KeithStone53151

I wouldn't put too much stock in the specific teams we beat or lose to. Bottom line is we won 5 or 7. The Mets payroll is at least double ours and the roster is loaded with quality players. Slumps can end at a moments notice. The best part of this week was 24 runs against the pirates in 3 games. Hitting is the greater concern. The pitching has been better than the hitting, and we have significant injury reinforcements coming on the pitching side with no hitters on the horizon really in the minors or injuries. Maybe frelick, maybe Hiura. Both would specifically fill a need and it would be great if they put up big july numbers in AAA to provide an option.

It wouldn't be unusual for him to pursue FO staff. For example, let's say he's familiar with really good stats guy that's ready to advance to the next level...maybe he'd pursue that guy to be stats director. Those positions may not exist in reality, but you get the concept. It's no different from a NFL head coach hire going back to his old coaching staff and grabbing a guy or two for advanced positions. Maybe the QB coach becomes his new OC. And...doing this I wouldn't view as tampering. Considering Counsell wasn't even a Stearns choice/hire, it's far less certain that he'd even want Counsell as his manager. Especially with unlimited funds. To a different point, I will say it wouldn't overly surprise me if the Mets end up being accused of tampering allegations...that they talked contract/agreement with Stearns for 2024 before he left the Brewers in 2022. I'm not about to line up and accuse, because it's not being talked about and no evidence exists that we know of, but it would make sense if evidence surfaced. A little bit of curiosity/speculation on this specific piece of this whole topic/thread is pretty darn reasonable in my opinion.

Already making moves is one thing, and almost certainly not happening. But it seems fairly likely that he left the Brewers last year intent on POBO for the Mets in 2024. Maybe there was/is no agreement in place, but both parties have wanted this for a while and if/when Stearns wants to start working again...I expect this will be the outcome.

I had to check, Yelich really is grading as above average defender this year. But, that's an improvement at age 31 over three consecutive below average defensive seasons. I suspect that's not going to continue over the life of his contract, it may not continue as soon as next season as this could simply be a small sample size. Yelich's career trajectory is most easily explainable by being a great contact hitter, and in his peak years MLB juiced the ball leading to him hitting a lot more HR than he rightfully should have...which he parlayed into a big contract extension. I have a lot more hope that the current slash line is sustainable for a few more years, and he keeps stealing 30-40 bases for at least 2 more years. That probably puts us at 2 more years of paying 25-50% above market and 3 years of paying 60-80% above market. I know that seems doom and gloom, but coming into this year he looked like he'd be in a position to get kicked to the bench by the young crop down the stretch. So this improvement is quite huge for this contract not being a massive failure.

Agreed, except I don't think DFA Winker does anything at all...except maybe tell the roster to figure it out or you could be next. But it's not like we have a guy down in AAA pounding the baseball and ready to get a shot at this level. Either the guys we have need to improve to career norms or better, or good chance we'll be big sellers in a month.

Yelich? Let's not get carried away...

I think you'd be surprised how many people on the mlb roster would obliterate AAA pitching. Probably a good chunk of the active roster including guys like Voit and Winker who are bad right now.

I believe I saw something early in the preseason that Hiura made significant mechanical adjustments. Who knows how true that is. But there are a couple noteworthy differences between this Hiura and previous Hiura. He's 26 now and I'll stray off into 2 points on that. First, 27 is a very typical age where hitters will peak. Lots of career seasons at 27. And approaching that threshold might make a difference. Two, other players I'm familiar with that had elite bat speed but struggled early on include Carlos Gomez, Rickie Weeks, Javy Baez...all 3 of these guys really turned a corner at that 26/27 and put together a few really good offensive years. None of these guys are apples to apples, most notably Gomez/Baez are all-world defenders at their position...which with that you can kinda deal with mediocre offense in the case of baez and bad offense in the case of gomez. All that said, there are certainly enough positive factors that having hope in Hiura is a reasonable take. It's also not a difficult argument to make that Hiura might be worth taking a chance on his AAA production being real improvements given the production of Winker/Voit to date. You really can't get 600ish OPS from platooning DH's, just not good enough.

Dillard with a really nice analysis of that umpire error, though I will give the ump credit for not tossing winker. Most of the umps in the league would have tossed him almost immediately

Where's the high pitch to Adames called a strike? Was it just so bad it didn't appear in the chart?

This game is a perfect example of why umpires need their power checked, why umpires should be able to lose their jobs, and why we need automated strike zones. I just watched highlights, this umpire is an absolute embarrassment and he should not be umpiring major league baseball games. This guy clearly had a vendetta against Adames for some unknown reason. Wild to me that umpires can screw up so badly and as soon as the manager or player say anything... ejection.

Agreed. An epic fail by the jets likely means Rodgers was trash, and in that case getting literally anything is better than having bad Rodgers in 2023 and the cap problem in 2024. There are far more scenarios that the Packers win this trade than the jets. The jets basically need Rodgers to be MVP Rodgers, but even in that case it would be a win/win if Jordan love is the real deal.

Even in an extreme case? Let's say the jets are 1-8 to start the season and Rodgers looks old/bad but is healthy? In that case they are also in serious risk of that pick being an ultra valuable top 5 pick. I generally tend to agree that the 4-7 jets are not punting on the season, I think it takes a very extreme scenario for them to consider benching Rodgers to save the draft pick. I'll add the GM would almost certainly be fired at the 1-8 mark if Rodgers was bad and potentially benched.

Yeah, pick 42 obviously completely changes the valuation. Overall this seems like a pretty reasonable compromise based on what the reported offers/asks were...although the Jets didn't protect themselves from a scenario where Rodgers only plays 1 year.

Ehhhh, the Pirates have a good young core. One of that young core is out for the season, but they have young talent and it was more a matter of when not if they would get good. I didn't think it would be this quick...still might not be. Changing of the guards happen in baseball much quicker than projection systems can catch them. The year the Cubs won like 100 games and went deep in the playoffs with the Baez/Rizzo/Bryant core...most projection systems had them around 80-82 wins.

Late to the party, I'm pretty thrilled that the A's are moving. Them having to play in that stadium for so long while the City threw up so many road blocks, it seemed inevitable. It's one thing to not want to shell out a ton of taxpayer dollars to build a new stadium, it's quite another to block a team from buying land to build a new stadium. Vegas seems like a weird choice, I feel like there are other more viable options. Being on the west, they could have simply gone to Portland. San Antonio would also be a good choice. Others seem to be noting that there are quite a few decent options for Milwaukee to potentially be moved. It seems unlikely to me though. Milwaukee has notably high attendance, it would seem weird to move a team from a city where fans turn out despite market size.

I tend to agree that i think Burnes makes his next start. MLB athletes receive world class treatment on any injuries. It seemed he strained it during the run down and pitched through it for a bit. I'll agree that if it's a problem during his bullpen session maybe they push him back, but with the treatment he's getting and preparation for it pre-game...I suspect he'll be fine. Worst case most likely is they push him back a couple days or skip one start. I think a trip to the DL is extremely unlikely.

I probably should have tweaked my comments a bit. A strikeout is better than weak contact. Weak contact sometimes goes for hits while a strikeout is virtually never anything but an out. Problem is, the k rate is so sought-after right now...the option of relievers that don't get strikeouts but generate weak contact at a very high rate might be the better value option than high k rate pitchers...allowing us to utilize resources elsewhere in the roster. Also as you noted, weak contact generally requires less pitches than a strikeout, so you can get more outs and be more fresh than the guy using 20 pitches to strike out 3 guys in an inning.

Oh man, in no universe are the Reds or Pirates or Cubs better than this Cardinals team...not right now. I'm certainly going to enjoy the Cardinals having the worst record in the division for as long as it lasts. That team somehow winning 60 games would be hilarious but it would take like 8 major injuries and even then probably isn't realistic.

My argument is slightly more difficult with Woodruff injured, but Burnes/Woodruff/Peralta have a pretty solid track record of striking guys out. Even Lauer does. Miley is really the only guy that is a well below average strikeout guy. Looking at their numbers, all our starters except Miley are striking out about a batter per inning. Burnes has the worst k rate of the other 4, I'll go out on a limb and say that's unlikely to be how we end the season. Right now our SP is 21st in MLB in k rate, that'll improve when Woodruff is back and Junk and his 3.86 SO/9 stops making starts. Now in relief, Milwaukee is dead last in k rate at 6.18. Slightly ahead of us is the 12-0 Rays with 6.34 and then significantly ahead of them is the 28th ranked Nationals at 6.89. On one hand, we knew our relief was going to be a question mark at best with Williams really the only established guy. Also, being in the company of the Rays right now certainly isn't a bad thing and maybe us and them know something other teams don't. One other major point, our defense to this point is inarguably one of the best in the league. We are in first by a wide margin in DRS, and fangraphs has us in the top 5 in both RAA and OAA. The eye test backs that up, especially when we have our best options out there(I'm imaging a world with Taylor/Frelick in LF and Yelich DH or bench...we'd be plus or better at every spot). Bottom line is weak-moderate contact with a superb defense might be better than k's and a high pitch count.

At this moment, the Brewers are in first in the division and the Cardinals are in last.

I think this is accurate. That said, maybe NFL splurge and update the clocks to include a decimal place as part of the counter for the last 5 seconds like NBA.

Good post. I think your math is off on nfl. 16 player ejections would be one every 17 games. I also would bet heavily that very few of these ejections were due to making a snide comment, or saying mean things to the umpire, or whatever these overcompensating babies are tossing players for these days. In NFL it's almost always a dangerous play or player misconduct. I'm not sure about nba I don't watch much, but I know they have a technical foul system so guys at least get a second chance unless they do something egregious. I watch plenty of EPL and I can't tell you how many times I've seen guys scream 4 letter words at the refs and not get a card of any type. If you get sent off in soccer you almost always earned it through dangerous play. So I'll concede there's more ejections in other sports than I realized, but I still stand by in MLB ejections should be much more rare...and umpires need to set their egos aside and keep guys in the game. Honestly we need more ejections like what happened to realmuto, but in games that matter otherwise nothing will change... you'll still see guys get upset at a strikeout, throw their bat in frustration, and get tossed.

I know my viewpoint is minority, but I almost always disagree with ejections decisions. I can understand it in this case, especially when applied to current precedence. What I'd really like to see is them implement a warning option before an ejection. At the end of the day it hurts the product and is disappointing for fans to see top players get ejected from games. This is completely not a thing in basketball, football, hockey, etc...it happens rarely if ever that you might go to a game and 1/4 through the game your favorite player gets ejected. In baseball, it's about 1 of every 10 games that a player or manager is ejected.

This looks much more reasonable than the shift we saw in spring training. Anything in the RF corner is a triple even for slow guys, and there's a ton of room in the outfield. If you have fast OF it's probably not a huge deal and this shift is probably a net positive. We could pull this off on days with BA, Wiemer, Mitchell in the outfield. Yelich is pretty meh out there so I wouldn't want to risk trying it on days he's in LF(most days).