How close are we to rebuilding?

[danzig6767]

We are not even close to rebuilding as long as MA is the owner of the Brewers. Maybe if Braun, Gallardo, Weeks, and Segura all had career ending injuries then we would be close to rebuilding which would really be a forced rebuilding. I just can not see MA going through a rebuilding process.

 

While i've long thought that Attanasio has played a pretty sizable role behind the scenes in how Melvin has been in a mainly win now type of attitude, i do think that you're overstating the amount of say "stubbornness" he'd have towards rebuilding. I just don't see him being like Herb Kohl who has flat out refused for nearly decades to ever seriously rebuild.

 

My sense is that Attanasio has the attitude of if there is any realistic shot at all to at least compete for a playoff berth, he'll defer to trying to compete for that playoff berth for two reasons.

 

1. He's a very competitive guy

 

2. He wants to keep seeing about 2.5-3 million fans pouring into Miller Park and fears that a couple of poor seasons would hurt attendance significantly.

 

If though Attanasio looks at the team over say the next 2-3 years and the evidence at some point is pretty clear that at least contending for a playoff berth is a major long shot, i just don't think that he'd be very stubborn and refuse to accept the state of a likely bad team.

 

Over those next 2-3 years, i believe that kids Bruce Seid has previously drafted will end up deciding the direction the Brewers head in more than anything else will. So far Seid hasn't looked very impressive, but if some of his draft picks aren't able to come up and be really productive on the cheap, then it will likely result in putting to much financial pressure on the big league club to stay competitive and thus they'd have to try rebuilding to whatever degree.

[adambr2]

Thanks guys for the honest feedback. And thanks DHonks once again for your snide hyperbole, it's been missed.

 

I don't mean to be doom and gloom on the team, I think we have a legitimate shot this year. I do have concerns about the weak farm system. I fully concur that Mark A. will always be willing to make whatever moves necessary in free agency to stay afloat -- but the payroll can't sustain FA replacements at every position once the core starts to age -- so we'll need some prospects sooner or later.

 

Braun and Lucroy seem like the best values on the team at the moment. Lucroy looks like a steal of a deal -- he's slated to make $2M, $3M, $4M, and $5M in his arby years and first bought out year of free agency. Feels like robbery.

[Ennder]

but the payroll can't sustain FA replacements at every position once the core starts to age -- so we'll need some prospects sooner or later.

 

We have plenty of prospects to cover this, don't buy into the silliness about the minor league system being awful. It isn't high upside, it isn't useless. Lets go in the wayback machine to 2006. Fielder was our only A prospect at that point. Braun was B+, Capellan was our #3. Hart, Zach Jackson, Gallardo and Eveland were B's. Rogers, Cruz, Inman and Dillard were B-. We had 9 more C+ prospects of which one has become a real quality major league player and that was Escobar. At that point we were considered to have a really good system.

 

 

This year we were rated as 4 B guys, 7 B- guys, 11 C+ guys. So lets say the same basic rates apply here. We don't have a Braun or Fielder which obvious sucks. We have probably 2 really quality major league guys from that group of 4 B. We have maybe 2 quality major league guys from the B- pool. Out of that 11 C+ tier we have maybe 2 good major league guys and another 2 fringe types.

 

so right now in the minors we likely have 4-6 quality major league players and a 2 or 3 fringe types. More than enough fire power to fill in holes in a decent roster. Not the type of minor league system you want to build around but we have enough quality players signed that we don't need to build around this next wave.

[danzig6767]

Well Ennder, for all of the flack Melvin gets for signing guys like Lohse or certain trades he makes, i do think that if the team does end up regressing pretty significantly at some point over the next few years, the odds are good that the biggest reason why will have been that the farm system just didn't produce enough cheap and productive players to help offset the more pricey veterans.

 

So if that were to end up being the case, the decision by Melvin which will have had the most negative impact on his team wouldn't involve any player, it instead would be the replacing of Jack Zduriencik with Seid.

 

General Managers in baseball really don't have the time to go and scout the vast number of kids available for a draft each year, so that is up to the Scouting Director who the GM hires. Decisions made by Doug to the big league clubs will obviously have a sizable impact on just how well the team can remain competitive over the next few years, but those fortunes are also tied very heavily to the performance of Seid who Melvin hired.

 

We can end up with a 10-15-20 page thread over the signing of Yuni to be the 24th/25th man on the roster, even though he's largely just an irrelevant spare part. Who gets hired as the Scouting Director though is more important than pretty much any other single move that a baseball GM makes, especially in a market like Milwaukee. I'm leery about Seid, but he hasn't been in the job a long time.

[The stache]

I don't see Mark ever going into "rebuild" mode. That would entail selling off the pieces we have, and starting pretty much from scratch again. See the Marlins. So long as we have some of the guys we do now (Braun, Lucroy, Hart, Weeks, Gallardo), we're going to be looking to mix in complimentary pieces via trades/free agency (Greinke, Marcum, Lohse), while finding the majority of the roster from players we develop.

 

Ryan's only 29. He's entering his prime now, and can realistically stay at the top of the game for at least the next five years (maybe longer, as he stays in incredible shape) before he starts to slow. During that five year window, Yovani will still be in his prime, and assuming he stays healthy, we've got a strong #1/2. Corey and Rickie are 30 and 31 right now, and with the report that Hart will be resigned, I think we can expect both to be here for that 5 year period. Jean Segura is young, and is going to be great. Jonathan Lucroy is 26. Carlos Gomez is 27. Nori Aoki is 31. These players make up a core that will be here for at least the next half decade.

 

I fully expect that Wily Peralta will develop into a strong 2/3. Michael Fiers and Tyler Thornburg are pieces to the puzzle. They will be starters, or bullpen guys. I think eventually Taylor Jungmann and yes, Jed Bradley, will factor in as back of the rotation guys (forget Bradley's disastrous 2012). Hunter Morris will be here full time next year. Khris Davis figures to be in the mix, and I wouldn't be surprised if Mat Gamel is still here if he can get healthy. Then with Clint Coulter, Victor Roache and Mitch Haniger, some bats will be here in the next two years or so.

 

Expect the Brewers to be competitive, vying for a playoff spot, for the foreseeable future.

[3and2Fastball]

Hunter Morris will be here full time next year. Khris Davis figures to be in the mix.

 

How? In what capacity if Hart is resigned? They are both blocked.....

[MJLiverock]

I see the term window tossed around with almost derision by some posters and have to disagree with it being a negative. There are always going to be periods of time or windows of opportunity when a team should be going for it or taking that extra push to win. The opportunity to have the elite level talent in a couple of players that is needed to win championships only comes along every so often for most teams that can't just buy it on the open market at any given moment. For the years when Braun, Gallardo, (and Fielder while here) and a decent core of players like Lucroy, Hart, Weeks, are around they should push the envelope. If they didn't I'd say they wasted the prime years and chances to win with a talented MLB roster while always playing for that mythical future improvement. At some point you have bet the cards in your hand or you never win. The Brewers spent many a year playing for tomorrow to no success in the 90's, finally just admitting they had nothing at the MLB level letting payroll bottom and starting over, building the prospects to get a sold MLB team and it became time to go for the championships.

 

Now in the future if they are a 75-80 win team and making trades or signing high dollar closers or building a strong bench I'd questions those moves as frivolous or poor use of minor league talent. But when the MLB roster has enough core talent and an elite level player or two I see no reason to keep the team down and hope that in 3-5 years the teams is better or some other elite talent develops while the prime of the elite players in hand are wasted.

 

I have yet to feel remorse over any of the prospects traded by the Brewers over the last severals seasons despite some claims at the time that Inman, Garrison, Brantley, Dickerson, LaPorta, Thatcher, Gillespie, Jeffries, Odorizzi, Escobar, Cain, Lawrie, were future stars. A few of these guys namely Lawrie and Odorizzi and Escobar may still be above average players but the Brewers also got back Segura, Hellweg, and Pena to offset some of that talent.

 

I'm starting to come around to the notion that the current inefficiency in baseball valuation are the prospects. The fail rate is so high that outside of the few very obvious guys that never get traded for anything Trout, Strassburg, etc., teams may be better off dumping off prospects for proven talent and letting someone else overpay for potential.

[danzig6767]

 

I have yet to feel remorse over any of the prospects traded by the Brewers over the last severals seasons despite some claims at the time that Inman, Garrison, Brantley, Dickerson, LaPorta, Thatcher, Gillespie, Jeffries, Odorizzi, Escobar, Cain, Lawrie, were future stars. A few of these guys namely Lawrie and Odorizzi and Escobar may still be above average players but the Brewers also got back Segura, Hellweg, and Pena to offset some of that talent.

 

I'm starting to come around to the notion that the current inefficiency in baseball valuation are the prospects. The fail rate is so high that outside of the few very obvious guys that never get traded for anything Trout, Strassburg, etc., teams may be better off dumping off prospects for proven talent and letting someone else overpay for potential.

 

The Marcum for Lawrie trade is the one i still have strong reservations about.

[Fear The Chorizo]

If the Marcum for Lawrie trade doesn't happen, the Brewers don't make the playoffs in 2011. Lawrie definitely has big upside, but he hasn't exactly excelled from the moment he hit the majors, plus he's injured again. I would have loved to get Marcum for something less than Lawrie, but you can't fleece teams in trades every time.

 

It's Lawrie and Jake O that are the two prospects who could turn into quality big leaguers - Jake O still has a long way to go to establish himself as a big league-caliber starting pitcher. I think Lawrie has to screw things up for himself not to be a good big league player.

 

I tend to agree that at this point, prospects in general are overvalued throughout baseball. Don't get me wrong, there are a small group of the can't miss prospects that remain the biggest value there is, but that list is normally 5-10 players long on any given year. Teams are fortunate to have more than 2-3 prospects in their system that will eventually become above-average major leaguers at any time, yet it seems like there's prospect lists 10-20 names deep for most organizations every year. Teams with more quality than that in the farm system typically have prolonged major league failures that lead to high draft-pick stockpiling, or they are big market teams with quality international development schools and deep pockets to sign international players. The Brewers did a good job using overvalued prospects to improve their big league pitching during recent playoff runs in 2008 and 2011, and I can't complain about what was given up in order to have two shots in the postseason in the past 5 years. The key for them is to continue producing an impact player from their system every few years, and to make sure those players aren't rushed through the system.

 

The Brewers right now are a mix of veterans and young guys, both home grown and acquired via trade or free agency. As long as they don't get nuts and extend too many veterans on the wrong side of 30 over the next few seasons, I don't see the doom and gloom some posters are forecasting lately.

[MNBrew]

The Marcum for Lawrie trade is the one i still have strong reservations about.

I'd agree that there's reason to justify those reservations, but what I don't get is people pointing to that trade as a symptom of or reason for the Brewers' allegedly poor farm system (not that you were one making that point here). . . . Lawrie's entering his 3rd (2nd full) big league season. That's well past being a prospect and a minor leaguer.

[TooLiveBrew]

If the Marcum for Lawrie trade doesn't happen, the Brewers don't make the playoffs in 2011.

Lawrie & the package sent for Greinke could well have been used to acquire younger pitchers, and there's simply no way to know whether or not that theoretical team would've made or missed the postseason.

 

The Marcum for Lawrie trade is the one i still have strong reservations about.

I'd agree that there's reason to justify those reservations, but what I don't get is people pointing to that trade as a symptom of or reason for the Brewers' allegedly poor farm system (not that you were one making that point here). . . . Lawrie's entering his 3rd (2nd full) big league season. That's well past being a prospect and a minor leaguer.

Well, except that he's only entering his age-23 season (younger than Hunter Morris, for example). Obviously he's not a minor-leaguer anymore, but given that injuries have interrupted his playing time thus far he's more of a still-prospect to me than someone who'd had full-time playing time for even just one full season.

 

One of the main reasons Lawrie was traded is that he was reportedly vocally unhappy with how slowly he felt the Brewers were taking him up the organizational ladder. If he'd stayed a Brewer, I think he would've seen the bigs first in 2012, and probably closer to the middle of the season in order to keep him for another year of service time.