2026 Brewers Optimism!

[Brian]

Matt Arnold is a good GM without the big $$$.  Safe to say David Stearns is the worst Mets GM of my lifetime.  It's almost unthinkable to be that bad with over a $335 million roster and all the money in the world at your disposal. 

[RWeeksFan23]

14 hours ago, liveforoctober said:

2026 Major League Baseball Playoff Odds | Baseball-Reference.com

Coming into today (Saturday) Baseball Reference had the Brewers with a 25.9% chance to win the NL Pennant and a 15.8% to win the World Series. Both best in the NL. Only the Yankees have better odds in both.

how on earth would the Brewers have better odds than the dodgers or Cubs? Or the Braves, who have the best record in the NL?

[sveumrules]

2 hours ago, RWeeksFan23 said:

how on earth would the Brewers have better odds than the dodgers or Cubs? Or the Braves, who have the best record in the NL?

Because the BRef playoff odds estimate team quality based on “their performance over the last 100 team games (even if it spans multiple seasons)” so they are still slightly more influenced by the end of last season than the beginning of this season.

[torts]

This team IS FUN!

[BarremlensTSSC]

Had to spin by after the discussion of Chourio being "disappointing" elsewhere.  😂😬

[BarremlensTSSC]

23 hours ago, Brian said:

Matt Arnold is a good GM without the big $$$.  Safe to say David Stearns is the worst Mets GM of my lifetime.  It's almost unthinkable to be that bad with over a $335 million roster and all the money in the world at your disposal. 

I'm slow to figure this stuff out but I find myself wondering in retrospect how much of Stearns success in Milwaukee can be attributed to Arnold.  I don't want to be unfair to Stearns, but Arnold arrived in Milwaukee in 2015 along with Stearns.  Stearns is certainly entitled to credit for staffing out a talented front office and with Arnold staying in Milwaukee Stearns couldn't take all of the staff he put together here with him.

The sample sizes since Stearns landed in NY is still relatively small, and it's interesting to me that his best moves in NYC thus far (since it's far to early to evaluate their international signings/drafts) came when he took a pretty conservative approach to adding to the 2024 squad that made the NLCS.  Since the Mets started getting more aggressive and tried to leverage their stack of chips (i.e., $ and market size) into building a team that can beat the Dodgers things have gone less well, obviously.  I was pretty salty with Stearns when he left even though I get wanting to go to a team you grew up following but I feel a little badly for him now.  It's trending towards a "be careful what you wish for" outcome currently.

[torts]

Beating the cubs is FUN!

[owbc]

1 hour ago, torts said:

Beating the cubs is FUN!

.600 win percentage in a season that we were “punting”

[Underachiever]

This team has played very well against the good teams the last few years. Maybe someday I'll not worry about how tough an upcoming schedule looks; the team sure doesn't seem to worry about it.

[markedman5]

Jake is a good dude

 

[sveumrules]

1 hour ago, Underachiever said:

This team has played very well against the good teams the last few years. Maybe someday I'll not worry about how tough an upcoming schedule looks; the team sure doesn't seem to worry about it.

2024 their 52 W - 41 L record against teams .500 or better was 2nd best in MLB, 2025 their 46 W - 38 L record was 3rd, so far this year their 15 W - 6 L record is thee best in MLB.

Another good one is how exaggerated the Brewers struggles against LHP get blown up in the IGTs. Since 2024 they have a perfectly cromulent 101 wRC+ (13th) against LHP, they were an MLB best 29 W - 18 L vs LHP last year, and are 9 W - 5 L so far this year despite missing two of their best RH hitters (plus Yelich who had a fine 109 wRC+ vs LHP from 2024-25) for most of the season.

[RobDeer 45]

I'm optimistic so I'm here.  Let's go get this one here today!

[kestrel79]

On 5/18/2026 at 7:42 AM, BarremlensTSSC said:

Had to spin by after the discussion of Chourio being "disappointing" elsewhere.  😂😬

I think we forget sometimes how young he was when he was called up. Braun was probably still 1-2 years older than Jackson when he debut as a Rookie coming from college. He is still very young.

[BarremlensTSSC]

8 minutes ago, kestrel79 said:

I think we forget sometimes how young he was when he was called up. Braun was probably still 1-2 years older than Jackson when he debut as a Rookie coming from college. He is still very young.

I completely agree.  And to be fair, the commenter who started that conversation noted the hype that surrounded him, which was major.  I watched him at High A when he was 18 and the whole stadium, including the people in line for food, would stop when he came up to the plate. 

Regardless of that context I think there's a percentage of the fanbase who expect players to show up in MLB as finished products or for them to become finished products in those first 2 years and for Chourio that meant people expected him to be an MVP level player at age 22 (he was literally held to an Acuna standard in that conversation;  Acuna himself won his MVP at age 25.) In reality he's put up between 6.5 and 7.4 WAR (baseball ref/Fangraphs) in 291 games.  I just don't see a way to be anything other than encouraged by that.  

And as an aside, his at bats last night were fantastic.  He was a free swinger during a mini-slump that ended a few days ago, but last night he put a couple of gems on Imanaga and saw 7 and 6 pitches in at bats where Imanaga was relying on him to chase out of the zone, netting a pair of singles, and RBI and a stolen base.  No they weren't 3 run homers (although he just missed one of those in his lead off at bat) but they were professional at bats of the sort that lineup needed.  At the age of 22.  Super excited about his first two weeks back from injury.  He looks like a better player than the one we saw last year.

[torts]

9 hours ago, RobDeer 45 said:

I'm optimistic so I'm here.  Let's go get this one here today!