Brewers DFA Smoak; Get Vogelbach

[MrTPlush]

Khris Davis tried to play first base once. It was so bad I don't think he was even allowed to play first base in a minor league game. In retrospect I do think it was a somewhat strange move not to try Braun at 1st base at that point. That would have still opened a spot for Santana and we wouldn't have trotted Chris Carter out to 1st base that year. Would have given us another year to see how Davis/Santana would do.

 

Reality is I think Stearns hated the below average OF defense and sold high on Khris Davis. Jacob Nottingham and Bubba Derby were certainly not peanuts though. They were solid prospects.

 

I think you are being generous calling the likes of Cooper/Choi/Grisham mashers. None of them have a ton of power. I wouldn't expect him to put a lot of value and high picks into corner masher either. Poor defense, lack of versatility, and those positions don't reap a lot of value when they produce (not at an elite level). Outside of 3rd base those corner spots aren't exactly premium positions.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

The failure of Lucas Erceg to develop is still rearing its ugly head.

[TURBO]

Most organizations have a couple minor league guys who can mash and hold down a corner outfield spot or first base. It's the easiest thing to find. The fact this team doesn't is nuts.

 

Check the Brewer drafts under Stearns. He simply doesn't draft masher corner infielders or corner outfielders for that matter. Anywhere much less the early rounds. Worse, he unloaded the one guy in the system he inherited that could mash, Garrett Cooper, at the first sign he was a prospect. Same goes for corner OF prospects he inherited. He couldn't wait to unload Grisham. He made some nice cheap acquisitions, Aguilar, Ji-Man Choi, and Thames but never really committed to those guys. He traded Kris Davis for peanuts, because he couldn't imagine trying him at 1B or moving Braun there.

 

Actually, he 100% did commit to Jesus Aguilar. It worked out at first, but once he fell off a cliff, what could we do? Jesus had every chance to succeed in Milwaukee, he just flamed out.

[SoCalBrewfan]

Never really committed to Thames = over 1400 plate appearances over three years. Never really committed to Aguilar = over 1200 plate appearances over 2.5 years. With those two guys producing, Choi seemed like surplus, but it seemed to me that they tried to keep him around as long possible. But then, as noted above, Aguilar lost it completely. Later, Thames' contract expired, and we were back to square one. (Both are replacement level this year so moving on from them doesn't seem unwise.)

 

It's quite possible that Stearns had convinced himself that he could pull 850 OPS guys out of a hat at that point, and generally it's true that 1b/dh who can hit but are defensively challenged can be found reasonably cheaply. I mean, yeah, I'd rather have a Freddie Freeman holding down the fort there for a decade, but in the absence of that, we have still mostly done ok at finding production at 1b.

 

This year they have gone through LoMo and Smoak without either sticking, but Gyorko has performed well. But it should also be noted that it is a weird year. At 36 games, this would be less than a quarter of a regular season most years, and it's hardly unusual for a player to have a bad month or two and turn things around. A guy on a one year deal, is it worth giving them time to figure things out? Apparently not, for many teams this year.

 

This offseason we will probably be grateful that we don't have many long-term commitments because it seems likely that the economics of the game will be unsettled. I imagine there will be bargains to be had for teams that have the roster spots and payroll to take advantage.

[JackNicholson1974]

Brewers sign Vogelbach, saving him from a life in a van, down by the river.

[Eye Black]

Brewers sign Vogelbach, saving him from a life in a van, down by the river.

Via TMZ Sports from 2016:

SEATTLE MARINERS ROOKIE GETS CHRIS FARLEY TREATMENT... Chippendales Lives!

[DuWayne Steurer]

like a few other posters have said, lots of guys are struggling this year. It's a weird season that started late after a mini camp that probably didn't do a lot of guys very good.

 

Bellinger is barely hitting over 200. Yelich is barely hitting over 200. Some guys are doing fine. Some guys are struggling

 

I guess I don't see the point in dropping a bad player to pick up a demonstrably worse player in the hopes that he randomly gets hot. That's not even looking at data. That's just hoping you get some kind of dumb gamblers luck. I usually trust stearns's judgment, but this honestly doesn't make any sense if vogelbach gets any kind of playing time.

 

If you're going to hope a guy gets randomly hot, there's no reason that you shouldn't expect that it would be Smoak, who's only been bad this year instead of putridly awful like vogelbach.

[Ron Robinsons Beard]

like a few other posters have said, lots of guys are struggling this year. It's a weird season that started late after a mini camp that probably didn't do a lot of guys very good.

 

Bellinger is barely hitting over 200. Yelich is barely hitting over 200. Some guys are doing fine. Some guys are struggling

 

I guess I don't see the point in dropping a bad player to pick up a demonstrably worse player in the hopes that he randomly gets hot. That's not even looking at data. That's just hoping you get some kind of dumb gamblers luck. I usually trust stearns's judgment, but this honestly doesn't make any sense if vogelbach gets any kind of playing time.

 

If you're going to hope a guy gets randomly hot, there's no reason that you shouldn't expect that it would be Smoak, who's only been bad this year instead of putridly awful like vogelbach.

 

I think this decision was made 100% on the fact that Vogelbach is a full 6 years younger than Smoak. I mean, if you are going to pay a guy for crappy 1B/DH production, why not pay the guy making much less who is substantially younger? This is really a low- to no-risk pickup. If Vogelbach sucks, it isn't like you lose much because Smoak also sucks. If he gets hot, or at least average, he's cheap and you can hang onto him next year for cheap. If he sucks, cut him and move on.

[RollieTime]

Fully expecting Vogelbach to come in and hit 3 home runs now in his first 10 at bats with the Brewers. With days off in between of course...

[DuWayne Steurer]

What I'm really going to miss.... Is listening to our TV guys go "that ball was smoked" The three or four times the rest of the year that Smoak May have hit a homerun.

[markedman5]

 

Is a hitter coming off the DL soon? I wouldn't be surprised if Vogelbach is gone by the end of next week. Like I posted before, this seems like a claim just to have a guy on the roster they can easily dump when they need to.

 

 

Not that I'm aware of.

 

Anybody you claim at this point can be easily dumped........If all they wanted was a guy who was easily dumpable they could have just kept Smoak.

 

They are taking a flyer on a guy who is younger and under control so if they see something they like they have an option to keep him without paying him 4 million next season.

 

He may be gone in a week....but if he is it will be because somebody else became available that they wanted to take a look at.

[NYChez]

Fully expecting Vogelbach to come in and hit 3 home runs now in his first 10 at bats with the Brewers. With days off in between of course...

He’ll have reached Russell Branyan-level legend status by this time next week.

[brewers888]

Most organizations have a couple minor league guys who can mash and hold down a corner outfield spot or first base. It's the easiest thing to find. The fact this team doesn't is nuts.

 

Check the Brewer drafts under Stearns. He simply doesn't draft masher corner infielders or corner outfielders for that matter. Anywhere much less the early rounds. Worse, he unloaded the one guy in the system he inherited that could mash, Garrett Cooper, at the first sign he was a prospect. Same goes for corner OF prospects he inherited. He couldn't wait to unload Grisham. He made some nice cheap acquisitions, Aguilar, Ji-Man Choi, and Thames but never really committed to those guys. He traded Kris Davis for peanuts, because he couldn't imagine trying him at 1B or moving Braun there.

 

This is one of my big issues with the drafts under Stearns. I think he is way too focused on athletes vs guys that can really hit. He did pick Hiura who was a bat first guy but the majority of his position player picks are good athletes who either can't hit or have very questionable power.

 

Even this last draft we pick Mitchell who is a star athlete but has shown little power in games and Zamora who looks like another middle of the diamond athlete who may not hit enough. We have drafted very few players that can hit and hit with power and we have virtually ignored third and first basemen in the draft.

[homer]

Yeah Stearns and Co. seem to really like drafting toolsy guys. Everyone seems to love their drafts so maybe they've just had some bad luck.

[stoutdude04]

Fully expecting Vogelbach to come in and hit 3 home runs now in his first 10 at bats with the Brewers. With days off in between of course...

He’ll have reached Russell Branyan-level legend status by this time next week.

 

One can only hope.

[timpep]

Fully expecting Vogelbach to come in and hit 3 home runs now in his first 10 at bats with the Brewers. With days off in between of course...

He’ll have reached Russell Branyan-level legend status by this time next week.

 

A bit of an off topic observation, but Russell the Muscle was about 15 years ahead of his time. Everyone looked at his strikeouts and low batting average and scoffed but he got on base and hit homeruns, everything everyone wants these days.

[adambr2]

Fully expecting Vogelbach to come in and hit 3 home runs now in his first 10 at bats with the Brewers. With days off in between of course...

He’ll have reached Russell Branyan-level legend status by this time next week.

 

A bit of an off topic observation, but Russell the Muscle was about 15 years ahead of his time. Everyone looked at his strikeouts and low batting average and scoffed but he got on base and hit homeruns, everything everyone wants these days.

 

I think most of bfan.net appreciated him for it in his time, even if the casual fan didn't.

[timpep]

I think most of bfan.net appreciated him for it in his time, even if the casual fan didn't.

 

Oh, I agree. I guess I was pretty vague. I just meant the baseball world in general. Guy couldn't keep a starting job to save his life and continually bounced around. He was very underappreciated overall, but I agree, he had a big following here.

[sveumrules]

Fully expecting Vogelbach to come in and hit 3 home runs now in his first 10 at bats with the Brewers. With days off in between of course...

He’ll have reached Russell Branyan-level legend status by this time next week.

 

A bit of an off topic observation, but Russell the Muscle was about 15 years ahead of his time. Everyone looked at his strikeouts and low batting average and scoffed but he got on base and hit homeruns, everything everyone wants these days.

 

Russell Branyan career: 11.9 BB% | 32.9 K% | 17.5 PA/HR

2020 MLB Average: 9.2 BB% | 23.1 K% | 28.5 PA/HR

 

The league isn't quite as extreme as The Grand Branyan just yet, but in 1993 league averages were down at 8.8 BB% | 14.6 K% | 42.1 PA/HR, so maybe by around 2050 or so MLB will just stand for Major League Branyan.

[owbc]

There was a contingency of BF.net that wanted to bat Branyan leadoff because of his high OBP.

[SRB]

I think this decision was made 100% on the fact that Vogelbach is a full 6 years younger than Smoak. I mean, if you are going to pay a guy for crappy 1B/DH production, why not pay the guy making much less who is substantially younger? This is really a low- to no-risk pickup. If Vogelbach sucks, it isn't like you lose much because Smoak also sucks. If he gets hot, or at least average, he's cheap and you can hang onto him next year for cheap. If he sucks, cut him and move on.

 

I'm sure a significant part of it is also just making it looking like the front office is doing something to appease fans mad about the team's slow start.

[Oxy]

Adam Dunn is still the 3TO poster boy.

[Jopal78]

A bit of an off topic observation, but Russell the Muscle was about 15 years ahead of his time. Everyone looked at his strikeouts and low batting average and scoffed but he got on base and hit homeruns, everything everyone wants these days.

 

 

I wouldn't say Russell Branyan was ahead of his time. He played in the major leagues for 14 seasons, players don't stick around that long absent being able to produce.

 

That he played for 10 different teams and never got a multi-year contract is more a byproduct of a team's reluctance to build around a Low OBP player with below average defense. Which I still think holds true today. This is also why Vogelbach is now with his fourth organization in 5 years.

[sveumrules]

Adam Dunn is still the 3TO poster boy.

 

(462 HR + 1317 BB + 2379 K) / 8328 PA = 49.9 3TO%, Dunn literally missed hitting 50% 3TO right on the nose by 1 HR/BB/K.

 

One of my all time favorite stats is that Adam Dunn (25.6 fWAR/18.0 bWAR) & Juan Pierre (24.0 fWAR/17.3 bWAR) have almost exactly the same career WAR though they had complete opposite playing styles.

[pacopete4]

Andy Haines will straighten this guy out.