Fear The Chorizo

I'm bashing the Nightengale tweet in this thread for two reasons: 1 - it was posted in this thread 2- the tweet was framed in a way that the trade of Hader was the primary reason the Brewers have gone on a skid and lost control of a division race they had total control over since the AS Break, which is about as flat-out wrong as most of Nightengale's takes prove to be. The Cardinals have played consistent winning baseball all season long with the exception of an uneven July, and they've gotten red hot in August - that's why they've taken control in a division race while the Brewers have played sub-0.500 ball for the last 3 months. Is anyone going to argue with you? Based on your post the answer to that question is apparently yes - I won't bother with answering the other 6 questions in your post.

Is he talking about the Padres? The Brewers were playing poorly for well over a month prior to the Hader trade and a chunk of it was due to Hader sucking. Hader has been worse since getting shipped to San Diego. I'd argue the team making the biggest moves at this deadline that have created an organizational disaster, including sending what was left at the top of a once great farm system for Soto+Bell, is the Padres. For all the hand-wringing about the Brewers moves, going 9-14 in a stretch of now 23 games that has 7 against the Dodgers sprinkled in isn't horrific by any stretch - particularly considering the fact their record is likely worse if they still had Hader imploding on a nightly basis behind what would be a much thinner bullpen than before the trade deadline. I thought since the Hader trade happened that Gasser was the player with the best value included in that trade given the fact he's 1 year into his minor league career and hasn't used up any service time. With Hader continuing to scuffle and approaching an ever more expensive arbitration/free agency and Gasser off to a solid start in AA, that seems even more to be the case at this point.

Some years that's true, but some years you get that nice pattern of upper 60's - mid 70's for highs and upper 40s for lows that stretches from mid september into halloween before winter starts flirting with us in November - biting bugs and wasps go away and it's tough to not find something to do outside. It's actually been a pretty darn nice summer this year in terms of moderate temps/ pleasant weather over here near MPLS, too...probably just jinxed us into 6 months of brutal winter but that should at least get me ice fishing more often!

I think you are severely underestimating how much a drop in revenue 5K fewer fans in the stands 82 times a year actually is for a team that doesn't have a mega TV deal. Just conservatively putting a $100 per fan in terms of revenue spent (ticket + parking + concessions + merchandise) sets that to $41M. If the Brewers are basing an annual team payroll they expect to contend and draw fans similar to their normal attendance averages when they are playing well (35-38K fans per game), and they wind up seeing almost 20% fewer fans in attendance, it's a big blow to their bottom line.

For one, the Brewers averaged about 35K fans per home game in 2012. That figure is down to about 30K fans per game this year. And we are two seasons removed from from a 60 game COVID season with zero gameday revenues. Declining attendance and limited gameday revenue really hurts a market like Milwaukee, especially considering the fact they really haven't capitalized in TV revenue anywhere close to what many big market teams have done, and even some mid-market teams. The other aspect is 2012 was the one season the Brewers crept up in payroll from the bottom half of the league over a 5-6 year period surrounding it, and that was even after letting Fielder walk in free agency after the 2011 season - 2013 saw their payroll shrink back down closer to $80M. The Brewers are a bottom 5 market team in MLB that can maximize gameday revenue in effort to field a team with a payroll in that 15-20 range - stretching higher can only be done a year here or there and it would come with payroll slashing moves in future seasons.

His team-leading OPS will be higher going into tomorrow's game than at the start of the night

That was absolutely destroyed

Devin Williams should have that look nailed down - probably what everyone in the clubhouse gave him last October after he decided to break his hand as the playoffs were about to start

I think the current roster logjam has alot to do with Stearns' organizational philosophy of positional flexibility/interchangeable parts going a bit too far - and the fact there isn't a true batting order anchor to build the lineup around since Yelich has turned into an OBP-dependent leadoff hitter. The Brewers are full of slightly above replacement level bats for their primary positions - but that leads to alot of questioning when it comes to getting guys regular ABs when the guys plugged in the lineup don't produce and the guys on the bench don't have a glaring reason to avoid playing. And at this point in the season, I think there is value in a team committing to "dance with the guys that got you there"....in the Brewers' case, they can't really state what that "everyday" lineup actually is because of how much shuffling around they do with 5-6 spots in the lineup on a day to day basis. I think anytime the Brewers face a lefthanded starter, both McCutcheon and Hiura need to be in the lineup - Keston has done enough recently to justify that opportunity primarily because the Brewers as a whole don't have many quality options against RHP. Against a righty starter, Hiura needs to be the DH even if that means McCutcheon starts the game on the bench.

It would be fantastic to see Bakh get even a week of drills/practice in without having to take more days off - fingers crossed.

There isn't another hitter on the Brewers' roster anywhere close to Hiura's 0.856 OPS right now - he needs to get the lions' share of ABs as a DH, and if that means benching one of the veteran OFs making alot more $$, so be it. Hiura had inflated BABIP stats back in 2019 as well - primarily because when he makes contact into fair territory with his handspeed through the zone he tends to hit a rocket somewhere. The K rate is alarming, but if a typical 4 AB game for him includes 1-2 strikeouts and 2 batted balls that have a high likelihood of impacting the score of a game, you have to ride that type of production right now when there aren't better answers in the MLB dugout.

I think it's more to do with the initial few years of Buxton's MLB career, which were pretty darn bad offensively - he took awhile to develop as a good MLB offensive player, always had GG caliber defense roaming center field. He's also been injured - alot - and missed large chunks of seasons where it looked like he would have finally put it all together.

Sure, but what they failed to do was see how any sort of recovered/healed knee and mindset translated to on-the-field performance in game situations before offering a contract extension they had no urgent need to offer. If Yelich's camp told the Brewers' FO that "it's now or never" in early spring 2020, I'd have simply said, "Ok, guess it's never, or we'll address this again over the next offseason when you still have 2 seasons left on your current contract" Yelich is 30 years old this year, which would have been his last under his former contract assuming the Brewers would have picked up his 2022 option (something that would actually be very open to debate given Yelich's 2020-2021 season performance). I'd have been just fine letting him walk after this season and not thought twice about it even if he maintained MVP-level production, because I just don't want to see the Brewers extending players longterm once they are beyond 30 years old.

Stearns' biggest mistake, IMO, is giving Yelich that contract extension before seeing exactly how he recovered from that knee injury when they still had him under his previous contract for up to 3 more seasons at very friendly prices for their payroll. Conversely, this is probably the best move Yelich's agent made in their entire career. By waiting would the Brewers have risked not being able to extend Yelich had he continued raking offensively? Yes, but they also could have gotten 3 more years of his prime without burdening their payroll longterm - something a team with the payroll limitations the Brewers have must focus on instead of extending players well into their 30s so we can watch their inevitable decline. The Brewers built their whole window around him being the 2018-2019 version of himself through the years when most of their young pitching core would reach free agency. Not having that player in the middle of their lineup really hurts, especially now that they are paying him to be that type of hitter and instead they get a "serviceable" leadoff hitter who is a declining defender. The trade for Yelich was highway robbery given the fact none of the prospects shipped to the Marlins have amounted to anything and the Brewers instantly got an MVP-caliber OF in his prime under an incredibly team-friendly contract. The Brewers could have waited 1 or 2 seasons to see how Yelich's career arc trended after that knee injury before working out a mega contract extension, and if they did Stearns and company could have actually walked away from Yelich after 2021 without offering him an option year for this season. In retrospect, Braun's extension looks incredibly team-friendly and a better use of limited payroll than Yelich's, and we are barely into the teeth of this organizational albatross of a contract for a small market club.

And July 2021 was roughly the time when inflationary pressures started gaining steam...any sort of year over year increases in the months ahead means prices are still going up significantly despite demand cratering due to economic inactivity. That essentially is stagflation. Reality is that in order to get prices back to reasonable levels, there probably needs to be an extended period of deflation where we are seeing a prolonged stretch of negative year over year prices - similar to what we saw through most of 2009. The fact demand has dropped to the COVID wasteland of spring 2020 isn't really anything to be optimistic or happy about either - there was so much pent up demand forced on the economy from 2020-mid 2021, the fact there isn't significant economic growth beyond that in 2022 despite the inflationary pressures is a bad sign pointing to a sustained and long-lasting recession. As for the market, it's acting almost independent from what the day to day economic reality is facing most of the country - tough to say when another correction will occur because of so many levers committed to propping the market up, but that most likely will happen after people start scratching their heads as to why the FED continues jacking rates up each month despite monthly inflation rates getting back to 1-2% year over year. This economy is more or less malfunctioning and unpredictable.

I believe the answer to that question is yes....and for players who utilize the bunt with any level of frequency for base hits, it definitely biases their average exit velo. I would imagine there are advanced stats that account for average exit velo on swings only vs including the bunted balls. But a bunted ball is indeed a batted ball, and I wouldn't be surprised if minor league stats tracking doesn't screen out bunting since a vast majority of players don't bunt anymore.

I don't think Turang is Rule V eligible until after next season....I think he's going to have (and deserve) every opportunity to be on the Brewers' Opening Day 2023 roster, and frankly I'd prefer that instead of starting his service clock this year. If the Brewers are going to turn things around at the MLB level, the middle infielders already on their roster have got to be better. Adames, Wong, and Urias performing more like they did last season would cure a ton of offensive and defensive ills on the infield. I've long been a huge fan of Turang despite knowing he's never going to turn into a power bat - his defensive ability and hit tool for avg/obp plus speed gives him a ton of value as an everyday SS/2B option for the Brewers next year.

I've seen enough of Hiura this year, despite how much he's been yanked around by the Brewers, for them to simply hand him the everyday DH role for 2023. McCutcheon has had his moments but frankly Hiura should have been given that role at the start of this year. Despite the K rate and the completely backwards way they've given him ABs, I believe he's the leading OPS hitter on their roster this year, possibly behind Brousseau by a few points. Obviously neither of them have enough qualified ABs, but Brousseau was injured and never was supposed to hit cleanup on this roster (he is tonight), and Hiura's lack of consistent MLB playing time is more a product of a veteran roster logjam and his inability to play defense to give him a non-DH everyday role. Hiura's bat in the lower half of the lineup is more than fine as a DH who seems to be improving at working counts and able to hit for plenty of pop. He needs to be in the lineup every day and definitely shouldn't be getting pinch hit for in a game he's homered in just because a righty reliever is about to face his spot in the lineup..

It's because he was the one hitter who had the minor league option available, and the Brewers' FO would be damned to just DFA a marginal utility bat - even if it meant sending one of their best hitters back to the minors instead. Looks even worse after they've basically been forced to purge guys off their 40 man for nada after the trades they just made to add 18 more relievers just as a bunch of other pitchers that were on the IL are coming back.

It's infuriating at this point....zero reason to PH for Hiura in that spot. It's like Counsel's #1 goal for managing every game that Keston is on the MLB roster is to make it as difficult as possible for him to settle in and get comfortable with a role.

My best take is that when Hiura is going good, he's consistently driving the ball to center-right center, and he's proven to be a very good offspeed hitter against RHP, where he can let the ball travel and use his handspeed to drive a ball that's breaking away from him. LHP offspeed breaks in towards his hands, so his approach winds up jamming himself or getting caught in between much more with lefties. If he's going to be a quality everyday hitter he's got to make an adjustment - but I also think the Brewers are at the point where they've done a disservice to him at the MLB level by how sporadic his ABs have been against RHP. Even in 2019, most of Hiura's success came against RHP - he just isn't getting consistent ABs when he's in Milwaukee, and they can't seem to find a way to take advantage of his pronounced reverse platoon splits. McCutcheon has been decent of late....but he's still OPS-ing below 0.725 and essentially is in the everyday role Hiura otherwise would have had, particularly against RHP.

Can this one be locked and put out of its misery, or at minimum have the thread title drastically altered so it doesn't come off as completely misleading? Seems to be plenty of other threads for all the negative nancies to flock to lately that at least are based on more than some poster's interpretation of a tweet.

San Diego's metro population is wedged smack-dab between the Twin Cities and Tampa. Yet look at what the Padres are doing right now while the Twins and Rays ownership pretend they're paupers. If I'm not mistaken, the Padres' organization gets a significant amount of revenue from real estate/condos/etc. they have a stake in around Petco as part of that area's overall redevelopment. While they are in a small media market their stadium generates large market revenues atypical of small market ballclubs.

We also took Rogers and his contract off SDs hands. The Twins were already paying pretty much his entire salary this year (financial gymnastics, as part of the trade between the Twins and Padres last offseason included the Padres essentially shipping most of the $7M in cash to Minnesota - but Rogers counted almost zilch towards San Diego's luxury tax threshold this season because of it). Including Lamet in the trade offsets the luxury tax ramifications for the Padres of adding what's left of Hader's 2022 salary from their perspective. I do think there was another move or two involved that was going to include Lamet at the deadline, and it fell through from the Brewers' perspective. With pitchers coming off the injured list there was just no room

As for when has Stearns done X, as I said, if you just want to say, you blindly trust Stearns...fine. If it's just trusting Stearns, ok. I don't believe Brewers fans 3 days ago would have argued for Glasser over Kelly as they are now. I didn't see a specific pitching prospect you mentioned in this statement that Stearns has traded away from the Brewers who is now thriving at the MLB level - so do you just blindly mistrust Stearns since you can't come up with one? Would you rather the Brewers have kept Kelly to see if he could command his stuff effectively enough to become a reliever at the MLB level around 2025 while having to stash him on their 40 man roster the next 2.5 years when other prospects appear to be ready sooner and in need of that roster spot? IMO that's as big a reason Kelly is no longer with the Brewers as anything. And I don't think its fair to directly compare Gasser and Kelly as prospects without also including where they are in terms of minor league service time/40 man roster limitations. Gasser is older but has much more minor league control tied to his development before he would need to be added to a 40 man roster - Kelly does not because he was drafted as a 19yr old, missed a full season of professional development due to COVID and then most of another year due to arm surgery. Kelly will always have more upside simply because he throws harder than Gasser, but he also has a much lower floor and has a long ways to go before realizing that upside consistently. Gasser was a high floor 2nd round draft pick 1 summer ago who has improved his ceiling with increased velo/stuff.