BruisedCrew

To be completely precise, with this many games left things like clinching the division or a playoff spot may not have one “magic number”. The magic number works with respect to Team A finishing ahead of Team B, and it’s determined by Team A wins and Team B losses. The magic number of 32 is the Brewers magic number to guarantee finishing ahead of the Cubs. But, theoretically, the Cardinals could get hot while the Cubs fall apart and move into second place, and that would flip the focus for the magic number. The magic number for clinching any playoff spot would be even more complicated because of how many teams could move into that 7th spot. But, as long as it’s understood that the target for the magic number could change, using the Cubs for the division and Arizona for the playoff spot would be the correct targets today. At least the magic number can never go up.

I have asked for this every year with mixed results. It can be fun to come up with that obscure player who appeared in two games in 1996, but I think they should be identified.

Tonight’s game raised the Brewers RPG since June 10 from 4.27 to 4.63.

So the White Sox might not blow this one until tomorrow.

It stopped raining about two hours ago.

Does anyone else remember when it was common for people to have. “13 run pools”. Everyone would put a certain amount of money in a pot and draw a team. Whoever had the team that scored 13 runs first would win the pot and then you’d do it all over again. I think teams scoring 13 runs is more common now than it was in the 60s and 70s.

It seems like it’s been a month since the Brewers had a lead like this.

I don’t care how badly Yelich is hitting, I can’t believe Wilson let Miller pitch to him. He was looking completely gassed, pitching to Bauers, much less Contreras..

Turang being back tomorrow is great news. A steady diet of Vaughn at 3B and Sanchez at 1B with the minor leaguer of the week at 2B is a recipe for disaster. We saw some potential outs thrown away on the road trip. Fortunately they didn’t cost as much as they might have. They got away with it, but putting extra runners on base for Ohtani is not a good idea Pratt starting rehab soon is good news if it means that he is progressing to the point where he can play in a game within a week and might be back with the Brewers by August 31 or earlier, Frelick coming back is good news if it means his shoulder has improved to the point that he can throw like a major league right fielder. Otherwise he represents little, if any, improvement over Lockridge With the 7 games in 10 days against the Cubs coming up in 2 weeks we all want to see the team as close to full strength as possible. Uribe’s return would be a big help, but that might not be happening that soon. When the Brewers say that they don’t think a pitcher’s injury is anything serious that doesn’t necessarily mean a minimum stay on the IL

That is absolutely not true. The Nationals, Cubs, and Pirates are averaging over 5 runs a game this season. They are not unstoppable and two of them are almost certainly missing the playoffs. What is true is that a team that scored 5 runs or more EVERY game would likely be unstoppable. Pitching and general run prevention obviously plays a big role.

That’s a different question, and the answer may be different for each of them. I hope that the Brewers aren’t counting on a big bounce back from Yelich to lead them the rest of the way. I really don’t want to continue this discussion on this thread and while games are going on. Maybe we can pick it up on the more generic thread about assessing the offense. where everyone can continue to try to convince me that the Brewers offense is just fine and will soon return to scoring at a pace of 5 runs per game.

You are really torturing something fairly simple and straightforward. When I talk about looking at the whole picture, I am talking about not just taking the surface level number as the end of the discussion. I freely admit that I am looking only at runs scored as a measure of the value of the offense. If wORC+ says that the offense was basically average both before and after the Vegas trip that would also suggest that the offense is not top 5 in MLB. If you haven’t done it already, I would suggest that you read that Jake McKibbin article. He seems to think that the offense has not been great for the last 2 months and that that might raise concerns for the rest of the season. If you think the offense is just fine and is just in a little slump, that’s fine.

No, that does not follow. It is simply a fact that the Brewers in March and April scored more runs per game than they have scored for the rest of the season since then. If you want to look a little deeper, you might find that the high runs per game during that month was significantly affected by four very high scoring games. But when I bring that up, I get accused of cherry picking. My approach is to look at the whole picture to reach an opinion. Sometimes one number doesn’t tell the whole story.. It would be great if the Brewers for the rest of the season would score close to five runs a game. But, they haven’t shown any signs recently of breaking out of the current slump. They have been even worse since the beginning of August than they were from the middle of June through the end of July Maybe they are due for an explosion of 80 or so runs like they had the first 10 games in June, preferably when they play the Cubs

That certainly wouldn’t be my recommendation, but maybe the people who think only the full season numbers are a fair reflection of the current team would like that.

I completely understand that hot and cold streaks happen. But I also understand that the personnel on teams changes as the season moves along. The lineups that the Brewers were using in April are significantly different than the ones they are using now... The Brewers cold streak over the last 2 months has been a doozy, with their RPG of 4.37 being 12th best (or 4th worst depending on your preference) in the NL