gregmag

What Patrick is doing now won’t keep working. Nine strikeouts and seven walks in 19 innings. BABIP of .241. Fly ball percentage up and HR percentage cut in half from last year. Maybe he’s a starter, but nothing he has done this season makes that more likely. I don’t know if this is the moment to move him to the pen, but if this is really who he is, then that’s where he should end up. His stuff played up in shorter outings during the postseason. We’ve seen him do that job well. Both Henderson and Gasser have shown flashes of dominance as starters. Drohan and Crow are promising wild cards. I have a hard time believing that Patrick is the best starting pitcher of those five.

Hmmm. Lesser Contreras threatens violence he’s already committed if the Brewers try to get him out (what a competitor!). Wild Mis up tomorrow. Should be fun. Lesser Contreras has had an interesting career. He came up for half a season while the veteran Cubs won their title. As soon as he established himself, they declined. He joined the Cardinals after a playoff season; they immediately declined. He joins the Red Sox; they’re 2-8. No wonder he makes so much noise — it’s all he’s good for.

A lot of preseason assessments of the Brewers dwelled on the team’s success last year in scoring without hitting the ball hard, emphasizing how unsustainable that is. What those assessments seemed to miss is that we had 3.5 hitters who accounted for a lot of that weak contact success — Collins, Durbin, Frelick, and Mona (the .5) — and we traded 2.5 of them. That’s a deliberate change to move on from offensive smoke and mirrors. If the guys Boston traded were spare parts to them, you have to view the guys we traded the same way. The Brewers clearly did not view Durbin and Mona (let alone Siegler) as meaningful contributors going forward.

It seemed late last year that he might be getting more coherent in interviews. It seems now like that was a false alarm, and I’m very relieved. The grim world we live in cannot afford to lose any comedy gold.

I love this deal. It reflects the reality that MLB salary structures never actually line up with a player's present ability. The typical way salaries work after the six years of team control is that teams pay players for what they did before. That's mostly unwise for teams, because they aren't getting what the player did before. Most players past team control are in their late 20s or early 30s, when they're likely to decline. The Brewers are trying the opposite approach by paying players for what the team thinks they're going to do later. This has one inevitable disadvantage in common with the other approach: You don't actually know what you're going to get. But it has two advantages. First, it just costs less money. Fifty million dollars over eight years? Even the Brewers won't be too bothered if that contract turns into the worst-case scenario. Second, the team is paying for players at an age when they tend to improve, not decline. You won't like this analysis if you're a big believer in the value of proven major leaguers and/or the worthlessness of players who haven't made the majors yet. The Brewers aren't believers in those things, and they've done pretty well betting in the other direction. The Pratt contract, though unusual in a lot of ways people have discussed here, is really just another instance of the Brewers' consistent approach.

I'm glad for the turn this discussion took. I'm very sympathetic with Playing Catch's premise that too much online discussion is negative and mean. But to me, this article is fantastic. Wit and whimsy are great ways of making a criticism into something more than a rant or a cheap shot. I've never seen an umpire make a call as blatantly bad as Bucknor's last night. You have to be able to have some fun with that, which is a gracious alternative to just getting angry about it.

I’m a huge Perkins fan, but I think this is the right decision. In the statcast era, some aspects of spring performance mean more than they used to. Lockridge has clearly figured out how to tap into some power. It makes sense to see if he can actually sustain that at the highest level. I’m glad Murphy can make these decisions based on indicators of performance rather than seniority. Mitchell’s obviously a weird player. I take Jopal’s point that he’s a vet and needs to perform now at the major league level, but he just hasn’t played much the last couple of years, and clearly he’s still figuring stuff out that a lot of guys get past (if he’s going to get past them at all) at a younger age. I could definitely see the wisdom in sending him to AAA for a month to get more swings in. OTOH, I think it would suck more for Perkins to get sent down after making the opening day roster.

To say that "Tauchman plays all three OF spots" is tenuous. In 2023, at age 32, Tauchman played mostly cf. In 2024, at age 33, he played 67 games at the corner spots, mostly in rf, and only 15 in cf. In 2025, at age 34, he played only in rf. (Also, FWIW, in his one really good defensive season, way back in 2019, he played 78 games at the corners, 14 in cf.) It's not impossible that a 35-year old whose teams have aggressively moved him off cf for two years could play meaningful innings at the position, but it's pretty unlikely. I don't think teams would look at Tauchman and Perkins and see fungible players. Tauchman is a corner of bat. Perkins is a defense-first cf and also six years younger. I'm not sure Perkins has trade value, but if he does, it's because some team wants to pay for cf defense. Also, if Tauchman opts out, he's a free agent, right? So wouldn't we have to assess his value based on what some team ended up paying him (or not)?

They probably should trade one of McGee, because two of him is entirely too many. Kidding aside, thank you for this breakdown. That’s a really good roster, and the pitching staff is borderline unholy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a AAA pitching staff where every guy could be a reasonable candidate to call up because the team affirmatively wants him. Maybe not Rodriguez, but he has actually started games in the majors.

Two things : first, Bitonti has a 60-grade arm? Second, I don’t think we emphasize this enough: The Brewers are the best system in baseball; the Brewers never draft high because they’re always winning; and only four of the Brewers’ top 30 prospects came from trades. Those three facts should not be able to live together.

Priceless. Carlos Gomez vs. Brian McCann is about the easiest moral choice I can imagine.

I think Rengifo vs. Urias is pretty easy to understand. Urias has been a better player, but he’s entering his age 32 season. Rengifo is three years younger. If you buy that Rengifo’s struggles last year were an outlier, they’re pretty comparable now. You trust the 29 year-old to hold more of that value than the 32 year-old.

Jack, this is such a great story. I love when you’re able to combine your expertise and ability to find an interesting angle with the great quotes you’re able to get in interviews. Just a terrific read.

Counterpoint: He just put up the second-best OPS in his league while playing at nearly a year below league-average age, he’s healthy after working through the freakiest of injuries (unless you think his face is a ball magnet or his feet will slip in every clubhouse party), he has the offensive skill the Brewers most lack and plays the position they most need, and at AAA he’ll be on call by definition. There’s no way he doesn’t see the majors by June! Or, you know, we could be intellectually honest and look at the whole picture, which seems like it’s mostly down to his K rate and defensive performance as he starts at AAA.

Why on earth would a one-year deal for Sanchez, in what is likely Contreras’s final Brewers season, make it more likely that they would trade Quero?