomes trade fodder, locking in the certainty of a very reasonable salary only helps the prospects of a reasonably decent return.

Don't forget Ash's regular job as the guy giving the majority of the detailed medical updates.

Estrada couldn't keep the ball in the park in 2014 or himself in the Brewers rotation. He turned it around in Toronto, showing plenty of why the Brewers left him in the rotation so long in 2014. Last winter he was quite likely a non-tender candidate if the Brewers couldn't make a deal for him. Toronto got him as a good arm & for staff depth, mainly in the bullpen, but needed him in the rotation after other injuries opened a spot. He became a 3.6 WAR SP on a playoff team and, in exchange, the totally crappy 2015 Brewers got a spare part from Toronto who was a 3.1 WAR 1B who played in 149 games. Win-win. Doug Melvin is an ex-GM because, at age 63, he decided to step down, a move he started to feel he was ready for beginning last winter. That has nothing to do with going "all in" in 2011 and coming up 2 games short of the World Series and having a lousy farm system over the next 2 years. For the first 5 months of the 2014 season, Melvin pulled the right strings and the Brewers were 71-55 before the entire team tanked. Yet the farm system was getting much stronger and even no-fanfare young guys still came up in 2015 and contributed meaningfully -- all before Melvin announced the transition plan he conceived. I liked Yost as the Brewers manager and rooted for KC again in the Series this year. Yost has become a much better manager with the Royals, but even that transformation wasn't instant or ever guaranteed. In his Brewers-managing days, once the team proved capable of having a shot at making the post-season, Yost's teams were marked by an inability to get out of late-season death-spirals, the final episode of which Melvin & Attanasio rightly believed had to be cut short lest the promise of finally making the post-season in 2008 once again go by the board due to a horrific Yost-led collapse. For all Yost did well, he showed zero ability to get his teams out of those slumps that became death spirals in the standings. Wade Davis is a heck of a pitcher these days. He started off as a promising starter in TB but was inconsistent and finally was bumped into relief. He showed no real foreshadowing of his KC success in the TB bullpen. He became part of the Shields deal to boost the prospect return for TB (not unlike adding Fiers to the Gomez deal netted Phillips, though Fiers was leaps-and-bounds more successful in the bigs at the time of that trade that Davis had been prior to the Shields trade). That said, to suggest that the Brewers would've traded Odorizzi -- their only high-end SP prospect at the time -- for a fireballing middle reliever is sheer folly.

A sound-byte-depth answer and a scoff. Billy Beane made a stupid trade perhaps no other GM makes, and I'm just supposed to agree with your assertion that Toronto fleeced the Brewers 5 years ago? So much for critical thinking! Marcum helped the Brewers get to within 2 games of the World Series. I doubt Lawrie would've done the same for MIL anytime since, or for that matter that even Josh Donaldson would've made that much of a difference had he been on the 2015 Brewers. . . . IMO, the notion that the Marcum/Lawrie trade blatantly favors the Blue Jays is more emotionally charged myth than reality, conveniently justified by the state of the Brewers' farm system from 2011-13 -- there's little if any causality between trading on-the-verge-of-MLB-Lawrie and the Brewers' barren farm system. Was Lawrie and a bunch of bodies truly worth now-repeat All-Star Josh Donaldson? Value-wise, no, but Anthopolous still got Beane to go along with that deal. . . . On the flip side, had Lawrie still been a Brewer last winter, could the Brewers have made that same trade? I highly doubt it. Toronto very likely fleeced Oakland on their deal involving Lawrie. However, given what Marcum helped the 2011 Brewers do, I don't believe Toronto fleeced the Brewers in their 2011 deal at all.

If he's relatively "crippled," to use your word, then that's quite likely true. However, if he can stay pretty much healthy and keep producing as he has up to now (when healthy), and assuming he's still a worthy option (which would corroborate the first contingency point), then $11M in 2021 money might still be very reasonable for Braun at that time.

If nothing else, compared to the past dozen/whatever winters, no one can say for sure they know what to expect the Brewers will do.

I like that Gord Ash gets to stick around. Regarding the comment about getting fleeced by Toronto, I beg to differ. Other than a couple truly inconsequential things (OF Alvin Morrow for C Kevin L. Brown; Paul Philips for cash -- and I'm guessing many don't remember who some or all of those guys even were, let alone who got who), those below are about it for Brewers/Blue Jays trades in the past 20 years. So based on your verbiage, 3and2Fastball, and other comments reflecting significant dissatisfaction with the "Melvin regime," is it fair to assume that you have a strong bias against the Marcum/Lawrie trade because we gave up a strong prospect on the cusp of the majors for a post-TJ surgery veteran SP who didn't help get the Brewers into the World Series? Getting Dave Bush & Gabe Gross for Lyle Overbay (with Prince Fielder waiting in the wings) wasn't stellar for either side & sure wasn't a fleecing by Toronto. Getting Shawn Marcum for Brett Lawrie looked good in 2011 for the Brewers, better (in terms of promise) in the next couple years for Toronto, and ultimately not great for either side in the long run. Trading Carlos Villanueva for a PTBNL (later turned out to be cash) was a "nothing" deal because we weren't going to be keeping Villanueva -- he wasn't getting any better by that point and he wasn't cheap any longer. Getting Yorvit Torrealba for the last 1-2 weeks of 2012 for cash was, in a way, a very-small-scale version of the Villanueva trade in reverse. Getting Adam Lind for Marco Estrada was a win-win. As best I can figure, the only deal that might be considered a fleecing is the Lawrie/Marcum trade, and that's still all in how you look at it. Lawrie had lots of promise but was wearing out the patience of the Brewers' front office with his devil-may-care, boisterous & arguably self-serving & immature ways (he was also a #1-drafted-C who told the FO he was moving to 2B). But he's also a career pedestrian .736 OPS 3B whose OBP the last two years is a robust .300. Granted, the Brewers paid Aramis Ramirez a ton more than Lawrie made in the same time frame (2012-15), but Ramirez's offense dwarfed most anything Lawrie did except for his 150 ABs in his 2011 debut, which ultimately screams "small sample size" relative to how he's performed over the rest of his career. . . . Marcum sure petered out quickly after 2012 and was lousy in the 2011 postseason, but I doubt the Brewers get nearly as close to the postseason without him in their 2011 rotation (13-7, 3.54 ERA, 200 IP w/ 158 K's & 57 BB's). It's also worth nothing that under Macha's reign in 2012, he was also 7-4 with a 3.70 ERA in 124 IP with 109 K's & 41 BB's in spite of the time he missed with injuries -- not stellar but still quite respectable, especially by 2012 standards.

The Brewers' website's transactions show the Brewers activating Michael Blazek off the 60-day DL. There's no similar transaction listed for Jimmy Nelson, although both Nelson & Blazek appear on the active & 40-man rosters with no asterisks or DL significations. My math says that puts the 40-man roster currently at 36 players.

See my above post. Currently, Nelson is the only worthy MLB pitcher on the roster. I think Davies may be a back-end rotation guy for cheap. Jungmann probably isn't and Peralta is good enough but should be dealt as soon as his stock gets any higher. Point is, we should be shuffling out a lot of pitchers. Guys that could be mainstays like Lopez will eventually get their share, but there is going to be a lot of crap to sift through from the young guys. Heck, even with Nelson. The Astros dealt Bud Norris pretty early on and got Hader, Hoes (AAA/MLB depth), and a competitive balance pick. The Brewers just need to keep throwing darts at the board and selling them off if any hit. Having cheap vets to either soak up innings or peddle off will just be another aspect of the rebuild. I get the logic to an extent, but at what point do you actually quit selling off young talent? What you're describing sounds like a never-ending cycle (or the Royals or Pirates for two decades prior to the past 3-4 years).

I've thought of things along similar lines (principal ingredients in potential Twins trades), but I think both of these amount to overpays on the Brewers' part. . . . That said, Plouffe is someone that could net the Twins a decent return in a trade given that 3B is Sano's position and he's got a much higher ceiling than Plouffe, and the Brewers would seem to have an asset or two that could make an exchange of vets a possibility.

I never put forth anything suggesting Lucroy is the only veteran (obviously that's inaccurate), and I don't get where that implication came from. Your first question to me seems to imply that that's what I thought (not the case). My quote above, between yours, was in response to that direct question: Since this thread is titled "Braun or Lucroy?" and the vast majority of it has centered around those two, there wasn't much relevance to bringing those other guys up here. A lot of your posts in multiple threads seem to emphasize trading valuable MLB-proven assets for more young players. My apologies for overgeneralizing that and mistaking your bias to be for a total teardown. There are certain things you favor and those do come across very heavily across many of your posts. Lucroy may well not be as valuable 5 years hence as he is now. Obviously the odds favor that, though no one without a crystal ball can actually guarantee that will be the case with him. However, he still could prove to be the best available option for the Brewers even at a much higher salary (I'm not going to suggest I know what that salary will be). I guess I'm simply more willing to consider that option than some others are. Anyone can say all they want that the Brewers could shell out huge dollars later if catcher's still a glaringly deficient position on the roster. However, we've learned many times that you can't guarantee a coveted FA will want to play here enough to sign here, or that another team's willing to accept the return you offer for their stud catcher if they're even motivated to listen to proposed deals in the first place. It takes two to tango. It well could happen. But there are no guarantees.

MrTPlush, your position seems pretty obvious: No matter what other logic people present, it won't matter because you favor the total teardown approach and you believe trading Lucroy needs to happen this winter. That's fine. I understand the though process. I just disagree. Per the topic, this thread isn't about trading Peralta, Nelson, K-Rod, or Smith, and more of the recent thread focus has shifted to Lucroy rather than Braun. Defensively, Lucroy works well with the Brewers pitchers, is outstanding at blocking pitches in the dirt & at framing pitches, and he threw our runners at nearly a 30% rate. He may not be a Gold Glove contender but defensively he's pretty sound & solid. He's the sort of catcher who I'd trust to handle & lead a staff of mostly young pitchers. If you disagree -- and it appears you do -- then I won't be able to bring up anything to persuade you otherwise.

How are they different? They're not. The Brewers last contending team was built through the draft. Braun, Fielder, Weeks, Hart, Lucroy, Yo, etc. Then they added a couple vets to try to put them over the top. Very similar to what the Astros and Cubs have done this year. But the Brewers are not in the same position they were last time around. You can't just add a Greinke and a bat to this roster and compete next year. There is no reason they shouldn't try hard to move Lucroy and Braun during the hot stove league. The Brewers right now aren't yet at the same point they were "last time," either. I think the point isn't where the Brewers were in 2008, but where they were in 2005-2007, when the prospects were first starting to flourish in the bigs. That timeframe is the closer parallel to the Cubs & Astros of today. The '08 Sabathia trade got them into the playoffs and the only meaningful loss over time was Michael Brantley (not to mention that by 2011, the next playoff year, Brantley still wasn't near the All-Star-caliber player he's finally become). The Sabathia trade probably more closely parallels Houston's trades this year for Kazmir & Gomez/Fiers. The Brewers were several years into their "window" with the Braun/Fielder/Weeks/Gallardo/Hart/etc. core when they did the Greinke/Marcum trades. That would seem more to parallel KC's Cueto & Zobrist trades (although KC's really only been above sea level for a couple years now after decades of endless lousiness).

Two comments: - Barrios was used by MIL as a reliever in the minors & bigs. That would indicate they don't see him as a starter at this point. - Jungmann parenthetical comment is inaccurate: "(started off nicely but was definitely falling off after first few starts)" was more like "started very nicely but experienced fatigue when pitching a 6-month rather than 5-month season for the first time" . . . . His last 4-5 starts were lousy, but he'd never pitched through September before. He was pitching very well up to that point.

Because we don't project to be contenders, we don't need a capable catcher? That's how the "trade Lucroy" logic comes across. To carry that thought process further, does that mean it's not prudent to have any proven vets around until your young players show they're leading a team's ascent? If they move Lucroy, the logic within the explanation at the time should seem fairly self-evident based on the return. But I don't think that means that holding on to Lucroy is definitively illogical. There's not *only* one way to do this rebuilding thing.