Oxy

What's the scouting report on Brent Diaz? I assume he's minor league roster filler as a 29th round pick a couple years ago, but his numbers have sure been solid in limited time.

It HAS BEEN average, but the depth and talent make it likely to be well above average come playoff time. With all of the options the Brewers have they shouldn't be forced to use guys at that time who have pitched poorly and dragged the overall numbers of the staff down. This is true for every pitching staff in the league, of course, but even moreso for the Brewers.

Originally, basketball was meant to be a non-contact sport. Once Jordan was allowed to carry the ball and travel to easily get past defenders and Barkley and Shaq were allowed to back guys down and overpower them the refs had no choice but to allow more contact. The letter of the law would even say that a big guy posting up can't use his hips to push a defender off the block but that went away sometime in the 80s/90s as well. It's a different game now.

There are a lot of crazy trade opportunities with Cleveland. One could put some combination of Arcia, Shaw, Aguilar, Hiura, Turang, Burnes, Peralta, Ashby and Rasmussen on the table if they somehow make Lindor or Ramirez available in addition to one of their starters. I can't see it happening, but it would be something if it did. Ramirez is having a very Shaw like season, but I'd still take him after his last couple of years.

I'd rather get Kluber. Hopefully we don't need a starter to get us into the playoffs, we need a guy who can anchor us in the playoffs. He should be cheaper considering he'd be coming off injury and he's older. Still, his track record is a lot better than Bauers'. His option years would give us nice flexibility in the offseason as well. It's a higher risk, higher reward, lower cost type of deal. If he's actually valued higher than Bauers, then sure, I'd take Bauers. As far as what we give up, that's tricky. I'd go Burnes or Peralta, Ray or Grisham, Thomas Jankins and then a lower level flier guy like Gray, Bello, Rodriguez, Fernandez or Abreu. I really have no idea though. It's easier to say that I want to keep Hiura, Turang, Ashby, Rasmussen, Woodruff and one of Peralta or Burnes. Everybody else can go. Although before the season I would have put Zack Brown on that list, so things could change quickly between now and July 31st.

Agreed. They are the perfect example of a team who assembles the highest WAR guys they can get at each individual position in order to create a whole that is far less than the sum of its parts. I don't get the impression that winning the game is as important as putting up stats and picking up paychecks for those guys.

If we make the playoffs, the only pitchers on the staff right now who have a greater than 90% chance of making the playoff roster are Hader and Woodruff. Jeffress and Davies I'd put right at 90%. Everybody else I'd put at 75% or lower. That's an extremely odd position to be in for a team with World Series aspirations, but that's how I see it right now.

Ya that's fair, if Aguilar hits well that really clears things up and is best case scenario for the team. The arbitrary end points you posted are sorta misleading though. You start it with a hot two game stretch where he hit 3 homers and it inflates the other 90ish PAs he's had since that time (232/360/319). Sure. From May 16th til now he's slashing .147/.231/.265 in 40 PAs. From March 28th to April 28th he hit .129/.225/.127 in 82 PAs Which means that from April 29th to May 15th he hit .357/.481/.619 in 55 PAs. On the whole, I don't think Thames or Aguilar are good full-time options, but I think a pretty strict R/L platoon will give us above average production from here on out with a possibility for MVP level production at times for either of them. We aren't relying on them to be a linchpin in our lineup. Yelich, Moose and Grandal have been very consistently excellent. We're not going to find better options elsewhere.

I do love these retrospective looks at buy low/sell high candidates.

Since April 29th, Aguilar is slashing .263/.376/.461. I highly doubt we will be able to significantly upgrade at 1B from a Thames/Aguilar platoon. Plus, once Hiura comes up we'll just have another roster spot to find. We might be able to find a guy who is having a decent year and has outproduced the guys we have, but moving forward and trying to predict production from here on out is a totally different matter. None of those guys are actually an upgrade.

I agree that we aren't going to make any big moves at the deadline. We have no obvious holes anywhere on the roster, lots of decent depth and a middling farm system that will likely need to be tapped into next year when Chacin, Anderson, Thames, Moose and Grandal are all likely gone. I'd say we need an Ace, but our depth might make up for us not having a TOR type guy (although Woodruff might get there), and nobody is going to trade us an ace for a whole bunch of middling pieces. Getting another relief arm seems likely, but I'm not sure that any guy we could get would actually be more talented than the guys we have...same with the SP situation.

I agree with this if the K rate is the same. I'm wary of low avg., high OBP, high K rate guys as they basically feast on bad pitchers and get owned by good pitchers. Moose is pretty good at making contact as opposed to a Thames. Thames cannot slow his bat down in order to even foul off a borderline pitch, so he just takes it (good strategy for him) resulting in either a BB or a K. It seems like Moose can actually fight off good pitches or even hit them for line drive singles/doubles. That means he'll BB less and K less...but put more balls in play and have more success against guys who can really work the corners. ALSO: this is only from my observations. I'd appreciate it if the more advanced stat keepers could either corroborate or correct my observations.

Since nobody has mentioned the OA, I'll mention the OA. A quirky mix of sci-fi meta-storytelling and social para-psychology with some multi-dimensional and/or new age malarkey thrown in. If you like M Night Shyamalan's stuff, you'll probably like The OA. Brit Marling has a very strange intelligent crazy cat-lady vibe to all her that is both enchanting and revolting. She's made a bunch of interesting indie movies over the last 10 years (along with Zat Batmanglij and Mike Cahill; The Sound of My Voice, Another Earth, The East, I, Origins) and many of the themes from those movies come together in the OA. It's one of those things that might be over-the-top pretentious, but I can't stop watching. The last episode in season 1 has the most ridiculous climax of a show I've ever seen. Season 2 gets weirder, but also actually explains a lot of the crazy loose ends that you are sifting around throughout all of season 1.

I think it will depend on how this season ends up. If we flounder down the stretch and miss the playoffs I can't see us re-signing Moose or Grandal. Likewise, if we win the World Series I can't see them coming back either. If things keep chugging along well and we perform well in the playoffs but come up just a bit short (again) then I could see how an extension could make sense. It doesn't seem like it would be a wise long term financial decision, but if Stearns and MA believe it to be so, then it will be so.

Does Perez go 2 innings tonight? Burnes, Claudio, Perez? Who is next in line after Perez now that Kratz is gone?

Certainly, as you've seen it in the last 2 years. Stearns packs AAA with pitching depth and covets guys with options. Why does he do that? Pitching is volatile. Especially relievers. They shuffle shuffle shuffle until they find the ones who have it going that year then they move forward with that group.aa Very few teams do that to the same level as MKE. He plans for this. It's a value generating tool. Get a lot of moderate MLB talent, see who has a year of it. So when he goes, You could pull out 4 pitchers from any team and improve their ERA. MKE, unlike most teams, can actually do that because they are sifting through a dearth of options. If you remove the 4 worst on any team, sure the ERA looks better. Can they? No. Can MKE? Yes. That's Stearns model. Houston did that before he came to MKE. Both teams have talked of the same thing. You need 10 starters cuz you don't know. That's not just injury protection. I agree with you here, but I think you meant a wealth of options, rather than a "dearth" of options. Also, while that seems to be a strategy of his going into a season, it pretty much didn't work this year. Every AAA/A type guy with (or without) options that MKE picked up either got hurt or flopped through the first 2 months. The internal depth that MKE already had has been better than any of the external acquisitions. Still, we are so deep that veteran guys like Chacin and Gonzalez who are out of options STILL have to come up with phantom-ish injuries in order to get the guys we want pitching right now to be pitching. Also, while the talent and the depth is great to have, things still haven't settled to the point of even knowing who will be on the postseason roster (if we are fortunate to make it that far) outside of Hader and...Woodruff?? and Davies?? Even those guys could be left off if other guys step up and their performances go south in the last 4 months of the season. It's really a unique situation.

I figured at least one of the 3 youngsters would flop out of the gate in the starting role, thus I wanted either Miley or Gio. We missed them both, then we half fixed that miss by picking up Gio late. If they were confident that Nelson was going to come back strong then I get not signing either right away, but it still seemed a bit risky. With Chacin's poor start we still aren't anywhere near having a settled rotation. Woodruff and Davies are locked in for the next month anyway, then we'll see who emerges at that point. I love the fierce competition. Everybody knows they are going to get a fair shot and it is probable that we are going to end up with quality numbers at the end of the year once everything shakes out.

I'm not sure what this is. I'm not sure either, but it's the lineup thread and I'm in a posting mood and it actually makes sense right now... I don't really think it SHOULD be done, but it would be interesting.

So: Thames/Aguilar Grandal Yelich Hiura Moose Braun/Cain/Gamel Braun/Cain/Gamel Arcia

I'm fine with that, but that's more because it creates a very nice R/L/S balance to the order and because Moose, and Hiura are hitting well right now than it does to do with Braun hitting poorly. Could switch Braun and Hiura and that would be fine too, as a suspect pitchers will adjust to Hiura at some point (then hopefully he adjusts right back). Until Thames hit a couple homers this series he's shown no power this year, nor much quality contact either. Aguilar's line since April 29th is .266/.388/.484 Thames' line since April 29th (before today) is .209/.376/.299 I like the Thames/Aguilar platoon, but perhaps they should be leading off until they find some power?

No, that was me, thanks for the reminder. Ha Seriously you two need to change your names so they don't run together in my memory. Agreed. Along with True Blue Brew Crew. I have no idea who has posted what among those 3.

Before today, over the past 2 weeks, he was 2 for his last 18(.111) and 7 for his last 32(.219). Small sample sure, but that's what streaks are, clumps of small samples. So, he had 2 bad games on Friday and Saturday, going 0 for 9. Before that he was 2 for 9 in the previous week, and 7 for 21 (.333) in the last 2 weeks. Then he had a couple of hits today. Again, he had back-to-back bad games-- which will happen about another dozen times this year, and every single time it happens it will be cited, unlike every other player on the roster.

Anybody up on the fast risers and free fallers over the last 6 months?

I'm not sure where this Braun being ice cold thing is coming from. He's had 4 multi-hit games in his last 7 starts since May 24th. He hasn't hit a homer in awhile, but I didn't really expect him to hit 35 bombs as a non-full time player this year. The microscope on him is ridiculous around here.

I certainly don't expect that kind of production consistently, but I DO expect that he won't have those months where he puts up a .400 OPS or worse. Gotta stay away from those prolonged slumps.