How Do We Expect to Win?

[crossface21]

2002?

 

I don't think you truly appreciate how bad that team really was. Glendon Rusch and Ruben Quevedo as the #2 and #3 starters, respectively. That says it all right there. It's gonna be a few years before they are competing for a playoff spot. But I'm excited to see things change the next couple of years and to watch some of the new Crew come up. 2003-2005 weren't great years, but they were a pretty exciting bunch of kids learning how to play and it was fun watching them. In 2002 I was just finishing college with no job yet, so all I had was time to party, drink beer, and watch the Brewers. I stopped watching the Brewers. It was just that awful to watch.

[rickh150]

2002.... We are better than that team. Yet, the division was not loaded with the young talent like it is now from multiple teams. It took 6 years from 2002 to make the playoffs on the last game of season. In that regard, I see our future track similarly.

[JohnBriggs12]

I am in complete agreement with the premise for this thread. While everyone was anxious for moves at the deadline and almost giddy when they did the deals, they depressed me even though I too liked some of what they got back. They took a team that was playing some decent baseball over the last couple months and with a tweak or two could have gone into 2016 with a very competitive roster and turned it into a team that can't compete at all. Right now this roster, even with 3 terrific young starters, looks like a 95 loss team for next year playing in this division and there will be many series against the top teams like they just had where they just didn't belong on the same field as the Cubs. So now they arguably have a top 10 minor league system? So? Future success is dependent on unproven talent. When and if that talent translates to the major league team is anyone's guess. Top draft picks sometimes turn into great players. Sometimes they are complete busts. Even if an Arcia becomes an All Star, and Phillips is a near All Star CF, that doesn't mean they will have complete team. They still lack the resources to add premier major league talent compared to Cubs and Cards and keeping Nelson and Peralta long term will become an issue before we know it.

 

We do know the Cubs have some premier talent and aren't going anywhere. Schwarber looks like a young Babe Ruth. It's indeed depressing.

[gregmag]

Briggs, you state your views well. I don't agree; I think you're overestimating our talent. But you could be right.

 

The thing is, they tried it your way. Bank on an optimistic view of your talent. Patch around what you have. Think about what your team can do, not so much what other teams may be able to do better. The Brewers have been playing that strategy for four years running and for the vast majority of the team's history.

 

That's why I think your prescription is clearly wrong. We've done it your way for years. Other smart people make a strong case for a different strategy. A version of that strategy -- build with youth -- got this team its best results since 1982. It's time to try something new.

[pacopete4]

I hope our next GM moves some of our players through the system faster. More so the pitchers.

[ewitkows]

In don't think that's the role of the GM. That's more the minor league farm director . I think they have been pushing guys lately that have proved they can handle it. They left kodi in A ball when he was suppose to go to rookie ball when the season started. They moved Victor up once he proved he could hit at high A

[paul253]

The Brewers started the rebuild. I just hope they finish it. I don't want them to slap another team together that Mark thinks will win enough games keep fair weather fans around.

 

They need to move Adam Lind. I realize they probably won't get much for him but there is literally no reason to keep him. Next year would more than likely be his final year anyway. He's terrible vs lefties and we can fill the position internally either with Braun (long term) or Rogers (short term). Trade him and maybe grab a lower level corner infield prospect. Trade Lucroy and focus entirely on getting back either a catching prospect a third base prospect or a starting pitching prospect with #1 or #2 potential. Any one of those would fill a huge need. Then just go with you have. Use Segura until Arcia is ready. Use Schafer or Peterson until Taylor, Phillips or Reed takes over. Put Santana in RF. Fill the final spot in the rotation with Cravy Thornburg or Davies. Then just keep developing everyone else. They'll draft someone who will likely be a top five organizational and top 100 overall prospect. I was as down on this organization as anyone. But it seems like they MAY have figured it out.

[trwi7]

Trade Lucroy and focus entirely on getting back either a catching prospect a third base prospect or a starting pitching prospect with #1 or #2 potential.

 

Focusing on one position in trading is probably one of the worst things the franchise could do at this point.

[TheCrew07]

I'm not sure that's true, part of trading from a position of strength is acquire a position of greater need. We really don't have a need in the OF or at SS... we need corner infielders, catching, and impact pitching.

 

I'd prefer pitching and there is a very short list of the position players at positions of need in the minors... there are just aren't many potential impact players at those positions.

 

It depends what teams would what Lucroy. The only time Melvin hit the impact pitching window in season was when he acquired Sabathia as a buyer, and over the winter he was always a buyer of veteran impact pitching with prospects, but he's gone now so it's tough to guess what will happen.

 

As always I'm not concerned with "mlb ready" I'm concerned with getting the best talent back possible.

[BrewCrewForever]

I like the road the Brewers are headed down. The farm system is starting to look quite good and I feel really good about what the team will look like in 2018. The trades at this deadline seem like they will be very good and I am excited to see what this new GM will do alongside Montgomery and Counsell. While 2016 and 2017 will not be contending seasons they could still be fun to start seeing some of the guys in the system that are close and get them ready to contend in 2018. Hope they make more trades this offseason to stack that young close to the majors core even more.

[paul253]

Trwi it wouldn't be focusing on one position it'd be focusing on one of three positions. I think it be more foolish to trade Lucroy for an outfielder or shortstop then to not trade him unless you get back a third basemen, catcher, or quality starting pitcher. The absolute last thing we need are shortstops and outfielders so why would you take one back for him?

 

And just to be clear I'm not suggesting we trade him for the best third basemen catcher or pitcher we can get. I'm saying trade him if you can get a good enough return from a team willing to give up a player who plays one of those three positions.

[davego]

I just want to add one point to the discussion. With two wild-cards now available, the opportunity to just "get in" are greatly enhanced. My point is, the 'Crew could finish 3rd in the division, still qualify, then roll the playoff dice.

[rickh150]

Davego has a good point about a third place team potentially getting in the playoffs and winning it all. It gives me, for one, more hope in the near future.

[danzig6767]

You know, now is the time to be bad. The Cards, Pirates and Cubs are good. I see the Cubs as the upcoming juggernaut. They have so much money they can spend, a deep system, star talent developing. They have been better than I anticipated, and they have a nice mix of veterans and young talent.

 

So it's a bad time to mediocre - like we have been for the last few years. Even if a lot goes right we have too many teams that can beat us.

 

That's why now is the time to rebuild. Sure we'll get beat up for a few years, but like the Astros and Cubs, if you manage things well, draft well, you'll see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is where Attanasio is so key. He has to be willing to look at where the Brewers stand compared to the rest of the division and use it as a time to rebuild correctly, while accepting that losing quite a few games will likely result.Whether he'll accept that is the biggest question to me.

[danzig6767]

Right now, it is 2002 in my mind.

 

It really isn't as bad as 2002 as we have a better minor league system and still have some trading chips (Lucroy and Braun). The brewers will always be the last team in MLB for market and likely local TV revenue. We need to move past that and realize it is what it is, that doesn't mean the Brewers can't be competitive. To be competitive they have to be smarter and right now we are stuck with an organization that is mired in 45+ years of not being smart enough. It isn't impossible to do get smart people, but with some of the historic issues and current leadership, there are definite negatives that make it less likely the Brewers can be competitive for the top young GM talent. Not impossible, but the Brewers need to start putting their house in shape. A complete cleanout with a new GM might be enough, but it might take incremental steps to put into process the changes needed to make the brewers an attractive place for the best in baseball.

I don't buy that the Brewers can't be competitive for the top young GM talent. General managers make pocket change in the grand scheme of a baseball team's overall budget. If the Brewers end up really liking a certain guy, throw some extra money at him to make sure you get the guy you want. A GM is arguably the most important person in a MLB franchise. Throwing say an extra million per year in an offer is nothing in a team budget with revenues near or over 200 million. Bad signings blow 10 of millions.

 

Plus, there are only a very limited number of available GM jobs out there and if an unproven guy turns down a job hoping for a better one, things could change and he may never land one of those GM jobs.

[reillymcshane]

I'll make a stab at the original question - how can we conceivably build a winning team. Here's my try at that question - all for fun and just to throw out some stuff to talk about.

 

Our pitching talent appears to be focused on starters who induce a lot of ground balls. Jungmann, Peralta and Nelson are all groundball pitchers (throwing aroudnd 50% ground balls). I think that Davies and Wagner are GB pitchers as well. Further down, I believe Medioros is too. Not sure about Cravy. Our relievers are power arms other than K-Rod. Thus, you build around what your strengths are - decent groundball pitchers, a bullpen of strong arms.

 

With that in mind, build your position players to better support your strengths. That means better defense. I'm not saying you simply get rid of players because they don't play good defense, but that you don't be afraid to prioritize it as you fill positions.

 

Players like Arcia, Taylor, Reed and Phillips are plus glove guys that could fit the profile of players we would need. Lucroy is a fine defensive catcher.

 

I think that in a couple of years we could have a solid rotation of groundball type pitchers. If we have a good defense to go with them, that will make them even better. If we have a good catcher (good pitch framer, good mentor), that will help them even more. It can make a bunch of solid starters better than average. Combine a better than average rotation with a good bullpen, it's pretty interesting.

 

Offensively, it's a challenge, but you need to fill several positions over the next couple of years (such as 3B). I guess that's where the GM comes in - perhaps using existing assets like Davis, Segura, Lind and others as trade chips (assuming none of those guys is a long term solution).

 

In the end, you get position players that are better defensively than we have had in the past. We may sacrifice some offense, but the better defense will help our GB dominated staff. And we can perhaps make up some of our deficiencies with not just better D, but with good base runners, guys with good baseball IQs, etc.

 

We do this with younger, cheaper players. The salary flexibility allows for better depth, allows the club to make some moves (such as sign a FA or take on salary in a trade) when the time comes that we can actually compete for the playoffs. And we're not forced to settle on junk like Betancourt starting at 1B because we don't have any room in our budget to add a decent player.

 

I think the closest thing to this is what Pittsburgh has done. They've got a lot of mileage from good defense and ground ball pitchers (their ball park helps).

 

Ultimately, you need the personnel to do anything. We seem geared toward a pitching staff of ground ball types - thus that's what I'm thinking.

[3and2Fastball]

I'd like to see the Brewers shut down Jungmann, Nelson & Peralta for the rest of the 2015 season. The rest of these games are meaningless. Whatever experience & development those 3 pitchers can gain is far overshadowed by the fact that every pitcher has only so many bullets in their arm.

 

The Brewers need to be forward-thinking. Shutting down their top pitchers of the 2016 season now, would really help their career longevity and health

[tmwiese55]

I'd like to see the Brewers shut down Jungmann, Nelson & Peralta for the rest of the 2015 season. The rest of these games are meaningless. Whatever experience & development those 3 pitchers can gain is far overshadowed by the fact that every pitcher has only so many bullets in their arm.

 

The Brewers need to be forward-thinking. Shutting down their top pitchers of the 2016 season now, would really help their career longevity and health

 

You have to play in order to improve. With this logic they shouldn't even play next year because the team has no shot. Each should have some kind of cap that they could hit by the end of the year but it's way too soon now. Biggest thing is not letting them go past 100 pitches in a start. You saw this with Jungman this weekend when he gotten taken out. I thought that showed they are thinking about this issue, but they have to pitch in order to improve.

[monty57]

The Brewers started the rebuild. I just hope they finish it.

 

I think that's the biggest hurdle for most teams. Very few teams have the guts to stick with the plan once things start to look a little brighter, and that can turn a well-crafted plan for long-term success into a short "window of opportunity." That's why I hope Pittsburgh does well. They have not given in while others have sold the farm to "win now," and maybe if they see success, the Brewers will follow this path.

 

If the new Brewer regime does things right, we will probably be in the bottom 10 teams in the majors for a few years, but by that time, we will have very little money tied up in guaranteed MLB contracts, and we should have a lot of young talent. We won't have the top line budget as the big market teams, but we will have a lot of free cash, and that's what's important in extending young star players, and adding talent via free agency to "plug holes" in the roster. Melvin did some things well, but he was not good at maintaining some free cash, preferring to always max payroll even deferring money to future years to get more from the current years' budget.

 

We became a top-heavy team sliding in reverse. We had/have some nice trading chips to restock the farm, which was absolutely necessary for us to have a realistic shot at future MLB success. We couldn't afford to miss that opportunity. Seeing the rebuild start, and realizing that it will be a few seasons before we can expect winning baseball to return is tough, but once we've made a few more trades, and some contracts/deferred money are purged from the books, we will have a clean slate on which to build. There is no guarantee of success, but since we're coming from a situation which has seemed almost guaranteed for failure for a number of years, I am thrilled that the team took the painful but necessary steps to begin the rebuild.

[MrTPlush]

I'd like to see the Brewers shut down Jungmann, Nelson & Peralta for the rest of the 2015 season. The rest of these games are meaningless. Whatever experience & development those 3 pitchers can gain is far overshadowed by the fact that every pitcher has only so many bullets in their arm.

 

The Brewers need to be forward-thinking. Shutting down their top pitchers of the 2016 season now, would really help their career longevity and health

 

So when we are competing everyone's arm falls off because no one has pitched 200innings in the prior year? Fantastic idea...

 

Odds are these pitchers are long gone before innings start effecting them. Taylor Jungmann is the only concern for the future in that sense. Peralta and Nelson are both workhorses.

[FVBrewerFan]

Offensively, it's a challenge, but you need to fill several positions over the next couple of years (such as 3B). I guess that's where the GM comes in - perhaps using existing assets like Davis, Segura, Lind and others as trade chips (assuming none of those guys is a long term solution).

 

Good news is, they will actually have money to spend on a FA position player or two- especially if they can find a way to trade Braun.

 

If they can develop their own young pitching staff, which doesn't look far-fetched at this point, it should be relatively easy to find a position player or two to plug in when the time is right.

[The stache]

Santana isn't a slouch either. All we really need is a legit 3B and a C prospect and we could compete again.

 

I think Gilbert Lara or Jake Gatewood will be our third baseman of the future. Both should have the power to play the position, and both have above average arms. The only question is if they will hit enough.

 

It would take some tweaking, but this is a possibility:

 

left field: Clint Coulter

center: Brett Phillips or Trent Clark

right field: Monte Harrison

 

first base: Domingo Santana

second base: Yadiel Rivera

shortstop: Orlando Arcia

third base: Gilbert Lara or Jake Gatewood

 

I have no idea who will catch for us, but there are some really intriguing possibilities for the Brewers of the future. We could have a pretty nice defensive outfield with Harrison in right and Phillips in center. Harrison has an absolute cannon of an arm, so he immediately helps pitchers out by limiting the amount of extra bases taken on balls hit to right. Phillips has a really strong arm, too. The weak link would be Coulter in left. He's slow, but does have a decent arm. Clark and Tyrone Taylor are also in the mix out there. As for Domingo Santana, I just like him better at first. At 6'5" he doesn't even have to jump for balls hit down the line. Rivera is exceptional defensively, and would likely transition well to second. He has the range and arm strength to play the position. How much he will hit at the Major League level remains to be seen. On the left side, we're going to be really solid. Arcia is an exciting prospect. And we have two guys in Lara and Gatewood that could fight it out at the hot corner. They have the size and power potential to make for a prototypical third baseman.

 

Honestly, this group coming up has some exciting potential, but I think no matter how they do from a pure offensive standpoint, our team is going to have much better defense. If the Brewers elect to move Rivera to second, with either Phillips or Clark in center, our defense up the middle is going to be rock solid.

 

I think two or three years from now, we're going to be surprising a lot of people.

[3and2Fastball]

Santana isn't a slouch either. All we really need is a legit 3B and a C prospect and we could compete again.

 

I think Gilbert Lara or Jake Gatewood will be our third baseman of the future. Both should have the power to play the position, and both have above average arms. The only question is if they will hit enough.

 

It would take some tweaking, but this is a possibility:

 

left field: Clint Coulter

center: Brett Phillips or Trent Clark

right field: Monte Harrison

 

first base: Domingo Santana

second base: Yadiel Rivera

shortstop: Orlando Arcia

third base: Gilbert Lara or Jake Gatewood

 

I have no idea who will catch for us, but there are some really intriguing possibilities for the Brewers of the future. We could have a pretty nice defensive outfield with Harrison in right and Phillips in center. Harrison has an absolute cannon of an arm, so he immediately helps pitchers out by limiting the amount of extra bases taken on balls hit to right. Phillips has a really strong arm, too. The weak link would be Coulter in left. He's slow, but does have a decent arm. Clark and Tyrone Taylor are also in the mix out there. As for Domingo Santana, I just like him better at first. At 6'5" he doesn't even have to jump for balls hit down the line. Rivera is exceptional defensively, and would likely transition well to second. He has the range and arm strength to play the position. How much he will hit at the Major League level remains to be seen. On the left side, we're going to be really solid. Arcia is an exciting prospect. And we have two guys in Lara and Gatewood that could fight it out at the hot corner. They have the size and power potential to make for a prototypical third baseman.

 

Honestly, this group coming up has some exciting potential, but I think no matter how they do from a pure offensive standpoint, our team is going to have much better defense. If the Brewers elect to move Rivera to second, with either Phillips or Clark in center, our defense up the middle is going to be rock solid.

 

I think two or three years from now, we're going to be surprising a lot of people.

 

 

I would buy plenty of tickets to see a team like that. Especially if we can somehow land Riley Pint in the 2016 draft and Jungmann, Nelson & Peralta continue to develop.

[FVBrewerFan]

Lara, Gatewood, Harrison, and Phillips are so far off that I wouldn't even consider slotting them into the line-up at some future date. Yes, they all have talent, but even Coulter hasn't proven he'll make it all the way to MLB. I agree, it's fun to think about the line-up down the road a few years if these guys all reach their ceilings.

[monty57]

Lara, Gatewood, Harrison, and Phillips are so far off that I wouldn't even consider slotting them into the line-up at some future date. Yes, they all have talent, but even Coulter hasn't proven he'll make it all the way to MLB. I agree, it's fun to think about the line-up down the road a few years if these guys all reach their ceilings.

 

I agree on Lara, Gatewood and Harrison, but Phillips is 21 playing in AA. He could realistically be in the majors sometime next year.

 

'Stache's lineup does bring up the question of what we're going to do with Braun. I would love to trade him this offseason, as he has shown that he still has ability, but by the time we could be good again, he'll be well past his prime and I'd rather look at a lineup like 'Stache put together. We have plenty of OFs and I agree that Santana looks like a good 1B candidate who is MLB ready right now. Getting out from under Braun's contract while adding some more talent to the prospect pool makes the future (beyond the next year or two) look even brighter.