sveumrules

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.

On April 7th, Anderson had a 1,593 OPS through his first 27 PA. FanGraphs had that as a 0.7 WAR week. From then until going on the IL, he posted a .620 OPS over 307 PA. That’s a replacement level three months. Upon return he put up a .440 OPS over 21 PA from 0803 to 0822 before his PT completely evaporated. Maybe there was something more going on behind the scenes or whatever, but I think it just boils down to performance and health with a dash of being supplanted by Monasterio in the interim. The Brewers barely use their 13th (or 14th in Sept) position player, so my guess is they were fine with Anderson occupying that last man spot and getting minimal run while other guys (who might be needed later on) got more consistent AAA reps in the interim.

MLBTR reporting Colin Rea had language in his contract which will allow him to reach free agency this winter, so that will be one more open spot for the offseason.

Kind of an interesting, random tidbit in Dan Szymborski’s FanGraphs chat today. Someone asked which minor leaguers saw the biggest improvement in their ZiPS projection this year. Tyler Black was one of the five hitters, ok, pretty obvious after the year he put up, but then among the five pitchers was none other than James Meeker.

I would guess Burnes, Woody and Freddy each start and throw a few innings on their regular turns Thursday, Friday, Saturday with five days rest each. That would line them up on four days rest each for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of the Wild Card round.

They were losing by three runs, so Williams, Payamps and Uribe were likely out of the equation. Milner (the only other lefty) had already pitched, as had Wilson. With Megill on paternity leave and Teheran throwing three innings on Sunday, that left Chafin, Bukauskas or Rea as the options to come in and face the lefty Nootbar in that situation. Chafin allowed a walk and a single, but also recorded two outs and allowed zero runs in his appearance. Craig keeps going to him because he is on the roster and someone has to pitch low leverage innings to save the good relievers for higher leverage situations.

On the one hand, our outfielders are 10th in WAR and the Brewers are currently 5th in MLB for wins as a team, so I'd say he hasn't really been missed all that much. On the other hand, Mitchell has played in 44 career games with the Brewers going 30-14 in those games. Obviously a small sample, but Mitchell has definitely had some special sauce so far in his career with his +0.97 WPA ranking 6th among Brewers from 2022-23 even though his 130 PA only rank 26th.

Olson has a little bit of an edge on that next group (especially in BRef WAR) so I think he's a lock for the Top 4 with Betts, Acuna, Freeman. After that it should be between Carroll and Contreras for 5th/6th, but we'll see how closely the voters have been paying attention.

Yeah, looks like he last pitched 9/13. Probably done for the year.