LouisEly

BOO-YAH!!!

Megill hitting 101.9 and 101.6. Might be a little friendly competition in the clubhouse with Miz.

If ever there was a time for a suicide squeeze, it was right there with Monasterio.

And that's why he hasn't been used in many high leverage situations. He still has bouts of wildness.

WAR is a counting stat. It has a direct correlation with plate appearances. Some players have fewer plate appearances than others because of injuries or being behind another better player at the same position. That doesn't make them a worse player because they have a lower WAR. wRC+ normalizes for plate appearances. And I'd argue that what a player is doing today is what's important, not what a player did 4-6 years ago when he had a 63 and 82 wRC+, lowering his career wRC+ (or WAR, whatever the preferred measure is).

Then how exactly would you normalize the data to account for differences in the number of plate appearances, a bench player who is behind a better starter, a player who has missed time due to injuries, a player who plays multiple positions, etc. Don't say what not to do - say what to do instead.

Because this isn't the steroid or live ball era anymore. Among 49 players with at least 100 PAs at 1B this season, Bauers is 25th in wRC+, 30th in fWAR. He's literally an average 1B - a starter for a bad team, a good backup for a good team.

Not quite as generous of a strike zone when Ohtani is up to bat.

Did Koenig drop it below 100?

Payne has been on fire since coming back from his time off. 1.416 OPS, 6 BB/2 K in July so far.

On Father's Day weekend, MLB.TV had a 50% off sale for the rest of the season. Thought about it as I wasn't sure how much I'd be able to watch, but I pulled the trigger. Being in Denver there are only three games I get blacked out. WAY, WAY better viewing experience than Bally's last year. I especially like that the skip forward is only 10 seconds and doesn't require a second button push to resume play, allowing me to skip forward between pitches almost every pitch.

Garcia is in his 7th year in the organization, is still in A-ball, and while he has improved in this department he is only one season removed from a 9 BB/92 K season and still has a 28% K rate in A-ball. I doubt that any organization would put any value on him. He has more value to the Brewers as a minor league free agent re-sign than to any other organization.

And look at what Boston got for Priester. He wasn't much different than Tobias - two years younger, but didn't have the (somewhat brief) MLB success that Tobias had. Was sitting in AAA, just like Tobias is, and about the same service time and control remaining.

Ask Kershaw if he twisted his ankle turning around to watch Woodruff's 420-ft HR off of him.

Vaughn has a 3-week audition before they have to make a decision. Should be plenty of time.

You mentioned the need to have and challenges of finding a commercial kitchen in order to have that hot dog cart. Maybe your calling (and more lucrative career) is owning a commercial kitchen if they are that hard to find.

2011 was Gallardo's 5th year in the rotation. He debuted in 2007. He's the same age as Felix, was no longer a prospect, and they needed him in the rotation. I think MLB execs in 2011 had a much higher opinion on Fiers and Davis than the prospect ranking sites. And Green and Gamel were putting up big numbers in AAA and still relatively young. Thornburg was an option, too. He had a great 2011 - 136.1 IP, 94 H, 58 BB, 160 K, 2.57 ERA between A/A+.

Rogers was drafted in 2004, so I think that list is... not accurate. The first thing I thought of was that the Brewers had two 1st round picks in 2011 and drafted starting pitchers with both of them - Taylor Jungmann and Jed Bradley. But that was before they could trade players within a year of drafting them. Otherwise, that would have made a ton of sense to start a package with those two. In 2010 they drafted another pitcher in the 1st round... but that was the Dylan Covey fiasco, and he didn't sign. Their 2nd round pick that year was Jimmy Nelson, and their 3rd round pick was Tyler Thornburg. In 2009 they drafted two more starting pitchers early in Eric Arnett and Kyle Heckathorn. Arnett was a bust from the get-go, so not him, and Heckathorn wasn't showing anything special. So no on those two. But they had two later round picks who were tearing through the minors - Khris Davis and Mike Fiers. Davis had a .948 OPS in the Florida State League before getting promoted to AA Huntsville, and Fiers, while already 26, was dominating AA and AAA and made it to the majors in 2011. They had two other guys in AAA who were struggling to get an opportunity in the majors. Taylor Green (24 at the time) had a .997 OPS in AAA and Mat Gamel (25 at the time) couldn't get an opportunity with Fielder manning 1B but had a .912 OPS in AAA that year. They also had 23-year-old Zach Braddock who looked good in 2010 but was struggling in 2011. So... my guess is: Jimmy Nelson Mike Fiers Khris Davis and two of Green/Gamel/Braddock

Eerily similar to what the Brewers did to Imanaga last year.

ESPN has a really interesting read on some behind-the-scenes scrambling at the MLB trade deadline as told by GMs: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/45661110/mlb-trade-deadline-2025-gms-best-stories-deals-fell-rumors The second-to-last story is from Zack Minasian during his time with the Brewers, when the Brewers almost had a deal for Felix Hernandez: "Jack (Zduriencik) and Doug (Melvin) were talking about a trade that would have sent Felix Hernandez to Milwaukee," Minasian recalled. "At one point, we thought Jack had agreed to it but he needed to make one other move before we could finalize it. "It didn't happen, but for an hour we thought we were getting Felix Hernandez. We were nervous, anxious, excited and just waiting." It doesn't say what year that was, but looking back you can probably isolate it to 2011. It would have been very unlikely that SEA would have been willing to trade Felix before 2011, especially since that was his age 25 season and he won the Cy Young in 2010. That, and the Brewers wouldn't have been sellers during that time to acquire Felix as a prospect. Seattle wouldn't have been buyers during that time either. While it may seem unlikely that the Brewers could acquire him in 2011, in that it might have literally cost the farm, it wouldn't be unprecedented since the Brewers went all-in for Sabathia in 2008. It would be unlikely that the Brewers would have traded for him between 2012 and 2015 as they finished 3rd in the division twice and 4th twice during that stretch, so no need to make a big acquisition. Melvin then moved out of the GM role in August of 2015 and Zduriencik was fired two weeks later. What could have been to have Felix Hernandez in the 2011 playoffs...

Sterling Brown drove himself! **ducks and runs for cover**

And now the 8th team in MLB to 50 wins. Got there before the Yankees, Red Sox, and Cardinals.

Plus, for literally half of the winter, he wasn't there.

FIFY

I get what you're saying. But, solo HRs don't win games. You have to have guys get on base before them. As we saw yesterday, when a couple of guys get walks and a single in front of a power hitter... that's when damage is done. You have to have those guys, too, who get walks and singles. The Brewers are 8th in runs per game despite being 22nd in HRs. What they're doing is for the most part working well.