Rolling Out the Barrel: Winter Meetings are Coming

As I write this, I’m still trying to comprehend what I just saw during the end of the football match featuring our local 22. I have nothing else to offer at this time. Please give me the benefit of the doubt during this difficult and confusing time as we attempt to move forward together. God bless Richard Rodgers.

Brew Crew Ball || The Brewers and the Rule 5 Draft  (Dec. 3, 2015)

My good friend and colleague Kyle Lesniewski (@brewerfan28) delivers a fascinating look at the Brewers history in the Rule 5 draft in anticipation of the annual Winter Meetings, which begin next week in Nashville, Tennessee. He explains what the heck the Rule 5 draft is and provides an interesting trip down memory lane, recapping the Brewers’ activities in the draft since the 1997 draft. The decision to non-tender utility infielder Elian Herrera this week further fueled the speculation that GM David Stearns plans to be active in the Rule 5 draft. Of particular note are a trio of players from his former team that the Astros left unprotected that could fill positions of organizational need: outfielder Teoscar Hernandez, right-hander Brady Rodgers, and catcher Roberto Pena.

ESPN || A Winter Meetings wish list for each NL team (Dec. 3, 2015)

We’ve never done the following in this space before — because I really do try to curate the best Brewers-related writing of the week to bring to y’all when Fridays roll around — but I think it’s important (especially when it comes from a place with so much sway over the sports zeitgeist) to call out when someone gets something as fantastically wrong as Jonah Keri (@jonahkeri) did in his offseason preview of National League teams. Keri is one of the best in the business, and I’ve featured his stuff in this space before, which is why it’s so disappointing to see him miss the mark so completely in this piece. Perhaps in the wake of the shuttering of Grantland, his mind is elsewhere, and for that, no one could blame him. Writing for the mothership now, Keri delivers a list of needs and an offseason plan for each NL team in this article. Showing a complete lack of knowledge regarding the Brewers organization, he lists shortstop and center field as positions of greatest need for Milwaukee, stating, “they’ll need to find long-term replacements for Carlos Gomez (traded) and Jean Segura (bad at baseball).”

Yikes. Not only is that overly-harsh shot at Segura hyper-simplistic, it’s just not true; though he’s struggled at the plate over the past two seasons, Segura remains a valuable defensive asset. Additionally, to say that the Brewers need to find long-term replacements in center field and shortstop is about as wrong as one could be, as those are two positions at which Milwaukee is strongest in the higher levels in their farm system. Keri wraps up his blurb about Milwaukee with another swing-and-a-miss. He says that “rebuilding a farm system that doesn’t have much more to offer at the higher levels should be the Brewers’ top priority.” I’ll let Christopher Crawford field this one:

Oh hey guess what? The #Brewers system is coming out tomorrow, and…I think it might be my favorite system right now. Yep. The Brewers.

— Christopher Crawford (@CVCrawfordBP) December 3, 2015

 Minor League Ball || Milwaukee Brewers Top 20 Prospects for 2016 (Dec. 2, 2015)

SB Nation’s John Sickels (@MinorLeagueBall) released his annual ranking of the Brewers top 20 prospects on Wendesday. This may shock you, but he has Orlando Arcia at the top of the list, rated as an A- prospect. There are a couple of surprises on his list, none bigger than his lofty #4 ranking of LHP Josh Hader, who is coming off a suberb showing at the Arizona Fall League. No other publication that I’ve seen has Hader ranked in the top ten right now, but it’s hard to argue with the upside pick here. While most scouts doubt Hader’s ability to stick as a starter long-term due to his arm slot and small frame — something our own Michael Schwartz discussed yesterday — the numbers that he’s putting up right now are making it harder and harder to doubt him. Speaking of those other publications, you should of course take a peek at Baseball Prospectus’s Brewers top 10 prospects list, which was released yesterday, as well as the 11-20 supplemental list released exclusively here at BP Milwaukee, if you missed them.