We all know what the Brewers received when they traded for CC Sabathia from the Cleveland Indians earlier this month. They received an ace pitcher, a consistent performer, a Cy Young candidate. But what does a deal like this do to a farm system? Where do the Brewers sit now, after going out and adding a player of Sabathia’s calibre? Well, lucky for you, I’m here to break it all down.

Before the season began, the Milwaukee farm system was rated as the 22nd best in the game by Baseball America. The Brewers fell further than any other team in the rankings from the previous year, largely because they’ve graduated so much talent to the major league club. Their entire infield in Milwaukee is homegrown, as well as both their starting left and right fielders. Mike Cameron in center field and Jason Kendall behind the plate are the only two regulars the Brewers field who aren’t products of their farm system. They also graduated Yovani Gallardo, their #1 prospect in 2007, to the big league ranks, giving them a pair of potential aces at the top of their rotation, both of whom were drafted and developed by the Brewers. I don’t know about you, but I find that to be pretty impressive.

Anyhow, per BA, the top 10 Brewers’ prospects entering the 2008 campaign:

1. Matt LaPorta 1B/OF
2. Manny Parra LHP
3. Alcides Escobar SS
4. Jeremy Jeffress RHP
5. Cole Gillespie OF
6. Matt Gamel 3B
7. Brent Brewer SS
8. Angel Salome C
9. Lorenzo Cain OF
10. Caleb Gindl OF

It’s obviously not as inspiring a group as the past few years for the Brew Crew, but that’s still not bad at all. LaPorta is one of the most promising young sluggers in the game; Parra has since graduated from prospect status and is currently putting up excellent numbers in the majors. Personally, I’m not a real big believer in Escobar, just from the one time I saw him play. Too small a sample, really, but I came away less than impressed. Jeffress has a big time arm but, unfortunately, just can’t seem to decide whether he would rather be Dwight Gooden or Peter Tosh, as he began the year serving a 50 game suspension for marijuana use. Gillespie is a solid all around player, and Matt Gamel essentially looks to be the second coming of Ryan Braun, including the 53 errors at third base last season.

Anyway, how has all of this changed? In the Sabathia deal, the Brewers gave up LaPorta, Zach Jackson, a left handed pitcher who was pitching at Triple A this season, Rob Bryson, a hard throwing reliever that many projected to be the Brewers’ closer of the future, and a player to be named later. The PTBNL in this deal is likely to be either outfielder Michael Brantly or third baseman Taylor Green, with most sources indicating that the Indians like Green, so we’ll just assume he’s the guy for our purposes here, shall we?

First off, in LaPorta, the Brewers gave up their consensus number one prospect. LaPorta draws comparisons to guys like Matt Holliday and Pat Burrell, among others, for his polish, power, walks, and strikeouts, though he has done a nice job of keeping his K rate under control season. The Cards don’t really have a closely comparable player in their system to LaPorta, but quality-wise, he’s probably just a slight step down from a guy like Colby Rasmus. Rasmus is a better prospect due to his defensive projections, but LaPorta should end up a slightly more productive hitter. Actually, I take that back. The Cards do have a similar player; their most recent top pick. Wallace is pretty close to LaPorta, a polished collegiate slugger with defensive questions. Wallace’s plate discipline is a little better than LaPorta, but his power profile is a little less. Very similar players, though. I just forgot about Wallace, given that he hasn’t been ranked on a list anywhere yet. As for the Brewers losing LaPorta, anytime you lose your top guy, it’s going to knock your system down a peg or two, and this is no exception.

Zach Jackson is basically just a ‘change of scenery’ type guy. Milwaukee acquired him a couple of years ago from the Blue Jays in the Lyle Overbay deal. As recently as 2006, he was a top ten prospect in the Brewers’ system. He was seen then as a mid rotation type guy, and expected to be in Milwaukee by the end of the ’06 season. Well, he made it to Milwaukee that year, but struggled at the major league level, seemed to lose his confidence, and never did quite get it all back together. He’s still only 25, though, so there’s time for Jackson to possibly develop into something useful. He has some definite funk to his delivery, making him a good candidate to become a LOOGY if nothing else. Either way, the Brewers didn’t give up a ton of value here.

Rob Bryson strikes people out. It’s just that simple. He strikes people out. Lots of them. He was drafted in 2006, under the now defunct draft and follow system, and began his pro career in 2007 at the Brewers’ Rookie level affiliate in Helena. And what did he do there? That’s right. He struck people out. In his debut, he struck out 31.5% of the batters that he faced, or 70 of 222. To begin 2008, he moved up to Low class A West Virginia, and what did he do? Well, you get the idea. At WV, he struck out 31.6% of the batters that he faced, while walking only 8.7% and posting a nifty 2.81 FIP. If you’re looking for a comparable player in the Cardinals’ system, it would probably be someone like Jason Motte, though younger and without the interesting story. Their strikeout and walk rates are very similar, with Motte coming in at 34.6% K/PA and 9.3% BB/PA this season. Unlike Motte, though, Bryson lives largely on the strength of his slider, rather than pure velocity. Maybe sort of a hybrid of Jason Motte and Luke Gregerson, if you like.

Taylor Green is the Brewers’ reigning Minor League Player of the Year. An excellent defensive third baseman, he also boasts an exceptional batting eye, carrying nearly a 1:1 K/BB ratio. He has a nice, compact, line drive swing from the left side that produces solid batting averages, but not a ton of power. That’s the real knock on his game, as otherwise he’s top to bottom solid. There has been some talk of moving him to second base; you might see a little bit of a guy like Dustin Pedroia in him. Tell the truth, Green is sort of what you might hope Daniel Descalso turns into.

All right. So Milwaukee gave up quite a bit for a three month rental, no? A comparable package from the Cardinals might be something along the lines of Colby, Anthony Reyes, Jason Motte, and Allen Craig. Not exactly comparable players, I know, but as a quick and dirty value comp for the whole package, it will do.

So, back to the original question: where would the Brewers system rank now?

Well, they started at 22, and they’ve lost their top two prospects. LaPorta to trade, Parra to the majors. They moved a future closer candidate in Bryson, who ranked as their #16 prospect before this year. Jackson doesn’t really impact the system much one way or the other, but he did offer some depth to the ML club. Green’s unsustainable BABIP of last year fell off this season, bringing him back down to earth, but he’s still a solid prospect. I imagine he would be a top 25 in pretty much any system in baseball.

Milwaukee, did, however, add two of the most intriguing talents in the entire draft in June, helping to offset these losses. They drafted Brett Lawrie and Jake Odorizzi in the first and supplemental rounds, respectively, giving them two players with extremely high ceilings, both of whom I greatly coveted. I’m a big believer in Odorizzi in particular; in fact, I’m going to go on record right now and say I think he ends up the best pitcher in the entire 2008 draft class. So, the Brewers did add two top ten sort of talents, while only losing probably one.

What about the players already in the system? Well, I’m glad you asked.

Alcides Escobar is apparently aware of my disdain for him, and is not at all amused. He is currently tearing up Double A, putting up an OPS of .809 while still playing his trademark defense. Still, though, his current levels of production are almost guaranteed to fall off, as he’s sporting a nifty .384 BABIP while only hitting line drives 18% of the time. He has excellent speed, so he may be able to maintain a slightly elevated BABIP due to legging out some hits, but .384 just isn’t going to happen. He walks in less than 5% of his at bats, so when his batting average falls, the rest of his offensive game will go with it. He has shown some pop this year that he hasn’t previously, with seven home runs and fifteen doubles, but power just isn’t part of Escobar’s game. Bottom line, I suppose you have to consider him the Brewers’ top prospect right now, but he’s pretty weak as a #1 guy.

Jeremy Jeffress is a riser. He’s pitching very well right now at high class A, putting up a 3.08 FIP and striking out over 32% of the hitters he’s faced. The guys over at Saber Scouting did a nice profile of him not too long ago, and there’s a lot to like. Of course, the off field issues raise some significant concerns. Personally, Jeffress would probably be my pick for best in the system right now, question marks and all. And really, how mature were any of us at 20 years old anyway? When I was 20, the girl I was seeing broke up with me to start dating her previous boyfriend again. I responded by sleeping with her older sister, her younger sister, and one of her closest friends. My point being, at that age, lots of us make very, very poor decisions. Jeffress has plenty of time to grow up. Hopefully, he takes advantage of it.

Cole Gillespie has been okay this season, but not much more than that. He does have a good walk rate to go with some power, so there is potential there.

Matt Gamel is a very interesting case. He’s continuing to follow the Ryan Braun career path, with a 1.042 OPS right now in Double A. However, he’s also getting by with a BABIP of over .400, so that’s probably going to come down. Still, this is a very, very talented offensive ballplayer. The only problem, of course, is that he’s still not so good at third base. The Brewers already moved Braun to left field and are set at first, so there’s really not a whole lot of room for a guy like Gamel. Best case, he’s probably trade bait.

Angel Salome may be the most intriguing player in the Brewers’ system at the moment. He’s putting up a .915 OPS at Double A as a 22 year old catcher. Intriguing enough for you? He’s also hit eight home runs this season. The odd thing about Salome is that he’s only 5’7″, though he weighs 190 lbs, so he’s pretty solid. As I said earlier, the Brewers only lack a homegrown player at catcher and center field, and Salome could very well fill the catcher hole in the next couple of years.

They lost one top ten prospect to trade and one to the big leagues, a probable top 15 sort of guy, and a borderline top 15. They added two top ten talents in the draft and have seen four of their previous top ten players have seasons that should push their values higher. I’m just eyeballing here, not doing a whole lot of research into what other teams have done to move up or down, so this is strictly an out of my — sort of number, but I think that we could actually see the Brewers jump up two or three spots by the time next year’s system rankings come out. Not bad for a team that managed to trade for one of the best pitchers in the game, huh?

To me, this really illustrates the difference between a system like the Cardinals and the Brewers. The Cards have made a ton of smart draft picks over the past four years, but they rarely go out and get the impact type talents that can buoy a system up even when you have to move some depth. The Brewers, on the other hand, even after virtually emptying their farm system to build a major league club and bring in a big time talent, have a couple of players that have a pretty good chance of being stars. The Cards’ system right now is probably in better shape, but I still think they could take a page from the Brewers’ book.

Okay. Going out on a limb completely and just tossing out a number, I say the Brewers’ system is ranked #19 next year. What say you?

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.