JimH5

He's been a great GM for the franchise. There is a lot to the job beyond roster construction, but that's the most important part, and he has found ways to keep the team competitive within whatever budget he has been afforded.

Game One of the ALCS was 2-1 and went 3 hours and 50 minutes and featured 7 relief pitchers. 304 pitches thrown and 1 run scored while a ball was in play. If you made it through that, congrats.

Great study, Sveum. One other change from 1986 until now is the average time of game in 1986 was 2:48, and it has been higher (longer) than that in every season since. It's been at or above 3:00 every year since 2012. There were on average, 2.8 pitchers used per team game in 1986, and that number has climbed to 4.43 pitchers used per team game in 2020. Teams averaged 189 SB attempts in 1986 vs 104 in 2019. Lots of reasons for baseball traditionalists to turn away from the modern game.

He was. But actual payroll came in at a much lower number. His comment seemed like one to brace fans to possibly limit expectations on team spending next year. We'll never know how much money they made or lost in 2020--and maybe we shouldn't--but it's a common refrain for owners and front offices to posture payroll commitments as though they are digging through the couch cushions to afford players without evidence on how strained their budgets really are. This year, when they announced that they wouldn't lay off anyone in baseball operations, I gave high praise to the ownership group--and I'm not ripping them now. I'm just calling out a statement as being made in error.

Stearns' willingness and openness to talk about his mistakes is a good thing. I'm glad he's trying to find out why their offense was so much worse than their projection. His claim that this year's payroll was among the two highest in club history simply isn't true. The MLBPA accepted massive cuts this year to accommodate the owners' true claim that revenues would be lower due to empty stadiums and a short season.

Baseball playoffs continue tomorrow, and as of right now, 9 of the 12 starting pitcher slots in the Monday and Tuesday schedule are listed as TBA.

With Ryan Braun's tenure now over (unless another deal is signed), I think the players with the most continuous longevity in the organization are Orlando Arcia (2010), Brent Suter and Tyrone Taylor (2012).

I wonder what this means for Rick Schlesinger.

That was an emotional night for me. Lots of childhood and young adult memories spent at County Stadium. It was a dump at the end, and not conducive to the modern economics of baseball, but I have lots of good memories of County Stadium. The Seligs really went all out with that ceremony. I'm thankful to them for that.

"Look, a lot didn't go right for us this year. A lot of the moves I made last offseason didn't pan out the way I thought they were going to pan out. But our team, really, hung together, overcame that and now we get to play in our third postseason in a row on a national stage. "And that's something to be really proud of." That's a quote from David Stearns in a JSOnline story from Todd Rosiak, posted last night. I'm glad that Stearns admits it when he gets things wrong. I think that's his most admirable trait. He recognizes organizational failures and he cuts bait when appropriate. I think Jake Faria and Justin Smoak are good examples of that.

As of today, Jesus Aguilar has a 120 wRC+ on the season. The Brewers composite 1B have a 93 wRC+ and their DHs have a 115 wRC+. We can celebrate the acquisitions of Gyorko and Vogelbach, but let's not forget the ABs given to Smoak and Morrison, too.

I'm not sure what opinions you think I'm stating as fact...I think I'm just looking at the performance of Aguilar, Faria, and the cast of Brewers who have played 1B and DH this year and suggesting that it wasn't a garbage for garbage trade with no winner and no loser. Yes, I'm doing it with the luxury of hindsight-'something nobody has when trades are made, but something that is often used to praise Stearns when a trade or player acquisition goes in the Brewers favor. Fans give him credit and praise for signing someone like Junior Guerra, but he suffers no criticism for signing someone like Josh Lindblom. Aguilar is better as a 2020 Marlin than he was as a 2019 Brewer, and Faria is worse as a 2020 unemployed guy than he was as a 2019 Ray. I'm wondering if there is something in the Brewers organization that affected the performance paths of those two guys. Aguilar performed well with Darnell Coles as hitting coach and poorly with Andy Haines as hitting coach, and now is better with the Marlins coaching staff. Is that the difference? I don't know. Maybe. What does it mean when we use a cliche like a guy "needed a change of scenery"? Jesus Aguilar seems to have benefitted from one, and Jake Faria didn't. Maybe it's just a function of a small sample size, as some have suggested, or maybe it's something else. One thing that is undeniable, though, and not speculating, or opinion, or questioning is that Aguilar is employed and productive as a major leaguer and Faria is not. That Aguilar isn't doing it for the Rays doesn't seem significant to me.

If I sell you a $10 trinket at a rummage sale and then you sell it for $8 to a third person who then sells it for $30, I get no solace that you also failed to get full value for the trinket. That's my point on the Rays and Aguilar. The Brewers still gave up on a guy who turned out to be worth more than they got in return. And worth more than the other guys they acquired later to fill his position. Stearns' objective with the roster should be to win games and maximize the value of the roster spots. It's not about winning and losing trades. Aguilar had more to offer than the Brewers (or the Rays) got from him. Maybe it's worth shrugging it off in deference to Stearns and his track record, and maybe the Brewers fell short on this one.

Aguilar has posted a 122 wRC+ for the 2020 Marlins. Brewers DHs have combined for a 111 wRC+ and their 1B have combined for 91 wRC+. He would have been an upgrade at either position. That Tampa Bay was a stopover point between the 2019 Brewers and the 2020 Marlins is immaterial. Sure, I guess the Rays were also wrong about him, and if you want to use that as cover for the Brewers handling of Aguilar, have at it. But the Brewers had him in the organization, gave him up for a below replacement guy who they just waived, and are now watching Aguilar outperform the players they acquired to fill the spot he used to occupy. Even the most ardent Stearns fan would like to have that one back.

I don't think Tampa Bay's decision to retain or release Aguilar has anything to do with evaluating whether the Brewers got good value in return for him. It's pretty clear that they didn't. Clearly, Aguilar was under performing as a Brewer in 2019. It's undeniable. Was that all on him, or was that an organizational failure that they couldn't unlock the potential that we now know was still within him? He was dealt for a now released, sub-replacement level pitcher who may have had one of the worst 9 game careers in franchise history. Maybe some of that should fall on Stearns and the coaching staff that he assembled. We all called him a genius when he picked up Aguilar off of waivers. Can't he take some of the blame when trades don't work out?

Fixed that sentence for you. If the Brewers had released Peralta and he’s succeeding as a player for the Rockies - nobody here would be calling the Lind trade a success. But they didn't release Peralta. They released Faria, who was a bust by every measure. And the guy they gave up in the deal scored 3 runs last night in the middle of a lineup destined for the playoffs. I think it's fine to trust the process and still recognize when a trade doesn't go well.

Isn't that how you're supposed to measure a trade's success? Freddy Peralta is the reason that the Adam Lind trade is deemed a success. It works both ways.

Maybe it's a leap of faith, and maybe it's an organizational shortcoming. Neither of us know. But we do know that Aguilar is employed and productive and Faria isn't. And given a chance to do it all over again, based on what they have produced, none of us would want the Faria side of the trade.

Right ... basically a nothing for nothing deal. I was hopeful on Faria, and he did show some promise last year in his few opportunities, but was never consistent enough to break through. Not sure I agree with that. Aguilar is an everyday player on a playoff team, and a wRC+ higher than anyone on the Brewers. The Brewers couldn't unlock it, but it was within Aguilar all along. They traded him for a player who produced no value. If we celebrate when a trade works in the Brewers favor, don't we have to acknowledge when it doesn't?

As if 162 regular season games aren't already meaningless. This will make September baseball as unimportant as the last 3 weeks of the NBA regular season. The only teams playing with urgency will be the mediocre .500 teams trying for the last playoff spot. I like the 7 inning doubleheaders, but really don't like this.

The lead guy on the medical subcommittee who presented the "return to play" case to the Big Ten chancellors was Dr. James Borchers from Ohio State. Is he an unbiased 3rd party specializing in infectious diseases? No. His practice is in sports medicine at Ohio State and he's a former long snapper on their football team. So we knew where this was going. The case centered around newly available rapid tests for the virus. Those tests have shown to be less accurate than lab tests, and I suspect that they'll be administered by people who are disinclined to report bad news to anyone outside of the football programs. Maybe it will all work out, but fans and players should be very suspect that player safety had anything to do with this.

If you truly believe that's true, than you're basically stating that 'most of us' are racist/bigoted/etc. and choose to belittle marginalized people as a result. I truly don't think that's accurate on a 'most of us' level, regardless of how negatively we can perhaps view society as a whole right now. Thom Brennaman used a bigoted word and it seems because of that, you're making the leap that he must be a bigot if you assume his character is not like others here. You don't know the man. While they won't admit it, I'd be willing to bet that 80% (and I'm thinking that may be conservative) of posters here have used the same word he used on the telecast at some point in their lives. Are they all bigots and of poor character because of it? Based on your post, the answer seems to be yes. Sorry, I disagree and it's reallly not your position to be making assesments on anyone's character beyond your own or your kids. Heard the old "glass houses" line? Careful, it never takes much digging to turn up a few skeletons on the 'holier than thou' crowd. I'm not holier than anybody and I have used the word. And I stopped using it after I was a high school student, 40+ years ago. It's not Brennaman's character that got him in trouble, it was his conduct. Rick, if you're suggesting that like Thom Brennaman, we all have character flaws, then I agree. If you're suggesting that we all use hateful language that is harmful to people, I disagree.

I agree. His claim that he didn't know the word was rooted in hate seems not credible. It was a common insult in 1970s Junior High School. He had to have know about it then...or in the 45 YEARS since. And him pointing out that he spoke with 2 gay men about this incident seems like he wants us to know that he's really, really, REALLY sorry, and can he please keep his job. I'm probably a jerk for being so gleeful about his downfall. But we all find things that entertain us.

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/2020/08/20/thom-brennaman-what-said-wrong/3401957001/ Lots of groveling. He's asking for forgiveness, and I think this is way too soon for that.

Fox Sports has pulled Brennaman off of their NFL broadcasts.