gregmag

I hate the type of player Gordon is, but others have made a reasonable case for his value. Even accepting that case, I don't think Gordon is the level of player a team in the Brewers' position should be looking at. Gordon, at this stage in his career, has no upside. He is what he is. Assuming you like what he is, he's still the kind of player you plug in if you're a top-tier contender that just needs to fill out 2b with a credible regular. The Brewers aren't that. We still need to get better to become serious contenders. I'd rather gamble that Villar can recoup some of his lost mojo than go for an expensive non-difference maker like Gordon. If Villar flops, you have Sogard. Or go scour the bargain bins and try to find a better Villar. The chance that Gordon moves us appreciably closer to the mountaintop just seems vanishingly small.

What Monty said. All of it. Age is a massively important factor in thinking about extensions. We're really lucky that Shaw didn't get to the majors and establish himself until he was a little older. We should be grateful for that good fortune and just pay him year to year. I'd seriously explore extensions with Arcia, Santana, and Davies. I'd be more inclined to wait another year on Knebel. The fact that the team explored an extension with Villar last year and didn't get it done should reassure us that Stearns isn't inclined to overrate his players too much. Sometime in the past few months Perez went from being underrated to being overrated. That happens. His versatility gives him real value, but I think he's a guy who fills out your roster, not a guy you build around. Given that overplaying him was one of CC's few big mistakes IMHO, I hope Stearns can get something for him.

Just to be optimistic for a minute, the Brewers are pretty well positioned to get what they can out of Braun. We have a glut of 1b / corner of types (including cf types who can slide over to the corners). Several of those guys have options. With smart roster management, we can ride however much good Braun we can get and ride out bad / naggingly injured Braun. Has any NL team ever had better reasons to want the DH than the Brewers right now? Nelson, Anderson, and Guerra all got hurt on "offense." Braun would greatly benefit from the DH, and we could hide Santana's defense there when Braun was hurt. I've always strongly favored the DH; right now, as a Brewers fan, I'd practically kill for it. Cool that Braun would play 1b. I was speculating recently (maybe in this thread; can't remember) that moving him to 1b was probably still a viable option and that his openness to the move was the biggest likely impediment. It will be very interesting to see how the Brewers move forward with 1b / corner of.

Some would say baseball failed Montreal. They were on their way to the postseason and possibly their first World Series when the strike wiped out the World Series. They were also on pace to draw almost 2 million fans that year. Fan support dried up after the strike. I may have talked about this before here, but Olympic Park in Montreal was probably the most depressing building of any kind that I've ever been in. Including hospitals and funeral homes. It was (is?) a giant cement mausoleum. It made the Metrodome look like Camden Yards. Anybody who attended a game in that hellhole had to love baseball more than their own sanity. I can't imagine why any casual fan would have set foot in the place more than once. The strike reaming is one great reason to cut Montreal some slack, and the fact that their ballpark needed Prozac concession stands is another.

That is great to hear.

Freeman, Stanicek, Newfield, Braggs, Tatum, Eldred. You people really know how to depress a guy. Two I don't think I've seen mentioned: Randy Ready; David Green, whom we at least pawned off on the Cardinals (along with Sixto Lezcano, who looked like a generational star as late as age 28).

The problem with this statement is that it ignores the passage of time. The Braun to 1b argument keeps coming up in the same way that the idea of moving an aging parent out of their house keeps coming up. The fact that the family decided it didn't make sense five years ago doesn't tell us much about whether it's a good idea today. Braun (like every player) gets slower as he ages, he gets more vulnerable to injury, he has less energy to spread across his game. Moving him to 1b almost certainly makes more sense with each passing year. The questions, I would think, are (1) whether Braun just refuses to do it, (2) whether there's some categorical reason he can't do it, and (3) how much value the switch would bring overall. Right now this team has a major pipeline of OF talent and two older guys at 1b -- and they have to put Braun somewhere. Question (3) therefore seems to favor moving him (unless the team loves Thames and Aguilar more than we think). (2) could be a problem, but I can't see it. Maybe they do think his fielding problems at 3b were prohibitive for 1b -- but it's really hard to imagine he'd be worse than Carter and Thames. Maybe they think diving for grounders would be worse for his body than the rigors of OF play -- but generally teams seem to view 1b as an easier assignment. For those reasons, I think the issue right now most likely comes down to question (1) -- Braun's willingness to make the move.

Thanks. I forgot Reed had been bounced, and the first source that came up (Baseball Cube) had him still on. I hope you're right about the org's willingness to thin out the relief suspects a little.

This is a really good discussion. People haven't done the usual off/on thing yet. Who comes off the 40-man to offset the adds? I think Mass nailed the adds. Wilkerson is already added, so the conversation about him seems over, at least for the moment. I'll assume for now that any MLB/AAAA reliever who comes off will just be replaced with another MLB/AAAA reliever, so I'll ignore guys like Drake, Torres, and Webb. It seems reasonable that we could dump one reliever and use his spot for another kind of player, but I don't think the Brewers will do that. (Maybe they don't think of Espino as a reliever who needs replacing; in that event, he could go and open up a spot.) The catching situation is interesting. As discussed above, a lot depends on Susac's health. If they think he'll be back to his old self, they'll keep him. They have to add Nottingham. They won't be able to rely confidently on either of those guys as the #2 right away (hopefully Susac gets there quickly), which means I think they keep one of Garcia, Bandy, and Vogt. So we stick with four catchers. With relief pitcher and catcher numbers held constant, and with Wilkerson already taken care of, we still need to add: Diplan Dubon Peralta Whom do we dump or let walk (again, aside from catchers and relief pitchers)? The locks are: Berry Garza The other possibilities seem to be: Sogard Walker Reed Maybe we resign one of the infielders (neither of them excites me, but I can see the cases for both) and let Dubon replace the other one. Losing Reed would mean only five OFs on the 40-man, not counting Perez. Given Braun's and Brinson's injury histories, we may want to keep Reed or replace him in the OF rotation. Even so, the numbers seem to work pretty easily. Diplan and Peralta take the Berry and Garza spots; Dubon takes the Sogard or Walker spot.

We just did that a few years ago with Davis. Same amount of control and he was a little older but it's almost the same situation as they each have deficiencies that would hurt other teams less than it hurts us. As for 1B, it was brought up in another thread that the Astros tried him there and it didn't work. Speaking of Davis, in his 4 full big league seasons he's had batting averages of .244, .247, .247, and .247 in order. That's why I included his age in the point. 24 vs. 27 is a massive difference developmentally. On average, at least; maybe with these two players it turns out not to be. But many more 24 year-olds improve substantially than 27 year-olds. The 1b thing . . . Maybe you're right and the Astros proved conclusively that he can't play 1b and there's no reason for our staff to revisit the question. If so, though, this seems harder for us than the norm. Other teams seem to take bad or aging ofs, stick them at 1b, and move on with life. We couldn't do that with Khris, people sometimes arge it wouldn't work with Braun, and now Santana. I thought any fool with a bat could play 1b. Why doesn't it work for us?

The thing is, everything that caused us to lose when we lost resulted from the same organizational philosophy, leadership structure, evaluation processes, etc. that caused us to win when we won. You can't tweak reality. You can, our could have, changed up reality wholesale -- different manager, GM, trade strategy, etc. -- but based on our expectations and results, I'm not trading our actual 2017 season for what's behind door number 2.

I can't think of a rebuilding team that has traded a 24 year-old power hitter coming off a breakout year with four years of team control left. Aside from the usual "deal anyone if you get blown away" caveat, trading Santana seems very unwise to me. He's a cornerstone-type player. If his defense is intolerable, then think about moving him to 1b and moving Thames and/or Aguilar. TPlush may be right about Broxton. (I just love Keon, so he's hard for me to be objective about.) Braun's going to be here, and he's going to be hurt a lot. Santana, Phillips, and Brinson should all be in the of rotation. Braun and Brinson have had a lot of injuries. Keep Keon around as the nominal fifth of, and he'll probably end up with the PT of a third/fourth of. One of my few criticisms of Counsell is that he fell in love too much with Perez. I love having Perez around for his versatility, but he's a subpar hitter. Broxton wasn't much better, but I'd bet on his outhitting Hernan going forward. (Also, Perez shouldn't bat leadoff in a beer league. If there's such a thing as a prototypical #7 hitter, he's it.) Garza bye woo-hoo! Who knows with the bullpen guys. Torres certainly seems to have worn out his welcome. They may still see something in Drake, and that could be right. Nelson's injury may change some things. I would assume it's more urgent now to try Hader as a starter, which means Wang could have added appeal as a bullpen lefty. Wilkerson seems very likely to get a long look as a starter. He seems likely to be where Cravy was on the depth chart. I think trading or cutting bait on Villar would be a bad idea, but I understand why a lot of people want him gone. He needs a reset, at least; if it works, he has a ton of value. The catchers are interesting. Why was Susac so terrible this year? If the likeliest answer is something more nuanced than "he's just terrible," I'd keep him over Bandy. I'd like to think Susac will outplay Vogt, but maybe that train has left the station.

Why? Knebel is 25 and he'll probably regress just because it's really hard to have a 1.8 ERA over a full season buoyed by a 92% strand rate. Phillips isn't going to keep a .400 BABIP so unless he significantly improves his contact rate in the offseason, he's going to regress. Is Arcia going to improve with his approach at the plate? It's more likely he stagnates or regresses than improves if he doesn't improve his plate discipline. Young players don't just automatically improve because they're young, especially when they have serious flaws in their game. Anderson has a HR/FB rate of 8.6%. As an extreme fly ball pitcher does anyone really expect him to keep it that low? The average LOB% is around 73%. Anderson is over 80. Could he keep that high strand rate? I guess it's possible but is it more likely that he regresses to around the league average? Anderson's BABIP this year is .265. He's a pretty extreme fly ball pitcher so he'll probably have a better than average BABIP but will it be .265 or closer to .285 like his career average? Young players, as a group, do in fact improve. Every player has flaws in his game. You're just reciting flaws, ignoring strengths, and pretending that you've somehow made an argument rather than just reinforced a bias. Teams more often than not regress after big improvements. Stearns will have to work in order to build on 2017's gains. I can see Shaw and Thames regressing, but the young guys we're talking about have all built a strong foundation to grow on

I get to be at the ballpark tonight, on Sep. 29, for a game between a Brewers team that's playing for the postseason and a Cardinals team that isn't. I am indescribably giddy.

Matheney is toast. You don't get to miss the postseason twice in a row here, plus Mozielak has Beaned him with trades a few times. I love our team, but one issue is that strength of opposition seems utterly irrelevant. We could easily lose to the Memphis Redbirds (or beat the '27 Yankees). Also, 2nd place in the division is still in play. I doubt the Cards want to finish third.

Cards eliminated from the division before the Brewers, and they looked bad doing it. Our Cubs series was a heartbreaker, but we can be proud of how we played them down the stretch overall.

Maybe Venezuelan health care is really good. I don't know one way or the other, but it's a good-sized country with well-developed institutions (political chaos notwithstanding). I would imagine he has family who would like him close, and presumably there's no great danger at this point in moving him. It makes sense to me that they would bring him home. Man, I hope he comes through this and can live a good life.

As long as our guys take enough steroids. That's the only way anyone ever hits off him.

If you look at the staff in the aggregate, they've exceeded expectations by a wide margin. If you look at in-season adjustments, both the rotation and the pen have improved dramatically. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this: two fifths of our opening day rotation and our opening day closer pitched themselves into oblivion, and I (not alone, but I'll take the hit) was kvetching in May that our other three starters and most of our bullpen sucked; and now our pitching staff is leading a playoff run. I have no idea how much credit coaches deserve for anything, but performance over expectations and improvement over the season seem like two pretty conventional metrics for assessing coaches. Johnson looks great by both.

I've got to ask, gregmag: worse than Sal Bando? I still have fond memories of a blistering screed you posted here years ago about Bando. I think Bando was just an idiot. How he kept his job so long is a testimony to the incompetence of ownership during that time. Perhaps he was a jerk as well -- don't really know. I just know he was a horrible GM who set the franchise back years because of his poor decision-making. Heh. Bando actually crossed my mind when I wrote that, which shows how deeply I hate him. But I think reilly's right. I recall that Bando was somewhat abrasive, but any of us would be abrasive if we did six things every day to screw up the team and then everybody with two brain cells to rub together was constantly asking what the hell we were thinking. It's hard to be pleasant when you're that stupid. Certainly Bando drained more hope and joy out of my life than any other sports person ever. LaRussa I just loathe personally based on everything I know about him. If you combined LaRussa's skills and Bando's character, you'd have Earl Weaver. Of course, if you combined Bando's skills and LaRussa's character, you'd have Sarah Palin.

The second worst park I've ever been to is old Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. Cavernous, ugly, boring. But in absolute terms it's far closer to first place than last place, which is held by Olympic Park in Montreal. That gray cement atrocity was a mausoleum, a hellhole, a war crime. It drained all beauty and purpose from the world. Seriously, I have never been in a building of any kind that failed in its mission as spectacularly as Olympic Park. I haven't been to many of the new parks, because one of the few losses in the transition from my former significant other to my wife is that s.o. liked baseball and wife doesn't. (I know, but you have no idea how many other factors offset that.) I have a real soft spot for Camden Yards.

This thread is awesome, and Dead Simmons is the best sport ever. I'll say this: I hate the Cardinals less than I used to. Matheny is a sanctimonious tool, but LaRussa is probably the worst human being to soil MLB in my lifetime, and anyway Matheny does have the virtue of being a terrible manager who costs them games. It also wigged me out when they had like no African-American players for a decade -- that doesn't happen by accident -- but now they're overpaying for Dexter Fowler, which is awesome both as civics and because it was a bad use of their resources. Molina, whom people in StL love as if he weren't a complete jerk, will be gone soon, and hopefully they'll play and pay him deep into his decline. Beyond him, they don't have anyone as annoying and self-righteous as Chris Carpenter and Pujols used to be. They're still a scary effective organization, and they'll always be the enemy. But they maybe aren't quite as good as they used to be, and they're pretty much keeping the Cardinal Way to themselves.

I'll be fascinated if we have something to play for in the final series and the Cardinals don't. They won't lay down, because nobody really does that and anyhow Cardinal Way blah blah blah, but I know several Cardinals fans who would rather see us beat the Cubs than the Cardinals win some meaningless games.

A lot of how you evaluate Braun comes down to how you think his injured stretches affect the team. I think Stearns and Counsell have built a roster that helps to mitigate the hit from Braun's injuries. Maybe they did this largely because of Braun, which could count against him, but I kind of like the model. You get Braun for 100-120 games, and you have decent options for when he isn't around. Especially next year, if Phillips and Brinson are both up, this system could work pretty well. He's still a worthwhile regular on a contending team. Would I like more for his salary? Sure, but I'll take this over what's behind door #2. His situation could much more easily be worse than better.

This is beautiful.