Cool Hand Lucroy

With Uribe struggling, I think letting him try to build confidence is worth it. I don't really want Vieira against Goldy and Contreras.

With Gray going, I'd assume that, if Rea doesn't go 6 or 7 strong, you're punting, especially if you can win today. Maybe that's just me in Gray-owns-us mode, though. :)

Yeah....he did throw 50+ pitches on Wednesday. And Hoby was efficient. I could see trying to squeeze an extra inning out of him, but I don't mind letting him sit either.

Good point. The tricky part with Hall is that his bullpen potential is good but probably not Hader level. Even if Hall becomes a very good bullpen piece (a la Peguero), he's likely got more value as a solid number 4 starter. This is really the question for me. Is it worth trying to turn Hall into Colin Rae when you know you could turn him into Peguero? I'd say yes. I also remember Burnes struggling mightily when we first tried him as a starter. Then, he and the pitching lab worked some serious magic.

[insert strike zone complaint]

That pitch Turang hit out was nuts. No idea how he got there.

Is there another guy on this roster who looks more improved than Turang? Another guy in the big leagues? I mean, I saw Bryce putting together lots of good ABs late last year. I was really excited about his development. But this is...beyond. I suppose you could say similar things about Perkins.

Many, many outs left here. If Hall can get through another scoreless, give him credit. This was going to be an "over" kind of game today (I didn't see the total beforehand, but I would be surprised if it was lower than 9.5). Gotta score at least 5 to win. Seems about right.

I think Hall's going to provide value in the bullpen no matter what. Ortiz looks promising as well. For one year of Burnes, I just don't think a lot more was out there. It's also April. Hall's got a good arm. He hasn't figured it out as a starter. He might not. I think it's totally reasonable to argue that it's wrong to continue this experiment at all, but there's something worthwhile in this guy. He just hasn't shown much of it in his first 4 (!) starts.

4 starts only, but Hall seems to have a lot to figure out. I'd give him a little more leash. He's not THIS bad, so the results are going to improve. If I had to bet, I'd say they don't improve enough to outdo the value he'd provide in the bullpen. But I don't see a lot see a lot of harm in another couple starts given that you're very likely to see some improvement.

Beating the Cardinals is great. Especially when you just toy with them as much as possible. In all seriousness, great to win these games where the offense doesn't show up. Hopefully they get to Mikolas tomorrow. Be a good time for Hall to find it. I'm not confident about Sunday's matchup. Chourio's had some good swings. Struggling lately, but that's the deal when you're in your first 50-100 ABs. This lineup misses Yelich quite a bit. Blake Perkins really stepping up and playing well. I don't expect to win at a .667 clip, but this has been an unquestionably great start for a FUN team. Love it.

I like the move to walk Wilson.

This has been a weird game. I thought Murphy should have had Joel up much earlier. Neither team really deserves to win. Hopefully we're the ones who get lucky. I might walk Arenado.

I like the pitch clock a lot, but I'd argue for it to be like 2-3 seconds longer per pitch. 18 with no one on, 20 with runners on.

That's a theft, but you sort of feel like the Padres stole game 1 with that weird big inning. Give Uribe a lot of credit, not just for finding the strikeout stuff after a rude greeting, but for that really great play to end the top of the 8th. I thought the April schedule was really difficult. Still got that Yankees-Rays week to navigate, but 11-6 is a great, great start. Let's hope the more solid part of the rotation can win us a series in STL.

The Padres have had a lot of batted ball luck this series. The Brewers have also been sloppy defensively. The bullpen is my biggest worry with this team right now. Seems like there's regression from a lot of guys. Hopefully a lot of it is just April and variance, but you've gotta have two of Peguero, Payamps, and Uribe really firing.

Except he might have been our best offensive player in the 2011 playoffs. Just a tribute to the randomness of baseball, Yuni B being an October monster.

I think it's a little too early to put Hall in the "glorified long man" camp. I'll grant that he's looked like it so far, but he needs more starts. Uribe really needs to make an adjustment. Not missing bats at all early on.

I actually feel like the Brewers have 3/5 of a good rotation. It's just that it takes about 7 guys to get there. The injuries haven't helped. I'm more worried about some of the bullpen stuff so far. Schedule's been tough out of the gate, so the hot start is important.

Well, we know Yelich was having some neck issues and that he's had the back thing before. Probably (hopefully) something they can manage with a few days off or the minimum IL-stint.

Definitely one of those GAB games. Definitely can't give extra outs in that ballpark. Good battle from the offense, which has looked great lately. This is going to be a difficult part of the rotation all year.

I mean, you can call it "babying" if you want, but it's really just enacting basic communitarian principles. You try to properly minmax the interests of athletes, large institutions, and small ones. This isn't actually that hard. By agreeing to play COLLEGE sports, the athletes agree not to prioritize making as much money as possible, the schools agree to the same, and you allow for players of the highest interest sports to share in the overages they help create through a sound negotiating process. Look, men's basketball and football have highly developed professional systems, and tons of money flows into college sports because the market wants as much of that content as possible. Players should get some stake in that. If they think they deserve more, fine. Negotiate for it, or go pro (and the NBA and the NFL need to be better about allowing for that choice, especially the NBA). The idea that only sports that can pay for themselves should exist (which it sounds like you're saying) is bunk. If you think it's valuable and important to allow for more athletes to play high-level tennis or track or women's crew (and to earn scholarships through those endeavors), you subsidize a system that allows for that because the societal goals are more important than allowing the men's basketball players to keep ALL the revenue they generate. There's no reason you can't effectively and fairly tie together higher education and athletics. It's just that the institutions and interest groups in charge have royally messed it up. Schools want revenue growth at all costs and athletes want to be treated like all-star professionals. It's what happens when self-interest is the only guiding principle at play. It's possible to make this work, just as it's possible to fix all kinds of societal problems (health insurance, climate change, etc.), but we won't because the entrenched interests aren't equipped (and are mostly run by people who aren't very thoughtful) and most fans aren't that interested in nuance and lack the patience for difficult trade-offs..

I do actually wonder if there's some coordinated thinking to this? Like, you have a more contact-oriented offense, and you don't want to be taking chances with less than 2 outs?

I think, like most things, this is a case of an inept organization being unable to adequately see the future. The NCAA waited until it was absolutely shoved in order to even try to correct the serious systemic problems facing college sports. The players produced a bunch of revenue that they didn't get to share in, the NCAA made sham "student-athlete" arguments in order to keep the status quo, and now there's a genuine belief that college sports are just a lower level of pro sports, even though that really shouldn't be the case. And it will become the case if we keep this up. 60 or 70 schools will field full athletic rosters, and we'll have the football model, which I think is horrible for basketball, hockey, volleyball, baseball, and every sport that isn't football. The NCAA failed the vast majority of its member schools. It's sad. And they've done such a great job of making themselves villains that it's going to be hard for courts and the government to buy the legitimate arguments they are now making about roster turnover, a "free market" for student athletes that's not free at all (because it's totally unregulated and full of bad actors like self-interested agents and also completely top-heavy), and the need to redistribute a lot of revenue to support, say, the Division III softball championship (and I don't that I'd trust the NCAA to enact good corrective policy anyway). The biggest thing I think college sports needs is a credible commissioner. I've seen others make this argument. You need somebody actually interested in crafting a good policy compromise that enables freedom, labor protection, and access to revenue for the players and preserves the collective interests of non-revenue sports. I think those policies exist, and I actually don't think they'd be that difficult to enact. But if we can't get a credible voice to craft and enforce them, I'm not that optimistic about the future of college sports. EDIT: One concrete example is that, by failing to anticipate or care about the growth of women's athletics (especially volleyball and basketball), the NCAA cost itself maybe 100 million dollars. They bundle the rights to those tournaments (and like a couple dozen others) and sell the whole package for like 35 mil. You have to think the women's tournament in hoops is worth at least twice that. And volleyball is worth a big number too. If the NCAA was better at managing its revenue, we wouldn't be in this situation.

Ha. I wish. We're blackout territory for the Cards, Cubs, White Sox, and Brewers, for no reason I can fathom.