tmwiese55

I agree with this and it was what I was getting at in my post last night. If Burnes/Wood/Peralta pan out they'll be treated like normal starters in today's world.

And assuming Thames is still here or you have a good enough infielder for Shaw to play some 1B, or Braun can play some 1B vs RH then you could go back to more of a platoon or shared role like it was to start the year. Jesus again had about a 30 point split in obp and 55ish split in OPS. It would also keep him fresh so hopefully he doesn't tail off like this year. I'd assume it wouldn't be as strict as it was to begin with him only playing vs LH but one or two games per week vs RH to keep him fresh.

2-3 times through the order is essentially a completely normal starter these days, outside of your super aces like Max. That's not out of the ordinary at all. They're not all of a sudden going to go to the playoff model all the time we saw this year. I feel like we're overthinking or overdoing it a touch. For most of the year you have 25 man rosters and you don't have a day off after 2 or 3 games every time and you won't have 40 man rosters like they had in September. They will have to deploy a somewhat normal starting rotation, just like the did this season because you just can't handle the innings otherwise. The difference is that we're going to yank at the first sign of trouble during that 3rd time through the lineup instead of going to 100 pitches every time, like most teams are still trying to do if they can. To make up for this tweak they're going to have a couple multi inning guys like Hader, Guerra, and maybe Wood/Peralta. Long story short, having starters go 2-4 innings like in the playoffs isn't sustainable for a whole season. They will still have the goal of developing normal starting Ps like they have a great chance to do in Burnes, Wood, Peralta, Brown, and more. The potential is there for all these guys, will they make it? Who knows. But I think their chances of success are high and I think higher because of the tweaks they're making to pull guys a touch early which keeps their stats looking better, arms fresher, confidence higher, etc. Come September and beyond though, they're going to do all they can to maximize their depth and any advantages it can give.

Coach Cooper would have earholed him.

Thames hasn't handled part time duty very well. I think he's gotta go. I hate to say it because he's a good dude and I've enjoyed watching him, but that 2 1b thing really limits our flexibility in a bad way and is only worth it if both mash. I'm fine if they trade Thames, but you're going to have to find a team to take on most of the money without giving anything back in return. Matt Adams, Lucas Duda, Logan Morrison are all available on the FA market and offer basically the same thing Thames offers for ~ the same price on a 1 year commitment. If you could dump Thames for nothing just to clear salary it would really help justify Moose since it's close to covering half right there. If Schoop or whoever you get to play 2B is competent vs RH Shaw can get a lot of starts at 1B vs righties. This is assuming Jesus ends up back to more of a platoon type player who you don't play every day. I hope Jesus proves me wrong but that's the more likely future for him imo. Keeps him fresh and optimizes splits.

Wow, what a "What's the point?" deal. Player acquisition in the NBA is so weird. And stupid. They were essentially paid by another team to take their second round pick. we owe some future 2nds due to trades so it was an easy way to get one back for nothing.

I'm sure he does like it, and I'm sure he'd like starting too. those quotes were just saying the right thing, I want to help the team however they see fit. Especially as a young generally unproven player. That's what he should say publicly. Behind the scenes after he's now established himself comes the real talk with the agent who sees Chris Sale with a 200 mil contract coming and Andrew Miller with a 4/36 and Chapman 5/86. Don't get me wrong, that's still a lot of money but it's logical to think his agent would advise that he should try to start at some point, if it doesn't work go back to this role.

Well, I certainly don't want to start using WWE as the standard as to what acceptable on field behavior should be for baseball (or any other actual sport). I don't think there is any excuse for what Machado did (either crotch grab or trying to injure another player), but I see no purpose or good coming from being brought down to his level and trying to retaliate in some future game. I would much rather see the players union and the owners agree that there needs to be much bigger penalties for these types of on field activities. Right, every sport can have their own rules and what they have as acceptable on their field of play. This just speaks to the notion of it's offensive and "oh my god there is kids in the audience" type views, this is nothing compared to what's out there in the world that kids see every day. That was the point. Many parents probably said things more offensive in front of their kids while complaining/heckling/complaining about Machado than the act Machado actually committed. Grand scheme of things, this isn't really any different than what Pina did after that big double he got in LA, or all the celebrating MKE does after big hits. If we didn't make a big deal out of it acting all offended then it wouldn't be a big deal, it would be over and most innocent kids wouldn't even know. The real thing to be upset with Machado about is the intentionally kicking of Jesus. Along with past dirty things like the slides, hitting Cs with the bat, etc. Not this stupid stuff, this is just something angry fans can latch onto and make a big fuss about nothing and get on their preachy high horses about without looking in the mirror.

I only watched the shooting specific episode as I don't really watch SP, but was told by friends to watch that one. I don't know, since it would be the gun rights people being offended here I don't think they care too much about offending those people. Sure, they are making light of it since it's a comedy show but their point on it as that it's ridiculous that this continues to happen and we do nothing as a society. So in a sense they are on the right side of the issue or at least the side that is valuing kids lives so I don't think they're offending victims so to speak. Basically, they're mocking the people content with doing nothing. Not mocking the kids/victims themselves, if that makes sense.

WWE has been doing things crotch grab/suck it related for 20 years now and their primary demographic is kids. It's not much of a big deal at all, it's certainly not going to warp a generation because they saw a guy grab his junk. It's just a cocky (pun intented) thing to do. It is what it, big time athletes have egos and often want to talk back especially when they're getting relentlessly bood. Heck, in baseball players constantly grab their junk just to adjust.

So good! Yup, it's perfect. Blackish is right there with it though.

I'd guess the recently discussed innings issues will be address by shuffling up and down from AAA and 10 day DL stints to skip starts or kind of take breaks throughout the year. Plus to go along with any legit injuries that happen. But say Burnes opens as a starter and all is going well, 2-3 months into the year if he has a bad game, shoulder is sore, velo is down for a game, well then toss him on the 10 day for 2 week break and bring Peralta up. Kind of shuffle through the guys as needed. One or two in AAA keeping stretched out but on an innings and pitch limit to keep stress down, stuff of that nature.

I recall Forte saying throughout LMOE that the only thing holding up MacGruber 2 was he didn't have time due to the show. At this point I thought for sure Mac2 would be in the works.

Right, both Burnes and Woodruff have a change up the would be using if they were starting. Woodruff did use it here and there. Making a guess this far out is obviously a fools errand, but i'd guess Burnes opens the year as a starter and Woodruff takes the Burnes BP role and waits his turn to start when someone else gets hurt. Woodruff could also be one to stash in AAA at times to keep his inning down and stretched out to come up when someone gets hurt. Peralta is obviously a candidate for that as well.

This is an idea I can get behind. I've had him kicking around in the back of my head too. It's going to come down to if someone else gives him a legit contract or not, you know MKE likely isn't going beyond two years. 3 at most if there is team options involved. I just don't know what the market is going to be for him

Adam is pretty spot on. The goal should be to add a couple more bats so that Braun should be batting lower, like when Jesus was going well. The Shaws and Moose's are just as streaky and hit or miss as Braun has been, plus have the drastic split problems. To his point, the reason we don't discuss it is that first we know due to contract he's going to be here. Second, the likely replacement for him if he struggles should be here already in Santana.

I don't want this to come off as a Moose bashing because generally he was fine and we got what we expected. But really is also the type of hitter we should be trying to move on from, not commit multiple years of significant money to. One year deals, sure there's next to no risk (that applies to Schoop too). If we can take away one universal lesson from Cain/Yeli acquisitions is contact and OBP is really important. Moose has half that since he doesn't K a ton, but a barely above .300 OBP is nothing special that we need to be tripping over ourselves to lock into the lineup.

I 100% agree with snapper. When it comes to the "kids are watching" talk, in today's world a dude in a baseball game grabbing his junk is absolutely nothing compared to what these kids hear, see, and say on a daily basis. heck, it happens so quick very few would even notice it if adults didn't talk about it and make a fuss about it. Every 12 year old kid in that stadium heard language from fully grown adults in their areas that is way worse than a dude touching his junk, which most of them didn't even notice.

I don't get the ripping Braun going back to 3rd. His second half stats were great, what more do you want considering Jesus was falling apart and who else was doing so well offensively in that stretch to put in that spot? now, planning on him to be 3rd for next year, that's a different call. But are you saying they should have had Jesus stay there hitting .230 or whatever he did second half? Also, add in the Yelich baserunning blunder vs LA and his avg/obp goes to 275/322 in that series. Again, who hit so well vs LAD that this was at all the worst of their problems? Add in Yelich's two baserunning blunders for the playoffs and his avg/obp goes to 333/363.

Eventually fell asleep around 2:30 Today's the day we've been waiting for, no matter what happens it's going to be a memorable night. Going to cheer like the World Series is on the line. But first, off to Madison for the Badgers game. Me too: game 6, Badger, Game 7 all in roughly 24 hours. heck of a weekend for sports nerds, especially if we come out 3-0

I hope she waited. I was at that game paying the $100 face value for tickets. I noticed that tickets were going on SH for as low as $35 on game day. Yup didn't do it. Waited and UW actually opened up some at Face like two weeks before. hindsight could've waited even more and got way less like you said. BYU loss, Nebraska being winless, combined with rain in the forecast all day and it led to being way less (at least it didn't rain so it was a fun day).

Keep in mind all that goes up more with higher prices. They're doing it like a % rather than saying "our service fee is $15 per ticket or per purchase". Get into the 150-200 tickets and the fees get high. Friend of mine was buying Nebraska/UW tickets a few weeks ago, before the BYU loss the price was still high. So buying 10 tickets was going to cost her over $500 in fees.

I also think it would be an appropriate risk to start Pina due to how bad our offense has been. I understand the Kratz catches these guys thing. But Pina is a good defensive C and everything Kratz is being praised for in handling these guys are the same things Pina was praised for last year. Long story short, I think any potential risk of loss in chemistry is worth it for the increased chance of offense.

But Braun's vaunted stats are hard hit and line drive %s, it's not volume based. Basically saying when he puts the ball in play he still does it a top tier hard contact rate. It should go up even more though if he was more patient and more importantly (this is where you're right) his overall slash splits would increase because he'd take more walks instead of Ks or just outs in general regardless of how hard they're hit, plus he'd likely have more counts in his favor to hit balls hard even more often. I really don't think we're are grasping at old Braun love, none of us are saying he's been great. Everyone is saying he's just been blah/ok/meh/fine. We're just saying he's been far from the worst here so it seems odd that he'd be the one benched. Plus, and I know this seems nostalgic to say, but he's still Braun and we saw that with how Kershaw pitched around him to get to Jesus then Jesus blew the scoring chance. In agreeance to your point though, the next AB Kershaw was trying to do it again and started 3-0, but Braun refused to take the walk. That's what he has to improve on. Somewhat it's just semantics/views in that you think we're apologizers for him and we think you're nitpicking him. Of course, I'm on side there and think that way because he really hasn't been that bad (especially relative to the rest of team) yet he's been singled out. ETA: I know in past threads I've advocated turning BRaun into a top of order OBP/contact guy due to his drop in power. He would have to embrace it, take his walks, compact his swing, smaller bat, realize it's not his job to drive in runs etc. But i think he could thrive with a Cain style hitting approach but of course with less speed. He already has the opposite field approach/swing down. Just has to accept he's not a power hitter anymore and hopefully could scratch a good contribution the last couple years with this approach.

No way anybody should be writing them off, that's for sure. It's excusable in the emotions of a gut-wrenching loss, but not now. However, given the Dodgers' starters the next 2 days, I'd put the Brewers' chances below 44%. Another factor in that stat is that having home-field advantage in games 6 and 7 often means you were the more talented team all along, even if you fell behind 3 games to 2, but that's not really the case here. The talent isn't as far apart as some people make it out to be, but I do think the Dodgers have a little more of it. They've been building it up intelligently for years and have a huge payroll, whereas the Brewers were tanking a mere 2 years ago. I think the Brewers will have that much talent eventually, but I don't think they have it now. Yea, I agree with all this. Dodgers injuries held them back 5-7 games this year, they're the more talented team and normally they'd be the home field advantage. Yea I'd ballpark more like 33% or so to win. Two 50/50 chances in a row is 25%, so a bit better