sveumrules

Counting Game 163 the Brewers were 7-3 in their first ten postseason games back in 2018. Obviously the predictive power of that ten game sample has turned out to be nil. I’d likewise hope this most recent ten game sample (spread out over five years) has minimal influence over potential future playoff results. At the same time, in a macro sense we are pretty close organizationally to the Twins within the economics & geography of MLB, and they lost 18 straight playoff games over almost 20 years before starting off this particular postseason 3-1.

Age (33) and injury concerns (career high is 359 PA in a season) will probably limit his deal, but he can definitely rake with a 138 wRC+ over 344 PA this year and a 130 wRC+ over 1,242 PA going back to 2019. Maybe he gets something like 2 years for $25M? MLBTR article about him today noted he only caught 25 games over the last four months after returning from injury, but he could be primary DH/backup C to open the season then slide into more of a DH only role once Quero is ready. Only has 51 career MLB innings at 1B, but would imagine he’d be fine out there once a week or so if needed.

Pretty big odds shift with ARI and PHI winning the first games of their series. Fangraphs now has the NL teams World Series odds at 18.5% (ATL and PHI) then 9.1% for ARI and 9.0% for LAD.

How did I think wrong? I repeated your exact timeline. You said you expect it to happen, an expectation implies a much higher degree of certainty than mere speculation. I’m not offended in the least. Just a curious party on an internet message board.

MLB Trade Rumors dropped their projected arbitration salaries for 2024, with the dozen eligible Brewers coming in at… Brandon Woodruff: $11.6MM Willy Adames: $12.4MM Corbin Burnes: $15.1MM Adrian Houser: $5.6MM Rowdy Tellez: $5.9MM Eric Lauer: $5.2MM Hoby Milner: $1.7MM Devin Williams: $6.5MM Tyrone Taylor: $1.7MM Bryse Wilson: $1.3MM Joel Payamps: $1.7MM Abraham Toro: $1.3MM Would imagine that Rowdy, Lauer & Toro will be non-tendered at those numbers.

I thought your expectation for a sale was Spring 2025, maybe Feb 2024 at the earliest? Or has the timeline moved up now?

Hoskins is about as consistent as it gets. 127 wRC+ in 2021, 122 wRC+ in 2022, 126 wRC+ for his career. Brandon Belt was heavily platooned with 365 of his 404 PA coming vs RHP, but he posted a 138 wRC+ on the season. He was also primarily a DH (only 28 starts at 1B) and will be going into his age 36 season. Was paid $9.3M last year, so will probably want a raise on another one year deal. Scanning the wRC+ leaderboard for 2023 (minimum 250 PA) I see a Matt Wallner on the Twins with a 144 wRC+. What's the scoop on him @Brock Beauchamp? Looks like he has raked throughout his minor league career, but will never provide any defensive value and is likely a platoon only bat. Who knows what Colorado is ever doing, could try to pry Nolan Jones (135 wRC+ in 424 PA) loose. Rays love to deal and could probably stand to move one of Harold Ramirez (128 wRC+ in 434 PA), Luke Raley (130 wRC+ in 406 PA) or Josh Lowe (131 wRC+ in 501 PA). Ramirez and Raley don't really have any defensive value, but Lowe put up decent defensive numbers in RF this year. Luis Robert (128 wRC+ in 595 PA) could be the biggest name on the trade market, while Eloy ended up with only a 105 wRC+ over 489 PA so not sure he qualifies as a power bat at this point. If the Yankees want to shake it up maybe Gleyber Torres (123 wRC+ over 672 PA) could be had via trade? As far as the get a power prospect for Burnes route guys like Curtis Mead (TBR) or Coby Mayo (BAL) are probably a little too ambitious of asks. Maybe somebody like Colt Keith (DET) or Brady House (WAS) could be in play if the Tigers/Nationals want to try to kickstart the rebuild? Dodgers would probably part with Andy Pages, but he wouldn't be ready from the jump (if at all) in 2024.

Postseason field is set, so here are the World Series Odds for each team from FanGraphs & BPro... FG: ATL (28.6%) | HOU (16.8%) | LAD (12.9%) | TBR (7.1%) | PHI (6.8%) | BAL (5.2%) | MIL (5.0%) | TOR (5.0%) | MIN (4.5%) | TEX (3.8%) | ARI (2.8%) | MIA (1.4%) BPro: ATL (18.2%) | HOU (16.2%) | LAD (15.9%) | BAL (15.9%) | MIN (6.2%) | MIL (5.3%) | TBR (4.8%) | MIA (4.3%) | PHI (4.2%) | TOR (4.1%) | ARI (2.7%) | TEX (2.2%) Some interesting divergences between the two systems. Both have ATL favored, though FG has their odds 10.4% higher. FG seems to like the NL more in general with a 57.5% to 42.5% split, though most of that difference is accounted for by ATL. Other biggest split is BAL (5.2% vs 15.9%).

Above all else, this sucks for Brandon Woodruff. Impossible not to feel for a guy who has been such a huge part of the organization’s success over the last six seasons. Ideally, he can get this thing right with an offseason of rest/rehab, then put up a 30 start platform season in 2024 and secure a multi year deal in FA. As for the postseason, it takes what was a slightly weighted coin flip in our favor for the WC round to more of a true 50/50 toss. If we survive that, what was already going to be an uphill climb will just be that much steeper. Hopefully, this galvanizes the team, they go on an improbable run and win the whole dang shebang for Woody. Those are the outcomes I’ll be pulling for, however improbable they may be.

Now that the regular season is a wrap and all the stats are in the books and on the servers, thought I'd do a quick rundown on how much bang teams got for their proverbial bucks at the top of the free agent market. Player salaries via SpotRac and WAR totals via FanGraphs, using runs allowed based WAR for the pitchers... Scherzer ($43.33M) 3.1 WAR Verlander ($43.33M) 4.1 WAR Judge ($40M) 5.2 WAR ($40M+ tier: 3 at $126.66M for 12.4 WAR) Rendon ($38.57M) 0.2 WAR Trout ($37.12M) 3.0 WAR Cole ($36M) 7.0 WAR Seager ($35.5M) 6.1 WAR Arenado ($35.03M) 2.6 WAR Strasburg ($35M) 0.0 WAR ($35M+ tier: 6 at $217.22M for 18.9 WAR) Lindor ($34.1M) 5.9 WAR Correa ($33.33M) 1.1 WAR Stanton ($32M) -0.8 WAR Cabrera ($32M) -0.8 WAR Bregman ($30.5M) 4.3 WAR deGrom ($30M) 0.9 WAR ($30M+ tier: 6 at $191.93 for 10.6 WAR) Altuve ($29M) 4.0 WAR Bryant ($28M) -1.1 WAR Harper ($27.54M) 3.3 WAR Sale ($27.5M) 1.8 WAR Turner ($27.27M) 3.8 WAR Freeman ($27M) 7.9 WAR Yelich ($26M) 4.1 WAR Goldy ($26M) 3.6 WAR Semien ($26M) 6.2 WAR Xander ($25.45M) 4.4 WAR Stroman ($25M) 2.0 WAR Darvish ($25M) 1.5 WAR Votto ($25M) 0.0 WAR Mookie ($25M) 8.2 WAR ($25M+ tier: 14 at $369.76M for 49.7 WAR) Wheeler ($24.5M) 4.7 WAR Corbin ($24.42M) 0.8 WAR Springer ($24.17M) 2.2 WAR Realmuto ($23.88M) 1.4 WAR Rodon ($22.83M) -0.1 WAR Baez ($22M) 0.8 WAR Ray ($21M) -0.2 WAR Gausman ($21M) 4.5 WAR Olson ($21M) 6.6 WAR Marte ($20.75) -0.3 WAR Mikolas ($20.42) 2.1 WAR Morton ($20M) 3.7 WAR Kershaw ($20M) 4.8 WAR Musgrove ($20M) 2.8 WAR Ryu ($20M) 0.8 WAR Schwarber ($20M) 1.4 WAR Castellanos ($20M) 1.0 WAR Perez ($20M) -0.3 WAR Story ($20M) 0.1 WAR ($20M+ tier: 19 at $405.97M for 36.8 WAR) So, in total 48 players individually made $20M or more during 2023 (I didn't include Soto at $23M or Ohtani at $30M since they were one year Arby contracts) with total combined compensation of almost $1.312B in exchange for something like 128.4 WAR, or a little over $10M per win at the very top of the market.

So rotation prolly looks something like this heading into training camp then… Dame | Payne Patty | Beasley | Green Khris | Marjon | AJJ Giannis | Jae | Thanasis Brook | Bobby | Robin Biggest question is probably who starts at the two. Patty seems more like a fifth starter do all the little things glue guy who is already familiar with our stars vs Beasley as more of a 6th/7th man gunner off the bench. Should also be interesting to see how Marjon and AJJ do as the only real youngsters on the team and if Griffin can mold them into playable wings.

Should be a fun lineup today, er no? Maybe something like… Frelick RF Monasterio 2B Rowdy 1B Donsldson 3B Caratini Cat Mitchell LF Taylor DH Perkins CF Turang SS

Yeah, if he was still in the running for the CY at this point I guess I could see it, but even in a crowded NL field with no standout winner he should still finish behind all of Snell, Gallen, Wheeler, Strider and Webb

That SF roster had a $187M opening day price tag, 10th in MLB per Cots. Giants didn’t fail quite as spectacularly as the Mets (72-86 | $331M) or Yankees (81-79 | $278M) or Padres (80-80 | $249M) or Angels (72-88 | $212M) or White Sox (61-99 | $181M) or Cardinals (69-91 | $177M) or Rockies (58-102 | $172M) in terms of dollars per win (some pretty steep competition this year), but they came up short of expectations two seasons in a row now either way. Closest match for SF this year was probably Boston (77-83 | $181M), and they just fired Bloom. Gabe had the one out of nowhere year in 2021 when SF went 107-55, but kinda crazy how close he has been to .500 every other season, 80-82 then 81-81 his two seasons in Philly, followed by 29-31, 81-81 and now 78-81 with the Giants outside of 2021.

Cubs have the same record as the Reds and are playing against a team you literally said was trying to lose on purpose a few pages back. There’s still a mathematical chance CHI ends up tied with ARI, so might as well include them in the discussion until that chance actually reaches zero.

Except vs the Cubs, who they are 6-1 against head to head.

Miami is 4-2 vs Arizona so they hold the tiebreaker there. DBacks only have the tiebreaker over the Cubs, due to their 6-1 head to head advantage.

Not bad for a team who had already decided to lose on purpose.

This must be a misprint, I feel like I remember being guaranteed somewhere by someone that Candelario would outhit SantanCanha combined.

Something else here that didn't really seem thread worthy, but Eric Longenhagen did some investigating on minor league listed heights, with a blurb on Tyler Black - who was subject to much height related speculation and discourse over the summer. The whole thing is an interesting read, but here is the Black specific section... "Tyler Black is listed at 6-foot-2 on his Wright State player page (the source of my initial Board input prior to him being drafted) and was 6-foot-1 in the Brewers media guide entering the season. Before I learned about MLB’s pilot program, his 2023 shrinkage to 5-foot-10 felt suspect to me, because Black was one of the players who seemed most apt and eager to use the ball/strike challenge system in the 2022 Arizona Fall League. Walks are a substantial part of his skill set. It was tough to find a satisfactory moment to screengrab Black upright and close to another player on the field, so I’ve included two above. He also stands next to Pedro Pagés and Andy Thomas, both listed at 6-foot-1, several times in my video from last year. I’m finding it quite tough to actually gauge how tall this guy is."

Numbers might have shifted around slightly since then, but Perkins popped up in a FanGraphs article back on August 16th as one of only four OFs - along with Tatis, Kiermaier and Julio Rodriguez - who were top 20 in all of Arm Strength (92.2 MPH | 14th), Sprint Speed (30 feet/sec | 2nd), Jumps (+2.7 feet vs avg | 4th) and OAA (+5 | 12th), at the time of publication.

ALE - 442 W NLE - 415 W NLC - 397 W NLW - 397 W ALW - 382 W ALC - 351 W NL Central and NL West have the exact same number of wins so far. The AL Central has been such crap, the AL East has been a gauntlet, the other four divisions have been pretty close to the middle. Diamondbacks got all those extra games against the Rockies (worst team in the NL by 11 games) and are still half a dozen wins behind the Brewers.

Cubs lost all three to the Braves? Could have sworn I heard somewhere those games weren’t even going to be all that hard for Chicago since Atlanta was already going to be coasting on a wave of malaise by then.

Could be his final appearance period. MLBTR reported Colin has language in his contract which allows him to reach free agency after the season.

They gave it to Lovullo in 2017, which fair enough, the D-Backs won more games. Be kinda funny though if he won it again. That would give him 2 MOTYs with a career managerial record of 495-534 from 2017 through today. Meanwhile, CC is currently at 571-459 over that same 2017 through today stretch.