sveumrules

Baseball Musings RBI percentage page has 255 players that came to bat with at least 200 runners on base this year. Bauers 13.78 RBI% ranked 139th so he wasn't really cashing in base runners at any extraordinary rate.

Ratings for TV sports (and TV in general) are down across the board over the timeframe cited in the article. NBA set attendance and revenue records again last season even if fewer and fewer people are paying for cable nowadays.

158 career MLB innings with a 5.57 ERA and 5.68 FIP but a 4.37 xFIP which means the model thinks his home run rate has been flukily high. Nothing too special at AAA this past year with 76 IP of 4.34 ERA and 4.10 FIP. His last time in MLB (13 innings in 2023) he put up a non-descript 4.73 ERA and 4.53 FIP, but his 3.61 xERA and 3.34 xFIP again implied he was possibly the victim of some bad luck in there. Steamer really likes him with a 3.76 ERA projection for 2025, looks like the Brewers computers and scouts were similarly intrigued.

The only thing Attanasio would sell for $2 at the stadium is a cup of his neighbors sand.

If you scroll down past the Last 30 Games split it lists only 18 career games.

Yeah, just plug him into the Bauers role and give him 350-400 PAs against MLB pitching. I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up with a batting line something like Joey Ortiz last year - 240/330/400 or so. That was good for a 104 wRC+ last year. With his overly patient approach I think leaving him in AAA any longer would be a detriment. If he struggles either of Mike Boeve or Ernesto Martinez Jr. should be just a plane ride away.

Black only played 18 games at the MLB level. He homered in each of his last two games in AAA on September 21st/22nd to close the season.

OKC are a best in the West 20 W - 5 L. Their +12.1 netRtg is tops in the Association. They were on a five game win streak and had won nine of their last ten. No matter, your 2024 Emirates Cup Champions are the old washed up Doc Rivers coached Milwaukee Bucks.

Interesting ideas @wallus Castro had an 85 wRC+ over his first 1,082 PAs with DET but has kicked it into a new gear with a 108 wRC+ over his last 1,044 PAs since joining MIN. Steamer isn’t really buying it though with a 99 wRC+ projection for next year and looking at his StatCast page I can kinda see why. Has played 4.000 combined innings at OF/SS/2B with bad DRS (-36) and middling FRV (+1). Only has 458 innings at 3B with +1 DRS | +2 FRV. Is a switch hitter, but has pretty pronounced splits with an 87 wRC+ vs LHP | 116 wRC+ vs RHP since finding his stroke with the Twins. Could maybe be something there if the Brewers think he’s a viable 3B defender and buy into his new hitting results more than the publicly available projections do. Schmitt has posted nice small sample marks at 3B with +3 DRS | +2 FRV in 295 innings, but the metrics haven’t been a fan of his work at SS/2B with -7 DRS | -6 FRV in 432 combined innings. Hasn’t really hit at all in AAA (95 wRC+ over 568 PAs) or MLB (73 wRC+ over 390 PAs with just a 4.4 BB%) though. Steamer (89 wRC+) and ZiPS (93 OPS+) think better days are ahead, but barring some kind of breakthrough or swing change his offensive game seems pretty limited. Pass. Luzardo would all depend on the medicals. If the Brewers staff think he’s got another 279 IP of 80 ERA- | 80 FIP- in him like he racked up from 2022-23, I’d trust their judgement. Would guess the Marlins will want players with zero service time coming back though since they aren’t realistically lined up to compete soon,

If he was expected to start every day in the majors I'd agree, but right now it looks like he's more slotted to fight it out and earn playing time as part of a timeshare so that has to knock him down a little. Believe MLB dropped him in at #15 on their Brewers Top 30 for whatever that is or isn't worth. Longenhangen gave him a 40 FV at FanGraphs. Their Brewers list will be getting updated this offseason, but that is in the same tier that starts with Bitonti at #14, CarRod at #15, Pena at #18, Meccage at #19 in the last update.

I'd probably slot him in at #19 between two other diminutive Brewers prospects. Big believer in Luis Pena's upside at #18 even though he is on the opposite end of the proximity scale so can't put Caleb ahead of him. Love Luis Lara's defense in CF and he has plenty of time to figure out the rest, but Durbin is just on a whole different level as a hitter and on the cusp of MLB.

Welcome to the board!

Having a minor league fielding percentage 32 points better than thee literal worst 3B defender of the defensive metrics era is a point in his favor?

Based on what? The Brewers played Black at 1B for 76 games, DH for 21 games, OF for 12 games and 3B for 9 games (with three errors and a .876 fielding percentage) last year. That distribution would seem to imply the Brewers don’t believe Black is defensively capable of handling the strong side of a 3B platoon at the MLB level. If they had intentions of playing him at 3B on any kind of regular basis in MLB he would have gotten more reps there. All indications, from his scouting reports, to his fielding percentages, to how the Brewers have chosen to deploy him most recently indicate he is pretty horrible at 3B (especially for a team built on a foundation of run prevention).

Yeah, it seems like every postseason they flash up the onscreen graphic showing how the team that hits more HR in any given game has some obscene win percentage. Couldn’t find anything more recent, but this deep dive into the topic by Mike Petriello from 2020 does a pretty thorough job looking into it.

Lowe definitely falls flush in the Venn Diagram overlap of proven hitter, the Brewers can afford him, likely available, and on a team we have trade history with. Think he would need to play like 40 games each at 2B / 1B / DH to make it work defensively.

Interesting signing. Has been pretty durable averaging 150+ IP over his 12 year career. Definitely a control artist averaging just over one walk per nine innings the last three years, but only like 6.3 strikeouts per nine in Japan. For comparison here are some other recent NPB guys (with their K9) before coming over…Sasaki (11.4), Yamamoto (9.3), Imanaga (9.2), Senga (10.3), Ohtani (10.4), Darvish (8.9). Sugano has also been pretty homer prone in NPB with an HR9 over one in 4 of the 5 seasons from 2019-23 before putting up good homer suppression in 2024. Will be curious to see how that plays in the AL East.

The gist is that those seven players combined for about four wins (+38.9 runs) above average last year when accounting for defense and position. Steamer thinks those same seven players will only be marginally above average defensively (+2.5 runs) in 2025. Odds are the projections are underselling our defense (and by extension our pitching), so the Brewers should be a pretty safe bet to beat them again.

Projections regress defense to the mean extra hard. Last year’s DEF results vs next year’s Steamers… Contreras (+7.6 to +2.7) Chourio (+3.1 to -4.6) Ortiz (+11.3 to -0.9) Turang (+5.6 to +3.5) Mitchell (+1.3 to +0.5) Perkins (+6.9 to +2.9) Frelick (+3.1 to -1.6) TOTAL (+38.9 to +2.5) That’s something like three to four wins of likely under-projection right there.

Last year’s position players had the following MLB ranks… +19.7 BsR (1st) | 9.7 BB% (2nd) | 217 SB (2nd) | 26.4 avgAge (3rd youngest) | .326 OBP (4th) | +64 DRS (4th) | +29 FRV (5th) | 27.2 WAR (5th) | 777 R (6th) | .248 AVG (8th) | 104 wRC+ (10th) | 177 HR (16th) | .155 ISO (18th) | 23.6 K% (18th) First of all, just way to go. They were really really good at a lot of different things, especially for how young they were. Even with Willy the primary deficit was hitting for power though, so I think it’s only natural to hope for improvement in that area this year, especially with his departure. The players on hand should eat into a chunk of his lost production no doubt, but I’d feel a lot better about them maintaining or maybe even building on that Top Six finish in run scoring if they added one more bat to the mix.

Last year Contreras DHed 34 games and Yelich came in at 26 in only half a season. I wouldn’t be surprised if Contreras ends up around 40-45 games this year if they try to DH him more often to keep him fresh. If Yelich is healthy most of the season have to imagine he’s the DH at least 50-60 times coming off injury with four superior OF defenders on the roster. That would leave something like 220-240 games for Hoskins and someone else (probably Tyler Black at the moment) to divvy up between 1B/DH. Casas probably shouldn’t be seeing too much time at 1B either. Among 27 players with at least 1,500 innings there the last three years he has -7 DRS and -8 FRV, both ranking 20th. Brewers need another power bat no doubt, but with the dearth of catching in the system behind Quero I’m not sure they’ll be too motivated to deal him.

They had open spots heading into the Rule 5, but they were all spoken for with Thomas, Wolfram, Cortes, and Durbin all lined up. I would have preferred to keep Smith, he’s pitched well and is a great dev story, but the reality is (not even counting established SP like Peralta, Civale, Tobias and Woody) he’s behind nine RHP on the 40 man - Henderson, Megill, Payamps, Peguero, Mears, Bukauskas, Uribe, Patrick, and Rodriguez plus guys like Misio, Yoho, Hunt and Wichrowski that aren’t on the 40 man yet. I’d classify it as more of a calculated risk than any kind of unforced error, especially considering Smith hasn’t thrown a pitch for CHI yet and could still end up back in the org depending how things go.

If healthy and performing, sure, but Robert has only qualified for the batting title in one of his four full seasons while missing 237 of 648 games during that time. His K rate has also exploded going from 19.2 to 28.9 to 33.2% over the last three years. Not a good sign for a guy with a minuscule 5.6 BB% for his career. The White Sox are probably holding out for an offer matching the guy that hit for a 128 wRC+ over 595 PAs for 4.9 WAR in 2023, but teams know he only managed an 84 wRC+ and 0.5 WAR over 425 PAs last year. Steamer sees him bouncing back to a 103 wRC+ which is more or less the same as Garrett Mitchell’s 102 wRC+ projection. I’d rather take the risk on the guy we already have that will be making peanuts the next three years versus trading a big prospect package for a guy making $57M over the next three years.

Believe there will be a few more Comp A picks awarded for Burnes. Santander and Walker (if they sign with new clubs) so the Brewers will have two picks between #29 and #33 but the exact number of those picks isn’t quite set yet. But yes, should be fun!

Bucks move on to the Championship Game of the Emirates Cup with a 110-102 win over Atlanta. Giannis and Brook combined for an efficient 48 points making 17 of 25 FGAs. Also had six blocks between them. Lillard with a not so efficient 25 on 8 for 21 shooting, but hit the game sealing bucket at the end in typical Dame fashion. After posting positive marks for a +23 on/off in his first three games back Khris had his first clunker with a -5 today on 2 of 7 shooting with 3 turnovers. AJJ did a little of everything with 5 PTS | 7 REBS | 4 AST | 2 STL and pesky defense of Trae Young. AJG drained three of six from deep and the Bucks were +6 in his 19 minutes on the floor.