DHonks

I like all these goals...let's get to 85 first, as that wins my season bet on the Brewers. Then I don't care much about how many wins, as long as we win the division for those bets. Once we achieve those two, then my NLCS champs and World Series champ bets are in play.

While he doesn't drive the ball with authority, I love that he doesn't hit high fly balls with tongs of launch angle. His line drive shots to all fields often get over the infielders and infront/between outfielders. Love his walks as well, and his defense has made tremendous progress. Pina may be among the elite defenders in the league at catcher, but Narvaez isn't a big drop-off. I hope they are our tandem for a few more years.

I think our pitching depth is fantastic, but that's what we're built for. I don't see us dealing any of our arms unless a team blows us away. We have them all under control for several more years, and now isn't really the time to deal them. While Houser might have nice value, he fits wonderfully as our #4 starter. The only one that I'd probably consider moving is Lauer. I like the increased velocity and use of a cutter, but he really doesn't have a true out pitch. We could probably find a team willing to give us good value for him, but then again he's cheap and with another good year could really have value. Don't forget the initial struggles of Peralta and Burnes. There are no guarantees that Ashby will be great instantly next year. I've always been an advocate of breaking guys in via the pen so that they can work on attacking hitters and finding success before we put them into a rotation. Plus one final question....are the Brewers likely deploying a 6-man rotation next year? I'd think so. After this year's huge IP jump, I don't see them switching to every 5th day and giving everyone another 30+ innings. The time to deal Hader would be after next year, unless the team can work some magic. Maybe I could see moving Suter, but what is his value? Do advanced metrics love him? He gets outs, he's a great clubhouse culture guy....but I think he has more value to us than to another team. I think we'll keep all our pitchers except we'll let Anderson go (despite his very strong season). I think we'll try to make a run at Avi but will fall short. We'll probably try to acquire an OF for RF. They'll take a look at 1b, although we've been MacGuyvering some bargain level production there since Prince left. We'll try to find a 3b. But realistically, the Brewers are probably pretty comfortable with Urias, Adames, and Wong 3b-SS-2b, and Peterson being a key depth piece. I don't see any changes at catcher as well. This team is built for pitching and defense. I can see Hiura initially trying to rebuild value at AAA next year, with them possibly moving him all around to build value to help this team with versatility. Will he ever be good at LF, RF, 2b, 3b, or 1b? Probably not. But could he be serviceable for a few games at a time at each spot...yes if he finds his bat.

To be honest, I could see Yelich moving to 1b in the near future. He has very nice speed on the base paths but he just doesn't get to much in the OF. He's kind of a long-strider with slow acceleration. Wasn't 1b his position in HS or the early minors?

thanks. In my head I typed him in there. I've really liked Anderson his entire career. He's seemingly evolved with the Brewers into a sinker-changeup pitcher that pounds the strike zone. But I would pencil him into the "missing" portion of the list

I hope that's a tongue in cheek comment. Any A-baller could duplicate what Shaw did this year. I hope that's also a joke. He had some big time hits for us early in the year during rallies. He played some very good defense. Unfortunately he just didn't have enough hits. Good luck to Travis, but it's pretty laughable to think that any A-baller could even have done what he did.

Some early thoughts: Rotation (can we get by with 3 starters?) Woodruff Peralta Burnes Swingmen: Lauer Houser Ashby Short relief: Strickland Suter Late innings: Cousins Boxberger Williams Hader Missing: Sanchez Milner Topa Norris

Right now I would assume the qualifying offers go away. That’s probably number one on the list of demands for players. Really major league baseball should go with a system more like the NFL where they don’t punish a team for signing people but rather they compensate a team for losing people.

With Lauer as the 6th starter, or trade bait for a position player..?? I have to imagine we will need a six man rotation again next year To avoid having another substantial jump in innings pitched for everyone. People need to remember that all of our starters took some lumps in their first year in the rotation and Ashby is no sure thing to dominate next year

At this point wouldn't they rather NOT get him in game action, thus saving a minor league season before he needs to be protected?

Vogelbach was hot before the injury, hot in AAA, and is a likely cheap DH for our 8 remaining AL road games and for next year I wouldn’t be shocked if someone else with a nagging injury were put on IL for Vogey, but there’s a point where we already have redundancy in the OF

It means he’s not eligible to play in rehab games but the brewers will likely work him out for a few days before making a decision I wouldn’t be totally shocked if they felt covered in the OF with Taylor and Peterson, and they DFAd JBJ

Wasn’t it 2011 when the Cards were like 10 back of the playoffs entering September, wound up winning the wild card, beating the Brewers in NLCS, and winning the series? Need to step on those cockroaches while they’re still sputtering

Lindblom and Ashby are candidates for Saturday as well, especially if they need some length

Wasn’t his slider absolutely filthy?

I’d try to approach Avi to see if he’d be willing to add 1-2 years. I doubt it, as I think he’ll get a nice 3 year free agent deal

I'd like to see the 10th inning (and maybe the 11th) played with nobody on base. But I definitely feel that by the 12th it's a fine idea.

I don't see how this happens. Our current options for 2022: 1b: Tellez, Vogelbach, Hiura, Shaw, Peterson, and a wild-card--Yelich 3b: Urias, Shaw, Peterson, future acquisition DH: likely Vogelbach Given that our rotation will start to get pricey, as will our closer, I don't know how much we can spend on pricey free agents like Escobar. Any 3b help will likely be acquired in a trade or as a free agent signing in late January or early September

We don't know exact dates, symptoms, etc. We know the Journal Sentinel has reported Strickland and Cousins should be back mid-week. Hader sometime the following week. Guessing Lauer will be available this weekend as 10 days would be this Thurs. So we could theoretically have Lauer and Houser pitch this weekend of piggyback. Well, Lindblom started in AAA today. So I'm guessing they have some other plan. They can always start Burnes and Woodruff on regular 4 day rest, but that would go against their stated plans

What’s frightening about these games is that throwing fill in starters with a depleted bullpen behind them really negates the advantage the Brewers would usually have against teams like the Cubs and Pirates. I don’t want to count on giving up 7 runs in the first inning and coming back to win. There’s nothing that can be done about it, but if the Brewers don’t win at least 4 or 5 of these 7 games it will feel like they are using more ground. First of all, our bullpen should start returning to full strength during the Cubs series. Another positive is that it’s normally not possible to give a guy 10 days of rest during August. I think the team will be stronger in Sept and Oct because of this. It’s frustrating we’ve lost 3 of 4 and probably could have won all 4, but so be it.

Guessing Peralta, Ashby, Lindblom, and Burnes vs the Cubs

Yes….So many deals of Stearns are about player control and paying less salary to free up $ for other parts of the team. Often goes unnoticed. You can almost say the Brewers won this trade because of the extra money they saved to spend on other parts of the team. very true. Also, if we hope to sign Hader, Woodruff, and Burnes for the long-term, we'll need to do the Rays approach of churning the rest of the roster. Someone gets to very good, trade them for talented players and develop them.

Let's all wake up and look at things for what they are. He's proven to be a defensive liability with "maybe" at best hit/power tools. Please define "sell low" with that in mind. I know it's a different era and front office, but we had the worst 1b and 2b in MLB playing side-by-side in the 00's. Liability is a loose word at 2b when we had to suffer through Rickie Weeks for so long. Scooter was only better because it's hard to be worse than Weeks. Smart money says Hiura goes to AAA next year and has to regain his value at 1b, 2b, DH, or wherever. He's not the first hitter to burst onto the scene and then struggle. Carlos Delgado went from leading the league in homers in April to being sent down. Fernando Tatis? Carlos Gomez? Or how about people that didn't burst on the scene, but struggled mightily before becoming great? Jose Bautista was downright awful. Jose Guillen bad as well. Alex Rodriguez. Every career doesn't follow the same developmental curve. I wish they'd all be like Braun or Fielder, but that's extremely rare.

To be honest, the service clock concern is popular among fans and most teams don't worry about it. Let's look at Turang. If he's up for 30 days in September (I don't think he will be), that's 30 days. But that means we'll still have him for AT LEAST 6 more years in the organization. He likely wouldn't be ready to play much on the roster until 2023. So if he's up for less than 1.0 season before then, he could be an opening day starter for 2023 and still be under contract for 5 more years. I still don't see Ray in the majors. He hasn't shown any reason to be in AAA, let alone the majors.

The Brewers sold high on Grisham. Remember at the start of the 2019 season, and there were only a few of us that hoped he might ever see the big leagues. Nearly everyone on the site had given up on him. It's possible the Brewers front office had some questions going forward regarding whether he could maintain that 2019. What's really weird is that we were hearing he was a corner OF and people weren't high on his D (especially in CF), then he goes and wins a Gold Glove