CheezWizHed

Yes, I agree with Jim. I'm sure Gasser, Crowe, and Henderson wish they could remain on the 25-man roster like Woodford... but I'm sure those three prefer their long-term role over Woodford's (i.e., being an expendable arm)

And a 2 month DL stint...

Yeah, I wasn't saying there would be two teams in one city. There is plenty of precedent that when a city gets an MLB franchise, the AAA team normally moves. The Twins and St. Paul Saints are unique, though. The Saints were pretty well established as an Indy league team when the Twins turned them into the AAA affiliate. They had enough popularity to manage both.

Yeah, I don't mean that the intensity or focus of the playoffs is the same as 6 games mid-season. But if you compare the health and availability of players on both teams during those two times, and you will find a big difference. They walked into the playoffs healthy and in a good state. Woodruff was shelved. Priester was fighting his wrist (ultimately TOS) issues, Contreras hit a wall with his broken finger and playing nearly every game that season. It was a pretty big swing for both teams.

Why wouldn't another city get the minor league franchise? We used to have Denver as our AAA affiliate, but then the Rockies were awarded, our AAA moved to another city.

I find the Brewer's approach to not exactly be this; and yet, be brilliant at the same time. They tend to take a player a bit lower in the consensus rating and sign him for less than the slot. Then find a tough sign later on that they can "steal" at a lower draft pick level. Almost like trading down in the NFL. We (the fans) tend to think that the player drafted at #19 must clearly be better than the player drafted at #20; and #20 is clearly better than #21, etc... But that is never fully the case. So if you have buckets of players (players with similar talent) and try to get multiple players from that bucket, you get two options to get good players instead of one good option and one weaker option (from a lower tier bucket). Intuitively, it would seem like your 1st round pick (taking someone lower on the consensus board) would result in more busts. But the Brewers seem to manage great 1st round picks despite doing this (remember how bad the Brewers used to draft when in the top 10 yearly??). It's like they are playing 3D chess! First round picks signed as underslot: Andrew Fischer (signed 5 picks at round 11+) Braylon Payne (signed 5 picks at round 12+ including Tyson Hardin) Brock Wilken (allowing us to sign Cooper Pratt) Eric Brown (allowing us to sign Jacob Misiorowski) Sal Frelick (actually overslot signing). Eric looks like a bust. Brock will get a cup of coffee at the MLB level at least due to his power, but I'd say low probability to stick. Sal made it. Payne and Andrew are tearing it up and look every bit like good MLB players. Plus you snag pseudo first round picks in Pratt and Miz. Hardin looks like another great find. Yet, it seemed like there is always plenty of complaints (at least Braylon, Brock, and Eric) about the first round pick despite a pretty high hit rate.

Saying the Dodgers have more talent is fair. Saying 3-4x is way over the top. We just played a toe-to-toe series while throwing out our #4, #5, and #6 SPs at them. Yes, last year's sweep still stings, but they were also healthy and we were not. The reverse happened mid-season (maybe that was the Dodger's plan?) and we swept them. Is there a gap? Yes. But it isn't as big as people think.

Nolan Ryan was just a special dude. He pitched 26 consecutive years (plus one brief cup of coffee when he was 19 years old) in an era where pitchers were out there for 200-300 innings. At 44 years old, he put up 5.2 WAR and was still exceeding 100MPH on the radar gun. In 1973, he had 383 Ks in 326 IP (a modern-day K/season record). He had one season at 89 IP; after that his lowest was 131 IP. In his 26 full seasons, he averaged 207 IP per season. Like you said, pitchers have a higher K/IP rate these days, but could you imagine someone putting in 300 IP in a season today? Or Ryan pitching "only" 6 innings/game? I was never a specific fan of the guy, but you have to marvel at what he was able to do over such a long period of time.

The thing to remember with the Ryan/Johnson era of radar guns is that they changed where they measure the pitch velocity in 2017. Ryan's FBs were measured near the plate while Miz's FBs are measured closer to the mound. That gives modern FBs a +2 or 3 MPH to the previous era. I would guess Ryan throwing today in his prime would be neck and neck with Miz.

But how will Chris Carpenter explain this to his son???

I stopped watching ESPN years ago... but I can't believe they just showed 3 people who report on sports for a living Googling if Murphy won the NL Manager of the Year award the last 2 years on a row. Embarrassing.

Matt Wise says, "Salad is dangerous!"

I'm personally thankful for an end to the days where the Cardinals would go head-hunting because someone peeked at a homerun, showed emotion, or celebrated a win. If you hit a HR, you have a right to celebrate it. You win the game and have a team celebration (Untuckem')? Congrats, you earned it. I don't and never have liked taunting in any form. Uribe's celebrations are fun (six-shooters), but he resorted to taunting last night. Obviously, he has had issues in the past with fights and other incidents. That doesn't make me hate him, but he needs to learn from it. Murphy does a fine job managing the clubhouse. I can't imagine what CC's post-game mumblings would've been like, but this is how Murphy controls his clubhouse. There needs to be some measure of discipline and accountability or the whole team falls apart (see 2025-26 Bucks...)

If the story is true, he will be suspended, released, and jailed. As for his performance, he has been on an every-other-year roll for 6 years. I am hoping that this was going to be one last good year from him.

I did think about that the other day when Miz gave up a run. Harrison is up to 18 innings now?

Yeah, I knew where you were going with it. I almost put my comment in blue, but 1987 was the year I was locked in as a Brewer fan. And certainly the funnest non-playoff team in Brewer history. Plus my therapist says that I'm almost worked out my issues with the Twins winning the WS that year with a worse regular season record than the Brewers, while the Brewers finished third... Nope, not bitter at all!

It feels sacrilegious to compare the Cubs to Team Streak.

Yikes on the charges... At least with RBs, there are generally a few available at the end of TC for a trade. And it normally doesn't take too much to incorporate them into the team.

Little Mario can jump!

Well, Hall started that year as a starter, so we can remove his -0.2 WAR and I'd guess we'd see less of the Frankie Montas (-0.1) or Joe Ross (+0.5) rather than impacting Rea (+1.1) or Myers (2.6 WAR - who came up a month into the season as an SP replacement).

I know I was being more "black and white" in my determination of success on the trade, but the reality is that there is still plenty of gray possibilities... If Ortiz produced multiple 3.0 WAR seasons and Hall had multiple 2.0 WAR (as a reliever), you probably claim that a win. I was trying to make more of a point against the "sum total WAR = WIN" argument rather than being definitive on what I consider a "win". If I gave 5 "win" scenarios it would've muddled my original argument and put the focus on the wrong part. So I chose to be succinct over thorough. you’re assessing how much you’re able to improve each roster spot over what you would’ve had there otherwise But getting multiple players that are 2.0 WAR or less in a trade (especially when we are giving up a high-end player) really can't be the goal. You can get those types of players with lesser trades and/or waiver pickups. If we didn't make the Burnes trade, it isn't automatic that our 3B that year would've been a 0 WAR player.

I'd want to tackle the X WAR vs Y WAR evaluation of a trade. There are very limited numbers of 4+ WAR players where having a 2 WAR player is much easier to find (or even have a replacement level player have a career year at 2 WAR). So I'm not a fan of simply adding up the WAR gained vs the WAR lost to declare a victor in the trade. Let's use the numbers from the Burnes trade: Corbin had 3.9 bWAR the one year with Baltimore Joey had 2.8, 0.3, and 0.4 (so far this year) + future years control Hall had -0.2, 0.6 and 0.6 (so far this year) + future years control The fallacy of saying that we gave up 3.9 WAR, but gained 4.6 WAR is that that 4.6 WAR was acquired with 2 spots on the roster over 4.5 years of time; thus a very low WAR/year/roster spot. If your goal is to fill a roster with cheap players so that you are simply "competitive" and not contending (i.e. the Selig era), then this trade is a win. But if you really want to contend for a WS, we need each roster spot to be filled with the highest WAR players possible. As of now, I say this trade was a bust. Unless one of Ortiz or Hall exceeds the WAR we gave up with Corbin in a single season, I think it remains that way. It is hard to predict a butterfly effect of the changes, but I'd guess we would be better off if we stayed with Corbin for that one year and get the comp pick instead.

This is why I don't like using English because you can make it say anything you want it to say. 😂 Metrics certainly need to be handled correctly. And they tend to be tricker to understand because people don't like math. But for the people that do understand them, it is pretty easy to refute someone abusing it. When you have something that models actual results well (not all metrics do), they are useful for comparing apples-to-apples for a player's full performance and not just biased to the ones a scout sees/remembers. And I agree with others that it is more about predicting probable outcomes and not ensuring them. There are still small sample issues when looking at a 5 or 7 game series and intangibles that metrics can't measure (i.e. the whole is more than the sum of the parts).

I'd certainly take a WS victory instead, but continually frustrating the Cubs is a nice consolation prize.