gregmag

How many loud outs did we have and still win? I can think of two Frelick, Turang, Mitchell, Chourio . . . did the Rays have any?

IMHO that’s not how baseball works at all. Process plays out over a much longer time frame, and performance can shift dramatically from game to game. They’re still a team that won 98 games in the weaker league and took six games to shake the Guardians. We’re still a team that won 103 games in the stronger league and swept the Dodgers. Both teams’ players are still the same guys they were two days ago. The difference now is that they need four wins and we only need three. They nearly stole game one, but they didn’t, and the ground they gained yesterday doesn’t count today. Rasmussen will be tough, but Henderson’s no slouch.

Another fantastic article.

The Martinez choice objectively makes this game easier compared to Rasmussen, but for the same reason it amps up the pressure. Miz versus not one of their top two guys in Milwaukee. We have to win this.

It’s for the culture.

Brilliant work as always. I’ve gotten so tired of the narrative all summer that’s gone “The Brewers can’t hit homers / Only teams that hit homers can win in October so the Brewers are doomed / Oh look the Brewers are hitting homers and winning in October / See I was right about everything.” The big fallacy is that hitting homers off great pitchers is inherently easier than other kinds of scoring off great pitchers. What we’ve seen is that different great pitchers have different vulnerabilities. Homer-dependent offenses like LA have nowhere to go when the homers stop flying. A balanced offense like the Brewers can make adjustments in different directions to take advantage of different opportunities. This piece fills in exactly how they’ve achieved that versatility.

If the man can throw one inning with his fastball at 92, that’s likely to be a better inning than any of Patrick, Drohan, May, Harrison, or Senzetella can give you. The question is just which of those five to dump. Senzetella is a real RH relief pitcher who seems to have found his footing. The others are all length guys. Harrison looked great in his last appearance and could actually make a difference. Patrick if he’s right can give you three good innings. I’d keep both of them. Drohan may just be out of gas. If so, dump him. But if you have any hope that he has a pint left in the tank, May is the guy to dump. Yes, he has great stuff, but he hasn’t shown that he has any clue about how to get guys out with it. Beyond that, he can’t handle adversity. He’s the one guy on this team who doesn’t deserve his place. If the Brewers think he’s better than Bryse Wilson or Grant Anderson, fine, they know more than I do. But there’s no way he’s better than Shane Drohan with a pulse or Brandon Woodruff with a prayer.

My parents were lovely people, but they had issues. Our house at night could be a scary, lonely place for a bewildered only child. I got into baseball and the Brewers at age 10, just in time for the 1978 explosion. Through all the bad years after 1982, all the numbing losses and false starts and nights spent fiddling with radio dials around the country to try to pick up staticky broadcasts, I never forgot that feeling of discovering baseball and having it seem touched with grace. My parents cared about my passions. They got into the Brewers. Ueck was on at our house all summer, lifting us up and calming a lot of the chaos at night. Once I was away at college, Mom and Dad started going to quite a few games themselves. When Mom was recovering from a heart attack at 60, I went to a game in Detroit and passed a note to the broadcast booth, and Ueck gave her a shout out. She couldn’t believe it. They both passed away in 2017. It was their time, and I’m glad they didn’t have to endure Covid and MAGA and social media. But the night we drove up to Milwaukee to start cleaning out the house, the Brewers traded for Christian Yelich. Mom and Dad would have loved this, and as I process my joy, all I can do is carry them in my heart.

Matt, thanks for bringing your A+ stuff. I love reading it. I realized last night when Bauers used the word of which you wrote that I’d never seen/heard a player use it before — FCC and all that. I could get used to it!

That’s not a problem. It’s a way of keeping a culture alive and bringing new people in. It’s kind of the whole point.

As I understood the reports at the time, the Tigers wanted a package built around a pitcher and a position player. The Brewers offered Pena as the position player, and the Tigers wanted Henderson as the pitcher. Literally the only pitcher the Brewers own with more value than Henderson is Miz, so you can’t improve the package on that side. The Brewers’ only minor league position player with more value than Pena is Made. I don’t think even the most extreme “prospects have no value except to other teams“ people argued for trading Made, who has a very real chance to be better than Chourio. Maybe I’m missing something – maybe the Tigers would’ve settled for Fischer and the Brewers refused to part with him — but it seems unlikely that both of those things were true. I’ve heard no indication that the Tigers were interested in quantity over what they perceived as quality. So I literally can’t see any way to get the deal done without Henderson.

If, as reported, the Tigers were insisting on Henderson, then Harrison’s status was irrelevant. The “upgrade” from Henderson to Skubal was negligible either way. Maybe the postseason upgrade would have been worth five years of Henderson . . . but then maybe Harrison is back to being useful now.

Miz needs three strikeouts for 250 and fewer than six hits allowed to stay under 100. I don’t think Turang cares about 20 steals. I’m guessing he hasn’t been running for health reasons. I do kind of hope he’s swinging for the fences to get the RBI without any complications.

Please stop using “regular season” like this damning-with-faint-praise qualifier. It’s greatness, period. Winning a few short postseason series is another, different measure of greatness. I swear people are starting to get into this mindset like the real, 162 game season is some kind of long exhibition series or extended spring training. If I ask you who the MVP was in any given year, you’re not going to come back with the World Series MVP. If I ask you which pitcher had the most strikeouts in a given season, you’re not going to talk about the pitcher with the most strikeouts in the postseason. We don’t call those guys the “regular season“ MVP or the “regular season“ strikeout leader. We call them the MVP and the strikeout leader. The Brewers are the best team in baseball.

That’s super interesting. Thank you!