Spencer and Joseph's Five-Part Minor League Pod Series: Episode 5 on the Sounds (and Mailbag ?'s) is now Available

[Joseph Zarr]

Folks we tried so hard to keep it sub 2 hours. We failed. Alas, Spencer and I are Brewers Minor League Gossip Lords. 2 hours 8 minutes. We improved. BUT, we must get back to the drawing board; regroup; fine tune our flaws. @wiguy94: You were right. Again. Sighs.

[MudcatsfaninBrunsCO]

13 hours ago, Joseph Zarr said:

Folks we tried so hard to keep it sub 2 hours. We failed. Alas, Spencer and I are Brewers Minor League Gossip Lords. 2 hours 8 minutes. We improved. BUT, we must get back to the drawing board; regroup; fine tune our flaws. @wiguy94: You were right. Again. Sighs.

Send me my shoutout time if u can!! HAHA

[Joseph Zarr]

1 hour ago, MudcatsfaninBrunsCO said:

Send me my shoutout time if u can!! HAHA

Oh fear not, Finn, we gave you flowers right at the top. First 10 minutes.

[MudcatsfaninBrunsCO]

27 minutes ago, Joseph Zarr said:

Oh fear not, Finn, we gave you flowers right at the top. First 10 minutes.

Thanks Zarr! When is it out? Monday?

[Joseph Zarr]

26 minutes ago, MudcatsfaninBrunsCO said:

Thanks Zarr! When is it out? Monday?

That's above my pay grade. Some time early next week, tho, I imagine. 

[brewerralph]

Thanks to both of you for doing this. I am way ok with the length, because you cover players and don't talk nonsense. Keep up the good work. 

[MudcatsfaninBrunsCO]

On 12/7/2024 at 11:59 AM, Joseph Zarr said:

That's above my pay grade. Some time early next week, tho, I imagine. 

Okok.... Thanks again to you and @Spencer Michaelis for doing this!!

[Spencer Michaelis]

1 minute ago, MudcatsfaninBrunsCO said:

Okok.... Thanks again to you and @Spencer Michaelis for doing this!!

Of course! Should be out Monday or Tuesday I’d imagine! Btw, now that I’m looking at it again, I am pretty sure I completely butchered your username when I said it, but we also gave you the actual shoutout of your first name so that ought to help 😂

[MudcatsfaninBrunsCO]

1 hour ago, Spencer Michaelis said:

Of course! Should be out Monday or Tuesday I’d imagine! Btw, now that I’m looking at it again, I am pretty sure I completely butchered your username when I said it, but we also gave you the actual shoutout of your first name so that ought to help 😂

How did you mess it up? Just wondering(: and Your welcome!

[Joseph Zarr]

4 hours ago, MudcatsfaninBrunsCO said:

How did you mess it up? Just wondering(: and Your welcome!

I don't think Spencer 'butchered' it, per se, if I recall correctly. It came across casual and unimportant if I remember correctly. I think he didn't know how to pronounce it in the flow of a live recording and deferred to 'Finn'. SO, your given name was repped twice 😀

I, on the other hand, a player who obsesses over these players throughout the years had two rare brain farts in the flow of 'off the top of my head' - which is how I roll (not the brain farts - tehe - I spend so much time watching these guys and arranging my own spreadsheets I don't really refer to them when we do these. I go from my memory bank). LOL. I couldn't find 'Luis Contreras' in my brain (lonnnnng farm day) and was left hanging with "Luis...oh goodness...the young man who signed with the Astros last season..." 😅 Which is absolutely hilarious as I was a huge outspoken fan and supporter of Contreras and his stuff while with Biloxi and Nashville and kept tracking and sharing his progress in our Alumni thread. AND, then I completely forgot how I have RHP's Chase Costello, Will Childers, and Aidan Maldonado in kind of a trio of 'Guys with stuff that plays in different ways and for different reasons but are often overlooked'. Completely forgot their names (and later finished the thought when I remembered them all). Two pretty funny moments. Thankfully, I don't think I got too hung up in the flabber jabber stutter silence realm for too long. 😅

[Spencer Michaelis]

7 hours ago, MudcatsfaninBrunsCO said:

How did you mess it up? Just wondering(: and Your welcome!

I simply wasn’t reading it at the time, was trying to remember off the top of my head for some reason, instead of sticking with Finn lol. I think I may have said Bruins Colorado or something. Now realizing it was standing for Brunswick County which makes way more sense. 

[MudcatsfaninBrunsCO]

9 hours ago, Spencer Michaelis said:

I simply wasn’t reading it at the time, was trying to remember off the top of my head for some reason, instead of sticking with Finn lol. I think I may have said Bruins Colorado or something. Now realizing it was standing for Brunswick County which makes way more sense. 

Your good Spens!

[Spencer Michaelis]

Episode 2 is out 🙂

 

 

[MudcatsfaninBrunsCO]

12 minutes ago, Spencer Michaelis said:

Episode 2 is out 🙂

 

 

Thanks Yall! But... Joe, It Zeb - U - Len(:

[Joseph Zarr]

38 minutes ago, MudcatsfaninBrunsCO said:

Thanks Yall! But... Joe, It Zeb - U - Len(:

I'm from up Nort! I say everything wrong. 😘

[Austin Tatious]

Good podcast and appreciated getting my question answered.  

Love the baseball talk on a cold December day.  

[biedergb]

What a way to start my Saturday. 4.5 hours of minor league recap 😉😃

I got caught up on both videos.  Wow.  Amazing job @Joseph Zarr @Spencer Michaelis  

Thank you both for doing that  love the videos added, and you really went into something on so many different players. 

No need to keep it under 2 hours, just cover what you cover, as there is a lot going on in the minors.  (Well I guess the Shuckers recall could be under 2 hours as there are 2-3 months of the season that don’t need any review sadly)

Looking forward to the T-Rats review.  That was my favorite team of the year.  A very deep lower levels of the minors with so many intriguing players. 

[biedergb]

For the T-Rats video - did you get questions (did I miss it)? Or are you still taking for questions?

And if still taking them - how do we get them to you?

[Spencer Michaelis]

6 hours ago, biedergb said:

For the T-Rats video - did you get questions (did I miss it)? Or are you still taking for questions?

And if still taking them - how do we get them to you?

We are taking them! You can just reply here 🙂

we will make this the official call for T-Rat specific questions!

[CheeseheadInQC]

This one is more general, but a couple of the options were on the T-Rats 60-day IL, so I will ask it here: Which pitcher who missed the full season in 2024 are you most excited to see back out there at some point in 2025?

Also, I tended to see the worst Timber Rattler performances when they were in the Quad Cities. The one exception was Jheremy Vargas. Outside of increased versatility, were there any positives to take from the rest of his season?

[Spencer Michaelis]

Still taking T-Rats specific questions if you have them! (If you have Shuckers or Sounds questions, go ahead and toss them in if you'd like to as well, we will keep track of them)

We haven't touched on a lot of the over-arching questions you guys have asked. I have them all filed away somewhere, and my plan is to end the final episode by going through the questions we haven't touched on in any specific episode 🙂

[Playing Catch]

So, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, and one thing I've noticed, not specifically in yours, but generally, that they use a lot of pronouns, so that if I'm casually listening, and Spencer says, "His in-zone contact rate is elite," and it perks up my ears, but I have to go back to hear if Spencer is still talking about the guy I think he's talking about, or if Spencer has moved on to talking about a different guy.

Perhaps I just need to concentrate harder through the three hours, (which I'm willing to do!), but I think it would be helpful for more casual listeners that are doing two things at once.

T-RATS:  This is still a more general overview question/comment, but I would appreciate any thoughts you have about the Brewers owning the Warbirds (nee Mudcats). Is Third Base Ventures LLC (owners of T-Rats) affiliated with the Brewers ownership? For some reason I thought the Brewers owned the T-Rats.

Why may this be advantageous? Does it help to solidify the organizational structure to protect against future league-wide expansion/restructuring?

What would Blake Burke need to do to firmly place himself as part of the Brewers plan for 2026/2027?

[Spencer Michaelis]

47 minutes ago, Playing Catch said:

So, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, and one thing I've noticed, not specifically in yours, but generally, that they use a lot of pronouns, so that if I'm casually listening, and Spencer says, "His in-zone contact rate is elite," and it perks up my ears, but I have to go back to hear if Spencer is still talking about the guy I think he's talking about, or if Spencer has moved on to talking about a different guy.

Perhaps I just need to concentrate harder through the three hours, (which I'm willing to do!), but I think it would be helpful for more casual listeners that are doing two things at once.

I will do my best on this! It feels really clunky to me when I keep saying the name, so my natural instinct is not to, but I've actually noticed myself going, "wait, who are they talking about now" when I'm listening to other podcasts too. So I definitely get it lol.

[biedergb]

TRats question

First off - where do we see a lot of these guys next year. I mean Areinamo, Adams are locks to go to AA, but Lara probably yes given the full season. Pratt (who moved up to AA for the playoffs)? What about E. Fernandez Garcia and Vargas who by ages/AB should move up? Hall or Burke or Wood repeat A+? What to make of H. Perez who came back healthy with some pop?

The starting rotation had a lot of arms. Talk about W. Rudy the “ace” of the staff who is not as well heralded. And Aquino was good, and Cornielle looked great but was repeating a year in high A, so how does that work into evaluating them?  Plus Manfredi who looked great at times and may now be a reliever- or will he go back to stretch out as a starter again? Finally the bullpen - who was the best “closer” -Yoho was amazing in his short stint but obviously is closer to the bigs than A ball now.  But Y. Rodriguez, Costello, Root and Rund all closed/saved games and are all still with the organization right? Who looked best, and what they need to work on? Finally a couple of swing men in Cruz and Fitzpatrick, do they have starter stuff, or middle relief only?

What was the most surprising player (T. Bryant jumps out to me given the spark he was in the ‘pen)?

And there were several injured players (Jimenez, Birchard who missed time), and what players can come back from injury?

Finally the future of Victor Estevez-the guy is a future MLB manager of the year right? And if so what year?

OK that’s like 17 questions 😳

‘Thanks!!

 

[biedergb]

One more follow up to add - reading some of the end of year prospect ranking list.

Can you elaborate on Luis Lara's season? He was so young, and was streaky, but I view it as a major success, however his prospect status has slid quite a bit. Is he still a real prospect considering most players his age were is the ACL or in low A?