BruisedCrew

I was at the game today and didn’t have the advantage of multiple replays, but it looked to me like Arcia lost a split second getting a handle on the ball. That was a big play, but I tend not to dwell on the “if only” scenarios because who knows exactly what happens if the score is 3-1 instead of 4-1. There are always a lot of plays in a close game that could tip the balance.

Our Sunday lineup now includes Moustakas and Schoop. It is light years better than a month ago. It will help if and when Schoop can progress from not striking out to hitting a ball hard. Otherwise that 6-9 is pretty brutal.

Very strange that Counsell goes from one extreme to the other on the lefty-righty thing. I wonder if Cain did tweak something last night and if that’s why he’s sitting out. I’m not surprised Aguilar is sitting out, but this lineup has the makings of one of those “Sunday lineups” that contributes to the Brewers’ awful record in the final games of series.

I was there too! 2d game of a DH they'd last the 1st so even worse. Some bum came up to put the first few on and then our close Irish Tom Murphy came in to the jig. I still remember how stupid that jog sounded at 6-6. As I recall it was 5 in the 10th so 11-6 I remember a game against Arizona where the Brewers went into the last of the 9th with a 5-0 lead and ended up losing 6-5 without recording an out. I hate seeing the opponent get a rally started no matter how large the lead is because once it starts it isn’t always that easy to stop.

Sure, in general you want to save your best relievers. But I don’t think that means that you blindly refuse to use certain pitchers regardless of how often they have been used and whether or not you have an off day coming up. Or that you ignore how many effective relievers you have. When none of your best relievers (at least the best 4) did not pitch in the previous 2 games, and you have an off day coming in two days) I think there is less value, and possibly some downside, to saving all of them. It’s one thing if you have a great closer, a reliable setup man, and 5 or 6 mediocre pitchers in the bullpen. Then you want to save those two “best” relievers for tight games that you have a chance to win. But the Brewers bullpen right now has more effective relievers than that. If I ranked the Brewers best relievers now, I would say the best 3 are Hader, Jeffress, and Knebel. Their roles and ability to pitch on consecutive days are different, but they are the ones I would be using the most judiciously. Next, I would put Soria, followed closely by Burnes. Albers was in this category for the first part of the season but since his return he has pitched himself to the bottom of the heap. Barnes has taken over Williams role as the bridge guy who pitches mainly when the team is behind or has a comfortable lead or needs someone before the 6th inning. Jennings is in a special category as the lefty who can be used in several roles but isn’t one of the “best” relievers. I keep coming back to the specific circumstances of last night’s game and why the general desire to save relievers may not apply. Counsell already did something unconventional by using Knebel in the 7th. He apparently thought that with two days off, he could get Knebel some work in without sacrificing his availability for today if he’s needed or for Tuesday. Why would the same not apply to Soria and/or Jeffress? Hader may be different because they seem to be even more reluctant to use him on consecutive days than the others. I would have brought Soria in to start the ninth last night. If he could have gotten through the inning without throwing a ton of pitches he could have been available today if needed. Even if he wouldn’t be available, you’d still have Hader, Jeffress, Burnes, Jennings, and probably Knebel and Barnes. If that isn’t good enough then you’re screwed anyway. It’s fine to be concerned about the bullpen getting overworked, and I’m there too. But sitting a reliever for 3 days in a row, and maybe 5 days in a row if they don’t get in today, isn’t going to make them any more effective in September. Pitching Albers for the third time in 4 days may not have been the ideal way to have him work out his problems either. We’re obviously going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

As I said before, if you’re trying to get a guy a chance to find his stuff, use him in a game when you are several runs BEHIND so that you aren’t risking blowing a game that you should be winning easily. If the bullpen had been used heavily in the last couple of games, then maybe you have to use Albers. But last night, because of Thursday’s blowout and Guerra’s 8 inning start on Friday, everyone in the bullpen except for Jennings and Burnes had had at least two days off and is looking at an off day on Monday. Albers, meanwhile had pitched both Wednesday and Thursday, and wasn’t able to get out of an inning in either game. So, yeah, I think using your least effective and least rested pitcher against a potent offense was an unnecessary risk. Let Barnes and 2 of your rested and more effective relievers get in an inning of work and don’t give the opponent life. With the rest they’ve had, with just one inning of work they should be available to pitch both today and Tuesday after the off day. I don’t criticize Counsell for bullpen decisions that often. But I did it last night because I think he unnecessarily put a game at risk and it almost blew up in his face.

Tomorrow I would give Aguilar and his tired bat a day off and play Thames at first and Braun in LF.

That’s why bringing Albers in was so ridiculous. They should have those guys plus Jeffress, Burnes and Jennings tomorrow, so why diddle around with a 6 run lead in the ninth inning? Put in a pitcher you trust and get the game over with. Because it is a 6 run lead? Have you noticed how many runs Albers has given up in his last few outings? What happened tonight was totally predictable and Counsell walked right into it. Just close out the game and go home instead of giving the opponent a chance to win.

That’s why bringing Albers in was so ridiculous. They should have those guys plus Jeffress, Burnes and Jennings tomorrow, so why diddle around with a 6 run lead in the ninth inning? Put in a pitcher you trust and get the game over with.

Unless Albers is in a car accident those firms will be no help.

Just what I wanted to see. Blackmon as the tying run.

Not gonna get a more ideal time to use Albers. Clean inning here would go a long way toward making him useful again. Yeah, a more ideal time is when you’re behind by 6 runs. Using him now gives the Rockies life.

Barnes may be setting up a save situation for somebody.

I would let him go longer if he can. They probably aren’t going to use him two days in a row anyway and with the off day Monday he should be OK to go on Tuesday if needed.

I think we’ll be seeing Hader tonight. Peralta is going to have problems going more than 5, and there isn’t really a reliable middle reliever out there right now.

Here’s an obscure fact. I was at the game against the Dodgers last year when Shaw hit his other GS. Perez followed that one with an HR too. Sadly, the Brewers ended up losing that game in the ninth. We don’t need a rerun of that part.

Remember when everyone ripped Counsell for pinch hitting Shaw instead of Arcia against a lefty with the bases loaded?

I really don’t get batting Schoop fourth. It seems like that just puts more pressure on a guy who’s already pressing.

This is kind of a slippery slope though. Anyway you try to define the team that stretch where they went 0-7 is going to taint the data. Before that stretch they were 55-37. After that stretch they are 9-5. If they had gone a more reasonable 3-4 during that stretch we would still be in first place, they just laid an egg for a week. It is true that if you discount the losses the record will be better. And, if you discount the wins the record will be worse. This is taking the good and the bad from two periods of two months each, and the Brewers were 15 games over .500 in the first period and .500 in the more recent one. The first part of the season included a lot of games against teams that were, at the time, struggling mightily (Reds, Marlins, Padres, Royals) and the Brewers, to their credit, took full advantage of that. But they also got slapped around by the Cubs. My overall point is that if the Brewers play just .500 ball the rest of the way and finish with something like 88 or 89 wins, there’s a good chance that they will be on the outside looking in just like last season. Of the teams that are now in the big clump fighting for the playoff spots several of them are likely to play above .500 the rest of the way. The Brewers don’t have that many games left against the really weak teams, especially now that the Reds have stabilized from their awful start. Most of their remaining games are head to head against teams that are in the playoff hunt, including the teams like the Nats and Pirates who are one hot week away from getting right into the thick of things.

I agree with everything you just said, but that is a lot of "ifs." *nervous laugh* I look at it this way. A lot of us have felt they did a lot with smoke and mirrors in the first half. But the wins have kept on coming, so at some point maybe we need to realize that it isn't smoke and mirrors, and we might actually have a legit contender on our hands. Of course, they team has created a false sense of security in me before, and crushed those hopes, so there's always going to be a sense of trepidation. But if you would have told me back in April that this team would be sitting at 15 above .500 and 1 game out of 1st on Aug. 3, I'm not sure I would have believed it. I thought they were a playoff contender, but I figured it would be to sneak into that 2nd wild card. This has been terrific. I totally agree, which is why I get a kick out of it whenever somebody complains when Counsel/Stearns do something unconventional. Perhaps they are just getting lucky...perhaps not. At the risk of sounding like the crier of doom, the wins haven’t exactly kept coming from the Brewers hot start. At the end of May they were 36-21 with a 4.5 game lead in the division and the best record in the NL by 2 games. Since then they have played just .500 ball, the 10th best record in the NL since that date, and have lost between 2 and 8 games in the standings to the other primary playoff contenders. So there are now 3 teams within 2 games of them in the fight for the 2 wild card spots. If they want to claim one of those spots they are probably going to have to pick up the recent pace not just mark time. I usually start with the expectation that it will take 90 wins to reach the playoffs and it’s looking like that will be the case again this year. The big questions that were there at the beginning of the season still remain. Will the starting pitchers be able to keep the team in enough games as they struggle to score runs consistently without wearing down the bullpen that has been the biggest part of the team’s success? The bullpen has inevitably cooled a little from its near perfect start and I don’t think it’s realistic to expect a repeat of the April-May performance. So, as others have said, to me the biggest key is going to be whether the offense can start scoring more runs so that they don’t have to rely on perfect outings from 3 or 4 relief pitchers to scrape out wins.

Do you believe in miracles?

Several good pitches to hit and Schoop couldn’t hit anything hard. If Davis had thrown a curve 2 feet off the plate he would have waved at it.

Whenever I see Aguilar make that throw to second I have flashbacks to the game against the Dodgers last year when he threw to second with one out in the ninth and a 3 run lead and hit the runner in the back instead of taking the sure out. When the dust settled the Dodgers scored 5 or 6 runs, including a grand slam to win the game.

Then when they do come in they’re rusty. As we get later in the year I wonder if they’ll start using a Hader a little more. He’s had too many weeks with just 2 innings pitched and then when he comes in after a week off he doesn’t have good command.

Seeing this challenge reminds me that the Padres screwed themselves against the Cubs today by losing their challenge in the second inning on a pitch they thought grazed their hitter. They lost the challenge and a few innings later couldn’t challenge a play at the plate when one of their runners was called out but should have been safe. Silly to burn a challenge that early in the game when all you’d get out of it is a runner on first with 2 outs. The 8th inning is a completely different story.