Ennder

Wade Miley actually projects to be an above replacement level pitcher. If they find even a small tweak to help him I fully buy him rebounding into a useful pitcher. Thinking otherwise is just pessimistic thinking. Two years ago he got hit by the homer bug and last year he completely lost his command which is normally quite good. If they can fix that command he is back to a mid 4 ERA guy. Gallardo is just done though. Nothing in his peripherals suggest he can be more than a replacement level pitcher at the major league level. Using him to start a few times due to injuries is probably fine but penciling him in for more than a handful of stats means the team did not do its job building rotational depth.

Because baseball is a high variance sport and a lot of what happens comes down to sequencing. If you look for teams that have bad years with RISP like this, generally speaking even if they have the same basic lineup the next year they don't have that same issue again. Same thing with the great records in 1 run games, those things just aren't sustainable year to year. People hate the answer but a whole lot of the details of baseball just come down to dumb luck in small samples.

AL East: Red Sox AL Central: Indians AL West: Astros WC1: Yankees WC2: A's NL East: Nationals NL Central: Cubs NL West: Dodgers WC1: Diamondbacks WC2: Brewers Toughest calls for me were the WC2 slots, rest were pretty comfortable picks. Neither league has a solid WC2 team imo, it is really up for grabs. I'll be really surprised if any of the division winners change other than maybe Yankees over Red Sox barring massive injury issues of course.

Nobody actually said that, in fact nobody in this thread defended Garza the pitcher. The 3rd inning included an error by Shaw, the ump missing two strikes leading to a walk, a bobbled ball by Arcia, a very poor decision to try to turn 2 by Walker, a bad throw to the plate by Thames. It also included Garza fumbling a come backer and the catcher missing a throw he easily could have caught. Garza is not really to blame for 3 runs that inning, maybe 1 is on him. Trying to blame the 3rd on Garza is what another poster called hate and I get it, people dislike him so much that he gets no benefit of the doubt at all. I would gladly see them cut ties with Garza. I don't think they will because we have him next year and the team needs depth. He is not a good pitcher at all, but the 3rd inning isn't a reason why he is a bad pitcher, it was bad defense all over the infield. I will tell you, between about 4 of the posters in this game thread this is why I left these forums back in 2014. The constant complaining about every little thing, second guessing everything and just being complete downers every time the team has a bad game makes this forum unpleasant to visit. Its like you all get some sort of joy out of the team doing poorly. This team was not built for a playoff run, it is in the midst of a rebuild. Of course it is going to have flaws here and there and fixing them this season would have been idiotic because it would have required majorly mortgaging the future. Try to be happy that the team is still in a playoff race this late in the season with no payroll and having traded away most of the top talent on it and having a great farm system. This year should be a celebration not just constant negativity.

I doubt it, bad umping and bad defense is making this so much worse than it should be. Though I hate watching him pitch, every time he gets ahead he sits outside the strike zone and everyone knows he is going to do it so they just take everything.

Garza isn't good enough to survive being squeezed like this.

Our offense has been pretty sluggish lately but at least we aren't the Royals! 43 inning scoreless streak and counting.

Well sure when you start 50% fewer games you have a lot fewer chances at a bad start. Give each of them 100 starts and I highly doubt Anderson is more consistent. Nelson is also going deeper into games giving him more chances to turn that 3 run game into a 4 run game. Some of those runs were also unearned, runs are a team stat.

Yeah I have the opposite gut feeling too. I think Anderson would just wilt in the big game but Nelson has the mentality for it. He's the guy I would want if we snuck into the wild card game.

I try not to think about how bad the Brewers collapsed in 2014, but just about every day my memory of the day on facebook is me complaining about how awful they were the previous night in 2014.

I just hate that they don't call stuff like that an error.

You can say that but the stats really don't back it up. his wRC+ per month goes 216, 105, 67, 122. 74. So one super elite month, one average month, one all star level month and two bad months. It all adds up to a 118 which is close to an all star level player but since it has been so erratic I can't put my finger on exactly how good he is.

Yes and that reason is because he was hurt, he has full no trade protection and he doesn't want to go to 90% of the teams in the league. Plenty of teams would have gladly traded for Braun if he were healthy, he is going to veto most trades though. His wRC+ was 123 in the first half and that includes a 2 week period where he was playing hurt and went like 1 for 17, that is still pretty elite. He is no longer the ultra elite player he was when he first came up, that is true, but he is one of the top 15 OF in baseball when he is healthy.

So for people who don't understand the broadcaster complaints. Bill just said Davies is keeping the ball down and that is why he is effective, this inning every single strike he threw was high. He literally is not keeping the ball down and is being effective anyway. He could not have said anything less truthful in this inning. He does this all the time and it frustrating as heck.

Considering his pitch limit is probably about 50 I'd put the odds under 30%.

So just how good is Bat Boy do we think? He was so awful the first two months each of the last 2 seasons and pitched like a #2 the rest of the year but watching him pitch it doesn't seem believable. Davies and Thames are two guys I just have no good read on how good they actually are.

Basically a bullpen game where you know you are going deep into the bullpen to cover the innings. Please see more than 2 pitches guys.

Non elite bullpen guys just don't get traded all that much in the offseason. He is too inconsistent to get any sort of top end player back. The most likely return is going to be a prospect of some type even if it is one ready to play in the majors. I also think they probably start the season with Villar as the starter at 2B next year. He has had a bad year overall but he has still shown enough flashes I think they try to give him a chance to gain value. Next year is not a year I think the team goes for the playoffs either, that all starts in 2019. 2018 is about breaking guys in and maxing out the value on guys you don't plan on keeping longer term.

He has played to a league average CF for WAR so you have to play Broxton or trade him for a real prospect. They can't just give him away for peanuts.

Two of those three were so god awful they got released, yet we were supposed to go out and get them and just assume that they were going to turn into decent relievers again? Your right, just trot out Drake/Torres and hope for the best. Those guys are proven. Why would it have been a big deal to try giving them a fresh start? Sure seems to be working where they are now. Which is exactly what we did with Jeffress. But don't let facts get in the way of your complaining. Sorry but this is just going over the top at this point. Trying to say Stearns is a bad GM because he didn't take more fliers on marginal RP is just silly. Neshek got back a real prospect btw. Stearns adding more marginal RP is a mistake for this team right now, it isn't inexperience, it is doing his job well. The goal is building a long term winner, not to make bad moves to incrementally increase our chances from like 5% to 8% of making the playoffs this year.

The Red Sox also don't play small ball, they just hit for a good average. There offense was way better last year when they actually hit a lot of HR. Almost nothing you are saying about small ball is true. The Royals won the world series on the back of a dominant bullpen and getting really hot at the right time. The Giants world series were largely about dominant starting pitching but 2 of the 3 were also about one guy getting crazy hot and hitting a bunch of HR. The Cardinals have never been a small ball team.

For what it is worth his xStats are .282 AVG, 22 HR, .867 xOPS. That is mostly park neutralized so Miller Park is probably adding a few HR and a little OPS. It looks largely legit, not a lot of luck involved here.

Man that has to totally suck. Guy throws a no hitter through 9 and then gives up a walkoff HR to start the 10th. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2017/08/23/dodgers-rich-hill-no-hitter-pirates/596102001/

Bunting with your slow catcher on 1st with a guy that really struggles making contact would have been a really awful move. Bunting there is clearly the wrong thing to do given the players who were on base and due up. There are some things I don't like about Counsell but properly not bunting in bad situations is not one of them. I showed this last time someone complained about not bunting but bunting is never the right play without there being some positive context to the play. Either a really good bunter up, a really bad hitter up, a fast guy on base, bunting to bad fielders etc. I'm not saying it is always wrong but there needs to be a reason that it is better than average success rate in that specific situation and in this case it clearly was not. The Cardinals and Giants didn't bunt often in their World Series years either. The Royals only did it with their really bad hitters. It has to be really hard to be a fan with a glass completely empty mentality. I feel bad for you.

Sure they could have added more rentals to most likely still miss the playoffs or at best lose in round 1. It would have taken losing people off the 40 man. It wouldn't be a smart move but Stearns could have done it, if only he had more experience he could have thrown away those resources for nothing.