Yelich to the Brewers in exchange for Brinson, Isan Diaz, M. Harrison and Yamamoto

[Eye Black]

Lathund’s post above (#348) is really spot on. If you’re someone who occasionally passes over the longer posts, I encourage you to take the time to go back and read it. It sums up nicely a lot of the thoughts I’m sure many of us have had about the recent moves.

[Pugger]

Before we get excited, any video of Yellich crying after being told of the trade?

 

I doubt it. Miami is having another fire sale so I suspect he wasn't unhappy at all. The last I heard Realmuto has requested to be traded too.

[Pugger]

Yelich's has a ops of 839 away from marlins park for his career and it went up to 869 last year. We just got an amazing player who will be a blast to watch for 5 years as he is likely just entering his prime. And we still have tons of prospects in the pipeline.

 

Down here southwest FL we get all the Marlin and Rays games so I've seen Yelich play a lot. He will hit for more power in Milwaukee, is still in his prime and is solid defensively. What's not to like?

[adambr2]

The Yelich trade tree:

 

Lewis Brinson (through Jonathan Lucroy, drafted by Brewers 3rd round 2007)

 

Monte Harrison ( drafted by Brewers 2nd round 2014)

 

Isan Diaz (through Jean Segura, through Zack Greinke, through Lorenzo Cain, Jeremy Jeffress, Jake Odorizzi, and Alcides Escobar)

 

Jordon Yamamoto (drafted by Brewers 12th round 2014)

 

The bottom of the JJ Hardy trade tree (for Carlos Gomez, (with Mike Fiers), for Brett Phillips, Domingo Santana, Josh Hader and Adrian Houser)

[ClosetBrewerFan]

Lathund’s post above (#348) is really spot on. If you’re someone who occasionally passes over the longer posts, I encourage you to take the time to go back and read it. It sums up nicely a lot of the thoughts I’m sure many of us have had about the recent moves.

 

Agreed. Lathund's post sums up my thoughts perfectly. I keep going back and forth on how I feel about this trade. It's hard to lose all that potential, but that is all it is at this point. This is really all about risk management. Stearns traded high risk (high reward) prospects for a known, young commodity. The intent is an upgrade of talent in the short term with long term stability. This is still consistent with Stearns motto of obtaining young controllable talent. The farm is still extremely deep but the top of it just got a major haircut. We cannot sustain another of these though.

 

The Cain signing is a headscratcher though. 5 years is just too long, but obviously he sees something that I don't. But Cain is not young and while he is now controlled through 5 years, will not be cheap. And I like Cain, but still...

[tigerbrew]

I like the trade. Stearns is doing a great job so far.

[TURBO]

I had already convinced myself that Brinson was gone, so losing him had no effect on me, it was inevitable it seemed. The sting of Diaz and Harrison will lesson over time, but I was attached to both players, especially Diaz. I'm very happy we were able to hold on to Burnes, Ortiz and to some extent Woodruff (not as high on him as some) so that is the plus in my thought process.

[adambr2]

I think some are missing the point when it comes to the Cain deal. No one is expecting him to produce 5 years at his current level. Nor is that the Brewers expectation. Stearns and Mark A. are well aware that 5 year contracts to players in their 30s rarely work out that way. They're hoping for 2 years or so of a 4 WAR player, 2 years or so of a 2-3 WAR player, and hopefully at least a serviceable bench option by year 5. That's very realistic and $80M is well worth that if it pans out that way.

 

The contract is also structured in a way (diminishing no trade clause list) in a way that as he ages, they will have the ability to trade him to more teams). With rising costs in MLB, if they wanted to move on after year 3 or 4, as long as Cain isn't a total distaster at that time, they can likely find a taker in at least a partial or near full salary dump, especially with the short 1-2 year commitment at that time

 

It's actually quite smart as far as FA contracts go. Cain was a market inefficiency and Stearns took advantage. Cain is 21st in position player WAR since 2015, even with lost injury time. JD Martinez, who is going to get the much larger contract, is 42nd.

[Boomer5]

I think it is obvious we overpaid in both transactions, however, that is the market, and DS thought he had to do what he did. You have to pay to play.

 

Are we currently better for the 2018 season, yes.

 

Will this trade make us better in 2020, we shall see.

 

Agreed. The lineup needed to be fixed and Stearns fixed it. At the cost of 5 prospects and $80 Million.

[SoCal Brew Crew Fan]

On the Cain contract...think of it like Aramis Ramirez. He paid for himself early in the deal before declining. Cain won't be earning his contract in year 5, the hope is he exceeds it by quite a bit in the early years. It's a competitive bid situation and every team needs at least some FA (albeit selectively) as a part of the mix.

 

I agree with the longer post as well...excellent summary. Yelich is special. The next moves will be interesting given the plethora of OF, the need for another arm or two and the option of adding younger prospects to keep the farm engine going. Stearns seems to know more about this than I do and appears to have the fortitude to move against the grain which is needed if they want to differentiate themselves.

[adambr2]

On the Cain contract...think of it like Aramis Ramirez. He paid for himself early in the deal before declining. Cain won't be earning his contract in year 5, the hope is he exceeds it by quite a bit in the early years. It's a competitive bid situation and every team needs at least some FA (albeit selectively) as a part of the mix.

 

I agree with the longer post as well...excellent summary. Yelich is special. The next moves will be interesting given the plethora of OF, the need for another arm or two and the option of adding younger prospects to keep the farm engine going. Stearns seems to know more about this than I do and appears to have the fortitude to move against the grain which is needed if they want to differentiate themselves.

 

Exactly. The Brewers have no choice but to accept the realities of what a player like Cain costs on the FA market, or avoid that kind of market all together and stick with contracts like Chacin. Just the way it is, hope to recoup your value in the first few years and then hope it isn't a disaster by year 5. No one expects that Cain is going to be a 4-5 WAR player at age 36.

 

I understand the desire for a safer 3 year deal for a player his age, but even if they could have pulled it off it would have definitely been more expensive on a per year basis, something like 3/60. 3/48 would have never happened.

[TURBO]

3 for 60 million? I'd take that over 5 @ 80 million every time with a player his age. I get it, that wasn't going to happen.

[pacopete4]

3 for 60 million? I'd take that over 5 @ 80 million every time with a player his age. I get it, that wasn't going to happen.

 

Oh I don’t know. For an extra $20M I think I’d take a shot on year 4 & 5. That’s not much money for the type of player Cain could still possibly be.

[82brewcrew82]

I think it is obvious we overpaid in both transactions, however, that is the market, and DS thought he had to do what he did. You have to pay to play.

 

Are we currently better for the 2018 season, yes.

 

Will this trade make us better in 2020, we shall see.

 

Agreed. The lineup needed to be fixed and Stearns fixed it. At the cost of 5 prospects and $80 Million.

Can't have it both ways. By definition, either they paid market or they overpaid.

[Boomer5]

I think it is obvious we overpaid in both transactions, however, that is the market, and DS thought he had to do what he did. You have to pay to play.

 

Are we currently better for the 2018 season, yes.

 

Will this trade make us better in 2020, we shall see.

 

Agreed. The lineup needed to be fixed and Stearns fixed it. At the cost of 5 prospects and $80 Million.

Can't have it both ways. By definition, either they paid market or they overpaid.

 

By definition Stearns paid more than 28 other teams were willing to pay so technically he didn't pay market. By definition.

 

If the reports are accurate Cain was receiving 4 year deals. Stearns gave him a 5 year plus a Bobby Bonilla adder to pay him until 2027.

 

I absolutely agree the lineup needed fixing for the Brewers to get to the next level and these two players will be a big help in that regard in 2018.

[adambr2]

But again, we don't know how much those 4 year offers were for. Could have been 4/70 and maybe he just preferred the 5th year for $10M more.

 

Also, if you're going to use that as your definition for 'above market' than literally pretty much every FA signing ever is above market.

[wallus]

3 for 60 million? I'd take that over 5 @ 80 million every time with a player his age. I get it, that wasn't going to happen.

 

If I were Cain, I would easily have taken the 80 million offer instead. Total money on your last contract means a lot.

[Thurston Fluff]

 

As I’m reading people talk about over pay as if this is 2002, the guys on MLB network are slobbering over the Cain acquisition. Speaking about how he only has to be a 2-win player per year for the contract to be worth it. Hell he could have that in two seasons.

 

We'll see how that plays out in years 4 and 5 of Cains contract. There is a pretty good chance we have that bloated contract on the books when we need to have the money for another player at that time, but will be strapped. I might be wrong, but so could everyone else.

 

But you’re more missing he point. He will be nothing but a bonus in terms of the value of the contact by then. In year three he will, most likely, have made the contract worth it. And $18M in 2021 isn’t going to be holding the crew back if in contention just like Braun isn’t present day. You’re just looking for reasons to hate this because your beloved prospects are gone.

 

I think the point is if we are working towards always being a contender we should never knowingly overpay someone for the year they are playing. Braun's contract already hurt us. Imagine if the money spent on him the past four years were spent on players worth that much money. To me the contract's total amount is only half the issue. How it's structured is the other half. Knowingly overpaying someone at the end of the contract for gains at the beginning of the contract creates a cycle of a couple years of good teams followed by a couple years of terrible teams. The goal is to be St Louis not Pittsburgh.

[brewtank34]

Why is the Cain contract being talked about in the Yellich thread?

[82brewcrew82]

By definition Stearns paid more than 28 other teams were willing to pay so technically he didn't pay market. By definition.

 

If the reports are accurate Cain was receiving 4 year deals. Stearns gave him a 5 year plus a Bobby Bonilla adder to pay him until 2027.

 

I absolutely agree the lineup needed fixing for the Brewers to get to the next level and these two players will be a big help in that regard in 2018.

So every FA contract every singed is technically not "paying market" which means every single FA singing is an overpay?

[pacopete4]

Why is the Cain contract being talked about in the Yellich thread?

 

I think with the moves happening at the same time it’s hard not to talk about both.

[adambr2]

 

I think the point is if we are working towards always being a contender we should never knowingly overpay someone for the year they are playing. Braun's contract already hurt us. Imagine if the money spent on him the past four years were spent on players worth that much money. To me the contract's total amount is only half the issue. How it's structured is the other half. Knowingly overpaying someone at the end of the contract for gains at the beginning of the contract creates a cycle of a couple years of good teams followed by a couple years of terrible teams. The goal is to be St Louis not Pittsburgh.

 

You don't think the Cardinals have given out FA contracts knowing full well that it's going to be a bad deal on the back end?

 

That's fine if that's your philosophy, I can certainly understand it, I'm just saying, you can go ahead and take Cain, take Darvish, take Arrieta, take all these guys off the table, they are not available to us if you're not willing to overpay on the back end.

 

How a contract is structured, at least as far as how the money is spread out, means nothing to me. $80M guaranteed is $80M guaranteed. Their accounting department understand their budgeting process, the time value of money and all of that a lot more than most of us do, so as far as that goes that's between Mark A. and his accountants as far as I'm concerned.

 

I do agree about the Braun contract. They still had control for 4 years, not sure what the hurry was to lock up his 30s years, and it's certainly a deal we'd rather be without now. It would be like us extending Yelich for 2023-2026 right now. Still, they had a chance to get out of it as recently as 18 months ago, and they'll likely have a chance to get out of at least some of Cain's on the back end if they choose.

[pacopete4]

 

I think the point is if we are working towards always being a contender we should never knowingly overpay someone for the year they are playing. Braun's contract already hurt us. Imagine if the money spent on him the past four years were spent on players worth that much money. To me the contract's total amount is only half the issue. How it's structured is the other half. Knowingly overpaying someone at the end of the contract for gains at the beginning of the contract creates a cycle of a couple years of good teams followed by a couple years of terrible teams. The goal is to be St Louis not Pittsburgh.

 

It’s been overstated so many times that Braun’s contract hurts us. Well it didn’t stop us from adding over $20M to our outfield for years to come a few days ago. Not only that but if 1WAR = $8M, I think Braun will probably do alright in getting the value out of that contract. Also you may want to check out who the Cardinals are paying money to over there in St. Louis. Lol

[SRB]

I haven't posted anything on the trade yet, because I'm still unsure exactly what to think. Not that I'm indifferent to it, just that I see both some real positives and real negatives, and I'm not quite sure how I value them and what the end result is. So I'll just use this post to sum up some of the points and see where I land afterwards. Beware of some rambling.

 

To start with, I should say that I don't think this was the year to make the big moves, I would have preferred to use 2018 to see if 2017 was real, to allow some top prospects to graduate and get ML playing time. But, I'll try to not let that get in the way of the analysis, as I can also see that the depressed FA market (Cain would've been long gone at a higher AAV in most previous years), the Marlins fire sale and the huge 2019 FA class and the incoming 40-man crunch making some arguments for why making these moves now makes sense.

 

We should first take a moment to appreaciate how rare the Yelich trade is. It's a 4-WAR (Average over his first 4½ seasons) All-star outfielder, under contract for 5 years (Or 4 years + team option, which is even better), through his age 26-30 seasons for an extremely team-friendly amount. The 5 years in particular, for such an established player, are very very rare. Even rarer that they get traded. The years of team control in particular will reflect the cost; when we compare this trade to other trades, nearly all of the comparisons are for fewer years, or higher salaries. And yet it gets judged by the same standard as those by many. Trades are always hard to judge as one can't predict the future. But there are projections and predictions (And Yelich is young, consistent and seemingly durable (155 and 156 games in 2016 and 2017) so should be comparatively easy to project), and there are very few players expected to be more valuable at the time of a trade than Yelich; at least I struggle to come up with any examples. (In a vacuum that is; Chapman was infinitely valuable in that he may have been the difference between WS and no WS, but not in raw numbers).

 

There simply aren't many opportunities to acquire players like this. There aren't many 26 year old FAs either; Bryce Harper will be one, and is clearly a better player. But that's also going to be the biggest contract ever, likely $400m+. Stanton had averaged less than 0.5 WAR more than Yelich (And was a year younger tbf) when signing his for $325m. What would Yelich get? I don't know, I'm not a great judge of the FA market, but it would be the kind of deal a club with a budget like the Brewers would never, ever make. So what I'm trying to say is that this is the only way to get a player like this. Brinson could become one, but probably not straight away. Meaning there'd need to be an early extension to make full use of it. And with more risk.

 

And risk brings us to the next point. Even a fair veteran for prospects trade is lopsided. The immediate (and 1-2 year) return is in favour of the club trading the veteran, and the overall value over the years of control is in favour of the other club. That's just the nature of it. You pay a premium for certainty. I would think it's not unreasonable to expect that Yelich will produce 15-25 WAR over the 5 years of control. The projections for Diaz, Harrison, Brinson and Yamamoto are much, much wider. With high-risk and high-ceiling prospects like Brinson, Harrison and Diaz it's even tougher than usual. The best case scenarios for Harrison and Brinson (i.e their hit tools becoming even above average) are superstars, 5+ WAR players, so 30 WAR each over their years of team control. Or they could never establish themselves in the majors. Or be 4th/5th OF types. Or simply average starters. Even when discounting the most unlikely outliers (i.e none of them making the majors, or all of them becoming superstars) you still have a very wide range. But even then, when weighing the various projections and scenarios together by their likelyhood you still end up at an expected value higher than the average for Yelich.

 

So, in that sense it's an 'overpay'. Every veteran for prospects trade is, by design. For one team a narrow and fairly certain range of outcomes is more valuable, at this time, than a more uncertain outcome but with a higher average outcome. So you're paying for certainty and decreased variance. You're also paying for knowing when you're getting that production, from which playing position, and in what manner. The Yelich trade is a great example of this IMO, where the prospects are very high risk and high variance and the veteran is very consistent and low risk.

 

There's also the fact that the three highest rated pieces in the deal were all position players, and the pitcher included wasn't one near the majors. Pitching prospects are much more volatile, much harder to predict. So if sustained success for the next 4-6 years or so is what you want, keeping hold of your AA and AAA (and ML) pitching prospects makes a whole lot of sense. Maybe the cost of the deal could have been lower had some top pitching prospect been included, but as much as much as I believe in Harrison and Brinson I value developing internal pitching options more. There's higher development risk in pitchers (TINSTAAPP and all that), but that's the kind of risk a small market team can bear, hence focus development on pitching. They also have a higher economic risk when making signings, but that's one risk a small market team can't bear, so I'd focus on position players there. So yeah, while I think the overall package could have been less had a Woodruff or Burnes or Ortiz been included, I'm still happy with this.

 

While this seems to signal a change in approach, I still don't believe it as an "all in" move. It's a move (Or moves, if we factor in Cain and the likely Santana trade) to signal the start of a competitive window (Which might be the kind of window that is intended to stay open for a loong time, or a "soft" window, or "Cardinals-style" type of approach, or whatever you want to call it), it's a move to shift from high-risk to low risk. By which I mean that a focus on retaining and developing all top, high-celing prospects, like Harrison, Brinson and Diaz, is perhaps the best way to build a true WS-favourite, a kind of one in a generation team. But it's also an approach that gives a pretty good chance of hardly ever going to the playoffs if things go wrong. Somehow I was a lot more against this type of move before it happened; looking at a prospect list and imaging those three names gone felt a lot worse than looking at the same lists now without these guys. It's still a strong system. The fact that they were traded for five full years of a young player helps; it's not a short-term move. The OF is set for several years now, but that just gives time for Grisham, Ray, Stokes, Lutz and the rest to develop quietly. That's the beauty of a deep system.

 

There's also the matter of what we do with Santana and in the FA market. It's still possible that the strengthening of the current rotation comes from free agency, say Alex Cobb. And that Santana is used to replenish the system. Won't bring a Harrison/Brinson/Diaz package of course, but perhaps prospects in a position of weakness. Looking at it like that, the balance off this offseason isn't either rebuilding or "going for it" in the traditional sense. It's a shift towards winning now, or winning soon(er), but more like reshaping than anything else. I don't think we'll see a massive buying spree, I still think that the team will rely a lot on the prospects (mainly pitching) to fill major roles in the team over the next few years and not just be used as trade chips.

 

A big question to ask though is how far these moves take us? Is it enough to be truly competitive? Was it too soon? Will we be caught somewhere inbetween, with neither the future value or present value we'd like? I guess that this already very long rant hasn't really brought any answers, so I'll stop for now (40-man issues being one thing I never even got to!). But the overarching feeling I get, surprisingly considering my views before the trade (and the Cain signing) is a fairly positive one. And that's despite believing that Brinson will be a huge success (And possibly he would not have been that here, not being given the development time needed during a competitive push), that Harrison is very high risk but worth it due to the sky-high potential, and that Diaz will be a productive MLB starter. But it depends also on what the next step is. I want these moves, and possible future ones, to supplement a focus on developing our own talent. Not as the starting signal for a series of short-term moves.

 

One thing not mentioned much in this thread is that I think there's a strong possibility Stearns and the front office are internally down on Brinson relative to his external market value as a top-20 prospect. You can't really keep him in AAA any longer, and what if he tanks again over a longer sample size in the majors in 2018? They could strongly believe that they sold Brinson at his peak value.

[82brewcrew82]

Lots of ways to view these deals and I'm not sure any of them are 100% wrong or 100% right. I like what they have done but my overall opinion is dependent on acquiring at least one starting pitcher. If they don't do that then my opinion will be decidedly less optimistic.