Sean Murphy traded to Braves, William Contreras to Brewers

[Herbie_Hancock]

All star 24 year old catcher with 5 years of team control? I mean come on. This is a franchise altering move imho

great job crew 

[AkronsWitness]

15 hours ago, JonStark said:

Why were they asking so much from STL if they were just gonna accept this? 

Great question because from what I heard they basically wanted Cleveland's entire farm system for him. Honestly, I dont follow baseball super closely but what is the infatuation with this guy? I looked at his numbers and they are average as average gets for a hitter. Why is everyone losing this minds to trade for a guy whose best season was .250/66/18.

[AkronsWitness]

duplicate

Edited December 13, 2022 by AkronsWitness

[JonStark]

1 hour ago, AkronsWitness said:

Great question because from what I heard they basically wanted Cleveland's entire farm system for him. Honestly, I dont follow baseball super closely but what is the infatuation with this guy? I looked at his numbers and they are average as average gets for a hitter. Why is everyone losing this minds to trade for a guy whose best season was .250/66/18.

Honestly, I wanted him bad. a 24 year old all star catcher who has that much team control isn't easy to come by. My ideal scenario for the cards was to get him for something like the Braves did and then use the Contreras money elsewhere.

[hrubes20]

I am VERY happy Ruiz is no longer with the Brewers after that breakout this year.  I'm a big fan of his.  With that said, the A's probably should have been able to get a little bit more quality in the return, rather than quantity, IMO.  Great trade for the Braves and I get the trade for the Brewers, who absolutely needed to try and replace some of the offense they've already lost this offseason.

[beekay414]

1 hour ago, hrubes20 said:

I am VERY happy Ruiz is no longer with the Brewers after that breakout this year.  I'm a big fan of his. 

Why? His EV stats are very underwhelming and he profiles more as a 4th OF than a starting CF. He's a 30 grade bat in reality and hasn't shown he can make any type of good contact vs MLB level pitching, which trends with what his MiLB stats said too.

[hrubes20]

1 hour ago, beekay414 said:

Why? His EV stats are very underwhelming and he profiles more as a 4th OF than a starting CF. He's a 30 grade bat in reality and hasn't shown he can make any type of good contact vs MLB level pitching, which trends with what his MiLB stats said too.

I am certainly on the more optimistic side with him, but he is arguably the biggest weapon on the bases in organized baseball.  Unreal speed.  Just imagine what this kid is gonna do now that the bases are even a little bit bigger.  Only been in the OF for a short time, but he has decent instincts out there.  Projects for me to be above average at a minimum, and likely plus before it's over with.  But the big move with Ruiz last year was his ability to take a walk.  Reports were coming in that he was finally laying off some garbage, and the walk rate spike indicates that.  His contact certainly isn't consistently hard (potential for a smart organization to make a tweak or two) but he makes a lot of it.  With his speed, the banning of the shift, and his ability to make contact, he's going to be able to consistently hit for high BABIPs.  If the walk rate holds, that's a league average hitter without any swing tweaks to get more LDs.  League average bat with good/great CF defense and top of the scale baserunning value?  That's a 4 Win player pretty easily.  And it's not like he has never shown game power.  It's in there.  He just needs to tap into it.  He wouldn't be the first player to first figure out the plate discipline aspect before being able to then hit for more power.  A guy who I feel has a solid floor as an everyday player, with potential for a multiple AS type of player, is not one I want a division opponent to have for 6 years.  

This isn't to say that I think the Brewers made a mistake, obviously.  They needed pure offense, and Contreras is coming off a great year with the bat.  They can play him 50ish games at C and 100 games at DH and their lineup will be better.  Not to mention that Chourio is probably only a year away in the OF, so they don't need to make any room for him.  That MFer might be Ronald Acuna before the knee injury.

[beekay414]

4 minutes ago, hrubes20 said:

I am certainly on the more optimistic side with him, but he is arguably the biggest weapon on the bases in organized baseball.  Unreal speed.  Just imagine what this kid is gonna do now that the bases are even a little bit bigger.  Only been in the OF for a short time, but he has decent instincts out there.  Projects for me to be above average at a minimum, and likely plus before it's over with.  But the big move with Ruiz last year was his ability to take a walk.  Reports were coming in that he was finally laying off some garbage, and the walk rate spike indicates that.  His contact certainly isn't consistently hard (potential for a smart organization to make a tweak or two) but he makes a lot of it.  With his speed, the banning of the shift, and his ability to make contact, he's going to be able to consistently hit for high BABIPs.  If the walk rate holds, that's a league average hitter without any swing tweaks to get more LDs.  League average bat with good/great CF defense and top of the scale baserunning value?  That's a 4 Win player pretty easily.  And it's not like he has never shown game power.  It's in there.  He just needs to tap into it.  He wouldn't be the first player to first figure out the plate discipline aspect before being able to then hit for more power.  A guy who I feel has a solid floor as an everyday player, with potential for a multiple AS type of player, is not one I want a division opponent to have for 6 years.  

This isn't to say that I think the Brewers made a mistake, obviously.  They needed pure offense, and Contreras is coming off a great year with the bat.  They can play him 50ish games at C and 100 games at DH and their lineup will be better.  Not to mention that Chourio is probably only a year away in the OF, so they don't need to make any room for him.  That MFer might be Ronald Acuna before the knee injury.

I'm not sure I believe the walk rate is real, just yet. His out of the zone swing rate was still pretty damn high IIRC. We'll see. Not going to openly root against anyone so I hope you're right.

Between Chourio, Frelick, Wiemer and Mitchell, I just never understood trading for Ruiz. Flipping him for Contreras and two bullpen arms is about as good as we could've done there. I believe he'll catch more than that. We're pretty good at developing catchers defensively so I feel like he'll improve there. I mean, Omar Narvaez grew leaps and bounds behind the dish for us, no real reason to think Contreras can't.

[hrubes20]

14 hours ago, beekay414 said:

I'm not sure I believe the walk rate is real, just yet. His out of the zone swing rate was still pretty damn high IIRC. We'll see. Not going to openly root against anyone so I hope you're right.

Between Chourio, Frelick, Wiemer and Mitchell, I just never understood trading for Ruiz. Flipping him for Contreras and two bullpen arms is about as good as we could've done there. I believe he'll catch more than that. We're pretty good at developing catchers defensively so I feel like he'll improve there. I mean, Omar Narvaez grew leaps and bounds behind the dish for us, no real reason to think Contreras can't.

I forgot about Frelick in your system.  Definitely have options for CF in the coming years.