gregmag

As of right now, the only NL team to have won or lost more than six of its last 10 games is Miami at 7-3. Just an odd little thing I noticed; no idea how common it is for nobody to be especially hot or cold.

Somebody needs to remind the Columbus pitchers how a shutdown inning after your team scores is supposed to work.

I can’t remember any other time when I could look at an ACL line score, see that the Brewers had scored anything at all, just confidently assume that one particular guy was in the middle of it, and always be right. Yes, he has a .517 BABIP and hits too many grounders. Yes, he has struck out a few more times than he’s walked, which for a Brewers prospect these days is actually notable. Yes, he has been a poor percentage base stealer. I have no idea how his defense is. But I would think he could work on those things perfectly well in a league where he can’t just carry all the opposing pitchers around in his gym bag and trade them for snacks.

Twelve runs on four hits beats eleven runs on eight hits. Never change, DSL!

Does anyone else think pitcher wins have become a terminally stupid stat? In the era when starters were supposed to go 7-9 innings and bullpens were afterthoughts, wins had the big problem of depending on run support. But for most pitchers, run support came out in the wash, so you could be pretty sure a 20-game winner was a very good to great pitcher. Bad things like Bob Welch's 1990 Cy Young happened, but the problem was limited. (As Bill James pointed out, wins as a *career* stat in that era actually had great value. If you wanted to rank the greatest pitchers of the 20th century, you could do a lot worse than taking all the 150-game winners and ranking them by wins per season and/or W/L percentage, adjusting for longevity if that's your jam.) The wins stat still has the run support problem, but in our era of heavy bullpen usage, much bigger problems have come up. The vulture scenario that happened with Ashby last night was one obvious example -- totally absurd. But what about the starter who pitches 4 2/3 shutout innings while his team stakes him to a 6-0 lead, then watches a reliever come in for four innings, give up four runs, and get the win? What are we even doing at that point? I see three possible fixes: (1) get rid of wins and losses as stats entirely; (2) change the rules for what constitutes a win or loss to account for present norms; (3) expand official scorer discretion to award wins and losses and relax the norms that guide scorers' judgment in those situations (including the five-inning starter requirement). Of course, none of this will happen. Still, what do you think?

Rengifo was rocking a .534 OPS. Jett's at .693 in Nashville. He hasn't been anywhere near great, and he isn't ready, but if you had to call him up tomorrow, he very likely would outhit and outfield (on the infield) Rengifo. Maybe the team wouldn't like having its hand forced to call Jett up before the optimal moment, but he'd get decent playing time replacing Hamilton or Ortiz, and he seems like a guy who could take initial struggles in stride. In the end, then, I don't think DFAing Rengifo rather than stashing him makes any difference.

I was in high school in 1982. I moved to St. Louis in 2008. I was here in 2011 when the wildcard and a bad umpiring call against Atlanta helped the Cardinals climb over us to steal a World Series. They only won in 82 because fingers was hurt. I care less about 2006, but they had absolutely no business winning that year. So they got all puffed up about being three-time undeserving recent champs, their fans got predictably arrogant about it, and they had a bunch of loathsome people on their “great” teams in those early years I was here: LaRussa, Molina, Chris Carpenter, Berkman, Pujols. Oh, and did you notice how they went a good decade there somehow managing to roster virtually no Black American players? Yeah, LaRussa was awesome. But a lot of my good friends are Cardinals fans, it really is a great ballpark and a good fan base in person, they’ve very helpfully sucked for a few years — and now they’re building the kind of team I actually enjoy watching, with no apparent raging jerks as far as I can tell. They’re basically trying to be the Brewers south, and why wouldn’t they? Meanwhile, the Cubs are kind of a bargain basement Phillies – aging, entitled, boring. Their only significant young position players are a couple of cultists and a self-absorbed misogynist. Their fans, both in person and online, are miserable. Dodgers fans think they’re entitled to win because their team has money, but at least they’re actually winning. Cubs fans get mad at their team for not winning and whine that they’re entitled to win because of their money. Worst of both worlds. So for me, now, it’s the Cubs, and it’s not close.

I think this was the best day of the season so far: We won a series against a playoff contender in dominant fashion. We beat arguably the best pitcher in baseball who doesn’t pitch for us. Our very important second-best pitcher got his mojo back after a stupid setback. Evidence that our young phenom hitter is making The Leap continues to grow. Every other team in the division lost, getting our lead back to a very agreeable five games. Blake Perkins got a hero moment. Cooper Pratt is coming up. That is a hell of a lot to be happy about.

I think the answer must be that they want to put a top prospect in a position to succeed when they bring him up. I’m sure the assessment varies from player to player. In 2016, Orlando Arcia was a top 10 MLB prospect. At age 21, he played 2/3 of the season at AAA. He was good not great, putting up a 723 OPS with a bad BB/K ratio. The Brewers called him up for the final third of the season. He never developed into anything more than a second-division starter, putting up a couple of 2-WAR seasons that account for most of his career value, with nearly all that value coming on defense. Maybe that’s all he was ever going to be, but the Brewers got criticism at the time for bringing him up before he was ready.

Re: Rengifo and Perkins, I think people sometimes forget this isn’t a fantasy league. Inconvenient timing is real. Take Rengifo (please). He was supposed to be an adequate placeholder until one of our 15 3b/ss prospects was ready to go. That’s why we didn’t try to go out and sign Alex Bregman instead. (Well, that, and money, and the fact that we understand aging curves.) Alas, he’s been an awful stopgap, and none of them is ready to go. It would be great to go find some 90 OPS+ guy who plays adequate defense and whom we could cut loose in two or three or four months when Pratt or Williams figures it out. But you see the problem, right? If that guy exists, he’s on a real contract. So your options are: Expend real trade and payroll resources for a decent upgrade who then blocks your prospects in the medium term; Scoop up someone off the scrap heap and hope against hope that he works out better than Rengifo (whom, in this scenario, you’re still paying); Rush a prospect up and risk messing up a long-term asset; or Suck it up for a while. So no, in the abstract, Rengifo shouldn’t be on a MLB roster. But in our actual circumstances, he’s the least bad choice, at the moment, for this particular roster.

We rightly talk a lot about the Brewers’ ability to develop young players. They’re showing quite a rare knack for developing older players. Last year, at 29, Bauers was substantially better than he had ever been before. This year, at 30, he’s a lot better than that. Andrew Vaughan has been massively better for the Brewers at ages 27 and 28 than he ever was before. Brandon Lockridge has never been a useful major league hitter. This year, at 29, he’s off to a strong start with a .368 OBP. David Hamilton actually had a much better year in 2024 than any of these other guys ever had before joining the Brewers, but he has a much higher OBP this year at 28 than he did then. The Brewers talk like they’ve figured out something with him, and it’s at least worth paying attention. Blake Perkins became a good fourth outfielder type for the Brewers at 26-28, which is when most players peak — but they got him there from no prior MLB experience. This is unusual. Few hitters go from useless to useful in their late 20s. The Brewers’ ability to do this with multiple guys has been a big factor in their recent success.

Well thank you for that earworm, which will soundtrack my next several nightmares. (You’re right though.) Thanks @edfunderburk. I try.

Dude pitched fewer than nine innings last year. He wasn’t helping, so he got sent back. I don’t think that supports any heavy theorizing. His minor league track record is much bigger, and it strongly suggests he can get guys out. As usual, it comes down to command. If he can buy himself some time to work with the MLB coaching staff — good start last night — I like his chances. Also working in his favor: four functional limbs [knocks furiously on nearby wood]. Speaking of which, who replaces Fitzpatrick now? Rodriguez maybe?

At this point, sadly, it’s looking like nothing for nothing. I hope and trust at least one of the three will help somebody sometime.

Please! My life has been kind of chaotic, and I was like, “Wow – the draft is today?“