Fear The Chorizo

That a way Orlando

Thank You!!!

How about instead of hand wringing over reliever moves that have led to all of 1 run given up in what is essentially a bullpen game we start getting salty about a lineup that has managed 1 hit thus far? Let's go, offense! Do something!!

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but the guys you mentioned didn't commit their acts on children - while all of the above are despicable actions, IMO there's a significant difference between domestic abusers and pedophiles in the public eye. He's not ever beating this rap to the point of being welcomed in a clubhouse, no matter what happens to him in the court of law - and the fact he was actually arrested and booked tells me they have what amounts to a slam dunk case proving his guilt.

I don't think this was known much at all outside of investigators, otherwise the story would have broke long ago. The reason he wasn't dealt at the deadline was how astronomically high the pirates' asking price was for him - particularly because of the 4 yrs of team control. Needless to say, that length of team control looks pretty diminished right now.

Not only should he never pitch in the bigs again, he should also have one home the rest of his life - prison. This isnt a story of he said, she said - there is actionable video and phone evidence, otherwise he wouldn't have been brought into custody...throw all the flipping books at him, and mlb should promptly bar him for life.

Biggest question of tonight's game will be if the offense can get through the lineup early to give Woody a chance at an at bat so he can hit a bomb before his pitch count requires removing him from the game.

I think we as Brewer fans are looking at this all wrong when trying to scope how many wins they need for the playoffs - with how they've been playing recently and looking at their schedules, the Brewers are going to wind up a 93-win ballclub. Pressure's on the Cubs, Cards, and Nats to figure out how they can respectively go 12-0, 10-2, and 12-2 to avoid any sort of tiebreaker/play in game against the Brewers for a playoff spot or division title - we all know from last year how those go!! That feat will be tough considering there will be 9 losses between those 3 teams.

The Cubs have been scoring tons during this homestand against scrub teams, and that 4 game Cardinal series this weekend is going to feature some crazy high scoring games just looking at the forecast - every game will have the wind blowing out at Wrigley, a couple game it will be significantly blowing out. I'm hoping Bryant's cortisone shot starts wearing out right around this Thursday - that will really hamper their roster with him, Rizzo, and Baez all out. I expect at least 1 bench clearing incident between the Cubs and Cards before the year is over, especially if one of the teams is beating up on the other - feels like the Brewers have somehow gotten under both organization's skins and they are going to be salty knowing one of them is likely to miss the playoffs altogether.

All good points - I just think between those other three teams, at least one is going to crater enough to make an 89-win Brewers squad a shoe-in for the playoffs. By getting in easily, I simply meant that an 89-win total has them clear of a wild card play-in game - since two of their competitors are also NL Central teams, there still may be some sort of tiebreaker games for the division, with the loser winding up as either WC1 or WC2...but that still guarantees a playoff spot to both teams in that extra game scenario. And I guess the other part of my post was surprised at this stage of the season the 2018 Brewers' record was only 4 games better than the current club. Granted, that's only possible after this crazy hot early September stretch by this year's team, just a few weeks ago they were barely over 0.500. I always did think this year's roster looked more talented on paper, but to be honest I feel like the NL as a whole was much more competitive this season - so it makes sense that wins are harder to come by. Plus, injuries to pitching and poor performances by arms the Brewers leaned heavily on in 2018 quickly cratered the thought this year's staff was going to be really good.

89 wins easily gets the Brewers in - that would mean an 8-4 finish while the Cubs and Cards, and Nats are guaranteed 9 losses between them while they play each other in remaining games. The Brewers are just 1 GB of the Cubs, 1.5 GB of the Nats, and 3GB of the Cards. 89 wins gets the Brewers closer to the division title than missing the playoffs altogether, IMO Wanna know something nuts? The 2018 Brewers squad we are all certain was a much better roster only had 4 more wins than this year's team does heading into 9/17. They wrapped the season up on a 10-2 run to catch the Cubs despite not getting any head to head opportunities in that stretch. The Cubs finished a solid 8-5 yet still couldn't hold the Crew off.

Well that means the nats will lose, and the brewers odds at snaring a playoff berth climb regardless Just keep winning baby

Hamels just looks flat out done as a starter - he's either pitching hurt and will rejoin the IL or he is throwing batting practice and scared to throw it over the plate. So nice to see. How the Reds haven't gotten more than 1 thus far is crazy. 5 walks in 3+IP and he's out of the game...time to gas the hell out of that cubs' bullpen!

It makes these threads so much faster to read through, that's for sure!

I wonder what the confidence intervals are on these projections, but, yeah, I agree with nearly all of this. The odds give us a nice range of expectations. If someone told me we had a 75 percent chance of making the playoffs, I'd think they were overconfident. 25 would seem too low. Just about anything in between about 30 and 60 feels pretty defensible to me, and at that point, who cares, right? Let's play and hopefully win! And, it'll become apparent as this week progresses just how much control the Brewers have of their playoff destiny - regardless of what happens with the teams in front of them playing each other in the standings, the Brewers' playoff odds should increase around 8% with each game they win since the other teams in front of them play each other. They're around 36% probability right now, that means 8 wins gets them in - while there will be some days where the percentage swings jump or drop with some variance, I really do think 8 wins secures them a playoff spot.

I hate Fangraphs, but I'll give them some props on their NL Central projections thus far - at the start of the season they had the Cubs at 87, Cards at 86, and Brewers at 85 wins. it wouldn't surprise me - while it's likely that all three of those win totals are off by 5-8, at least they're in the ballpark and it's likely the final standings will have these teams all separated by 2ish games. Both the Reds and Pirates continue to underperform projections, which is why the other 3 NL Central teams' win totals are likely going to wind up a bit higher than what FG forecasted back in March. At least they guestimated the Brewers within 10 games this season... FG projecting the Brewers to finish 6-7 seems more like them trying to equalize their preseason prediction on their overall record more than looking at how they're playing now and who they've got left on their schedule. sure, 6-7 is possible, but that would be a trainwreck of a finish. I'd view 8-5 as the over-under based on how this team is playing, and I'll go out on a limb and pick the over.

As long as somebody loses - which is likely to happen - the Brewers gain ground on somebody with a win. Also, they are guaranteed not to lose ground on somebody with a loss. Yesterday's win at STL was just immensely huge for their division chances as long as they play winning baseball the rest of the way. Bottom line, Brewers don't put up a stinker series against the Padres to start this week and they are sitting really pretty headed into this weekend once cubs-cards starts.

Sure - and to be fair the Brewers have some blowout wins on their side of the ledger, too. They are 15-22 overall in games decided by 5+ runs. However in that sample of games their run differential is -56...so when they get blown out they really wear it. As a team, the Brewers are 48-40 against opponents who will be or are in loose contention for the postseason (Dbacks, Braves, Cubs, Astros, Dodgers, Twins, Mets, A's, Phillies, Cards, Nats). I think those games total a +11 run differential for the Brewers, too - that's with the Brewers being 20-20 against Cubs and Cards to the tune of a -39 run differential. That means they are a whopping -40ish against non-contending clubs to date despite playing them 3 games above 0.500. Bottom line, the Brewers are a flipping weird team in 2019 - that much I think we all agree on.

I view run differential the same way I view RBI as a stat for how today's game is played - it isn't very predictive and its more an end result of how certain teams are structured. It's far easier now for a team with a handful of dominant relievers to scratch out a bunch of 1 and 2 run victories and then let scrubs get pummeled during games where it just won't be your day and you just don't have great starting pitching to hide those marginal relievers from making too many appearances. The Brewers' biggest stretch of struggles in the W/L column came when even Hader wasn't reliable in the pen, which led to blowing a handful of games we as fans were used to winning. The 2018 brewers won 96 games with a +107 run differential - markedly better than this year's squad, but actually quite low for a team who led the league in wins. This is just how the Brewers are put together. I'd argue teams like the Cubs are built to pile up a larger run differential than what their win total would predict, because their offense is streaky hot or cold, and the ballpark they play in is conducive to high scoring games more often than not when the weather warms up. Plus, their bullpen is leaky enough that they wind up blowing more late inning leads than most in close games - when they win they typically win big, and they probably lose more frequently than they should in close games because their bullpen sucks. That's not being unlucky, that's just how their roster is constructed. Case in point over this weekend, the Cubs wound up adding a +30 to their run differential total for the season against a Pirates club who has mailed it in while Wrigley played more like an arch softball league park than a MLB field due to optimal wind/weather conditions for offense. They are a whopping +48 against the Pirates for the season over 16 games played, which is almost half their current +112 run total. The crazy part of that is to date their season series record against the Pirates is 11-5, with one of their losses being by 13 runs! While looking at the Brewers' season schedule, they seemingly had at around 1 shellacking every 3-4 weeks that offset any marginal games a bunch of closer wins had to their run differential: April 22 - 13-5 loss to the cards May 1 - 11-4 loss to rockies June 4 - 16-0 to the Marlins July 6 - 12-2 loss to the pirates July 23 - 14-6 loss to the reds aug 18 - 16-8 loss to the nats aug 26 - 12-2 loss to the cards sept 13 - 10-0 loss to the cards That's a -77 over just 8 games - If you take away the Brewers' 12 run win against the Braves back on July 16, that -77 over 8 games offsets every other one of the Brewers' 32 other wins since the all star break. There are alot of different ways to put together a winning baseball team - the teams with really good starting pitching and a solid offense typically have a high run differential because they typically win the most games and don't run into many blowout losses. The Brewers don't have that type of rotation, not by a long shot. But, they can still find ways to win more than they lose by managing their roster and bullpen well - even if it looks held together by chicken wire at times.

Look at their remaining schedules - if the brewers play well down the stretch they will overtake at least one of those 3 teams for a playoff berth even with a loss today.

Great to start the year 2 and 0, with both wins being division opponents. Also great knowing that the defense is much more talented than it has been in a long time, and the team found a way to win today's game despite giving the Vikings tons of undeserved life with dumb play selection and clock management. Also, the defense was within a hair of a bunch of tackle for losses and turnovers, where if they make even a few of those plays minnesota doesnt even sniff 16 points. If they stay healthy, this is a very good team that will be a nfc title factor, no question about it.

Just stop shooting yourself in the foot and this is a blowout win

Beat the cards tomorrow, and the division and both wild card berths are very much in play considering remaining schedules of the brewers and their competition.

This is either a joke or some sort of good luck post...literally the last time this pitching matchup happened a few weeks ago the brewers beat Flaherty 4-1 and lyles got the win. The brewers actually have had pretty good success against Flaherty - hoping the bats show up early and get some runs on the board

Get this game by 1 run and make the run differential disciples' heads explode. Tonight's game is a big one to avoid starting a tailspin in the standings and to keep pressure on both the cubs and cards headed into their last 7 head to heads