BruisedCrew

Rowdy!

I assume Tellez can’t bunt, but a groundout to the right side would be acceptable.

The Brewers are really going to be in a tough spot if they use Boxberger and Williams in a loss.

The offense is going to have to step it up if the Brewers are going to get through these next two weeks. They don’t have the horses in the bullpen to win games with only 1 or 2 runs scored, especially once they have to start plugging in emergency starters.

The Giants have a very strong bullpen. Given the state of the Brewers staff, they aren’t going to want to get in bullpen battles with the Giants.

Sorry to hear that, hope you’re feeling alright. Seconded. Glad to hear from DS all of these guys are having mild symptoms. Hope it stays that way, and they all get back to to full health quick. Burnes looking sharp. Hard hit balls from the offense too. Could use a couple avoiding gloves. I’m not seeing all of these hard hit balls turning into outs. Other than Tellez’s drive that Yaz caught it seems like a lot of weak outs.

Tellez misses by a foot.

Wow, that did not look like a home run swing.

Best to just assume that the Reds will sweep the Pirates and consider it a gift if they lose one. They aren’t fooling around with the Pirates pitching staff. 7 runs in 2 innings last night and 7 in the first tonight.

I haven’t seen the Brewers release their lineup yet. The way things have been going that makes me nervous that there might be some Covid developments with position players too. Maybe they are waiting to see if Yelich will be good enough to go and be put into the lineup. At least the fact that he is warming up on the field must mean that he has tested negative and will be able to play if he feels up to it.

Would that still be subject to the usual 10 day mandatory stay (except to replace an injury) or could they add anyone from the 40 man roster at will. This is kind of where I was going. I would assume those rules would all still apply. If they don't then cutting down the size of expanded rosters makes no difference at all if players can just be constantly shuffled back and forth off the active roster. The one difference it would make is preventing teams from having 15 guys in the bullpen for every game. At least the 3 batter minimum would cut down on the ridiculous number of pitching changes that used to take place in September games.

It’s probably too late now. Hopefully Burnes previous bout will help him this time.

That advantage obviously doesn’t start until next week. If the Brewers can avoid losing ground this weekend I would consider that a win.

Would that still be subject to the usual 10 day mandatory stay (except to replace an injury) or could they add anyone from the 40 man roster at will.

I agree with this. Yelich batting 7th takes away his biggest value. It isn’t ideal to have two LH at 1-2, but Wong and Yelich are not completely neutered by LHP. The way they are hitting now, I think I would put Yelich 1st and Wong 2nd. I would also move Narvaez down further. He hasn’t been hitting that great lately and he is by far the slowest guy in the lineup. I propose: Yelich Wong Adames Escobar Garicia Tellez/Urias Cain Narvaez (second cleanup hitter) Pitcher Actually, in a lineup with no superstar hot hitters and no complete black holes, the batting order becomes relatively unimportant. Tinker with it to reflect who is hot, but don’t overthink it.

Of course, probably the all time turnaround belongs to the 1969 Mets who trailed the Cubs by 10 games on August 13 and won 38 of their last 49 to win the division by 8 games. The Cubs finished 18-27, but even playing .500 wouldn’t have been good enough to hold their lead.

The "if the Brewers just go .500 the rest of the way, then..." scenarios are interesting, mathematically undeniable, and help quantify the value of the cushion. But, as others have mentioned, it is not that uncommon for a team to lose a lead of this size at this time of the year. That can be either because "just going .500" doesn't always happen (remember how the Brewers lost a 5 game lead in the wild card race in virtually no time in 2008 and needed the Mets to collapse the last week just to crawl back in), or because another team puts together the kind of hot streak that seemed so improbable just a month earlier, or some combination of the two. The example I use goes back to 1982. On August 20, the Brewers had a record of 69-50 with a 4 game lead over the Red Sox and a 7.5 game lead over the Orioles (who had a record of 61-57).On that date, you could have said, "If the Brewers just go .500 to get to 92-70, the Red Sox would have to finish 27-18 and the Orioles would have to finish 31-13 just to tie them". The Brewers then won their next 3 games to extend their lead over the Red Sox to 6 games, while the Orioles also won 3 to stay 7.5 back. Those 3 wins by the Orioles were the start of a streak in which the Orioles won 17 of 18 games to cut the Brewers lead to just 3 games with 26 games still to play. The Brewers had won 13 of 19 games (they were not choking) and had seen their 7.5 game lead over the Orioles shrink to 3 games. The Red Sox were also hot and stayed just 4.5 games behind. Over the next two weeks the Orioles got as close as 1 game, trailed by 2 going into the last week, and by 3 going into the historic final weekend when they beat the Brewers 3 in a row before Don Sutton and Robin Yount combined to produce the Brewers first ever division title. The bottom line is that the Orioles, who were 7.5 games behind and with a record only 4 games over .500, amazingly finished the season 33-11 (.750). The Brewers did much better than "just finish .500" (26-17), and they needed every one of those wins to hold off the Orioles. This is just one example, but one that was quite stressful for anyone who was emotionally invested in seeing the Brewers win a division title. So, I consider it more a matter of personal experience, not paranoia, to not take anything for granted and consider every game important until something is mathematically decided.

While all true, these things do happen with a higher degree of frequency than fans of teams with big divisional leads at this point in the season like to admit - just ask the 2018 and 2019 Cubs;) What it takes is for the trailing team to just get on absolute fire and take full advantage of winning the remaining head to head matchups they have with the team they are chasing. Sort of. The Cubs went 16-12 in September in '18, with a 5-game lead I'm guessing that would win a division about 99% of the time. And the Brewers didn't really go gangbusters in the two series with them; they went 4-2, making it even harder to believe. And there was a tiebreaker game, so anything less than just scorching play from MKE and they would have held on. I think most people forget how dicey that last DET-MKE series was too. The Brewers very nearly lost both of the first 2 games. The Saturday game against the Tigers was one of my favorites of the hundreds of Brewers games I’ve been to since Opening Day 1970. The Cubs lost in the afternoon, meaning the Brewers could move in to a tie for first. Talk about a playoff atmosphere. The Tigers jumped ahead 3-0, but Yelich got them back in the game with a 2 run HR in the third. When he hit his second HR to break a tie in the 7th, the crowd was roaring, and didn’t stop as Knebel and Jeffress closed it out. I think they both struck out the side.Good times.

I think playing at home in the playoffs is a bigger advantage than during the regular season. Just the tactical advantage of having the last bat has value. Throw in the home crowd support and I think every player and manager would rather be at home than on the road. Plus, if they’re at home I might be able to go to the game.

Gausman pitched yesterday, so the Brewers would have missed him anyway. Looks like his leave will fall conveniently in between starts so the Giants will be able to add someone to the roster to replace him.

Reds lost at home yesterday to the Twins. No different than the Brewers losing to the Pirates at home. The Reds will occasionally lose to bad teams too. They won't go undefeated. Yes, I think most people understand that teams don’t go undefeated. Last night’s game was exceptionally galling, not just because of blowing a 4 run lead to the last place Pirates, but because it highlighted the problems presented by the COVID crap. How often does a team lose half of its 8 man bullpen in the space of 3 days, including its All Star closer, and the 4th and 5th top options out of the pen? And at the same time wonder if and when the loss of players is going to end? The new relievers have performed poorly, so it raises concerns about whether the bullpen is going to cost the team multiple games over the next couple of weeks until some of these guys can come back and get back into game shape.

As has been mentioned in other threads, since the Brewers swept the series in Cincinnati to push the lead back to 7 games, the Brewers and Reds have had the same result on all 12 days that they have both played (8 wins, 4 losses). The lead has never been above 7.5 or below 6.5, and the movement has only come on days on which one team was off. That would be very frustrating for the trailing team.

I will be very pleasantly surprised if that holds through this weekend.

Whew, a big win. Now they can take a step back, take stock of what the heck happened this last week, and decide how to approach next week with all of the new pieces on the pitching staff.

Of course it’s Polanco. The guy with the sub .700 OPS who destroys the Brewers. With Reynolds on deck.