gregmag

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!

On the broadcast last night, Ben McDonald was talking about how the Brewers’ offense is built to win in the postseason, because it gets difficult to hit home runs off great pitching so you need to be able to play small ball. Of course, that’s the exact opposite of the conventional line, repeated over and over again this year, that only home runs win in the postseason. Has anyone done an actual, thorough analysis of postseason offense? I’ve heard over and over the stat that teams that hit home runs win more postseason series, but that’s not useful information by itself. I suspect that teams that hit more singles or doubles or steal more bases also win more postseason series, because all of those things contribute to winning games.

Oh, then I bet I’m missing others, because I missed that one. I was having a hard time finding a good list – did you find a comprehensive one, or did you just see that in some Brewers info? I’m really curious about this.

I first started noticing baseball in 1977 and became a full-fledged fan just in time for the first great run of Brewers success in the late 70s and early 80s. IMHO there hasn’t been a better Brewers team than this one, ever. At one time or another, we’ve had better players at just about every position, but these teams over the past few years have been the most complete Brewers teams I’ve ever seen, and they keep refining the formula. There’s a reason they’re likely to break the franchise record for wins for a second straight year.

I have to say, as a Brewers fan who has put up with living among Cardinals fans for almost 20 years now, that I’m very happy the Cardinals have become a different kind of team. Mármol likes to provoke conflict, and that’s annoying. But the whole “Cardinal way“ thing seems to have receded into humility. The present team is young and hungry. I can’t think of any of their players who irritate me, although they’re young and have plenty of time to ingratiate themselves. Seeing how they reacted to this made me happy for the team, their fans, and the rest of us.

If I’m counting right, there were six 20-run shutouts from 1901 until a month ago. Half our nation’s history. Six. That’s far rarer than a perfect game, a player hitting four homers in a game, a triple play, or just about any other amazing baseball feat you can think of. The fact that the Brewers have done it twice in a month is one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen in baseball.

He’s had 1.5 straight superstar-level months and 2.5 of the last 3.5. He was coming back from injury in May and had a crappy July. Great players have crappy months. To my eyes, though I haven’t watched every plate appearance, he seems to have reined in his worst chase tendencies as the season has progressed (though his strikeouts have been weirdly consistent from month to month). I’m having a hard time seeing him, at least this year, as notably inconsistent.

Brewers narratives with all potential NL playoff opponents, in arguable order of fraughtness: 1. Cubs: obvious. 2. Dodgers: have broken our hearts twice in NLCS; Death Star to our rebel alliance. 3. Braves: eliminated us once; stole our team in 1965; bonus points for embarrassingly retrograde name/logo/fan rituals. 4. Phillies: eliminated us once; lying crybabies about 2025 All-Star Miz (who should absolutely wear a Savannah Bananas cap next time he warms up in their ballpark, but I digress). 5. Padres: came into MLB the same year we (Pilots) did and are racing us to see who can end our/their title drought first. 6. Diamondbacks: backed up the money truck for our former ace; and hey, here’s a team that we eliminated once!

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" -- Mark 8:36

The Cubs are closer in the standings to the Cardinals than to the Brewers. They’re also down to the second wild card.

Comments like this are such a tell. “You responded to my argument with information. I don’t want to admit that your information refutes my argument. Instead, I insist that all information is worthless. Now that I’ve undermined the whole basis of reasoned discussion, here’s some information that doesn’t address your points at all but sounds good to me and — who knows! — might even fool a few other people.”

Playing “major league baseball’” in Texas right now is a great hustle.

I only listened to that game on the radio, but I will never forget it. I was in school in Michigan, so I was able to get the Blue Jays’ radio feed, back in the days when you had to practically use your body as an antenna to try to pick up out of town games. The Brewers had their best shot at the playoffs in years, but then the Blue Jays traded for David Cone, which was really deflating. Cone was set to pitch the next day, so he was charting pitches in the dugout. I remember feeling like the Brewers’ outburst that night was a defiant gesture against their fading postseason hopes. The Jays won the division, Bando gift-wrapped Molitor for them in the off-season, and that was basically the end of the Brewers for the better part of two decades.