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I could see someone getting a little crazy and offering a solid prospect simply because Garza is a starting pitcher, especially if the Brewers paid the last $5-6 million he had at the trade deadline if it was a smaller market team...but yeah, I agree, probably similar to the K-Rod deal.

I just want to throw in another aspect of how that crop of talent that came up in the mid-00's didn't win more. You guys have pretty much covered a lot of good angles but I haven't seen anybody mention the issues we had with closers during those years. It was like that bullpen had a transmittable virus for many years there.

2005 - Turnbow, awesome
2006 - Turnbow, absolutely fell off a cliff. This and Lee's impending free-agency force us to trade for Cordero.
2007 - Cordero notches 44 saves, but 7 blown saves in the meantime. Respectable, but ... lost him to free-agency.
2008 - Patchwork closers. Brewers made the playoffs despite Torres and Gagne combining for 14 blown saves.
2009 - Stability for a year with Hoffman. If baseball wasn't set up the way it was and the Brewers would have kept CC, this would have been the start of a run.
2010 - Age finally catches Hoffman, John Axford takes over out of nowhere

2011- Axford keeps it going and has a stellar year and surprise, surprise, best season out of that whole era.

2012 - Axford starts out well, blows first save in ages afterwords ending a remarkable streak of consecutive saves the same night he has his first chid. Comes back after a day or two off and can't get anybody out anymore, single-handedly destroys the season. No choice but to trade Grienke as a result. Hart and Weeks start to age poorly, Braun PED allegations hang over the team's head. Window closed that season.

Basically, 4 out of those 7 years the Brewers closers were awful (and that is just who I mentioned, there were others who didn't get as many chances who couldn't get anybody out in the 9th as well).

The terrible bullpens contributed to many of those seasons going into the trash.

We weren't forced to trade for Cordero because Turnbow was bad. That was short term thinking on Melvin's part. That whole trade deadline was a disaster.

trwi7 wrote:We weren't forced to trade for Cordero because Turnbow was bad. That was short term thinking on Melvin's part. That whole trade deadline was a disaster.

Fair enough, I'd be interested in you helping refresh my memory. I just remember Turnbow being a comic-book hero the year before then becoming "Turn-blow" and Lee on the verge of free agency.

Just because Turnbow was bad doesn't mean we had to go out and actively seek a replacement at the trade deadline, especially with our best trade chip.

So we ended up trading our best trade chip (Lee) and one of our top prospects at the time (I think he was 8th at the time of the trade when we still had a really good farm system) for a homeless man's Carlos Lee (Mench), a reliever, Laynce Nix (had been a bust and had major contact issues in the minors and majors) and Julian Cordero, a 21 year old who never made it above A ball, wasn't good and never pitched in professional baseball after the trade.

I remember being up by my dad, getting up in the morning and them breaking the news just before the commercial break on Cold Pizza (before it became First Take and turned into a disaster) and then coming back from the break, hearing the entire trade and being stunned by how awful it was. Keith Law had just started working at ESPN and they brought him on and he might have been more shocked than me about how bad it was.

I specifically remember him saying if this is what you were going to trade him for you'd be better off just keeping him for the rest of the year and taking the compensatory picks when he leaves in free agency. At least that way you'd get a couple of good prospects in the draft and still have Nelson Cruz as a replacement for Lee.

trwi7 wrote:Just because Turnbow was bad doesn't mean we had to go out and actively seek a replacement at the trade deadline, especially with our best trade chip.

So we ended up trading our best trade chip (Lee) and one of our top prospects at the time (I think he was 8th at the time of the trade when we still had a really good farm system) for a homeless man's Carlos Lee (Mench), a reliever, Laynce Nix (had been a bust and had major contact issues in the minors and majors) and Julian Cordero, a 21 year old who never made it above A ball, wasn't good and never pitched in professional baseball after the trade.

I remember being up by my dad, getting up in the morning and them breaking the news just before the commercial break on Cold Pizza (before it became First Take and turned into a disaster) and then coming back from the break, hearing the entire trade and being stunned by how awful it was. Keith Law had just started working at ESPN and they brought him on and he might have been more shocked than me about how bad it was.

I specifically remember him saying if this is what you were going to trade him for you'd be better off just keeping him for the rest of the year and taking the compensatory picks when he leaves in free agency. At least that way you'd get a couple of good prospects in the draft and still have Nelson Cruz as a replacement for Lee.

Thanks. Man. I completely forgot about Nix. Yuck.

Still though, Cordero was good for a year, so that trade shored up the closer position for at least one of those years.

I still approach an aneurysm just recalling how much the bullpen let us down throughout those years. Man oh man, it was brutal some of those years just watching games go up in smoke in the 9th.

Clark/Ortiz/Dubon - Does that even sniff Quintana?

mlloyd10 wrote:Clark/Ortiz/Dubon - Does that even sniff Quintana?

Unless the White Sox want all very young prospects and for some reason are in love with those 3, no, I don't think it's even close.

I guess if you took that package and threw in one more of our highly regarded prospects (one of Hader, Brinson, maybe Phillips) that may be about right.

Kerb Hohl wrote:

mlloyd10 wrote:Clark/Ortiz/Dubon - Does that even sniff Quintana?

Unless the White Sox want all very young prospects and for some reason are in love with those 3, no, I don't think it's even close.

I guess if you took that package and threw in one more of our highly regarded prospects (one of Hader, Brinson, maybe Phillips) that may be about right.

Yea, Quintana has three more years left on his contract at very team friendly terms (about 10 million per), so if the White Sox do make him available, they'll get a haul even though he's real good, but not an ace.

mlloyd10 wrote:Clark/Ortiz/Dubon - Does that even sniff Quintana?

Probably not but if Im the Brewers that doesnt make sense to me either. Even with the 3 more years of control he'll be 29 in January. Im not trading to add anything to the MLB roster that isnt someone who can be around for the prospects to hit the majors. We cant jump the gun here. We have guys who are producing outside of their career norms. While its fun to watch and exciting one has to assume there will be some regression to career norms. If were targeting anyone I would hope it to be guys like Jose Urena, Sean Manaea, or even one of the Mets under-performers. Someone in that 25-26 year old range.

We should not be buyers at the deadline.

Agreed. Even if we are somehow still in the mix near the deadline no way do I trade any prospect(s) for win now.

The best course of action here is to obviously sell off a bit more this year and then just deal whoever is blocking the next prospect with each passing year for young help in the farm system.

I will say that if Mark meddles and forces the Brewers to do something, they could have a nice run if they dealt for Quintana and another pitcher. Stearns can obviously fill a good offense and they'd have several years of good, controllable pitching. Obviously you're killing the chance of a decade of having pretty good teams for a slightly more certain 3-4 year window. Not endorsing this. The only reason it piques my interest is that we still may not have great pitching in the foreseeable future.

We're going to have to get some really good pitching from somewhere. Maybe it's Hader/Woodruff or maybe we'll have to use our savings on cheap position players and heavily overpay a few guys. At the very least, in the ideal path, when we have to deal Domingo, maybe Braun, Villar, etc. hopefully we fill the minors with 4 or 5 more low-level pitching prospects so that there is a constant stream of pitchers coming in for the next decade.

wichmae wrote:

mlloyd10 wrote:Clark/Ortiz/Dubon - Does that even sniff Quintana?

Probably not but if Im the Brewers that doesnt make sense to me either. Even with the 3 more years of control he'll be 29 in January. Im not trading to add anything to the MLB roster that isnt someone who can be around for the prospects to hit the majors. We cant jump the gun here. We have guys who are producing outside of their career norms. While its fun to watch and exciting one has to assume there will be some regression to career norms. If were targeting anyone I would hope it to be guys like Jose Urena, Sean Manaea, or even one of the Mets under-performers. Someone in that 25-26 year old range.

Yea, i'd rather just bring up say Woodruff at some point and see what he can do than give up good prospects for someone like Quintana.

Kerb Hohl wrote:We're going to have to get some really good pitching from somewhere. Maybe it's Hader/Woodruff or maybe we'll have to use our savings on cheap position players and heavily overpay a few guys. At the very least, in the ideal path, when we have to deal Domingo, maybe Braun, Villar, etc. hopefully we fill the minors with 4 or 5 more low-level pitching prospects so that there is a constant stream of pitchers coming in for the next decade.

Or maybe Stearns could trade one or more of Broxton/Braun/Santana for AA or AAA pitching given the surplus of outfielders in the system.

That's the nice thing about the team finally having organizational depth to where a guy like say Broxton with years of team control could be traded since we have Brinson in AAA.

MickeyDavis wrote:Agreed. Even if we are somehow still in the mix near the deadline no way do I trade any prospect(s) for win now.

Win Now, but with team control

mlloyd10 wrote:

MickeyDavis wrote:Agreed. Even if we are somehow still in the mix near the deadline no way do I trade any prospect(s) for win now.

Win Now, but with team control

No

Yeah, I'm hoping for a few losses in a row here in a key series to the D-Backs and we sell off one more time. After that, we basically just sell when we have someone blocking. If Phillips becomes MLB ready next year, Santana is gone. Broxton may have to be shipped out for Brinson next year. Keep filling the pitching pipeline.

Kerb Hohl wrote:Yeah, I'm hoping for a few losses in a row here in a key series to the D-Backs and we sell off one more time. After that, we basically just sell when we have someone blocking. If Phillips becomes MLB ready next year, Santana is gone. Broxton may have to be shipped out for Brinson next year. Keep filling the pitching pipeline.

Yeah, I don't think they sell off if they are winning games and lurking around 1st place/wild card. If they fall out of a bit, I think they will. I think if they get roughed up this weekend that we may see the fortunes of the season turn a bit. Some of the offense is starting to cool off and I just don't think the pitching staff is very good. I don't expect much of an uptick there, unless Guerra pitches like a #1 again maybe.

I didn't see this anywhere.

http://www.tmj4.com/sports/baseball/milwaukee-brewers/one-on-one-with-ryan-braun-of-the-milwaukee-brewers

"Obviously I've had a couple of instances recently where it's been close to not happening, but as of now I think we're a lot better than anyone thought we would be to this point," he said.

Braun is also fresh off the disabled list, and he isn’t sure how many more seasons he has left.

“I don't think I'm going to play for too long,” he said. “...Our bodies are similar to cars, the more mileage you have on a car, the more maintenance there is, the more important those oil changes become.”

Despite his setbacks, he is still enjoying himself as a leader in the clubhouse.

“Life is good, I have no complaints,” he said. “Life doesn't get much better than this.”