Penny to Brewers?

[endaround]

Wow that package is so bad I don't even know what to say. A pitcher the Sox don't want and isn't that good plus a 27 year old "prospect" for a 5 win player and a prospect?

[804Sox]

maybe it was unclear, but that's not what I was suggesting. It was two different ideas (the second, Hardy for Penny and DelCarmen, really just being a response to previous discussion about MDC as a middle reliever at best)

 

What I was really trying to gauge was Penny's perceived value relative to a B-/C+ prospect with upside like Odorizzi or Peralta among Brewer fans. To me that seems fair, although I get the feeling that a trade between Boston and the Brewers would expand to include both Penny and Hardy given the Sox struggles/injuries at SS.

[bklynbrewcrew]

804 Sox, the Brewers are trying to contend for a playoff spot. They cant possibly trade Hardy and accomplish that. As far as Penny for an Odorizzi or Peralta thats not a trade that interests me at all. Penny is just not that good. Why would the Brewers give up a potential high impact guy for an average at best starter who we would control for just the rest of the season.

[nate82]

A more accurate trade would be Counsell or Iribarren for Penny. Penny would have been a good pickup in free agency for the Brewers but not in a trade. Basically when you trade garbage you get garbage in return. There is no way Penny is worth any prospect.

 

If the Brewers are trading Hardy to the Red Sox Lars Anderson and Clay Buchholz are coming back to the Brewers not Brad Penny. Brad Penny right now is worth a D prospect which would be Iribarren. There is no way the Brewers trade any pitching prospect to the Red Sox for Penny that is just not going to happen.

[trwi7]

I wouldn't trade any prospect in the top 15 for Penny. He's just not durable and he's a free agent who might not bring any draft compensation. If we're making a trade, I want a difference maker. I don't see Penny being that big of a difference maker.

[nate82]

I wouldn't trade any prospect in the top 15 for Penny. He's just not durable and he's a free agent who might not bring any draft compensation. If we're making a trade, I want a difference maker. I don't see Penny being that big of a difference maker.

The Brewers are not even the top team to be looking at Penny anyways. I believe the Phillies will go after Penny which I believe is a mistake but I believe the Phillies are the front runner in acquiring Penny and not the Brewers.

[endaround]

Well the Phillies are desperate at this point

[trwi7]

Well the Phillies are desperate at this point

The Phillies would probably be better off calling up Carlos Carrasco and see where that takes them.

 

Hamels/Blanton/Moyer/Happ/Carrasco

[Invader3K]

I just don't see why any team would be that interested in trading for Penny unless it was for next to nothing in a trade. The guy is just not very good anymore.

[endaround]

The same reason the Brewers are paying $6m for Looper. Penny's FIP is 4.77 in the AL. Looper is 5.63 in the NL. Penny isn't great, but he's a solid 4. The Phillies could use a solid 5 at this point.

[804Sox]

804 Sox, the Brewers are trying to contend for a playoff spot. They cant possibly trade Hardy and accomplish that. As far as Penny for an Odorizzi or Peralta thats not a trade that interests me at all. Penny is just not that good. Why would the Brewers give up a potential high impact guy for an average at best starter who we would control for just the rest of the season.

My thoughts were that if Escobar is kicking down the door in AAA it would make Hardy expendable to fill other holes, but you're right, I don't think the Brewers could afford to lose Hardy's bat. A more likely scenario is Escobar at second

 

w.r.t. the second part of your post, teams trade potential high impact players for average players at the deadline all the time. Particularly with A-ball pitchers like Odorizzi or Peralta, projectability does not always translate to improvement or production down the road. The attrition rate is so high among minor leaguers that it's a calculated gamble by both teams in a trade. Certainly Peralta's K rate, for example, suggests future success (while his career BB rate might not), but there's no guarantee he'll ever make AAA, much less the majors - even top 50 prospects like Edwin Jackson, Andrew Miller, and Homer Bailey flame out all the time (although there's still time for all of them to turn it around.

 

I definitely respect where you're coming from (that's why I asked for people's thoughts) in not wanting to give up young, projectable arms for mediocre players, but at the same time, if the Brewers feel Penny could help them make a run in the playoffs THIS YEAR they have to at least considder it.

[Oldcity]

Penny wouldn't be a terrible addition, but I just think the Brewers will look at several other better pitchers before they look at him.

[endaround]

Escobar isn't kicking down the door in AAA. He's not anywhere near ready. A .290/.336/.385 in AAA is just not that good.

[TheCrew07]

Its not that bad either... geez. His power number have been on the rise over the last month, he's making better contact, still stealing bases. He's doing well improving himself as a player. He tends to start a tad slow and gradually build himself up over the course of a season. So his MLEs stink, so what? If you can prove that he won't continue to improve once he's called up then fine. There are parts of his offensive game that he needs to work on because better pitchers will exploit those weaknesses, but once he solves AAA pitching his development will plateau until he sees regular MLB ABs. That was the case in Spring Training and early in the AAA season...

 

MLEs are fine if we're trying to compare production in a single season, but they are pretty useless when discussing player development. Mass linked to a 5 minute pregame audio discussion about Escobar in yesterday's link report in the Minor League Forum, clearly the organization feels Escobar is extremely gifted which is no surprise, it's pretty obvious when you watch him. I'm just trying to separate out how of what Iorg had to say was organizational spin vs factual based opinion.

[Oldcity]

But he hasn't solved AAA pitching yet, so why take offense to his point? All he said was his line isn't good, and it isn't.

[TheCrew07]

I'm not offended, just give credit where credit is due. He is actually knocking on the door, our resident Sox fan wasn't mistaken, most organizations would love to have Hardy at MLB and Escobar at AAA, but for whatever reason people around continually piss on Escobar and it got old last November...

 

If the Brewers were to move Hardy then Escobar would be a capable replacement and 804Sox made the exact point that many of us have been making... If the team wanted to move Hardy for MLB pitching we've missed our window, because going into his last season he's nothing but a glorified rental. The only way a deal like that would work is if it were like a sign and trade, where Hardy agrees to negotiate a long term deal before the trade is made.

 

The same is true of Fielder... who's going to give up MLB pitching for a rental? I think Fielder makes perfect sense for LAA or the BoSox down the road, he's a crappy 1B and a premium offensive talent, but he's passable at 1B for interleague play or the World Series.

 

Instead of making a bold move to improve the starting rotation with some quality young pitching this past off season it appears Melvin is going to ride out both players into FA. I'd still take prospect pitching back, I could list 10 names that I really like around the minors but the truth is those deals are highly unlikely and not even worth discussing in season. As long we're in the playoff picture none of the starting position players are getting moved.

 

Penny isn't a good target for us, the idea should be to push our 3,4,5 down... not insert random talent into the back end of the rotation between what we have. Who would he pitch better than to justify giving up talent for him for a single season?

 

Hardy is a good fit for the BoSox as well, he makes sense for them, but why should they give up a top of the rotation prospect when they could just sign him in FA?

[TooLiveBrew]

Is middling in AAA really 'knocking on the door'? I guess if you feel that timeframe would be flexible enough to extend into 2010, then yes. I think Escobar is going to take all of this season & perhaps some of early '10 to get his bat ready... and imo that's fine. He's still pretty young, and as gifted as he is defensively & on the basepaths, it seems it's worthwhile to wait for his bat.

 

And to say that people "piss on Escobar" seems a bit extreme.

[TheCrew07]

He would be in Milwaukee in late June if Hardy wasn't in front of him, top prospects do not spend time in AAA unless they are blocked by a truly better player. I know it's a popular notion around here is that 2 years of AAA will "fix" Escobar's bat but Escobar will probably plateau development wise instead of continually getting better at AAA, and he'll likely struggle initially at MLB regardless how many AAA ABs he gets. They will attack the hell out of his flaws until he makes adjustments, he'll get a little bit of that at AAA, but advanced scouting and better talent make a huge difference at MLB. There are plenty of examples of guys who keep getting bounced down to AAA to "get better" and while their AAA stats improve, their MLB stats when they get called back up are pretty similar because they've quit developing as players.

 

If he develops more power it will be a slow process over time, he'll hit 1 or 2 a month until he fills out his frame, that's more an off season thing. He'll slug in the high .300s right now with the low .400s as a best case, so I'm not sure what people are referring to when they talk about his power, his a twig... but he's making much better contact as of late as the 2B have begun to spike. I'll take 9-10 HR and 25-30 2B out of him, if people are waiting for him to match Hardy's power numbers it's going to be a long wait. His one Major flaw is his BB rate, but he's on pace to equal or better his pace from AA at a higher level so he's continuing to improve, that's a slow process, and not something that's going to happen overnight.

 

In the end the perception of Escobar is skewed by comparing him to Hardy, instead of the other SS prospects in the game. No he's not Hardy with the bat... but JJ wasn't the player he is now in his first 2 seasons either. He's continued to put on muscle and improve as he moves toward his peak. Hopefully Escobar will do the same, prospects are very rarely finished products when they reach MLB, he does't have to hit like Gamel to be knocking on the door, he just has to be ready for the next challenge, and there's a wide gulf between the 2 ideas.

[TooLiveBrew]

I know it's a popular notion around here is that 2 years of AAA will "fix" Escobar's bat

 

I'm not sure why you think there has to be such an adversarial tone to the Escobar conversation. I think what people want to wait for is the power that comes as a player gets older, not that there's some magical 'fix' in AAA. And judging from how he's handling Gamel, there is absolutely no guarantee that if Alcides was up, Macha would play him.

 

And of course the other obvious point that's been made many times is that there's just no rush to move Escobar up with Hardy already at short.

[logan82]

In the end the perception of Escobar is skewed by comparing him to Hardy, instead of the other SS prospects in the game.

 

Not really. He is compared to Hardy because that is who he would be replacing. Even if he was the best SS in all of MiLB and that wouldn't matter. When talking about a position on the MLB club, it is always going to involve all of our options at that position. Until JJ moves on that discussion will involve JJ vs Escobar.

[rluzinski]

Penny might be a 4.75 ERA type pitcher who can't be counted on to pitch 200 innings anymore. He's getting paid $5 mil dollars, which is in the ballpark or what he's worth. The idea that a reliever and Penny could get Hardy is pretty out there.

[Tbadder]

It's my impression that Escobar has a very "young" body, even for his young age. He will get bigger, stronger. This indeed might cause him to improve relatively late in comparison to other prospects. A year and a half to two years might prove fruitful. I wouldn't say that about any other Brewer prospect I know, but it seems like he might be an anomaly.

[PrimeTime955]

From Buster Olney today:

Brad Penny has had a decent season for the Red Sox, but it's possible that they will move him for a decent Grade B prospect before the trade deadline, with Clay Buchholz waiting in the wings and Daisuke Matsuzaka showing progress in his rehab. Possible fit: the Brewers, who have been looking for a starting pitcher and might be a match for one of the second-tier starters (Penny, Jon Garland, etc.). The Red Sox almost certainly would not offer Penny arbitration, so it makes sense for them to move him before the July 31 deadline just to recoup a little value.

[brewmann04]

Do we really need a pitcher like Penny, i hope the brewers pass.

[dadofandrew]

If he's better than Mike Burns, he'd be an upgrade, at least as of today. Guys that can go 6 innings and give up 3 runs do have value.