I think sometimes Cubs fans are a bit spoiled at the fact that Theo Epstein is in charge of the team’s front office. Since taking the reigns of the Cubs in 2011, fans have watched Theo work his magic to trade, sign, and steal away the best players in baseball to fit the Cubs system.
I’ll forever be appreciative to Theo for being a f*cking genius and my appreciation for him grows even more when I look at other team’s front offices and laugh at the shit that goes on.
Case in point — the Milwaukee Brewers.
I’ll give credit where credit is due with their offseason acquisitions of Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yellich. Those are two great pieces to add to a team who already has a very solid offensive lineup but the problem isn’t with their offense…it’s with their pitching.
My reaction to the #Brewers recent moves?
Nicely done. Can they pitch too?
— Adam Nissen (@nissen54) January 27, 2018
With the season only a day away, it appears the team is content with their rotation of Chase Anderson, Zach Davies, Brent Suter, Jhoulys Chacin, and Jimmy Nelson. While this rotation wouldn’t scare a little league team, I find it most comical that the team is loaded with talent that the team tried to package in a trade for a front end starter and couldn’t find any takers.
A team having “too much talent” sounds like a good thing but what it really means is that big league players who should be playing will be either sent to AAA or riding some pine. A few Brewers players sounded off on their thoughts regarding the front office’s lack of getting the Brewers some goddamned pitching.
Top outfield prospect Brent Phillips, who would more than likely be part of a package for a front end starter, admitted they were waiting on the team to pull the trigger.
“Everybody kept saying we were going to get a starting pitcher for the last two months.’’
Third basemen Travis Shaw put it a little more bluntly when it came to the team having 159 position players and barely enough pitching.
“Depth is a nice problem to have, but I’m sure it sucks individually for a couple of guys.’’
It also has to suck playing everyday at Miller Park a.k.a. Wrigley North but I’ll leave that to argue another time. Look, Shaw is right: depth is a good problem to have. However, if the Brewers want to contend for the NL Central consistently, they’re going to have to package up some prospects to try to land a top-tier pitcher at some point this season.
I hate to use the Cubs as the standard but look at what they’ve traded away the past couple of years to get pitching (Eloy Jimenez, Dylan Cease, Gleyber Torres, Billy McKinney, Dan Vogelbach, Jeimer Candelario). I understand the importance of a great farm system but at some point, the talent down there has to be used to help the big league club compete immediately.
Now how do you convince a top-tier pitcher to move his family to Milwaukee is a different question that I unfortunately don’t have the answer to.
Maybe the ‘Crew should take a page out of Theo’s philosophy of minor league talent.
“I kind of laugh when people start to criticize the state of the farm system because the entire goal of a farm system is not to win Midwest League championships or Southern League championships or PCL championships. The goal of the farm system is to get your players to the big league level so that they can win a world championship and 1a) take some of your prospects and trade them for big league players so you can win championships. That’s exactly what’s happened in this organization.”
And that my friends, is the difference between a first-class organization and an organization who can’t lure any starting pitching to their city.
