• The Marlins ownership group’s refusal to capitalize payroll indeed resulted in a bargain bottom deal for Giancarlo Stanton, who will now call the Yankees his team.
• The….Angels won the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes, prompting a range of reactions calling non-existent (see NEIFI Analytics) to positive impacts.

A non-contender won Ohtani’s services, and the Marlins are indeed officially in…well, they’re not rebuilding, so let’s call it “firesale mode,” and these two clubs fittingly define a mediocre MLB. The Marlins join the announcements from the Royals front office that they expect to rebuild, along with the Tigers who are rebuilding alongside the already-rebuilding (and maybe on the upswing) Chicago White Sox, who join San Diego, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati as rebuilds-in-progress. Other clubs in bizarre territory include the Athletics (what are they doing?) and the Blue Jays (some fans now clamoring for their share of #ThatProcess). The Mariners and Giants (losers of Ohtani sweepstakes) at least seem like they’re trying to win, as do the Pirates and Mets.

That’s half the MLB, right there. Wouldn’t it be nice to be playing 2018 in the American League Central, where the upstart Twins will battle Cleveland for the title, alongside three stated rebuilding efforts?

Anyway, with roughly half the MLB hilariously trying to rebuild, or maybe not in an earnest position to win, the Brewers have their own principles to consider: Milwaukee is on the upswing after completing their quick-and-easy rebuild, but now it’s time to watch some young (or, if not young, inexperienced) players cut their teeth at the MLB level. This is not the best scenario to be in entering the Winter Meeting, as there’s a very good argument to be made in favor of the Brewers simply sitting tight; no, they don’t need to trade Domingo Santana for prospects, and similarly, no, they don’t need to trade Lewis Brinson to win now. In fact, the Brewers are one of the few clubs in the MLB that can justifiably stand pat for the offseason and simply rerun the algorithms that powered 2017 (after all, the spreadsheets looked so good the first time around that it’d be great to give it another shot).

Of course, with so many clubs purposefully trying to shed MLB contracts and competitiveness in order to play for the future, the Brewers do have two key assets in their favor of the offseason:

• Tons of free cash, both in the form of revenue savings from 2016-2017 (probably close to $120 million), and payroll space for 2018 (and onward).
• Tons of interesting prospects behind the top tier of the system.

Thankfully, many of the aforementioned rebuilding or limbo clubs also have something that the Brewers need for 2018: starting pitching under arbitration or guaranteed contractual reserve. Where this group of arms gets interesting is their sheer boredom as a group. To demonstrate this, imagine a winter meetings in which the Brewers emerge with…Dan Straily, Kendall Graveman, and BPMilwaukee chat fan-favorite Danny Duffy; or even Jeff Samardzija and Marco Estrada; or Jake Odorizzi and Mike Foltynewicz; or any combination of these arms!

The question one could ask is, how much would these arms cost? What is difficult to assess about this group is their general trajectory, as most of these arms feature one genuinely good season over the year few years while offering stable depth in the majority of other seasons. Yet, there are clear improvements by someone like Danny Duffy, or Jeff Samardzija’s phenomenal peripheral development in 2017, that raise questions about whether spending on the heftier side of these arms’ prospect prices would be beneficial. An additional issue is that these arms feature well-priced contracts or arbitration control, which leads to a difficult market position in assessing a prospect package. What types of prospects within the current Brewers system are worth surrendering for cost-controlled starting pitching?

I did not consider popular Brewers Twitter trade discussions like Chris Archer or Jacob deGrom, simply because both of those arms are indisputably elite pitchers who will not be in any type of “bargain” position for the Brewers. Even someone like Michael Fulmer is more of a potential bargain for a club like the Brewers, given his relative lack of track record compared to deGrom and Archer (and, no, even five years of contract reserve do not erase the risk of unknown MLB performance trajactories compared to Fulmer’s previous scouting pedigree). Coupling Fulmer and Jordan Zimmermann could also be a unique strategy for the Brewers to lower the Fulmer prospect package out of “elite” territory.

What Brewers fans will undoubtedly complain about is that many of these pitchers seemingly offer nothing more than middle-, and often low-, rotation, innings-eater profiles. In some cases, recent injury questions (as in Graveman’s case) may not even lead to solidly dependable innings eating in Milwaukee. But, there are two easy responses to this:

• Outside of someone like Jake Arrieta or Yu Darvish, the current pitching free agency class is full of these types of gambles anyway.
• Some combination of Junior Guerra, Brent Suter, Brandon Woodruff, and even current fan rotation favorite Josh Hader do not profile as anything better than the immediate value provided by the arms noted above. Yes, if Hader continues his 2017 profile, he’s not a #3 starter (or better).

Of course, the Brewers also entered 2017 with a mostly innings-eating or uninspiring middle rotation set of pitchers, and their pitching staff was one of the club strengths. One also needs to assess each potential trade target’s arsenal, approach, and persona for compatibility with the new Derek Johnson coaching regime (if Johnson can help to turn around arms like Jimmy Nelson and Chase Anderson, what can he do with other middle rotation arms? What is the Brewers’ systematic pitching?). Additionally, acquiring more proven rotational options via prospect packages for arbitration controlled or guaranteed contract starters could prove to be a cheaper strategy than pursuing the current free agency market. The benefit here is that each of these arms would push options like Woodruff, Suter, and Guerra into more palatable depth roles within the rotation. It should not be detrimental to suggest that Suter is a fantastic swingman option; penciling Suter into the rotation to start the season raises some alarms about the potential of the southpaw delivering a full season rotational role.

One way or the other, the Brewers will need to win in 2018 with a motley and unsuspecting rotation. But that’s okay, because the team has the front office and coaching staff to make this type of profile work. The alternative path is parting with significant prospects (such as Brinson) to acquire an ace like Archer, or chasing the huge contract top-tier free agents. It should be noted that the beauty of this middle path will be the Brewers’ ability to trade from a position of strength (their depth) while developing key elite prospects at the MLB level (like Brinson) and giving the new pitching system another group of unassuming talent to churn into MLB winners.

Photo Credit: Lance Iverson, USAToday Sports Images

After one year, this trade raises many question marks. Granted, there’s still quite a lot of value present in the trade, both in terms of future rotation potential (or trade value) for Houston (with Fiers), and trade, controllable contracts, and hopefully potential performance for the Brewers quartet. Still, even raising these types of vacant hopeful pleasantries does not substitute the fact that one year out, what looked like a blockbuster for both sides is creeping toward a somewhat value-neutral non-event. If there’s any lesson to be drawn from this trade, however, it is that the perception of a trade can change over time, and that a trade’s legacy is certainly not finished on its consummation day, nor one year later. In 2017, this trade might still have those value questions for Milwaukee, and even in 2018 or 2019; yet, it is somewhat absurd to suggest that analysts must wait five years to assess the total value of the trade. What is more interesting is to dig deeper into those years and understand how a trade’s legacy and change year-in and year-out.

I know no better trade with which to demonstrate this point than the Zack Greinke trade orchestrated between the Brewers and the Royals. It was commonplace during the 2014-2015 World Series appearances (and Championship) by the Royals to hear Brewers fans groaning about how former President Doug Melvin traded away Championship-caliber players, but it’s easy to forget that by opening day 2013, the quartet of youngsters traded to Kansas City had dwindled to two roster spots (Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain) and a total of 3.1 WARP between the 2011-2012 seasons. Interestingly enough, Zack Greinke suffered his own surface stat nightmares in 2011, waddling through a productive WARP season while ranking fourth best in terms of runs prevention on a solid, consistent Division Championship rotation. Still, the trades for Shaun Marcum and Greinke were indeed vindicated by the Division Championship and League Championship Series run, which undoubtedly netted the Brewers significant playoff revenue shares, not to mention local merchandise.

Greinke netted a strong 8.67 WARP for the Brewers before the front office traded the righty away midseason 2012, understanding that the club would not be able to defend their NL Central crown. By the end of 2012, the trade looked like a rout — the Brewers netted 8.67 WARP, playoff revenue, and Jean Segura, while the Royals controlled the contracts for 3.1 WARP worth of production; about the only benefit Kansas City could claim were those reserve rights.

Using harsh 3-Year, 10-percent depreciation analysis, as with the other sections of the Grading Trades series, one can see that the prospective value of the Brewers prospects matched up quite well with the production value of Zack Greinke; various WARP or contract surplus estimates place the trade package within 80 percent of Greinke’s expected value, which seems quite good for estimating trade value.

EDIT: Updated November 2 to add Yuniesky Betancourt. 1.5 WARP in 2010; 0.14 3-Year Depreciation ($0.5M). Contract surplus: -$5.8M. 

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Of course, Wade Davis and James Shields may have been more crucial to the Royals’ postseason success than Cain or Escobar (not to say they were unimportant), and both of those righties were traded in a package involving the Royals’ Jake Odorizzi. It is interesting that fans almost never mention that Doug Melvin traded away a depth prospect that allowed the Royals to land crucial Championship-drivers, instead focusing on the controllable Cain and Escobar. Trades are as important to building contenders as controlling players, and the Royals instantly turned around their fortunes even while making a trade that caused much head-scratching at the time (myself included). By 2013, the Zack Greinke traded proliferated to two other deals, as the Royals matched Brewers newcomer Segura with their own acquisition of key production assets.

The Jean Segura story has been told multiple times, and it may be worth revisiting it again a few years in the future. But here it is most interesting to point out that even if Segura had an up-and-down-and-out performance in Milwaukee, the shortstop may have helped to net one of the franchise’s new cornerstones. Isan Diaz, Aaron Hill, and Chase Anderson are the latest branches from the Greinke deal, with Wendell Rijo and Aaron Wilkerson added to the family by extension of the Aaron Hill deal. And so this trade moves on and on: with Diaz, the Brewers have another potentially elite trading chip, or a potential middle infield cornerstone if everything goes right.

It is nearly impossible to write these twists and turns into the Greinke trade saga. Kansas City drew 14+ WARP from James Shields and Wade Davis, although one gets the sense that WARP sells short the situational mastery of Davis. Milwaukee received more than 10 WARP of production from Jean Segura before netting a 50-60 grade surging prospect in Isan Diaz. These figures can be added to total production received by both clubs in the original Greinke deal. Of course, even Cain and Escobar famously overcame their 2011-2012 hiccups to bolster the Royals with valuable play during their contending seasons. Prorated to normalize six years of performance against Greinke’s year-and-four-months for Milwaukee, the production value of the original Greinke deal again appears quite evenly matched:

EDIT: Updated November 2 to add Yuniesky Betancourt. 1.5 WARP (2011); $5.5M contract surplus ($16.0M total annual value). NOTE: 6.6 FRAA in 2011 (!!!).

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So, one can only imagine the twists and turns that the Gomez-Fiers trade will take in Milwaukee. One can extend this lesson to nearly every trade, in terms of understanding that the lineage of a trade can take winding manifestations that are never imagined at the time of that trade. It remains to be seen if Hader, Houser, Phillips, and Santana impact the next Brewers contender more via trade or their own performances, or a mix of both. If the first year is any lesson, it is worth expecting another strange twist in 2017.