Thurston Fluff

Arizona had a season recently where their record was something like 20 games better than their Pythagorean. It was because they refused to use their best relievers in games they were trailing. Drove fans nuts, but it worked. Much the same happened here. That's 100% the manager's call. Other managers would have done things differently. It likely would've led a burnt out bullpen. I'm not so sure I buy that. People tend to view a player's talent level as a set number when in reality talent is more a range of possibilities than a static number. As an example there was a thread about Kris Davis' batting average because it is so rare to be so stable for several years in a row like that. There was also a thread about how stable Hernan Perez's production has been for several years now. They are at one end of the spectrum while some others have much more volatility from year to year. Yet that volatility gets smoothed over in a five year period which make it appear like each player would give you roughly the same production from year to year. Given that some players have more range in their production from year to year than others it seems to me a team with a lot of players who are wildly inconsistent from year to year is bound to be harder to peg a set number of wins for.

For me it's the moment that didn't happen. They didn't crash and burn at the end. They had a slump in there that looked like it could derail the season but overcame from it for once.

I think there are two aspects of a stadium. The first, and most important to the Brewers, are the internal facilities that the players use. The other is the fan amenities that draws in a crowd. From what I read they are planning on upgrading the facilities instead of building a new stadium. If the upgrades are for the players it doesn't matter for the Brewers if the fans are sitting on metal buckets. In a weird way it might actually help them stabilize their musical chairs with affiliates. If the stadium isn't a good draw due to the fan amenities it might make it easier for Attanasio to buy the franchise. In an ideal world I think the Brewers owning their affiliates is best. Once he owns the franchise then he can work to get a taylormade stadium that fits what the Brewers want.

I don't really think either way is wrong but just some food for thought. Things that get passed down from generation to generation also have the stories that go along with it. If someone a generation or so from now have the metals cleaned or what not and find out some are not original it may make them question the stories behind them. Speaking for myself that would be worse than not having the metals anymore.

Yeah, that was high quality January baseball reading right there. Hot takes just flying. Obviously there were people who loved the deal, and people who hated it. Hopefully those who hated it, or were extremely upset by the prospects we gave up, have come around. Yelich truly has proven to be a special player. While I wasn't one who hated the deal I didn't love it either. I was skeptical the overall value was going to be in our favor. It's still to early to know that but Yelich has produced so well now that even if the value slants in their favor down the road I am fine with the trade. Sometimes the timing matters as much as overall value.

I agree this a a worse stretch than the Brewers back to back 21 then 20 games in a row stretch. I do think however that the Brewers would have been better suited to deal with a 30 game stretch in September than the Cubs are. That is a hidden disadvantage of trading all your top minor league talent away. Finally as far as how they are handling it it's too early to tell how they will deal with it wins and loses wise but they sure complained about it far more than the Brewers did.

Odell Jones in 1988 maybe? Went 7 perfect before giving up a walk in the 8th & a single in the 9th. That's who I was thinking of. I thought it was the 90's but me being wrong is nothing new. You're memory is obviously way better than mine.

In the 90's a reliever making a spot start pitched a no hitter through 8 innings for the Brewers. I don't remember his name off hand but he was an older guy who, as a mop up man for a 90's era Brewers team, was clearly on his last legs in the league. I think Lopez may very well carve out a nice career for himself but this also could be the highlight of his career.

That is quite perceptive. It usually even out but it never feels like it when that bad luck happens to your team.

Yeah, I just moved to the area and I would’ve figured the buzz for playoff baseball would have been the talk from just about everyone. Hasn’t been the case so far. A little disappointing on that end of things. It's weird. I see Brewer gear all over the state but it's almost like people are waiting for a big losing streak. I didn't get that sense back in 2008 or 2011. Maybe because the guys powering the team haven't been here all that long? I dunno. What do you expect? They've crapped their pants in September twice since the last playoff appearance. Casual fans aren't going to buy into this team until their pants stay clean in September.

WAR is a fan stat. It boils everything down to one number so everyone can compare any two players with one simple number. To use it for any other purpose is malpractice.

When a player hits multiple rough seasons he either keeps doing the same thing and hope for some luck or he changes his approach to become less dependent on luck. Miley chose the latter. While there is some luck to this run, I agree it all can't be attributed to pure luck.

That seems to happen to a lot of fans in every sport. It seems like fans can only enjoy the ride to first championship and any subsequent one they only enjoy after they win it. The whole ride to the championship is loaded with fret and complaints. See the Packers for a hometown example.

Since the Brewers have the waiver priority the Cards can't get him if we don't want them to.

Anytime an ump has to interpret intent one side is going to be unhappy. I hate rules that require officials to interpret a player's intent. Sometimes it's unavoidable but this in one rule that really shouldn't be all that hard to tweak so umps don't have to decide what someone else was thinking at the time.

Does anyone else stay awake at night wondering where Clark Kent changes into Superman these days?

Yes I did read the article closely but I wasn't basing my point off the article. For Bosch to talk about how easy it is to beat MLB testing while simultaneously ignoring he got caught by MLB's overall anti-PED approach is missing the big picture on his part. Baseball, both players and owners, deserve some credit for taking the extra step of adding an investigative approach above and beyond pee testing the players. They could very easily have just gone the NFL route and did cosmetic testing without really trying to rid the sport of PEDs. They didn't and a lot of players, not to mention a major PED pusher, got caught because of it.

That was a good read thanks adambr2. It is kind of ironic how Bosch mocked baseball for it's weak testing but not recognizing he got caught by MLB. The best thing they did was add the investigative arm to the anti-PED crusade.

Which is exactly what he should have done. Last year's team had no shot of going deep into the playoffs and this one probably doesn't either. It would be nice to make the wild card but making some huge move aimed at 2018 would have been a mistake, not a sign of a good GM. I almost feel like he did too much this deadline. I agree with everything you said but this. Any team that makes the playoffs has a fair shot of going deep in the playoffs. Some may have a better shot than others but every team has more than no shot.

I agree with this, but I do wonder where that new farm talent will come from. This team really doesn't seem to be in a place to carry a Rule 5 guy, and the international market seems to me to feature players that are pretty far away from making an impact. Yelich, Cain, and Braun are all here for a while, and I think you could say the same about Aguilar, Shaw, and Arcia. Santana isn't going to bring much back even if he is deemed redundant, and, while I could see the Crew parting with Thames, he likely has little value too, especially so close to the end of a deal. Maybe if the young rotation arms pan out, you could part with one of our depth SPs, but that's risky because pitchers break and because you might not get a lot back. I expect, as you say, there to be enough talent in the system to keep the team competitive through or near the end of Cain's deal, but to get to that place where we're just continually putting out good teams with a shot is going to take some near flawless drafting and smart leveraging of major-league assets. I think the next couple years we can maintain our current level of play with who we have coming up now or are here already and still be able to part with a couple redundant pieces. I wouldn't be opposed to rebuilding the minor league depth by trading some guys with limited time left on their contracts. Someone like Chase Anderson or Thames could get us one or two low minors prospects that are a few years away but have some upside. they won't bring in big names or major numbers but they can get us prospects who end up like the ones we lost for Moose, Schoop and Soria. The international market may not help in the near future but if we keep getting them every year in five or so years there will be a steady string of them helping out. The only way for that to happen is to start now and keep going.

Nothing of value to add but that was funny.

Ditto here with the caveat that I didn't think he was going to get that many years. I really wasn't interested in him enough to think that many years at that salary was a good investment.

Starting to do better though? The two starts prior would terrible. Starting to do well, in my opinion, would be multiple starts. Not one appearance. He needs to make sure all his pitches are hitting the spots he needs them to hit. In a rehab start he very well might throw the same pitch in the same location ten times in a row just to make sure he can hit that spot every time he needs to. He may go heavy on the fastball for three innings then switch to almost all change ups. Some of them are likely to get hit but not allowing any of them to become hits wasn't the point of throwing ten in a row. While everyone wants to make sure he's ready fans only have results to go on. I don't think that matters factors into their views the same way.

I highly doubt that after getting worked over by A and AAA batters throughout his seemingly-forever rehab start and stops, and basically close to his last rehab appearance, he was working on his stuff. I would be willing to bet he was throwing max effort. My point is rehab starts, especially the early ones after a long DL stint, are not about results. They are about getting ready to return to the majors. I think the fact he is starting to do better probably means he's getting closer to being back. To discard the latest rehab game because his earlier ones were less effective is to ignore the fact that someone out as long as he was isn't going to treat early rehab start the same as someone who missed a couple weeks or a month. He had to know he wasn't going to have just one or two rehab starts then come back and he worked on it more like spring training than a one or two start rehab.

I don't think you can read too much from the results of minor league rehab starts. Doubly so after this long a layoff. It's like looking at a veteran pitcher's spring numbers. He's probably working on getting a feel for all his pitches and might not even have been going max effort in the first few outings. If he's physically ready I'd be happy to have him back starting.