tmwiese55

I think 2nd is the best spot as well. Get a chance to have someone in front of him get on. But if that doesn't happen, and he gets on himself then you have your best hitters behind him to drive him in (rather than already having one of your best out of the way. Plus, of course the simple math of getting more ABs throughout the season

Wilkerson DFA? But he dominates AAA, I know I've read from an expert source here that if given the chance in the bigs he'd be really great. Opening day Wilkerson/Freitas battery for the title. In all honesty, while I don't think it would be a loss to DFA he's also not the worst guy to have around in the role he's in now as emergency depth to eat innings.

To trwi's last point, I'd guess they planned on a longer leash to handle mediocrity to poor type performance mixed in with an occasional flash. But I just don't think they could have planned on how overwhelmingly bad they were. An 11 run ERA after a month though for Burnes kind of forced their hands a bit. Payroll, yes we can't know what they'll do. I'd guess that taste they got by getting so close last year and still having freak level Yelich would lead them to continue to splurge in the same area they're in now, maybe trying to redistribute some to pitching though. I'd guess they view these Yeli years as their 'window' and go for it. But obviously just a guess.

Yea I'd agree he was ripped on and bashed more than he deserved. But reality is his ERA went drastically up and by mid season he had a mid 4s ERA. Started having starts skipped, was pulled from the rotation, and didn't make postseason roster. I'd grant though that 'badly' probably wasn't the right word specifically for him (probably should've said regressed, or poor start) but the overall point stands regarding staff in general, that's was kind of a nitpick of what I was getting at. He did 'average' and usually had short starts thus needing the pen big time.

I am not sure where they ranked overall last year statistically as starters, but while the players sucked at face value some had really low ERAs to help us way more than you would have expected. Miley was a 2.67 ERA on the year Gonzalez gave us 2.13 ERA in a short period Chacin a 3.50 ERA on the year Even the guys people hated (Guerra/Anderson) floated around 4.00 ERAs I know I expected some more stability and more than one guy throwing throwing 175+ innings, but not sure I was expecting better results overall because last year they really weren't that bad if I recall. Yup, generally accurate. But it was patchwork the whole time. You had Davies, Anderson do badly last year. Nelson never came back. Guerra flopped as a starter. Then they had to wing it with guys like Suter. Miley finished year strong after all that bad stuff but still only did like 15 games. Gio pitched in 5 starts ok. It was nice to have Chacin as a stable force all year though. But for the most part it was a mess all year as well that they pieced together fairly well as you point out. But by no means was it just smooth sailing and having such a deep pen allowed for these guys to pitch very few innings and the team to still win. Again, by september you were essentially down to two starters, and then trying to get 4ish innings from Gio. That Pen went away this year and it was logical to think you'd getter/more production from starters. Looking at it, they only had 3 guys pitch more than 101 innings. and two were Anderson and Guerra and those were blah results. It was the bullpen that made the magic and Chacin did great.

I was certainly on the gritting my teeth about the bullpen from beginning. What made it great was 3 lights out at the end of games. 2/3 were gone to start the year. Plus Burnes going to the rotation. I certainly expected massive regression there. But I expected better from SP vs last year, don't forget out starters last year also didn't cover a lot of inning, had a lot of injuries, etc to the point they were down to basically just Chacin/Miley by the end. So with fresh young arms injected along with Jimmy, Davies, Anderson contributions I expected better from the rotation than in 19. I never thought Burnes would collapse, that was a killer. 150 sub 4 ERA innings from him would have made a drastic difference. And I expected an improvement on O with adding in a good hitting C and 2B compared to the black holes at those spots last year. But that was countered by 1B, Shaw, Cain collapsing.

Time to get ruthless time to get Steinbrennerish! TPlush did better than I could explaining the ridiculous amount of mistakes that Stearns made this year. Close doesn’t get the cigar. Stearns did not have a great season. I don't think even his strongest supporters will deny that. However, looking at the larger track record, he took over a franchise in the middle of a rebuild with no a weak farm, made some great deals to turn it around in 2 years, and has had them in contention every year since including a division title and one win from the Series. Perhaps he has earned the benefit the doubt after one down season, a down season still being one where we are within reasonable contention in late August. Stability is important too. You don't just clean house every single time things don't go perfectly to plan. Adam nails it, it's really that simple. FYI: Yankees have had the same GM since 1998 and have had some poor years by Yanks standards in that time and didn't fire him.

Perhaps everything that can be done is trusting the GM that put them the closest they've been to winning the WS in almost 40 years. Nah, that's crazy though. One year contracts for all, if you don't win we're firing everyone and starting over every year!!!

Again, you were praising Stearns as a genius back in February, and when I brought this up yesterday, you said you didn't want Stearns fired. After thinking about it, I want the most forward thinking, innovative, non- risk averse leader > this guy is it. The Rays, imo, are incredible in what they do, to annually compete on a 70-80 million payroll is really astounding, but’s it’s the way they do business, re-tool in half year cycles, selling high on players no matter the circumstances, the constant adding of young talent to the farm. Astute free agent signings(Charlie Morton). I know nobody’s perfect, but imo, Stearns has made fundamental mistakes that to me, has led me to want this change. We can’t change ownership, so we need a leader that can win it all with a payroll max at ~ 150 million at some point in the near future, and because he’s already proven to be one of if not the most forward thinking leader in baseball, he’s the man I want for this job. First, he only recently became GM and the old GM is now VP. The one before that now runs the Dodgers. So, just saying it's a team effort. The current GM has been part of the whole run though. Generally speaking I love what TB and agree with that being a great org to poach from, I mentioned it for pitching coaches too. That said, let's not forget this: 2014: 77 wins 15: 80 wins 16: 68 wins 17: 80 wins Once again it seems you're massively overreacting to recency bias. What your'e saying about TB is exactly what other teams/fans would be saying about Stearns. Competing yearly on a small budget, what a good job he's doing, imagine what he could do with a big payroll. Essentially exactly what the Mets tried with for him. So what if TB had fired their whole management staff after 2016? how would they be doing right now?

I'm sure Stearns would be viewed strongly throughout the league and would have a GM/VP job this offseason if he wanted it. Rewind 10ish months ago when the Mets were after him and I'm sure he, like everyone, had the opinion that we have to keep this guy, pay him the money and toss him whatever title he needs. Some things go badly and you change courses and fire the next season, yea that's a great way to manage a team. Keep in mind even in this 'disaster' of a season they're still several games above .500, remember just 13ish years ago we were having statewide celebrations for winning the last game of the year just to make .500.

I see this often. What frontline starter was available that Stearns refused to go after? and pretty much hasn't every frontline starter who was a FA essentially flopped on their new contract? But hey, at least we can say we had a high payroll and were trying!! I guess the one to really look back on would be Verlander when he was traded. Had a massive contract though and hadn't been doing so well, tough to see this resurgence happen. Plus, he had a no trade and almost didn't even waive it for Houston, so strongly doubt he waives it for MKE. ETA: no issues for Pat Corbin yet. We'll see how that ends up though.

Thing is, this is pretty much the exact opposite of what they whole league is going to during this HR, launch angle, juiced ball revolution happening. HRs and Ks are up everywhere. Everyone is doing it this way and it's working. Seems though we've been hit hard on the variance of RISP combined with 3 guys just flopping this year. Think of this simply, how many dozens if not hundreds more runs would they have if Cain was say 285/375, Jesus was 270/340, Shaw was 265/340. Those are not crazy numbers for any of them. Arcia is what he is and actually improved from last year. Idea is simply stack as many good hitters as possible in a row and the numbers will all put together for a bunch of runs scored, in this case they seemingly had 7. Even with all that going bad they're league average (not terrible as some say), so just those guys doing mid level norm performances they'd almost for sure be top 5.

Cain looked great and like his old self last night. Sign him to an extension now!!

If someone would straight take the contract off your hands, sure you probably do it. But that won't be the case, you're either eating some money or taking on a bad contract yourself. Plus, you're essentially selling very low. It's very rare to fall off this drastically in one season, remember a mere 11ish months ago he was MVP discussion worthy. Combine that with that we know of a litany of injuries he's been dealing with, including the same thumb we saw mess up Braun and I'd strongly gamble that he rebounds next year. As long as he doesn't get hurt again which of course is an issue to factor in though at his age. So combine the odds of some kind of improvement, even if not to 2018 level with the fact that you're still going to be paying some of that money (eating or in taking on bad contract) well you might as well just cross your fingers on the rebound. Note if relevant, I was one at the time of signing kind of gritting my teeth at giving this to a player at his age and injury history, so I'm by no means a 'cain homer' so to speak. Especially when we had a 550K outfielder on roster who just put up 30 HR on a 370ish obp or whatever it was and was controlled for years (I know the D stuff). Darn our cheap owner though. Also, anyone notice the dichotomy of one thread demanding to spend money for the sake of spending money and how in just a year after spending on the largest FA contract in team history that we need to rid ourselves of said money.

Sitting moose vs a righy, something happen last night?

66 million gross profit. Then add playoff revenue ON TOP OF THAT > another 10-20 million > now it’s not quite as impressive is it? I don't know how many times you need to be told that us joe schmoes have no idea on numbers of that nature. We simply don't know that stuff and acting factual on it is incorrect. What we do know for a fact, is they increased team player payroll in the 30 mil type area and it's drastically more than they ever spent before.

thoughts on him moving to LF or 1B? LF could open up after Braun if Grisham can play CF ok. For 1B, we'll he's taller than Prince and of course it's just way easier and with very little throwing. As someone who is fairly athletic you'd kind of hate to use DH on him instead of a slower/bigger,/older etc type person

Guy puts out roughly 30 mil more in payroll the year after making the NLCS because they're in theory close to winning it = not willing to spend money for a year or two to try to win.

Yes I think that was the plan and really they did do it. They traded everyone with any value and were awful. I don't know how it's more scorched earth than that. But yes their success at nailing small moves let them win quicker so only got 1 high pick out of it. Then what are we gonna do, rip him for getting Yelich? Right now I don't know how you can full rebuild while having Yelich cheap and as tough as this year has been they're still close. The things to bash this org for are essentially a complete failure to draft/develop pitching. that's beena problem for 30 years and so far not much has changed on that with the new GM/team the last 5ish years. And I'd say overall drafting in early rounds since Braun-ish time. Better in these two areas and lots of things would be different.

So you think Stearns has had a good year? Hasn’t made an inordinate amount of mistakes, from the early rotation to the horrible pitching shuttle to sending Hiura back down to the imbalance of lefty hitters, to keeping a near .530 hitter vs lefties down all year. Oh, almost forgot, letting DJ go. If I had more time to think, I could probably come up with more bad decision making. Isn’t that enough? Enough to fire him? Hell no. Yeah, some of the moves have been questionable or flat out bad. Some he made last year were questionable at the time as well. The difference is that last year most of those ended up working out. They haven't this year. It's baseball. That happens. Sometimes it just isn't your year. But to overreact and call for change when that happens is a great way to guarantee that EVERY year isn't going to be your year. Yup, well said. you can't have crazy overreactions and hind sight 20/20 type views to everything. This is baseball and crazy stuff happens all the time. I love how you list the AAA C as a mistake like that's going to translate. I guess we should've played that AAA C at SS or something. What an idiot GM, he thought playing our ASB 1b instead of a career minor leaguer at 1B or two time near AS in Shaw a bunch. What a moron. He's had a lot of things not go his way this year, that's for sure. Pitching staff massively injured and 2/3 young guys flopped. But again, at the time I think almost everyone was on board with the young P strategy, especially you. As a small market, it's the right strategy. That and to blame him for Cain, Jesus, Shaw is just hindsight 20/20 BS, there's nothing he could do there. With your kind of reactionary thinking like 20ish GMs and manager would be fired every year. Plenty of managers and GMs would've been fired who a year or two later won titles or went deep. And somehow you're seeming bashing him for Moose/Grandal in spite of the massive amount of production had on cheap one year low risk deals, these were great moves and withou them they'd be completely out of the race right now. Losing DJ was a big loss, I've been one on that train the whole season. But you also have to relax and realize us sitting here have no idea what the story is there. They might have countered with everything possible and the guy was just determined to go home, who knows, maybe some sick parent or something going on, IDK. Moreover, if it did come down to just not paying X amount more money we don't if that was his or the owner's call. It's just very tough to lay blame on something of that nature as we don't know what the personal stuff for DJ was that made him do it.

1.8 million not what I would call expensive, especially to not have to see Arcia flail away anymore, I’d call that the best value in all of sports. So you're just ignoring the post that points out that Galvis's K percentage is higher than Arcia's? That's on point. Why is Galvis ‘s war higher? you said flailing away. Not WAR.

Sounds like you want Bud Selig again. Bashing the owner is completely laughable. Took over a joke of a team and has been consistently competing and trying ever since with by far more winning than they had in the 20+ years prior. Are the late 90s/early 00s really that long ago that people forget? You're following and rooting for the smallest market team in baseball, in a sport without a salary cap, and mad we don't spend more money. This is the nature of our team, they're always going to be the underdog. There's a local owner 90 miles south doing what you want, just root for them, the team we beat last year and 1-2 games behind right now while spending a ton more money.

To flip that much after a half season on your viewpoint is exactly how organizations should not be run if you care about long term forward thinking and all that. You have to give time and not have constant turmoil. The worse teams in all sports are the ones that change management every year or two. For his job, think of this simply. If you'd have been told when the rebuild started in 2015 that by 2017 they'd be a game out of the playoffs, by 2018 a game from the WS and that in 2019 in competition for the playoffs with 5-6 weeks left would that be a successful management job? Oh, while having acquired an MVP on a cheap contract. But I suppose weigh that again not acquiring Freddy Galvis, and yea it's debatable. Note again, even with Galvis' having his 'career year' he's still flailing more than Arcia, who is not good. But yes, at least it's a new person to watch flail, so definitely a big deal.

Because we watch brewer games in person and on tv, 4-5 times each game, we have to watch this horrible hitter flail away, game after game, year after year, the cumulative effect is maddening. Galvis would have put an end to that wow, that's a heck of an argument. Maybe you really should be GM. And after watching Galvis every day you'd be thinking the same thing about him. Seemingly moreso as he seems to flail away even worse than Arcia

Now, of course I'd rather have Galvis than Arcia. But have you really looked at Galvis' career stats? He's basically Arcia, but having a slightly better year for himself, likely aided by the juiced ball. Which is fine, still better than Arcia and more reliable. But to act like it's blasphemy to not acquire a hitter in the similar mold as you're bashing here seems a bit of a stretch. BTW Arcia's K rate is 20% and Galvis is 24%.