Jose Abreu

[rickh150]

Every hitters job is to reach base without making an out.

 

This is not necessarily true.

 

Right..... sometimes a sac fly or a mere grounder to second gets it done.

[LouisEly]

Eric Thames also cooled off drastically in the second half. I think his numbers are skewed by his ridiculously hot start.

 

Thames did cool off, but still posted a .794 OPS in the 2nd half and had a 1.004 OPS in 72 PAs in Sept/Oct. His numbers are not that skewed by his April. He had a bad June and August, but posted a .861 OPS in July as well.

 

Abreu is a better hitter, but a big reason why the Brewers can even consider adding a FA/trading for a good SP is because they are getting great production from a 1B platoon that costs them <$6M/year. Add in Abreu's arbitration raise... and that inhibits their ability to add pitching.

[Lathund]

Every hitters job is to reach base without making an out.

 

This is not necessarily true.

 

It's not necessarily true of every single plate appearance for every single player (Pitchers bunting, or runners at 3rd with less than two outs etc) but overall I would say it is. The vast majority of at bats don't come in those situations, and excepting those situations where you can trade a guaranteed run for an out (And not even all of those situations) or where the chances of getting on base are really low (pitchers), the goal is always to not make an out. For a big power hitter, you can accept a tradeoff between a lower OBP and more total bases, but even that's both situational and not linear; as in on average (Based on all base/out states and their weights) two walks are more valuable than a double and an out even if it results in the same amount of bases. That the latter event gives you more OPS than the former is rather misleading.

[KeithStone53151]

Eric Thames also cooled off drastically in the second half. I think his numbers are skewed by his ridiculously hot start.

 

Thames did cool off, but still posted a .794 OPS in the 2nd half and had a 1.004 OPS in 72 PAs in Sept/Oct. His numbers are not that skewed by his April. He had a bad June and August, but posted a .861 OPS in July as well.

 

Abreu is a better hitter, but a big reason why the Brewers can even consider adding a FA/trading for a good SP is because they are getting great production from a 1B platoon that costs them <$6M/year. Add in Abreu's arbitration raise... and that inhibits their ability to add pitching.

 

This. Also consider the cost in prospects to acquire what likely is similar or slightly better 1b production. I'm not going to try and argue that Thames/Aguilar is better than Abreu, best case for the Brewers is our guys will get similar production to Abreu again, but it's pretty close...and the cost in payroll $ and prospects is too great to even consider the upgrade. Other teams surely have a greater need for a 900 OPS RH power bat at 1b and will push the prospect cost beyond what we should be willing to pay.