DuWayne Steurer

Cincy up 6 - 4 on the Cards

Honestly, once they were up 3-1, this one just felt different. Just felt like today was the day, and it was. I'm not saying or suggesting they're out of their funk, but the losing streak is over, and maybe (just maybe!) things will start to turn around.

omg it's happening

Wow, Cutch got that OPS up over .600! Whoot!

Hader can still avoid Soto with a 123 inning.

Alexander sure plays around with a lot of dudes on base. Something something playing with fire, but so far, it hasn't bit him in the butt.

There's a big 2-out hit for Willy. Needed that.

LF -- Yelich SS -- Adames 1B -- Tellez 2B -- Urias DH -- McCutchen C -- Narvaez RF -- Renroe 3B -- Peterson CF -- Taylor P -- Alexander Nationals CF -- Thomas 2B -- C. Hernandez RF -- Soto DH -- Cruz 1B -- Bell LF -- Y. Hernandez C -- Ruiz SS -- Garcia 3B -- Adrianza SP -- Espino

If this is actually the Brewers thinking (and none of us knows if this is how the front office actually thinks), then that's wrong, dumb, and stupid. As other people have pointed out, Cain is a sunk cost. They're paying him regardless if he plays, doesn't play, or whatever. Everyone here knows what sunk cost means. Right now, and honestly for the rest of the year, he's actively hurting the team's chances of winning almost every time out there by putting up a .440-ish OPS. Paying him to not play, and finding literally anyone else would be a net plus for the rest of the season. I'm pretty sure an analytics-driven front office understands that, and hope they pull the trigger sooner, rather than later.

Well. Sigh. Get em tomorrow boys.

I think we hear that a lot "the message is falling flat" about managers and coaches. I'm not sure I buy that. Rosters turn over to a pretty large degree pretty quickly in major sports, so most of the guys on any given team aren't around long enough for a manager or coach's style to wear them out. There's only a handful of Brewers who have been here more than 3-4 years so I don't think Counsell's voice has fallen flat, so to speak. I think, this year, he's choosing to selectively use out-of-context data to stubbornly stick to lineup choices, and that's not great, and I think that he's fallen into the same bullpen usage patterns that most other big league managers end up falling into. He used to be a little more creative with how he used guys, and that was (IMO) a net plus for the team, but not as much anymore.

that was some hard baseball to stomach for sure.

that was some hard baseball to stomach for sure.

Welcome Brewer Fanatics to a guest addition of Forum Friday. I'm happy to fill in for Chris this week and recap the week for the Brewers faithful, and faithful we must be, after the week the Brewers have been through. But with Adames and Renfroe back from IL, and Narvaez coming back soon, maybe the Brewers luck will turn around soon. Image courtesy of Brewer Fanatic Welcome Brewer Fanatics to a guest addition of Forum Friday. I'm happy to fill in for Chris this week and recap the week for the Brewers faithful, and faithful we must be, after the week the Brewers have been through. But with Adames and Renfroe back from IL, and Narvaez coming back soon, maybe the Brewers luck will turn around soon. As the Brewers round the one-third stretch of the season, hanging on by a thread to their one-half game lead in the NL Central division, the busiest topic of discussion this week is undoubtedly the Brewers offense. With so many key pieces of the Brewers hitting corps sidelined for various reasons, the Brewers have struggled to put up runs. With Renfroe back and Adames finally returned, there's reason to be optimistic, and Narvaez should also return from the Covid-19 reserved list soon. As @nate82 pointed out in the offense thread, the Brewers key bats have outperformed most of the high-dollar free agents that were signed this off-season, aside from perhaps Trevor Story. However, there's not much debate in Brewer land that Andrew McCutchen shouldn't be playing every day and hitting cleanup, and a look in at any game thread the last week will show you that there's almost a clear consensus that the Brewer Fanatic faithful all roundly agree that McCutchen should be sitting versus righties and hitting deeper in the order. As contributor @monty57 points out, some trade targets that could be available, and have been discussed both in the "offense" thread and the trade forum, are Andrew Benintendi, Josh Bell, and Trey Mancini. (Shameless plug for Tim Muma's Trey Mancini article here). As the summer wears on and the trade deadline nears, trade talk will definitely heat up on the forum and potential targets will be tossed around. With a lot of the forty man roster banged up, a lot of the forum chatter has been devoted to keeping up to date on player movement and injury updates. @BruisedCrewdropped a tweet from Adam McCalvy today with an update on injured starter Brandon Woodruff, who has been surprisingly, ably replaced for a pair of starts by Jason Alexander. If Woodruff is to be out for any period of time, hopefully Alexander can continue his run of success. Over in the minor league forum, the Dominican Summer League and Arizona Rookie League started on Monday. @damuelle has a thread with all the news, roster moves, and more to keep us up to date with what's going on there. A couple of great posts from @Smichaelis9 and @CheeseheadInQC that provided some great scouting reports on some of the fresh new faces we'll see and hear about down on the farm. Thanks posters! And if you haven't heard yet, Jackson Chourio is putting up PlayStation numbers down in Carolina, giving us another week of talking about how he may be the next "Soto, Vlad Jr., Acuna", in the words of @Brewcrew82 (among others!) He's quickly made the leap up Baseball America's Top 100, and along with Joey Wiemer, Brice Turang, and Sal Frelick, the Brewers now sport four players in BA's top 100. Thanks to contributors like @Mass Haas and @Julio Muchacho who put a lot of time and effort into putting together a lot of quality minor league reading. It's appreciated. We're at the one-third point of the season, and despite the recent setbacks, the Brewers are still in first place, heading to Washington to take on the Nats for three games. As @RoCoBrewfan (that's me) said in a game thread just a few days ago, "any day with baseball is a happy day". We're all Brewer fans here. Except that one guy. He's a Cardinal fan, but we let him post here because he seems like an alright guy. Thanks for reading. Go Brew Crew. View full article

I guess the point is not about the upside (and I agree), but the point that the managers have both been slow to react to make changes with their lineups. Counsell should move McCutchen somewhere..... O'Neill shouldn't be hitting cleanup at this point. We aren't the only team that's got struggling guys hitting in key spots. Like someone said yesterday, the Rays had Kevin Keirmaier hitting cleanup. Ooof.

I'd guess probably 99 people out of 100 would rather have Adames up in a clutch situation over Pablo Reyes. Yes, he's hitting .200, but the opportunity for an XBH is there, whereas Reyes just doesn't have that pop.

For all the complaining about McCutchen hitting cleanup (and he shouldn't be! Make no mistake) Tyler O'Neill and his .607 OPS and 2 homeruns have hit either 3rd or 4th for the Cardinals 26 times, and he's hitting cleanup tonight.

On the bright side, looks like the Brewers will be in first for at least one more day, as the Cards are getting shellacked by the Rays tonight.

40 straight unscored on appearances. There's no way he could just go on forever without giving up a run. Sooner or later someone was gonna just run into one, even if it was just by random luck.

Nice start to the inning for Pablo there.

Milner's been good, the metrics and data says he's been pretty good, and he faced the bottom of the order tonight. Not sure what else he's supposed to do except never pitch. CC can't just use Williams, Hader, and Box.

Someone's gonna get run here. Brewers dugout is gettin' a little chirpy.

That's been (one of) the knocks on his defense since he came out of college. He made that throw though, and we needed him to.

Defense redeems itself. Good deal. Kept the lead for Alexander.