BruisedCrew

Unfortunate time for Yelich to go into a slump.

Hard to count on that. They said he still needs at least one more rehab start and he has been injured and/or ineffective all season.

He didn’t pitch yesterday. Sure did. Oops. No need to get snarky. I just looked at Baseball Reference and saw that he hadn’t pitched two days in a row. So, to answer the original question there was no previous data on Burnes pitching two days in a row.

He didn’t pitch yesterday and has not pitched 2 days in a row for the Brewers this year.

I think we can put to rest the concept that the Brewers have a good bullpen.

30 pitches for Anderson and still not out of the first. More stress on the bullpen and another hole to dig out of.

Yelich has slipped into one of those little droughts where he is swinging at bad pitches and getting a lot of strikeouts and weak grounders to the right side.

I really wonder if fielding different lineups and batting orders every day makes it harder for players to get 8nto a groove. I understand wanting to give guys a day off every so often, and wanting to get everyone in a game now and then, but are they overdoing it?

Throw in the week before the break, the overall under .500 record since June 1, and the state of the once deep bullpen and the apprehension is more understandable. Plus, it’s 12-10, not 12-9. The Dodger series on the road was 2-2.

Much needed win. Good plan to lay in the weeds letting the Braves think they didn’t need to score any more until they could get Hader in. Hopefully Hader will be ready by Tuesday in case they have a chance to win one against the Cubs.

What a break. An easy DP if the pitcher doesn’t get in the way.

If he’s not running it’s an easy DP.

Way to go Marty. Now we’ll see if Hader and Jeffress can close it out.

For Moustakas they should play the Marty Moose song from National Lampoon’s Vacation, though most people probably wouldn’t recognize it.

This could be the “put it out of reach” inning for Freeman and Markakis.

Thames having a big night striking out on pitches out of the zone.

Shaw fails to turn what should have been a sure DP so the Braves have another scoring chance.

This offense is just abysmal.

They cleverly scheduled both games next week against the Brewers as day games and have Quintana lined up to face the only team that can’t touch him.

The Brewers really need to get some early runs and keep adding on. With the bullpen woes scoring a couple of runs and trying to hold on to a small lead over several innings isn’t likely to work any more. Might have to use Hader for two innings tonight unless they fall way behind. Unless they made some player moves I haven’t heard about yet the middle relief is in dire straits. ETA: I see that Wilkerson is up to replace Hauser. I’m surprised they didn’t option Peralta; maybe they will use him in long relief in Chicago if a game gets out of hand there.

Let's try some data here, the season started on March 29th, we are now 133 days into the season. Josh Hader has pitched 39 times this year (including the all star game) or an average of once every 3.4 days. He's only had 5 or more days rest between outings 4 times. But yes, clearly Counsell is mismanaging Hader, because he's been completely unsuccessful in his role. I'll add to this point, Hader has a .419 OPS against over the last 28 days. He's allowed runs twice since July 1, 2 runs both times. The 2 runs allowed on August 7th is probably fairly fresh, and he pitched on both August 4th and 5th with 1.1 combined innings allowed 1 walk, no hits, striking out 2. So it isn't like he had a long layoff before this bad outing. Hader has made 10 apperance over a 41 day span since July 1st which included most of a week off for the all-star break. My point here is that even lately, he's been pitching fairly regularly. It definitely sucks when Hader gives up a couple runs in an outing, but he's not perfect...his ERA isn't going to be 0 and strike out 2/3 of the guys he faces. San Diego as a team is red hot and they lit up every one of our relievers not named Jeffress. I think part of the question is that he has pitched only 23 innings since June 1 after covering 33 in April and May. 23 innings in 62 games is pretty light usage for one of the team’s best pitchers, especially one who is not a closer and is supposed to be able to go multiple innings.

But according to CC's manager manual, Hader can only pitch in games the brewers lead by a few runs or are tied and since June 1st that hasn't happened often. Barnes OTH pitches when the team is behind or ahead by a lot so he's had more opportunity to play (the behind part mostly as being ahead by a lot is pretty much impossible with this team).. Since the end of May this team is a 500 ballclub that had built up a 16 win lead. That puts them on pace for 89 wins without looking at strength of schedule, etc. So they are still very much in the chase for a wild card, but a team that has struggled to put any sustained winning streak for 2.5 months and is looking more and more like a 500 team is very unlikely to march into the post-season on a tear. Could happen... Likely won't happen... To add to this, Hader’s stats since June 1 say something about the Brewers’ decline since then. On May 30, Hader and Knebel finished off 3-2 win over the Cardinals to complete a series victory. At that time the Brewers were 36-21 with a 4.5 game lead over the Cubs and at least a 2 game edge over everyone else in the NL. Since then they have gone 30-32, which is worse than every playoff contender except the Nats. Through May, Hader had appeared in 19 games (all Brewer victories) pitching 33 innings and allowing only 4 earned runs (ERA 1.09) with an amazing 66 strikeouts and opposing hitter OPS of .347. Since then, he has appeared in 19 more games, but only covered 23.1 innings. His ERA is 2.31 with an opponent’s OPS of .553. He has struck out 35 hitters. He has also picked up 2 blown saves and one loss and the Brewers are 12-7 in the games that he has pitched. So, he has still been very good, but significantly less spectacular and less prolific than the first 2 months. In April and May the Brewers picked up a lot of wins by getting through the first 5 or 6 innings with a small lead and using some combination of Hader, Jeffress, Albers, Jennings, Barnes, Williams, and Knebel (when he returned from the DL) to finish out the game. They did that with amazing efficiency, often with relievers covering multiple innings in a game. Things are a lot different now. We all know what has happened to Albers (who was better and more valuable than people remember the first two months) and with injuries and regression for Williams, Soria, and Barnes, plus Knebel’s problems, the bullpen is now a shadow of what it was in May. The ability of the bullpen to cover short starts has been greatly reduced. As for Hader, it seems that he is often being saved for situations that aren’t arising that often, as evidenced by the significant drop in his innings pitched. He also hasn’t been as dominant, making it more difficult for him to cover multiple innings. The Brewers are still in the thick of the race, but to keep pace with the other contenders they’re going to have to find a different formula for winning than they used in April and May. Since getting more innings from the starters doesn’t seem likely, it’s probably going to have to come from a significant improvement from the offense. While there have been some signs of improvement there, they haven’t been big enough or frequent enough to get the team off the .500 train.

Mark one on the negative side for the no defense lineup.

They are coming together tonight. Just not the way you want.

I have a feeling Peralta will be optioned out after this game to bring in another reliever. With the two off days next week they won’t need a fifth starter until the Reds series at MP, and I don’t think I want to see him starting against the Cubs or Cardinals anyway.