Fear The Chorizo

Sometimes relievers give up runs when they pitch, regardless of days' rest and who they are facing. This isn't little league. Hader was brought in tonight during a game situation he should be comfortable with. He gave up two dingers. I'm not sure what else there is to pick apart about it.

The Britton decision is just an injury at the worst possible time - he was basically the best reliever in baseball, then he got hurt as the Orioles plummeted out of contention in early 2017 and didn't get back in time healthy enough to warrant a high return. The Orioles would've been nuts to trade him prior to the 2017 season, which would've been when his value was astronomical. They took a gamble this offseason that his 1st half could get teams interested again, and again he got hurt. That being said, his 2018 has actually been only 11 games, all over the past month. And lately he's been pretty good. His velo isn't back to the high 90's that made him dominate in 2016, but there has been a noticeable uptick in that direction over his past 2-3 outings. Don't discount him as terrible - IF he's healthy, he's a difference maker and would be a huge depth piece to the pen.

They are almost 30 games over 0.500...they're started looking pretty good a long time ago. I get what you mean, though - to me they should pull out all stops to acquire an impact starter. The AL playoffs are going to be awesome with Houston, Cleveland, Boston, NYY and take your pick of Seattle or Oakland. Kinda crazy knowing that there's basically no chance for anyone other than the 6 teams i just listed to get one of the 5 playoff spots, and there's still more than 2.5 months left of the season.

It shouldn't at all if the Yankees decide to include a top prospect or two - in fact if I'm Baltimore I'd almost rather have that. Not like they can do anything about Machado potentially signing there as a FA this offseason anyway, mightaswell try and poach their system if they can.

More potential Brewer pieces are surfacing on Twitter than anything specific from other teams (Dodgers, Indians, Dbacks, etc)...probably someone with Baltimore leaking these names from potential Brewer offers in hopes to get a different team to pony up a prospect that wouldn't need to get leaked out - they'd just accept the better deal. Of all the teams potentially involved, I feel like the Brewers would want to make a deal for Machado ASAP using a quantity prospect package while others might like to trade for him but may want to wait a bit to hopefully land him at a reduced price. And the tweet about Baltimore adding Britton to the mix actually makes zero sense for the Dodgers due to luxury tax issues, unless Baltimore is willing to pay big chunks of their remaining salaries to get a premium prospect or two from LA. Seems like the Orioles know whatever the Brewers' offer is the best in terms of value, but they want more and are trying to make something happen to land someone they've targeted in the Dodger system...

I think with the number of potential suitors, the one thing that will be universally agreed upon at the end of this is how Oriole management found a way to bungle the eventual trade. They are either going to wind up holding onto Machado for too long in hopes to drive up potential offers and end up getting less value, or they are going to pull the trigger on a trade after overvaluing some team's offer due to a prospect only they really like. The advantage the Brewers have in all this is the big market NL teams potentially interested (LAD, Cubs) either have luxury tax concerns or nothing in their system worth headlining a Machado trade, which could drive the value down to something that a quantity-type package from the Brewers headlined by either Woodruff or Burnes could wind up being the best available deal. I can definitely see someone like the Dbacks swooping in with a desperation move and making the asking price too steep for DS to stomach for 2.5 months of Machado. Hopefully the fact that there are 3 juggernauts in the AL, plus the Indians and Mariners, is enough to dampen some of the NL 'meh' contenders' appetite for buying this deadline.

Then we could still use Ortiz (most likely) in a package to land Stroman. um, no - stay as far away from Stroman as humanly possible - he's damaged goods and 5'8" pitchers don't age well at all, anyways. If the Brewers want to go after a frontline pitcher and are willing to give up the prospect capital it takes to acquire one with plenty of team control, go after Sean Manaea at the deadline if the A's can't make up any ground on a playoff spot over the next few weeks. the point of acquiring Machado isn't to bring in an elite defensive SS who is also pretty good offensively - the point is to replace the dead last MLB offensive production the Brewers have gotten from SS this year with a guy who would probably be the team's best hitter.

While the implodization of this board would be worth buying a ticket for if that happened, there is no way they are trading him for a reliever, even one as good as Hand. Injury Messiah is going to be here a while. (Sorry, while Hiura's bat is great, I just don't trust him to stay healthy. Too many red flags in his early career have me worried) If Hiura goes, it's going to be for a controllable starting arm, or possibly a solid, controllable bat at a position of need like Realmuto. Maybe the Jays should offer Guerrero jr., or the braves could offer Acuna, since they are also injury prone prospects.

Which is why it's probably a buyers market in terms of trades this year...not everybody will be able to sell that wants to, because the dominant AL teams have few holes to fill. A team like the brewers that has a few positions in obvious need of an upgrade could get great value without having to outbid a bunch of teams.

When you've got a guy throwing high 90s and commanding a wipe out slider, he's gonna make a ton of hitters regress.

Sogard needed to hit, granted, and he needed to impress, but his at bats were not regular or often.. not even 100 At bats tend to get pretty limited when you're hitting an extremely empty sub-0.150 with the opportunities you're given. And he had 113 ABs this year - that's greater than 100. I liked his solid contact, ability to work an at bat, and solid d. His skill set was unique to our K/power/questionable defensive players. Don't the Brewers currently have the highest rated defense in all of baseball? I can't imagine how far they'll plummet without a weak-armed, limited-range backup infielder to gobble everything up out there...and Villar sees more pitches per plate appearance

On the Northsiders: How do you lose Kris Bryant and not skip a beat? They've kinda missed him all season, even when he wasn't on the DL and playing every day - his 2018 #'s are pretty good, but not close to his 2016-2017 production.

Optioned last time.... should have DFA'd him back then.

Cubs number two. I'm shocked we are still in first. Cubs seem to be good at everything. Hugely up in run differential. Maybe bullpen? That change soon I'm sure as we get to the trade deadline. For a good chunk of this year, cubs' offense has either scored a ton in games to blow the doors off a team, or been shut down and lost 1-2 run games...thus the crazy high run differential for being 14 games over .500 right now. No doubt they have talent all over the field, but their pitching depth is stressed and they'll need more arms to contribute. They have actually been lucky with how inconsistent their starters have been overall.

Had Sheets not broke down for that 2008 team, I'm convinced that was the best shot the Brewers have had to win the WS. Because of Sheets' injury, CC had to get ridden to death down the stretch just to win the wild card. The premium prospect at the time (LaPorta) was hopelessly blocked for multiple years at 1B (Fielder) and LF (Braun) had he stayed a Brewer - and Melvin obviously sold high on him. Losing Brantley stung more than anything, but in reality he would have struggled to become a MLB regular in Milwaukee as well due to Hart and Braun holding down corner OF spots, plus solid players like Cameron and Gomez playing CF. If hindsight is 20/20, it's not the Brewers who don't want to make that trade, it's the Indians because they'd hope a prospect package from a different team would've amounted to more than what they got for the premier starting pitcher available at the 2008 deadline.

I'd rather the Brewers solidify their SS position via trade for 2018 and then move to a Miller/Villarish platoon at 2B. Problem is aside from Machado, I don't think there's much quality in available shortstops - and I think a team like the Dodgers is going to offer whatever it takes to bring Machado into the mix. Dozier probably is an upgrade, but I don't think he'd be a differencemaker considering the way this team's roster is constructed.

Crazy how the schedule plays out before the AS break - Cubs still have played 2 fewer games than Milwaukee due to earlier season rainouts, but the Brewers will be playing 3 more games than them between now and the next 11 days due to a bunch of scheduled offdays in early July for Chicago that I'm sure they wish could be sprinkled into August and September instead. It would be huge for the Brewers to play well through next weekend and keep/expand their divisional lead while gaining the advantage of having many more off days during the stretch run. The Cubs will have to play their final 69 games over 74 days, while the Brewers will only have 64 games to play. The Cubs' pitching needed these early July days off due to a recent extended stretch of games, but they still have a ridiculous stretch from mid August through mid September that goes like this: 2 game set with Brewers at home 6 game road trip at Pit and Det with 1 off day for travel between those two cities (close distance travel) 7 game homestand with Cincy and Mets 11 game roadtrip with stops in Atl, Philly, Brewers, then back out to DC for the Nats 3 game homestand with Brewers 29 games over 30 days (with 23 straight games from Aug 21 - Sept 12), traveling to 9 different destinations when including trips back for homestands. What could make things even more interesting for the Cubs is that they only play 6 games during the 2nd half in stadiums that have essentially no chance of a rainout (@Brewers, @Dbacks). If they run into a bad stretch of weather at any point that leads to rainouts, there's no room left on their schedule aside from adding doubleheaders.

The baseball schedule is never really about who you play, it's if you get lucky enough to catch teams playing poorly when you play them. Frankly all of those teams could just as easily look at the Brewers and say, "well, we haven't played the team with the NL's best record yet, and they are probably going to acquire MLB talent to improve their club, too"

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-trade-rumors-marlins-wont-deal-j-t-realmuto-unless-theyre-blown-away-by-an-offer/ Pass on JT if the Marlins are going to ask for more than the moon. He'd be an impact add at a position of need, but I'm not willing to empty the top of a solid farm system to acquire him.

Cards Cubs open the 2nd half with a four day, five game series...that will go a long way to either burying the cards chances at the division or muddling things up even more. Brewers have on of those series with the pirates right before the all star break.

I agree, the broadcasters spend more time trying to come up with dumb questions for people to respond to than just calling the game. I wouldn't mind if they occasionally read posts realtime and discuss questions posed by viewers, but don't forcefeed questions to try and get posts. I can deal with all the other junk fb has simply by making the feed fullscreen and losing the emoji and comments stream on the side.

There's no chance to pick it up - hitters are literally guessing

Has there been any commentary thus far on the shadows to start this game? 3pm starts on sunny days typically end in teams being awful on offense, at least until the shadows go away around 5:30ish. not a total excuse for some of these brutal ABs....but it does help to be able to pick up the baseball and explain putrid swings by both teams thus far

As your post suggests - I think the 7 day DL thing doesn't have to do with actual injuries - if either of these guys had something signficant healthwise that has caused them to miss 1/2 a minor league season, we'd have heard about it by now.

I guess, but every team has stretches where their pen gets exposed a bit - the Brewers split with a Reds team that is rolling offensively and had it not been for Zagurski blowing the lid off game 3, the Brewers could have won 3 of 4. I recall a few weeks ago the Brewers' rotation went through a stretch where many starts went 7+IP (around the time of that Cub home series) - then the following turn through they all got touched up or had to exit much earlier and the pen has been feeling shorthanded ever since. With their current rotation, I do think they need an innings eater to anchor things - Anderson is good for 6-7IP most starts, Chacin is in that 5-6IP range, Guerra has been a 5-6 IP guy that I feel gets yanked out of games a few outs too early routinely, Suter shouldn't stay in games longer than twice through the batting order unless the offense is scoring a ton, and Peralta is the young guy wildcard who shouldn't be counted on for more than 5-6 IP routinely. Adding a quality starter that could allow the Brewers to use Suter as a long man or have Suter and Peralta piggy back games to limit Freddy's innings would be great. Where the pen has shown signs of stress is the fact some of their key guys are no longer going multiple innings to try and keep them fresher - if that shift holds, then I think they'll need at least one more solid relief to go along with a frontline starter. Any word on how Albers is doing? I feel like when he was healthy he was just what their pen needed to bridge games when key late inning guys needed an extra day. This is also a key stretch for the Brewers on the schedule, with more games left than days remaining before the AS break due to that doubleheader in Pittsburgh next weekend and no other off days. Some of their MIF fodder will need to be jettisoned to get an extra arm or two up again.