KeithStone53151

I'm not 100% sure that Lauer will be guaranteed a rotation spot either. I think Woodruff and Anderson are the only 2 guys locked in. Lindblom probably gets a rotation spot. The other 2 will more or less compete with Peralta, Burnes, Suter, etc for the final 2 spots. I would assume Lauer and Houser have the inside track on rotation spots, but the other guys will have a chance to earn those spots with a big spring. Especially Burnes.

The future is, the Astros lose a bunch of good players after this year...and their 2 TOR pitchers after 2021. They lose their 4 best draft picks over the next 2 years. Any endorsement deals for the team and players will certainly take a hit. The $5 million fine. Their front office is in shambles. They likely won't be able to attract the best talent to fill vacancies. Every team hates the Astros, and I'd be surprised if some of those hitters don't eat some fastballs in ST. The championship obviously helps mitigate those losses, maybe makes it a win. But the Astros are in for some very difficult times in the near future. And who knows how good their players will be without the assistance of video monitoring to help with pitch recognition. I'll add they may very well deal with some of the ball/strike calls that Braun dealt with his first few years after his suspension. Consciously or subconsciously.

What's probably more likely is they have added motivation heading into the season and have another big year. Kinda like how everytime the Patriots get caught cheating, they get all mad and self-righteous and use it as added motivation all season. As if they're like "how dare you catch us cheating...we'll show you!". Hopefully that's not the case. I would much moreso prefer them be terrible this year. Maybe Trout can finally get a playoff appearance...

Excellent take, I especially like your point that I bolded.

One other random thought. Is there any chance some players take offense and we see some ST bean ball wars? Especially teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, and other divisional teams.

Nor did the FO play a part in this. Honestly, I kind of feel bad for them after reading that. Imagine working your lives for this opportunity and wanting to stand on the top of the baseball world on merit and watching people around you run rogue. Do you quit this high paying dream job because you can't get in front of it? Do you speak out and get yourself blacklisted, and risk your entire career? Do you can Cora and watch a revolt? That's a horrible place to be put in. Put me in that position and I'd be besides myself. I'd be destroyed by the notion that I have to throw away what I worked to earn so that I could have a clean conscience because I can't stop what's going on around me. In the end, these guys take the fall anyway. This is part of what comes with being a GM. It's no different in any other business. If a small contingent of lower level employees of a random publicly traded company were to cook the books, and it later got caught by auditors or a governing body, the CEO and CFO would be fired and probably go to prison...even if they legitimately knew nothing. It's part of what they sign up for when they take the job, they are accountable for actions of those beneath them. Of course, in said scenario...the low level employees(or the Astros players in this case) would get punished as well. It definitely seems like Hinch/Luhnow got a raw deal on this, and it annoys the heck out of me that the players that actually cheated don't even get a slap on the wrist. But both of them could have easily put a stop to it if they wanted to...especially after the September 15th memo to teams after the Red Sox thing. And I'm buying that Luhnow knew nothing less and less. I don't buy that he's never walked through the dugout and seen that monitor. My guess is he actively chose to look the other way. I still completely doubt he was involved at all, but he knew...or maybe had some idea that something fishy was going on but intentionally ignored it. Sorry dude, when you're a GM that's not gonna fly. One other tidbit, I get annoyed by national writers saying how it's weird that the owner who knew nothing didn't get punished...while the GM who knew nothing got punished. Last I checked, his team lost 4 top draft picks and got fined 5 million(which more or less comes straight out of his pocket)...and he needs to replace a GM and manager among other critical staff. How many people are going to be lining up for that GM job? Do you think Matt Arnold would want that opportunity? Or would he wait for a less tainted opportunity? I have a hard time believing the owner will be able to get the very best GM prospects to consider this role. Point being, he was pretty thorougly punished...just not as directly as Luhnow/Hinch.

I have a hard time believing fiers is going to be impacted negatively by this. Plus dude will be 35 this year. His days in the league are numbered regardless. I find the connection of Stearns to this incredibly surprising considering the Astros front office was not at all involved. It's not like luhnow created and streamlined this system. All he did was bury his head in the sand so the players could do it. You could argue it raises questions on what the culture is like within the Brewers organization, but I would be surprised if it was anything close to what Manfred found within the Astros org

I think those projections are incomplete. 34 hr for Yelich, they must only be counting 1st half stats...

This could end quite horribly. The Brewers were also accused of sign stealing at Miller Park. https://www.brewcrewball.com/2019/11/14/20963825/milwaukee-brewers-mlb-sign-stealing-controversy-houston-astros There were a number of accusations against the Brewers last year that went to the Commissioners office for review, and no wrongdoing was found. Both the Pirates and Cubs made accusations against the Brewers that were found to be baseless. I wouldn't be concerned about this.

The more I think about this, the more frustrating it is that no player got punished. The ones who actually cheated, and devised the cheating scheme...don't get in trouble for cheating. It's mind-blowing actually. It's as dumb as saying 2+2=mop

After reading through the full memorandum, I tend to think Luhnow and Hinch got a bit of a raw deal. I get they are managers and they are responsible for the actions of their employees at the end of the day...but it's still very frustrating to me that those 2 got suspended and now fired, while the players who actually created the process suffered no discipline. I completely understand why both things happen, that doesn't make it right though. Cora on the other hand, should be out of baseball. Seems like he was the coach that was basically the ring leader of the whole thing.

Already said they wouldn't. I am guessing that was partially hoping they would talk and get some information about the situation. Josh went on twitter with all the confidence in the world that no player would get punished. No player would agree to assist in the investigation without amnesty...which is fairly logical.

I'm pretty sure my jaw hit the floor when I saw the punishments. Not that it wasn't completely deserved, it's just a shockingly massive punishment. I would like to think it's enough to bring all forms of cheating to a screeching halt. I'm curious if the manager and GM get paid during their year long suspensions.

One thing worth pointing out, Packers receivers not named Adams had 3 total targets while Adams had 11. Allison, MVS, and Kumerow each had one...the first two converting for 11 and 8 yard gains. We will seriously need to involve some more players, otherwise SF will double and even triple DA.

If for whatever reason, the Cardinals go crazy and trade for Arenado...I love the idea of getting our hands on Carpenter. He's going to bounce back in a big way this year.

I want to expand on this. Their LB/DE are incredibly fast, which also makes them really good at covering tight ends. So the idea of Jimmy Graham or Tonyan or Lewis having a big game are a bit wishful thinking. It's tough to know the best way to beat this defense, but I know we don't want to play them straight up with our normal style offense. If we want to play 2 and 3 TE like we tend to, we need to at least some of the time have all of the line up in a spread formation...and even have them split out wide sometimes with the WR in the slot. I like the idea of power running with Williams more than edge running with Jones. I definitely think we need our RB and TE helping in pass blocking, stuff like last game with Jones/Williams chipping Clowney before heading out on a short route is going to be critical. Defensively, we need to take away Kittle. Overall their weapons are a bit underrated in my opinion. They are pretty solid across the board with weapons, but obviously Kittle is the best one and it would be better to force someone else to beat us.

Right exactly. First part down for Graham was his elbow. Which like you said, maybe it's 4th and an inch. I think if there was no call on the field for whatever reason and it went to video to make a determination, it might end up being 4th and an inch. But that's not how it works. That fumble is a virtually guaranteed 3 or 7 points, and we may have simply put this team away early. It's that much less wear on our defense, that much more wear on their defense. Plus being incredibly demoralizing. There were probably 10 worse calls in the game than this one, maybe more. And at least 8 probably went against the Packers including the clear worst call of the game.

I know a few have noted the loss of power to the lineup, but one thing I really like is the added hitting ability. We more are less are swapping Grandal/Moose/Arcia/Thames with Narvaez/Sogard(Gyorko)/Urias/Smoak. Below are the high and low avg over the last 3 years. Grandal - .241-.247, Narvaez .275-.278 Moose - .251-.272, Sogard(Gyorko) - .134-.290 and .174-.272 Arcia - .223-.277, Urias - .208-.223 MLB/.296-.315 MILB Thames - .219-.247, Smoak .208-.270 In the first 3 cases, the batting average should definitely improve for the first 3 of those positions. 1st base is probably overall a push, though Smoak might be better than Thames if he gets platooned and limited AB as a RHH. The lows for Sogard and Gyorko were clearly off years, the other 2 years were much close to the high end of the scale than their off year mark. And with 2 guys likely platooning, the odds of both being similar to their off years is very low. At least one of those guys should be good. This also doesn't factor in the addition of Garcia, who is more or less a .280 hitter. I point this out, because having a team that overall hits better for average is less reliant on the home run ball to score and should be more consistent. We should have less of those prolonged stretches of crap offense waiting for Moose or Grandal or Yelich to get ahold of one.

I would say the most underrated part of that game for me was the job our secondary did. How many times did Wilson have like 6-8 seconds before he even got pressure...and still ended up getting sacked? I found it just so impressive that with all that time, we maintained good coverage on everyone a majority of the time. He did complete some passes, especially 2nd half...but man it was basically a 7 on 7 drill most of the time. Very few sacks were earned by the pass rush...most were coverage sacks. Regarding the ref controveries...the fumble in the 1st quarter seemed insane to me, and it seems most on here shared that opinion. The Graham spot, to me he looked like he was probably like 3 inches short...but given the call on the field there's just no way you can overturn that with the evidence provided. One other factor, the yellow line on tv was off by almost half a yard...so it certainly looked worse than it was On to San Francisco...hopefully we can find something in the game tape from last time to help us make a contest out of this one.

I think the upside is a potential league average 3b for a very low cost.

I think this could be a sneaky good signing.

Hard to overly dislike a minor league deal, but Morrison has had about one good(not great) 3 month stretch for his entire career. I'd rather we use minor league deals on guys with some upside.

I find this a bit weird. I don't disagree, but my primary concern is keeping Wilson in the pocket and not letting him rush for 75+ yards. Making him actually throw the ball, or hand the ball off a majority of their plays...are winning formulas for the defense.

Robert Murray was let go from the Athletic for some reason, but he still breaks more news than any other Brewer beat reporter. I really hope the Athletic finds someone new for the upcoming season. Agreed. I find it a bit odd. Even a few national level guys have defended him, saying it's crazy the Athletic couldn't hang onto him.