I like either player, even on a 2 year deal, over Kinsler on a 1 year deal. Unless Kinsler shows the willingness and ability to play another IF position, and given his continued prowess at 2B I don’t see why he couldn’t handle a few innings at 3B, or even 1B. Maybe not SS. I doubt they sign him otherwise; we’ve seen how Stearns prefers positional versatility among his non-1B infielders.

Marwin seems like the ultimate Stearns player, but I don’t see him committing more than 2 years to a utility player who ideally is relegated to a part-time role once Hiura/Dubon takes over 2B, to say nothing of the yearly salary Marwin will likely get.

Granted, Yelich has been as impactful or perhaps moreso than either of CC or Greinke, and is under team control for longer. It’s obvious the Brewers have won the trade in the short term. However, I feel pretty confident that at least two of Brinson/Diaz/Harrison/Yamamoto will be impactful MLBers, and won’t be surprised if Brinson further develops into an All-Star caliber player (admittedly, I’m a big Brinson fan. I think he may have been a little rushed, and liken him a bit to Byron Buxton). So I can’t make a determination on this trade for a couple more years at least, but if I had to bet, I’d say the Brewers are still looking good in that time based on the likelihood Yelich has similar seasons to 2018 in the next 4 years. By then I do expect 2 or 3 of the prospects traded for him to be Marlins fixtures, and I probably will be wishing Jordan Yamamoto was in the rotation or Isan Diaz was manning second, like I was hoping in 2016.

Furthermore, flights from Denver or Colorado Springs to Chicago or Milwaukee aren’t much over two hours, while flights from San Antonio to Chicago are ever so slightly longer, and require a connection to get to Milwaukee, either through a Texas airport or Chicago. The travel situation is at best the same, as SA-MKE is comparable or perhaps more unfavorable in terms of distance and flight options as CS-MKE. Having an affiliate in San Antonio is clearly better than Colorado Springs in many areas, but travel is not one of them.

While this looks like fair value given Yelich’s production this year, the package appears now, as it did in January, to have been misused on hitting OF (a luxury, even given the team’s offensive struggles) when the same assets could have acquired controllable, top-of-rotation pitching. I point to the Yelich trade as a reason this team is not making the playoffs.

Yelich’s production in essence replaced that of Santana’s in 2017. It exceeded it, but not enough to make up for other team shortcomings (pitching) and this bears out in the similarities in records (and likely, the September outcomes) of the 2017 and 2018 teams.

1. Usage of Hader and Knebel (who of course has always really struggled after 4+ days off).
2. Importance of Arcia (his glove) to this team, despite poor offense that makes it easy for the average fan to hate him. I agree 100% about his defensive value being under-quantified, even though the numbers laud it, and it’s true. No one else on the team is good enough offensively to compensate for the lack of Arcia’s glove, as you state. Fully endorse.
3. The actual poorness of the starting pitching staff despite good surface numbers, particularly Guerra.

If these moves were made to shore up the offense as you suggest, I think it’s generous to state that they even gained a smidgen of extra offense! Run scoring has dropped in July, closer to April levels.

What I like about this site, as opposed to other large Brewer blog sites, is that you all give room for opposing viewpoints within your staff. While I’m not stating other sites don’t, their writers all seem to fall in step together in the sort of optimism I mentioned earlier.