Cool Hand Lucroy

Boy, this offense is struggling lately. Double plays, quick innings, maybe overswinging a bit. Hope the third time through is different.

The pitch to Santana was a true borderline pitch. Gameday had it as a strike. Perez, though, yikes. That's just an umpire giving in. On the bright side, Odubel Herrera made an out against the Brewers.

There's not enough time when the Brewers are hacking into double plays, but there's way too much when it's a vintage Matt Garza inning. Thankfully, there haven't been nearly as many of those this year.

It's hard not to be frustrated with the bullpen, but as I think about, what else can we really expect? The Crew flipped all of its best relievers for prospects either at the deadline last year or in the offseason. Management basically decided relief pitching was a crap shoot and got value where the market was willing to overpay. We knew going in that that course of action was going to leave the team without a proven bullpen option, and so far that's hurt. I think Knebel and Barnes will be fine, and it's good they've had a chance to run through a pressure, MLB season. Hughes has looked good other than last (and both him and Knebel weren't exactly hit hard), and I feel good about Hader going forward wherever he ends up. Even Drake seems like a usable piece. Point is, we kind of knew this was going to be the way of the season. I remember lots of posts talking about how the Brewers were going to have to win games 7-6. I think these types of streaks are what happens when you get a young team and a young, unproven bullpen. The fun part is watching how they respond. I'm excited to see what happens over the next week. Be good to get a look at how these guys play under pressure/nerves.

The unbeatable Cubs traded their best prospect for Quintana. The Pirates may not get anything for McCutcheon and have an aging roster. It seems the Reds have less starting pitching than just about anyone save Baltimore. St. Louis looks like it's losing some magic. Milwaukee, meanwhile, is a) in first place, b) has a well-stocked, deep farm system, c) has a GM who has a plan and tons of payroll flexibility. I hate losing four in a row, but it was going to happen at some point. Avoid the sweep and there's lots to be optimistic about both near-term and down the road. Feels like 2007 to me, and that kicked off about the best five-year stretch we've seen from a Milwaukee baseball team. Go Brewers!

We have a much better chance of making the playoffs today than on Opening Day! Gotta love it.

My expectation was always for this team to be "in the mix" by 2018. I don't think that should change now. A lot will depend on how Stearns and co. decide to balance the young talent in terms of offense versus pitching. There are a lot of talented OFs in the system, and Dubon is someone I feel good about too. Then you've got Villar, who, well, who really knows what he is at this point. So, do you trade some of these guys for another starting pitcher? Do you assume Nelson and Anderson are for real and try to add a solid #3-#4 type to solidify the rotation? Or do you roll with the young starting possibilities (Hader, Woodruff, etc.) and see what happens? If it were me, I'd look to move Garza this offseason (maybe even before the deadline) while he's got some value as an innings-eater on a team-friendly deal. I have to think the Twins would pay for him given that they just tried to bring back Colon. Some other teams might have interest. Maybe you get a bullpen arm or something while clearing some space. I'd also look to package some of the OF glut to see if we can get a middle of rotation arm. I think the Crew can win with five #3 type starting pitchers, and we may not be all that far off from that right now. I think a corollary to this thread is "What would make 2017 a success?" What would provide reason to believe the window was opening for the Crew? I have to say it feels like we're there. Fangraphs has our true roster W% as .440, or 72 wins. Obviously this is a team with a lot of error margin on either side because of its youth, but if the Crew ends up in the 80-85 range that's a signal to me that expectations need to be higher entering next season.

Tough to win when you don't score more than three. Umps don't determine outcomes, but they did cost the Crew a run in about the only way that's still possible with instant replay. Offense needs a big hit with runners on at some point. Davies and Nelson in the last two, and I do think the offense will wake up. Still 8 over .500 and 4 over for July. They'll get back on track.

Torres pitches a clean inning, and Bandy singles against the nasty Rivero. Shows what I know about double-switching, I guess.

Nobody can make contact if that pitch is a strike.

Can't blame Counsell because he's been tossed, but it seems just silly to not double switch so that Aguilar can hit in the 9 spot. Is it really that important to have Torres pitch another inning? Really frustrated by that phantom call on Santana.

The good news is the Pirates had to use the back end of their BP heavily here after throwing 2/3 of it (Watson and Nicasio) yesterday too IIRC. Hopefully the offense picks it up starting tomorrow.

I just posted this in yesterday's in game thread - was it smart to put a young kid in his first appearance with his new team in that situation yesterday? Fair enough, though the situation did call for a lefty, and I think Webb's a better choice than Hader for the reasons above. Not ideal but best given the limited set of options available. I suppose you can make the case that Webb should have been starting the inning, but then he's going through two tough right-handers with a late one-run lead in his first outing. I suppose Drake could have come in once the bases were loaded too since he's being used as a lefty specialist, but I can see thinking you might need him later with the bullpen down two arms. Point is, it's a tough call, and I think CC just tried to let it ride when he probably should have used a better reliever to start the inning. Didn't work out, but that's probably a choice you have to make with a limited number of BP arms at some point in a season. For all we know, the plan was to use Hader as the closer. If he's the best reliever you've got left, I can see wanting him later.

I was on board with Webb instead of Hader because of the latter's still-developing control. Bases loaded nobody out is not, at the moment, an ideal situation for Josh. I can see a better case for Hader starting the inning, but Scahill was up as a sort of "just-in-case." Hader would have had to start throwing right after the home run, and even though it ended up being a bit longer before the inning ended, I can see not wanting to rush him into getting loose. I would have honestly preferred Torres to Scahill given the unavailability of Barnes/Knebel, but it's not like CC had a ton of options. Hader's future is as a starter. Him being in the bullpen for now is a nice little bonus in that it keeps his innings down and lets him contribute in an area of need. Not to mention giving him some big league experience. I'd rather "baby" him than throw him out there too frequently, especially since he's the type that's going to run high pitch counts. The bigger issue to me is just that Scahill shouldn't be on the roster.

From July 26 to September 5, the 2011 Brewers went 30-8. They had an insane August and won the majority of those games giving up 3 runs or fewer (and put together a 5 game winning streak while never scoring more than 3). I think the 2017 edition has a similarly balanced offensive attack and more depth for sure. Better defense too, definitely up the middle. 2011 pitching feels much, much better, though. After Nelson, I don't have a lot of faith in the rest of the starters. We'll see if Anderson can return to form when he comes back. The difference for me is that the 2011 Brewers had a deep pitching staff that could largely be counted on for quality starts and solid late-inning outs. I still feel like this year's team is going to have to win games 7-5. Maybe somebody from the pen or Davies comes alive, or maybe Suter is for real and Guerra figures out his mechanics and velocity. That's what it'll take for me to really believe, though. Two ten game road trips in the next month, one of them out west. It's tough not to be frustrated when the lead shrinks, but I am trying to remind myself that the overall record matters more right now. Just keep playing well and trying to go 6-4 every 10 or 7-5 every 12. Crew does that, and they're probably right there in September, for the wild card at the very least and hopefully holding off the rest of the Central.

Aren't the Brewers 0-fer when trailing after 8? I wonder how often a team goes through a whole year without winning a game like that. I really have no idea, so maybe it happens all the time. Just feels like the way this team hits it would come through at least once in a spot like that, though the 3-run deficit today might be asking a bit much.

Love the home runs, but it's so great to see Keon go the other way for a base hit. I shudder to think about the damage that guy can do with more consistent contact.

I like Thames, and I'm glad he's a Brewer. That said, he really looks lost at the plate a lot for a guy with an OPS of what? 1000? Aguilar on the other hand seems to hit it hard every time he comes up. I'd like to see him get another start each week anyway. Even a straight platoon seems worth discussing.

Arcia made up for his sloppy defense. Looks like Thames will have to do the same to turn this one into anything other than an L. I second enjoying watching Suter pitch. He's the solution to all the pace of play hand-wringing.

I miss the Indianapolis affiliation. Even Nashville wasn't so bad. It seems like part of what makes it tough is that the Royals have dibs on Omaha and the Cubs on Des Moines. Any chance Wichita works out in Milwaukee's favor? I know they're building a AAA stadium.

One area where I do think Stearns and co. might be ahead of the trends is the bullpen. Because relief pitching is so much more valuable in the postseason as compared to the regular season (a debatable point, but one I think is true), contending teams are going to overvalue its acquisition. What's great about this from the Crew's perspective is that they can trade high-quality relief talent (Thornburg, Smith, Jeffress), and then give other RPs a chance to succeed in high-leverage roles, something that inflates their value as well. You do this right, you can collect a lot of prospects without incurring a whole lot of short term risk, at least as I see it. Maybe I'm not up on other teams that are doing this, but it seems like one area where the Crew is innovating. It might as simple as selling assets that have more value to others than they do to the Brewers, but it feels, to me, like an instance of Stearns making a pretty shrewd calculation visavis the market.

FanGraphs did a series on umpire zones a few years ago, and I thought it was fascinating. Based on my subjective viewing of the Cubs-Dodgers series, Ted Barrett's Game 6 strike zone seemed much more fair and consistent than Alfonso Marquez's the previous game. For me, that means there are some umpires who can do a really nice job, and the troubling thing about the clip is that it shows some of the people who might benefit most are refusing to do so (I hope Real Sports didn't just choose Crawford because he was the most extreme--I'd like to think lots of umps can take a self-improvement approach). My take is that a certain amount of subjectivity is okay in baseball. It's a human endeavor, and it's subject to human fallibility. The goal is to use technology to eliminate egregious bias and unfairness. For me, a strike zone has never really been a precise thing. It's defined, but the definition is subject to variables that change (height, stance, etc.). That means that the same exact pitch could be a strike or a ball depending on the hitter. In that sense, "precision" is a myth. There's no such thing as a pure strike or pure ball. It depends. What does that mean? For me, it means MLB should reward the best-rated umpires with whatever incentives they can. They should perhaps even appoint the best home plate umps to ump home plate more often rather than arbitrarily rotating. We can use the technology to get the human error rate down, save umpire jobs, get the call right, and keep the human element that traditionalists care about. I guess what I'm saying is I don't see this as a thorny issue. You can have human umps that use technology to get better. Fire guys who act like Crawford and reward behavior geared toward improvement. Hire the right skills but also the right personalities. If you do that and use the technology right, this is something that can be fixed while keeping every group happy. I see no reason the baseball community can't get together on this. It ain't that hard, and the fact that the debate quickly bifurcates into entrenched positions when there are nuanced solutions that would be agreeable to most gets at problems that may be culturally deeper than just baseball.

I hate news stories like this. And, yes, the folks who talk about a "quick to blame" culture/media are right to an extent. However, whether or not Kang is guilty in this instance, the sheer preponderance of stories like this suggests a cultural problem with all of athletics. I can't speak from experience about professional locker rooms, but I know that the way fans talk about sports, and the way amateur athletes talk too, suggests that sports are still pretty hostile when it comes to gender equity. There's seems to me to be a lot of misogyny in every professional league, and while baseball is making strides on that front (I'm glad some administrative and broadcasting doors are beginning to open for women), there's a LONG way to go. I really believe that the way athletes, fans, and commentators talk about gender roles (and by that I mean masculinity too) helps create an environment where rape, sexual assault, and even those gray area, mutual bad decision cases (where, nonetheless, it's vital for all involved to respect full, conscious consent) continue. We have to stop talking about sex as if it's a reward for athletic achievement, and, more importantly, we have to stop questioning a player's masculinity (with whatever choice vulgarity we choose) when we want to say he's bad. All of that contributes to what I see as a cultural problem. The good news is, fans can change the culture too. This isn't a "PC police" issue either. It's just being willing to remember that language shapes how we see the world and that the values we promote with our words have a way of becoming real.

This is a great table. The low BABIP does scare me a bit, but I wonder about exit velocity data too. I wouldn't know where to find it, but presumably Statcast would allow us to take a close look at how much of the low BABIP is luck and how much is the result of inducing weak contact. The K's are my favorite part about Davies' stretch. I love watching Brewer pitchers miss bats.

Aha. I was wondering if the bag was "safe," but was too lazy to look it up. Thanks for clarifying, Topper. I also found this page, which links to the rulebook itself: http://umpirebible.com/rules/runnerHit.htm#batted I was also interested in the tidbit about the runner NOT being out if he's struck by a batted ball after it passes an infielder other than the pitcher. For example, if the infield is in and the ball passes through the shortstop's legs to strike a runner moving to third, the ball remains live and the runner isn't out. This doesn't apply to the Flores situation (I agree with others; it was a great play), but it is an odd detail. Unfortunately, this doesn't address the "ball of the bag" scenario, but since it's still a live, batted ball, I would guess the runner is out in fair territory and it's a "play on" in foul territory. Anyone else know for sure?