gregmag

Some NL Central fun facts: The Brewers lead the Cubs by two games. The Cubs would be in first place in any other division (pending the rest of today’s results). The Brewers now have the best run differential in MLB at +119 (after having had, IIRC, the worst four-game start by run differential in MLB history). The Cubs are next at +115. Then come the 60-52 Yankees at +92. It would be very hard to deny that the Brewers and Cubs have been the two best teams in baseball to this point. As a division, the NL Central is now 32 games over .500. The NL East is -11, NL West is -29, AL East is +23, AL Central is -15, AL West is +2. But the NL Central has also been unlucky. By Pythagorean record, the NL Central should be +42. Every NL Central team except the Cardinals is lagging their Pythagorean record by one or two wins. (My math has to be off by a game or two somewhere, but it’s close.)

The change in his K/BB numbers from White sox to Brewers continues to be absurd. Yesterday, in his first PA, he looked pretty bad — long swings at some questionable pitches. The rest of the game, you could see his adjustments. I’m on the local train from just loving Vaughn’s breakout to believing it. I can see a plausible story about how the White Sox failed to develop the genuinely good hitter they drafted.

Jack, this is super interesting. It really helps to explain some seemingly contradictory things about Turang’s season.

Very sound analysis. I like the pitching situation. I don’t get Lockridge. I wish they had upgraded the infield depth. I strongly assume they know what they’re doing.

It’s too bad we can’t all have your superior character, but if we did, you wouldn’t be superior, so I guess it’s okay. You actually have a great racket figured out. Trading any prospect for any guy who has his own baseball card is always good. Not doing so is always bad. If the traded prospect becomes a star or the coveted veteran acquisition flops, you just lay low. As long as the Brewers are one of the 29 teams not to win the World Series, you’ll come back to bluster that you were right all along. Of course, the only reason the Brewers are good enough to make guys like you scream “ALL INNZZZ!!!” is because they ignored guys like you in past years and held onto prospects Chourio, Frelick, Turang, Woodruff, Peralta, Uribe, etc. . . . Oh, wait, I’m sorry — of course you never wanted to trade the prospects who eventually would pan out, just the ones who eventually wouldn’t; and never for guys who ended up contributing like Jonathan Schoop, only for guys who ended up contributing like CC Sabathia. My bad.

Wow. You said “period.” Now I’m convinced.

I really don’t care how people feel. Sports fandom involves all kinds of emotions. I want smart moves that help. If the only available moves aren’t smart — sending out substantial assets for low-probability “upgrades” — then the smartest move is standing pat. If some people feel unhappy about that, then they can feel perfectly free to stop watching and supporting the best team in baseball.

It’s a weird deadline, because you can make a case that we have good-not-great players up and down the roster whom we likely can’t realistically upgrade, plus our minor league system is so deep that we can definitely trade guys, but it’s hard to settle on which guys. Castro seems pretty ideal — super-utility type who could play a bunch of shortstop or fill in for whomever is feeling gassed. I like O’Hearn as a Bauers upgrade, though I’m with the faction who say a Bauers upgrade isn’t worth what the O’s will probably want. I don’t know the relief field, but I hope and trust Matt Arnold will grab a bullpen arm somewhere.

The caustic edge of some people here who think they’re paragons of courage and vision because they’re happy trading any given prospect for any given rental is exhausting. Every decision involves risk. Trading for Ryan O’Hearn entails risk, yes. So does standing pat with Andrew Vaughn. So does cutting bait on Logan Henderson or whomever. Assessing value is hard. There are good deadline deals and bad deadline deals. Defaulting to only caring about rentals’ value and not caring about prospects’ value isn’t some kind of moral and intellectual high ground. (To be clear, a bunch of people have made strong cases for the Jansen trade, and I completely respect their points.)

“What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” — The Book of Craig (also Mark 8:36)

You have a pretty expansive definition of “more competitive” if you think this alleged upgrade is worth anyone who has a chance to be a useful big leaguer. Leaving aside the smug condescension of “prospect hugging,” I don’t mind trading our 25th ranked prospect at all. In fact, he’s exactly the kind of prospect I’m happy to see the Brewers trade — *for someone who helps.* I don’t immediately see how replacing one mediocre backup catcher with another mediocre backup catcher helps anything.

This is mystifying. Our best A+ bat for a rental backup catcher? Who’s going to like this? The “prospects are worthless” crowd only want to acquire guys they know from ESPN; the “prospects matter” crowd only want to trade good prospects for substantial upgrades. How does this even wiggle ythe needle?

Suarez is having a career year at 33 — 143 OPS+ to 113 career. He has hit two thirds of his homers at home; his road OPS is .783. Everything about his season screams regression. He would likely be a modest offensive upgrade and a substantial defensive downgrade. I can’t see how he’s worth serious assets.

This is a heroic effort that brings out some less-discussed scenarios. Thank you!

If someone had proposed trading three prospects for a starter who would go 9-2 / 3.28, stabilize the rotation, and be a key part of turning a lost season into the best record in baseball, you would have blustered about how that’s the kind of win-now deal the Brewers don’t have the guts to make. But when the Brewers actually make that deal — and another poster points it out, giving you a chance to act superior (with, as always, nothing to back the act up) — you write it off.

Braylon Payne’s monthly splits are nuts. Excellent all-around April, but the k rate was a little high. Power completely disappeared in May — literally; zero extra-base hits. Power came back in June, but his bb/k was 1/20. In July it’s 13/10 with the most power he’s shown yet. I don’t know whether he was hurt, but he has clearly been working on things, and it’s starting to pay off.

Here's a tidbit: Since June 14, the Brewers have gone 22-7. Of the seven losses, four have been by one run, two have been by two runs, and one -- the Miz Mets game -- has been by four runs. In about a month's worth of games, the Brewers have lost decisively exactly once. (Of the wins, eight were by one run, four were by two runs, and ten were by three or more runs.)

Another repeater, Juan Martinez, shows a more dramatic version of a similar story. Pitches per plate appearance up from about 1.8 to four. Power way up, steals up, walks up, strikeouts down. Minimal increase in BABIP. Just better across the board. I’m sure all this stuff is very common in DSL repeaters, but I just happened to look at it today, and it’s kind of interesting.

Antunez’s flirtation with respectability keeps getting racier. A little thing I noticed: Moises Polanco, who has added some power and a few walks and strikeouts his second time through the DSL, has more than doubled the number of pitches he’s seeing per plate appearance, from just over two to 4.1. His BABIP is up from .315 to .363. We usually chalk that up to random fluctuation, but I wonder if his greater patience might be yielding better quality of contact. He’s also scoring and stealing less while driving in a lot more runs. Seems like they may be consciously changing his role.

I half agree with Bob. I like the idea of adding O’Hearn to replace Bauers. However, I think we are starting to underappreciate our young starting pitchers. I think Peralta is gone this winter. We can roll into next year with a rotation of Mis, Priester, Myers, Henderson, Gasser, and Patrick. Unlike SF70, I’m not confident yet about anyone beyond those six. I’m also not confident the market will properly value Myers and Patrick.

This is really good. I would add two other things about Durbin. First, as we know, he gets hit by ridiculous number of pitches. Second, he almost never grounds into double plays, which is especially impressive for such a contact oriented guy. Those two things, generally, are underappreciated stats, and Durbin is unusually good at both.

I want to make clear that I’m not bumping this to rag on Jason, who wrote a very reasonable pessimistic article. Around the same time, I think I said in one of the forums that I was kind of relieved to have a low stress year when I could just watch our prospects and let the Cubs have their little moment. The interesting question this raises is: what did we miss? It’s not like anything deeply weird has happened. No one is wildly exceeding a reasonably optimistic expectation. Freddy has been the best version of himself, but not a perfect version. Woodruff came back later than expected. Yelich found his form, but not his MVP form. Megill has been a solid closer and Uribe a solid setup man. Turang and Frelick have continued to develop, but they haven’t taken PCA-level leaps. Even Miz is just doing what we all hoped Miz could do. None of these things is shocking. So how did most of us, at least many of us, not see these good times coming? The best I can come up with is that the team set up an array of solid plausible outcomes, and almost nothing has gone very wrong. The fate of a major league baseball team in any given season turns on a bunch of variables – let’s say 40 variables. It’s relatively easy to imagine complete failures or amazing successes. I think it’s probably hard for most of us to imagine 35 of those 40 variables landing around the 70th percentile outcome. The Brewers are really good at making incremental gains while screwing up almost nothing. On top of that, the kind of success the Brewers build for often takes some initial churning. You have to wait for Durbin to get some reps at third base while you suffer through some Capra-Dunn faceplants. You have to figure out which relievers don’t have their stuff together and get rid of them. You have to wait for the Red Sox to make Priester available, and then you have to let him take his lumps while you get his pitches right. The Brewers’ formula is subtle, and right now we’re seeing it come together in all its nuanced glory.

I love people’s points here on the “it takes a village“ theme. I was thinking about this the other night, and I think the Brewers’ success with continuity of leadership reflects the next level of small market strategy. The first level is figuring out that for the cost of one or two player upgrades, you can instead hire a bunch of really useful front office people. The next level is making the infrastructure solid enough that continued success doesn’t depend on finding the perfect person, or a particular type of perfect person, every time someone moves on.

Man, I wish I had just a penny for every thousand online trolls who pulled this line. I could retire tomorrow. No, you don’t get an “intellectual independence” merit badge for posting a blandly petty hot take, blowing off the vastly smarter responses that you should be thanking people for spending their time typing, baselessly accusing a player of publicly lying, and then responding to a request to back up your nonsense by acting like evidence is for lesser beings. That’s not independence — it’s vacuous belligerence. Woodruff and the Brewers made a deal that was both sensible and honorable for both sides. Finding a way to crap on such a thing takes a rare gift.

Outfielders are often made and not born. I like to remember that Gorman Thomas was drafted as a shortstop.