SoCalBrewfan

Nice find! I want to believe. I loved the Urias acquisition at the time and firmly believe that he deserves a mulligan with Covid and the wrist injury. It's also worth noting that even at 700 OPS he's a two win player, and that's the 40th percentile of projected outcomes. I sincerely believe that Urias has the inside track to be the starting SS, and any noise to the contrary is a combination of not diminishing Arcia's value and happiness and wanted to hedge bets in case things don't go as planned.

Nice find! I want to believe. I loved the Urias acquisition at the time and firmly believe that he deserves a mulligan with Covid and the wrist injury. It's also worth noting that even at 700 OPS he's a two win player, and that's the 40th percentile of projected outcomes. I sincerely believe that Urias has the inside track to be the starting SS, and any noise to the contrary is a combination of not diminishing Arcia's value and happiness and wanted to hedge bets in case things don't go as planned.

While it's fun to argue about who will be where at the start of the season, I think it's unlikely that the opening day lineup (much less the March 2 chatter about said lineup) is the same one taking the field for a hypothetical playoff game. Moreso than in past years, the error bars on projected performance seem huge, and so I imagine that the first month plus of the season is going to be partly about evaluation. And really that's been Stearns' MO from the beginning, particularly for those last few utility and bullpen roles. I fully expect to tune in one weeknight only to find Jacemark McSpangenmilleradino our new starting 3B.

While it's fun to argue about who will be where at the start of the season, I think it's unlikely that the opening day lineup (much less the March 2 chatter about said lineup) is the same one taking the field for a hypothetical playoff game. Moreso than in past years, the error bars on projected performance seem huge, and so I imagine that the first month plus of the season is going to be partly about evaluation. And really that's been Stearns' MO from the beginning, particularly for those last few utility and bullpen roles. I fully expect to tune in one weeknight only to find Jacemark McSpangenmilleradino our new starting 3B.

Harrison was a guy with tools and so his breakout came as he put the ball in play enough that it looked like he was putting it all together. All three of the position players in our end of the trade were legit top 100 prospects at one time or another, but arguably not all at the same time. There was a good reason this trade stung brewers prospect lovers at the time...that was a lot of perceived value. That said, they all had that Brewers prospect profile that we see now and again where the other tools are there but making contact seems to come and go. See also Corey Ray. If it all comes together and there's enough contact, those other tools means you can have a heckuva player on your hands, even with 150+ strikeouts. But it's pretty hard to put up 215 Ks like Harrison did in AA and still have plus offensive value. Not impossible, mind you, just really hard. In that sense you could argue that the risk / reward profile for the marlins was extreme. All three of those hitters had the possibility to be really good players, but also the significant possibility of struggling to reach the uecker line. Did Stearns secretly sigh relief getting value for three such risky players? Or was he sure that he was giving up a future all star? I suppose we'll never know.

Harrison was a guy with tools and so his breakout came as he put the ball in play enough that it looked like he was putting it all together. All three of the position players in our end of the trade were legit top 100 prospects at one time or another, but arguably not all at the same time. There was a good reason this trade stung brewers prospect lovers at the time...that was a lot of perceived value. That said, they all had that Brewers prospect profile that we see now and again where the other tools are there but making contact seems to come and go. See also Corey Ray. If it all comes together and there's enough contact, those other tools means you can have a heckuva player on your hands, even with 150+ strikeouts. But it's pretty hard to put up 215 Ks like Harrison did in AA and still have plus offensive value. Not impossible, mind you, just really hard. In that sense you could argue that the risk / reward profile for the marlins was extreme. All three of those hitters had the possibility to be really good players, but also the significant possibility of struggling to reach the uecker line. Did Stearns secretly sigh relief getting value for three such risky players? Or was he sure that he was giving up a future all star? I suppose we'll never know.

You've got at least eight guys who could feasibly put up sub-4.00 ERA seasons in a changing six-man rotation That's good, because as I said in the Anderson thread, you're likely to need the depth this year. Planning for a five man rotation is in the best of years an act of optimism, but this year, my guess is that rotation and bullpen roles are going to be very fluid for many of the pitchers. (Not Woodruff, Burnes, Hader, Williams, presumably...) EDIT: of course Lathund said something very similar above, with which I very much agree!

It's a solid signing I think, likely to be decent value though there's always a chance he misses significant time...in that case it's not a lot lost. This year of all years, who is fifth vs sixth in the rotation might be pretty fluid. In the best of years you probably need to plan for six to eight starters for depth, but between potential covid issue and the fact that nobody pitched many innings last year, you might get twelve guys getting significant numbers of starts. (For reference, the 2019 Brewers had ten with three or more starts, eight with 8 or more.)

That is really interesting, thanks for that! Looks like there are exactly three teams who played in four or more conference championships in the Rodgers era (NE, GB, SF)? I feel like I know intuitively how difficult it is to have sustained success much less win it all, but I am honestly still really surprised by that. It also points out just how fortunate (smart?) the packers have been as far as both quarterback play and simply playing meaningful football games. Like a few of us here, I remember the leaner years between SBII and Holmgren (though I was not really aware until the Lynn Dickey years), and what it's like to be a fan of a team that might, if everything goes right, qualify for the playoffs as a wild card.

Whatever else you say about Counsell, he tends to use his whole roster and get guys plenty of PAs. (Sometimes more than some of us would like.) Every winter I wonder how they're going to use the roster they put together, and every year they manage to do it. If they bring in Choo, I have no doubt that we'll see the usual Counsell mixing and matching and get him and Hiura plenty of playing time. The big question is who will be the guy we'd rather not see out there that mysteriously ends up with 300 PAs. Also, it seems like the brain trust really wants some runners on base this year.

I thought I remembered that someone on the board had a personal connection to Kraus, that's interesting to hear. Hope things have gone well for him, let him know that he still has some fans out there in cyberspace...

But who is the side in any potential labor dispute advocating to level the playing field? The owners might drift in that direction to contain costs, but it's not because of fairness; the richest franchises would cheerfully screw over the little guys to get an advantage. Meanwhile the players have no incentive to keep spending in check and even if they don't like the discrepancies the free spending of big markets exerts upward pressure on salaries. The small market owners aren't really a meaningful bloc at this point, as far as I can see. Statheads used to like to point to the possibility of winning in small markets, the As sometime and the Rays of late, but David getting lucky doesn't mean Goliath wouldn't win best of seven. Sorry, was in the mood for a rant I guess...

See also several generations of college bats in the Pioneer League, including Jake Kraus hitting .399 or something nutty with Helena.

Anyone who played in El Paso is a good candidate, but Lavel Freeman's .395 batting average there in 1987 had me dreaming of MLB batting titles. In retrospect, a 24 year old having a big year in El Paso should maybe have been viewed with some caution, but, hey, I was younger.

This system is broken, and you can only conclude that there are enough people who like it that way that it's never going to get unbroken. Maybe it will be a little less broken around the edges, but never really a fair fight. Even if Bauer isn't the sub 2 era guy from last year, the Dodgers will shrug off the bad money as they have before and it's a short term risk not a ten year albatross. If he opts out it probably he means he had another amazing year, and they probably have another title to show for it.

I think it's funny to complain about a stat being 'made-up'...as though batting average or RBI or fielding percentage or ERA were handed down from the heavens on a crystal tablet. Of course it's made up. So is ERA, and people seem to have no trouble using that in an argument. Just say what you mean: I don't trust stats invented after I was born. Wong deal is sneaky good I think, the defensive bump going from Hiura to Wong is about as big as is possible, and we didn't really have a 1B so Hiura can focus on the part of the game that he's good at. Wong has little power but the issue with the Brewers wasn't with the big swingers, it was too few guys getting on base to extend innings and make the big swings count for more. I like it. Now I would like some clarity on the left hand side of the infield, if that's not too much to ask.

The other thing that makes me think that the Padres would not deal Cronenworth is the depth chart. They have Tatis at short, Machado at third, Hosmer at first, but really nobody to fill the hole at second if Cronenworth is traded. I thought they were on the record as putting Kim at second?

This is not a projection of what will happen, and Erceg being there doesn't mean anyone expects him to be the starting 3b, it's just that they run all the players that seem to have a plausible chance to play as though they were going to be on the team. Also we don't have much at third right now. I mean, nobody expects Braden Webb to start 21 games, or Jake Gatewood to get over 400 PA...and players who have retired or gone to Japan will often still be listed. It takes time to do the projections and write-ups so they spread them over the offseason. They will of course be updated. Rather than complaining about what these projections are not, I like to use them to get a glimpse of some unexpected nuggets. For example, the projection system thinks Alec Bettinger would be an adequate back end rotation piece in 2021 with a 93 ERA+. It projects that Yelich will bounce back and Urias will be our third best position player considering offense, defense, and positional value. It likes Turang a bit I think, listing Ryne Sandberg as a comp. Strangely, it thinks Billy McKinney has some value.

I don't know whether this has previously been reported, but it seems like Trey Supak has signed with Oakland. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/11/athletics-sign-pete-kozma-deichmann-romero-charles-40-man.html

Yeah, same. Sucks.

You might only be interacting with the cashier for a few minutes, but think of the poor cashier and what their day and risk profile looks like.

As someone said above, this roster was built for a long season with redundancy in mind. I assume that, for example, Holt would have been given a longer leash in a full season, and that performances of e.g., Yelich would have evened out. It's not just Brewers, after all, who hit well below their career numbers this year. You could argue that the redundancy meant that the flops we had, and there were many, were at least somewhat mitigated. The moves I thought were forward looking, Narvaez and Urias, proved to be the least impactful for this year, but it's not unreasonable to expect they can still bear fruit in the future. Some of the moves that seemed pointless, e.g., Gyorko or Phelps or Anderson, ended up being important ones. Heck, keeping Arcia (which not everyone wanted to do) probably kept things from totally unraveling. Making the playoffs was a bit of a gift, but you could argue that the tinkering (Vogelbach) made a difference. He's also the GM who stuck with Burnes after a terrible year and again put together a great bullpen with scraps like Phelps, Yardley, and Topa and the emergence of Devin Williams. We also lost one of the best position players on the team to opting out; with LoCain on the team this is a better offense and the pitching probably looks better too due to better defense. There the redundancy helped as well, and though Garcia was no great shakes at the plate, his defense was important. Bottom line, evaluating a GM based solely on this year is lunacy. Who among us would look good if evaluated on this year without considering the context?

With all the key LH hitters on LA, I think the lefty-righty stuff is going to be part of Counsell's thinking, though I think Muncy is counterintuitively a reverse split guy historically. I'd guess Suter then Peralta or Rasmussen, with Claudio available for Pederson or other LH subs. I think Dodgers vs LH starters are usually Betts ®, Seager (L), Turner ®, Muncy (L*), Smith ®, Bellinger (L), Pollock ®, then hard to say, Hernandez and maybe Taylor? Sometimes they swap Bellinger and Pollock, I think? So you figure there will come a time when you want a RHP for Turner / Muncy / Smith or maybe for Pollock / Hernandez / Taylor / Betts. IF they pinch hit with Rios and Pederson after you go RHP, then you have Claudio and Lauer to counter. Dunno, just spitballing...

I used to think this, and said it out loud to people back in march. Fortunately humans are disgusting gooey creatures who do not simply emit raw streams of viruses, but rather tend to embed them in moist sticky little blobs that are tens of micrometers. I think some of what is hard is that masks are not individual protection, but rather population protection. The goal is reducing odds of transmission but you're not reducing them to zero. But this is a numbers game, and knocking percentages off of every possible transmission event can help, potentially dramatically, at the population level. Will it guarantee an individual safety? No. Can it make a difference on a larger scale? Evidence suggests that it can, but it's just one piece of the puzzle.

I will tell you this, I was wrong about baseball this season and the extended playoffs. In the end I'm more excited about the brewers having a shot today than I expected to be, even if I still think playoffs are better it's harder to qualify.