Cubswin11

I think it would be pretty risky and stupid to not sign one of the 3. Especially with where the market is at, if the horsefeathering Brewers are our only competition for Darvish (at an already depressed price) I don’t see why we wouldn’t go get Jake/Cobb at an even lower price with little to no competition. oh i'm not saying don't sign cobb and roll with monty. i'm just saying they'd be fine as is. but big time pass on arrieta (and i was never nor am i one of the arrieta haters) Rolling with just Monty and Hellickson or something as the 5th starter scares me a bit but agree we likely could get away with it but opens up room for vulnerability and lessens the margin of error for injury/regression. I’m good with bringing Arrieta back on the right deal, he pitched really well in the 2nd half + playoffs last year. I know the stuff and underlying stats slipped but for 3/55 or 4/70 I’m completely fine with it.

I kinda feel the same way, let him go there and bring back Jake and still win the division by 8+ games pass on jake. sign cobb in that case. hell, even with monty we'll be fine. I think it would be pretty risky and stupid to not sign one of the 3. Especially with where the market is at, if the horsefeathering Brewers are our only competition for Darvish (at an already depressed price) I don’t see why we wouldn’t go get Jake/Cobb at an even lower price with little to no competition.

I kinda feel the same way, let him go there and bring back Jake and still win the division by 8+ games

Yeah I listened to an interview Theo gave about a year ago, and he credits Kevin Towers a lot for teaching him about how a FO works and giving him a chance. Lots of people inside the game liked the guy. Yeah he seemed to be, beloved and had a wide ranging impact on many people in the game based on watching MLBN and listening to MLB Radio today. horsefeathers cancer

Brewer insider guy update.... I don’t see Theo losing out to or Darvish picking a horsefeathers hole organization unless they really over pay, which fine. In a follow up post he said he feels it’s 60/40 he ends up a Cub. FWIW

I forgot Victorino was a Cub for like 10 seconds a few Springs ago

Damn, I really wanted Avila back. I’ll be extra pissed now if we don’t get Darvish because the savings of getting a lesser pitcher would’ve allowed us to add him.

Everyone is seeing through this, this is the Brewers MLB writer.

Story says Baseball Reference has Brewers' payroll at 82.5 million. Cot's has it at basically 91 million. Wonder which one is right. I think it’s at ~82 without the pre-arb guys and adding them (they have quite a few) bumps them to ~90. That’s what I’ve seen on that brewer board at least. So they could kinda afford Darvish but 110-120 is about as high as they can ever go payroll wise and he would tap them out for the foreseeable future. Plus the Brewer guy already said our offer is substantially more.

With what the Brewer guy said and the Dodger/Ranger leaks yesterday I think it’s prettt clear Darvish/his camp is just leaking horsefeathers to drive up our offer since we are the only game in town.

The Brewer insider guy is back and said.... http://forum.brewerfan.net/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=36316&start=360 Also said Brewers were working on an Archer trade but Rays upped the ask and it fell apart. Sounds like Santana, Burnes and other top minor leaguers is what it would take.

Yeah I just completely ignored than nonsense

Brewer fans are either unwilling or unable to understand projections, sure they could be low (and even Fangraphs admitted they think the Brewers will be better since they are a tough team to project with limited data/so many outlier years last year) but they are what they are with the data available and projections doesn't equal predictions. The fans should be excited and should have some optimism but they seem to be turning a blind eye and shunning any notion of regression and not having any real star potential players (outside of Yelich). They seem to think they are a high 80s win near lock when I think they could just as easily (even more probably) win 74-80 games and go the way of the Padres a few years ago when they added Upton and Kemp and others or the Angels the year after adding Pujols, Hamilton, CJ Wilson, etc.... http://forum.brewerfan.net/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=36333 Some good quotes.... - He was worth 1.5 WAR last year and has put up 1.5 or less 3 times between 2013 and last year including a .8 season. He's going in to his age 34 season. This isn't crazy, enough said. A ~.010 drop across the board is relatively insignificant. He's looking like a contact dependent with average to below average power for the position SS with good fielding. He never put up crazy numbers in the minors to suggest there's a ton more in the bat (unless he has an outlier high BABIP year) and has just okay BB/K rate numbers. He's something like Alcides Escobar 2.0. - Maybe he's just a guy who can carry an abnormally high BABIP but common sense and the projections systems are telling us it's really hard and rare to carry such a high BABIP with a ~30% K rate. Since 2015 only 10 qualified players had a .320 or higher BABIP with a K rate of 28% or higher, it's hard to do and even harder to replicate (no player replicated it over that 3 year span, they were all unique players). Santana in 1000+ PAs is a 31.7% K rate guy with a career .354 BABIP, last year he was 29% and .363. So it's quite reasonable to project a significant BABIP drop if his profile doesn't change and he doesn't lower his K rate by 5%+ - He has a career MLB ERA of 3 and FIP/xFIP of 3.14/3.24 in 167 innings. Seems reasonable, also ERA for RPs is dumb. All it takes is a few blow ups to horsefeathers up the ERA for the season. He had ERAs in the 5's in 2017 and 2016 in AAA in over 100IP combined. His FIP/xFIP last year were 3.06/3.66, again it seems reasonable. Especially for a guy who has a BB/9 well in to the 4s at any stop in his career he logged significant innings and again ERA fro RPs is dumb but only a few blow up innings is going to kill the ERA and a guy who can walk the entire ballpark in a given inning is a prime target to have some of those blowup innings.

If we are really at 4 years like some have said, what do you guys think the number is? $90 and Theo holding firm knowing the rest of the bidders can’t really top it? The 4/110 floated about Jake earlier in the offseason?

I’m guessing Cobb and Jake want to wait for Darvish to sign so they can squeeze some extra money/years out of the teams left/maybe another team comes bidding for them that isn’t now that loses out on Darvish. Yu just really needs to make up his horsefeathering mind and pick a team. i basically think yu realistically (bc dodgers are unrealistic) wants to go to the cubs and his agent is trying anything he can to squeeze them for more by leaking all this other crap. theo knows how strong the cubs' position is on the pitching market too. i don't think there's a chance in hell he opts to go to minnesota over us, but weird horsefeathers happens sometimes i guess. This is mostly how I feel too. I wonder when or if it’s already happened that Jake/Cobb/Lynn and their reps or the union are pushing hard for Yu to make a pick already. His market seems pretty clear and defined and he’s holding other guys back from getting a job/offers.

I’m guessing Cobb and Jake want to wait for Darvish to sign so they can squeeze some extra money/years out of the teams left/maybe another team comes bidding for them that isn’t now that loses out on Darvish. Yu just really needs to make up his horsefeathering mind and pick a team.

You also probably have to add $3-4 million on the low side for IP/GS incentives Maedea will hit this year and it could be as much as a $7-8 mil hit.

You’ve always been our slump buster, Butters

Yeah, that’s what I was getting at. If they are fine going to 6/150+ outside of the LT ramifications just go to 8/160. He gets his 25-30 a year for the first few years, but for that we get to tack 1-3 years on to lower the AAV for LT purposes. Hell, even give him an opt out after 3-4 years. Also paying more now in real cash helps a bit in future cash outlays with arbitration raises/Bryce (though obviously I get the time value aspect of that by paying more now than later but it’s a trade off). That seems like a structure bound to test the limits of MLB and the lux tax rules. Probably but good, be the first to do it and likely get away with it before changes like the Dodgers and the 10-day DL

I’m guessing it’s this.... He made 25 starts and pitched 134 innings last year. I'm only getting to $4.25 in incentives hit from last year and $7.25 in 2016. So overall those equal about $12 million but it should only be a ~$4 million cap hit from 2017 going in to the year + his base salary.

unless there's some mlb rule/tax implication i'm overlooking (which i don't think bc it's all based on AAV anyway), there's no good reason to frontload when you can backload. money now >>>>>> money later you would front load as an incentive to a player to take a lower over AAV to protect you from the tax hit. He gets more money sooner, which has more value, while you avoid tax hit.Yeah, that’s what I was getting at. If they are fine going to 6/150+ outside of the LT ramifications just go to 8/160. He gets his 25-30 a year for the first few years, but for that we get to tack 1-3 years on to lower the AAV for LT purposes. Hell, even give him an opt out after 3-4 years. Also paying more now in real cash helps a bit in future cash outlays with arbitration raises/Bryce (though obviously I get the time value aspect of that by paying more now than later but it’s a trade off).

If by 4/60 you mean 2/30 or 3/40, sure. But just get Yu my heart wants yu, but it kind of feels like it's back to 6/150 for him, and his recent injury history makes that pretty scary to me. i'll still be excited if they end up paying that much to get him, but i don't know if it's a smart decision. Highly doubt that and if it is go to 8/160 to lessen the LT hit and front load it. Who cares if we’re paying him $10 mil a year 5+ years from now

If by 4/60 you mean 2/30 or 3/40, sure. But just get Yu

Who is Darvish's agent even? His one on one with Jed/Theo was just because he wanted to work on his English and not because he’s representing himself, right?