BruisedCrew

It’s a good observation. It’s weird to say the least. Some people fawn over the reds, others complain about people not being fans in the correct manner. It's like it's some weird collection of people here where everyone has a different opinion or something. It’s so weird that some fans pay attention to division rivals and think about how they stack up to the Brewers. And that they pay special attention to how the teams play against each other.

Yeah, and probably partially a function of them winning 5 of the last 6 against the Crew. I think they have a more balanced roster. Is it better? Probably depends on how you feel about Wong and Taylor and Cain. And is Yelich this guy this year? Or something with a bit more SLG than he's shown so far. The Reds bullpen melts down more often than this board...if this fanbase had to follow that it would constantly wonder why it couldn't come up with a decent reliever or two like the Brewers who seem to have no-name relievers come out of their ears and dominate year after year after year... For as awful as the stats are for the Reds bullpen, it doesn’t seem to translate into very many late lost leads. The Reds significantly improve their W-L record in the late innings. Maybe they score enough to cover the runs given up, or a lot of the runs off the bullpen come in lopsided games or when they just reduce leads or increase deficits.

Cool, let us know how it goes. In two minutes there has been more scoring than the Brewers manage in an hour.

It just seems like Yelich isn’t very productive because 6 of the regulars in the Reds lineup have a higher OPS than he does. It’s pretty depressing being at the games and seeing the stats on the scoreboard showing that succession of .800 and .900 OPS hitters coming to the plate. Yelich has a .402 OBP. That's second in the National League. Actual value of OPS is a bit mis-weighted toward sluggers, thus that .402 OBP out of his .773 OPS plays even better than his OPS would suggest. He isn't far off from being elite again. Anyone who has seen Yelich’s at bats, including Yelich himself, knows that he isn’t close to being elite. The raw numbers that you’re citing don’t capture the strikeouts and weak contact. Maybe he can regain the form he had in early 2018 before he exploded, but he isn’t close to that now.

It’s looking like the Euro Cup soccer final is going to be more entertaining than this game.

See my post above with his results in 7 starts after June 1, including 2 against the Brewers. Runs are going to be hard to come by again for the Brewers. Yesterday I said the Brewers needed at least 6 strong innings from Peralta, and he fell just short. Today I think they need 7 innings from Woodruff with no more than 1 run.

This isn't true. Yelich is still one of our better offensive performers with his 113OPS+. He's playing at a lower level than expected, but he's been an above average player without a doubt. It just seems like Yelich isn’t very productive because 6 of the regulars in the Reds lineup have a higher OPS than he does. It’s pretty depressing being at the games and seeing the stats on the scoreboard showing that succession of .800 and .900 OPS hitters coming to the plate.

This figures to be another game in which the Brewers will be struggling to score and will likely need a near perfect outing from Woodruff and the bullpen to win a low scoring game. After his horrible start to the season, Castillo has regained the elite status that was expected for him before the season started by the fantasy owners that made him a high draft choice. Since June 1 he has a 2.00 ERA and WHIP just under 1.00 in 7 starts. That includes 2 starts against the Brewers in which he allowed just 4 hits in 12.2 innings. 2 of the 3 runs charged to him scored after he left the game that was interrupted by a rain delay. Woodruff, on the other hand, has not been as sharp since June 1 as he was earlier in the season. He has posted an ERA of 3.72 in 6 starts since June 1.

Probably because he has no interest in playing.

The Brewers could have Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, and Nolan Ryan pitching against the Reds and it won’t help them win as long as the offense is helpless against Miley, Gutierrez, and Castillo. The offense is in another one of those stretches that is going to make it a struggle to win. And now that Hader has rediscovered his gopher ball, a small lead late in the game is not safe. Winning 5 of 6 on the road against the team ahead of them has to have the Reds feeling pretty good about their position.

And there’s the ballgame.

This will be Peraltas last inning even if he gets through it.

If Gutierrez could pitch against the Brewers every game he’d be a cinch for the HOF.

Yelich batting near the top makes sense because of his OBP and speed. Having him 2nd between Urias and Adames fits with the general approach of alternating lefties and righties as much as possible. Yelich is the most logical lefty to bat second.

Where do you find these umpire ratings? How does this compare to Thursday’s game when more of the bad calls seemed to go in the Brewers favor?

I will be going again tonight. I completely agree that neither tonight’s nor tomorrow’s game is a must win, but they are certainly what I would call “pivotal”. If the Brewers lose both, they will be limping into the ASB having lost half of their 8 game lead in a week, and the Reds will be energized and facing a home series right after the break where they could cut another game or 3 off of the lead. If the Brewers win both, they restore the 8 game lead and throw some cold water on the Reds momentum. A split of the two would leave the Brewers in a very good position heading into the break.

Peralta has had mixed success against the Reds this season in his three previous starts. In the first start he was staked to an early lead, but threw over 100 pitches and didn’t get out of the fifth inning even though he only gave up 1 run. In the second he threw over 70 pitches while giving up 1 run in 4 innings and didn’t return after a rain delay. Probably his best start was the third, where he pitched 7 innings and just gave up 2 runs, but was saddled with the loss. This will be Gutierrez’s third start against the Brewers, and the first two were the best of his 8 career starts. The Brewers scored just 2 runs against him in 7 and 6 innings, and the Reds won both games. His Achilles Heel has been the Padres, who have roughed him up in two starts and are largely responsible for his unimpressive ERA. I hope the Brewers can get to Gutierrez this time, but the offense has been pretty listless this week. I think the Brewers will need a strong 6 (or more) innings from Peralta to win.

Yah, they go and do all the stuff. Peralta and Woodruff are both AS and neither has any kind of asterisks on their selection. They are all the same. Even those cowards from Houston are All Stars just like everyone else...even though we know why they are hiding at home. Correa is apparently hiding out at home because he’s on the COVID protocol list.

I had already included last night’s game as one of the 18 games. Another way to break this down is to ignore the two bullpen game starters because those aren’t really starters. In the other 16 games, the Brewers have scored 0 or 1 runs against the starter in 11 of them, and their overall record in those 16 games is 7-9. So, again, the general observation that the Brewers have had trouble against left handed starters seems to be borne out by the facts. Fortunately, they haven’t faced that many of them.

But what I'm seeing is a higher amount of PAs and runs scored vs RH Starters than I do on overall RHP. Meanwhile the LH Starters stats are less the vs LHP overall which makes sense vs LH RP. So not fully right. The Baseball Reference splits page explains that the lines for LHP starter and RHP starter include all plate appearances for the entire game, and not just those against the starter. So, they don’t really tell you what was done against the starter. I scanned through the box scores and identified 18 games started by LHP, including 2 that were “bullpen games” in which the starter pitched 1 or 2 innings. My quick and dirty calculation says that the starters in these 18 games went a total of 86 IP and allowed 26 R for an ERA of 2.72. In the last 4 starts by LHP (not including Gomber of the Rockies in a bullpen game) the Brewers have scored 2 runs in 26 IP. The pitchers were Miley tonight, Anderson of the Pirates last Sunday, and Caleb Smith of the DBacks twice. I’m sticking by my statement that the Brewers have not done well against LH starters.

Are you sure you’re looking at the right data? Overall hitting against LHP and RHP is irrelevant to the question of how the Brewers have done against lefty starters. Those numbers will include against lefty relievers who might be back of the bullpen guys pitching in lopsided games. The relevant information would start with identifying all games in which the Brewers have faced LH SPs and looking at how many runs they score against those starters compared to what RH starters. I’m not sure the Brewers have had more than 10-15 games against LH starters this year in large part because the division teams don’t have many. I’m pretty sure Miley’s start tonight was the first by a Reds lefty in the 11 games the teams have played, and I don’t think the Cubs have had any in their 12 games against the Brewers. If anyone has info on how the Brewers have done against LH starters to refute my impression that they have had trouble against them, I’d like to see it. We do know that they have now been shut out in their last two games against them.

Vs. LHP: 216/.318/.387/.705 Vs. RHP: .221/.310/.381/.690 That isn’t the question. I am talking about how the Brewers have performed against left handed starting pitchers as compared to right handed starters. And the issue is scoring runs against those starters, not a few points difference in BA, OBA, and SLG. Maybe the answer is that the Brewers have trouble scoring against all starters, but it sure seems that there have been some mediocre lefties who have had great starts against them.

Not sure why it would be comical. Good pitching matchups don't guarantee wins and bad matchups don't guarantee losses, but some people would rather see the probabilities tilted in their favor when possible in important games against division rivals. Tonight's game is the worst pitching matchup of the series for the Brewers (note: this does not mean the Brewers can't or won't win). They have trouble against left handed pitchers as evidenced on Sunday when they were dazzled by the Pirates Tyler Anderson. And while starting Lauer doesn't guarantee a loss, he is pretty clearly the least effective of the Brewers six starters. He was roughed up early in his previous start against the Reds. The Brewers may also be a little short in the bullpen tonight with Houser not getting out of the 5th yesterday and Williams and Hader pitching each of the last two days. Using one start is never a good indicator or actually knowing what you’re talking about. The Brewers have been better offensively against left handed pitching this season according to their splits. And it would be comical, for me, to see Lauer pitch well enough for a win tonight after all the hoopla about the Reds and us going on this huge long losing streak. What are the stats for the Brewers against left handed starters this season? It doesn’t seem that they have faced all that many this season, especially against teams in the division, so maybe that’s why ones like Sunday’s stand out for me. I also recall that they didn’t face any lefty starters for the first couple of weeks of the season. In recent weeks, in addition to Anderson on Sunday, they struggled to score in two games against Caleb Smith of the DBacks, even though the Brewers were able to win those in low scoring games. There was also the guy Bubic of the Royals who shut them out for 6 innings on one hit and Kim of the Cardinals who held them to 1 run in 5 plus innings.

There would be something comical about us winning the first two games of this series after all the worries of Counsell not lining up his staff to take down the big bad Reds. Not sure why it would be comical. Good pitching matchups don't guarantee wins and bad matchups don't guarantee losses, but some people would rather see the probabilities tilted in their favor when possible in important games against division rivals. Tonight's game is the worst pitching matchup of the series for the Brewers (note: this does not mean the Brewers can't or won't win). They have trouble against left handed pitchers as evidenced on Sunday when they were dazzled by the Pirates Tyler Anderson. And while starting Lauer doesn't guarantee a loss, he is pretty clearly the least effective of the Brewers six starters. He was roughed up early in his previous start against the Reds. The Brewers may also be a little short in the bullpen tonight with Houser not getting out of the 5th yesterday and Williams and Hader pitching each of the last two days.

I was around in the 70’s and 80’s. I think the biggest difference is that fewer games were on TV, there were no strike zone boxes on televised games, and there were no websites to show visual presentations of where pitches crossed the plate relative to a strike zone. That made it a lot more likely that you either wouldn’t see where pitches were or would simply move on from what seemed like bad calls. I would say the same thing about replay. Nobody really cared for more than a few seconds if a runner came off the base by a fraction of an inch for a fraction of a second. There were no super slow motion and stop action replays to show that it happened. So, a runner who beat a throw was safe and we moved on. And a bang bang play was just that and whatever the umpire called was the call and the game moved on, except for the occasional vehement argument that added some color to the game without holding it up for several minutes while we wait for someone in NYC to dissect the replays to tell us what happened. In many ways the good old days really were better.