Playing Catch

I didn't mean literally. I simply meant that he's in the same ballpark as other prospects of note, talent-wise. He was #32 in FanGraphs Top Yankees Prospects in 2023, for example.

I fear Misiorowski will always be haunted by the curse of expectations. Fans will expect too much from him too soon, regardless of his role. Woodruff, Burnes, and Peralta all had BB/9 rates under 4 at a similar stage of development. Misiorowski is over 5, and that's been quite consistent. If he's considered a developing prospect, he has no business sniffing the 26-man roster.

I don't like that the Reds prospects looked really good. I don't like that they signed that catcher out of Venezuela in 2023. That's our territory! Their pitchers were just as filthy as ours. Dinges looked like Tom Cruise in All the Right Moves.

When the Brewers signed Deivi Garcia as a minor league free agent, many eyebrows around the minor league forums were raised. No one was predicting Cy Young, but Garcia, at 25, should probably get outside consideration for being one of the Brewers top 30 prospects.

Thanks to Cool Hand and Oxy for calming me down a little bit. I was real pissy about Thursday in Denver. I like playing the "worst" 14-seed. That makes playing at altitude on Thursday a little easier to swallow, as there is NOTHING worse than losing on Thursday afternoon. The BYU thing also really bothered me. This possible matchup would be the inverse of the 2003-2004 Pitt-Badger matchup. This time, the Badgers are the tough 3-seed, and BYU is the underseeded 6 seed playing in their backyard (kinda).

We may disagree about the value of being aggressive at the deadline, but you are correct. I don't see that changing this season, regardless of where the Brewers are in the standings. Per the consideration of finding themselves a "seller" at the deadline, I don't think it would be the worst timing, franchise-wise. I understand that every season is precious, but it seems like the bubble of organizational talent is very young right now. Dealing a Peralta at the deadline could be lucrative in terms of finding another pitcher with top 100 talent to replace him with.

I know that announcers routinely talk about teams "missing open looks," but there's a reason MSU has one of the best 3% defenses in the country. Teams may be "open" enough to take a good shot, but there's always a guy right there, ready to nick the shooter's elbow. The Badgers hitting 31% on 29 3-point attempts was a strong shooting performance yesterday. The Badgers are good enough in all areas of the game that when they shoot well enough from 3, like yesterday, they are final 4 good. This team wouldn't be able to repeat the gauntlet of teams the 2014-15 team went through to get the Final, but with a couple of fortunate bounces, this team can win their region. As JFS mentioned earlier, Carter Gilmore was terrific against the Spartans yesterday. Perhaps it's from sitting courtside for 4 years, but he seems to sense the game's rhythm. He seems to step up when Tonje and Blackwell are gassed, or when the offense stagnates a little bit. This team needs big moments from him and McGee to keep winning.

Reds vs. Brewers in the Spring Breakout Game tonight, available on MLB Network.

Turang is one of my favorite players on this team, but he's proven to be pretty limited with the bat so far in his career. For his career's sake, it would be good to play a strong defensive shortstop, so he can be deemed an everyday player. That's tougher to pull off at 2nd in the eyes of the faithful.

Burnes, Woodruff, Peralta, Hader, and Williams were all very good to elite in advanced pitching metrics and FIP stats. Strikeouts are valuable to EVERY team. Soft contact is more valuable to elite defensive teams.

Those poems are AI generated, right?

I never even took stats in high school, but can't help but think that the FG folks are looking at this. That's a whopping +9 wins/season for 8 seasons. At some point, that becomes a real trend, and they would need to ask themselves what is happening. My guess is that over time, DRS is proving to be a better metric for projections than UZR or OAA.

We're all crossing our fingers with him! The organization has a dearth of catching prospects after Quero.

C'mon, man. Drop it. Mayo is a significantly better prospect than Wilken, and I suspect that you know that. And inviting people to "prove you wrong," complete with sarcastic emoji-game? Just knock it off.

As the days count down to Opening Day, I'm feeling more and more apprehensive about this season. I think the Cubs win the division, winning somewhere near 93 games. I think the Reds and Brewers will be behind them in the 88-90 win range. Pirates 80-84, Cardinals 72 wins.

That makes me wonder if they are leaning into Dunn/Capra rather than Dunn/Durbin. edit to add: I say this as I fear Durbin is a poor defender at 3rd, and would play more second base, which would mean more moving parts with a platoon situation.

Much like the posters here at Brewerfan, I think the authors of these puff-pieces are increasingly stat-savvy. To use the Brewers' ERA to defend the Brewers' worth or criticize the linked puff-piece, is spurious. The Brewers pitching staff last season was more like, 20th in the major leagues... They just happened to pitch for one of the best defensive teams in the world. Now as to your question if the Brewers can be better this season? I doubt they will perform meaningfully better or worse. For many of their best 2024 performers (Myers, Megill, Koenig, Hudson), it's hard not to project (slightly) worse performance. As for the 2024 underperformers, how much improvement can reasonably be projected? Not much, in my humble opinion. With all of this said, they will probably be one of the best run-prevention teams in MLB. But I think that has more to do with their defense than their pitching staff.

I understand the frustration that Gopher fans had with much of their in-state talent going to their biggest rival, but a basketball roster is small, and increasingly made up of national prospects (and international!). It was a short-sighted, safe decision to hire Johnson. And in some ways, it worked. Johnson seemingly ran a solid program, he just didn't have good enough players. I've said it before, but I don't think the talent exodus out of the Cities is that different from non-athletes. For kids growing up in the Twin Cities, Madison is a very attractive situation. Beautiful campus, great student/academic experience. Just far enough away from parents to be exciting and new. For high schoolers whose college choice is a Big Ten research university, Madison is often viewed as a tier above "The U," which is often VIEWED as the fallback to getting into Madison for local Twin Cities kids. Add in all of the basketball-related benefits, and it's an easy choice for any player that wants to have something of a typical college experience. Gopher fans that refuse to see this reality are blindly biased. In my opinion, the most likely type of program that is successful at Minnesota would be pulling in mid-to-upper tier prospects lacking in academic focus or ambition. Their hope is to make money playing basketball. But a recruiter could highlight the fallback benefits of the U of M... an international city (e.g. international airport) with lots of post-playing employment opportunities. If the Gophers really wanted to get wild, they should hire some hotshot basketball coach out of Serbia.

Yeah, my interpretation was that things were going smoothly until the hurricane damage to the Trop, and at that point, things got messy; Sternberg began to consider a new course, which frustrated the other parties (St. Pete officials/MLB officials). I think MLB needs to deal with the revenue disparities if they are going to strongarm owners into NOT moving their team to a more lucrative situation. At the same time, MLB doesn't want to subsidize owners that aren't even TRYING to make their city's situation viable. If MLB is committed to the Tampa Bay market, their best course of action may be to allow Sternberg to move to another market, and commit an expansion team to the Tampa Bay market.

Yeah, that situation is crazy to me. I'm not sure MLB has helped the situation by leaking that they want Sternberg to sell the team, and they want the team to stay in St. Pete. The St. Pete mayor yesterday said they won't negotiate with the Rays current ownership group, and that "that bridge is burned." If I were Sternberg, why would I sell a team without a stadium deal? That would be lunacy. From context, it sounds as if he is to blame for the new stadium deal disintegrating, but I don't know what MLB's game is here. I presume, they want to corner Sternberg and the Rays to St. Pete, so that future expansion team locations aren't eaten up by an existing team (thus eliminating a bidding city from buying a team for billions).

The University of Minnesota needs to replace Williams Arena. That's the tricky part about turning that program around. I've defended the Barn for many years, but it is time. The Gophers need to hire a publicly facing cheerleader that can bring some attention to that quickly fading structure. Winning/attention will be needed to make a lot of noise toward the issue, and there's the rub. It isn't easy to find coaches that bring enough verve with them to make big changes. It may not be possible, but I think making a run at Tony Bennett would be wise. Obviously, his father did something similar when he went to Washington State, of all places. The pros to such a hire don't require elaboration, and there aren't any cons, either, unless their NIL system can't provide enough to be on par with the other middle-tier programs in the B1G. McCollum, too, looks to be a sure-fire winner. He'd be a great hire. Aside from home runs like Bennett or McCollum, I think the Gophers should hire whoever the money wants to hire. They need a better roster.

The type of league will matter a lot, as will the type of owners in the league. If the league is established, and if the owners are invested, it will be a steep learning curve. If everyone is more or less starting together, don't worry about it. You'll have a great time. I was in two fantasy football leagues for years and years. I quit them both about 10 years ago, and I've never looked back. Fantasy baseball, however, is awesome.

The disappointing PSU loss: They built a big-ish lead on a lazy, senior-day afternoon. The players began thinking about celebrating with their families after the game, relaxing all week before a Friday game (or so I imagine). They allowed PSU to shoot an eFG% of .664 (!), and we're outrebounded. That stinks of poor effort. This team got complacent with a big lead... again. They paid for it. The Badgers have a record of 5-5 on senior day under Gard. Two losses versus highly ranked teams, but also losses against Nebraska and PSU. What is Gard's overall B1G winning percentage at home? .700? Considering this is 10 HOME games that take place at the same time every season, and usually with similar stakes, I think it's fair to question the coaching staff's preparation for senior day. Senior Day is a unique challenge for players and coaching staffs. Preparing the team to handle the unique challenges and pressures associated with it is real. I'm not sure a 10 game sample is large enough to draw many conclusions, but it makes me wonder. These games contribute to the belief that Gard's teams fade late in the year. I don't know that I believe that, but I also get tired of needing to defend late-season performances like this. This was a LOUSY loss.

Marcus Ilver Kamari McGee Carter Gilmore Max Klesmit John Tonje Steven Crowl Grinders, to a man. One of the best groups to have ever enjoyed senior day. That top 6 alone would get to the tournament.

It was a good game. Both teams played hard wire-to-wire. The officials had a devil of a time calling every foul on senior night, so they didn't, including the Tonje drive late. But that no-call was earned. Just a classic old-school B1G grinder. If you are gunna beat Minnesota, you have to defend, and match their consistent effort. The Badgers did just that. That game almost makes up for the Oregon game. If they had switched the two outcomes, I'd probably have been fine with it.