Related Article:
2016 Southern League bats

So we continue with the Pacific Coast League variation of the contextual minor league statistics for Milwaukee Brewers prospects. I began this series in order to judge each player within his own age group within his own league, in order to keep players in groups that are more likely to fit their own developmental standpoints. For instance, Orlando Arcia ought not to be judged on the same scale as a Garin Cecchini or Will Middlebrooks, two players with MLB experience that are receiving a second chance in the Brewers organization; while those two might be judged moreso on their ability to get back into the grove and produce quality outcomes on the plate, a prospect at Arcia’s age and developmental standpoint may be more likely to work on improving one specific aspect of his game. In fact, for his age-21 season, Arcia completely shifted his strike zone discipline, improving his walk rate significantly, while also striking out more; for all the complaints about the rookie’s slow-rising batting line and .212 TAv, Arcia is already posting a walk rate that has hovered around 10 percent since leaping to the majors. So, a project such as “improving plate discipline” could help to explain why other areas of Arcia’s bat “took a step back” in 2016.

Not unlike the Southern League, a wide variety of professional ballplayers work in the Pacific Coast League. Many second-chance MLB players work in the most advanced minor league level, giving the Pacific Coast League the look of an organizational depth association. Yet, a few supremely young players rush through, and there are even organizational depth players that remain young for AAA (such as Garrett Cooper, for instance, who is “old” for AA and “young” for AAA).

Not surprisingly, isolating players with more than 5 PA, there are many different performance levels, age-by-age, on the Pacific Coast:

While it does not necessarily seem surprising that the youngest players in the league lack slugging numbers, or overall offensive performances that match the general impression that the PCL is a “free-for-all,” it was surprising to see how quickly the slugging tails off after age-25. Slugging percentage jumps once more at age-27, but then players working in the PCL between age-28 and age-35 seasons generally do not provide large slugging totals for their work. Hypothetically, one might guess that if a player is at age-28 and slugging effectively, they get their chance to work at the MLB level, while glovemen or bat-control depth guys are more likely to work their late-20s seasons at AAA; this is only one possible explanation.

By my count, the Brewers organization featured 15 players at AAA Colorado Springs that had rookie status entering the year. The vast majority of these players were young or relatively young for Class-AAA ball.

A few notes:

• Without any regular age-19 or -20 bats in the Pacific Coast League, Arcia was basically tied for the youngest regular position player in the league (with Padres’ top prospect, Manuel Margot, who had one of the best seasons in the entire PCL).

• Contrary to popular belief, Arcia showed excellent discipline and excellent isolated power for his age group.

• Garrett Cooper had a surprisingly good batting line, which I did not expect given my assumption that older players would be held to harsher performance criteria at AAA.

• Lewis Brinson really stormed the league in his Brewers debut!

• While Brewers fans commonly focused on his MLB struggles, Keon Broxton put together a great AAA campaign, even (especially?) for the league’s median age.

• Kyle Wren did nothing but hit in 2016, but he lacks isolated power behind his strong AVG and OBP totals. One wonders whether he’ll get his MLB shot in Milwaukee, given the stacked tools situated in the crowded Brewers outfield.

• Garin Cecchini produced a solid line for his age group, although the slugging did not come for the second-chance rookie. Cecchini could potentially profile as a contact-discipline depth player, but the lack of power could hurt a corner-defense profile.

• BPMilwaukee featured Nate Orf as one of the Three-Up players at midseason, given his batting profile and utility glove. Hopefully Orf makes it to the MLB!

• One wonders whether Yadiel Rivera and Ramon Flores will stick around in the organization for their respective gloves; unfortunately, their bats did not come around in 2016.

Unfortunately for Garin, the win-now Red Sox elected to spend big money to bring Pablo Sandoval in off of the free agent market prior to the 2015 season, relegating Cecchini back to AAA. With third base blocked at the big league level, Cecchini began moving around the diamond, appearing at first base and left field as well as the hot corner. In addition to learning a couple new positions defensively, Garin began tinkering with his swing. He’s never been much of a power threat, but he made some changes in an effort to begin driving the ball with more authority.

The results were disastrous. He was never comfortable at the plate and in 117 games with Pawtucket in 2015, Cecchini posted a meager .213/.286/.296 batting line (.216 tAV). Not only did he not accomplish the goal of hitting for more power with only seven home runs, but he struck out at a rate in upwards of 21 percent, well above his career average. The Red Sox designated Cecchini for assignment in December of 2015 and the Brewers acquired him for cash considerations on the final day of the Winter Meetings.

Cecchini began this season with AAA Colorado Springs hoping to rediscover the form that once made him a highly-touted prospect. In order to do that, however, he needed to once again find the swing that helped him consistently post .290+ batting averages in the lower minors.

The above video are some highlights of Cecchini from his nightmarish 2015 season. He stands in a rather upright position with his knees slightly flexed, hands held high around his ear level and with a bit of an uppercut in his swing while searching for more power.

Garin Cecchini double #SkySox https://t.co/xXkdWSVH3N

— Brewers Prospects (@BrewerProspect) June 19, 2016

Now, here’s a highlight of Cecchini from the 2016 season, and it’s not difficult to see the differences. Garin is in more of a crouched position with greater flex in his knees this year, holding the bat a little bit higher than he was last season and producing a more level swing-plane.

Thanks in part to the adjustments that he’s made this year, Garin is enjoying a nice rebound campaign in the hitter-friendly confines of Colorado Springs. Through 66 games he’s hitting a solid, if unspectacular .281/.338/.386 with 14 extra base hits and six steals, good enough for a .273 tAV that comes in a little better than league average and is a significant improvement over his work from last year. He’s cut his strikeout rate nearly in half down to roughly 11 percent and is still taking walks at around a nine percent clip, as well.

Aaron Hill and Chris Carter are currently handling the corner infield positions up in Milwaukee, but it’s likely that both will be trade candidates in the run up to this year’s deadline and could find themselves donning new uniforms by August 1st. If one or both of those two players are moved, that could open up a real opportunity for Cecchini to get some extended playing time at the big league level. That’d be especially true if the club elects to keep Orlando Arcia in AAA longer in light of Jonathan Villar’s (himself a buy-low, post hype prospect) unexpected success at shortstop this season.

Now that the 25 year old Cecchini is back to his patient and contact-oriented ways, he could be back on the path to becoming the player described in the 2015 Annual as “someone who can challenge for a .290 average with a strong walk rate and enough pop to keep pitchers honest. What they all agree on: He’s got plus-plus makeup and seems likely to get the most out of his natural abilities.”

Let’s meet the potentials, shall we?

Tier 3: The Department of Organizational Depth

Hernan Perez

Outlook: Perez had this job for a month or so last summer, but he couldn’t hold it. To make things worse, the guy who took the job from him went to the Dodgers on a minor-league deal. That’s not exactly a good look. Perez has cumulatively played about a half-season in the big leagues, and he’s already tallied a win and a half below replacement level. The writing is on the wall with him at this point.

He’ll be 25 years old on opening day, though, so he’s not quite old enough to be completely written off. Perez just has no prospect pedigree to bank on and a major-league stat line that screams “overmatched.” On the bright side, Colorado Springs should inflate his stats nicely, so that’s cool.

Jake Elmore

Outlook: Like Perez, Elmore has been a below-replacement-level player for his career. Worse still, no less than seven different teams have cut bait on Elmore in the past five years. That’s approximately a quarter of the league who have waived, DFA’d, or non-tendered Elmore. He’s now in Milwaukee on a minor-league deal and traveled to Spring Training as a non-roster invitee. Elmore is around because if multiple infielders succumb to injury he can play all three positions somewhat adequately. It would be disingenuous to write Elmore off as a completely uninteresting player, however — he’s pitched, as a position player, for two different teams already.

Yadiel Rivera

Outlook: Of the three fringe candidates in this race, Rivera boasts the best shot at a major-league roster spot. His defensive skill and versatility, combined with his largely impotent bat, make him a textbook reserve infielder. He can play short, second, and third and leave you impressed at every turn. In fact, his glove has been considered the best in Milwaukee’s system for years now.

Rivera shot through the Double-A and Triple-A levels in 2015 before making his big-league debut in September. After that, he participated in both the Arizona Fall League and the Venezuelan Winter League. While he is a plus defender at all three positions, his bat is decidedly below average. During his minor-league career, he seems to have vacillated back and forth between two different approaches at the plate: he can hit for acceptably mediocre power and strike out a lot, or he can cut his strikeouts to a mid-teens percentage clip while simultaneously slashing his already-tenuous power numbers back to essentially zero. I’m not even remotely kidding; Rivera posted an ISO of .066 in Colorado Springs, which feels like either a typo or some kind of really crappy miracle.

Neither approach seems like one that will provide value at the big-league level, but since Rivera is so useful defensively, that’s basically a moot point. He’s never going to win an award, unless they give one out for “Least Valuable Fantasy Baseball Commodity,” but he should be able to hold gainful employment in a big-league jersey for a number of years. We should all be so lucky.

Tier 2: The Department of Fenway Park Dumpster Diving

Will Middlebrooks

How he was acquired: The Padres non-tendered him, and Milwaukee inked him to a minor-league contract with an invite to Spring Training. It’s probably the best possible situation for Middlebrooks because…

What he did last year: Middlebrooks was downright terrible in 2015. Remember in high school, when you got fired from your first job because you were too busy playing video games and missed multiple shifts? Teenage You was undeniably more valuable to that McJob than Will Middlebrooks was to the San Diego Padres last year. Really, the biggest positive you can draw from Middlebrooks’ tenure in San Diego is probably that he didn’t steal any tanks while in town.

He actually started the year as the Padres’ regular third baseman. But a nightmarish .212/.241/.361 slash line saw him lose his job to Yangervis Solarte in June. Then, because this was the 2015 Padres and no defensive tactic was too wacky to employ, San Diego ran Middlebrooks — who had never played the position professionally — out at shortstop for four starts. Eventually this circus act was shelved, and Middlebrooks was exiled to the minors. At Triple-A El Paso, Middlebrooks posted an OBP of .287 and was almost half-a-game worse than replacement level in just 38 games with the team. His non-tender was not shocking this past fall. Middlebrooks’ breakout 2012 season feels like forever ago now, and if he continues to play as poorly as he did last year, he’ll find himself looking for a new career path before long.

Strengths: You don’t become a Top-100 prospect without some kind of skill. Middlebrooks’ ability to hit for power has been his calling card since he smashed 18 homers and slugged out a .201 ISO in Double-A five years ago. The next season, despite making his big-league debut in May, he was a 1.8-win third baseman. Twenty-seven is nowhere near the traditional decline age, so he still owns that .270-20HR skill set he flashed years ago. Defensively, it’s the same story. He’s inconsistent, but at his best he’s definitely an asset. What’s more is that San Diego’s daffy shortstop experiment might actually have legs — the advanced defensive metrics like what he did there, though the usual cautions about extremely small sample sizes apply here, and he certainly passes the eye test.

Weaknesses: Conversely, you don’t get non-tendered without a few really obnoxious warts. As you might be able to tell from his OBP numbers, Middlebrooks has no patience at the plate and is routinely outfoxed by big-league — or even Triple-A — pitching. Middlebrooks’ premature decline is not merely an offensive phenomenon, either. His FRAA metrics have trended in the wrong direction for several years, and he was two-plus runs below average at both San Diego and El Paso in 2015.

Optimistic Major-League Comparison: The good news is that even a slight correction for Middlebrooks could yield fantastic results. PECOTA’s second-favorite comparison for him is 2013 Trevor Plouffe. Plouffe has been a two-plus win player at the hot corner the past two seasons, but coming into 2013 — at 27 years old, same as Middlebrooks this year — he had a career line of just +0.1 WARP. His career OBP is just .308 and he might never even hit .260, but his power, speed, and defense make up the value lost. In theory, Middlebrooks is quite capable of doing the same thing.

Outlook: It’s not that I’m not rooting for Middlebrooks — quite the opposite, in fact. The thing about professional baseball, when you get past the low minors, is that the sorts of physical gifts that used to buoy Middlebrooks matter far less. It’s an ecosystem in perpetual flux, forever adapting and counteradapting to itself. Middlebrooks was physically gifted enough to make it to, and even succeed in, the big leagues for a stretch. But the league adapted to him, and now he has to either learn to adapt back or learn how to sell insurance. The rarefied air of Colorado Springs and homer-friendly tendencies of Miller Park will give him every opportunity to showcase his power. If he learns any semblance of pitch recognition, that will be a perfect match.

Garin Cecchini

How he was acquired: Milwaukee purchased the post-hype prospect from the Red Sox in December, a deal Bryan Grosnik referred to as “the definition of ‘buying low.'”

What he did last year: It has to be a special kind of bad in order to plummet from “eventual MLB regular” to “sold for cash considerations” in just a year.

When he struggled in his first taste of Triple-A ball in 2014, it was concerning, as a +0.7 WARP season from a top prospect should be, but it was hardly the end of the world. Furthermore, in a late-season cup of coffee, Cecchini didn’t look lost. Then, the Red Sox signed Pablo Sandoval and moved Cecchini to left field. For whatever reason, this seems to have sapped his will to play ball. The player who had once been nicknamed “The Roman God of Walks” in reference to Kevin Youkilis posted a Triple-A on-base percentage of just .286. He didn’t exactly compensate in other areas of his game, either — Cecchini was two wins worse than replacement level at Pawtucket.

Strengths: Cecchini comes with the Kevin Youkilis Skill Set — average defense at third base, power that is present if not overwhelming, and a patient approach that works the count, bleeds out walks, and exhausts pitchers. Even in the post-Moneyball era, it’s an underrated skill set. In other words, it’s a profile that lacks excitement, but really what’s more exciting than someone who can contribute to a championship?

Weaknesses: Two years of evidence indicate that Double-A has been Cecchini’s glass ceiling. In making the jump from Double- to Triple-A, Cecchini struck out at a clip four points higher and lost the majority of his walks. During his second Triple-A season, these trends only got worse. Cecchini’s profile has always been the “low ceiling but high floor” type, which in light of his Triple-A track record has to beg the question: Were we seeing something that wasn’t there because the Red Sox hype the bejeezus out of their prospects?

Optimistic Major-League Comparison: Projection models don’t wear clothes, but if they could, PECOTA would be proudly sporting a “Screw Garin Cecchini” T-shirt right about now. His list of comparables are a Rachel Phelps wet dream, Quad-A flotsam like Trevor Crowe, Cole Gillespie, and Jaff Decker. Sitting atop this catalog of the crappy is none other than Shane Peterson. Like Peterson, Cecchini is pretty decent at avoiding outs and not much else. The difference being Cecchini’s overall offensive game is stronger, while Peterson is actually a plus defender in the corners.

Outlook: The days of expectations for Cecchini disappeared with his batting eye. If he figures out what’s been ailing him about Triple-A pitching, there’s still hope he can turn into an okay big leaguer. But last year was a giant leap towards career minor-leaguerdom for Cecchini and, like Middlebrooks, he’s got nowhere to go but up after 2015. Still, you can’t fault the brass for giving him a shot. All it cost was money, and money’s the cheapest thing in baseball nowadays.

Tier 1: The Department of Resellable Assets

Aaron Hill

How he was acquired: Most of the other names we’ve run through are young, post-hype prospects who were acquired for next to nothing. Hill, on the other hand, is an aging former regular who was foisted onto the Brewers in order to make the Jean Segura/Chase Anderson deal happen in January. In fact, the Diamondbacks were so happy to be rid of him that they agreed to cover over half of his 2016 salary.

What he did last year: For the first time in years, Hill managed to stay healthy, arguably because he struggled to see the field. Arizona frequently tabbed Nick Ahmed, Yasmany Tomas, Jake Lamb, or even Phil Gosselin to play ahead of him. Maybe it’s because their new front office saw Hill, and his lavish contract, as a symbol of everything the old guard did wrong. Maybe it’s that when he did see the field, he slashed a mere .230/.295/.345. For this level of production, Arizona paid a sum of $12 million. In light of that, it sort of makes sense that they’d pay him $6.5 million to stay away from their Major League roster.

Strengths: The best thing you can say in Hill’s favor is he’s been here once before, and he bounced back nicely.

Four years before he played his way out of favor in Arizona, Hill played his way out of favor in Toronto. He was almost a two-loss player when Arizona acquired him in a waiver trade. Then, over the final five weeks of the season, he nearly clawed his way back to even for the year. He improved his OBP by over a hundred points, and his slugging percent by over a buck fifty. The next year, Hill kept the momentum going, hitting .300 in regular action and posting 6.8 wins above replacement. The eight wins Hill was worth to the D-Backs from the end of 2011 through 2012 represent over a third of his career total. It could very well be that he’s the type of player who needs that extra motivation.

As it sits right now, the newly-acquired Jonathan Villar is perched atop the official depth chart. In his 589 career plate appearances, Villar has contributed a TAv of .239. He’s only going into his age-25 season, so some offensive improvement can reasonably be expected, especially if he is granted more full-time employment. Inconsistencies in playing time often contributes to poorer performance for young players.

The supposed problem with that reasoning, though, is that Villar never performed particularly well in the minors. In fact, over the 12 changes in levels during his career with more than 100 plate appearances, Villar’s TAv has outperformed his opponent’s TAv (that is, the True Average of those who are also competing for playing time in Milwaukee) four times. In other words, two-thirds of his career at any level has been worse than his competition. Projecting more out of him may be foolhardy, though it should be noted that Steamer projects Villar for his best season yet — a half-win season.

The Brewers player with the most Major League experience at the position is the newly-acquired Will Middlebrooks. While his experience may be tempting, he has actually been below replacement level over the past two seasons. In fact, Middlebrooks has lost his teams 1.6 games (according to WARP) over only 504 plate appearances. His walk rate in 2015 was even lower than Villar’s and his strikeout rate was basically the same.

The other two remaining options to play third base are Yadiel Rivera (a natural shortstop) and Colin Walsh (a natural second baseman). While positional changes shouldn’t be looked upon unfavorably, it doesn’t show great organizational depth. Furthermore, just because they are on the official Brewers site depth chart doesn’t really mean anything.

Rivera is going into his age-24 season and seems allergic to walks. Walsh is going into his age-26 season and has fared well at every level offensively except for a short stint at Triple-A.

This is all meant to say that there is no white-knight savior at third base for the Brewers going into the 2016 season. Except, well, perhaps there is.

Last month, the Brewers acquired Garin Cecchini from the Boston Red Sox for cash considerations. Let’s start with Cecchini’s minors stats and a blind comparison.

In 2013 Cecchini dominated High-A, posting a .349 TAv over 262 plate appearances. A different infield prospect for a different High-A club — we’ll call him Player B — posted a .340 TAv over 237 plate appearances in the same year. In 2013, Cecchini also made his Double-A debut and performed at the well-above-average clip of .312 TAv in 295 plate apperances. Player B waited until 2014 to hit the Double-A level, but in his 441 plate appearances he posted a .276 TAv. That line happens to look a lot more like Cecchini’s first season in Triple-A Pawtucket, actually, in which he posted a .256 TAv in 458 plate appearances.

In summation, Cecchini was better than Player B in High-A and much better than Player B in Double-A. Though Cecchini took a step back in Triple-A, he did stay above average according to True Average.

Player B is Toronto Blue Jays second baseman Devon Travis. Both Travis and Cecchini will be entering their age-25 seasons. The main difference, however, is that Travis has already made a fairly substantial mark on the majors. In 238 plate appearances, Travis’ .307 TAv buoyed a 1.9 WARP season. While he shouldn’t be expected to post another .194 ISO season, and his BABIP of .347 indicates some regression, there’s reason to think Cecchini could make an impression on the majors next season if he is given a shot.

Furthermore, the difference between Cecchini’s and Travis’s Steamer projections are a paltry half-a-win. If you recall, that’s the expected worth of Villar. While Travis is expected to produce 0.9 fWAR for the Blue Jays, Cecchini is projected to produce just 0.1 less than Villar. While Cecchini’s contact rate doesn’t indicate particular success, Villar’s has been even worse. Moreover, Cecchini’s walk rates were very good up until Triple-A and, with the right tutelage, his on-base percentages could definitely surpass Villar’s.

While we are less than two months away from real-life Spring Training games, there are still many decisions to make for David Stearns to finalize his roster. I think it would be a clever move for Stearns to give Cecchini a long look at camp for the Opening Day roster. If I had to pick a player to out-perform their half-a-win projection between Cecchini and Villar, I’d take Cecchini. For a rebuilding team with not a lot to lose, Cecchini could be a good low-risk, high-reward option to break camp at third base. If he doesn’t pan out away from the Boston media and their expectations, then Villar can be used as a serviceable replacement.

Of course, Melvin didn’t always struggle in this facet of management. The first five years of his tenure (2003-2007) saw the Brewers draft Ryan Braun, Yovani Gallardo, Rickie Weeks, and Jonathan Lucroy, among others. Those players combined with Prince Fielder and Corey Hart, J.J. Hardy, and Bill Hall — whom the team had selected in the pre-Melvin seasons — to form a strong nucleus that helped the club make playoff runs in 2008 and 2011.

After that, however, the prospect well dried up — such that, for five years running, the Brewers have placed in the bottom five of BP’s organizational rankings:

[Note: These rankings began in 2008.]

With the aforementioned core heading to the Major Leagues, Milwaukee sorely needed to replenish its system. Melvin responded with the opposite due to the club’s competitive window. In deals for CC Sabathia, Zack Greinke, and Shaun Marcum, he sent away Matt LaPorta, Zack Jackson, Rob Bryson, Michael Brantley, Lorenzo Cain, Jake Odorizzi, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffess, and Brett Lawrie. Some of those players didn’t end up accomplishing much, but the prosperity of some of them — particularly Brantley and Cain, each of whom has played at a borderline-MVP level in the past couple years — have made many fans regret the trades retrospectively.

Inadequate drafting compounded the woes of those deals. Jack noted in his piece that the club’s picks from later years haven’t yet amounted to much. Over the past few years, teams such as the Rangers have managed to maintain a solid minor-league system despite swinging big trades, and they’ve done so by constantly restocking their affiliates through the draft and international free agency. Part of that is good scouting, too, while part of that is a willingness to spend money. Melvin’s Brewers partook in the former half of the equation while neglecting the latter half, though, and it has come back to haunt them.

With that said, Milwaukee has made recent strides. BP’s writeup of the farm system stated that it possessed “talent to makes several teams quite jealous” — a massive improvement from its standing over the past several seasons. After spending the first half of the decade in the minor-league cellar, the 2015 Brewers have taken the necessary steps to move back up to the top half.

Part of this, in fairness, happened before this year. In August, Julien Assouline analyzed the team’s drafts under Melvin, who had perhaps not received the credit he deserved. Some of Melvin’s strengths there stem from the early years, but even in the later part of his run with the Brewers, they fared moderately well. Derek Harvey commented that the club’s drafts from 2009 to 2014, under late scouting director Bruce Seid, provided them with numerous quality players that presently stock their system. Indeed, of the top-20 current Milwaukee prospects, eight — Jorge Lopez, Devin Williams, Monte Harrison, Tyrone Taylor, Jake Gatewood, Kodi Medeiros, Yadiel Rivera, and Michael Reed — came from drafts during that span, while Orlando Arcia and Gilbert Lara signed with the team as amateur free agents in that period.

Still, an improvement of this magnitude, and in this short a span, suggests something different in the past twelve months. Part of the difference stems from the 2015 draft, which has (to this point) yielded incredible rewards. Four of those top-20 prospects came to the team in June: Trent Clark, Cody Ponce, Demi Orimoloye, and Nathan Kirby. Clark stands out as the best of the bunch, but all four have intriguing upside and could continue to blossom further. New scouting director Ray Montgomery, as Harvey observed, seems to have taken off.

The team’s decision to finally rebuild has helped with that. July saw them deal away established starters Aramis Ramirez, Gerardo Parra, and Jonathan Broxton, as well as (relative) stars Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers. Those trades — which, as J.P. Breen correctly posited, meant the team had recognized that its window has closed — brought back a great deal of prospects. Yhonathan Barrios, Zach Davies, Malik Collymore, Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips, Josh Hader, and Adrian Houser now occupy various levels of the Milwaukee system; Phillips, Davies, Houser, and Hader ranked in the top 20, while Santana has already begun to contribute at The Show. Together with Marcos Diplan, an intriguing top-20 farmhand whom the team acquired in last January’s Yovani Gallardo swap, they amount to a formidable group.

Overall, David Stearns inherited a solid amount of prospects when he became the GM in August. Surveying the trove a couple weeks before Melvin stepped down, Derek Harvey concluded that the system had gone from the bottom to the upper half of the league — a prediction that, as stated previously, we’ve likely seen come true. Stearns didn’t stop there, though. In his four-odd months atop the organization, he’s made several trades to bolster the minor- and major-league depth, further improving the system as a whole.

The first two transactions came in mid-November. Stearns swapped Cy Sneed for the Astros’ Jonathan Villar, then followed that up by shipping Francisco Rodriguez to the Tigers in exchange for Javier Betancourt and a player to be named later (catcher Manny Pina). Seth Victor described Villar at the time as “a good acquisition for a team that needs middle infield depth and flexibility,” a player who won’t make a noticeable difference yet should still provide some value. Betancourt — who rounded out the top 20 — is, in Chris Crawford’s estimation, “a high-floor prospect with a fairly well-defined ceiling.” In other words, he could become a Villar-type player a few years down the road.

After BP published its top-20 list, Stearns has made a few more moves, evidently in an effort to muck up the rankings. First came the Adam Lind trade, which brought back three young pitchers: Carlos Herrera, Daniel Missaki, and Freddy Peralta. While I can certainly see the logic in Jack’s distaste for the deal — Lind gave us something to cheer for in this dreadful 2015 season, and those players always hurt to lose — I ultimately come down on the side of J.P., who expressed cautious optimism regarding it.

Not long after that, three more prospects came to Milwaukee. The day following Lind’s departure, the Red Sox sold Garin Cecchini to the Brewers for cash considerations. BP’s Bryan Grosnick called the deal “[t]he definition of ‘buying low,'” as a disastrous 2015 had caused Cecchini’s stock to plummet. Likewise, the players Milwaukee snagged in the Rule 5 draft — Colin Walsh from the Athletics and Zack Jones from the Twins — don’t carry elite pedigrees, or much upside, for that matter.

These deals nevertheless give the Brewers plenty of options for 2016 and beyond, as J.P. outlined a few weeks ago. (Plus, the quantity acquired from these transactions only increased thereafter, when the Brewers sent Jason Rogers to the Pirates, receiving Keon Broxton and Trey Supak in return.) Overall, the solid 2015 draft, along with Stearns’s willingness to trade anything not nailed down, has translated to a complete turnaround in Milwaukee’s minor-league system.

What does this mean for 2016? Well, as J.P. pointed out, the Brewers have more routes they can take at the Major League level; although few of those will likely lead to wins, the results should give the team some clarity for 2017. More immediately, it means the Triple-A Sky Sox will presumably play better in 2016. Michael Schwarz explained how that affiliate would progress with legitimate prospects filling its roster. The biggest takeaway here, though, is general optimism. Years and years of no future, at long last, appear to have come to an end. Now, more so than at any point in recent memory, there could be hope on the Milwaukee horizon.