gregmag

Are the MiLB Gameday pitch location graphics for the ACL accurate? Because they say the ump called balls on two middle-middle pitches to Jadyn Fielder just now.

I have been a Miz doubter. I bought the reliever risk line, which in fairness had a fair anount of evidence behind it. I apologize to the Miz community and Miz-Americans everywhere.

So you’re saying prospects always fail; therefore prospects have no value; and therefore we should trade all our prospects for the enormously valuable major league stars other teams will eagerly send us in exchange for nothing of value. Am I missing anything? I assume you don’t want to trade Peralta for prospects. I don’t know how long you’ve been following the Brewers (I don’t mean that in a snarky way; I literally don’t know how old you are), but it feels like yesterday when some people were furious we traded Adam Lind for prospect Freddy Peralta. Same with Carlos Gomez, who got us prospect Josh Hader, and Jonathan Lucroy, who got us the highest-ranked prospect we shipped out for Yelich. BTW, take a look at how Lind, Gomez, and Lucroy did after we traded them. Or check out Hunter Renfroe’s performance since we swapped him for the at least occasionally useful Elvis Peguero. IMHO, baseball players are baseball players. They’ve done what they’ve done, whether they’ve been playing in the majors or the minors, and the name of the game is figuring out what they’re going to do next. Young players run a risk of never panning out; old players run a risk of declining into uselessness. Most players most of the time run a risk of getting hurt or just performing inconsistently. There’s no simple formula for constructing a championship baseball team. But if you’re not convinced, then yeah, I’m absolutely sure the Rockies would send us Ryan McMahon for Jesus Made even up.

I don’t see any possible 3b upgrade that’s enough of a “sure thing” to bring this team into contention. They’re going nowhere without better contributions from their stars. I don’t really mind if this turns into a soft rebuild year. It’s not my preference, and we aren’t quite there yet, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. A lot of stars seem to be aligning for our division rivals this year. Let them have their moment, get a high draft pick for once, come back rejuvenated next year.

Wilken is on an absolute tear. What’s really encouraging is that he’s doing exactly what Joseph and others were saying he needed to do: get more aggressive. With the usual small sample caveats plus a warning that I did this math by hand to include today’s game . . . Wilken 4-25 (103 pa): .164 / .408 / .373 // .780 Wilken 5-25 (42 pa): .382 / .486 / .738 // 1.214 His K rate has dropped a little, from 27.2% to 23.8%. His walk rate has dropped a lot, from 26.2% to 16.7%. His HR rate has skyrocketed from .029 to .119. His BABIP has climbed from an unsustainably low .214 to an unsustainably high .421. Basically he’s attacking the ball a lot more, and he’s getting insanely great results. The results will regress to human levels. We can hope he sticks with the approach.

Unless Matt Garza has a kid in organized baseball that I don’t know about, that would be my least favorite Brewers bloodline ever.

I just noticed this unusual line from last night’s T-Rats box score: Alastre 4 2 0 2 Productive outs! Or something.

The A-Crew box score demonstrates once again that, at least in a context of higher bullpen usage, pitchers’ wins are a stupid stat. In related news, Bill Schroeder should really have more time with his great-grandchildren. Fantastic to see Pena back in the Mudcats’ lineup. I agree with SF70 that Hardin needs to be at AA, unless he’s working on a new pitch or something. He’s 23 — seems reasonable to challenge him.

Jack, great article as always. A nitpick: Durbin was picked off second in St. Louis, not first. I remember it vividly because I was there. Incredibly frustrating game.

Jesus Made My ratings are an orgy of recency bias, and I'll own that. Made has carried his skills from the DSL into low A. I'll dream on his upside over anyone closer to the big leagues.Luis Pena Here's where the recency bias starts to predominate. Pena looks very nearly as good as Made . . .Braylon Payne . . . and Payne looks very nearly as good as Pena. He lands behind those guys because he's a few months older and not an infielder, but he's still an 18 year-old cf in low A. Of course he still has a long way to go, but getting this kind of HS talent under slot? What a great draft pick, and my present favorite prospect to follow.Jeferson Quero Hard to rate him right now. He very well may be a better bet to have an impact big league career than the youngsters, but we won't really know until he gets back on the field.Cooper Pratt He's hitting in the Southern League. His defense has worked out so far. He isn't doing anything too exciting, but he seems to be right on schedule.Jacob Misiorowski Welcome to the AAA pitchers portion of the program. I've been lower than most on Misiorowski his whole career, but he's getting harder to deny. He has stayed healthy (I'm typing this with one hand and knocking on wood with the other). His command is showing some improvement. His time is coming.Logan Henderson We've seen what he can do in the majors with his two pitches working. I'm not betting against his continuing to command those pitches and getting his secondaries presentable.Robert Gasser Looked really good last year. Left-hander. Strong prospect pedigree. Doesn't rely on top-line velocity. I feel good about his comeback chances.Carlos F Rodriguez A forgotten man, and many people got down on him after he scuffled last year in his emergency call-up, but he sure looks like he has taken his game to the next level.Eric Bitonti I'm on the fence about Bitonti right now. He has more than held his own in low A at 19, but it's hard to get too excited until his vaunted home run power shows up in games.Josh Adamczewski What do the guys at 1, 2, and 3 have that Josh doesn't have? Two years. That's it. I can't say it's fair -- 20 at low A is perfectly legit age for level. It's even better for high A, which it's getting increasingly harder to keep Josh away from.Bishop Letson I'm trusting the BF pitching experts in ranking him this high. Age for level and performance to this point look very good.Ernesto Martinez He looks ready.Mike Boeve Speaking of forgotten men . . . he has done nothing but hit. Not sure if he hits enough for 1b. Not sure if he can stick at 3b. We need to see him at AAA.Luis Lara Rating Lara this high is all about age for level and scouting accounts of his skill set. His results so far have been solid but unexciting.Josh Knoth Holding pattern.Caleb Durbin Here's where I start punting. I don't see anyone else in the system whose skill profile, performance, and age for level clearly warrants putting him ahead of guys who have already earned spots in the majors and show meaningful signs of contributing.Chad Patrick See above.Craig Yoho See above again. Yoho is a lot more fun than Patrick, but starters are a lot more valuable than relievers. If Yoho ends up as the closer, it's a different story, but I don't think we're having that conversation yet.Brock Wilken Lord help me, I'm going to trust his prospect pedigree for one more round of rankings. Getting beaned can mess with someone for a while. I just feel like he still has a path. As everyone knows, this system is absurdly deep. It's also very much in flux; I could see my list looking very different in four months. It feels weird to leave Jadher Areinamo off my list. He's 21 at high A, plays all over the infield, keeps hitting. He's a real prospect, Same goes for Marco Dinges, whom I'm very high on. A few other guys who may be conspicuous by their absence from my list . . . Tyler Black: Who the hell knows at this point. He could realistically have a better career than anyone on my list, or he could keep fading away. Luke Adams: Just feels to me like he won't make it. His numbers have gotten worse at every stop. Juan Baez: Probably would have made my list if he was off to a better start, which I know is shallow of me. Very concerned about his think tool. (Yes, I just made that term up as far as I know, and yes I want it to catch on.) EBJ: I've been rooting so hard for him, but it feels over. A bunch of other guys have already shown some evidence that they could end up better than some guys on my list -- just at a glance down the sidebar: Holobetz, Wichrowski, Quintana, Di Turi, Burke, Meccage, Anderson, probably more. I just need to see more and/or better from them. Again, this feels like a very volatile system, in the best way -- lots of rapid churn. Exciting churn. We're way past the point where limited guys like O'Rae, Clark, and Wood can sniff the top 20.

Cool to see the Mudcats’ bottom of the order get in on the fun. Payne has been scuffling. I haven’t watched closely and probably couldn’t diagnose it if I had, but his rising K rate suggests pitchers have found a hole in his swing. Major deal to see if he can make the adjustment. Made’s slugging percentage got robbed.

Fun facts of the (off) day: the Mudcats have 874 plate appearances this year. Only 52 of those PA (6 percent) have gone to players (Rodriguez, Nicasia) with season OBPs lower than .368. The team OBP is .402 (league is .345). We know that the Mudcats have the lowest batters’ age in the league, 19.5. I’m not sure how that number is calculated, but in a sense it understates how young they are. Half of the 14 players on the roster are 18 or 19 (seasonal age). Those teenagers have gotten 58 percent of the team’s plate appearances. The five players over 20 have gotten only 25 percent of the PA. The league average batter’s age is 20.6.

Jesus is risen!

The Mudcats hitters today took their legend to a new level. It takes a special kind of mojo to look that scary in a loss.

That was awesome, and this to me was the most impressive part: In his sixth and final inning, he got the top three guys in the lineup, all on swinging strikeouts. That said, he would be a lot better off with a third pitch. The Brewers have one of the most interesting pitching situations I can remember. Henderson, Patrick, and Priester have all pitched very well so far. All of them are supposed to be refining their games in AAA. It will be fascinating to see how this all shakes out.

This cracked me up because – notwithstanding your larger point, which is very sound – it would be completely valid on its own terms.

Happy to see Payne, Pena, and Josh A. all back in action. I’ve been rooting for Payne since day one — I love toolsy high school hitters — with a little extra passion because so many people dissed the pick. I know it’s still early, but he’s sure looking like an easy top 100 guy. The fact that it’s still early actually says something in his favor, because most kids that age need some time to adjust to full-season ball. He hasn’t set a foot wrong from day one. I love MLB pipeline. They do great work that takes a lot of effort, and I read it avidly. But sometimes their rankings seem obviously irrational. At this point, there is no way EMJ is the number 30 prospect in the system. Also, how is he an overall 40 grade prospect with component grades over 50 on everything except speed? I’m going to be a reverse curmudgeon here. I think the 20 to 80 scouting scale is stupid. It’s a facially stupid way to design a numerical scale, and it’s a functionally stupid way to try to convey meaningful information. I think once analytics became prominent, old-school scouts wanted revenge, and the analytics gurus meekly started talking the language of 20 to 80 as if it was useful. I greatly value the insights of scouting, and I think scouting and analytics together provide amazing information. But the 20 to 80 scale strikes me as an aging emperor with no clothes.

At some point it’s going to start getting hard for the Brewers to keep Bauers up over EMJ. For me that point came in the offseason. I understand that EMJ gets more playing time in Nashville than he would in Milwaukee, but that doesn’t seem like a great reason for keeping a 25 year-old at AAA. Do we know if there’s anything particular he’s supposed to be working on down there? Off-speed recognition or something?

Priester has done well, and he certainly could be this year’s Myers. So could Patrick. But my sense from what I’ve read is that the Brewers intended for both of those guys to be working on things in AAA. Henderson too. Assuming Woodruff and Myers are both effective when they get back — a big assumption — it would seem like those three “AAA” guys will be competing for one spot. Whoever looks closest to his finished self will stick. I would have to think that Priester has a big edge, given that they just gave up a lot to get him.

I’m sorry that I haven’t already internalized this information, but is the Carolina league a crazily hitter-friendly environment? Because I’m starting to get irrationally excited. These Mudcat batters are ridiculously young, and they all seem to have advanced approaches. But it’s also not like all they do is walk; every one of the known prospects seems to have some combination of bat-to-ball, power, and/or speed. Collectively, power seems to be most lacking, but a lot of hitters tend to develop power later, and again, these guys are absurdly young. I know it’s very early, but my goodness they’re fun to follow.

I don’t understand your point here. Are you saying you don’t think they scouted Priester? Or are you saying they shouldn’t have made the trade because he hasn’t had prior success?

Forgive me if I’ve missed something, but where’s Payne? Is he definitely starting (at least) in the ACL, and definite ACL guys aren’t in these games?

I see both sides of this one. The pushback for Bauers is that he isn't at a point where he might fall off the aging cliff, a lefty bat makes more sense as a complement to Hoskins, and he's likely somewhat less bad in the outfield than Canha. The argument isn't that Bauers might be better than we've seen; it's that Canha is 36. Yes, he was serviceable at 35, which is pretty amazing; but staying amazingly slightly above replacement level from 35 to 36 is a lot less likely to happen than staying stubbornly slightly below replacement level from 28 to 29. To dodge the argument entirely, I think everyone is hoping that either EMJ rakes at Nashville or Tyler Black figures out 1b, which could obviate this whole issue in a few months. This discussion caused me to poke around and see if I could find some kind of aggregate data about how MLB players age. I couldn't -- someone else probably can -- but I did find this fun 2012 Medium piece by Joe Posnanski: https://medium.com/joeblogs/aging-with-chart-a098c93e7ed6 As he says, this doesn't prove anything, but it does provide at least some evidence that hitters decline pretty sharply as they move through their 30s.

It seems like, if three things all happen, trying Turang at ss would still make sense: (1) Dunn doesn't hit; (2) Durbin hits too well at AAA to keep down but still doesn't look like a 3b; (3) Turang recovers and manages to strengthen his shoulder. Moving Ortiz back to 3b in that scenario wouldn't be a big deal. But I doubt all three of those things happen. More likely somebody gets hurt and forces the issue. If Dunn hits, a whole lot of problems disappear or at least get a lot simpler to manage.

Maybe, but after this season the Brewers will likely lose four of their five top SPs to free agency or preemptive trades. If they thought Shane Smith was one of their 12 best SPs right now, it wouldn’t exactly be doing him dirty to build up his innings this year and then give him a real shot at the rotation in 2026. They saw the same results from Smith that we all saw, and they weren’t moved. They certainly could be wrong; Smith could be better by 2026 than one or more of whichever six out of Myers, Ashby, Mis, Hall, Henderson, Hunt, Rodriguez, and whomever else they put in the rotation. Hell, I would have protected him. But they aren’t fools, and they made an informed decision. I’m not inclined to bet a lot on Smith’s immediate success.