Cool Hand Lucroy

I was just talking with someone today and saying I've never seen a more dominant collection of pitchers and a worse offense, so I'm with you. Some of that is maybe due to the run environment league-wide. But still. Yelich and Hiura were supposed to be the center pieces here. If theyvwere even at league average, things would look better. But they're not, and Bradley has been awful. It is not a fun offense to watch. Yelich will hit. Will Hiura? That's about the only thing that will make them watchable offensively...

Wow. What do you even say at this point? I know symbolic shake-ups are just that, but like...can't hurt?

Going to have to hit tonight, it appears. Braves hitting it pretty hard.

Yuni B career WAR (bRef): -2.4. But the man hit in the playoffs. We'll always have that.

The 2011 team had a much more complete roster. That said, the pitching was on fumes in October, and they still had to play Mark Kotsay in CF. I'll go with the same answer as dlk. 2011 was a better team overall. 2021 has a better shot at a WS if they make the playoffs. Even a 1-game WC. Imagine going Burnes-Woody-Hader, with Williams and Freddy available in support. In a do-or-die situation, all hands on deck, it's pretty easy to see this crew needing just a run or two to win. Put it like this: If I had to pick facing the 2011 Brewers or the 2021 Brewers in a postseason series, I'd rather play the 2011 version. Gallardo and Greinke were both excellent, but does any other pitcher on that staff scare you?

Will give them until the lineup is healthy, and the offense doesn't have to be world-beaters. They need to be like a bottom-third offense instead of a bottom-sixth one. That's it. But this team is about the least amount of fun I've had rooting for a comtender. So many holes up and down the lineup.

That was awesome. Well done, Lo!

It is really tough to go down 1-0 in the first inning and feel like it's going to be an uphill battle all game. It doesn't quite feel over, but, man, is it close, and that maybe speaks to the utter weirdness of baseball in 2021. It's getting to the point where I feel like I may have to just embrace it. Might be more fun that way.

Frustrating.

It is hard to believe a major-league hitter can have an AB as bad as Shaw's.

Well, Flaherty probably has one more at most. Hoping Rasmussen and probably Suter can keep it close. Get JP a save opp. Or walkoff win.

Well, the shadows are gone now, so....I expect an offensive breakout...

JBJ's inability to walk is a real killer. Sure doesn't look like he can hit his way out of this...

The offense isn't good. It's also been pretty darn unlucky this series.

I get Levering and Grindl confused a lot. Singleton has a similar timbre too, haha.

Alright, this is getting ridiculous. Offense time.

Their pitcher can. Well, he did. I don't have the numbers. Sure seems to me like even pitchers are sacrificing less (or failing to do it more).

It's hard to believe there are worse offenses in baseball, but there are. Like 4 of them

You know bunting is a lost art when even pitchers can't do it. And Woodruff might be better than a position player or two on this roster...

The idea of banning the shift has always felt really intrusive to me, and I'm opposed to it sort of on principle. Still, even after just a month of data, it's impossible not to see the weirdness of baseball over the last couple of years (some of which may still be COVID-related). I'm probably more open to banning it than I have been in the past, even though I wish there were less intrusive ways to change the shape of the game. I think this is the real trouble with analytics. There's an entropy to them, a "heat-death," a move toward homogeneity. It's easy to see how to win in today's brand of baseball. You have to hit home runs and flyballs and stress exit velo and shifting defensively. To try anything else would be very unlikely to work and would be a massive risk. The culture of the game now is such that the analytics have replaced the "eye test" and the "Triple Crown" as instantiated knowledge. We've reached the other side of the pendulum arc. Basketball feels to me like it's in the same place. The NBA is all threes and dunks and backtaps, and college hoops is constantly trying to become more like the NBA. The analytics breed homogeneity, and that means there just isn't a lot of variance in how teams approach the game. And variance is what makes matchups interesting. So, what to do? I think it's a two-path option: 1) You alter the rules to promote more variance in team approaches. I think strike zone set ups might help here, pickoff limitations, slightly bigger bases (which would also have an injury rationale, in addition to increasing the running game), rules that shift the advantage to the baserunner when one's aboard. There's also moving the mound back or pitch clocks, or other things designed to help hitters. There are maybe some really weird, crazy-sounding things you could do about equipment (limiting glove size/padding for infielders, for example, to try and increase BABIP). The whole goal is to increase the value of hard contact irrespective of launch angle. 2) Some team is going to have to take a real risk offensively. Bunt against every shift you see for a week. Bunt more often generally. Acquire high AVG players. Stress AVG starting now and with the MLB club. The incentives are all lined up against this, of course. Doing this stuff messes with your whole philosophy, and it probably leads to losing for all kinds of reasons. But I think the fundamental lesson of the analytics era is that there is a reward to doing things the way no one else does. You just have to be willing to see it and try anything. I have a hunch the Brewers are onto this a bit in that they seem to me to be one of the more aggressive swinging teams in MLB. They want players making hard contact rather than waiting for walks and driving up pitch counts. I'll put it bluntly: I'd really like to see what happens when a team plays "old-style" baseball and just commits themselves to it. Honestly, I'd think it was fascinating if the Brewers did that, even if they ended up 20-142. I want the Crew to do well, of course, but I'm just genuinely more interested in baseball writ large, and I think it's worth recognizing that the fans provide some incentive for this, don't we? By valuing winning above all else? I'd just love to see the Brewers decide to bunt for a week. Because it would be fun. See what happens. The way teams in basketball try to pull teams out of zone by beating it down the floor. Maybe set some priors for when you won't do it (with the bases loaded or whatever). But given this offense's overall prospects for scoring, I don't think asking Pablo Reyes to bunt a bunch of times could be worse results-wise...

I know it's hard to change your approach, and, generally, the launch angle apprpach works. But, yeah, that doesn't mean it's good in every instance all the time. I think way too many players are applying a blanket mindset where a fine-tuned one would be much better.

Today's the day the streak ends. Love seeing Pina back there. I know he's only 5 WAR by bref (about 1 WAR a year), but I think that's underselling him. And, even if not, he's as solid as a catcher gets defensively. The kind of backup catcher that makes people get Romantic about backup catchers. I know at least person around here who agrees...

Kind of amazing to be 17-15 with this offense and this many injuries. I say that a lot, but the current 26-man is really unexciting. I also thought the team had no business in the postseason in 2019, though, so certainly not giving up on them in May. CC and DS and co. have earned some slack, but it sure looks like it's time for some adjustments.

I think CC leaving Perdomo in says a lot about the perceived likelihood that the offense can scratch.

The offense is just not very good. So, so early still, but something needs to change on that side of things. Health will help, but it's got to be more than that. I'm ready to let Cain, Taylor, and Garcia be the regular OF starters with McKinney at 1B. Bradley and Vogelbach can be 2x wk starters and bench bats.