coolhandluke121 wrote:A bottoming-out team goes into the season with guys like Cravy, Goforth, Pina, and Reed on the roster from day 1. This team gave themselves a puncher's chance of being successful. I have every reason to believe that was done consciously, because they could have easily rebuilt and stock-piled minor league talent without staying somewhat competitive. Look at Cincy, Atlanta, and SD, for example; it seems every time you looked up, one of them had traded a productive vet regardless of whether they had a decent stopgap replacement or not.
coolhandluke121 wrote:Look at Cincy
They played Phillips all year, Hamilton went down late, they were assuming Homer Bailey would be back among others. They HAD to trade Bruce pretty much. The reason they sucked worse is simply more inept management. By your logic, they should have been offering to trade Votto to teams and offering to pay the final 3 years of his contract or something. They kept a veteran Cozart all year. Beyond that, unless they dealt Suarez who still has a lot of team control or Duvall (a Chris Carter-type acquisition), they have nobody else that is a vet to trade.
coolhandluke121 wrote:, Atlanta
Not much of an argument here, but they have been going in circles so much that they now have to make win-now trades to not completely embarrass themselves in their new stadium. They traded FOR Matt Kemp and were looking into Lucroy. Again, I like what they've done the past 2-3 years but they tanked almost too much and did some **** insane things like trade for 31-year-old "prospect" Hector Olivera last year.
They kept Markakis, Inciarte, Teheran, Freeman, etc. I didn't see them trading any vets other than Kelly Johnson.
Again, true to form, they did make some good moves like trading the reliever and Harrell who they had picked up 3 weeks early for a somewhat valuable minor leaguer.
coolhandluke121 wrote:, and SD
They bottomed out because they had one of the dumbest offseasons in MLB history the year before that. They traded for a bunch of RH platoon hitters that can't hit in Petco. It was asinine.
All of that said, they still have Myers and they called up a lot of productive players. They also had their starting pitching staff devastated by injury and that was most of the reason they were worse than the Brewers. If Tyson Ross was healthy to start the year, they may have finished ahead of the Brewers.
You're trying to shape your argument to fit the narrative that you want.
This isn't the NBA and the Brewers did the best they could/what they should have done. They tried to deal Braun but struck out at the end.
I have no **** clue what leads you to believe that they're going to trade for a "win now" guy for Braun. If they get Puig, it's probably because they want to flip him again...although he is young enough to contribute in the next window if he really does rebound.
You can't blame the Brewers for being smarter than these other teams, even when they're trying to tank a bit. I'd trade back 3 picks in the draft to have Stearns running the show (from what he's shown so far) and a bonus of Mark A being willing to rebuild. That's more important. We'll survive picking 9th instead of 6th or 7th.