tmwiese55

Reading the comments today after the Gio signing I'm struggling to understand why there has been so much consternation over what I've been expecting / calling for. That is, stacking the 12 man staff with what are traditionally considered starters and having them used all over the weekly 54-65 innings a team pitches. Today I see people glad another starter was added so a we can shift long men to the pen. Well, that's exactly what I've been arguing for. Get rid of the 1 inning and 1 out specialists and have a staff full of guys who can start one day, give you 3-4 good innings out of the gate and then pitch a couple innings three days later. You'd truly be able to play matchups at all times rather than the current model of "it's Davies turn in the rotation". I see the point. And going back a day or two to whoever kind of made the "out of necessity" point regarding last year. That might be happening again now. Think of like this, ideally everyone knows they'd be better off if they can get normal-ish starting rotation production. Clearly the Brewers goal was that here as well with what they did to start the year. But at this point out of necessity a month in they might have to get crazy and try some other stuff. Or like Snapper said, you're throwing stuff at the wall at this point and management knows a situation like this is not ideal by any means. and that's why no one tries to go this route going into a season. You're essentially planning on needing 13-16 competent guys and to use several guys every day no matter what (each one with a chance to 'not have it that day') combined with the roster juggling thats needed. Our problem right now is finding more than one reliable pitcher, how are we gonna come up with like 15? And even still, they're very likely gonna stay on a normal 5 man rotation, it's just planning on them knowing they're not guys likely to make it past 5-6 innings. Which is still far from what you're pushing or predicting. Also, I think a key point that could have been made more clear in your whole point here is that you think this is a strategy that 'should' happen by us or someone in MLB. Not that you were necessarily predicting it. Though in the offseason it sure came off pretty hard as a prediction. Just saying I think it would come off a bit better phrased that way. If that makes sense.

Why would you think that he couldn't? Perhaps he could have. I don't remember him as an incredibly patient hitter. We'll never know. IDK, he always drew a lot of walks. Usually had an OBP significantly higher than avg approaching 100 pts other than the mess that was the beginning of last year

For sure. I feel like this started from my post that was reliant on the guys we having now at least stabilizing the rotation. with them all being guys unlikely to go super deep in games you're gonna need some multi inning guys like we had last year. And of course no one in the pen right now is exactly good so was hoping our young talented guys could step into spots there instead of the likes of Barnes, Wilkerson, Petricka, etc.

I don't think he'd be used in a 8th inning one inning situation. he'd be a longer guy to come in the 4th/5th and get 2-3. That's the scenario I was talking about anyway.

Well let's just hope he can be a solid mid level pitcher to the tune of 4ish era and gets his 5-6 innings most starts and hope Anderson can do that as well. This would at least provide some stability. Well then you have him, Chacin, Davies, Woodruff, Anderson. Plus Jimmy coming in soon to maybe help. Then if Burnes/Peralta come back in the pen it could stabilize the pen as well and have some of those multi inning guys that helped out so much last year. We'll see, we need some of these guys to start doing ok or this winning record isn't gonna last long. I don't think Gio is done but I'm' also realistic that he's not gonna have a 3ish ERA like he did in 2017. Just basic mediocrity is a huge improvement for us right now.

Exactly. Forgetting the roster restrictions and all that, it's very difficult to find 13-16 reliable pitchers that would be needed in this type of scenario. Probably a reason why teams have tried to find 4-5 reliable guys to start and then hope for as many good BP guys as possible but usually can only find 2-3. Somehow the perfect storm happened last year for MKE to have incredible depth of reliable guys in the pen. Obviously we're seeing the opposite of that now. As a small market team though it would be a cost efficient creative thing to explore but I'd say the roster rules combined with finding this many reliable guys makes it not tenable. I'd think to even consider a drastic change up you'd need the 26th spot, DH and no restrictions on pitchers on your roster. Probably the most realistic shift could be a middle ground of sorts. Where you do have a couple normal starters but also 1-2 'rotation' spots where you know it's gonna be a team approach that day so you plan your roster moves and reliever usage around it. Still, if your normal starters get beat up you're in big trouble as your bp doesn't get rest then. Could see this working around true top end SPs though, say WAS as an example. You have 3 ace level type guys you can rely on for 6+ almost every time out. Well then get weird those other days instead of trotting out a Tanner Roark for a 5 ERA all year.

I'd consider a for sure upgrade over our current 1B situation due to the reliability and consistency of him. You know what you're gonna get basically and it's a solid hitting 1B. Look at the OBPs there as well btw. Our current guys you basically have no idea what they're gonna do. Is the upgrade worth the cost of salary and prospects, well that's a different discussion. That's why I guessed it would be Thames going back to help salary. Still, I don't really think this is too feasible.

I saw some speculating that we'll be able to go Saturday since so few series will go 7 games, if any. I know in the past they've allowed game 1s the same day as game 7s. Don't recall for sure if there has been game 1s the day before though but my guess is there has been. It should be Sunday at the latest though and some hoops nerds best guess in Saturday. I'm hoping it's announced tomorrow though after some series close out tonight.

I'd believe it when I see it. Just spitballing hypotheticals I'd guess Thames would be going back though

Good point. I would be all for reseeidng the 2nd round. Say the 7 seed beats the 2 then let the 1 play them instead of being forced to play the 4. The East/West thing isn't gonna happen though. You'll just never get the East owners to vote against themselves in that away.

Personally I'd have rather seen him embrace being a contact doubles hitter like a prime Lucroy or even Cain type rather than try to hang onto trying to be a power hitter. He had really developed into a great opposite field hitter there and that seems to have gone away.

I agree. First, just simply to speed things up a bit since the playoffs are two months. Second, NBA is typically the most predictable playoffs that in 7 games the better team almost always wins. Dropping it to 5 increases the chances of some upsets. Fans love upsets and generally I'd consider it a good thing to give some lower a seeds a better chance instead of fans (like us for years) rolling their eyes at getting a 6-8 just to get creamed first round. All of a sudden you steal one game on the road like Orl and BKN did and you never know what could happen.

Of course t his is a small sample overreaction. But I'd also say the notion that a pitching coach doesn't matter is also a bit off. They're responsible for the strategies batter to batter, helping with mechanics, pitch selection. I think they're very important. Definitely more than a hitting coach. I guess just look at STL and ATL for all those years is evidence to me that a good pitching coach can be very important. Maybe there isn't a difference between say the 7th best guy and the 27th best guy but if you have one of the top top guys I think it's a big advantage. Of course DJ is still very early but it's possible he is one of those top guys. If he turns that CIN staff into good results this year it's a huge accomplishment.

Well he's likely unavailable today so a fresh arm. Plus doesn't STL only really have Carpenter and Wong as lefties, whereas almost all of LAD is lefty. So a 2nd lefty specialist seems redundant. That would be my best guess.

I'd just go back to the R/L platoon like it was to start last year and go from there, see how it plays out.

What are those extreme solutions being thrown around? I'd love to hear them. Got a link? You can find them anywhere online if you want to look. All kinds of stuff thrown around here in the offseason with piggy backing being the most obvious example that hasn't happened. Go argue with yourself if you want IDC. Anyone interested can go read the beginning of this thread as well and see how all that went...

Check out this year. First round was the best round of the whole playoffs. Also, the Hous/Por series ended in a Lillard walkoff even though it didn't go 7 games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_NBA_playoffs

They went that way in the postseason because they had no hope of winning with the traditional path. You still want the traditional path if you can obtain it. Same with the Ray's last year, they went weird because they had a lack of healthy starters. Same with the A's, everyone got hurt so they went a different path. What the Brewers did late last year was driven by the fact they had no pitchers who could reliably go more than 5 innings in a game, not because it is the smart way to run your team. They adapted to their roster and they should do the same this season. I think this is a great summary. What's the saying, necessity is the mother of invention, or something like that. Nelson's injury combined with Davies/Anderson falling apart forced their hands last year and they made the best of it. I know many liked to think we re-invented the wheel with what they did so it was tough to remember that throughout the year we still did the normal 5 man staff trying to gt 5-6 innings. With the biggest tweak being we had an early hook during the 3rd time through no matter what the pitch count was at the time. That was the biggest thing they were doing differently and really all I banked on again this year. The roster rules of the regular season just don't allow the kind of extreme solutions folks throw around. They wanted it to work similar to normal with these guys and so far it hasn't, so we'll see what they do from here but since there isn't a ton of off days and extra roster spots I think it's gonna look a lot like normal. Maybe the necessity does create something weird though if they conclude the three young guys are best as 2-3 inning guys right now thus creating a glut of middle relievers who can cover a lot of innings. And then have an early hook blah starters like Chase or whoever they bring up. Still, if a SP is going well they're just gonna keep letting them go until trouble. It's not like Chase is going to go 3 shutout with 2 hits and they're gonna say "welp our plan is 2-3 innings so he's out now". That said, if you had the DH and impending 26th roster spot I could really see some creativity happening even beyond what TB is doing. Like with a team going with an extremely small position player bench since you don't need the pinch hitters and all that goes with it.

At this point I'd definitely be giving Thames a few more games over Jesus and hopefully one of the two gets going. Or maybe you just have to do a strict platoon like how it started last year. That said, I agree the best roster construction would probably have been to trade Thames and replace him with a RH bat with ability to play IF. Since they couldn't or didn't want to move Thames preseason this is where we are now so I've assumed the plan (barring injuries to our MLB team) would be for Keston to be a Sept call up and get starts vs lefties over one of Shaw/Moose. If he does well and Jesus is still poor, then you can play Shaw at 1B and give Keston more starts.

Bucks are -8.5 as of now. I'd be all over that and I'd guess that's over 10 by game time if not closer to 13. GSW last night -8 was a freebie too. Knew they'd come out focused after that collapse the previous game

I'm fine either route they go on him. If he stays up though I definitely would like to see them use the offspeed pitches and more 2 seam fastballs. It seems to have some good cut on it. I guess just saying keeping him up and repeating the same stuff that has been feeling doesn't seem to make sense, make some changes at least.

That makes sense. Thoughts on the shifting putting him in more important spots being a balance to those points? I'd guess it's not enough to make up for it but it's part of the equation.

2018: 58.7% 4 seam 34.2% slider 6.8% curve 0.2% sinker 0.2% change up 2019: 56.9% 4 seam 23.0% slider 9.9% sinker 5.5% curve 4.7% change up Should be in AAA throwing 30% change 30% curve 20% sinker 10% 4-seam 10% slider. And told we don’t care how many hits or runs are givin up. Or to have started using them up here in these starts and see what happened. He dropped a first pitch curve for a strike I noticed yesterday. Just needs to throw enough to keep them honest. And usually the curve isn't going to be swung at right now. That said, he's missed his spots so much on fastballs he was probably going to struggle anyway but the hitter is less likely to tee off on that missed fastball if they don't know it's coming like they do now.

He had a game winning hit around a week ago

Boom, we have a game all of a sudden. Wilkerson getting involved in the pitchers raking. Also, Wacha is better than ya'll are crediting. i think he was a highly regarded prospect and was up by 21. season ERAs: of 2.78, 3.2, 3.38, 5.09, 4.13, 3.2