Ennder

I expect the team to be better next year than this year. /shrug. Gallardo replaces one of them we sign someone to replace the other, Parra improves with a full seasons work under his belt. We don't really lose anything else of consequence from the team and we do lose some dead weight.

Yeah I'm done for the year. I'll scan the box score but not going out of my way to watch/listen to the rest of the season. Just too frustrated by back to back wasted opportunity seasons. At least Yost is gone.

Thats a season, time to start talking about 2009.

Gwynn might not hit for the highest average or take a lot of walks or hit for power or even field all that great but other than that he is awesome.

Ok 3 run rally here and we turn the season around and make the playoffs! It's BIG BOY TIME!

4 freakin wins in the past 20 days for a team who was 80-56. Just baffling that any team could tank that badly.

Baker put in the LH pitcher first if I'm not mistaken.

That ball 4 sure looked good on gameday.

I think Braun has been pretty average for a LF so no qualms with that. Hart has a .511 OPS in september, that sure bothers me! He obviously needs to take more BB's to be the solid player we expected him to be. Last year he had 36 BB in 566 PA, this year he is down to 27 BB in 625 PA. It was too low last year but this year it is criminally bad. His strike outs are down overall which is a positive at least. His GIDP are also way up so maybe the lower Ks aren't helping as much as it seems~

Yeah it was early June, I went back and checked and editted but not fast enough! His defense has statistically been above average this year though. He has looked much better this year to me(unlike Fielder). He still struggles to turn double plays at times though, not sure how well the fielding metrics judge that.

Hart was fine until the beginning of this Month, that is just a slump. Weeks hasn't been struggling since early June, people just don't seem to realize it for some reason.

I would hope Hall becomes the utility infielder next year and we replace him at 3B with Counsell retiring.

Counsell is starting because Hall is one of the worst hitters in baseball this year against righties. At this point I'd give Gamel a start but oh well. I was looking closely at Weeks career today and noticed something kind of interesting. The sample is still a bit low but he has been just miserable against fly ball pitchers in his career so far. .190 AVG, .300 OBP, .338 SLG in 467 PA. I couldn't find splits for his pop up rate but this is exactly the type of pitcher he seems to always strike out or pop up against. I think he either needs to figure out this type of pitcher or sit against the right handed ones at the very least.

You'll notice it evaded the Diamondbacks and Rockies this year as well. Every year there are a couple teams that just win way more games than they should have or they sneak in the playoffs because their division is week etc. I don't group the Rays into that bunch because they are a legit team in my opinion. They have way more young talent than we do. As for the Brewer players. Hardy and Weeks are 4 years but each of them lost a full season to injuries so they are more like 3 years. Hall was never a big shot prospect so I don't really include him. Fielder and Braun both put up OPS over .850 this year at age 24 and both had shots at .900+, that is hard to argue with. Hart was sitting over an .800 OPS before this month started and his horrible slump. 1511 PA's into his career Hart has an .819 OPS and you can find comperables on his list like Edmonds, Holliday, Justice, Salmon 1885 PA's into his career Weeks has an .755 OPS and you can find Bobby Grich on his comperable list which would make me happy. 1801 PA's into his career Hardy has an.775 OPs and his most similar player by age is Craig Biggio. 2050 PA's into his career Fielder has an .902 OPS and you can find similar batters on his list like Gehrig, McCovey, Greenberg, Mays, Murray 1119 PA's into his career Braun has a .938 OPS and his stats are so good he broke the similar batter charts! There are still plenty of reasons to be optimistic about that bunch. Throw in Gallardo and Parra who look like the real deal in SP, Villanueva who is carving out a nice bullpen role and the fact we still have a good bit of upcoming talent and I don't think the team is tanking as much as people seem to think it is. The window isn't closing, it is still opening at this point. We really need to sign or trade for some OBP this season and bring in a solid starter though. You can only do so much with home grown talent and our talent has some pretty big built in flaws in defense and OBP.

While I'm glad we didn't keep Doug Davis who would have been terrible with our defense, it makes me sad that we lost Eveland even though I'm not sure he would have ever turned things around without a change of scenery.

The diamondbacks and rockies just had lucky years last year, I don't think either of those teams were better than the Brewers of this season and neither will likely be above .500 this year. Most of our young players won't hit their prime for a couple years yet so thinking that they have underperformed is jumping the gun at this point.

What bizarre way will we lose tonight? My guess is a bunt single scoring 2 runs on an error.

Mets will go roughly .500 the rest of the year is my guess.

Hart has been terrible for September. He really wasn't bad the rest of the year. OPS by month. .779 .861 .881 .740 .834 .505 Yeah a .740 and .779 aren't great but every hitter has their bad months, it is really the .505 OPS Sept and the lack of BBs that are hurting him.

Luckily an arbitor probably won't realize that an OBP heavy .873 OPS is much better than a SLG heavy one.

Oh god no, I don't want to re-sign Mota either, especially if he wants a raise or a multi year contract. I won't lose any sleep if we do sign him for a 1 year contract for about the same pay but I won't be jumping for joy either. I also agree on Kendall, it won't surprise me if next year he comes out and can't throw anyone out and puts up a .650 OPS and is just useless.

Ahh yeah, forgot about that. Mota has still earned his salary this year though so it still has been a good signing.

Kendall has arguably been the best defensive C in baseball this year. He has most certainly been an above average C this season. You are going to judge Cameron on strike outs and nothing else? Really? I'm not even going to offer a reply to that.

Brett took the team to 2 super bowls and probably would have taken them to a 3rd if Sherman wasn't such a bad coach in the playoffs. Hard to call him a choker, he has always been a very high risk player with lots of ups and downs.

Melvin has made two bad moves this season. 1) The Gagne signing. I can live with it since it is only 1 year so the overall risk was pretty low but there was no way he could have earned how much they payed him even if he didn't totally explode in the first half. 2) Trading Gabe Gross. We really could have used his bat off the bench this year. Melvin made a number of good moves this season. 1) Kendall has certainly earned his contract though I admit I'm completely surprised by it~. 2) Cameron was one of the best signings by any team in the offseason. He has been the 2nd most valuable Brewer positional player this year. 3) Riske deal. Yeah it hasn't worked out because of the injury but it was still a good deal. 4) Trading for Mota. I'm one of the few people that liked this to begin the season because Mota's ERA didn't match his peripherals. Yeah he isn't amazing but he is certainly adequate and it got Estrada off the team. 5) Trading for CC. Like or dislike it long term it certainly was a great deal for this year which put us in a position to make the playoffs if we hadn't choked for 2 weeks to start September. He has had a lot more plusses than minuses for me this year. Plus he fired Yost who probably cost us the playoffs for the 2nd consecutive year with his boobery. I also don't think we make sweeping changes next season. Offensively we pick up Cameron's option, move Hall to the utility infielder, let Counsell go. Then sign some 3B and maybe a left handed bench OF. Pitching wise we re-sign Sheets or pick up some mid tier SP to fill his slot, Gallardo takes Sabathias slot, we pick up a RP or two. I doubt we see much more than that happen in the off season.