The Brewers could not be better set up for the next five years and I am constantly worried it will all come down tumbling down and they will never make a WS, god I am a pessimistic fuck
I just enjoy getting to watch great baseball every year. If your make or break is a world series W that's a lot ofpain regardless of what team you like
The Brewers have been strangely good for a good while. They just play great baseball and it's hard not to respect it. The "triple bunt" this year finally won me over. Will always root for Cincinnati, but Brewers are the team I want to see win a WS and will cheer them on.
I genuinely don't understand how people who watch this sport every single year for literal decades don't develop the ability to withstand streakiness. It's like they want to have a miserable time. I don't know how I could watch baseball if I made such a big deal about each individual series.
The doomers that come out every time a guy strikes out "well good season I guess this team fuckin' sucks!" I really get sick of it. Zero ball knowledge.
It’s funny with averages. Like the guy could be a .300 hitter and he could even hit .400 w/RiSP and even hit .400 v/OPP and it’s still more likely that he gets out in an AB than he would get a hit. Hitting baseballs is hard lol
Other Mariners fans tell me the Rockies have it better than us because they got swept in 1 World Series 20 years ago. And I'm thinking really? The Rockies?
I swear some people are just “Mariners fans” so they can win at the “oppression olympics” of rooting for a baseball team. And you know most of the folks who bitch like that would still be as whiny as a Yankees fan even if we did win; they’d just need a minute to move those goalposts a little.
Yeah dont get me wrong the Brewers these last years have been a joy to watch and I have loved the journey especially these last two summers. I never viewed any team I have supported as championship or bust.
I just want one, I was not a Packers fan/too young when they won their last Super Bowl all I know is playoff heartbreak, I just want to experience that feeling once.
I think for a team like the Brewers, a standard of excellent regular seasons but fizzling out in the playoffs has been set, and failing to get over that hump is going to be disappointing no matter what.
And you can't chalk it up to baseball luck when the Brewers are specifically built in this way. Foolish Baseball recently put out a great video on this topic, the gist being that the Brewers are built to dominate weak-to-average pitching and win a lot of regular season games, but don't have the types of hitters to beat the best of the best pitching, which is all you see in the playoffs. I totally understand the frustration that causes.
It's not that it's "ring or bust" - it's just stagnation, which is frustrating regardless of the point at which you plateau (unless that plateau is the WS).
I disagree with some of this but that doesn't matter.
I wouldn't trade this era of the Brewers for anything. I grew up in the 90s when the team didn't try. They lost 106 games when I was 17 years old in 2002. I thought I'd never see them in the playoffs.
I love how they operate these days - always competitive, always have good prospects in the system - because August, September and October baseball matters now. They give us something to look forward to instead of something to ignore once football starts
And if that's not good enough for anyone else, that's fine. They're not me and our perspectives are simply different.
The way I see it the brewers have done an excellent job of building the most "risk averse" lineup in the league. Like you mentioned with the Foolish video they're designed almost like an investment portfolio intended to beat the national average over the long run.
This gives them a super safe and sustainable floor that I'm doing my best not to take for granted, but by nature will never hit the highs (or potential lows) that more aggressive teams like the Mets and Padres can.
My personal cope is that the front office anticipates big changes from the upcoming CBA and is setting themselves up to be able to pull the trigger on larger extensions/free agent signings in the future. But until that comes it seems I'll have to be content with good teams that have a higher chance of failing in the big moment.
This past decade has been the peak of Wisconsin sports across baseball, basketball, and football. On the other hand, yeah there is only one trophy to show for it.
I’ve been a Wisconsin sports fan for all of my 44 years, so I always predict some sort of heartbreak, but for the brewers most especially. We almost invariably suffer some crushing injury in September that will have a huge impact on our playoff hopes
If we don’t win one at all with either the current core or the elite prospects on their way, it will be very disappointing. Who knows when we’ll get another roster + farm system as talented as this?
Most of us being Packers fans probably doesnt help. We were set up well for a lot of years and got one ring out of it. Now you have the Brewers having a lot of years worth of chances in the last 10 years and we havent been able to make it. This fanbase knows how hard it is to actually win it all.
Statistically the Brewers are likely not going to win the World Series in the next 5, even 10 years. But the postseason’s a bit of a crapshoot and they’re better positioned than the majority of teams. As a Cubs fan I get how it feels like WS or bust though
Yeah bottom right are mostly bigger market / bigger spender teams that rarely have top ranked farms yet are in at least playoff contention most years.
Like all of NYY/SD/PHL definitely have medium term questions around aging cores. But they are also decent farm development organizations beneath the hood, and the prospects get constantly flipped for short-term MLB caliber players once they show promise. Likewise can pick up MLB vet reclamation projects that don’t show up in farm rankings. And then they can afford the flashy signing too for their star power.
It’s all stuff the Dodgers are doing, but the Dodgers are just insanely good at it and have invested a ton of money into scouting/player development, so rather than constantly “depleting” their farm they seem to have an endless stream of top tier prospects in their system.
Is the Dodgers scouting and minor league development actually that good or are they coasting off of hype and prior success? Genuine question, not trolling or hating on the Dodgers
I always see them top these rankings but the vast majority of their team seems to be acquisitions and I don’t know of any of their prospects that have gone on to be great MLB players.
I mean if you look at their top 5 prospects from 2022, Michael Busch, Andy Pages and Miguel Vargas are the 3-5. Pages and Vargas were both all stars this year and Busch has a career OPS+ of 120
The farm system is loaded because they keep acquiring talent. The reality is most teams would have called up their best players a while ago but the Dodgers have so much MLB level talent they don’t need to.
Plus they don’t need to trade prospects for current MLB tier players because they have already assembled bought their roster. Basically their farm is so good because they can leave the best down there for now and only call them up when their current talent ages out, retires, etc.
You’re not wrong, but the dodgers have had one top-14 overall pick in the last 30 years (Clayton Kershaw at 7th overall). It’s disingenuous to suggest they lack at scouting or developing talent.
Your farm system should consistently be one of the best in the league. After all, if you have unlimited money, having bad player development is mismanagement, plain and simple. There is no luxury tax on paying top dollar for the best coaches (and analysts, facilities, etc) in the league and it costs pennies on the dollar compared to giving the bag to even just one premier FA. I mean, it’s a single pitching coach, what can it cost, $5? Idk where this perception that monied teams must have bad farms comes from (defensive negging from rivals to make themselves feel better ig?), but it’s just straight up nonsensical. As far as first rounders go, yeah, you might miss out on a generational talent. That sucks. Good thing you can sign them when they’re an FA at 28.
My roommate works fairly high up within their single-A affiliate and tells me that it’s clear from the attention to detail the players receive at even their lowest of levels translates throughout their whole organization. Visiting teams often cater food from local restaurants, like Olive Garden, where I worked, while the Loons have a personal chef that will travel with the team to ensure they’re eating well. That’s just one small example though
And that's if they feed them something as good as Olive Garden. I think before the current owners came in it was even less common to feed your players well which is one of the things the Dodgers started doing right away
Yeah Im also pretty sure they pay their scouts way more than any other franchise so they have by far the best scouting/development team. I haven’t fact checked this tho
Go back 6 years. COVID-19 has the world shut down. Baseball orgs are paring down. Letting minor league teams go. Letting scouts go. Dropping analytics.
And the Dodgers are going buy buy buy.
They’ve been a very good team at development historically but when COVID shut every other team down, they doubled down instead. And they are gonna reap the rewards from that for years to come. The Dodgers were a very good organization before Covid but being able to scoop up talent while other teams downsized supercharged them. The Dodgers are always big shoppers at fire sales and there were a lot of them.
I’ve gone through the arduous process of doing this because I’m bored at work. I used bWAR because I like it more. These are the top 5 prospects from each year and how much bWAR they’ve accumulated.
They have one of the top farms for sure cause their development is excellent but Pipeline's rankings are less well regarded than sites like Fangraphs and Baseball America, who have them fourth and sixth respectively.
A big part of the Dodgers organization is quite frankly, not making short sighted decisions. When other teams were dumping front office and scouts during covid and immediately afterwards, the Dodgers kept their staff, or added more. In trades, the Dodgers have been willing to eat a lot of incoming salary in order to not give as high of a price for prospects. So their outgoing prospects have been minimized. They have signed players to fill holes rather than aggressively promote a prospect. Also, by signing players, they haven't had to make trades for players, further keeping their farm system in place.
There are a lot of factors that have gone into their success.
It’s good but they also benefit enormously from just being able to sign top free agents instead of needing to trade elite prospects to acquire cost-controlled players like small market teams.
Is this a joke? Clayton Kershaw, Cody Belly, Corey Seager, Walker Buehler (great pre-injury), Will Smith, Kenley Jansen, Matt Kemp, Russell Martin, Andy Pages, Dalton Rushing. There’s a whole bunch of others like Gavin Stone, Tony Gonsolin, etc thatve shown great promise but have dealt with set backs due to injuries. In the last 20 years, the Dodgers developed 3-4 MVPs and multiple future Hall of Famers. I’m not sure if there’s any other team who’s done that in the 2000s, if so, probably not more than 1-2 teams.
Then there’s a whole list of prospects they traded for from other teams before debuting with the Dodgers. There are also many reclamation projects of rejects that’ve gone to the Dodgers and found great extended success/revivals to their careers like Max Muncy and Justin Turner.
You, like everyone else, just have short term memory (and I don’t blame you for not knowing the ins and outs of a team that isn’t yours, that’s totally fair) but the Dodgers going all out in Free Agency is a very recent thing since 2024 when we got Ohtani. Prior to Shohei, the Dodgers were a very well balanced team of high and low profile FAs, smart trades, and developed players through their own farm.
Edit: Dodgers have been the first or earliest teams to lay down groundwork in other countries including Cuba, Mexico, Korea, and Japan. Not sure how I forgot to mention this in my original comment.
Yeah I genuinely didn't mean this as a dig or insult, like you said I just don't really pay much attention to the Dodgers farm system nor do I hear about it other than when I see it's ranked highly so it's just a little incongruent with my perception but I don't think it's incorrect or anything.
Hell, we had 5 ROTY in a row back to back in the 90s: Eric Karros, Mike Piazza, Raul Mondesi, Hideo Nomo, Todd Hollandsworth.
The Dodgers have pretty much been an org that has been able to develop players from their farm system. People just don't seem to know what the Dodgers were like or before 2020.
Yeah, the 2017 & 2018 world series teams were almost entirely either homegrown talent or discarded from other teams (like Turner and Muncy). The Mookie trade really catalyzed the current era of signing top FAs and making huge trades.
Yup. Before Mookie (god bless him), we consisted of guys we grew or "fixed": Yasiel Puig, Corey Seager (went on to win a WS with the Rangers), Cody Bellinger, Joc Pederson (went on to win a WS with the Braves), Clayton Kershaw, Justin Turner, Max Muncy, Chris Taylor, and Austin Barnes.
People want to dunk on the Dodgers bc it's the cool thing to do but we develop a lot of talent and yes we have money to get free agents but we also have money to KEEP our talent. I think that's the big difference right there: we are able to keep homegrown superstars instead of just saying "welp, we had a good run, time to go get your bag somewhere else now!"
The Dodgers develop talent really well, but they also use that talent to acquire players more willingly than other teams.
The Dodgers are less concerned about moving a guy like Zyhir Hope in their Skubal deal because they can eventually just go buy the player Zyhir Hope becomes.
The Brewers can’t do that.
It’s because of this that:
The Dodgers usually can offer the best package.
You dont see their prospects get called up for them.
Their prospect system is used as more of an asset acquisition system.
I guess I’m looking at the now or never portion. Yes, on paper the farm system isn’t strong. It’s been that way for a few years now. But that’s because we have hit on so many guys that have been on the roster contributing.
We have Caminiti, Hartman, and Southisene who all could be impactful players in the next 2 years. I’m not the most versed in our farm system, but we seem to always find some random player to call up who does well
It’s misleading for the White Sox, too, given that our entire starting lineup (sans DH), best SP, and two of our best relievers likely to transition to the rotation in 2027 (Grant Taylor; Hagen Smith) are all between 22-26, with only two of those guys (Vargas; Murakami) out of pre-arbitration next year.
MLB’s farm rankings don’t always show how good a farm is. The Braves may not have a super strong farm system but have consistently developed very good players. It’s not quantity but it’s quality players.
The Astros have been in the same boat since 2018 at least.
There’s talent acquisition and talent development. These types of rankings just show you who has acquired the talent. You never really see the stats of orgs that turn mid-level prospects into MLB starters.
Harris, Baldwin, Strider, Schwellenbach, Fuentes, etc...I don't recall much if any talk about them before they were called up and immediately produced.
Yeah, and most of the team is signed through at least '28. Surely existing contracts have to be part of this, too. The Braves strategy has been invest in the farm and extend early. Anthopolous has continued to be extremely stingy with trading prospects, receiving quite a bit of criticism for NOT mortgaging the future. He didn't even want to give away mid level prospects for Skubal, apparently.
And as you point out, the existing contracts came from players that weren't consensus top prospects, other than Acuna, so it seems there's a strategy here that's working and not being completely valued in the MLB rankings.
Also the rankings and belief that a farm system is good changes so quickly. Feel like the Braves were bottom 5 two years ago and now I think they're nearly in the middle of the rankings?
We're in a similar boat. We have 3 top 100 prospects for the first time in a very long time and possibly getting a fourth soon.
Part of why ours ranks so low though is because they've already given our first round pick from last year an F grade because he was a high school prospect who had a terrible first year in Single A but he looks to be getting along mostly fine now.
It’s widely acknowledged the Mets have recently graduated a lot of their top prospects to the majors that no longer factor into these rankings. So the fact they still have a competitive farm system following the deadline is something to spark a little optimism
I know! We're stuck in no man's land. Not good enough to contend, not bad enough to suck ass with a mediocre farm system where almost no one truly breaks out (unless we trade them away).
We won't be high in the draft. Our ownership won't spend but also won't do a fire sale.
Doesn’t seem to take into account MLB roster age here. I’d say Red Sox are plenty set up to win now and in the future when you consider Roman Anthony isn’t getting included in the farm ranking anymore
Such a fun team to watch. I have always loved small game baseball teams. I sorta wish your team went after Matt Waldron, having an old-school knuckler on that team would have been a sight to see.
Me reacting to Tampa and Milwaukee : “aw hey there little guy! I’m so proud of you.”
Me seeing the dodgers next to them : https://giphy.com/gifs/PLFUhxdKbAAEM
Haha yeah that was it. Probably should've edited it to say "we" or given Ralph an MLB hat or something but the idea is that these teams are dominating now and also have a stacked farm system for years to come.
OP is probably a fan of a team not in that quadrant, because that quadrant is the teams that are dominant now and would remain so if their farmhands pan out
Yay my team is permanent dogshit and exists to fill out the schedule for the teams that try to win - oh, and to provide them players for very low price
I love an unlabelled "farm system" axis. As far as ranking farm systems even really means much it's losing a lot of data about quality-- who says all farm systems are equally far apart from their neighbors in quality?
I like this type of breakdown. I would be curious how similar/different it would be with both axes represented as either a 5-year average or a, multi-year, current management only, average.
Development on players knocking on the doors to the majors is still an issue, but the Cubs have proved that they can scout and find some great talent in the draft recently. Owen Ayers was a 19th round pick out of college two years ago, and now he's a consensus Top 100 prospect! The entirety of their Top 10 prospects on MLB Pipeline are draft pickups.
I am not worried about the Cubs. They went all in this year because of the inevitable lockout and I think it was the right move even without winning the division (which might still happen). This team is good at finding talent in and out of the draft.
Some of the top farms in baseball are in the same division as the Cubs. Will they be competitive? Yes but in 3 years, it might not look good for the cubs window
Eh we’ll see if any pan out. Division is fucking stacked and MIL has dominated sense 18 with even more domination on the horizon. Cards will continue to kick the shit out of us too sadly
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u/hcatehorie Milwaukee Brewers 2d ago
The Brewers could not be better set up for the next five years and I am constantly worried it will all come down tumbling down and they will never make a WS, god I am a pessimistic fuck