Adam Lind acquired from Toronto for Marco Estrada

[3and2Fastball]

I get what you mean. It'd be nice to win just one. Doing something potentially franchise crippling to put all the eggs in one basket probably is not the best way to get one. It almost certainly limits us to just one. Just stay above average year in and year out and you get more chances for the stars to align. What better example than the Giants?

 

Very true. However, the Giants have been much better at drafting and developing pitching. We passed on Madison Bumgarner. They also traded for Jake Peavy and we didn't (Edwin Escobar & Heath Hembree are good solid pitchers but nothing incredible). They traded for Hunter Pence for the equivalent of Martin Maldonado and Tyler Thornburg and we didn't. They also have a much better manager than we do. They signed Michael Morse to a contract for $6 million which we could have beaten and would have certainly upgraded our 1B with Morse. The Giants didn't have a starting position player older than 32 on the roster in 2014, i.e. they weren't overpaying for an aging veteran (hello Aramis Ramirez)

 

I could go on and on. The Giants are a great example of doing everything the Brewers could have done but didn't

 

But yeah I hear you

[HiAndTight]

I get what you mean. It'd be nice to win just one. Doing something potentially franchise crippling to put all the eggs in one basket probably is not the best way to get one. It almost certainly limits us to just one. Just stay above average year in and year out and you get more chances for the stars to align. What better example than the Giants?

 

Very true. However, the Giants have been much better at drafting and developing pitching. We passed on Madison Bumgarner. They also traded for Jake Peavy and we didn't (Edwin Escobar & Heath Hembree are good solid pitchers but nothing incredible). They traded for Hunter Pence for the equivalent of Martin Maldonado and Tyler Thornburg and we didn't. They also have a much better manager than we do. They signed Michael Morse to a contract for $6 million which we could have beaten and would have certainly upgraded our 1B with Morse. The Giants didn't have a starting position player older than 32 on the roster in 2014, i.e. they weren't overpaying for an aging veteran (hello Aramis Ramirez)

 

I could go on and on. The Giants are a great example of doing everything the Brewers could have done but didn't

 

But yeah I hear you

 

It also wasn't long ago that Sabean was mocked on here regularly.

[endaround]

I get what you mean. It'd be nice to win just one. Doing something potentially franchise crippling to put all the eggs in one basket probably is not the best way to get one. It almost certainly limits us to just one. Just stay above average year in and year out and you get more chances for the stars to align. What better example than the Giants?

 

Very true. However, the Giants have been much better at drafting and developing pitching. We passed on Madison Bumgarner. They also traded for Jake Peavy and we didn't (Edwin Escobar & Heath Hembree are good solid pitchers but nothing incredible). They traded for Hunter Pence for the equivalent of Martin Maldonado and Tyler Thornburg and we didn't. They also have a much better manager than we do. They signed Michael Morse to a contract for $6 million which we could have beaten and would have certainly upgraded our 1B with Morse. The Giants didn't have a starting position player older than 32 on the roster in 2014, i.e. they weren't overpaying for an aging veteran (hello Aramis Ramirez)

 

I could go on and on. The Giants are a great example of doing everything the Brewers could have done but didn't

 

But yeah I hear you

 

If only the Brewers spent $40 million on replacement level production like the Giants!

[RobertR]

I'm actually okay if the Brewers simply concentrate on shoring up the bench and bullpen this offseason. They have stars in Lucroy, Gomez, and, presumably, a healthy Braun. They appear to have a solid and deep rotation. Upgrading the likes of Schafer, Herrera, and Bianchi shouldn't be particularly expensive. Nor should filling out the rest of the bullpen. None of that should cost you a draft pick or the services of a future young contributor.

 

Sometimes I think we overthink things. The key to winning more games, especially when you already have stars, is to minimize your team's weaknesses. How many stars do the Giants really have, besides Bumgarner and Posey? Depth was one of the reasons the A's have been getting by against teams with bigger payrolls, simply because they don't just give away games when their players need days off. Heck, it may help your best players stay healthy and productive if you're not afraid to give them a day off when they need it. I think there's a lot to be said for the notion of simply not giving away any of 162 games.

 

It might be that solid bench players are a market inefficiency. If so, that's something the Brewers can exploit.

[3and2Fastball]

I think when you compare the Giants (where we want to be) with the Brewers (where we are) it is important to look at a few key positions:

 

Hunter Pence had a 4.7 WAR last year, Khris Davis had a 1.8 WAR. The Brewers should not be satisfied with a 1.8 WAR out of the corner outfield spot opposite Braun. Likely they feel that Davis can upgrade that productivity. He will really need to.

 

Pablo Sandoval had a 3.0 WAR, Aramis Ramirez had a 2.1 WAR

[Thurston Fluff]

I'm actually okay if the Brewers simply concentrate on shoring up the bench and bullpen this offseason.

 

Ditto. Truth be told I would have been ok with them doing a complete overhaul or going this route. I wouldn't have wanted the overhaul to be a five year rebuild but would have been fine with tying to retool the roster with different types of players.

 

 

Depth was one of the reasons the A's have been getting by against teams with bigger payrolls, simply because they don't just give away games when their players need days off. Heck, it may help your best players stay healthy and productive if you're not afraid to give them a day off when they need it.

 

You hit on something with that. It is also a reason to keep Lucroy behind the plate and not spend his off days at first. Ramirez would probably benefit from more days off next year. I think the outfield would benefit going that direction. Braun really isn't a 150 game a year type of player now and Davis has had some durability questions in the past. Parra on the bench is a huge advantage. Four players capable of starting playing three positions is nice to have if it isn't expensive. IF we can find two decent bench players of rthe infield it would be nice. Six capable players covering four spots would be huge.

[SRB]

The Giants have a $150M+ payroll, why are they a comparator for the Brewers?

[Thurston Fluff]

I think I started it by comparing the way they won three titles to teams that go all in. It wasn't about payroll. It was about building a team that wins on a regular basis, yet never being great, as a better way to win as many championships as possible. I tend to think that way is better than going all in building a great team that lasts one or two seasons.

They actually didn't spend all that wisely so they had to spend more to keep the team together. But that doesn't negate the point that they managed to keep a competitive team on the field without ever going for it all in a particular season by trying to build the best team ever. I think the Brewers are better served going that route (albeit with our payroll, we will have to make better decisions than SF did) than trying to put all our playoff hopes in a super team for the year or two.

[logan82]

Does Mark A actually think that he can fill Miller Park again trotting out the same team plus Lind? That's the other question I'm intrigued with answers to.... can the Brewers really sell this team as viable contenders to the public in Wisconsin? I have my doubts on that....

 

I've seen this line of thinking in a few places. While the perception might be the Brewers are more than one or two players away from contending what they did last season says they really are just a player or two away. It looks a lot worse than it is due to how badly it ended but overall we were six games short of what the World Series winners had. Adding one legitimate starter where we didn't have one would go a long way towards winning six extra games throughout the season.

It also looks a lot better than it should due to a very unrealistic start to the season.

[JohnBriggs12]

I think when you compare the Giants (where we want to be) with the Brewers (where we are) it is important to look at a few key positions:

 

Hunter Pence had a 4.7 WAR last year, Khris Davis had a 1.8 WAR. The Brewers should not be satisfied with a 1.8 WAR out of the corner outfield spot opposite Braun. Likely they feel that Davis can upgrade that productivity. He will really need to.

 

Pablo Sandoval had a 3.0 WAR, Aramis Ramirez had a 2.1 WAR

 

Not sure where you are getting your numbers. Baseball-Reference had Davis with 2.1 and Baseball Prospectus had him at 2.8. I thought B-P had Ramirez at 0.6 and Baseball Reference has him at 1.4. Sandoval was 3.1 on B-P and 3.3 on B-R,

 

Davis wasn't the problem. He had 61 extra base hits. Ramirez had 39.

[logan82]

He is using fWAR which for position players is generally accepted to be better that rWAR.

[3and2Fastball]

Generally I use Fangraphs for WAR stats. That is where I usually go for comparative stats.

 

Found it interesting that Fangraphs ranked Lucroy 6th and Gomez 10th in WAR, overall, in MLB

[Thurston Fluff]

Does Mark A actually think that he can fill Miller Park again trotting out the same team plus Lind? That's the other question I'm intrigued with answers to.... can the Brewers really sell this team as viable contenders to the public in Wisconsin? I have my doubts on that....

 

I've seen this line of thinking in a few places. While the perception might be the Brewers are more than one or two players away from contending what they did last season says they really are just a player or two away. It looks a lot worse than it is due to how badly it ended but overall we were six games short of what the World Series winners had. Adding one legitimate starter where we didn't have one would go a long way towards winning six extra games throughout the season.

It also looks a lot better than it should due to a very unrealistic start to the season.

 

Take away that unrealistically bad ending as well and you get pretty close to where we ended. Find a player or two that are better than the one you had and the overall product should be better. If the product was slightly above average and you improve on that then the team should go from slightly above average to solidly above average. Solidly above average is about where playoff hopes are realistic.

I get what you are saying in that they didn't play that well for a much longer stretch of the season so that may have been an aberration. But take away Pittsburgh or St Louis best month or so and I bet their teams wouldn't have looked so good either. Very few teams play to their average all year long. Most teams surge then slump. Take away that surge and not the slump and no team would look good.

[Point Beer Is Best]

I think when you compare the Giants (where we want to be) with the Brewers (where we are) it is important to look at a few key positions:

 

Hunter Pence had a 4.7 WAR last year, Khris Davis had a 1.8 WAR. The Brewers should not be satisfied with a 1.8 WAR out of the corner outfield spot opposite Braun. Likely they feel that Davis can upgrade that productivity. He will really need to.

 

Pablo Sandoval had a 3.0 WAR, Aramis Ramirez had a 2.1 WAR

 

I agree that the Giants are where we want to be in terms of number of championships, but I don't think that's where we want to be (nor are we capable of being due to salary constraints) in terms of roster construction. I know it's all the rage to look at the Royals & Giants and set them up as the perfect franchises this offseason, but the reality is that over a 162 game season, these teams were Wild Cards.

[logan82]

I've seen this line of thinking in a few places. While the perception might be the Brewers are more than one or two players away from contending what they did last season says they really are just a player or two away. It looks a lot worse than it is due to how badly it ended but overall we were six games short of what the World Series winners had. Adding one legitimate starter where we didn't have one would go a long way towards winning six extra games throughout the season.

It also looks a lot better than it should due to a very unrealistic start to the season.

 

Take away that unrealistically bad ending as well and you get pretty close to where we ended. Find a player or two that are better than the one you had and the overall product should be better. If the product was slightly above average and you improve on that then the team should go from slightly above average to solidly above average. Solidly above average is about where playoff hopes are realistic.

I get what you are saying in that they didn't play that well for a much longer stretch of the season so that may have been an aberration. But take away Pittsburgh or St Louis best month or so and I bet their teams wouldn't have looked so good either. Very few teams play to their average all year long. Most teams surge then slump. Take away that surge and not the slump and no team would look good.

I agree we probably ended up about where we expected. I think the start and collapse were both aberrations. The rest is here.

[SoupTown]

I was interested in the Giants 150 mill payroll. I did not realise it was that. So, if we have a $150 mill payroll in 2015 who are we adding in free agency. Does that make us better than the Giants? If so, it means playoffs are salary based to a large extent.

[brewerfan82]

Using this as a baseline: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/2015-free-agent-predictions/

 

For about $50m more we could theoretically add SP James Shields ($19m), SS Hanley Ramirez ($19m), LHP Andrew Miller ($8.5m), and 1B/3B Mark Reynolds ($3.5).

 

SP Shields, SP Gallardo, SP Lohse, SP Garza, SP Peralta, CL Broxton, RP Miller, RP Smith, RP Thornburg, RP Henderson, RP Jeffress, RP Kintzler, C Lucroy, 1B Lind, 2B Gennett, 3B A Ramirez, SS H Ramirez, LF Davis, CF Gomez, RF Braun, BN Maldonado, BN Reynolds, BN Segura, BN Parra, BN Schafer

 

Money helps. I'd take that.

[Thurston Fluff]

I was interested in the Giants 150 mill payroll. I did not realise it was that. So, if we have a $150 mill payroll in 2015 who are we adding in free agency. Does that make us better than the Giants? If so, it means playoffs are salary based to a large extent.

 

Having the ability to out spend people does help but I don't think it means you have to spend to put up consistently competitive teams. I think there is a danger of having to much money to spend as well. To get enough star players via FA teams who have the money seem unable to resist the temptation to hand out contracts that are bigger than the player's worth. They usually have to give up draft picks as well so they have less of a chance of developing enough players of their own. At about the time those high priced players start to falter would be the time those prospects would be nice to have. Since they don't have them those teams have to get more FA's to compensate for the lack of prospects. That is the negative feedback loop the Yankees are in now. They have a choice to make; stick with their old crappy players at huge salaries, save their draft picks and not be competitive or eat those contracts and get more FA's for similar type of contracts and stay in that loop longer. What seems to be a common thread with high payroll teams is, after a certain point, a lot of money goes to players who suck. Philly is in the same situation with some of their guys. It appears they are choosing to suffer through it and end the cycle. The Dodgers are going to have that pop up sooner or later as well. The only time a high payroll seems to be a huge advantage is the first generation of players they overpay for. The Giants might be close to, maybe even at, the end of that period.

[LouisEly]

It's not necessarily that a big payroll allows you to sign free agents that puts you over the top. It's that it allows you to resign your star players and trade for players to shore up holes and take on their salary.

 

What if the Brewers had the money to resign Grienke? Or Sabathia? Or Fielder? Then you don't have all of this debate about who should be traded when, and what is an appropriate return for them. Makes the GM's job a helluva lot easier.

 

Hell, forget $40M in additional payroll, what if the Brewers had just $3M more per year to throw at Jose Abreu? 1B problem would have been more than solved.

[monty57]

It's not necessarily that a big payroll allows you to sign free agents that puts you over the top. It's that it allows you to resign your star players and trade for players to shore up holes and take on their salary.

 

Having extra money obviously helps, but no different than "real life," with any amount of revenue, you still need to be smart about it. Plenty of big money teams have spent unwisely and ended up with big obligations on bad contracts that keep them from competing. Unfortunately for small money teams, with the advent of "Moneyball," more big money teams seem to understand the value of being smart with their money, and aren't willing to give up "unproven" for "proven" as easily.

 

Also, you can't look at things in a vaccuum (i.e. if we had more money right now, we could do "x"), because having more money would probably have meant obligating it on previous moves. Melvin has a lot more money to spend now than he did a decade ago, but much of it is already spoken for. That's why I don't like the concept of spending the maximum payroll every year just because it's there. Had we foregone some spending in the past, maybe we would have had that little extra to pay more for Abreu. Again just like in "real life," if you spend less than your budget, you have money left over when something big comes up. If you always spend everything you have, you don't have anything left over when opportunity arises.

[Thurston Fluff]

What if the Brewers had the money to resign Grienke? Or Sabathia? Or Fielder? Then you don't have all of this debate about who should be traded when, and what is an appropriate return for them. Makes the GM's job a helluva lot easier.

 

What would have happens this year is we would have spent 24 million for 3 homeruns 16 rbi a .720 OPS terrible defensive first baseman and an additional 23 million for 46 innings of 5.38 ERA level starting pitcher. WE would have had a nioce season from Greinke but would he really be worth double the money we paid any of our three veteran pitchers? Hell having him in the rotation would have meant we wouldn't have had one of either Lohse, Fiers or Garza. Would trading Greinke's 2.71 ERA really helped all that much more than Fiers 2.13 for example?

[RobertR]

Honestly, I'd be happier if the Brewers were more cutthroat in cutting deadweight than if they had signed Sabathia or Fielder. Yeah, Grienke would have been a good signing, particularly because of his age and lack of any red flags due to body type, but I kind of think that the Brewers probably came out ahead in Lohse plus Garza over Grienke plus ????.

[Thurston Fluff]

That assumes of course we would have had Fielder to extend. Had we always had that money we probably would have spent it on a FA that would have allowed us to be just good enough not to be able to draft that high. Naturally that lower level draft pick would have been given away to sign said FA so we not only wouldn't have been drafting that high we probably wouldn't have had any pick in the first round. The loss of some of those picks would have meant a weaker farm system that would have made trading for Greinke or Sabathia more problematic. Money no doubt helps but I think it has limits. The longer you spend big the less return you get for it.

[BrewBalls]

Its hard to determine how an extension to CC, Prince or Greinke would have impacted the Brewers future decisions. Although I do believe having a larger payroll helps in three separate ways.

 

First, you can afford more star caliber players after arbitration ($14M+ salaries) on your roster. The Giants had 3 in 2014 and 4 (possibly 5 if they resign Panda) in 2015 while the Brewers only have 1 in both 2014 and 2015.

 

Second, you can supplement your roster with better complementary players ($5M up to $14M). The Giants has 9 in 2014 and 7 for 2015 while the Brewers only have 6 for both seasons.

 

Finally, you can afford to miss on a signing now and then without having it cripple your ability to build a competitive roster.

Giants were paying Lincecum $18M to pitch mop up duty and $5M for Scutaro who was out the entire season while the Brewers couldn't afford to sign a FA 1B because Weeks was making $12M last season to platoon at 2B.

 

I'm not saying money is the difference between winning and losing but it definitely can make a GM's job easier.

[BrewBalls]

That assumes of course we would have had Fielder to extend. Had we always had that money we probably would have spent it on a FA that would have allowed us to be just good enough not to be able to draft that high. Naturally that lower level draft pick would have been given away to sign said FA so we not only wouldn't have been drafting that high we probably wouldn't have had any pick in the first round. The loss of some of those picks would have meant a weaker farm system that would have made trading for Greinke or Sabathia more problematic. Money no doubt helps but I think it has limits. The longer you spend big the less return you get for it.

I agree to some extent. You can't just spend money to spend it. But if you use the additional payroll to supplement your roster with solid role players (Mike Morse, Tim Hudson, Marco Scutaro, Angel Pagan and Jeremy Affeldt) on shorter deals for lower AAV, then you can lessen the loss of return on your investments.