gregmag

Me: I really need to watch the game tonight. Brandon Sproat is pitching. Spouse: Oh, is he their best pitcher? Me: No, no. He’s like their fifth-best pitcher. Spouse: Then why are you so eager to watch him? Me: There’s a real chance that he’s turning a corner to possibly becoming their fourth-best pitcher. Spouse: Get help.

This is fantastic information. Thank you. As everyone pretty much knows by now, but your post nicely documents, the depth of our system is ridiculous. I’ve been paying enough attention that most of these stats don’t surprise me, but there’s one big exception. Given Matt Wood’s low batting average, I just assumed he was running a high strikeout rate. The fact that it’s actually 11% is bonkers. He’s laboring under a .200 BABIP. One of the classic truisms of prospect watching is don’t worry about logjams; they work themselves out. I think the Brewers are pushing that envelope at catcher (and arguably some other positions). Wood and Miller are 25. They should really be in Nashville auditioning for backup catcher duties next year; but they can’t move up because Quero is there. He has performed more than well enough to be apprenticing in Milwaukee right now; but he can’t move up because Sanchez has filled his role well and Contreras wants to catch as much as possible. It’s a great problem to have, but it is a problem, in the sense of a puzzle that needs solving.

We’re losing all these close games, and maybe we’ll lose this one, but Miz-Harrison-Woody-Drohan-Gasser with Henderson in the wings looks pretty great.

Fair. But I wouldn’t trade Payne for anyone after the top two.

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?“

Does anyone know more about the backstory of Uribe’s claims? Did one of our pitchers hit somebody to get Marmol going on retaliation? Or do the Cardinals still care about the fragile bones and hurt feelings of Willson Contreras? (Edit: it can’t possibly just be about “sign stealing,” can it?)

By your logic, all that matters is how much WAR you get out of the best roster spot you fill in exchange for the one season you lose. We lost 3.9 WAR; we gained 2.8 from Joey. So by the way you want to measure trades — ignoring whatever marginal benefit the team can milk out of other pieces, ignoring all future years of control — we lost the Burnes trade by 1.1 WAR. That’s a loss, but “bust” seems strong. I’m not inclined to ignore everything else the Brewers got back in the trade beyond the best single season in the trade year. You’re right that you have to consider roster spots when comparing WAR, but that’s kind of the point of WAR; you’re assessing how much you’re able to improve each roster spot over what you would’ve had there otherwise, which the WAR comparison presumes is a replacement-level player. Each year the Brewers roll with Ortiz or Hall or anyone else reflects the best judgment of a strong organization that the next player available to fill that roster spot would be worse. I think the Burnes trade is just evidence of how easy these trades are to win.

I went 10 for 10, which reflects that I am old and used to collect a lot of Brewers baseball cards in the 70s and 80s showing their minor league stops.

Sorry if someone already posted this and I missed it, but it seems to belong here: The Brewers have the top prospect in MLB.

Jesus MadeLuis PenaLuis LaraLogan HendersonCooper PrattJett WilliamsJeferson QueroAndrew FischerBraylon PayneBishop LetsonJosh AdamczewskiMarco DingesRobert GasserShane DrohanLuke AdamsColeman CrowBrady EbelBlake BurkeTyson HardinJD Thompson The comment fields for individual players don’t seem to work on my phone, so I’ll say my piece here. I may be overreacting to Lara’s great start, but it looks too broad not to be a breakout. What he’s doing at 21 in AAA is exceptional. Speaking of age for level, I’ve been higher than most people on Payne for a long time. He’s 19 and flashing incredible tools in high A. Adamczewski and Dinges are better players right now, but not by much, and Payne has a longer runway. I’m having a hard time believing in any of our lower-level pitchers right now. At the other extreme, I’m putting a lot of stock in pitchers who are still prospect eligible and have already showed they can get major league hitters out.

I’m perplexed by your underlying assumption that everything Boston thought about Harrison before they traded him must obviously have been right. That’s been the core of everything you’ve said here, and it doesn’t make much sense. For someone who incessantly rips people for opining that the Brewers know what they’re doing, you take a very different attitude when the question is whether the Brewers’ trading partner knew what they were doing. Yeah, if I want to win the division in 2026, I’m picking the guy whose career is in front of him rather than the guy whose career is behind him. Is that the safe-looking move to casual fans? Probably not. But I don’t think GMs win by trying to placate casual fans. I think GMs win by taking smart risks that casual fans a year later claim that of course they supported at the time (see, e.g., Priester, Quinn). You can cherry-pick the few stats that make Gray look good, but if you actually consider his value — you know, how much he contributed to winning baseball games, which I thought was what we were talking about — there’s no reason to think he’ll ever help a team accomplish anything substantial again.