gregmag

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.

The Brewers seem to be approaching pitching with what I think of (I’m sure real analysts have a real term for this) as a “flat talent” strategy. Premium pitching is expensive, so go get a bunch of starters who profile around average. If (when) somebody goes down or just flops, plug in the next guy. Coach them up, avoid exposing their weaknesses, keep the defense elite, and it should work reasonably well. Do it this way and you aren’t gambling real money on anyone, so no injury should completely torpedo your season.

I wish people wouldn’t say things like this. “I’m right, it’s as simple as that.” Actually, it isn’t. The Brewers had one really good reason to leave him unprotected: they’re trying to win, and they clearly didn’t think he could help this year. Did they make the right call? I don’t know, and I doubt we’ll know for a while. Clearly he’s talented, but so are a lot of guys who don’t make it. Five k’s in a spring training game doesn’t move the predictive needle an inch. It’s as complicated as that.

The rotation is massively more reliable than it was a year ago. That takes pressure off the pen, which also looks a lot more reliable than it did a year ago. Last year we needed magic tricks like Myers and Hudson to save the staff. Any magic tricks we come up with this season — Hunt? Henderson? Yoho? — are relative gravy. True, we don’t have two great months of Devin Williams on call; but we may have three decent months of Brandon Woodruff. This rotation is far from sexy, but it’s also far from the problem it was last March.

If you’re getting each of those guys in his prime, you could win a lot of games. Fun to think about.

Outstanding article. I never thought of revenue sharing in terms of an income tax before, but it clicked as soon as you framed it that way. I worry that owners don’t really care about competition. They’re happy with the sport as a glorified exhibition tournament, where audiences tune in nationwide to see star players and fans are generally happy because the teams with the biggest fan bases win the most playoff series and championships. I don’t know how we address the competitive balance problem if the people who run the game don’t care about competitive balance.

Man that’s a hatchet job, and maybe the most smug, condescending subhead I’ve ever seen on this site. I don’t even disagree much, but now you’ve got me rooting for Black just to teach you some humility.

I just don’t see how 25 hr with a .275 OBP is desirable, let alone irresistible. DeJong’s defense does help the argument. But power doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Yes, home runs count. So do outs, and DeJong makes outs at one of the worst rates in MLB. I think the Brewers are wise enough not to go this direction. As for the “Durbin and Dunn haven’t done it in MLB” argument, what DeJong has done the past several years in MLB has mostly been appalling. I’ll take an unproven flyer over a proven albatross seven days a week.

Trax, I don’t mean to pick on you, and I know you were just making a casual comparison. But I’ve seen a bunch of people compare Payne to Ray more pointedly, and it just doesn’t make sense. Yes, they’re both outfielders the Brewers drafted in the first round. Ray washed out, and Payne very well could wash out. But. Ray was *4 years older* on draft day than Payne was. IMHO that’s as major a difference between two drafted players as there can ever be. Ray had a very short runway, and he couldn’t get off the ground. Payne has as long a runway as anyone in the minors.

Gilbert Lara supports your point. His first season was nine years before Made’s. In no minor league season did Lara OPS higher than .655. Made has already exceeded Lara’s achievements by a lot.

Just Google “Brewers Garrett Crochet.” Numerous media outlets reported that the Brewers actively pursued Crochet. Finding this information is not rocket science. (Even I can do it!)

“He would improve their situation at those positions much more than his removal would worsen their array of options in right and center fields.” Would he, though? Do we have any reason to think he can play 3b well? Why do we think he would outhit Durbin / Dunn? I’m not saying I know he can’t do these things; I’m just saying I don’t see much evidence that he can. It feels like a total crapshoot.

Defensive metrics are important, fascinating, and tricky. I ‘d say when the collective “eye test” is so strong that a player wins a platinum glove, that makes a pretty heavy mark in the column of the metric that rated the player more highly.

He’s going to be 30 this year. He had a good year when he was 24. He has had one decent year since then, when he was 26. Infielders don’t gain a step defensively as they age. Injury problems don’t ease up. In fact, age 30 is right about when those vectors commonly go south for non-stars like Moncada. When the Brewers signed Grandal, he was coming off three straight 20-homer seasons at the most demanding defensive position. He was a great bet. Moncada is coming off three straight lost years. He looks to me more like a vain hope. IMHO you’ve made as good an argument as there is for signing him, and it still sounds to me like spending money for the sake of spending money and hoping against hope for a 20-hr season even if it comes with a bad OBP and declining defense — for a team whose identity is strong OBP and great defense. It reminds me of people who thought trading Hunter Renfroe was a mistake. Baseball players are strange beasts, and I would love to be wrong about Moncada, especially if we sign him. I just don’t see any reasonable expectation that he’ll help.

Injuries, plural, didn’t derail Ray Fosse’s career. Pete Rose did, in his signature moment of the selfishness and low character that permeated his life and career.

I suspect the Brewers know all about his reverse splits and Rosenthal doesn’t.

I am really glad someone brought this up. I think the calls to add power, even by some very informed commentators, have seemed pretty reflexive and not backed by data. I’m not saying those calls are wrong; I’m not informed enough to be able to say that one way or the other. I’m just saying that they aren’t obviously right, and the proponents keep presenting them as obviously right. Bill James did a similar study years ago in one of his abstracts to some of the articles cited above. He used a relatively bad low power guy and a relatively bad low OBP guy — maybe Vince Coleman and Dave Kingman? The upshot was that a lineup full of decent OBP guys works much better than a lineup full of decent power guys. It makes intuitive sense; stringing together sequences of likelier small events is more reliable than stringing together sequences of less likely big events. My other pet peeve that this topic brings up is the failure to recognize that young players, as a group, tend to add power as they age. Of course it’s not guaranteed, more than it’s guaranteed that Pete Alonzo won’t suck next year. But it would cut strongly against what we know from past experience if, as a group, Chourio, Mitchell, Ortiz, Frelick, and Turang didn’t meaningfully increase their power output in 2025. Steamer is right to make that bet. To put the point in more concrete terms: the name that I have probably heard the most as a power bat that would make sense for the Brewers to add (based on position and likely budget) is Yoan Moncada. Over the past three seasons, Moncada has slashed .236/.291/.387. he has had two good seasons, when he was 24 and 26. Next year he will be 30. Are we really better off paying serious (in Brewers terms) money for that kind of power-heavy profile, rather than just rolling with the options we have at third base? I’m not saying those are the only two possible choices, but again, Moncada is a frequently discussed avatar of the “add power“ plan. I just don’t get it. We’ve been down a similar road with Hoskins, and it hasn’t worked out great so far.

If Durbin puts up a strong OBP, then I won’t care too much about his lack of power. The problem with Frelick and Turang on offense hasn’t been that they don’t hit home runs — it’s been that they don’t hit. Maybe the reality is that you need the exit velo to get the OBP; we’ll see. But I think viewing Durbin as “redundant” of Frelick and Turang misses some nuance.

This is fantastic. When I was a kid in the 70s, Rico Carty was one of those “back of the baseball card” players. Like, the back of this guy’s baseball card looks really good. Why don’t we ever hear about him? Your take on the racial issues surrounding players like Carty is spot on, IMHO. Venerating the extraordinary grace of someone like Jackie Robinson should never be cause for invalidating the anger of different people who had every earthly right to be angry.

Matthew, forgive me if I’m just uninformed, but I don’t quite get your point about transaction costs. If you would indulge me, I would love to hear a little more about that. what would’ve been the downside of adding Rodriguez to the roster and trading him? If I am remembering right, the Brewers have had open 40-man spots since shortly after the end of the season. Assuming – and I understand this is a big assumption – that they could have gotten any kind of a worthwhile asset for Rodriguez, why not add him to the roster and try to make a trade?

This isn’t a “Brewers writers ignorance” thing. It’s a “Harold doggedness” thing, and it has been for many years. BTW, I think this is article is very well done. But Harold still thinks Ryan Braun has a chance to stick at shortstop.

You don’t trade for 30 year-olds based on unrealized potential.

This is one of those essays that very ably clarifies why the opposing view is right. You don’t get 3-4 years of peak value at Adames’s age. Defense at shortstop doesn’t stop mattering because you have great defense at 2b and 3b. The Mets’ Bonilla deal gets mocked for excellent reasons, and the Brewers don’t have Mets money. Maybe most important, Adames’s intangibles — which I agree are huge — don’t make him the one person on the planet without whose leadership the Brewers will collapse. The team needs to trust its culture. You don’t pay a player superstar money because of his value as a coach, and you don’t buy a middle infielder’s 30s for what his 20s have been worth.

Katie Woo, a smart writer when she isn’t being an unbearable homer, has an extensive article at The Athletic (paywall) about the Cardinals’ organizational failings. Basic thrust is that they’ve cheaped out for years on player development in favor of spending on the MLB roster, causing their prospects to be underprepared when they get to St. Louis. Here’s a summary: https://redbirdrants.com/posts/anonymous-cardinals-sources-flame-organization-in-brutal-post-elimination-takedown-01j8swe0d40x

Objectively meaningless reasons that I subjectively care about winning today’s game: Currently tied for the third-best record in MLB; could tie for second-best if the Phillies lose. Chance to get to second-best run differential in MLB (Yankees presently four better). Ten-game division margin looks shinier in the history books than nine.