BruisedCrew

Really hurts to have only 2 runs when you should have about 6.

In other words, their A Team.

I occasionally lurk other fan forums, I see an awful lot of "well their offense isn't that good". I feel like they saw how bad it was the first 1.5 months of the season and don't realize how different the current team is. Tellez is batting 7th, he probably should be a bit higher given he's been our best hitter since the all star break but the top 7 players in the lineup are quality hitters. Even Cain on the downswing of his career has a 754 OPS since the all star break...a pretty darn good 8 hole hitter. To top it off, we have guys with a 930 OPS and 870 OPS since the all star break on the bench. Since June 26th (43 games) the Brewers are batting .269 (4th in MLB) with a major league leading 251 runs and 5.84 runs per game (2nd in MLB) And only half of those runs were scored against the Cubs.

The batting order reflects Counsell’s preference for alternating lefties and righties if possible.It’s nice to see a threat in the #7 spot.

For what it’s worth, Miles Mikolas has completed his rehab assignments and is expected to rejoin the Cardinals this week, possibly to start against the Brewers on Thursday. If he and Flaherty can stay healthy their rotation will look better than it has for most of the summer as they make their push for the second wild card spot. Even if they can’t catch the Brewers they will be playing to win. After this Brewers series the Cardinals next 9 games are 7 against the Pirates and 2 against the improving Tigers. After that their schedule is loaded with playoff contenders, including the Reds, Brewers, Dodgers, Padres, and Mets, and doesn’t let up until the last 10 days when they have 7 games against the Cubs sandwiched around a series against the Brewers. They have a significantly tougher schedule than the Reds.

Has anybody said the Brewers are a lock for the post season? I know Peavey finally said it is “statistically over” but pretty much everybody (including him before the “statistically over” statement) has indicated that there is a small chance the Brewers could still blow it but it’ll be super rare or a historical collapse. I don’t think it is likely the Brewers will lose the division but I’m not going to celebrate anything until our magic number is 0 and we’ve got an x, y or z next to our name in the standings. I only brought it up because the title of the podcast is “Are the playoffs a lock for Milwaukee? Even with the Reds favorable schedule?” and they discussed a lot of the things that have been raised in this thread.

Wainwright has been a thorn in the Brewers side for a couple of decades. He not only pitches well against them, but he seems to get a big hit almost every time he faces the Brewers.

Haudricourt’s podcast on JSOnline this week discusses whether the Brewers are a lock for the playoffs in light of the remaining schedules.

With 22 games against the Pirates, Cubs, and Marlins, the Reds could easily go better than 26-17 if they can beat the Cubs and Pirates at close to the same rate the Brewers beat them and add 4 or 5 wins against the Marlins. 16-6 in those 22 isn’t hard to see at all.

At the risk of incurring more wrath as the resident pessimist, this is where the schedules and opponents have to be taken into account. For the season, the Brewers are a combined 38-11 against the Cubs, Pirates, DBacks, and Rockies, the 4 worst teams in the NL, and they only have 3 more games against those teams (the Cubs). Instead of piling up wins against bad teams, the charge for the Brewers now is to hold their own against the Cards, Reds, and Giants, who account for 10 of their next 16 games while at least winning series against the lesser teams. If they can win 5 or 6 of those 10 games, their position should look even better than it does now. I wouldn’t want to guess whether winning 100 games or losing the division is more likely, but at this point I would say they are equally unlikely. To get to 100 wins they probably have to squash the Cardinals hopes quickly so they become more docile in the other 3 remaining series. I think there is a good chance that the Reds win a couple more than 88 games, if for no reason other than that I think the projections may rate the Pirates and especially the Cubs a little higher than they deserve because they weakened themselves at the deadline.

Ah, there’s a name from my childhood baseball cards. He was one of the rubber armed relievers of the era who appeared frequently and was often asked to pitch multiple innings. Looking it up, in 1959 he threw 93 innings in 47 games, and followed that up in 1960 with 114 innings in 61 appearances as the Pirates won the World Series. He was a star in the 60 Series as he pitched 2-3 innings and saved each of the Pirates first 3 wins. In the historic and decisive 7th game, the Bucs may have gone to the well once too often, or at least too early. Face was summoned in the sixth inning trying to protect a 4-1 lead and promptly surrendered a run scoring single to Mickey Mantle and a 3 run HR to Yogi Berra. He stayed in and gave up 2 more runs in the 8th, but could have gotten a win when when the Pirates scored 5 in the bottom half to go ahead 9-7. But, the Yankees tied it in the 9th, setting the stage for Bill Mazeroski’s winner. One of the great games in baseball history.

I don’t know why citing past situations in which the Brewers and other teams have blown leads is interpreted as indicating that I think there is a “strong probability” that the Brewers are going to blow the lead, or that I expect them to blow it. To me, a “strong probability” would be at least 50% or more, and I am nowhere near that. As I’ve said, 90-95% probabilities are nice, but they aren’t guarantees of a desired result. My general attitude is that it isn’t over until it’s over, and that it currently isn’t over. The responses on this thread tell me that I am not alone in feeling this way. I also admitted above to being a little skeptical about these probabilities because they are attempting to apply mathematical calculations to something that has a significant human element. Once things go sour for a team the probabilities based on past performance and treating every game as an independent event can go out the window. For example, the Fangraphs charts show that the Padres had a playoff probability in the 95% range for much of late June through late July. Was that wild card race “statistically over”? Now just a few weeks later that probability is below 60%. It just shows how quickly these things can change.

As I have said before, it isn’t that I don’t believe the math, I apparently just have a different reaction to a 95% probability than you do. I wouldn’t get on an airplane if they told me that it had a 95% chance of reaching its destination safely and that crashes are “super rare”. I don’t wear a seat belt in the car because I expect to be in an accident (or because it’s the law), but because I understand that accidents can and do happen, albeit hopefully less than 5% of all trips. To put it in terms of baseball probabilities, according to the Baseball Reference site, the Brewers win probability entering the last of the ninth yesterday was 80%, and it went to 95% after Hader got the first two outs. I did not consider the game “statistically over” at that point because 2 out rallies are “super rare”. I didn’t put the game in the win column until the third strike for the third out and I expect most Brewers fans watching the game did the same.

I would throw the 3 games with the Reds in there, and completely agree that winning close to half of those 23 games would make the Brewers tough to catch. I don’t focus too much on the Dodgers games because they are the last 3 of the season. If the Brewers haven’t wrapped up the division by then there won’t be anybody declaring the race statistically over. This kind of highlights how pivotal the next two weeks can be as the Brewers have 3 game series against the Cards, Nats, Reds, and Twins, while the Cards and Reds play some of the weakest teams in the league when they aren’t playing the Brewers. If the Brewers win 2 of 3 in each of those 4 series they will be taking a big step closer toward the target. These two weeks present the Reds and Cards with one of the biggest opportunities to gain ground that they’re going to get, and it’s up to the Brewers to squelch those opportunities instead fo counting on the Cubs, Pirates, and amarlins to help them.

On the World Series probabilities, no matter how they compute them, the biggest factor at this time is going to be the probability of getting into the playoffs in the first place. For a team that wins a division, the probability of winning the World Series is going to be somewhere close to 1 in 8 (12.5%), unless the team is noticeably stronger or weaker than whoever they face in the playoff series. So, if the Brewers probability of winning the division now is 95%, I would expect their chances of winning the series to be about 11.8%, and I wouldn’t expect that to change much until the matchups are known. As of now, I wouldn’t think the Brewers would be significant favorites or underdogs against any of the likely playoff teams. Their chances of winning the series through the wild card route would be minimal because of the very low probability of the Brewers getting a wild card spot.

Ok? If by 'regally above the discussion' you mean that my understanding of statistical probabilities will keep me from wringing my hands over the next 6 weeks? No claim has been made that you can't believe the contrary. Just noting the fact that the division race is basically over to try and keep you from developing an ulcer. But, if you care to disagree with the statistics, that's your prerogative, I guess. By “regally out of the discussion” I mean that if you consider the race to be over, it would make sense for you to stay out of this conversation and let people who want to participate do so instead of stirring things up. I understand the probabilities perfectly, although I sometimes wonder exactly how these sites arrive at them. For example, how do they figure the probability of a team like the Brewers beating a team like the Cubs in their current state, which bears little resemblance to the team that played the first half of the season? Do their projections/simulations take into account the human reality that teams can fold under the pressure when things get tight? Or do they treat every game like an independent event, which would make losing stretches like ones encountered by the 2007 Mets or 2011 Res Sox virtually impossible mathematically. These probabilities are not the same as things that can be computed with certainty, like the probabilities of tossing a coin, rolling a pair of dice, or drawing from a deck of cards. Even if I accept the conclusions of these sites that say the Brewers have a 90-95% chance of winning the division, I recognize that 90-95% is not 100%. If I were rolling a pair of dice and all I needed was a 4 or above to win, I would know that my probability of a win is 91.7%. So, I would expect to win, but wouldn’t bet my life on it. And recognizing that rolling a 2 or 3 is possible does not mean that I expect to roll a 2 or 3, as you seem to think. Finally, don’t worry about me getting an ulcer from following sports the way I want. I’ve been doing it this way for many decades, and I am just fine. But, thank you for being concerned about my physical well being.

It hadn’t been said directly, but it was certainly implied by dismissing any suggestion that the Brewers could conceivably fail to win the division. But now it has been declared directly (see above).

I think the continual issue here is that one of the sides of the views on this is backed by overwhelming statistical evidence, and the other requires a massively unlikely set of scenarios to unfold. As such, thinking that may actually happen requires a pretty grim view of the team's future performance, and I don't think there should be surprise that that grim view is viewed skeptically as a result. So, yes. The division is statistically over. As others noted, the Reds and their fans have moved on to the wildcard, which is statistically more probable for them, and it's probably healthier for us to view it much the same. Again, you are misinterpreting the one “side” as saying that the that the 5-10% probability is going to happen, as opposed to just recognizing that things like it have happened. But, now that you have declared the race statistically over, maybe you and your side can leave the other side to wallow in its misery while you stay regally above the discussion that you think has no merit.

Tatis is back today so that might help the Padres get out of their funk. He had a 2B and a HR in his first two ABs. ETA: make that 2 HRs for Tatis

Castellanos and Bell got tossed in the first inning for arguing balls and strikes. I have the last inning on TV. Realmuto got called out on a pitch well off the plate, and the announcers are talking like it’s been bad all day.

Here’s hoping Hader has command in his first high leverage outing in two weeks. No margin for walks or gopher balls.

That was a meek inning from the heart of the order.

One of the lesser reported symptoms. The mound visit seems to have helped.

Cousins seems to have emerged from his Covid bout with loss of command.

I saw a comment the other day that Houser would need more than the minimum 10 days.