The stache

In honor of the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the Moon, let's see if Christian Yelich can send his 36th home run into Geosynchronous orbit.

Happy to see Gio back!

Oh, how I wish we still had Will Smith right now. Trading him for Phil Bickford (he of the 7.59 ERA at high A ball, right now) and Andrew Susac (who's in AAA....for the Royals) was a real head scratcher.

/puts on rally cap. Now would be a time for Lo to get on.

7 walks tonight issued by Brewers pitchers.

Fixed that for you.

I'm seeing an average exit velocity of 93.3, with a MLB average of 87.5. Is this for all at bats, or home runs only? His hard hit pct is 53.1%. MLB average is 34.4%. I should have known better looking at his scouting reports before being called up. Baseball Savant gives him a 70 hit tool, and 60 power, on the 70-20 scale. Yikes.

I knew Hiura could flat our hit. But the amount of power he displays surprises me. I'm aware of what he's done in the minors, but it doesn't always translate to the Majors. But 9 HR In 124 AB, and not yet 23? He's a legit 30 homer a season guy. ESPN's home run tracker is no more. Would somebody be good enough to post a site that tracks distance and exit velocity? Does Fangraphs track this anywhere? The thought of Hiura and Yelich back to back for the foreseeable future makes me giddy.

I mean...yah he kind of is. All players go through highs and lows. Ignoring something just because they ended or started the year hot/poor is so popular, but so misleading. One could sit here and say, "Well after his hot streak in May his OPS has been merely average at .750."...now he doesn't look so impressive. His BA in his last 14 days is .227, but if you took 28 days it is .305. All about how you want to cut that pie. I mean...no, I really wasn't. Please don't put words in my mouth. Should you need clarification on what I've said, ask instead of making assumptions. Nowhere did I say to ignore that first month. I said he's been pretty productive the last sixty games. I also referenced his slow start to July. I'm not sure what is ambiguous about my comment.

Put Bumgarner on a deserted island with a bunch of web cams tracking his every movement. I'd love to watch him lose his ____ on a daily basis. Biggest spaz in the Majors. Great pitcher, but I couldn't like him less, even if he were on the Cardinals.

We're seeing eye to eye, Adam. I think that you're just doing a better job of managing your frustration than I am. I do think Gio's return helps. Is he the difference between our team being a few games above .500, and winning 90-95 games? Clearly not. But, you do everything you can, within reason (reason being dictated by your franchise's financial resources, and young talent, which are, essentially, commodities) to improve the 25 guys one your active roster. Sometimes improvements come incrementally. Gio's return is a positive step forward. How long he can go, how often he can start-that remains to be seen. "Dead arm" concerns me, but he's had a history of reliability, at least from an innings pitched perspective. He's thrown at least 175 innings in 8 of the last 9 seasons, so I expect that he'll be a workhorse. He should be rested, his arm fresh, and hopefully, he's able to at least partially replicate what he did for us last year. His addition to the starting rotation means somebody moves to the pen, and a guy on the back end of the pen, one that doesn't really deserve to be here, gets sent down. In my mind, that's not one positives, it's two. It's a middle-of-the-rotation, crafty veteran replacing a young guy that has been inconsistent, and, it also makes the bullpen pool Craig Counsell gets to choose from on a nightly basis that much stronger. Secondly, a guy like Tyler Saladino has absolutely no place on our 25 man roster. He's a wasted spot. He offers virtually nothing offensively. He has no power. Doesn't get on base, and even worse, he has a ridiculously high strike out rate. He doesn't put the ball in play; never advances runners. That's at least fungible with guys that hit the ball out of the park. Take someone like Joey Gallo. Before this year, all he did was hit home runs and strike out. In two plus seasons, he'd hit 88 home runs in 1,082 at bats. That's a bomb once every 12.30 ABs. He'd also struck out a whopping 479 times, a K rate of 44.3%. As ridiculous as that is, he was young, and with that power, if he could increase his walk rate (13.4% in 1,262 PAs) and his batting average slightly, it was worth being patient. What happened? Gallo took a gigantic step forward this season. He's still striking out 46% of the time, but his AVG is up to .266 (he was a career .203 hitter coming into the season), and his walk rate has jumped substantially (51 walks in 277 PAs, an increase of 5% to 18.4%). He's due for some regression, but if he maintains even half of those gains, with his power and above average defense, he's a perennial All Star. He's at a 1.098 OPS, a 160 OPS+ in the AL. Though he will have cold streaks, his ceiling is high. A guy with a 46% K rate, but a .406 OBP and .600 + OPS will start for most any team in the Bigs. Saladino? He's fallen off a cliff. His K rate, which was 23% before coming to Milwaukee, has tanked. He's whiffing at nearly a 35% rate as a Brewer, including 44% this year. He's a decent defender, but he never walks, and he doesn't really make hard contact. With him in the lineup, the bottom third of our lineup is virtually worthless. Why Counsell doesn't see that perplexes me daily. Ok, so Arcia needs to get his head together. He needs to grow up, and show more discipline at the plate. But you don't make Arcia any better by benching him in favor of a complete scrub. Arcia has sent 12 balls into the seats. His OBP is terrible, but he has some power. It's his inconsistency and lack of maturity that makes Counsell nuts. I get that. But the entire team suffers with Saladino in the lineup. There is no justification for his being in a Milwaukee uniform None. Move him off the 25, and bring up any one of a number of better options. That's a small improvement for the team by improving bench strength. Get in Arcia's head, and send the right message.

Blow it all up? Rebuild the system? Seriously? A year ago, we were a game from the World Series. This year has been a massive disappointment, somewhat due to injury, somewhat due to regression, but you guys are willing to toss in the towel, admit defeat, and start over? What's more likely? This team, which is virtually the same as last year's team, massively over-performed last year, or they have massively under-performed this year? I choose to accept the second option. Catcher has been massively upgraded in the offseason. You don't get many catchers that will hit 30 bombs. So we get rid of Yelich. Get "big time starting pitcher prospects in return." The Brewers have had "big time starting pitching prospects" before. Have they shown the ability to develop top tier pitching? Wily Peralta was a big time prospect. Where's he now? Ok, so we got snake bit with Nelson's shoulder injury. But either we play to win with some pretty good pieces, make some smart decisions in the offseason to enhance them, and keep trying to get to the Series with our window open, or we're just small timers constantly rebuilding every few years. We had one of the top farm systems in baseball, got Braun, Fielder, Weeks, Hart, Hardy and Gallardo to the Majors. We made noise in the playoffs exactly one time with all that talent. Won one division title. Now, we've added Yelich, Cain, Moustakas and Grandal. Cain has been down this year, injury/regression. Yelich, Moose and Grandal were all All Stars. Yelich won the MVP last year, and is one of three guys with a legit chance to win it this year. Are we sure we want to dump them all again, and start over? If the Brewers are just going to be glorified rebuilders the rest of my life, I'll go find another team to cheer for. I've seen this same BS for 40 years. It's possible to win it all without a massive payroll. Look at Minnesota this year. They are not only crushing the ball, they've got some very good pitching. Jake Odorizzi was an All Star this year. Remember him? Jose Berrios and Odorizzi were both All Stars. Both have 145+ ERA+. The problem is that Milwaukee has completely dropped the ball with some very questionable decisions. I don't know how the front office can make such great moves like the ones I just described, and then let Wade Miley go. He cost $4.5 million this season, a real bargain. And he's got a 2.4 WAR with the Astros this season. He's 7-4 with a 3.32 ERA. He was great in Milwaukee last year. Why do you let cheap, effective veteran pitchers go? Gio Gonzalez was great with us last year, too. Brewers granted him free agency. Fortunately, he was available when the Yankees dropped him. We got him back, and we're paying him $2 million. He'll be back in a week or two, and having him in the rotation should be a big boost. The Brewers put too much faith in Jimmy Nelson's recovery, and now it's biting them in the rear. They had no real contingency plan in place. And some of the team's roster management this year has been questionable, to say the least. How does Tyler Saladino continue to get playing time? Nobody is running away with this division. As poorly as we've played, we still have a shot at it. Guys like Aguilar and Thames have been hitting much better after dismal starts. Hiura is a huge boost to the offense. I'm not throwing in the towel. No way.

Taken as a whole, Braun's 2019 at the plate doesn't look dramatically different from his 2018 performance. But he had a terrible first month of the season. On April 30th, he was hitting .196 with a slash line of .250 OBP/.381 SLG/.631 OPS. Look no further than his .209 BAbip for an explanation. In 2018, his BAbip, which had been .331 between 2007 and 2017, dropped to a career low .274. But since the start of May 2019, he's been a completely different hitter. The last 60 games, he's actually been pretty damned good. May 1 to July 15 60 games played 199 at bats 28 runs 61 hits 14 doubles 8 home runs 27 RBI 6/7 stolen bases 12 walks 47 strikeouts .307 AVG, slash line of .346 OBP/.497 SLG/.843 OPS .373 BAbip 123 OPS + Clearly that's not MVP Ryan Braun from his peak. But for 35 years old, OPSing 23% above league average is pretty good. The thing killing his WAR is his defense. But there's no question he's been producing offensively the last 2.5 months, overall. He's had a slow start to July, but I've got a sneaking feeling he's about to go on a hot streak.

Yeah, this is terrible. Tyler Skaggs died about 15 minutes from where I live, in Southlake. I feel awful for his family, friends and teammates. His new wife, most of all. I don't know what it is with the Angels. Tragedy just seems to follow the team, and show up every so often. Lyman Bostock, Nick Adenhart, Tyler Skaggs. Let's not forget Donnie Moore, who committed suicide soon after he retired from baseball. He never recovered after giving up the home run to Dave Henderson in the '86 ALCS. Injuries derailed his career, but mentally, he blamed himself on costing the Angels their first pennant.

Trout with his 30th home run. 8 RBI in the two games against Seattle, thus far. 75 on the year. From the #2 spot. Wow.

And that's so wrong. He was terrible.

Only place I saw it was on MLB Extra Innings.

Thank God!!!!!! Great AB Benny!!

Just an opp field single could do it. Make it happen, Benny.

Please crush one, Keston. Please.

That's 24 Brewers strike outs in the first two games of this series. Ouch.

Every Brewer fan in the seats should have been blowing that ball fair.

Braun walk off home run. He's due. His last home run was on June 19th. But 7 doubles in those 46 at bats. Please send on into the seats, Brauny. And add a bat flip just to see Bumgarner lose his s___!

All you can do is laugh at this point. This team finds more ways to lose.... And it all started with the leadoff walk.