The stache

And, Kemp has had a total 0.3 WAR for all of 2017 and 2018. No, WAR is hardly the be-all, end-all. But for a quick gauge of how a player has performed over time, it's pretty good. Braun's 4.4 WAR in 2016 is 1.7 more wins than Kemp has been worth over the last seven seasons combined, including 2018. Keep believing that Kemp is going to continue hitting the ball like he has been. History would suggest otherwise.

Braun's career BAbip coming into this season was .331. This year, it's .236. He's ripped two balls today, and has nothing to show for it. Kemp's career BAbip coming into the season was .336. This year, it's .364. Going forward, it's clear that Braun is due for an uptick in his performance. He's hitting the ball hard. Kemp, meanwhile, is due for a regression.

Yes, too bad we don't have Kemp and his 1.5 WAR in through 98 games. That 2.5 WAR projected over 162 games would have been such a major boon to this team! The front office made the right decision. As has been pointed out, Braun has had some terrible luck this season. But Matt Kemp, outside of one MVP caliber season, and one other quasi-All Star season, has been a major disappointment as a Major League player, and that ugly side of Kemp could rear its ugly head at any minute. Per BBR, he had an 8.0 WAR in 2010. A 4.9 WAR in 2009. Since his hot start to the 2011 season, he's been a disaster. 2.8 WAR combined over the past seven seasons, and 3,009 plate appearances. Take away this season, and 1.3 WAR over a six season stretch. That the kind of player anybody wants on this team? Braun has come through in the clutch on more than one occasion this season, and while he's clearly nowhere near the MVP he used to be, I could easily see him getting hot for a stretch.

Our starting rotation is laughably bad. The bottom half of our lineup is a black hole. But some wanted us to go all in on a half season rental of Machado. I'd have liked him on this team, but not at the cost, and certainly not before we fix about five other glaring weaknesses.

LOl at Kershaw striking out the side. I knew it was going to happen before I could log in.

Send in the clowns.

Now, let's go get Realmuto.

I saw an article on ESPN about what the Cubs would need to do to get de Grom. It may just be wishful thinking from the CSPN writers-I hadn't heard any rumors about their pursuing him. But if that happens, I'm going to throw up.

As would I. Arcia had only a 1.3 dWAR last year, and a 1.9 oWAR. I could see him being a perennial 5 WAR Player in his prime. His defensive metrics will improve. If he could get a .350 OBP and keep a .400 + SLG, and play his usual defense, I'd be thrilled. This is the kind of seasonal stat line I think makes for a reasonable expectation from Arcia: 155 G, 550 AB, 75 R, 152 H, 25 2B, 5 3B, 15 HR, 60 RBI, 15 SB, 62 BB. .276 AVG, .350 OBP/.416 SLG/.766 OPS. If he adds a few more home runs, he's getting closer to an .800 OPS. Gold Glove defense, and a .750 + OPS would be absolutely wonderful.

Know what? I'll give you exactly three guesses to figure out which orifice you can blow your "fair weather fans" BS out of, Mr. "joined in April 2018". I went to my first Brewers game in 1979, when I was seven years old, and have been a diehard Brewers fan ever since. In well over 90% of those years, the team has been mediocre, bad, or excruciatingly bad. In the seasons they were decent, or even great (twice!), they ended up breaking my heart in excruciating fashion. The Milwaukee Brewers are Lucy, and its fans are Charlie Brown. Every year, we get our hopes up. And, every year, Lucy pulls the ball away at the last second, and we end up flat on our backs. We know it's coming, yet we can't help but get invested in a team that inevitably falls flat on its face. I could watch every postseason game the Brewers have played in in my lifetime in a three day weekend, and have time left to go out for diner on Sunday night. That's how bad this franchise has been. They're the Detroit Lions of Major League Baseball without the glory years in the fifties. We've never had "glory years". If Brewers fans want to talk about the glory years of Milwaukee baseball, they have to look at the team in Atlanta that used to play at County Stadium. The vast majority of posters here, myself included, have stuck by this team through thick and thin (the overwhelming majority of which has been thin). We have waited for decades for a great starting pitcher, only to see the few studs we've developed (Teddy Higuera, Ben Sheets) see their careers ended prematurely because of injury. Yet, still, we remain hopeful. So, if some of us want to blow off a little steam when we see the all-too-familiar nose dive begin, we're allowed. And don't you dare question my, or anybody else's loyalty to this team. You're new here, and you don't know me, or anybody else, from Adam.

I am bleeping so sick of this team. The Brewers were 55-37 coming into the night. 18 games above .500. The Miami Marlins were 38-56. 18 games below .500. The Giants beat the Cubs in extra innings, meaning a win against a team that should be an automatic series win puts us 2.5 games up. What happens? We lay an egg. Again. The bottom half of our lineup sucks balls. Our starting pitchers couldn't get into the sixth inning even once against a lineup filled with spares. Peralta works 3 2/3 innings tonight. Chacin worked 5 2/3 the night before. Anderson worked 4 2/3 the series opener. Miami's .682 OPS is second lowest in the NL, fourth lowest in baseball. Their 4.85 ERA is the worst in the NL, fourth worst in baseball. And they take the series from us as the Brewers struck out 36 times in three games. Winners beat the bad teams that they're supposed to beat. Losers find a way to f it up. And that's what this team is. It's what they always have been, and always will be. Losers. For forty f#$&%*^ years I have waited to see this team win a World Series. Just one. For thirty-five years, I have waited for them to even get back to the Series. The four expansion teams that joined the Majors in 1998 have all won pennants. The Diamondbacks an Marlins have won three World Series between them. And here we are, yet again, getting ready for our annual fall swoon. Just wait for it. Our Milwaukee Brewers will once again find a way to break our hearts. We'll talk during the offseason about "how bright our future looks." Spare me. I've been hearing the same BS every year since I was a child. I'm fed up.

Carlos Martinez saw ghosts the other night, and Bud Norris will be seeing Jesus tonight.

Might have been gamesmanship by Counsell. Braun might have needed another night after his injection.

Another great part of tonight. We're now beating the Cards 7-4 in the season series instead of it being 6-5. Big game should the Cardinals go on a run, and get into playoff contention. We play them 19 times in total. 10 wins takes the series, giving us the tie breaker. We only need to win 3 more to take it.

I was very critical of Counsell last week. I said that I thought the Brewers would never make a serious run in the post season with him as manager. I saw just too many head scratch-worthy decisions. But, I am man enough to admit that sometimes I make rash statements in the heat of the moment. Counsell made a huge decision tonight, and kept the Cardinals from getting more runs on the board. Who knows. Maybe there's a reason why Craig is the team's manager, and I'm sitting at my laptop running my mouth. Managing is just like playing the game. It's a learning process. It's also about trusting the 25 men you have on your team. He's shown improvement each season as our skipper: 2015 61-76 .445 winning (age 44) 2016 73-89 .451 winning (age 45) 2017 86-76 .531 winning (age 46) 2018 45-30 .600 winning (age 47) He's been running the team without arguably it's best starting pitcher in Jimmy Nelson, and without his closer for a big chunk of the season (Knebel). Christian Yelich, one of our two offseason acquisitions, has missed 12 games. Ryan Braun has had some terrible luck, and been bothered by his usual nagging injuries. Eric Thames, who had 7 home runs in his first 30 games, slashing .976 when he got injured, missed about a quarter of the season. Yet the Brewers have been atop the division for a while now, and even when the Cubs took over first by mere percentage points, they held tough and fought back. These are the kinds of games we always used to lose. Good teams find a way to fight through adversity, and turn losses into wins. They did that tonight. And I hope Craig Counsell proves me very, very wrong.

1,000 times this!!!!!!!! Jesus is a big boy, good God! His stats since coming to Milwaukee last year: 198 games played. 476 AB, 77 runs, 27 doubles, 2 triples, 32 home runs, 101 RBI, 45 walks, 149 K. .282 AVG, slash .344/.548/.892. And one Cardinal execution. Brewers had no offense into the seventh inning. None. Down 1-0, the big man breaks up the no no with a bomb into the seats. The bullpen pitches 4 perfect innings. No hits. No walks. Strikes out 8 of the 12 men they faced. Outside of a Sogard single, the Brewers don't get any other hits until the ninth when the big man comes through. Again, and again, and again I will ask: how can you not be romantic about baseball??

Holy cow!!! What a win! Aguilar is the shiznit! Now to enjoy some Gateway Redbirds crying in their beers!

It's frustrating to see Arcia contributing nothing offensively, considering where he was last year at age 22. But it is way, way, way too soon to start talking about moving on. Andrelton Simmons is an interesting parallel. He had one decent season with the stick in 2013 at age 23-a .692 OPS isn't going to make anybody smile like the Cheshire cat, but 17 home runs showed he had offensive potential. Then, he dropped down to .617 in '14. 2015 was a very slight improvement at .660, and the Braves moved him to the Angels. He hit .281 and OPSd .690 in 2016 (OPS + was 91, pretty much the same as his '13 season). In 2017, he hit .278 and OPSd .752. That's a 102 OPS +. He doubled 38 times, hit 14 home runs, stole 19 bases in 25 tries. 47 walks against 62 strikeouts. This year, he's been even better, hitting .330 in 215 ABs, slashing .399/.460/.860 across 244 PAs. He's walked 24 times and struck out only 10. If Arcia can put up the kind of numbers Simmons did in 2017, and keep evolving as a premium defensive shortstop, I'd be happy as a clam. If he improves on those numbers, it's all gravy. I want, in Arcia, a guy that is patient at the plate. He doesn't have to hit 20 home runs. If he can hit .270, keep the walks and strikeouts close, and throw in some extra base hits, I'm happy with him for the next ten seasons. The Cardinals did just fine with Ozzie Smith at short for a number of years. The Brewers are where they are this year because of their bullpen, and improved defense. It's nice to finally see some guys in the Brewers uni who can play D. If we have to carry Arcia a while with less than stellar offense, it will mean some pain along the way. But it might just be a matter of time before he figures it out. We don't know. Eventually, one of these highly rated shortstops-Escobar, Segura, and now Arcia, has to be given a real chance. See where he is in another year or two.

So we make the postseason, you're saying? CC gets us there, right? Yet he is the reason we don't advance in the playoffs? Just trying to follow your logic... Not sure why my post is difficult to grasp. Should we make the post season this year, or at some point in the future, I don't think Craig Counsell is a manager that helps us to win a best-of playoff series, be it a single game, a best of five or best of seven. Look at this year. There are 15 teams in each league. 1/3 of the teams in each league get to the post season. Three division winners, and two wild card spots. The Reds and Marlins are out of it, and, barring big time turnarounds, so are the Mets and Padres. Eleven teams left. The Pirates, the Rockies, the Giants and the Dodgers are a game above .500. The Phillies are three over. Realistically, that leaves six teams fighting for five spots, though things could certainly change. Arizona is one of the six, but we hold the first tiebreaker against them, owning a 5-1 head to head final record. So, as of right now, the Brewers are looking like a good candidate to finish as one of the top five teams in the National League. Do I think the Brewers, with Counsell at the helm, will be successful against any of those other teams? No. I think he makes too many mistakes with how he manages his team. You're entitled to your opinion, but in a short series, where a manager's decisions are amplified, I don't like our chances with him. If a manager makes a terrible decision in a regular season game, it's just one game of 162. If he does it in a playoff series, it can mean disaster for the team's chances to advance.

Show me where I said "good player = good coach"? If that were the case, every Major League team would simply go after the hitters with the highest lifetime batting averages, and ask them to be their hitting coach. A great player does not necessarily make for a great coach. A poor player does not necessarily make for a poor coach. Ted Williams was a bad manager because he became frustrated working with players that didn't have the Hall of Fame talent he had. But there was no denying he knew how to hit, and the work he did with hitters made them infinitely better. Tony Gwynn was not the only guy to work with him. There are no sure things, and my post never suggested otherwise. What I am asking, however, is what evidence there is that this hitting coach, Darnell Coles, is the answer. We know he wasn't a particularly good Major League hitter. So, then the question becomes who has he helped develop into a strong hitter at this level? Who can we point to? He couldn't develop himself. So who has he developed? What's the bright spot on Darnell Coles' resume? And stating that Travis Shaw "never accomplished much elsewhere" is being a tad disingenuous. The Red Sox, while Shaw was in Boston, were pretty loaded with offensive talent-David Ortiz, Hanley Ramirez, Dustin Pedroia, Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley, Andrew Benintendi. He wasn't going to get a lot of playing time because of the guys in front of him. Shaw slugged .487 over 226 ABs in 2015, with an .813 OPS. He showed he could hit Major League pitching before he ever got to Milwaukee.

In 35 games against teams with a record below .500, we're hitting .268 as a team, slashing .343/.440/.783, scoring 5.09 runs per game. In 30 games against teams with a record above .500, we're hitting .225 as a team, slashing .286/.376/.662, scoring 3.53 runs per game. If you take away the two games against Philly where we scored 24 runs, that's 82 runs scored in 28 games, or 2.93 runs per game. If our goal is to beat up on poor teams, and get owned by good teams, then yes, we're "doing just fine". If our goal is to stop being the laughing stock of Major League Baseball, and, you know, eventually win a World Series, no, we are not doing just fine.

Look at how great a hitter Tony Gwynn was. Won batting titles in 1984, 1987, 1988 and 1989, hitting .351, .370, .313 and .336. But he'd experienced a downturn in his ability because of physical ailments that reduced his speed. To that point in his career, he'd been effectively a pull hitter. But meeting Ted Williams (the first time being at the 1992 All Star Game) turned his career around. Williams had him adjust his hitting approach, using the entire field, and going for more power. After hitting .309, .317 and .317 in 1990, 1991 and 1992, Gwynn became the dominant hitter again, batting .358 in 1993, then winning four straight batting titles, hitting .394, .368, .353 and .372 (at age 37, no less!). His career OPS Shot up, too. From 1982 to 1992, he OPS'd .813 slashing .381 OBP/.433 SLG. Between 1993 and 1997, his slash line improved to .412 OBP/.508 SLG/.920 OPS. His OPS + raised from 128 between 1982 and 1992 to 146 between 1993 and 1997, all because a great hitter spoke with Williams. Williams was able to evaluate what Gwynn was doing, and saw what more he could be doing to increase his offensive performance. That's what a hitting coach is supposed to do-identify what a hitter is doing wrong, coaching them on how to correct it. Now, could Williams have been a great hitting coach even if he'd never played? Possibly, yes. He was a student of the game. But the fact that this was Ted Williams talking, one of the greatest hitters to ever play the game, brought a certain amount of validity to what he was saying. I don't care how much you have studied the books, or watched the tapes. Getting in the batters box, and succeeding against Major League pitching, is the ultimate boon to any hitting instructor. Coles couldn't teach himself how to hit. What makes anybody think he can succeed in doing so with others?

Just out of curiosity, why would his playing career be irrelevant? He obviously had enough athletic ability to make it to the Major Leagues. But he was a below average Major League hitter. If he was unable to develop himself as a hitter, when he had every motivation in the world to do so (his financial future depended on his ability to play the game), what makes anybody think that he can develop others as hitters? What has Darnell Coles shown that convinces anybody he's the answer? What raw talent has he developed into a top flight hitter?

Darnell Coles has been the Brewers hitting coach since the beginning of the 2015 season. These are isolated examples, of course, but when I see the Brewers offensive woes this season, and I look at the offensive performance of past Brewers who have suddenly started hitting much better than they did while in Milwaukee, I start asking why. Consider these players: Jean Segura had a decent 2013 season, hitting .294 with 20 doubles, 10 triples and 12 home runs. His first half was strong-at the All Star break, he was hitting .325 with 11 doubles, 8 triples and 11 home runs. Slashed .363/.487/.849. He fell off a cliff in the second half, and had a pretty horrid 2014. Coles comes on board in 2015, and Segura does not improve. Now, I'm certainly not going to blame Coles for the precipitous drop off Segura experienced before he came on board. And, Segura was fighting through some serious personal issues towards the end of his time in Milwaukee. But could Coles have gotten more out of him? When he goes to Arizona, Jean Segura immediately becomes an MVP candidate (13th in the voting); he hits .319, slashing .368/.499/.867. Leads the NL with 203 hits, scores 102 runs, steals 33 bases, totals 41 doubles. His WAR is 5.5, more than the 4.9 he'd combined for the three prior seasons in Milwaukee. Since being traded to Seattle, Segura has continued to hit. He dropped off a bit in 2017, but still finished at .300. His dWAR has consistently ranged between a half and a full win. This year, Segura is hitting .340, on pace to score over 100 runs, put up about 40 doubles, and steal about 30 bases. In 62 games he has a 2.4 WAR. Scooter Gennett in his first full season with Milwaukee in 2013 hits .289, with a .754 OPS. Coles comes on, and in two more seasons with the Brewers, Gennett hits .263 with a .706 OPS; his OPS + is 88, 12% below league average. He's a member of the Cincinnati Reds in 2017, and suddenly he blossoms into a complete offensive player, batting .295 with 27 HR and 97 RBI. He slashes .342/.531/.874. This season, Gennett leads the National League with a .340 AVG; in 64 games, he has 16 doubles, 12 home runs, and is slashing .376/.556/.932 with a 150 OPS +, or 50% above league average. Orlando Arcia had a decent first full season at the plate in 2017-.277 AVG, 15 home runs, slashed .324/.407/.731. Anything north of a .700 OPS, when you consider Arcia's age, and his defensive abilities, would be sufficient, in my opinion, for 2018. But he's fallen off a cliff. He's struggling to stay above the Mendoza line at .207. His slash line is .244/.274/.519 for a 40 OPS +, meaning he's 60% below league average as a hitter. Again, these are a few isolated players, so maybe I'm reading too much into it. But does it seem that we are having a really hard time developing young hitters? Look at Domingo Santana's inexplicable drop in power production this year. 2015: 121 ABs, 6 HR. 1 HR every 20.17 ABs 2016: 246 ABs, 11 HR. 1 HR every 22.36 ABs 2017: 525 ABs, 30 HR. 1 HR every 17.5 ABs 2018: 178 ABs, 3 HR. 1 every 59.3 ABs Hernan Perez' average, on base, and slugging has dropped each of the past three years. Maybe I'm grasping at straws, but I'm trying to understand how Darnell Coles has helped our franchise. He's the hitting coach in Detroit for one season. 2014. The three years prior to Coles' arrival, Miguel Cabrera wins the batting title-.344 in 2011, .330 in 2012, .348 in 2013. His OPS those three seasons is 1.033, .999 and 1.078. Coles arrives, and Cabrera has his worst season since 2008, hitting .313 and OPSing .895. Coles leaves, and Cabrera again wins the batting title, hitting .338, slashing ..974. Coincidence? Or, is it just possible that Darnell Coles, himself a career .245 hitter (and worth -1.4 WAR in 14 big league seasons), doesn't know what the hell he's doing? Is this the guy we want fine tuning the offense?

I don't see us seriously contending in the post season with Craig Counsell as our manager. I just don't. Too many times I question his baseball acumen.