Brewers (Burnes) vs Nationals (Irvin): 7/31/23, 6:05pm

[Jim French Stepstool]

5 minutes ago, RobertCrawley said:

Burnes was at 95 pitches and had given us 6 good innings while struggling some with his command. I think his night was done. I hope our incredible bullpen run will get back on track. It's let us down the last couple of games.

Yeah, he wasn't at his top form. But I was thinking it's go-time & he's facing 8-9-1. I also thought he was at like 90-91 pitches. If it was 95 that changes the face of it some, for sure.

[wibadgers23]

The last blow-out win we had was back on 6/23 when we beat Cleveland by 6 runs. Everything else has been by 4 runs or less and it’s mostly been 3 or less. That is going to KILL our bullpen sooner or later. The offense has to start scoring runs AND adding tack-on runs late in games to keep the top end of the bullpen fresh.

[Fear The Chorizo]

29 minutes ago, yourout said:

When/if they get to the bigs and produce and don't have a whole host of mechanical issues that are quickly exposed I will eat my words. Till then...this organization sucks at drafting and developing hitting and has for at least the last decade.

I would argue most organizations suck at developing quality major league hitters if they don't do a good job of bringing in talent via drafting, international signings, or trading for/signing expensive established mlb veteran bats in free agency.  It's not like other teams are running Tom Emanski hitting drills and the Brewers just roll out the bats and say "good luck".

Out of curiosity, which organizations set the standard for developing a conveyor belt of quality MLB hitters, in your opinion?

 

 

[yourout]

Just now, Fear The Chorizo said:

I would argue most organizations suck at developing quality major league hitters if they don't do a good job of bringing in talent via drafting, international signings, or trading for/signing expensive established mlb veteran bats in free agency.  It's not like other teams are running Tom Emanski hitting drills and the Brewers just roll out the bats and say "good luck".

Out of curiosity, which organizations set the standard for developing a conveyor belt of quality MLB hitters, in your opinion?

 

 

I'll have to do a little digging on that. The braves come to mind as being pretty good at putting decent Big League hitters on rosters. I would also say the Diamondbacks are not too bad at it.

[yourout]

While it doesn't necessarily mean everything it would be interesting to see a list over the last 10 years of how many players from different franchises have been drafted with a team and made All-Star appearances as hitters with that team.

On edit.....looks like Lucroy(2014, 2016) was the last Brewer hitter drafted to appear in an all star game.

I'm not counting Lo Cain.

[BruisedCrew]

Lucky Reds win another one run game. 

[Fear The Chorizo]

1 hour ago, yourout said:

I'll have to do a little digging on that. The braves come to mind as being pretty good at putting decent Big League hitters on rosters. I would also say the Diamondbacks are not too bad at it.

The Braves do seem to have a pretty solid pipeline of finding high school talent based in their backyard - particularly Georgia and MS.  Credit them for having a great handle of local scouting identifying talent in what is a very deep pool regionally.  The Brewers, based on geography, don't exactly have an endless pool of baseball talent to mine every time the draft rolls around.

Acuna and Albies came from a large crop of international signings, which the Braves have always been big players in and have an extensive scouting network as well...frankly that's an area where they went beyond bending the rules in terms of signing bonuses around the same time those great players were brought into the fold.  As is the case with international signings, they've had more than their share of big misses, too.  A majority of the rest of their current roster that is scoring a ton of runs was acquired via trade or free agency and did not come up through their system.

Aside from Corbin Carroll, a 1st round draft pick who really didn't need any extensive minor league seasoning and tracked through the minors similarly to Trout once he began his professional career, who else have the Dbacks developed of note offensively in recent years?  I mean, they drafted Dansby Swanson 1st overall like 8-9 drafts ago - but does it really count being awful enough at the MLB level to be able to pick at the top of the draft - particularly when they traded him to the Braves for Shelby Miller?      

It wouldn't surprise me to see the Brewers identified among the top 10 organizations in terms of farm systems over the winter, with the strength of it coming from what are perceived as recent international signing home runs knocking on the MLB door at very young ages (Chourio, Quero) and some recent draftees who absolutely are raking in higher minor league levels (Black).  That comes as their 2021 1st rounder is now in the majors, their 2020 1st rounder is a major league regular if he could avoid injury and his ABs have largely been replaced by their 2020 4th rounder, and their 2018 1st rounder is this team's starting 2B.  And the Brewers haven't picked in the top half of the 1st round since 2017.  Am I saying Frelick/Wiemer/Mitchell/Turang are going to be perennial all stars?  Nope - but it's also way too soon to exclude them from being decent to good MLB hitters.

This sort of stuff winds up being far more cyclical than fans, and frankly baseball front offices because the randomness of it all takes away from the perception of how smart they are, care to admit.  To have a period where your organization churns out a bunch of solid young players (hitters or pitchers), you either have to have endless financial/scouting resources (Dodgers/Yankees), suck at the MLB level for a looong time and get pick of the litter draft choices every year (Orioles/Reds now, Padres a few years ago and Astros/Cubs/Royals before that), or hit the occasional home run in the draft along with making a few shrewd trades that bring in young talent (Braves, Cardinals most of the time).

 

[BlightyBrew]

Comparing the Nats and Brewers offense totals so for in the NL:

R/G - Nats 12th / Crew 13th

R - Nats 12th / Crew 13th

H - Nats 3rd / Crew 15th

2B - Nats 5th / Crew 14th

3B - Nats 4th / Crew 13th

HR - Nats 15th / Crew 11th

BB - Nats 15th / Crew 4th

K - Nats 15th / Crew 4th

BA - Nats 3rd/ Crew 15th

OBP - Nats 10th / Crew 15th

SLG - Nats 11th /Crew 15th

 

There will be no series going forward that will be "easy wins" for the crew regardless of what the "strenght of schedule" says. 

Doesn't matter who is pitching or who is coming back for the Crew or how many defensive runs they save. They still will give up on average 3 runs a game and we have not shown that we are capable of generating offensive runs game in game out consistently.  

 We don't hit enough for average or XB's.  Our ability to draw walks and get on base is nullified by the K rate.  The Crew rankings above have not changed that much since late April, at or near the bottom in the NL.

There are not enough Santana's or Canha's to make this offensive unit work. 

Games remaining : 3 Phillies; 5 Nats; 7 Marlins; 6 Cubs; 7 Cards; 7 Pirates; 3 Dodgers; 3 Rockies; 3 Padres; 3 Yankees; 3 White Sox; 2 Twins; 3 Rangers - 55 games left I can only see 26 more wins which we lead to 83 wins(2 games above .500).  Might be enough just to squeak but I doubt it.