KeithStone53151

If you had told me Garza would have gotten out of that inning allowing only 2 runs, I would have taken it in a heartbeat. 1 run is a gift, unbelievable.

I certainly would not have a long leash on him today with the off day tomorrow and the Dodgers looming. With Hader pitching yesterday the most likely multi inning route would be Drake?? Can't say I look forward to that option either... One thing I've noticed counsel will do is have guys pitch 1+ inning often and pull them once they appear to not look effective. The Jeffress/Torres/Drake tandem could probably go 4-5 innings if needed. Maybe even add hughes to that mix. We do have the off day, then 3 against the dodgers with our better starters due up that you'd hope will be able to go deep into the game.

I hope not, that means we probably got creamed. Can't afford to give away games. I certainly would not have a long leash on him today with the off day tomorrow and the Dodgers looming. Absolutely. Torres/Jeffress/Drake for 4-5 innings today if needed.

I hope not, that means we probably got creamed. Can't afford to give away games.

Pina is throwing out about 35% of base stealers. That's a shade above average. The elite guys this year throw out close to half, the crappy guys throw out 1 in 4. He also only has 4 errors, which tells you he isn't throwing the ball away very often...especially if you factor in all his pick off attempts.

I wouldn't be surprised if we signed him to give us innings in AAA playoffs when we call up some other arms in September. I guess it's possible he's a September callup as well, though i'm hoping it's Jungmann/Guerra.

I sure hope he isn't rusty or tipping his pitches or anything...

I'm going to disagree, Josh Hader has been shaky as heck this season. Even protecting him against righties he has an xFIP over 4.5. He just walks too many guys and doesn't get any groundballs. I don't want him in big situations unless it is against a lefty. Don't let the low ERA fool you, that is meaningless in a small sample when someone else is usually coming in to clean up your mess, Hader has not pitched well at all this year. He obviously has dominant stuff and that can save a lot of mistakes but I think Counsell is using him exactly like he should until Hader shows some sort of command of his pitches. According to baseball reference, in 68 PA since the all star break, Hader has struck out 24 guys, walked 9, allowed 11 hits(5 2b 0 hr) and a slash line of 196/338/286 with a 344 BABIP. A 13% walk rate is still high, but it's a sign of progress for sure. For comparison, Knebel is at a 13.7% BB rate on the season, Barnes is at 10%, Andrew Miller at 8%. This damages the BABIP argument considerably as 344 is pretty high and he still managed a 624 OPS against and 1.69 ERA over the 2nd half(it was 0.73 1st half, he was lucky 1st half without question). Saying Hader has not pitched well at all this year is absolutely foolish commentary. I'm not going to argue he's been dominant, but he's been solid at worst and very effective overall. I dunno what it is about people on this board pointing out one advanced metric that fits their line of thinking while ignoring 100 others that prove their point to be silly. I could say "hey look at his k rate, he's the best pitcher in baseball"...but that too would be foolish for the exact same reasons your comment is foolish. Is it that hard to believe that guys don't make good contact against him because his stuff is so filthy? Or that he's very clearly improved since his first 6 appearances at the major league level that are driving down his season ratios?

knowing that a player will be out of options may prompt the brewers to cut him ahead of the rule 5 draft deadline to open up more spots. of the current 40-man, these are the players that will enter 2018 spring training with no minor league options remaining: jesus aguilar jett bandy oliver drake junior guerra jared hughes jeremy jeffress taylor jungmann hernan perez manny pina yadiel rivera anthony swarzak (will be eligible for free agency) eric thames (by nature of his contract) carlos torres jonathan villar stephen vogt There are quite a few names listed that are at risk of getting cut prior to rule 5. The only incredibly safe names seem to be Aguilar, Thames, Pina, Perez, and Villar. I don't think they'll all get cut, but all the other remaining names could potentially be cut.

I personally don't think so, but hard to say. Last year, Hader was not brought up during his breakout year. Woodruff followed a fairly similar pattern to Burnes last year and also was not called up. The year prior, Jorge Lopez WAS brought up during his breakout year in AA. Burnes has also thrown 137 innings this season and has 1-2 starts left prior to september and potentially could have AA playoffs. That's plenty of work to prepare him for potentially 180-190 innings in 2018 if the opportunity arises.

Pitchers with electric stuff tend to strand more runners and have lower BABIP as they generate weaker contact. Just like guys with the highest exit velocities tend to have the highest BABIP numbers. You can't simply say "league average is X, so he should regress toward that". He's surely been lucky(nobody has a BABIP in the 220/230s or 93% strand rate), he isn't a 1.3 ERA pitcher. But he also isn't a 5 ERA pitcher in his current role, and probably not even a 4 ERA pitcher.

I basically agree with that, I guess I was talking more about Garza's next start. If he's bad in that start, no reason for him to pitch again this season. As you said, they'll have lots of options in September. But when I say short leash for his next start, I wouldn't even let it get to 5 or 6 runs. I wasn't really disagreeing with you, more than anything agreeing while adding that little tidbit. And when I say in a position to allow 5-6 runs, I meant moreso if he gets to the 2nd inning and has 2 on with 3 runs in...yeah that's enough. At most he could allow 4 runs in that case. No way should he be allowed to stay in there to allow the big fly to let it actually get to 5 runs. Even now, we have 8 in the bullpen and they haven't been worked all that hard recently with the off days(and we have 2 more coming up in the next week). If on a Garza start day, we have to use Hader/Torres/Jeffress for 4-6 innings...so be it. We shouldn't be giving away any games at this point, every game should be managed like a playoff game would be.

I honestly don't even know where to begin with this...you are approaching Briggs territory of foolishness. Please explain how it is foolish. Explain how the Mets with Degrom, Syndergaard, Harvey, etc in 2015 beat the cubs and advanced to the world series and won so many games? Their offense was not good, and they weren't a particularly great team defensively. The 2015 cubs won 97 games with a below league average OPS. I don't know how you can possibly think that if we plugged Scherzer into Garza's rotation spot to start the season that we would have only won 1 more game? We probably would have won 6 or 7 more games assuming everything else was equal. Not only would we have had a much more effective pitcher in that slot, but Scherzer certainly eats more innings and helps our bullpen way more than Garza did. Everyone stays more fresh down the stretch. Only good things come from this. And your point makes zero sense to begin with because the 2010 brewers won 77 games and the 2011 brewers won 96 games...but please keep telling me how adding 2 frontline pitchers to the top of your rotation only adds a couple wins. Maybe we should trade our entire starting rotation for position player prospects and sign 5 Matt Garza's...we'd be way better off long term based on your logic. Those tools that calculate expected wins are almost always universally terrible and wrong. Looking at projections versus actuals year to year, I'd bet projections are rarely close.

The Red Sox went from a 90 win team to a 90 win team this off season. So 0 wins added from the addition of Sale. So yes if the Brewers got Bumgarner they would only improve by about 1 win as nothing else for the Brewers is changing and no this is not based on WAR. Now if you said Villar or Broxton would be replaced by Trout or a Harper level of talent then yes you would see a more dramatic increase in your expected wins. Positional players have more of an impact on a teams wins than starting pitchers for obvious reasons. Plus you are not replacing Garza for whoever Garza would be replaced by. Even moving down one pitcher to the next you are gaining at most 1 win over the season. Take 2011 for example the Brewers expected wins didn't change when they acquired Marcum and it only changed by about 2 wins when they acquired Greinke. That team without Greinke or Marcum was about an above 500 team with those two acquisitions it bumped the Brewers up to about an 88 win team. So they went from an 86 win team to an expected 88 win team and beat the expected by 8 wins mostly due to their offense was better in 2011 compared to 2010. I honestly don't even know where to begin with this...you are approaching Briggs territory of foolishness.

Starting in September, we should have enough arms up that Garza should never be allowed to get into a position to allow more than 5 or 6 runs in a game...possibly not even that many. Hader/Suter/Guerra possibly Jungmann...all can go 3+ innings if needed.

Well right, the wildly ridiculous part is "at the expense of nottingham". There is next to zero chance that Nottingham is exposed.

Right, and if I remember right the Red Sox added him to their post-season roster in the past precisely to use him as a PR. Johnny Davis is another guy they could bring up to fill that role. Good to know, I shouldn't be surprised that Stearns has figured this out already.

Perez and his incredible flexibility will allow us to keep both if we choose. I could see us dangling one(probably aguilar) in the offseason. I would think Aguilar probably could net us a better haul than Jason Rogers did in 2015. I'm aware that the deal was a pretty significant overpay from a value standpoint for Pittsburgh at the time, but Aguilar also has way more value than rogers did at that point. I'm not sure if that would be worth it. A big part of the reason the offense has been as good as it has this season is depth. Any one or two guys can sit out on a given day and we still have a very potent lineup. Pick 3 of Perez, Pina, Vogt, Broxton, Arcia, Sogard...and those 3 would measure up well against the 6-7-8 of most teams in the league.

Sometimes I wonder if Briggs makes wildly ridiculous comments like this just to see how the board will respond. On the major league side he was talking about whether counsel would survive a 2nd half collapse and not making the playoffs. Anywho, yeah most on here tend to agree that there are 4 fairly obvious choice for the 40 man. Hard to say what moves we'll make to add them, especially considering we will probably be adding some MLB talent in the offseason. It's a shame to lose a guy like Wilkerson if/when a pitching needy team does pick him...but at the same time the whole point of the rule 5 system is to give a guy like him a chance at the mlb level.

There were times with the Dbacks that he was working close to mid 90s as well. He credits his off season training for some of the velocity spike...which could make sense. Velocities tend to be lower early in the season pitching in colder conditions...and tick up in warmer weather.

I don't know other rosters as well as ours, but I tend to agree. I certainly think we will benefit more than the Cubs will...after all what talent do they have left in their farm system? Phillips, Wang, Guerra, Bandy, Rivera(for defense), Jungmann, Webb, Woodruff...should all come up. Garza will probably start down the stretch unless he has 2 or 3 more clunkers in a row and regardless should never stay in the game long enough to give up 8 runs with all the extra arms we should have available. Guerra/Jungmann as guys that can go 3-4 innings if needed along with Hader. 2 lefties should come up to operate as situational lefties. Phillips should be a good PH/defense guy. Bandy coming up allows us to more freely use Vogt/Pina as a PH. Rivera should never even touch a bat when he comes up, but could be a good defensive option late in games at 2b/3b. The one thing I don't think we have but wish we did...is a guy with elite speed that could be used solely as a PR late in games. Maybe Stearns can track one down in the next week or so.

Adding a #1 or #2 starter to this team would be adding nothing. You would get a net gain of nothing as the win expectancy of this team wouldn't increase any higher than what it is by getting a #1 or #2 starter. Basically adding another #1 or #2 puts the team at an 81 win team instead of an 80 win team. You are adding one win to a team that is barely a .500 club to a .500 club. Why would you trade assets only to get a +1 win? Wait what? So you're saying, hypothetically in the off-season, if the Mets were to make DeGrom available, or the Giants were to make Bumgarner available, like Sale became available last off-season, and we were to pull a blockbuster and acquired DeGrom or Bumgarner in trade, and either traded Garza or let him walk, DeGrom or Bumgarner over Garza in the rotation is worth 0-1 additional wins over the course of a full season? There's no way that's true. I'll second that, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. People get way too caught up in WAR and crap like that...That's where a lot of these nonsense comments come from. It's a useful tool, but it's one of many tools and you can't base much of anything about a player solely on WAR.

This season, I'd take chase but barely. Over the next 3 years, nelson without question. Both could be very good, but I think nelson has the better arm. Also nelsons work ethic is well documented and tough for anyone to match. Also, nelson is a year younger

2.5 back from the diamondbacks and 3.5 back from the rockies. It's a shame the cubs won all 3 against a bad team with the help of some incredibly good luck, but we did our part winning 2 of 3 on the road against a playoff contender. The Dbacks and Rockies play each other and the Dodgers a lot down the stretch. The focus for now should be to win enough to get into the 86-88 win range by seasons end. If that happens, I'm sure we'll get a spot. We can focus on the game by game when the magic number gets to single digits. For the most part, we've played very well over the last week. Need to keep the hot stretch rolling.

The reds gave us fits as well. I suspect they will wreak havoc on the nl central race down the stretch with all the divisional matchups. Their offense is very potent but their pitching is dreadful, that's still a dangerous team because of the offensive potential. Hopefully we cam keep things rolling in Colorado, we need a strong start to this road trip