bill hAll Star

Frustrating. Just gotta hope he finds it soon. Villar is 360/385/580 or something since being traded. Only 24 or so ABs though. Villar crushed the ball @Texas like any other decent MLB player would do against that garbage pitching staff. He is 1/8 so far in the Tampa series and I would imagine his numbers will level back out towards what he's always been. He also made a critical error that could've cost them the game in the 9th last night.

Lineup is in: CF Lorenzo Cain R RF C. Yelich L 1B J. Aguilar R LF Ryan Braun R SS Hernan Perez R 3B Travis Shaw L 2B J. Schoop R C Manny Pina R P J. Guerra R

What's wrong with pressure? If he can't handle the pressure, how is he going to handle the pressure of a big AB the last game of the season to win the pennant? He's not a child, he's a professional athlete that deals with pressure every day. Besides, I really don't buy there's any more pressure batting 4th in the line-up vs 6th or 8th. Yeah. At least in this case he'd have Braun or Aguilar or Mous behind him and maybe see some pitches. There might be more pressure batting 6th or 7th when they've walked Aguilar and Braun and he's up with 2 outs and Manny Pina protecting him. EDIT: Today he's batting 7th in front of Pina haha.

Just like Chacin. Everyone that wanted to cut him after 3 starts has come back and admitted it :-). lol - there are posters on this page of this thread who called it insane that Chacin got his contract at the time of his signing when compared to the relative bargain value the Cubs got by paying Chatwood ~$12.5 Million per season to apparently walk everybody. Laughing emojii and all... Love reading the replies on these and I hope it's the same with Schoop. I'm sure there are more that just don't contain "Chacin" so I can't find them all in the search.

Agreed. I would add a caveat, Schoop wasn't brought in to contribute over the course of the entire season. He was brought in for the two month pennant drive, so coming up on two weeks of horrible performance is a big chunk of that time frame. But there's still a lot of games to be played, and Schoop could be the hero in September. That's, of course, when all the people calling for his head will quickly come here to post they were wrong. Just like Chacin. Everyone that wanted to cut him after 3 starts has come back and admitted it :-).

Games played for Sky Sox: Orf - 83 Bethancourt - 81 Blanco - 81 Broxton - 78 Moore - 73 Phillips - 71 Opitz - 61 Nottingham - 49 Not worth noting below there. So he leads the HR chase in Colorado Springs by a wide margin because the majority of guys that have played anywhere near as many games as him are not home run hitters.

The Nats are back in the race so I don't think he'll be getting dealt. I agree that I don't think the Nats deal anyone, but since the deadline the have dropped .5 game. They haven't made up any ground in their division. Between my post and your post the Nats went 0-2 against the Braves. The situation can change quickly with a handful of games. When I posted that, they had just beaten the Braves in game 1 of the doubleheader on Tuesday. They had Scherzer in the nightcap (and lost) and seemed to be rolling. Had they won the Scherzer game and last night's, they'd have been 2.5 behind the Dodgers (Braves knocked out of WC #2 slot) and a manageable 4 behind the Phillies with a bunch of matchups coming up.

Villar now since leaving @Texas is 1/8 with an error that could've cost the O's the game in the 9th last night. "We don't need Schoop or Moustakas next year" - We're averaging 5.18 runs/game since the Moustakas trade with a mostly pitcher-friendly stretch and that includes Schoop basically not contributing. We have a deeper lineup that cannot be pitched around and that is no small thing. Even the Rockies Thames game...when we get a few guys on - say Thames was batting 5 instead of 7th. Obviously with the butterfly effect, we have no idea if that game gets there, but they probably pitch carefully to Thames and then face Saladino, Miller, and Pina with no bench options in the pitcher spot if it gets there. Instead, they go Mous, Aguilar, Shaw, Schoop, Thames with a 1 run lead. That is hard to pitch around. I'm not saying it's worth $25 million to Mark, but having depth on the offense is very nice. If Hiura is going to be ready early next year, I'm not sure it's worth keeping both if in theory they both wanted to come back, but the offensive depth is not a small thing.

if nottingham isn't healthy, you have to wonder if the club will create space on the 40-man to add jett bandy or christian bethancourt. both have been putting up respectable offensive stats in triple-a. It's a fun exercise to try to find more than 1 or 2 40 man-caliber Brewers players who aren't putting up respectable Colorado Sprints stats.

1 year/$15m is debatable whether that would be a bad idea for him. It was the whole late offseason standoff thing, but he only signed for $6.5m this year (with the option) so it's quite possible that taking $15m is the right move for him. I'm sure he could sign 3/$25 instead or something, but he could bet on himself and go with the higher 1 year deal if we also wanted to pony up. Obviously there are financial constraints of taking on Schoop's arbitration number ($10m?) and/or Mous's ($15), but I guess I could see it happen if Mark really wants to open up the pocketbooks for a year.

If he's used correctly (7th middle infield option for extra innings or maybe a defensive switch) I'm OK with it. He's not someone like Nottingham that you could justify wanting to get more reps in AAA. If he starts more than a game, fire Counsell/Stearns.

My response earlier was to a poster who said Phillips was blocked, I pointed out he was NOT blocked. If his bat started speaking loudly, there would have been room for him. In your list above, Santana is on the 40, so not exposed to rule 5. Thames would move back to 1B, and Broxton could be traded or DFA. Not to mention other trades they could have done in the off-season. You make room for a superb defensive OF who can hit. Point being, he wasn't traded because there's no room for him- he was traded because he can't hit. This was kinda the point - one of those guys was blocked. If it wasn't Phillips, it was Broxton. We are kinda coming to the same point with different reasons but someone had to be dealt in the Phillips/Broxton/maybe Santana grouping and Phillips was chosen maybe for your reasons. It would've been very hard to have Thames, Aguilar, Braun, Broxton, Phillips, Santana, Cain, and Yelich all on the roster next year unless they wanted to move Braun to 2B part time (half serious). Too many bodies with no options remaining and not enough playing time for their value. One of them had to go.

Yes, a guy that hacks at everything is going to be very streaky. I haven't seen a lot of his recent at-bats, but he's hit a lot of balls hard right at guys in a few I've seen. Everything's in play so he's going to have some weeks that he goes 14/27 at the plate with 3 HR and he's going to have a lot of 2/28 with 10 K weeks.

I'm not a huge Schoop fan, but he's going to be very up-and-down. To be fair to the small sample [completely pitching/environment disregarding] militia, he's only got about 60 games this year, so he had better have one or two of those streaks where the ball goes over the fence a lot pretty soon.

The Nats are back in the race so I don't think he'll be getting dealt.

4 man rotation with a Lyles + Peralta piggyback game here and there makes sense. Throw Davies in there if he's good to go and it might be a Davies/Lyles/Peralta spot a few times in August.

I think that the debate of how inspiring the prospect list is interesting and I think the lack of hooking a big fish at the deadline and at certain periods after the Yelich move are due to Stearns having a package that he's willing to part with and sticking to his guns. There's the Scooter/Segura complaint, and that is warranted. They let some MLB guys go that figured something out with their swing and are both great players. But in the minors realm, so far our evidence is: -Letting Miguel Diaz go to rule 5. He looks like if he's ever going to make an impact it'll be in 2021 if ever. -Holding firmly to Brinson, Diaz, Harrison as the offer for Yelich - Diaz is moving up the ranks but still has some holes in his swing, Brinson has his known struggles, Harrison still could be good but he's really struggling right now. -Cordell for Swarzak - Cordell is hurt but no MLB impact. -Garrett Cooper in a deal - another "just a guy." We got "just a guy" but some people were crying about losing Cooper after 1 good MLB week last year. -The above list (TBA) I'm not saying everything Stearns does is going to be a bust prospect for something better in return but I think he is very stingy to hold on to the guys he truly thinks have value. I'm sure Phillips and the guys traded for Yelich will make a dent in the majors at some point and it's possible that Diaz, Harrison, or Brinson will one day be very good...but it does seem like Stearns has his list of prospects that he likes a little bit less than the pundits and he will hold out until he can get something for them. He'd probably dip into the Hiura/Burnes/Hader group for the perfect trade and only the perfect trade.

- Phillips was blocked and would never see regular playing time - Ortiz was stuck in AA purgatory and we have plenty of young pitching depth - Meideros was, at his ceiling, a bullpen arm...those are a dime a dozen - Carmona was an athletic upside piece still 4 or 5 years away from the majors All these guys helped bring in two very good major league players to help the Brewers make the playoffs. Also, none of these prospects were having very good years so I don't think they are valued as highly as some people on this forum tend to think. I guarantee that's what Stearns saw when he tried trading putting them in trades. Honestly, the bolded part just screams of describing guys a certain way to make your point. Phillips was not blocked. If/when his bat came around he would play plenty. Braun is a part time player, Thames could have gone back to 1B- and he's a FA after next year. Ortiz I was never very high on, but he still projects to be in a MLB rotation. Medeiros ceiling is higher than a dime a dozen bullpen arm. Carmona is not necessarily 5 years away from the majors. Even so, talent is talent. Yea, it's no like these are can't miss guys by any means. But I also think they have higher upside than you're giving them credit for. Pretty sure the teams that traded for them think so too. Aguilar, Santana, Phillips, Braun, Cain, Yelich, Thames, Broxton - which of those guys do you completely DFA, leave exposed to rule 5, or leave a 100% bench role in 2019? Braun can get less time but he still has to be on your MLB roster.

Peralta would either be optioned or moved to the bullpen given that his innings limit is approaching.

Yovani Gallardo, Ariel Jurado, Mike Minor, Drew Hutchison Rich Hill, Clayton Kershaw, German Marquez, Tyler Anderson, Jon Gray Just a little bit of difference there without even bringing the bullpens into the equation.

Maddux and Glavine would have had 5 ERAs if we have e-balls and strikes. I'd also have a lot less of an edge gambling on baseball.

The Blue Jays had better be eating 95% of that for me to think about it. I'm not sure he's any better than Pina at this point.

We'll have to let this play out a bit. A lot of decent lefty platoon guys could crush this version of Dylan Covey and James Shields/the trash bin of the White Sox bullpen. I think Phillips is going to be a MLB mainstay and a solid platoon/defense guy, but I remember this time last year a lot of people freaking out that Garrett Cooper was hitting .400 in like 6 games.

Because any AL guy would have to pass though all AL teams on waivers before getting to the NL teams. I mean, it's possible, but less likely that it would happen. Zimmerman probably would. I guess that I forgot that the AL teams go first in that. I think some of the more risky ones may.

This is your weekly reminder that the only reason Shields "can go 7" is because the White Sox don't care and are tanking. Every pitcher have save for maybe Peralta can throw 110-120 pitches and go 7-8 innings if we want them to...but they don't because that is our strategy. If Shields did come to Milwaukee, unless we get a 6-0 lead, he's probably coming out after 5 or maybe 6 just like everyone else.