Fear The Chorizo

He obviously didn't say as much and his actions suggest he isn't convinced a hitting approach shouldn't be open to change - particularly because he has dabbled with different stances, hand placements, preswing loadings, and swing paths multiple times (including during his first few minor league seasons and offseasons before he initially did reach mlb). So, in short, there's absolutely no point to psychoanalyze a theory that isn't based in reality.

Here I thought the whole reason he's not in the majors was his old approach got exposed by MLB pitching and he needed to make a significant adjustment to be a mlb hitter longterm. His willingness to go back to the drawing board and remake his swing is a sign of his confidence as a hitter IMO - if he didn't think he could hit any other way he'd still be trying to touch his chin with every leg kick in hopes he'd slug enough for a team to give him another shot. And I'd add that the initial swing change Hiura made to try and generate a better launch angle/more HR pop was probably the main reason his production cratered in 2020-2021 - when he was drafted with a hit tool considered the best in his draft year, he was not considered to have 30+ HR power potential over the course of a full season, more of a high average doubles bat that would hit 20ish HRs a year. What I'm seeing from Hiura now looks more like that type of player than the 2021-2022 version who would hit 35HR over 600 MLB plate appearances, but only hit around 0.215 and strike out 230+ times. Hiura's OPS-ing close to 1.000, hitting over 0.300, and I think leading the organization in HR for the season despite missing about 1.5 months of the year due to a minor knee injury - the changes he's made to his approach need to be looked at when facing MLB pitching for an extended run, because the numbers he's putting up this year in AAA are that impressive...it's unfortunate that doesn't appear likely to happen with the Brewers, when they've spent most of this season desperate for RH pop in the lineup.

Hiura's stance, load/leg kick, and swing look much different now than even last season when he was trying to reduce the leg kick and eliminate the gaping hole his old swing had with pitches above the belt. He is starting off more upright and is much quieter with his front side, then simply taking bat to ball. Not nearly the moving parts with leg kick and hands loading getting to the hitting zone, but still elite bat speed. Makes some sense that knee injury sapped him of some pop for awhile after he came back because he uses his legs to generate all his power in his current swing. He may always struggle a bit with velocity upstairs (most hitters do), but I think his new approach will prevent him from being an auto swing and miss at those pitches at the MLB level - dude needs to up!

Hmmm...ok, that's a bit different then - but I still think game situation dictates being aggressive and trying to score on contact in that spot. Scoreless game in the 6th. Meanwhile, Cy Lynn on his way to a CG shutout🤢

To be fair, if Taylor doesn't break for home there the Dodgers probably turn a double play and he's standing on 3rd with 2 outs. you can't read and react to exactly where a ball is hit towards the middle if a pitcher will field it or not. Middle IF is at double play depth in that situation, so, unless it's hit right towards you at third base if it's a grounder you head for home trying to scratch that 1st run of the game across.

It's almost like he should actually get a day or two fully off instead of DH-ing so he doesn't wear down. 0.692 August OPS for Contreras btw, who also gets his "days off" DH-ing. Jeez, they're going to find a way to not score this inning, too

I feel like WAR is a terrible stat to use when evaluating DH productivity, particularly with a team like the Brewers who probably get most of any positive impact at dh when they have to put Yelich or Contreras in that spot this season, and in turn have to weaken their lineup elsewhere by starting a backup in LF or catcher. Not having a guy you can expect to be a positive offensive player at that position has a cascading effect on the rosters ability to consistently score runs. Just stick with more traditional offensive stats to see if a team is getting production from the DH spot in the order. OPS to me is a good indicator if a team is getting enough slugging from that spot.

It's already mid August...the Brewers appear to be pretty good at ignoring Hiura this season so I don't expect that to change - and even if they do I would expect them to wait until September callups to add Hiura as a bench bat/part time player, not plugging him into the daily lineup as DH.

I mean, I guess it's not to the extent of oil companies yet simply because the scales we are talking about even now aren't remotely comparable with all the lithium/cobalt/etc mining to date helping to get 1.5% of cars on the road today being powered by EV batteries. And, O&G companies make much more than gasoline and fuel from the oil the extract - they aren't going away anytime soon no matter how many or few ICE passenger cars are on the road over time. China is jumping head first into EV car production not because of any green/renewable efforts - it's because they also happen to control most of the world's known supply of mineable battery minerals and do most of the high heat manufacturing for batteries (and frankly most of the world's other material needs that require high heat processes) powered by an electrical grid driven by coal. China got a big head start because they already had the supply chain and mining reserve rights gobbled up for phone/computer/electronics manufacturing. China also happens to have a pretty limited reach in controllable proven oil reserves and a population that is adding more new drivers/cars on the road than anywhere on a daily basis besides India. Make no mistake, if China was sitting on a ton of readily extractable oil EV's wouldn't be a thing anywhere else on the planet, either.

Rats...

They were careful with May, too and he almost has more TJ's than wins...there's being careful and then there's being too cautious when a pitcher is comfortably rolling with a low pitch count.

This half inning has trouble all over it

Why wait longer, sounds like he's already in midseason form...honestly he shouldn't take ABs from Santana - and Santana hasn't been good since the trade, either.

I agree with you on local package delivery vehicles and a good # of fleet trucks for contractors working locally (wasn't even thinking about that segment), but anything that needs to haul significant weights of materials, no matter how far the distance, is unlikely to be shifted to EV on a grand scale - at least with the current battery technology. Batteries for those type of vehicles would take up too much weight to be road-worthy unless the freight they haul isn't very dense. Rail infrastructure as currently designed is already at its max capacity and needs a ton of semi trucks to facilitate loading/unloading and transport on a local scale. Long haul trucking is already heavily integrated with the rail system - there are just too many places freight needs to be in order for rail to be the most efficient on a time basis. It would take significant infrastructure development to expand rail capacity in the US, and there are lots of hurdles to make that happen. It also gets much tougher for work vehicles that are used for remote jobsites at distance to heavily go towards EV - particularly ones that are set up as diesel engines.

Independent of cost, in the end environmentally it boils down to the question of whether EVs on a global scale are better environmentally than ICE for personal automobiles - and not just in terms of CO2 emissions. I'm removing freight/trucking/construction equipment from the conversation because quite frankly, they need petroleum-based fuels to deliver the power output necessary for effective performance. My reasonably informed opinion is that there is a threshold the EV fleet can reach where that supply chain becomes environmentally worse globally than current conditions, and that threshold is much lower than 50% of the personal vehicle fleet. Personal vehicles account for roughly 40% of global CO2 emissions at present, so turning that fleet from a majority ICE to EV would indeed put a dent into CO2 emissions - but it wouldn't address the remaining 60% of CO2 emissions if that's what someone is dead-set on slashing. As of mid-2022, approximately 1.5% of the global personal vehicle fleet was EV - projections are for that total to triple by 2025, which would bring the worldwide EV share to about 5%. The stick in the mud is, to scale the share of EVs globally to anything close to the level where it would significantly reduce CO2 emissions for personal vehicles, we're talking enormous, sustained increases in mining for battery materials whose extraction/manufacturing processes have a significant carbon footprint of their own and their byproducts generate a much more significant amount of hazardous waste. Unless someone has a dedicated solar array and battery storage unit at their home that their EV charger is powered by, EV vehicles should not be considered powered by renewable energy at present, IMO. They still rely on fossil fuels that provide sustained grid power for energy - particularly during off-peak demand hours when most people may wish to recharge their car at home overnight, and as the amount of these vehicles on the road increase there will be grid capacity issues in certain markets. Also, the batteries themselves are not efficiently recycleable at the moment, so there will be ongoing demand to mine more materials for new/replacement battery generation and increased hazardous waste management issues with spent battery materials as the initial EV fleets in developed countries age out of operating use. Oilfields do have well-documented environmental issues of their own, no doubt - but once a well is established the environmental impact during extraction operations is quite limited, and frankly oilfields can be reclaimed and restored much more efficiently without destroying habitat compared to the type of mining operations needed for EV materials. The advances in ICE emissions control technologies have largely curtailed much more significant air pollution than carbon dioxide concerns across most of the globe over the past 30 years despite an exploding population and dramatic increase in total vehicles on the road. There are also some emerging technologies focused on CO2 capture that could significantly reduce ICE greenhouse gas emissions to keep an eye on - although I think they may wind up being more readily utilized across the industrial manufacturing and freight transport sectors. There is a role EVs can play, particularly in cities/population centers of developed countries that have alot of routine suburb commuters driving 30-60 miles daily - I think improved public transit options, city planning changes, and a general change in how people go about travel/routine schedule all play an even larger role in trying to reduce the amount of all cars on the road.

Minor league system strength, the kind that consistently churns out good MLB players, is all about hitting on draft picks and getting enough bites at the international signing apple every year. Sure, there are organizations that are better than others in terms of "developing" players they bring in and turning them into MLBers, but I think so much of that is the individual player's drive. If organizations draft well (and that includes finding ways to get talented mid-round picks to sign on a consistent basis) to get players with MLB-caliber talent in the fold, it's a huge start. Not having several consecutive years of top 5 draft picks because the MLB squad is awful makes it difficult to pick an ironclad impact talent every draft, but the Brewers seem to have figured out how to find collegiate prospects who turn into MLB regulars after ~2-3 years of minor league experience. What we are also seeing is a dramatic improvement in the Brewers' instructional staffing and offseason development system over the past couple of seasons, which had long been an organizational afterthought in terms of staff and budget before Stearns overhauled it. To me, that should be more important and prioritized than spending in MLB free agency in terms of budgeting, particularly for a small market organization.

He's also been very good this season, but up until a month ago Stroman had been their workhorse and had better #'s than Steele besides W/L record...and that workload appears to have caught up to him a bit as his last 4-5 outings have been pretty short.

Their bullpen continues to be a mash unit, even after trying to add to it during the trade deadline to fill holes. Seems like a roster-filler until one of their endless list of righty relievers gets back healthy.

There's comparing apples to oranges in terms of legality/ethics, and then there's comparing apples to a grown man with essentially celebrity status having a relationship with a minor.

and they have some pitchers who seem to have success against the Brewers. Based on how most of the season has gone for the Brewers offensively, I think the above statement is true for every team. I've felt since very early on this season that the Cubs would be the primary competition for the division if they got more consistent pitching and decided not to sell at the deadline. Their pitching has been better of late but their recent good stretch of baseball is largely due to Bellinger's return giving their offense a boost to take them from pretty good to really good in terms of run scoring. Their pen still has holes and their rotation leans awfully hard on Stroman, a guy who hasn't been good for over a month, now. I still think the Cubs can hang close based on their schedule, but part of me feels like it's just their turn amongst the Pirates, Reds, and Cubs as the team closest to the Brewers in the standings as this season has progressed. If Burnes, Woodruff, and Peralta stay healthy along with a few key guys in the lineup staying healthy and productive enough, the Cubs won't be able to pass the Brewers up in the standings.

try as soon as they're mathematically eliminated from the playoffs this fall. No way would I want that front office trying to fix the mess they've created at the start of the offseason.

Shades of Vazquez from the Pirates if true... In case anyone wanted to know if there was any downside of guaranteeing an early 20-something almost $200 million over 11 years, here's one. Although I would think there may be some sort of out clause in the contract if the player proves to be a felon.

I'm fairly certain 1 of Burnes/Woodruff will be in the Brewers opening day 2024 rotation, and I actually think it's a coinflip that both are...so we'll get to complain about the Brewers not doing enough to win with them under team control for at least another calendar year or so, even though the act of paying them via arbitration to keep them Brewers as long as their organization can expect to flies in the face of typical small market team operations - fun! Another ironic thing - despite both of these guys being named Brewers' minor league pitcher of the year, neither were viewed as a surefire top of the rotation starter until several years into their MLB careers...and now they're suddenly once in a generation talents an organization can never recover from after they walk in free agency in a couple offseasons from now as 30 and 32 yr old pitchers, and the only way to try to capitalize on that is either throw hundreds of millions of dollars to them to stay or trade the entire farm system away for better hitters for the rest of 2023?? Some of this has to be the dearth of homegrown pitching talent many Brewer fans lived through during the Melvin years, and the thought that they won't ever have any other prospects that will turn into good MLB starters. The cupboard is far from bare.

I'm certain that if the Brewers got randomly hot and win the WS in a couple months, there will be posters who still bash them for not winning a title convincingly enough. This is a game threat on a night the Brewers won, right?

So what about Stearns'/Arnold's approach on how to build rosters in Milwaukee that you apparently don't think is enough to win a WS do you see him changing to make that difference in Gotham?