Thusly Boned

It is the infamous right forearm strain. We'll see him in 2019.

Amazing. I feel bad for Padres fans.

Had to go with the Schwarber option. .950 would exceed my expectations, but not by a whole lot. I think he's gonna bounce back in a big way.

They got an .889 OPS from Aguilar vs lefties though too (granted, in only 115 PA). And this is another example of how flawed the "Well they won 86 games and added these guys!" reasoning is for why the Brewers will be good. They got crazy production from guys like Aguilar and Sogard up and down the roster. They got 3.3 fWAR from Santana, which will be hard for both Cain and Yelich to top (and even if they do it won't be a substantial upgrade). They got 14-WAR from four pitchers currently projected for half that. Etc etc. Yeah, and half their team had outrageous first half performances, then fell on their faces. And we're not talking about guys with established track records or young guys breaking out. Do we believe Eric Thames is suddenly, at 31, the .936 OPS player he was in the first half? No, he's probably much closer to the .794 player he was in the second half. The same could be said of Travis Shaw. Jesus Aguilar had a babip approaching .400 in the first half, then reverted. Eric Sogard, he of the career .285 wOBA, posted a .402 in the first half last year (and then regressed to a much more Sogard-like .272 in the second). One would have to do some mental gymnastics to convince themselves that the second half performance of the offense wan't much closer to what can be expected, at least from their returning players. Yelich and Cain will help, but those additions will be mitigated by the fact that they will marginalize to some degree Santana and Braun (or push them out entirely). Pitching wise, Anderson, Nelson, and Knebel broke way out. Nelson, who was by far their best pitcher last year snd whose performance I can actually buy as a portent, will miss time and may not be the same. Anderson (who grossly outperformed his FIP), I'm not buying at all. If you squint really hard you can see Davies being Hendricks-like, maybe. Woodruff may become good, but he needs a lot of polish. Matt Garza is dead. They're not going to sign Arrieta. The Rays aren't trading Archer to them, at least not for a price that won't really hurt. They might sign Cobb or Lynn. There is a good reason most projections put the Brewers in the low-mid 70's in wins. These exuberant fans printing up "The Rebuild is Over" t-shirts are going to be scratching their heads when the Crew ends up with 79 wins.

how is this even a thought a person has? and why does it seem like 95% of baseball fans online think that there's something inherently better about players who were drafted/signed IFA and developed compared to guys acquired via trade or free agency these people are literally like "yeah, they're really good and all but they can't develop pitching so yeah and stuff" We had the oldest pitching staff in the national league last year by BR's reckoning, and we just added a 31-year-old pitcher with a history of arm problems to a 6-year contract. Our minor league pitchers are nothing special. It's not something that keeps me lying awake at night, but if an opposing fan needs something to feel better about when the Cubs are 10 games ahead of them in the projections right now, it's a pretty reasonable place to look. As pitcher heavy as the past couple drafts have been, I feel like the farm is bound to start churning out reinforcements for the staff within the near future. As far as Brewers fans go, I spend a pretty unhealthy amount of time skulking about on fan forums of other teams, and I really feel that they (Brewers fans) seem to be among the least informed/aware out there. Of course there aren't a ton of Brewer fan forums, so it's a small sample that probably isn't entirely representative. But then again, there aren't many Brewer fans in general, so maybe it is. But man, there are some real solid gold specimens over at Brewerfan.net. Keithstone might be my favorite.

The distinction is that they're trying to stay in the green this year so they can fly into the red next year with less worry. Depending on their tolerance for total payroll and the penalties for luxury tax they might have to make a tweak to fit in Harper's deal(like selling off the last year of Zobrist's deal by attaching a prospect), but already being in the red for 2019 is not a large concern. The idea isn't so much to avoid paying the LT at all (though that would be ideal), but to keep the number of years crossing that threshold to a minimum (to minimize the repeat offender escalators), right? And once the Cubs get out from under their current TV deal, that should take a lot of the edge off of paying the LT.

I feel like the asking price for Archer is prohibitively high, otherwise he'd have been moved by now. I think it would cost the Brewers Santana plus 2-3 of their best remaining prospects. It would be a full buy-in move, and I don't believe it will happen. Even if it did, I don't think it would change things a great deal.

Not to mention Schwarber's first half struggles. The Brewers and Cubs both regressed to their respective means in the second half of 2017. The bulk of the evidence suggests that time frame is much more like indicative of what to expect going forward.

I might take the under on all 3 If we add Darvish, I'd probably take the over on the Cubs, and the under on St. Louis.

I agree Santana’s not enough for Archer but I don’t think he’s enough for the other guys you mentioned either. More like him ++. Yeah, Santana alone isn't going to buy you a ton. He had a decent year in 2017, but he's a regression candidate. I'd think you'd need to add Philips for even the second tier of SP.

The players they had that would have netted Archer already went in the Yelich trade.

Unless they trade Santana or Braun, I really don't see the point here.

Yeah, without a robust farm system right now, how will we fill all the holes we might have in 2022?

http://www.relatably.com/q/img/keystone-light-keith-stone-quotes/Always_OOH.jpg

They think our starting catcher is someone named Castillo.

From GRB: Is this as delusional as it sounds? Because it seems pretty horsefeathering delusional to me, especially the bolded.

I really feel like Arrieta is about to fall apart, and I want no part of him on a multi-year contract. It was a great time, but happy trails to you, Jake.

Well, then he can bugger right the horsefeathers off.

Bingo Yeah, this has to be it. Machado is a fine player, but trading for him doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I really don't like the idea of giving up some of our best young players to acquire a player who may very well prove to be a one year rental and while certainly an upgrade, isn't so at a position of dire need. I'd much, much rather leave the infield as is, concentrate on pitching (Darvish, plz) this offseason and spend on Harper the next. I like the odds of the offense being really horsefeathering good next year as it is. But if the pretense of serious interest in Machado prices the Cardinals out (or better yet leads them to overpay), then great.

Probably gonna claim he was hacked after he wakes up from his sparking cider hangover and regrets his tone Sparking cider sounds like a good time to me.

Angelos is that organization's biggest problem. That guy is the epitome of a meddling owner.

It's hard to tell how things would go with that team. While I don't think there would be a fleecing (I don't think the Cards would allow themselves to be fleeced), if Angelos involves himself, Machado would not come cheap. I think the likely outcome of this is that the demands end up being so unreasonable for a one-year rental that Machado isn't moved at all.

The Cardinals getting Machado would certainly make 2018 a lot more interesting, but it's not something that would upset me all that much because it would cost Reyes/Weaver plus, and the Cards would have a snowball's chance in hell of retaining him beyond next year.

I have a feeling that Piscotty bounces back and that he'll produce well enough to make people wonder why the Cardinals bothered with this Piscotty/Ozuna swap. It wasn't really a pure baseball move. They were shopping him to the A's last summer not long after his moms diagnosis. Yeah, it was a nice move made out of consideration for the player. That said, I have serious doubts that it's a move they make if Piscotty had a 2017 that was similar to his 2016. He was never going to be a star, but settling in as a 3-4 WAR player is certainly a strong possibility, stronger now that he isn't stuck halfway across the country from his dying mother.