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gregmag

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Everything posted by gregmag

  1. gregmag
    I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but I can’t remember the last time he blew a plate appearance. It seems like he almost always hits the ball hard somewhere. I’m beginning to think his numbers actually understate how well he’s hitting.
  2. gregmag
    Love him to death, and thanks for the article with all the cool stats. I’ll be sorry to see him go, but I agree with others that the Brewers should not (assuming they even could) pay market rate for his future based on what he has done in his prime.
  3. gregmag
    I am fully convinced that, around the batting cage today, Willy or William was needling Chourio about not drawing walks. “Don’t you know that great hitters draw walks so that they get on base more?” I can see the look on Jackson’s face, carefree and analytical at the same time. “Walks. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay.” Then whichever of Willy or William didn’t start the conversation chimes in with “Oh, but you have to stay aggressive. You can’t get all passive looking for your walks.” Jackson with that look again. “Draw walks, but also stay aggressive.“ Jackson smiles and nods. “Thanks guys.”
  4. gregmag
    Frankie Montas, ladies and gentlemen. Seven innings of brutally efficient one-hit ball, on the road against technically the (now former) second-place team in the division. He was still hitting 97 in the 7th. In no way am I saying I saw this coming, but maybe the Brewers brain trust know what they’re doing.
  5. gregmag
    I love this perspective. Nothing will take away the sting of 1982 and 2011, when the Cardinals rode lethal combinations of strong play and dumb luck to kill two of the three best shots the Brewers ever had to win a championship. But yeah, they’re just another team now — one that’s been pretty bad at turning prospects into players. I’m actually guardedly optimistic that they’ll have a little run and hang onto their complacency a while longer.
  6. gregmag
    Which team should we all be rooting against in the Cardinals-Dodgers series? Last night I was reflexively rooting against the Cardinals because of the division. Then it dawned on me that we’re a lot closer to a bye than we are to losing the division lead. But relaxing about the division feels like an affront to the baseball gods. I’m struggling here.
  7. gregmag
    A year ago the Brewers were 65-56 with a 2.5-game division lead and (per Fangraphs) 63 percent division odds and a .505 remaining strength of schedule. Today the Brewers are 69-52 with a 9-game division lead, 95 percent division odds, and a .500 remaining strength of schedule. Oh, and the division is stronger this year. The other four teams are a collective 14 games under .500, compared to 34 under a year ago today.
  8. gregmag
    It’s one thing for the Brewers to be good, which they undeniably have been. It’s a whole other thing to be good AND lucky — like losing three of four and expanding their division lead. Team of destiny!
  9. gregmag
    Jim, somehow after all these years your recaps just keep getting even better and more enjoyable. The good material helps, but thank you!
  10. gregmag
    That strikes me as a very odd comparison. Corey Ray was nearly 22 (21 years, 9 months) when the Brewers drafted him. My distant memory is that he was one of the oldest players high on draft boards that year. What you saw with him was close to what you were going to get. In that important respect, he was more like Matt LaPorta, Kenny Felder, or Todd Dunn. Very different profile, but still an older college player with limited development time left. Payne is like Ray in the sense that he's athletic and toolsy, but he's 4.5 years younger than Ray was on draft day 2016. That difference dwarfs any similarities. Age is the most important stat for any prospect. Payne is the exact opposite kind of prospect from Ray -- a longer-term development project. Ray just had a weird trajectory because you expect guys like him to be safe picks, and he ended up crashing. Payne is high risk by definition, but I trust the scouts and analytics guys who see a potential impact player.
  11. gregmag
    Shocker: MLB’s biggest pythagorean underperformer kicks the living run differential out of MLB’s biggest pythagorean overperformer.
  12. gregmag
    I was as happy when the Brewers signed Rhys Hoskins as anybody else. 1b has been a black hole. We needed power. The money wasn’t going anywhere else. A name guy signed with the Brewers! But some doubts nagged at me. The only season where either BRef or Fangraphs had him above 2.2 WAR was 2022. BRef had that season at 3.0 WAR. Fangraphs said 2.4. So by the conventional understanding of WAR, we’re talking about a player who has had one season when he just barely deserved to start. A player who is now (just) on the wrong side of 30, coming off a major injury. He has been dead replacement level this year when healthy. He is putting up his worst wRC+ ever at 107. Yes, he has improved our 1b production over last year, but that by itself is not a nice thing to say about somebody. He has fully lived down to his reputation as a horrific 1b defender, the only hole in our plan to let opposing batters make weak contact and then catch everything. I’m writing this while he’s on a cold streak. We’re all waiting for him to get hot. But really, is that even a thing? Is Hoskins actually a player you can reasonably count on to make any kind of difference? Bauers has matched Hoskins’ replacement level production almost exactly, just with less bat and more glove. If we can’t come up with anybody better, is there any reason other than money not to just platoon them?
  13. gregmag
    I think you do a great job of assessing our trade assets. However, given the way you wrote the article, it seems weird that you don’t even mention Rodriguez (except as a trade piece), Myers, or Wilson. I’m not suggesting those guys are world-beaters, but they’re relevant to the conversation. You basically tell a story of how the Brewers’ rotation is in a shambles and definitely needs one big star to save it from oblivion. I don’t think that story rings true. If Freddy’s problem really is that he feels like he has to carry the rotation, someone just needs to tell him that right now everyone else in the rotation is out-pitching him, so don’t worry about it. All that said, I would be more than usually willing to trade a bunch of our top prospects now. I think Wilken should be untouchable given the Adames situation and the fact that Wilken has been on a downswing that I think he will come out of. I’m reluctant to part with Quero, although the argument that Contreras makes him expendable is easy to see. I think Rodriguez may have more value right now as a pitcher for us than as trade leverage. But Mis, Black, Boeve, Adams — in the right deal, sure.
  14. gregmag
    Two questions about that stat: Does it treat openers as starters? Do we have it broken down by month? I ask because I have a sense that maybe, as the season has progressed, the Brewers have gotten more out of their (real) starters, though I could be completely wrong.
  15. gregmag
    Did Murphy say anything after the game about pulling Myers? Like most people, I wanted to see him go back out for the 7th. But I can think of a few possible reasons for pulling him: His confidence is growing massively. Don’t mess with a good plateau. He threw 100 pitches last time out, so maybe they wanted to keep his pitch count down a bit. The bottom of the 6th took a long time. Maybe sending him back out was on the table, but the long wait tipped the scale in favor of the bullpen. All just speculation of course.
  16. gregmag
    I was a huge fan of the Hader trade. If the players were really so devastated to lose a one-inning pitcher in the middle of the worst stretch of his career, then they lacked the mental steel to win anything. I suspect the “clubhouse devastation” narrative was wildly overstated by poorly informed fans and online loudmouths who missed or ignored both Hader’s cratering and all the other ways the Brewers blew that season. But no way would I trade Willy now. He’s far more important to this team than Hader was to that one. He would leave a big hole in the lineup (though not at ss). He’s a leader whom everyone loves. The persistent overrating of closers and Willy’s expiring contract means the Brewers couldn’t make out like they did in the Hader trade. This is just Rosenthal not knowing or caring about what’s good for the Brewers.
  17. gregmag
    Nah. We played them close and just didn’t hit against great pitching on the road. First sweep of the season — in June. The offense has been inconsistent, which young players tend to be. The pitching needs reinforcements, but the present group is doing really well. It’s the team we’ve had all along — better than expected, still finding itself.
  18. gregmag
    There is zero reason to trade him. His value is low right now, so the opportunity cost of keeping him is minimal. The Brewers don’t desperately need him, but they could use him. This is a moment to work on getting his act together at AAA and seeing what we have.
  19. gregmag
    What other "biggest misses" are you thinking of? You suggest that Olson for Norris is representative ("such as") of other, equally bad trades. You criticize the OP for being selective. What's your full, non-selective argument? Off the top of my head, the worst recent trades I can think of after Olson-Norris are Richards and Francis for Tellez, Strzlecki for Chafin, Kelly and Mathias for Bush, and Toro for Patrick. None of those is consequential, let alone anywhere near as bad as Olson-Norris. Patrick may still help us. I think it's also misleading to suggest that the OP's approach mainly excludes bad trades. I don't think it excludes any great ones. But it excludes the very helpful deadline deals for Canha and Santana. In addition, Taylor / Houser looks like addition by subtraction even if we get nothing out of Coleman Crow. Same for Urias for Blalock, who is looking pretty good. Alex Jackson for McKendry won't sting and could still help. I'm not sure your point boils down to anything more than "count the Olson deal as a substantial negative," which is entirely fair. But I can't immediately think of anything else that would change the OP's bottom line.
  20. gregmag
    I'm a huge fan of this trade for the familiar reasons: We get six years of Ortiz and Hall for one year of Burnes. However, I think those of us who took that view in the offseason assumed that 2024 would be a year when Burnes wasn't putting us over the top. As good as the team has been, that may not end up being right. So -- if we're focusing on this year, would you undo the trade now? Would you take Burnes / some guy (Monasterio? Dunn?) at 3b over random dudes (Ross, Myers) in the rotation / Ortiz? On one hand, I think it's a closer question than offseason critics of the trade ever imagined. On the other hand, I think we'd be better right now with Burnes than Ortiz. The really interesting question is: How much better? Would our chances in 2024 of winning the division, or a playoff series, or the World Series be improved enough with Burnes to justify losing him for nothing after the season, rather than getting six years of Hall and Ortiz, including what Ortiz is contributing now? (The comp pick is basically a wash.) It's obviously a hard question empirically. I say no, but I could very well be wrong.
  21. gregmag
    Also, while I’m nitpicking here, I have a grammatical question / gripe . . . So first: Thank you for these recaps. They’re fun and informative. I imagine they take a bunch of time to write, and I’m grateful! Okay . . . Why do you use “would” forms to describe simple past events: “Contreras would drive in the runner” rather than just “Contreras drove in the runner”? Normally “would” only works in the past tense either to describe a repeated past event (“we would go on vacation every summer”) or to describe a past event in relation to an earlier past moment (“he thought he had a bright future, but he would end up disappointed”). You aren’t doing either of those things. It isn’t just you — sportswriters seem to do this a lot. I can’t see any reason not to use the simple past tense, which reads much more smoothly. That’s it. Sorry. Walk on my lawn all you want. Go Brewers.
  22. gregmag
    Unless you’re counting in some way other than adding up the seven game scores, you’re a little off on the total runs scored and allowed. It’s 49-25, not 46-28.
  23. gregmag
    Taylor’s now down to near replacement level, and Houser appears to be toast. I suppose you could argue that Taylor has been better than Chourio and Weimer, but those guys are part of the future, plus they’re cheap. The trade looked like a decent move when it happened. It looks better now.
  24. gregmag
    According to news reports this morning, much of the city will be without power for days. Officials are telling people to stay home because many roads aren’t safe and most traffic lights aren’t working. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/texas-flood-tornado-storms-outages.html?smid=url-share
  25. gregmag
    Really well done. This is the most thorough account of Thomas’s life and career that I’ve seen. Such a sad story. I’d like to think that teams now would be equipped to help players with major mental health issues.
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