The Kyle Lohse Love/Hate Thread

[Roderick]

Lohse was gonna sign with someone so the Cardinals didn't gain anything from this. We lost a pick and a big chunk of cash.

 

At this point I would not have assumed that Lohse would have signed with someone before June 1. So yes, we may have given the Cardinals a pick when they may not have ended up with one.

 

Who else would have signed him instead of trying the Dodgers castoffs first?

 

And if I were Lohse once the season started, you might as well wait. Your price will go up on June 1 (prorated 2013), and you can make sure the team you are signing with has a chance at the postseason this year (if that was important to him).

[Ennder]

The first team to have an injured SP or the Rangers. He was never going to wait until June 1st. They brought his price down and someone would have bitten if we didn't.

 

Dillard was never going to be a major league starter and Villanueva was a disaster as a starter because he just gave up too many HR. He now owns a career 4.80 ERA as a starter and isn't likely to stick in the role because he can't get people out once they see him more than once. They were most certainly not better options than cruddy old veterans, they were just cheap.

[brewmann04]

I still dont see anything wrong with this it gives the rotation another Veteran guy.

[faede]

I really love this deal.

 

I believe this is the kind of "buy low with an opportunity to score big" move that a small market team has to make to win big. Olney tweeted that the present day value (considering deferral money) of this contract is around 9.5m per year. Why? Because of the draft pick, mostly. Overvalue of draft picks/prospects is the trend that Melvin is taking advantage of here.

 

At that rate, you have the potential for an unmitigated "steal". This guy has been lights out the last two years since changing his approach. He's got a 2.2 WAR in 2011 and 3.9 WAR in 2012. That's worth a hell of a lot more than 9.5/year. Is there risk? Hell yeah, there's risk, but, there is also a serious reward side of this as well. Consider that Zack Greinke has had WAR of 1.4, 2.1 an 1.2 the past three seasons.

 

It's the calculated risk moves like signing Aoki, extending Lucroy/Go-Go and now this that makes/breaks how we compete going forward. If nothing else, it buys time for guys like Burgos, Thornburg, Nelson, Jungman, Bradley, Rogers, Peralta and Hellweg to prove themselves.

 

It'll be interesting to see if we get boom, bust, or something in between. Either way, it's a pretty calculated risk that certainly falls "below" market value for someone who has been a pretty damn good pitcher (and would appear to be a pretty good veteran presence) the last two seasons.

[monty57]

Going into this offseason, I lobbied for a veteran on a one-year deal. I really wanted to bring Marcum back, and he seemed to want to stay. Obviously, barring major injury, signing Lohse helps the Brewers this season. I don't think they're better than the Reds, but are probably going to fight with the Cardinals and the Pirates for 2nd/3rd/4th (eventually the Pirates aren't going to choke in the second half). With the advent of the 2nd Wild Card team, the Brewers are certainly a playoff-caliber team this year, as is any team that can claim to be "around a .500 team." This signing makes the playoffs in 2013 more realistic.

 

That said, I didn't want to sign an aging vet to a big multi-year deal. My worry, and what I have been worried about for a while now is what happens after this year. We now have around $75.5MM tied up next year in nine players, and adding Axford (2nd year arby) we'll be around $83MM for ten players. The "young" pitching was supposed to be our saving grace for remaining within a budget, but now we'll have $22.5MM going to Gallardo and Lohse, with Estrada and Narveson both in their second year of arby, and if they have any kind of success this year, I don't have any faith that Melvin/Attanasio will actually move a vet to let a younger player play. Estrada & Narveson will combine for at least $5-6MM next year, pushing our payroll to $88MM for 12 players. Badenhop will be in his 4th year of arby, adding $2-3MM, putting us around $90MM for 13 players.

 

Maldonado, Segura, Peralta/Fiers and Schafer will combine for around $2-3MM (which helps), putting 17 players at $92-93MM. We'll basically need our entire bench and most of our bullpen to play for league minimum, and need Hunter Morris to play a good 1B just for us (Gamel will hit arby, so he may be gone) to remain somewhere around $100MM payroll, which is probably Melvin/Attanasio's bogey with the new TV deal. It's feasible, but really leaves no margin for error, and any injuries will crush us.

 

If Melvin had been able to add any top prospects to the farm in his tenure with the Brewers, I'd feel more comfortable. I just don't necessarily like the business model of always pushing long-term, big-money contracts (fixed costs) to the limit of the budget. It's kind of like getting your mortgage and car payments to 90% of your income. If the price of gas goes up, you can't afford to fill your tank. As it stands, we don't have good, inexpensive talent, which greatly adds to the risk of adding another eight figure salary to the books... especially for a guy who will be in his late 30's. Does anyone know of a site to find how MLB pitchers have fared when they're 35-38 years old?

 

For those who wonder why I often say we have an aging, expensive team, as I illustrated above, we're almost certainly going to have a $100MM payroll next year, mostly in guaranteed, multi-year deals, and here's the age make-up. Remember, young players tend to get better, players in their late 20's are in their prime, and around 31 or so, they generally start to decline.

 

Key players next year who will be 30 or above: Lohse (35/36), Ramirez (35/36), Narveson (32), Weeks (31/32), Axford (31), Estrada (30/31), Gorzelanny (31/32), Aoki (32), Braun (30), Badenhop (31), Henderson (31)

 

Key players next year who will be 25 or younger: Segura (24), Peralta (25)

 

Minor league rank: Somewhere around 29 out of 30.

 

This is why I think we really need to cheer hard for the 2013 Brewers, because things could start to go downhill after that. Signing a 35-year-old to a 3 year/$33MM deal doesn't assuage my fears, it exacerbates them.

[LouisEly]

The 17th overall pick in any draft is not going to make or break any franchise.

I would say Mike Trout defies that logic.

 

Mike Trout, or any single person that TLB listed, on a team of average ballplayers is not going to make that team a World Series contender. You need to have 3-4 All-Stars on the team along with a handful of other above-average players. It took the Giants three years to get Lincecum, Bumgarner, and Posey. It took the Brewers five years to get Fielder, Weeks, Gallardo, Braun, and the players traded for Sabathia.

[Ennder]

I bet when we sign Valverde later this week people are gonna really flip out~.

[monty57]

The 17th overall pick in any draft is not going to make or break any franchise.

I would say Mike Trout defies that logic.

 

Mike Trout, or any single person that TLB listed, on a team of average ballplayers is not going to make that team a World Series contender. You need to have 3-4 All-Stars on the team along with a handful of other above-average players. It took the Giants three years to get Lincecum, Bumgarner, and Posey. It took the Brewers five years to get Fielder, Weeks, Gallardo, Braun, and the players traded for Sabathia.

 

No, one player can't do it all himself. However, if we had a few top prospects in the system, it would allow for us to add them into our roster which is filled with high-priced, long-term guaranteed contracts. They would play for league minimum, making the big contracts more affordable. It could also mean that one/some of those contracts could be traded when the player still has value, as the top prospect made the expensive vet expendable.

 

Unfortunately, for whatever reason (bad draft strategy, bad luck, trades, or whatever), we don't have much top talent on the farm. We've got a bunch of MLB role players. Melvin uses this as an excuse to sign more big-money, multi-year deals. Unfortunately, you need 25 men on your MLB roster, and we cannot afford 25 big-money contracts. Logic dictates that with a limited budget, any additional big-money deal signed means that you will need a greater number of inexpensive players. We do not have good, inexpensive players to fill those roles.

[brewmann04]

Lets see how this year plays out before we go worry about future years.

[Ennder]

We have a young farm system, not a bad one. Young farm systems don't grade well in general. Melvin is very aggressive with his prospects, he's aggressive in trading them for major league talent and he's aggressive at promoting them. Obviously you don't like that but it is how he is. We have graduated way more young talent over the past 10 years than say the Cardinals have and it isn't really even close so it isn't like we aren't getting cheap production.

[igor67]

Coming from any other team the arguments that Lohse is a fundamentally different pitcher after changing his approach the last two years would inspire some level of cautious optimism. But I can't think of a single veteran pitcher that the Cardinals turned around who stayed fixed after he left. Whether that means they have a special pitcher sauce or they just know when to let these guys walk away doesn't really matter. I hope Kyle is somehow the stunning exception, but the loss of the 1st rounder makes it hard to get the high ceiling kind of talent the system needs to not konk out in the near future.

[Ennder]

You could see what type of pitcher Suppan and Looper were when they left, just look at their component ERAs. Lohse is a 4ish ERA pitcher and that is what we are paying him as. The risk is his age, not really his production. If we signed him expect a 3.30 ERA I'd really be upset but at $11M a year that just isn't the expectation. The Cardinals haven't really fixed many pitchers btw, that is just a mirage people make up in their heads.

[faede]

I'd argue that Suppan and Looper weren't "fixed" to begin with from the Cardinals.

 

Suppan barely squeaked over average in his time with the Cardinals (hovered around 1 WAR) and Looper was the same if not a bit worse.

[Fear The Chorizo]

I really hope the posts about wishing we found a way to resign Marcum instead of Lohse stop, since it looks like Marcum's ready to open the season on the DL and collect his paycheck from the training room yet again.

 

Marcum's damaged goods. I'd rather pay 11 million a season for veteran starter who's capable of pitching an entire season instead of 4-5 million for a guy who's in the process of breaking down.

[logan82]

No he is not a terrible pitcher but yeah he is not a great fit for our team/park. He has a career 4.45 ERA and a career 4.45 xFIP so it seems reasonable to assume xFIP tells the real story since it converges faster than ERA does. His xFIP the past 2 years were 4.04 and 3.96. He has improved with age mostly because of his control and ability to keep the ball down and limit the HR but he is likely a true talent of around a 4 ERA. When you add our park and questionable defense he is probably something like a 4.25 ERA guy if we were to sign him. Giving up a good draft pick for a 4.25 ERA guy is a pretty hard sell unless the contract is pretty cheap.

I guess $11m/year is a pretty cheap contract.

[TURBO]

So we will have, on the average, 19 million tied up between Gomez and Lohse, per season?

 

1/5 of our payroll for 2 guys like this?

 

This saddens me.

 

I am losing faith in Melvin by the minute. Add that to the fact that our manager is a doofus, and I just don't see our future as anything other than average.

 

I will admit though, I love watching Gomez play. He can be maddening at times, but he is just so likeable, he gets passes from me. I am hoping that Lohse is worth every penny we paid him, I truly am, it is just hard for me to get excited about him after getting burned so often in the past by similar guys. I'm a bit gunshy.

 

Please, baseball gods, prove me wrong.......please!!!

[Ennder]

I'd think anything below a qualifying offer is cheap these days. I also like him a bit more now that I dug deeper and discovered that the sinker usage matches perfectly with when he started to get better results. I don't think we should expect him to pitch to his xFIP necessarily because the track record of this new version isn't long enough and because looking at the short list of guys who rely heavily on their sinker shows that almost all of them beat their xFIP on a regular basis.

 

My revised opinion is that he is probably something like a 3.80 ERA pitcher and with our situation he'll pitch closer to a 4.00 ERA guy.

[afeter]

15 pages and counting in 2 days, good stuff.

 

there so many financial managers on bfan. Mark A, doesnt appear to set an annual budget. I let him worry about the money. if people are really concerned about brewer finances stop sneaking beers & hot dogs into the game.

 

I lean towards liking the deal. Mostly becuase i still believe in the 2013 brewers. The offense was great last year and weeks and gomez are off to hot springs. How good can they be if weeks is an all-star and hart comes back quickly?

 

The rotation needed something, i'm not sure it had to be lohse, but there is no question an upgrade was in order to stay competitive.

 

here is my main concern, if the brewers get into the playoffs their lack of "plus" starters will likely be their demise. Maybe a guy like peralta develops, but 2 starts from gallardo and lohse in a short series doesn't scare anyone.

[Yeti73]

here is my main concern, if the brewers get into the playoffs their lack of "plus" starters will likely be their demise. Maybe a guy like peralta develops, but 2 starts from gallardo and lohse in a short series doesn't scare anyone.

 

One trip to the playoffs during the course of this contract will make it worth it for me. Plus, anything can happen once you're there. I also think that in year 3, if Lohse holds up physically, his contract could make him very tradeable.

[DHonks]

interesting to look it up and see Lohse's career ERA+ is 97. That's tied with Suppan (97) and lower than Wolf (100). So basically we have added a league average pitcher whose numbers are skewed that high only because of back-to-back career years in his early 30s.

[monty57]

I don't see a lot of people worried about his age. Loshe is 34 and turns 35 in October. There are usually only 10-15 MLB SP in any given year who are that age or older, and many of those either throw a knuckleball, are "crafty lefties," or already have Hall-of-Fame careers and are chasing milestones.

 

Almost no one makes it to age 37 or 38, when we'll still owe him $18MM, so I disagree with those saying Lohse will be tradeable at that point. Forget about the ex-Cardinal stuff, him simply being human would seem to point to him being a 5+ ERA guy when he's at an age when almost every pitcher to ever play the game has been retired. I don't see how we won't have five better starting pitchers by then.

 

Lohse should help us in our "win now" mode this season, but I sure wish we'd of found someone on a one-year deal.

 

there so many financial managers on bfan. Mark A, doesnt appear to set an annual budget. I let him worry about the money.

 

That's probably the only attitude that would allow someone to not worry about the team's future guaranteed liabilities. Anyone who looks at them would have to be somewhat frightened. Every time it looks like we might get a little breathing room, another 30-something is being signed to an eight-figure salary for multiple season.

[Outlander]

Almost no one makes it to age 37 or 38, when we'll still owe him $18MM, so I disagree with those saying Lohse will be tradeable at that point. Forget about the ex-Cardinal stuff, him simply being human would seem to point to him being a 5+ ERA guy when he's at an age when almost every pitcher to ever play the game has been retired. I don't see how we won't have five better starting pitchers by then.

To be fair he will be 36 when he is done with the Brewers.

[Ennder]

I expect 2 years out of him and anything he gives in year is a bonus.

[monty57]

Almost no one makes it to age 37 or 38, when we'll still owe him $18MM, so I disagree with those saying Lohse will be tradeable at that point. Forget about the ex-Cardinal stuff, him simply being human would seem to point to him being a 5+ ERA guy when he's at an age when almost every pitcher to ever play the game has been retired. I don't see how we won't have five better starting pitchers by then.

To be fair he will be 36 when he is done with the Brewers.

 

Sorry, I was adding a year. I thought he was 35 now, which seems to be the age most pitchers collapse. I feel a little better, but I still don't expect much in year three... really anything better than a "here, we'll pay you not to play" would probably be good. I'm hoping for an ERA sub-4 this year (please!!), sub-5 next year and "don't bring the ship down with you" in the final year.

[Raw Biz]

Melvin is very aggressive with his prospects, he's aggressive in trading them for major league talent and he's aggressive at promoting them. Obviously you don't like that but it is how he is.

 

You keep saying this but that doesn't make it true. It may have been true in the past with Weeks/Hardy but that's about it. Fielder was obviously going to be a stud. He was brought up to DH and get some PH appearances but I don't think he was rushed. Braun was a stud as well and obviously wasn't rushed. In the past five years, I can't really think of anyone who was aggressively promoted, except for Segura. But that was basically because the season was thought lost and Melvin wanted something to show the fans.

 

I think the signing of Lohse shows that Melvin isn't aggressive with prospects since Peralta will probably be sent to AAA. You might argue that he's not ready but if someone is aggressive like you say, whether or not he's ready wouldn't matter.