Fear The Chorizo

Definitely not a "put it all under your mattress and close your eyes until the crash hits bottom", but the increased volatility is eerily similar to summer 2008 - series of dead cat bounces when investors were hoping the actual outlook was rosier than where some fundamentals indicated things were headed.

The problem is that they didn't spike rates high enough earlier in this process to completely stifle inflation, and frankly jump the investment economy into a recession 1-2 years ago that led to actual price drops (deflation) to get costs back in line with incomes to avoid a consumer spending bubble from bursting....now markets are looking at the tea leaves showing consumer spending is teetering on a correction/pullback and any rapid rate cuts are just going to keep prices crawling further up at the worst possible time. At some point this economy is going to have to pay the piper, there is no such thing as a permanent "soft landing" - most of this year has felt like 2008 all over again, but for different reasons....and as we head towards fall the markets are getting more volatile and looking more pessimistic with conditions that are harder and harder to mitigate without a significant correction.

My favorite thing about Chourio right now is the fact that he's younger than 32 of the top 50 players taken in this year's MLB draft. Sky remains the limit on what this kid could do.

Here you go... https://www.wikihow.com/Develop-a-Thick-Skin

This deadline was a stinker - Flaherty was the one arm obviously available via trade I was hoping the Brewers would find a way to acquire but if there's legit back injury concern with him currently I get not getting too aggressive to land him. With the extra wildcard teams, the time to make hay via trade seems to be even moreso during the offseason.

What's easier on his psyche? Letting his talent play at the MLB level, allowing him the room to make adjustments at the MLB level, and watching him turn into the team's best hitter before he's old enough to legally order a beer just 3 months after this take got permanently buried in a glacier.

Disagree - there's been a stone sitting there for months in Mexico City that would've been much cheaper than just about anything they've done so far, and wouldn't have cost them a thing in terms of prospect capital. People can stick their head in the sand saying that Bauer should never be considered an option because they dont like him, but when the team is reshuffling broken deck chairs to try and find some sort of rotation continuity while a former Cy Young winner in his early 30s is just sitting there to sign for what could be league minimum, from a baseball standpoint it absolutely should be an option.

Contreras wearing down playing essentially every day at catcher and Yelich's recent health history make those two issues as close to a mid-season certainty as they've borne out to be....couple that with the annual "pick the wrong rabbit out of the hat" signing to serve as this team's primary DH (I thought at the time Hoskins was 1B and they still should have signed someone else to be the primary DH), and offense with a young and/or inconsistent team everywhere else was bound to go through some lean periods of production. For me, the biggest disappointment of this year so far has been the Brewers not quickly bolstering the rotation when it was obvious they didn't have near enough in that department to avoid the bullpen getting taxed and exposed - and not turning over all potential stones to acquire a veteran starter or two that could give them 6+ IP a start consistently and shoulder the innings load. The discussion on how many games up this Brewers team is on the rest of the division is kind of pointless at this point - because they are a different team than the one that built this lead with Yelich out and a leaky bullpen. Going through a 2 week crummy patch puts both the Cardinals and Pirates within a series-worth of games of the division lead, and stranger things happen every season where 1 or 2 division leaders at the break wind up missing the postseason if injuries or other flaws flare up at the wrong time. This feels like one of those points where things could go off the rails on a promising season up to this point.

Would go right in line with the Dodgers' propensity to field an entire mid-market organization's payroll-sized roster of IL-d pitchers. Assuming there's not a restriction/limit on just how many players an organization can put on the 10- or 60-day ILs....but wondering if there should be as a way to limit how many options an organization with limitless payroll can keep on their shelf and just keep on acquiring more players. Something like a high 40s MLB roster where at no point in time can they carry more than that number in total - if teams want/need to stockpile injured players longterm on their payroll, they sure can....but then they'd also have to DFA or trade away young MLB-ready talent in their high minor leagues to make room. The Brewers have a heap of injuries/guys on the IL along with some very targeted short term IL stints most of us assume are in part to try and maintain pitching staff roster flexibility without having to DFA guys, and currently have a total of 46 guys on the active 40-man + Injured lists. Meanwhile, the Dodgers sport 49...it's a yet-another competitive advantage that $$ allows the Dodgers to exploit and it's frustrating.

I look at losing Wiemer now as it's probably selling high on him from an organizational control standpoint....already a year of mlb service time burned and two (I think) milb options burned, and he's heavily blocked at the MLB level with chourio, Mitchell, frelick, and yelich all deserving everyday ABs in Milwaukee. Wiemer could figure it out in a season or two and become a really good mlb OFer with pop - but he just wasn't going to get that opportunity as a Brewer with who else is on their 40 man roster...and getting Wiemer off their 40 man really helps free up one of their logjams. That said, I wish he wasn't traded inside the division.

What if it turned out to be for a 3.5 month rental that finished with an early November parade? I also hope Wilken is going nowhere, but I'd be fine with overpaying for the main thing this roster needs to have a shot at an extended postseason run - a starter that can get you deep into a game consistently in October.

Max effort leads to bodies breaking...the reason guys didn't throw max effort decades ago was they knew if they got injured they would lose their job and potentially their career. No surprise that guys throwing triple digits can't do it forever before they can't pitch.

Theyve already redone his deal once, and it will probably be an every other offseason sort of thing until he either gets badly injured or retires.

That was about the most disjointed, random, scattershot OC that ive seen....really miss the parade of athletes on foot into a stadium for the unique storyline of smaller countries compared to replicating a boat parade where you don't see anyone and it kind of takes the Olympic moment away from the athletes walking onto the world stage. Would have been more culturally significant had they just passed out baguettes and wine to everyone and had them walk under the arc de triumph.

With the exception of Mahomes, any qb is expensive by the time his team has a window to contend - you maybe get 1 season of a qb breakout and then there's already talk about having to extend him. The 49ers also have zero super bowl titles during this stretch with all those cheap qbs, along with several veteran holdouts looking for more money and the decision on whether to give a Mr irrelevant over a $200m deal soon knowing that likely blows up their roster as early as next season despite an increasing salary cap. The Packers have managed the transition from on HOF qb to the next mainstay much more effectively than what they did between Favre and Rodgers - frankly any thoughts of them doing it better from either a PR or on the field standpoint is 20/20 hindsight that probably can't be proven true since it never would unfold the same way it actually did.

sorry, arbitration control for an already almost 30 yr old starter who's going to gripe about what he's getting paid each of the next 3 offseasons unless the Brewers overpay with a longterm extension that cripples them is not worth trading away the best offensive catcher in the game who is under the exact same amount of team control. The time to pull that sort of trade off would be in an offseason or two when Quero has proven to be both healthy and worthy of his lofty prospect status

I still think a chunk of this is going to be sorted out with a young OF or two moving in a deadline trade, then a couple reliever DFAs when guys like Williams and another starter acquired via trade need to be added back onto the 26 man roster. There simply is not enough room on this roster to carry both Frelick and Mitchell longterm when you've got Chourio and Yelich requiring everyday playing time in the OF - I still think I'd prefer Frelick being the one included in a deadline trade, simply because he doesn't have enough pop to be a corner OF and he's not as good defensively as a healthy Mitchell in CF.

Eric Sogard has to be sitting right next to his phone with this news.

20.....TWENTY - Chourio won't be 21 until next season. Chourio has come on strong over what feels like the past two months now - it is incredibly exciting to see a kid turning into a quality MLB player at an age when most highly-regarded prospects either haven't yet been drafted or are working their way between A and AA. This kid is truly a special talent.

While true, the Ricketts did take on a bunch of additional debt soon after purchasing the club with the stadium renovations and surrounding venue upgrades/property purchases - and then went through multiple seasons with it generating minimal revenue because of COVID....they can't cry poor by any stretch, but I'm sure the balance sheet needs a few years to unwind from all of that. I also happen to think their payroll is plenty high right now to be the big market bully of this division, but I think they've spent that money poorly. Giving Hoyer another $50-75m a season to spend on payroll isn't the auto-improvement it should seem to be.

But you've got to take shots like this - even if you wind up with guys who pan out like 10 straight Corey Rays or Brinsons, the 11th one might wind up being Mike Trout. And that one hit is worth all the other misses

I don't consider their first pick a throwaway at all, even after not including signability/slot/underslot considerations. Signing bonuses for MLB draftees are more related to prying high schoolers away from collegiate commitments compared to "BPA" ordering, anyway. This isn't like the NFL where drafts are solely from college players and there's a huge concern about injury where if a guy declares and is draft eligible he's going to sign whether he's a 1st or 7th rounder. Specifically to Payne - he's one of the youngest players in this draft and is arguably its best athlete. I've got zero issues picking him where they did. High schoolers with his tools turn into quality MLB players if they put everything together, and they are worth rolling the dice multiple times on those type of prospects until hitting on one.

He was more of an opener than a starter - as others have said hopefully some of the other injured Brewer arms are back right after the break....along with bringing in at least one more quality veteran starter via signing or trade that can actually be counted on to routinely get through 6+IP every time he's on the mound

Pretty sure he also got pulled over his rookie year around training camp for driving 140 in a 55 in the middle of the night, and his reasoning being something to do with his dog back at his place....so he seems to be rolling the dice on other people's lives/his life/NFL career often.