Brewers Acquire Marlins’ Christian Yelich
(Photo: Corn Farmer)
Despite recording 86 wins and finishing just a game out of the Wild Card in 2017, the Brewers have been pretty quiet this offseason. Of course, a lot of teams have been pretty quiet this offseason. Milwaukee added Jhoulys Chacin, which helps, and they’ve brought back Yovani Gallardo, which might help. But little more than that.
Well, until now. The Brewers’ offseason just got loud. In the midst of a busy winter themselves, the Marlins — who’ve already moved Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna, and Dee Gordon — have now sent what is likely their most valuable asset, Christian Yelich — to Milwaukee.
Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic had it first, and the Brewers made it official.
Brewers receive:
- Christian Yelich, OF
Marlins receive:
- Lewis Brinson, OF
- Monte Harrison, OF
- Isan Diaz, INF
- Jordan Yamamoto, RHP
We expected that the package would be significant given Yelich’s talent and a contract that will pay him around $10 million a year for the next five seasons. It is big with Brinson as the headliner. The young outfielder just appeared 18th on Baseball America’s recently released top-100 list, while Eric Lohenhagen placed a 60 future-value grade on Brinson, making him one of the best prospects in baseball.
The deal isn’t just Brinson and filler, either. Longenhagen listed Monte Harrison as the third-best prospect in the Brewers system, with Isan Diaz close behind at the six spot. All three profile as average regulars at least. Yamamoto is more of a project, but he has an above-average curveball.
Just a few days ago, Jeff Sullivan examined a potential Brewers trade for Yelich:
What the Brewers have assembled is a cheap, young foundation. They have dozens of would-be major-league contributors, average starters or plug-in role players. Everyone has his own share of upside. But looking at the 2018 Steamer projections, the Brewers don’t have a single player in the top 150. By WAR, you find Jimmy Nelson ranked at No. 156, and Nelson seemed to break out last season as an ace, but he’s also going to miss the start of the regular season, because he’s coming off major shoulder surgery. And Nelson, it turns out, is the Brewers’ only player in the top 300. I don’t mean to suggest that Steamer is flawless, and I don’t mean to suggest that Ryan Braun or Domingo Santana or Chase Anderson are bad. But this isn’t a club with an obvious star. The best player is a question mark, because of his health. Stars aren’t everything, but good teams tend to need them, which could explain the Brewers’ pursuits. They know they already have plenty of upside, but it’d be good to also have some higher-end certainty.
The Brewers have that higher-end certainty. They might still do more.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
Wow.
And now they signed Cain.
Hot damn, it’s a hot stove!
Weird pair of moves to put together — Cain at 5/80 would’ve been my pick to do instead of Yelich, not in addition — but man, today has seen a big improvement to the Milwaukee outfield for years to come.
For the first time this year, more movement in the hot stove than in my bowels.
Two movements in one day! Talk about irregular.
Colon puns never stink.
“Colon puns never stink.”
_____
Unlike, of course Colón/ cologne puns.
I actually think it makes total sense that they paired them. The Brewers otherwise would have blocked both Brinson and Harrison.
I actually saw the Cain deal first and thought “ugh, that’s not a good deal at all” and it still isn’t a good deal in a vacuum because the back half of that contract is going to be capital-U-Ugly…but now it is understandable because they’ve decided they want to go for it the next couple of years.
For 80M in FA, that gets approximately 9-11 WAR; Cain just produced 4 wins in one season. Vacuum or not, it’s a pretty good deal and the same can be said for the Yelich trade.
The Yelich trade was a good deal for both sides. The Cain deal…man, in year 5 he’s going to be worthless.
Don’t benchmark this to actual rates of $/win in that past–those are worthless for this sort of comparison. That just demonstrates how bad free agent buys have been, not what you’re expecting to get.
Anchor it in comparison to the deals that have been signed by position players, like Carlos Santana. Is this better or worse than that? If you think Santana holds on and produces 9 WAR (maybe a little less?) for $60 million, then we’re looking at about $7 million per win.
By that number, Cain needs to produce about 11.5 WAR. If he holds his value for five years at his projection this year, that’s a really good deal–that’s 16.5 WAR. If he depreciates by 20% each year (which is what is expected for his decline this year), that’s about 10 WAR.
Okay, I’m convinced this is not that bad of a contract, but it’s still going to be ugly in five years when he’s a 1-WAR player making $15 million. I still don’t like it in a vacuum, but it isn’t as bad as it looks at first glance as long as you think he doesn’t fall off a cliff in year 4 and produce nothing.
It seems like you identified your own bad reasoning in the middle of writing this comment, but then for some reason kept going anyway.
I’m not going to write all that out and then not post it.
It’s not a terrible deal in a vacuum, but not a great one either. It’s…okay, with more downside than upside.
Steamer has him at a 3 WAR player this year. Normal aging curve goes 3, 2.5, 2, 1.5, 1=10WAR, which makes the overall cost $ / WAR at $8mm, or below what wins normally go for.
Brewers win.
Perhaps this could persuade Yu to take their money
They add Darvish and suddenly this division has 3 teams with a legit chance to win it.
Doesn’t Darvish have a losing record over the last few seasons?
According to Longenhangen’s FVs, the prospects are worth something like $125 mil. Yelich’s surplus value is roughly $150 mil.
150 seems high, if I remember, Jeff used it as his most optimistic upside for Yelich.
If you give Yelich 4 straight years at 4 WAR and $10M/WAR, he’s worth $116.75 million. That doesn’t include the $15 million option at the end, or regressing Yelich for age though (or increasing $/win to be fair). If you give Yelich another 4 WAR on that option year it’s $141.75, but again that’s without any regression at all. Looks pretty even IMO.
Here’s what Jeff said in his most recent post about Yelich:
“I don’t know if Yelich’s value is more like $75 million, or more like $150 million. It depends on how much you believe in the upside”
Where are you getting 10M/WAR from? That seems like a much higher figure than what we’ve seen this offseason or before.
Matt Swartz wrote this article: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-recent-history-of-free-agent-pricing/
But I’ve seen it used elsewhere as well. If you want to use something closer to $8MM rather than $10MM that’s fair, it actually helps make my point about the trade being fair value.
I agree with you regarding Yelich’s range of value. That being said, I do think that he is probably closer to $150(maybe like $135?) because Milwaukee appears to be better suited to him(even accounting for park factors).
Dan Z posted Yelich’s Milwaukee ZiPs on Twitter and it projects him for 20.5 WAR, which would be ~$140 mil surplus.
Ultimately, Miami did well, and neither side was ripped off.
The actual, raw number of $/win doesn’t matter. The important part is that it is indexed to the FV system (Dave Cameron did that post, I think), so that you can compare.
The $/win does matter because the $/WAR is $8 million for the model that results in the estimates in that post. It’s not made clear in the article from Dave Cameron, but it is spelled out in the detailed explanation from the guys at Point of Pittburgh, which was linked from the FG article.
That said, it’s not correct just to use $8 million/WAR no matter what we think the current market value is. Surplus value of a contract isn’t linear with $/WAR because we’re subtracting a fixed dollar amount of salary from the calculated value of the player’s total WAR. The right answer is really to use what we think the current $ value of WAR is for both, which would require plugging that new $ value into the Point of Pittsburgh model and updating the prospect value chart.
From FanGraphs contract tool:
Worth ~$185M and making ~$58M if all options are picked up. So that’s ~$130M in value
It’s absolutely insane to project that a player coming into his prime years, his age 26 to 29 seasons, would consistently decline in performance from his age 25 season.
Average or above players increase in WAR by an average of 15% going into their age 26 season. 5 WAR average is a far more likely projection.
So far this offseason, FA signings have been just over $9 million per point of WAR. It may not end that way, but 2017 was at $8 million, so no reason to think that 2018 would maintain that same level. In fact, it would stand to reason that salaries would continue to inflate.
Yelich producing 5 WAR per year over the next four or even five years is absolutely not “far more likely” than him producing 4.
No, what’s insane is to use your opinion about Yelich instead of a projection system. A projection system is built on previous results of every player; it is the most reasonable estimate of a player’s value.
It also might be that Yelich’s year last year was a bit of a fluke, maybe he got a little lucky and isn’t expected to repeat.
You can’t just look at last year’s results and call that his true talent level.
Thank you, I should’ve just done this!
This offseason we have seen FA sign at just a bit over $9 million per WAR. If you are basing this on Yelich only producing 4 WAR then you are predicting a decline at 26-29 years old. Not likely.
Far more likely that the floor of his production is an average for the 4 years that is slightly higher WAR than the 4.5 fWAR he produced last year.
So a 20 WAR over the next 4 years or about $180 million in value for $43 million in salary.
That’s fair, I just did it back of the napkin, but $137 million is still closer to fair than if Yelich is worth $150 million. That’d be like an extra 50FV prospect.
Apparently the Brewers can find money in the seat cushions, and the Cardinals cant. Or moreso wont.
I don’t think there were any good FA fits for the birds this year. They got a good young OF with power and didn’t have to move Kelly, Bader or their top 3 young arms. I think they’ll make a move for Donaldson or Machado at the deadline depending on where they’re at.
Now the market moves.
If Nelson is healthy, the Brewers are now right near the top of the NL Central. If the Cards don’t counter by using their newfound surplus cash from their new TV deal, it makes the Cards look even more suspect. Like I said in the last Brewers article, they currently have a payroll smaller than last year, even though we know their new TV deal increased their profits by at least $20 million. There’s spending money just for the sake of it, and there’s slightly overpaying to make your team better. They were willing to stretch for Peralta, Leake, and Fowler, so why is 2018 different?
I’m not familiar with MIL’s payroll situation, but it’s interesting that Darvish would add significant value to any of the top three NLC teams. Barring any other moves, if Darvish goes to the NLC, I’d pick the Darvish team as the NLC winners (again, with the healthy Nelson caveat).
Fascinating, exciting times in the Central!
The Cardinals pounced on the players that you named because they saw each of them filling a specific hole on the team at the time. It’s also fair to think that they might have particularly liked each player relative to other alternatives, with Leake a possible exception because he was Plan B to fill a rotation spot after the Red Sox outbid the Cardinals for Price at the 11th hour.
As for the 2018 payroll, I don’t see that the lack of spending is for lack of trying. The 2018 payroll would be ~$15 million higher, with much higher long-term commitments, if the team had been successful in acquiring Stanton rather than Ozuna. The Cardinals were reportedly very eager to figure out a deal Donaldson and his ~$20 million in arb salary for 2018, but the Blue Jays didn’t want to deal.
It’s absolutely reasonable to expect payroll to increase over time as revenue also grows, but I don’t see any reason that growth should be linear year-over-year. The exact timing is subject to how the team evaluates the available options each year.
The Cardinals’ front office has been pretty vocal that they don’t believe in paying the “proven closer” premium in free agency, and I can’t blame them for thinking that signing Davis or Holland for 3 or 4 years at a big AAV is a poor use of money.
I see more of a case for Darvish, though even there it looks like a successful offer will be a 5 year deal (at least). That’s for a 31 year old pitcher who already has had a TJ surgery, and the history of long-term contracts to starting pitchers in their 30’s isn’t a very happy one for teams.
the Brewers are so hot right now
Remember 41% of people polled considered the Brewers ownership to be merely “average” This is not the movement of an average ownership.
I’m not one to believe in the idea that analytics has gone too far, but if we’ve gotten to the point of evaluating the “movements” of ownership I think I’m going to change my mind.
& 47% considered them pretty or very good. This is (hopefully) the movement of pretty or very good ownership.
Brewers ownership has had a tendency to meddle by signing the Kyle Lohses (and I think Matt Garzas) of the world, but nearly everything else they do is excellent. As far as we can tell, the owner is willing to spend to win.
I wonder what kind of return they can get for santana or broxton? Really happy to see a mid-market team with a previous projection of around .500 really go for it.
What can I get for Broxton now in my NL only? Not too much!
He’ll soon be starting in SF.
Sure seems like a match between the Brewers and Indians for an outfielder for pitching trade.
It would have to be Salazar–no way Cleveland is giving up Carrasco, Kluber, or Bauer, and I don’t think Clevinger is enough. And even then, I have a hard time seeing Cleveland do this.
You don’t think Clevinger is enough, but even then you have a hard time seeing Cleveland doing it? Pretty sure Milwaukee sprints to the fax machine to finalize Broxton/Santana for Clevinger, if given the opportunity.
Oh, sorry. That wasn’t clear.
Broxton for Salazar–Brewers sprint to the fax machine, Cleveland laughs.
Santana for Salazar–Brewers sprint to the fax machine, Cleveland laughs (but not quite as hard).
Broxton for Clevinger–Brewers sprint to the fax machine, Cleveland laughs.
Santana for Clevinger–Indians get stoked, Brewers are like “ehhh, don’t think so.”
Broxton just went a season with the fourth worst overall contact % and worst zone contact %. Min 200 pa.
I don’t think he gets a starter back.
Only a reclamation project of some kind.
I’ve been a huge fan of the Brewers system, and they could still really deal from depth to nab someone like Chris Archer. If you take someone like Santana and sell him at 80% value to the Rays, along with Erceg (who just seems like a Rays guy) and Luis Ortiz, I think that gets you close to Archer, especially after the Rays add some rando player who doesn’t shift the balance much but turns out to be a 2 WAR player.
I don’t think that even gets you close to Archer. Archer’s trade value is going to be higher than Quintana’s was last year.
It would take Santana, Hiura, Burnes & Erceg
If they sign Darvish now and get some cost controlled, quality back-of-the-rotation help on the trade market (e.g. with Santana), the Brewers become a very very very interesting team. I could see them putting real pressure on the Cubs and Cardinals.
According to latest reports, literally the only two teams that were even close to Miami’s asking price were the Brewers and Blue Jays.
I wonder who the headliner was for the Jays. Alford was probably involved. Maybe Bo Bichette. Or maybe Bichette was the sticking point.
Fangraphs projections still has the Brewers as only a 75 win team, even with Yelich and Cain. They reckon the Brewers gained only 2 low leverage wins in exchange for Brinson, 3 other prospects and $80 million. Even with Archer they probably still wouldn’t be at .500, by those projections.
Because projections mean anything lol. They won 86 games last year and significantly improved their team today. 90+ wins easily
Definitely some weird stuff going on there. Yelich is only projected for 2.8 WAR and Cain for 2.9, but on their pages they are projected for 4.0 and 3.3.
The Yelich projection is probably because of the positional adjustment to left field (maybe?). The Cain one is harder to explain.
It should be noted the Brewers projections are down on everyone. Santana is projected for 1.7 WAR on his page, Shaw is projected for 1.8, Pina’s projected for 0.7, etc. Depth Charts basically thinks a bunch of players are going to lose about 1 WAR, maybe more, off what they did last year and it’s not going to improve.
Clearly, the Brewers seem to believe that their BaseRuns record (which had them at 85 wins) is more reflective of the team’s status than the individual projections for this year. Whether that’s wise or not, I am legitimately not sure.
Yelich and Cain are a 6.5 WAR improvement over the LF and CF on the Brewers last year.
Brewers will run away with the NL Central.
Love this for Milwaukee, I think Brinson has a skill set with a high degree of bust rate. I am always leery of the “when the physical skills turn into baseball skills” types, and there’s a lot of that to Brinson.
Phillips can benefit from some time in AAA, and is decent insurance for the inevitable Braun injury, so the only question mark for me here is Broxton. Doesn’t seem to belong in AAA but also doesn’t seem like a guy who will do well without every day at bats. Maybe call the As up about relievers? There aren’t a lot of sellers left, and they’re a team that I could see liking him.
My guess is the Brewers were the lone team to go 5 years on Cain, or at least at the dollars he wanted. Bully for him.
Do the Brewers have any reasonably decent SP that Jerry Dipoto of the M’s might be able to acquire (for a glut of C and B-minus spects)?
???
Great propsect hall! Just think what the tigers are going to get for Michael Fulmer who is making league minimum with 5 years of control. They will get 4 top 100 players for him.
How do you get excited about Yelich? In a full season of batting third, he hits .282 with no power and 81 RBI. That’s performance you want to trade, not acquire.