JosephC

Hader being a Super 2 probably knocks down his surplus value by somewhere between 10-15 million. I'd put the surplus value estimates as follows: Josh Hader = 52.4 million Ryan Braun = -6.5 million Gavin Lux = 73.3 million

You should have said that it's not looking good for Brewer fans, especially those with tickets for games during the first couple weeks of 2020. Because if Stearns thinks Hiura will be Super 2 eligible, then Keston is probably beginning the season in AAA. He has options left, there would be nothing preventing the Brewers from doing this. EDIT - I counted Hiura's day of service time and came up with 114. Considering how unusually low 115 is, I think it would be a pretty safe assumption that Hiura will not be Super 2 eligible when the time comes.

Hader was extremely frustrating to watch this year. He has success with his fastball and I would assume that the strikeout analytics suggest just keep throwing high fastballs as that inflates the K-rate and that is all baseball is about these days. To use an old, tired cliché, there was no pitching going on there, all throwing. So at the end of the season, every opposing MLB hitter knows that he only throws a slider 15% of the time and 64% of the time the slider will be a ball. Why show respect for anything other than the fastball? So he gives up 9 home runs in the last 35 innings he pitches and he and the Brewers just say it's simply bad location and there is nothing wrong. Well, maybe he lacks a proper margin "for location error" because hitters only have to worry about one thing. Maybe if they actually had to worry about a second pitch, then it might not be so easy for them to just sit on the one pitch and smash it when it's not in the right spot. The numbers pretty much show that, on average, Hader will throw one slider per at bat and, on average, that one slider will be a ball...so why not just ignore any slider that's thrown and just sit on the fastball?

Only the crappy schedule can save them now. Not buying for one millisecond that the Brewers can be just as good without Yelich. He is just way too good of a player.

Based on what I've seen the first couple of games, I think Erdmann and Seltzner have easily looked like the better guards and IMO Lyles should not be rotating in during the Michigan game unless he really shows something in the practices leading up to the game. Will also point out that the starting right tackle, Logan Bruss, did not play in the Central Michigan game and they rotated two players in that spot to try to get the depth chart aligned for the rest of the year. But that position is not up for grabs, that's Bruss' job if he is healthy enough to play. So there were some factors that played into all those moving parts...to me it seems obvious who the best five are but we'll see what the unit's health is and how Chryst handles the guard rotation in the Michigan game. From what I hear in Madison, it sounds like the coaches are happy with pretty much everything except tight end depth. They've had a ton of injuries there...even Ferguson is coming off a hand injury...and if Ferguson got hurt there would be some real problems. Last week they listed a 224 pound redshirt freshman as Ferguson's backup...Jack Eschenbach...and I follow UW football pretty well and had never even heard of that guy. Bucky probably pretty lucky that they have four receivers that they feel really good about. But the Badgers do like to have a couple brute TEs that can block and they are missing that guy right now.

I'm guessing Hiura will be like Jeff Kent...a poor defender that you can live with considering the offensive impact he has. He was on pace to pretty much be a 4.5 - 5.0 WAR player had he been in the big leagues since opening day and was with the team for all 170+ days of the regular season. If he was a great defender at 2B, he might have the upside of an 8 - 10 WAR player per year. Even if he doesn't improve defensively, he still has 5 - 6 WAR upside with his offensive capabilities...and generally nobody complains about players who post 5+ WAR in a season.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27554568/mlb-weighing-opioid-testing-skaggs-death From the article: "MLB does not currently test major league players for opioids, though they are on the league's banned-substance list." MLB may be able to claim that they have the toughest drug testing policy when it comes to PED, but obviously their "drugs of abuse" program is completely worthless. On the banned-substance list, but not tested for? That makes no sense. I'd be pretty embarrassed if I was a "higher up" in MLB and the paying customers/general public is reading stuff like that.

I'm still solidly in Stearns corner. I'd still project Dubon as more of a utility infielder. But with SS looking like a pretty significant hole and Turang still years away, I think it's perfectly legitimate for anyone to question trading Dubon away. Unfortnately, that's almost more of a commentary on the continuing disappointment with Arcia than it is with Dubon's MLB upside. Recent stuff I'd question is the promotion of some of the young players. I still think just about everything regarding the promotion of Grisham was odd. Gamel had done a really nice job for the Brewers when you look at his ability to get on base and play all the outfield spots. Did Stearns really think Grisham was going to OPS .950+ in his first go-around as a major leaguer? He had been on a tear in MiLB, but he didn't have nearly the track record or the reputation of someone like Hiura. And the pitching had been pretty lousy...so was this a "Grisham will OPS .950+ and we will just try to outslug everyone" attitude that was always saw during the Melvin era? Grisham hasn't been as good with the bat or the glove as Gamel has been. And now Grisham will have totaled somewhere around 60 days of service time that the Brewers will have to figure in the years of service and super 2 equations when they play those games down the road. I also question why they brought up Devin Williams when they did. It's one think to look at a guy's MiLB numbers, and a totally different thing to watch him pitch. Williams definitely has a MLB future, but the change-up does not look anywhere near MLB ready and his fastball command really isn't all that great. Have to question what people in the organization were saying that Williams should be on the MLB roster because everytime he's out there he looks shakey as can be. ERA has been hanging in there at a pretty good level, but with a 6.21 xFIP and 5 BB/9...just hasn't looked like a guy who should currently be in the majors.

Agree with this, there are so many just terrible pitches mixed in with the "bad luck" that it's just impossible to think that the pitching staff is any good. Not to pick on Pomeranz, but he is probably the best example from last night. Gets Rizzo down 0-2 after throwing 2 95 MPH fastballs in the zone, Rizzo looked like he was "on" the second one but just missed it. Doesn't give Rizzo a different look, just tries a same thing for a third time and the 0-2 pitch turns into a very hard sac fly on a line out to Yelich. Rizzo is not Hernan Perez, challenging him with three straight high fastballs and not giving him any other looks is a bad approach. And after going high fastball after high fastball, Schwarber walks to the plate looking for exactly that on pitch #1, and personally I thought he got short-changed on the 442 foot estimate. Again, not to pick on Pomeranz because it's infected this entire staff. Just try to throw the fastball by hitters. Terrible 0-2 pitches. Well, the K% is pretty good, so the high ERA is just a function of just having some bad luck. Not buying it. This pitching staff is bad. Back to Counsell's bullpen management. I completely realize that Anderson had allowed 7 baserunners in 4 innings and wasn't anything even near dominant. But was it wise to pull him before he even reached the 60 pitch mark? Stearns and Counsell have to figure this out moving forward. Either Stearns has to start making big investments to give Counsell starting pitching that he feels confident with through 110 pitches/7 innings OR Stearns has to start making big investments so Counsell is extremely well stocked in the bullpen. And I'm not talking about having 4 good to decent relievers followed by 8 crappy pitchers that are rotated into and out of the last 4 spots under the "fresh arm" guise. Needs to be deeper than that.

Peralta "probably good"???????????????????????????????? You realize that he has a 12.96 ERA, 2.64 WHIP in his last 9 appearances? Counsell has only used him 1 time in the last 20 days. But at least you've finally demoted Burnes from "MLB high leverage use only" to "bad."

The last 20 games of the schedule SHOULD be ridiculously easy, setting up the Brewers to go on a possible late season run like they did last year. However, the Brewers had one stretch like this from June 14-July 14, and they played poorly during that stretch (could argue that it was longer as there were several games prior to this stretch that included the Pirates, but at the time the Pirates looked like they might be a respectable club). This is the main reason to still have some hope, if they start playing decent ball over those last three weeks, the opposition is such where they could have a pretty good 20 game run. It's just a matter if they are good enough, and while the pitching has been better than the hitting over the last couple of weeks, I still question if this team has enough pitching to put up a 15-5 run, even against bad competition.

Because all the QBs were given an equal opportunity in practice and Mertz was the third best QB. Rivals top 100 from 2015: #41 = Blake Barnett Rivals top 100 from 2019: #42 = Graham Mertz Just because the guy was a top recruit, none of that should matter until he steps up and earn the job.

Coan was excellent last night, as was pretty much the entire team. Even on Coan's two overthrows, on one of them it was very obvious that the defensive back held up Cephus and threw off the timing of the play. Coan was absolutely on fire in the second and third quarter, didn't come anywhere near throwing an interception and completed 73% of his passes. There is no way he is getting replaced by anyone if he keeps performing like that. Defense was also tremendous at all three levels. How many missed tackles last night? Not very many. Fast and physical and fundamentally sound. I only had one concern and that is the new kicker missed his only field goal attempt. Just love the way the rest of the team played. Maybe South Florida will just suck this year, Charlie Strong looks more and more like a big pretender when it comes to college football coaches. But even if South Florida are bad, bad teams need to get beat by 40 points and the Badgers did what they needed to do and dominated them. My biggest gripe was listening to flunkie Dave Flemming's AWFUL play-by-play last night. How far can a broadcaster have his head stuck up one player's butt? Based on what I saw last night, there is a reason why South Florida's QB has been with 3 different schools so far, and that's because he's not very good.

Does MLB's drug testing program include fentanyl? And if not, why doesn't it? It certainly wouldn't qualify as a PED, but definitely should rank near the top of the list in the drugs of abuse category. If Skaggs has been a habitual user for awhile (say > 1 year), then MLB should have some questions to answer about it's drug program.

Better be wearing helmets in the outfield seats. Last thing we need are a bunch of articles flooding the internet about how MLB is going to "umpire" home runs if they have to put netting above all the outfield walls to protect the customers who aren't paying attention.

The tackling by last year's secondary was the worst I could ever remember out of a Badger defense. Frankly, the tackling from the defensive backs looked to be at the same woeful level as most NFL teams. Hopefully that won't be a yearly occurrence in the "NFL defense" that Leonhard had brought to Madison.

When pro-rating 2019 out to a full season, Cain's average bWAR/FWAR over the last six years: age 28 season = 4.65 age 29 season = 6.65 age 30 season = 2.6 age 31 season = 4.8 age 32 season = 6.3 age 33 season = 1.9 I think the decline is usually factored in at the age 31 season? But Cain went up 2.2 WAR in his age 31 season (missed a bunch of games in his age 30 season), and then instead of going down in his age 32 season, he actually went up another 1.5 WAR. Rule of thumb is to decrease by 0.5 WAR per season once a player reaches a certain age. But considering his track record, I very much doubt that the average team would start at the low number of 1.9 WAR and start subtracting from that number. Cain's track record is too good for that IMO. And as far as measuring a player's decline, wouldn't defense factor into making that judgment as well? Cain was a +20 DRS in 2018, so far is a +18 in 2019 and that number is not inning adjusted. With 29 games still left, Cain's could hit the exact same number he had last year. UZR/150 was 11.9 last year, currently 10.5 this year. A slight dip but certainly nothing that would throw up any red flags. I look at all the numbers, and would suspect that for every GM that would think Cain is over the hill, there would be just as many (and maybe a few more) that would see Cain as just having a bad year offensively and would be a very solid bet to return to a 3.0-3.5 WAR player. And 17 million per year is not a crazy number at all for a 3.0-3.5 WAR player. I would absolutely, 100% agree that the final year is a concern, but IMO that's where the Brewers could throw in some money and the other team could find an appropriately valued prospect that they could live without. The other thing that factors in is that Cain seems to be pretty well respected around the league and displays some leadership qualities. There is nothing about his makeup that would scare other teams away from wanting him to be a member of their organization. I'll stand by my assessment from a few pages back, I think that Cain would have slight positive surplus value if put on the market. But I don't think that matters because I don't think Stearns will look to move him. Brewers have had severe run prevention problems this year, and trading away a guy that can play centerfield like Cain just makes that even worse.

I pretty much see it the same way as Oxy. Based on the scouting reports, I really doubt if the Brewers view Clark as starting 150 games in centerfield at the major league level. Even if the Brewers were to get modest offers with an opposing team taking all of Cain's salary, I'd guess that Stearns would still keep him even if he's only projecting Cain to be about a .320 OBP/.390 SLUG type hitter. His defense brings significant value, and Stearns probably wouldn't want to make a bad pitching staff look even worse by compromising the centerfield defense.

And once again the Badgers just ignore the star ratings. When Kayden Lyles moved back to offense, it was just assumed that he would be starting at one of the guard spots. He would have rated as the #1 guy in their 2017 class. Starting left guard = Jason Erdmann Starting right guard = Josh Seltzner Chryst says the Badgers will rotate Lyles in, but it appears that the two former walk-on's will be starting and get the bulk of the playing time.

Have to admit, I read all those reports saying there is no reason why Hiura can't be an average MLB 2B defensively and I really have to wonder exactly why it was worded that way. There was a time early in his career where it could have been written that there was no reason that Rickie Weeks can't be a plus-plus MLB second baseman because all the athletic tools were certainly there (and in abundance). But watching Weeks, and it was really hard to ever see him becoming a good defensive second baseman, and with Hiura it's really hard to see him becoming even an average defensive second baseman. The guy sure can hit though. I know a lot of people just hate short 1B, but I have to wonder if that is where he will end up.

Wow, Gonzalez had been pretty solid...very disappointing he would come out and lay an egg like this. Especially against Wainwright, who is a pitcher I wouldn't have much confidence in if I was a Cardinal's fan. I really liked the Brewer's chances going into tonight's game...so much for that....

Yep ... joining the Athletic Good move by The Athletic. I bet Bob got exactly the terms he wanted. Pretty great day for fans of McGinn's work, which I most definitely am. He's going to keep doing the two things he does best, the weekly Grading the Packers articles and his NFL draft coverage. Sounds like most of his other Packer stuff will disappear and he'll be writing a weekly article about a past NFL draft. He may just pick one player, a group of players, or an event but it sounds interesting if you are a fan of that stuff (which I would probably qualify as I have Pro Football Weekly draft guides dating all the way back to when Marc Wilson was on the cover). And to top it all off, if you were a McGinn subscriber, you can use a link that was e-mailed to the old customers to get The Athletic at $1.99 per month if you sign up for an annual subscription. I'm pretty sure the yearly price for McGinn's site was $35...now the reader can get his best content plus all that other coverage at The Athletic at $24 for year #1. Looking forward to the MLB coverage at The Athletic, which for me is a major bonus as people have told me their MLB coverage is currently at the top of the list.

Just looking at teams, and the Badgers schedule appears pretty tough. But the schedule certainly isn't overwhelming when looking at the home/away breakdown. The three non-conference games should all be wins (South Florida, Central Michigan, Kent State). Five conference games at home, four conference games on the road. The only brutal road game they have is at Ohio State. Michigan, Northwestern, Michigan State and Iowa all have to play in Madison, and Camp Randall has historically been a pretty tough place to play (and could be again with the Hornibrook factor no longer playing a role). Projecting 5-7 is saying they will beat up on games where they will be solid favorites (non-conference plus Illinois and Purdue), and then they will lose 100% of all the games that figure to be at least somewhat competitive. That's not going to happen. They have to go to Nebraska, but Nebraska has been clueless as to how to stop the run for the last 10+ years now. That's a very winnable game for UW. Minnesota, I see big-time payback coming there unless Coan turns out to be Hornibrook Jr. and completely takes any chance for a UW win away. Very winnable game. Why would Iowa be a favorite going into Camp Randall? I have a ton of respect for Northwestern's program, but why would they be a favorite going into Camp Randall? I think fans should expect a minimum of 8 regular season wins out of this group.

Even with Cain's offensive struggles, he sure has passed the eye-test as a real defensive asset in centerfield. Metrics back that up. +17 DRS, +10.1 UZR/150. That's a big impact considering Braun has been just awful in LF and Yelich has had his share of miscues in right field. This pitching staff has enough trouble because it isn't very good, and it would probably look even worse if Cain's superior defense was taken out of the mix.

It would be very interesting to see how a handful of teams currently value Cain. Pro-rating out 2019 to a full-season, Cain's recent WAR values: bWAR = 2017=5.4, 2018=6.9, 2019=2.3 fWAR = 2017=4.3, 2018=5.7, 2019=1.2 Average of all 6 numbers is 4.3. Then knock off 0.5 WAR per season, and if doing so Cain would be good for 9.9 WAR total from 2020-2022. But if just using the average of 2019, and then knocking off 0.5 WAR per season, then Cain would only project to 2.4 WAR from 2020-2022. Cain will make 51 million from 2020-2022. 9.9 WAR * 9 million = 89.1 million - 51 million = +38.1 million in surplus value OR 2.4 WAR * 9 million = 21.6 million - 51 million = -29.4 million in surplus value Obvious conclusion is that both the big positive number and the big negative number are unrealistic. Just add the two together and it comes out as +8.7 million. Just throwing out all the math, I would guess that Cain still has a slightly positive surplus value despite the subpar season. A +8.7 million in surplus value does not seem like that bad a number. That would basically be getting one role player prospect plus one fringe prospect in return (that's something like a #15 prospect plus a #26 or later prospect off a team's top prospect list).