BruisedCrew

Some pretty snazzy defense that inning.

Off day tomorrow I think he’ll be in for a save situation unless he says he doesn’t feel ready.

A soft tossing lefty against the Brewers less than imposing batting order against LHP does not inspire optimism.

Down 2-0 after losing the first two at home is something else again.

I meant that they were done for today, but I also meant that the regular season is meaningless. With all of the injuries and load management rests, you get 7 seeds like the Lakers and 8 seeds like the heat that are a lot more dangerous than the seeds suggest. Even if Giannis can play, this series isn’t going to be the cakewalk everyone who was looking ahead to the conference finals was expecting.

With Giannis out the Bucks are done. The regular season is meaningless.

Maybe the Bucks are flashing back to the bubble.

Maybe Woodruff can buck the history of Brewers aces being out much longer than the original projections. Us old timers were stung by cases like Teddy Higuera and Juan Nieves in addition to more recent examples like Ben Sheets and Jimmy Nelson.

The fact that Woodruff said the injury would be season ending if it occurred around the All Star break pretty clearly indicates that he won’t be back until sometime after the All Star break at the earliest. Season ending doesn’t seem out of the question.

Rays lose to the Jays so the record stays at 13.

It definitely sounds like the thought that he would be back at the end of the 15 days was a pipe dream.

Isn’t 25,000 only a sellout because they keep their upper deck closed?

I had some hopes that the Jays would end the Rays winning streak tonight and leave the Brewers with a share of the record. Those hopes took a big hit when I saw the Berrios was starting. ETA- Springer homered off Drew Rasmussen to give the Jays a quick 1-0 lead.

Because it is all but an absolute certainty that there will be injuries (in addition to the ones that have already sprouted up) that isn’t exactly going out on a limb.

The Cards pitching staff didn’t look like that much of a dumpster fire last weekend as they held the Brewers to 10 runs in 3 games. I enjoy every Cardinals loss, but I don’t think they’re the disaster some are making them out to be, even right now.

I would think that people would learn that the Cardinals are never a dumpster fire for very long. As an organization they always have the resources in both players and cash to put together a contending team. I don’t think they are panicking about a 5-7 start.any more than they were about being 4 games behind the Brewers in late July last year.

They aren’t posting it this morning.

I just saw the replay of the Cruz play. You can barely call that a slide it was so late. He looked more like he was aiming for the catcher than the plate. IMHO, if he had slid to the back side of the plate (either head first or feet first) with the high throw he could have scored without colliding with the catcher. I can see why the catcher was upset

I don’t expect it to be a big difference in the W-L record, but relative to the rest of the NL teams that they’ll be competing with for playoff spots, the Brewers are losing games against a worse group of teams than the teams in the NL West and (especially) East. The schedules will be more equitable now.

I'm going to skip the individual categories and just make my comments on the overall record. I am relatively bearish on the Brewers because it's hard for me to see how, at least on paper, the team is better than the team that played .500 ball for the last 5 months of the 2022 season. Compared to other teams that are considered playoff contenders they seem to have more question marks. I also think the schedule will be tougher this year as the new schedule doesn't offer as many games as the Brewers had last year against the Pirates, Reds, and Cubs (who still won the season series and should be improved this year). To be a contender a lot of things have to go right, including injury free seasons from the top pitchers. With Ashby and Houser starting the season on the IL, that hope is already off to a bad start. I also think the bullpen is not going to be the asset that it has been when the Brewers were most successful. The duo of Williams and Hader was a huge asset, and that no longer exists. Williams might be fine in the closer role, but there are a lot of question marks in the setup role. Like last year, I expect the Brewers to be middle of the pack in MLB in offense, and I don't think the pitching will be dominant enough to carry that offense to the playoffs. So, my bottom line prediction is 82-80 and fighting with the Cubs for second place in the division. No playoffs.

86 wins and no playoffs it is.

I think the best bet is to petition the league to let more teams into the playoffs.

Not really, but I find it kind of sad. I’m an old traditionalist who enjoys classic uniform styles and I hate seeing advertisements on those uniforms. I’m not a fan of all of the alternate uniforms which seem like a thinly veiled attempt to peddle more merchandise. Hopefully any sponsor messages will be subtle enough to not detract from the style; I wouldn’t want to see the Brewers (or anyone) wearing a big “Chico’s Bail Bonds” sign on their backs.

With the Brewers trading Hader and adding no hitters while the Cardinals and Phillies bolstered their rosters and are heating up, I’ll stick with my comments from before: 86 wins and no playoffs. The next couple of weeks with series against the Rays, Cards, Dodgers, Cubs and Dodgers might tell us if the Brewers are going to be in the race in September. Stay tuned.

I agree that the recent slide is a true team effort involving failures from the starting pitchers, relief pitchers, defense, and hitting. I disagree with the statement that the offense has been great since the break. It was great in the first 8 games, scoring 55 runs (even with a shutout in the one loss) while going 7-1. But in the next 7 games they scored just 28 runs against some of the worst run prevention teams in the league and lost 6 of those games. In all but one of those games the only runs came across on home runs. With the games generally being close, the inability to score without home runs has been costly. Four runs per game isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great, especially considering the pitchers they were facing. I also don’t agree that the effect of the Hader trade has been purely intangible. The Brewers strength for much of the season has been getting narrow leads and having Boxberger, Williams, and Hader bring them home. I even commented on a game thread a couple of weeks ago that I was concerned that the Brewers were relying too heavily on this pattern, and that they weren’t winning enough games by building leads big enough to not need saves from the back of the bullpen. The Hader trade shook up the roles in the bullpen by throwing the new pitchers into the mix and changing the roles of the incumbents. In 3 of the losses since the break, the pitchers were used differently than they were before the trade and games were lost in the late innings. Of course, we can’t say for sure that Hader’s presence would have made a difference. But, it might have Using Sunday’s game as an example, when Burnes could only go 6 innings because of inefficiency early in the game, the score was 1-1 after 6. Before the trade, Counsell probably would have gone with Boxberger, Williams, and Hader, hoping to get 3 scoreless innings and scratch out a run somewhere in there to get the win. Without Hader he went with Bush and Rogers, who gave up the tie breaking run (in part because Renfroe failed to make the play on what looked like a playable fly ball) If Hader had been here they might have gotten the three scoreless innings and might have won in 9. There were similar situations in the last two losses to the Pirates where runs surrendered by the bullpen affected the outcome.