BruisedCrew

When Hiura was inked into the starting lineup every day in 2020 and for the first month or so in 2021, and given somewhat regular ABs early this year, he was pretty miserable against both LHP and RHP. IMHO he didn’t do anything to show that he deserved to be put in the lineup every day. His success this year has come in a relatively low number of ABs after a slow start, so I can’t be too critical of the decision to give other players like Peterson and McCutchen those ABs when they were available. I would ride the hot hand now to see if it will last, but I would wait to see more ABs before declaring someone as great as any hitter the Brewers have ever had against RHP. He doesn’t even have a full season of plate appearances yet, and for much of the time his strikeout rate has made him unuseable. BTW, Hiura was in the starting lineup as DH against Gonsolin last week and had one of the two hits the Brewers had against him. So, there’s no reason to think he won’t be in the lineup tonight.

I know they don’t want to do this too often, but I would be putting McCutchen in CF and Hiura at DH. The biggest marginal gain the Brewers can make in their lineup is by replacing Taylor or Davis, not McCutchen. Then hope the drop in defense doesn’t hurt you. I hear the incessant drumbeat about how Hiura destroys righties and can’t touch lefties, but it’s Hiura’s fault that he can’t get more playing time. Because he’s a liability wherever he plays in the field and can’t hit LHP he becomes pretty limited in what you can do with him. I also hear about changes he’s made at the plate that have led to his improved hitting this year. Is there any reason why those changes can’t also help him hit LHP? He has had a few hits, I think including 2 HR against LHP in the last week or so. So maybe people shouldn’t be calling for Counsell to be fired when he plays Hiura against a LHP or leaves him in to hit when one enters.

Looking at their schedule, maybe not. I don’t expect them to keep winning at the pace they have been in August, but they have done two big things the Brewers haven’t. One, they are beating up on the bad teams, and they have a lot more of them coming up in the next few weeks. Except for one three game home series against the Braves this weekend and two at home against the Brewers in mid September, it’s nothing but Cubs, Reds, Nats, and Pirates until the last two weeks of the season. If the Brewers want to gain ground they’re going to have to do something big themselves, like winning 9 of 10 or 13 of 15 or something like that. Just winning series isn’t likely to be good enough. Second, the Cards improved themselves at the deadline by adding two veteran starters who have solidified their rotation and their bullpen by allowing the former spot starters to be used in relief, often for more than an inning at a time.

Not much scoring in MLB tonight. The six finals so far are 1-0, 2-1, 2-1, 2-1, 4-1, and 4-2.

I think I saw Mr. Applegate talking to Lola behind the Cardinals dugout.

Montgomery with a complete game 1 hitter and Pujols with another HR as the Cards win 1-0.

That will be me too. If it’s competitive I might give it to 11 PM but no way I’ll be up for the finish.

The Dodgers probably feel like they had their stinker of a series last week when they only scored 13 runs while splitting 4 games with the Brewers.

So, it sounds like your biggest beef is over the semantics and label of whether a pitcher is an “ace” or not. I’m not going to get deep into that other than to say that, regardless of what analysts call them, not all pitchers that analysts might call “aces” are created equal. Any more than all Hall of Famers are equal just because they share the same label. But, if it will make you feel better I will call Woodruff an ace before I criticize him for not being able to complete 6 innings in consecutive starts. I will say that that I disagree with your comment that Woodruff’s performance since coming off the IL is not that far from Scherzer’s. The differences may not be huge, but I think they are pretty significant. Specifically, your statement about Woodruff going “6/7 innings in all but 3 starts” suggests that there is no significant difference between going 6 or 7 innings, so let’s lump them together. Woodruff has only gone 7 full innings once and Scherzer did it 3 times, and never went less than a full 6. IMHO that is a pretty big difference. A starter who can go 7 innings as opposed to 6 in a close game is both leaving it up to only 2 pitchers instead of 3 who can blow the game with a bad outing, and keeping one more reliever fresh if you need him tomorrow. Scherzer also has an ERA of 1.83 in his 9 starts compared to Woodruff’s 2.53. More importantly, Scherzer has had 3 starts of the 9 giving up no runs; Woodruff has had 1. For a team that has trouble scoring I think you would agree that 1 run can make a big difference

Healthy deGrom. When he is on there’s nobody like him.

OK, removed from the discussion about the game, let me explain where I’m coming from on this. Terms like “aces” and “elite” are necessarily subjective, so I’m not going to get into a snit over those labels. And WAR stats covering the last 3 seasons don’t remove my criticism about how Woodruff has pitched this season. If someone wants to be considered an elite ace, I’m going to set a high bar. One of my standards for elite starting pitchers is that they consistently go deep into games while allowing very few runs. Sure, they aren’t going to do that every single game, but the Brewers top starters don’t cover 7 full innings as often as I think they need to, especially for a team that is offensively challenged and leans on those pitchers to lead them to a win, not just keep them in the game. Anyone who plays fantasy baseball sees what other top line starting pitchers do. I offer as an example Max Scherzer, who I have had on a Fantasy team for several years, but is not on your list of top 10 starters, probably because of an off year in the COVID season and injuries that have limited his appearances. Since Scherzer came off the IL in early July, his appearances have been: 6 IP 0 ER 7 IP 1 ER 6.1 IP, 1 ER 6 IP 2 ER 7 IP, 0 ER 6.2 IP, 2 ER 7 IP, 0 ER 7 IP 1 ER 6.1 IP, 4 ER (3 of which came in the 7th inning which started with the Mets leading 7-1. Scherzer left after putting 3 men on base with one out and all of the inherited runners scored. For a “worst” outing it wasn’t that bad. So, except for his first game back from injury (where he was pulled after 6 innings and 79 pitches after giving up no runs on 2 hits, Scherzer has pitched into the 7th inning every game, and completed 7 innings 4 times. Woodruff by comparison for the whole season in 18 starts has only pitched into the 7th inning 4 times and completed 7 innings once. IMHO, getting pulled before finishing 6 innings because of inefficiency or ineffectiveness should be considered a disappointing start for an elite pitcher, and Woodruff has done that 10 times this year, including his last two Burnes has been quite a bit better, but he has only pitched into the 7th inning once in his last 6 starts, and I hope for better than that from one of the best SP in MLB. Those short starts and giving up a lot of HR are a factor in the team’s recent struggles. If you think I’m being too critical, or have standards that are too high, I couldn’t care less. But everyone knew coming into this season that the Brewers needed their top starting pitchers to be exceptional to compensate for a subpar offense. I personally don’t think Woodruff has been exceptional this year

Hiura has hit 2 HRs against lefties this week, so maybe for the next couple of days we can table the idea that playing him against LHP is a fireable offense. For at least the next few days I would have Hiura in the lineup at 18 for Tellez against the LHP and for McCutchen against Gonsolin. No reason to look beyond the next 3 days right now,

Salvation for 1 day anyway.

Did I doze off and miss a Brewers HR? I’m only counting 3 for the Brewers and 5 total for both teams, not 4 and 6 like BA just said.

I doubt that, but he now has to figure out who sits the next few days to give him more ABs. They will be seeing two lefties in LA.

I’m surprised unless Bush is unavailable. At least he will now have more than a one run lead. I would say that Hiura is making a case for more playing time.

Going to be up to Bush for the save today.

I’ll respond to this after the game.

This is where it would be nice if the ace pitcher could have gotten through at least 7 innings so the Brewers wouldn’t have to go deep into the bullpen that was hyperextended yesterday just to stay in this game.

Good idea to get thrown out on the bases to remove your best HR hitter as the potential tying run. I realize that Tellez wouldn’t necessarily hit the HR if McCutchen had stayed on first because the pitches might have been different. But with the count in Tellez’s favor it would have been nice to give him a shot.

That was meant as a play on the line I heard years ago that Bob Gibson was lucky because he always pitched on days when the opponent wasn’t scoring any runs.

That was a forgettable series that came in the middle of the Brewers 8 game losing streak that included 3 losses to the Padres that gave both teams the season series. The Phillies series started with Hader blowing a save by surrendering two 9th inning HRs (his first blown save of the season) and concluded with 10-0 and 8-3 pastings.

There seem to be a lot of things that you find hard to ignore if they don’t line up with your preferences. When I referred to “one of the supposed aces” I was talking about Woodruff and today’s game and you jumped to the conclusion that I was including Burnes. That must be because I wasn’t excited about his inability to get through the sixth inning on Thursday after being presented with a rare 5-0 lead and forced the Brewers to use 4 relievers to close that game out.

Not sure why you care so much what pleases me.

The Brewers have really been unlucky the last few weeks. Just about every pitcher that faces them has one of his best outings of the season.