Brewers claim OF Kirk Nieuwenhuis from Mets

[MrTPlush]

We would really have to start trading some talent to lose 100. Lucroy,Braun, and Nelson/Peralta.

 

And for future seasons we should be adding some pretty good talent in Houser/Hader/Lopez/Arcia/Phillips I have a hard time seeing them lose enough either. I'd expect us to stay 95 or under.

 

While we are worse than last year I also am going to predict we don't have a historically bad start...which is worth 5+ wins in itself. So I would be surprised to finish with 94 wins or close to it.

 

But I agree why does it even matter that much. Some of you are overly concerned with that top pick.

[SRB]

Honestly who cares if we lose 100 games? Nobody thinks we're going to compete, so what does it matter.

 

Maybe that's just me though, given I'm one of the few (?) who almost prefers terrible, rebuilding teams. Much more relaxing season as a fan and lots of interest for those of us (as in Brewerfan users) "dedicated" fans.

[Jenkins5]

Honestly who cares if we lose 100 games? Nobody thinks we're going to compete, so what does it matter.

 

Maybe that's just me though, given I'm one of the few (?) who almost prefers terrible, rebuilding teams. Much more relaxing season as a fan and lots of interest for those of us (as in Brewerfan users) "dedicated" fans.

 

Honestly I think 90-100 lose season will be awesome for the pure fact the minor forum will get back to where it was in its glory days 2003-2008! I think it is fun to follow young prospects and see guys get opportunities at MLB level. I miss the days when there were 5 new trends rocking a day with heated debates going for pages on prospects in the minor league forum.

 

So just remember everyone, when the crew is struggling move over to the minor league side to focus on our future!

[dlk9s]

March 2016

 

NSFW NSFW

 

[bylo tesi me]

Serious question, if the Current team is set upon Tanking, who does everyone see as their main competition t word the bottom? Philadelphia?, Oakland, Seattle? Think I might enjoy watching the "Race" to ineptitude this season. Will still attend my usual 6-7 games this year

 

As for the topic, I've at least heard of Nieuwenhuis, at this point it doesn't seem to matter anymore if the goal is to lose. Perhaps they could make this old guy happy and have this team sponsored by Chico's bail Bonds.

[dlk9s]

The goal isn't to lose. The goal is to rebuild. A side effect of the rebuild is losing.

[Jenkins5]

Think the biggest thing is our our team and system is in position where we can make a few more trades that could make this team very fun to watch as soon as 2017. Lucroy can get at least 2 high level top prospects if Brewers wanted plus 1 or 2 R to A ball guys tossed in. Will Smith being a lefty making 1 million a season who has been very good out of the pen last two season (until overworked) in this RP market could possible get us a Top 5 prospect from a system plus lower level guy or two. Then you add some of those other guys....we have pieces.

 

How long our rebuild is depends soley on Lucroy's trade IMO. That is the benchmark for us. Does DS go top flight high level or low level prospects. (Purely a made up example to make point) Are we getting Gallo, Jackson, Cordell for now or going with Rays to get Adames, Whitley, Honeywell type 20 and under deal for longer rebuild

[brewcrewdue80]

You know, as easy as it was to claim these 3 players on waivers, it'll be just as easy to release? I'm guessing the 40man really stands at about 34 with 6 warm bodies to fill it to 40 for now. Someone says, why not play Reed? Well, maybe from Opening day Reed will be starting. These moves don't cement this players in to Starting roles/Backups come Opening Day. Reading too much in to the 40man on the reclamation projects. As I recall, a couple seasons ago, it was Toronto that pretty much claimed every waiver player and just revolving door of those guys. Bring them in to camp, take a look and see if there's a reason to keep them. If this is a 100loss team finding the backup that's 0WAR vs the one that's -1.5WAR. That to me is what is going on. The Rule 5picks will the 2 ML picks even make the Opening day roster or just be returned? That's 5 players on the 40man that have a tough road to making Opening Day. Pinto may be insurance if Lucroy is traded. He doesn't get traded, waived.

 

I'm pumped about the rebuild. We're already getting teams #15 prospects and stashing them as our #30. There's going to be a lot of talent brought up before the Superstud talents arrive. But let's just not hand them the job and make them earn it.

[brewcrewdue80]

Think the biggest thing is our our team and system is in position where we can make a few more trades that could make this team very fun to watch as soon as 2017. Lucroy can get at least 2 high level top prospects if Brewers wanted plus 1 or 2 R to A ball guys tossed in. Will Smith being a lefty making 1 million a season who has been very good out of the pen last two season (until overworked) in this RP market could possible get us a Top 5 prospect from a system plus lower level guy or two. Then you add some of those other guys....we have pieces.

 

How long our rebuild is depends soley on Lucroy's trade IMO. That is the benchmark for us. Does DS go top flight high level or low level prospects. (Purely a made up example to make point) Are we getting Gallo, Jackson, Cordell for now or going with Rays to get Adames, Whitley, Honeywell type 20 and under deal for longer rebuild

 

Such teasing saying such fantastic names like Whitley, or in other Texas proposals, Tate/Ortiz. Whitley I said, reminds me of Stanton....Get me to riled up over here on that kind of return potential. Yowza

[FVBrewerFan]

Waste of time. I don't like this trend of signing 28-29 year olds. I would rather go with Reed and any other YOUNG player than these ST invites that are old and well... not very good.

 

Scott Podsednik was 27-28 with the Brewers

Brady Clark was 30-33 with Brewers

Casey McGehee was 26/27 I believe

 

Some guys take awhile to get there opportunity to establish themselves. If Reed is so good anyway, he will beat these guys out for the job. If he can't, why should the Brewers just give him the job without earning it or proving it? DS is creating competition. If Nieuwenhuis comes out and proves that he is the best option you go with him. If not, you lose nothing by bringing him in.

 

I understand, but my point is if he is Brady Clark for a couple years, who cares? We don't need players who can help in 2016. 2016 should be a try-out year for the likes of Santana, Reed, Rivera, guys like that. Not 29 year olds.

[Boomer5]

The goal isn't to lose. The goal is to rebuild. A side effect of the rebuild is losing.

 

Semantics. The Brewers can't get to elite status without a string of excellent drafts. They are more likely to get there drafting 1 than 9.

 

Stearns came from Houston. Their plan was pretty simple and obvious. Tank and use the bonus money as widely as possible. This is a new era of baseball talent acquisition. It's all about acquiring the most bonus money.

 

The math is pretty easy here. This is going to be a 100 loss team. That is most certainly the plan and I promise you no one we aquired this offseason will change that.

[Jenkins5]

Once again though you don't play players just because they are young, it is there job to win the job. You never actually try to lose or make a lineup that will for sure fail (Outside of 76ers). If Reed & Phillips show they are not ready, what is wrong with a stop gap? Best case scenario, Nieuwenhuis takes off and builds some trade value as Scott Po & Clark did once our young guys prove that they are ready for their opportunity. Realistic best, he holds us over with decent offense and plus defense and becomes a decent bench bat and defensive weapon once Phillips gets the call. Worst case.....He doesn't makes team and claimed by another team...which isn't really a lose.

[danzig6767]

The goal isn't to lose. The goal is to rebuild. A side effect of the rebuild is losing.

Yea, the main objective is to play mostly younger players to see how they perform and usually that leads to high loss totals. The degree of losing though dictated mainly by how well those younger players perform, which is really hard to predict.

[MNBrew]

The goal is to win a World Championship, and the path for the Brewers to get there is for them to attain as many young, cost-controlled high-upside players as they can. In order to do this with their limited resources, they have to a) trade off the assets they have now that will yield a better return in the future than the current assets; and b) exploit their main avenue of talent acquisition - the amateur draft.

 

Signing placeholders to add a few more wins is counterproductive to the overall strategy. I'd rather they stick the extra money in scouting & international talent acquisition than signing guys like Pedro Alvares and Venerable.

1) Unless you're comparing the Brewers to the huge-market teams on the coasts or in Chicago, Texas, or St. Louis, the Brewers DON'T have limited resources. The notion that the Brewers are suddenly on a restricted budget and have to have a low payroll is wrong:

 

The lower payroll is a by-product OF trading veterans, not the '90s-Brewers-esque reason FOR trading veterans.

 

It's the same flawed logic as the faulty assumption that the Brewers need to trade the remaining players with substantial multi-year deals.

 

2) To the notion someone else suggested (like many others also have) that you're always better off letting your prospects get any MLB ABs over a vet/journeyman, I think it bears mentioning the general reminder that not every prospect proves to be MLB-ready and to continue to force-feed MLB playing time on someone who's not ready yet risks doing more long-term harm than good. . . . .Yeah, like many here, I love the turnover and the transactions and the promise of "what might soon be" in terms of prospects getting their MLB chance. But you have to have viable back-up plans, too, and failure to properly protect/develop your prospects in their finishing stages is simply unacceptable.

[Boomer5]

Amazing how we make some no risk waiver claims so now Brewers are going to lose 100 games for a few seasons. They have plenty a pretty good amount of talent in upper levels and could still add to it if they feel like it with Lucroy, Davis, W. Smith, Braun, Peralta, Segura, Gennett trades. We brought in a bunch of guy who were once high end talents who either had a bad year or two or have never really never got the at bats to prove themselves. If you are waiting until 2019-2020, you are really going to close your window with Arcia & Phillips if they come up this season. That gives you only around 3 years before they walk

 

I dont think the phrase the Brewers are following the tank model of the Astros is even all that controversial? Maybe because its such a radical shift from the 85 wins or bust mentality we had for so long? Why do you think the Brewers hired a guy from the Astros in the first place?

 

Obviously CC isn't telling the team to lose games but if Kirk Nieuwenhuis is taught to go out and hit 850 and play GG D at the end of the day he is still Kirk Nieuwenhuis and he will be a bad player and will therefore not win games.

 

The Brewers lost 94 games last year and since July have traded more than a few very good players. In the case of the Astros and O's trades, they did bring back guys who will contribute soon. However, in the offseason they haven't brought in anyone that matters outside of maybe Villar, and I think Im being charitable calling him a key contributor. The change from looking at 2017 with the Astros trade may have changed once Stearns came in and looked at the reality of the Cubs and Pirates and the Cardinals still being the Cardinals, current issues and all. Finishing 4th with 85 wins isnt going to help the Brewers get to the top, which is all that matters for a franchise that has never won a WS ultimately.

 

The Brewer only chance to get to that elite status is to build the farm system to top 1-5 in the game for sustainable period, and they wont get there by drafting 6-12 every year. Its a new era of baseball. The Cubs and Pirates thrived off high draft picks and wise international signings. The Brewers are just doing what these other teams are doing.

[monty57]

Lots of good points in this post:

 

re: Why not just play Santana? Santana is not a CF, and there is no need to use up his service time just to have him on the MLB team. He'll be in the majors, and that will likely be when Braun or Davis is traded. If that happens to be the 2016 trade deadline, then that just means he'll spend a few months in the minors, possibly adding a year of team control. Note that I'd guess either Braun or Davis will be traded this offseason, allowing Santana to be an opening day starter in RF and making us all happy that we have real CF's on the team.

 

re: Will we lose 100? It really doesn't matter, but I think our young pitching will keep us from hitting that many losses, so I'd take the under there. Either way, we're going to get a good draft pick.

 

re payroll: MNBrew is right. We will have loads of extra money to spend in 2016, it's just not going into the MLB payroll. I hope they are able to use it wisely to help us for the future, and once the time comes Stearns will be able to add to payroll to get it up into the middle-tier payrolls, but coming from a low payroll, that will leave a lot of free cash so it could make him feel like a kid at Christmas. Again, I hope he uses it wisely.

 

re the topic of the thread: Nieuwenhuis is a no risk, some potential return signing. It's more exciting to see a high upside signing, but we need to have role players during this phase of the rebuild, and there doesn't seem to be any problem with this signing. As YoungGeezy said, there is no risk to it, and best case scenario is a Scotty Po scenario, where we end up getting a guy to bring some excitement to the team for a year or two who is flipped for a Carlos Lee return when our young guys start hitting the majors and we're getting ready to compete.

[Thurston Fluff]

The change from looking at 2017 with the Astros trade may have changed once Stearns came in and looked at the reality of the Cubs and Pirates and the Cardinals still being the Cardinals, current issues and all. Finishing 4th with 85 wins isnt going to help the Brewers get to the top, which is all that matters for a franchise that has never won a WS ultimately.

 

Not picking on you personally for this but I honestly don't get this line of thinking for a couple reasons. The first is I don't think the division is going to remain as great as it was last season over the next few seasons. Just because those three teams were good last season doesn't make them a lock to be good for the next three or so. The Pirates are about to hit the same situation the 2011 Brewers did. Their core of players are going to get expensive, Burnett is gone and Liriano isn't exactly young nor durable. The Cards have lost a few players and their core is getting old. Even the Cubs, who look to be the class of the division going forward may not get much, if any, better than they were last season. They stayed remarkably healthy and all of their young players played up to their potential. That rarely lasts over a three year period. They will have their Rickie Weeks and Cory Hart's as well. Odds are each team will have their version of Ryan Braun's thumb, Cory Hart's and Mat Gamel's knees. They will all also have some guys who just never put together consistent, year to year, high level production. They too will have their versions of JJ Hardy and Rickie Weeks. The Cubs already did with Starlin Castro. Going deeper into that a couple season's ago they had an embarrassment of riches at shortstop in the minors. The farm was so full of them nobody was sure what they would do with them all. This winter they had to go out and buy an older free agent to play shortstop. Things change far too quickly to predicate building your team on how other teams look today.

The second problem with building your team based on when the division might get weaker is it's the wrong thing to focus on. Given the predictability problems I stated above it seems silly to target players to be ready at some time when the division might not be as good. If we are going to do that why not just strive to put out 85 win teams and hope for that to be enough in five years? If we are building a team that is good enough to win championships then there is no need to worry about how good other teams in the division are. There will always be a great team that we need to beat if we are to win it all. It doesn't matter one hill of beans if that team is in our division or not. You don't win championships by trying to avoid teams when they are good because there will always be good teams. The key is being good yourself.

[DHonks]

Monty, the service time argument doesn't hold water anymore. Teams have decided that if a player is ready, you might as well play the person and generate good-will. Teams aren't simply holding guys back in AAA like they used to. I'd take Santana in the OF any day. Plus, he'll play 6 games in the corner spots due to inevitable injuries to braun and Davis

[Thurston Fluff]

Monty, the service time argument doesn't hold water anymore. Teams have decided that if a player is ready, you might as well play the person and generate good-will. Teams aren't simply holding guys back in AAA like they used to. I'd take Santana in the OF any day. Plus, he'll play 6 games in the corner spots due to inevitable injuries to braun and Davis

 

I think Kris Bryant might disagree with you.

[adambr2]

Amazing how we make some no risk waiver claims so now Brewers are going to lose 100 games for a few seasons. They have plenty a pretty good amount of talent in upper levels and could still add to it if they feel like it with Lucroy, Davis, W. Smith, Braun, Peralta, Segura, Gennett trades. We brought in a bunch of guy who were once high end talents who either had a bad year or two or have never really never got the at bats to prove themselves. If you are waiting until 2019-2020, you are really going to close your window with Arcia & Phillips if they come up this season. That gives you only around 3 years before they walk

 

As the organization has been upfront about, this is a process that is going to take time. I don't think they are waiting for 2017 and I don't think they are waiting for 2021. Mark A specifically said there, I believe, that there is no time frame for this.

There are going to be so many moving parts in the organization the next few years and they can't and shouldn't rush the process for the sake of their top prospects now. That goes against everything we've been trying to change here.

 

Also, if they are contenders again in 2019 and Arcia and Phillips are their best guys and both have 3 years before they hit free agency, I fail to see how that's a bad thing. One thing this approach will help with now is being able to keep those top guys.

 

If you want to enjoy the Brewers in 2016, avoid looking at the W/L record all year completely. It has nothing to do with whether or not they lose 100 games. Right now, it's all about talent accumulation. Nothing else. Goal is to find those guys who are going to be part of the next winning team in Milwailee.

[reillymcshane]

I think that one important factor about the Brewers and the 'rebuild' is that this organization is in a better situation than other teams that have had to do rebuilds - such as Houston. The Astros rebuild took a long time because when the rebuild began the team was in horrible shape from top to bottom. Milwaukee has some interesting assets that could allow us to rebuild quicker than some other clubs have done.

 

Even without any further moves, look at our 2017 (not 2016) lineup.

 

Lucroy - All star catcher, still only 31

Arcia - Top 10 prospect

Santana - Top 100 prospect

Davis - Hit 27 HR in less than 400 ABs this past season; .800+ OPS

Braun - Still a force

Phillips - Top 40 prospect

 

Peralta - Top 100 prospect, 17 game winner with a 3.53 ERA in 2014

Nelson - Top 100 Prospect

Jungmann - Good rookie season in 2015

Lopez - Probably a top 100 - maybe top 50 prospect this year

Hader - Mabye a top 100 guy this year

 

Young bullpen with some big arms.

 

And there's some other guys that could emerge in the next year from he minors - Taylor, Wagner, etc. Plus some existing MLB players, such as Davies could step up.

 

My point is we have some interesting talent now. Not all of these guys will pan out, but it's a good starting point - I think a lot better than what teams like Houston and the Cubbies had after they went into a rebuild mode.

 

Yes, you need to find a 1B and a 3B. And you have to sort of 2B. But that's what 2016 is about. Let the young studs like Arcia mature a bit more, find potential longer term options at positions such as 1B and 3B. You develop good depth to handle the inevitable injuries that happen. And you keep filling the pipeline to deal with the inevitable failures of some prospects. That's why we try guys like Cecchini or Neiuwenhuis or whomever. Now's the time to see if they can fill a spot for a few years - or even just be a capable backup so we aren't employing stiffs like Yuni in the future.

 

I think the team's most glaring weakness is the lack of superstar potential. The two current stars - Luc and Braun are getting past their primes, and the guys we have in the minors don't look big slugger type all-stars. Same with pitching - lots of good looking players, but there's no ace stud in the making. A couple of drafts can change this - plus some of our recent picks stepping up.

 

In the end, I know for sure when we'll be 'good' - but I think we have a better start than a lot of the clubs that have had to rebuild. And even in 2017, I think we can be a fun club to watch as things take shape for the future. Maybe we won't be that good - but we should be interesting.

[JohnBriggs12]

"Mark A says there is no timeframe for this"

 

In other words he's asking fans not to hold them accountable. Ever.

[Brewer Fever]

"Mark A says there is no timeframe for this"

 

In other words he's asking fans not to hold them accountable. Ever.

 

It's never a good thing when people reading through these posts know exactly what name will appear next to the comment after reading. It's commonly referred to as a "broken record". That's you.

 

Merry Christmas

[dlk9s]

"Mark A says there is no timeframe for this"

 

In other words he's asking fans not to hold them accountable. Ever.

 

No, it's about not making promises that they don't know that they can deliver. There's no reason to put an arbitrary deadline on a rebuild, especially in a business with so much uncertainty. They could do everything perfectly and still not end up with the results they want.

 

The important thing is to have a reasonable, well-thought out plan that gets implemented properly, while at the same time being able to have the mindset to be able to adapt if the reality starts veering from said plan.

 

If we don't win in three years or five years or seven years or whatever, I'll be disappointed, but as long as I get the impression that the organization is giving it an honest effort (unlike, say, the Clippers for most of our lives), I'm not going to hang anyone in effigy.

[Ennder]

Monty, the service time argument doesn't hold water anymore. Teams have decided that if a player is ready, you might as well play the person and generate good-will. Teams aren't simply holding guys back in AAA like they used to. I'd take Santana in the OF any day. Plus, he'll play 6 games in the corner spots due to inevitable injuries to braun and Davis

This is just completely false.