BruisedCrew

Who told you that? And exactly what did he or she say? Sounds like some significant exaggeration. I definitely don’t remember hearing anyone say that wins against bad teams don’t count.

Whew. Would have been really brutal to let that one get away after using so much of the bullpen.

That’s my biggest argument in favor of robo umps. As long as they are no less accurate than the current umps, you won’t have to worry about certain hitters or pitchers getting the benefit of calls, or the umps playing Frank Drebbin and catering to the home crowd.

That would be the plan but a one run lead isn’t very comfortable no matter who’s pitching in these conditions. Need more runs.

Seven runs isn’t going to be enough.

Please keep the ball in the park against Wisdom.

What was the exit velocity on Yelich’s latest grounder to the right side? I love the guy but his hitting makes me want to cry.

Bet the Cubs are wishing now they had let Urias walk so they could face Yelich with the bases loaded.

This is going to be a challenging week for the pitching staff as a whole with 8 games in 7 days. They’re going to need another emergency starter on Wednesday before facing the Padres for four games. Have to hope to get Adames and Renfroe back for the weekend to help out the offense and for Woodruff to be back in time for the Mets series in mid June which starts a string of 13 games in 13 days. The June schedule always looked challenging and now it is even tougher.

Small is done. Going to be a long day for the bullpen.

With the wind bowing out Urias managed to hit one 20 feet from the plate and Yelich got an exit velocity of zero.

If it's anything like it is here, the wind is REALLY blowing out to left. Could be a real HR derby. It's too bad that timing and other circumstances have Small and Ashby pitching the two games. If Small runs into early problems (hopefully nothing like Ashby's first start against the Cubs), you hate to see the bullpen drained in the first game and then have to follow up with another lefty with the wind blowing out. Looks like a day where someone may have to take one for the team and accept the blow to the ERA.

I don’t disagree with your comment, but would add that the chances of “getting hot in the playoffs” are improved significantly if (1) there are more hitters who are capable of getting hot, and (2) the team can win enough games in the regular season to not just win the division but have one of the top 2 division winning records and avoid the new “wild card round”. I think adding a big bat or two has to be a high priority. IMHO, the Brewers pitching gives them a fighting chance against the best pitchers on the best teams in the league, but the offense leaves them at a distinct disadvantage against the teams that have both a couple of top end starters and a stronger lineup.

It’s hard to get excited about exit velocity when the result is rapping into an easy double play.

They actually missed the proper cutoff man on that relay. Maybe that’s what prompted the coach to send him.

To add to this point, this level of run scoring has been consistent in every series against a Good team so far this season, not just the last 2. Specifically: Cardinals- 13 runs in 4 games @Phillies- 8 runs in 3 games Giants- 2 runs in 1 game @ Braves- 10 runs in 3 games Braves- 8 runs in 3 games (2 in extra innings aided by ghost runners) @ Padres- 8 runs in 3 games @Cardinals- 9 runs in 3 games so far

Adames is heading out on minor league rehab so he might not be playing in the Cubs series either.

Let me offer some numbers and everyone can decide for themselves what to make of them. There was a lot of talk when the Brewers went on their hitting spree a few weeks ago that they were taking advantage of bad teams that made up a disproportionate share of their early schedule. Now that they have played more "good" teams I wanted to see what kind of disparity there might be. To separate the contenders from the non contenders I used the Fan Graphs projections which, in both leagues, have a pretty clear cut between the top 8 and the bottom 7. In the NL, the top 8 of Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Brewers, Cardinals, Mets, Phillies, and Braves all had playoff percentages of over 40% when I looked the other day, and the next highest was the Marlins at just under 10%. I call the 8 contenders the "Good" teams and the other 7 the "Bad" teams. In the AL it is similar with the contenders being: Yankees, Rays, Blue Jays, Red Sox, White Sox, Twins, Astros, and Angels. The AL isn't too important for this exercise because they will account for a small percentage of all games for NL teams. Using this classification (and not counting today's game that isn't going to help the Brewers profile) the Brewers record of 29-17 consists of a 19-8 record against Bad teams and a 10-9 record against good teams. One notable thing there is that, even after this week against the Padres and Cardinals, the Brewers have played 59% of their games against Bad teams. For the season as a whole that percentage will be about 54%, highlighting how "Bad Heavy" the early schedule was. It's not surprising that their schedule was rated as the weakest in the league by some of the projection sites. Looking now at the runs scored and allowed, in the 27 games against Bad teams, the Brewers scored 152 runs and allowed 108 for an average score of 5.63-4.00. In the 19 games against Good teams the Brewers have scored 55 runs and allowed 65 for an average score of 2.89-3.42. It speaks well for the Brewers ability to win close, low scoring games that they are 10-9 in those games. Focusing just on the runs scored, the difference between the average runs scored against Good vs Bad teams is a striking -2.74 runs per game. Anyone can draw whatever conclusions they want from that, or declare it to be a small sample size or cherry picking results, but I think it's significant and that injuries to Adames and Renfroe can't explain all or most of it. Because I put together a simple spreadsheet so I can quickly enter the numbers of records and runs scored and allowed from Baseball Reference ,I can run this exercise for any team in just a couple of minutes and I intend to do that on occasion as the season progresses to see how this develops. One obvious reaction is that it should be expected that any team would score more against Bad teams and their generally inferior pitching. But the other 3 teams I checked (Cardinals, Dodgers, and Giants) do not have differences anywhere near this great. The Cardinals are -0.48, the Dodgers -0.06, and the Giants are +0.27. Make of it what you will, but the statement "The Brewers have had trouble scoring runs against Good teams" is factually accurate so far this season. Maybe this will just prove to be an aberration and not a season long issue.

How many of those hard hit balls are pounded grounders right into the shift on the right side of the infield. That seems to account for a high percentage of his outs.

If Gorman, Yepez, and Donavan can contribute to what Edman, Goldschmidt, and Arenado can be expected to do, the Cardinals are going to have a pretty formidable lineup.

If you’re going to compare the Brewers scoring to other teams you can’t just consider injuries for the Brewers and not for other teams. The difference between the Brewers runs per game against the other playoff contenders as compared to the non contenders is pretty significant and isn’t explained simply by a few players being out of the lineup.

Now that the Brewers schedule has toughened up, their runs per game has slipped down to 4.50 which is slightly higher than the league average of 4.44, and lower than 5 of the other 7 teams that are considered serious playoff contenders. They are a fraction below the Phillies and ahead of the Padres and Braves. The pitching has really carried the team the last two weeks since they left Cincinnati.

Good to see Hiura hit. Before that the only “positive” to take from this otherwise dreary game is that Woodruff’s injury might not be as bad as I feared when I saw him call the trainer out.

At least it’s an ankle and not an arm or shoulder injury.

He also looked down and waved for the trainer to come out.