tmwiese55

Pina is throwing out about 35% of base stealers. That's a shade above average. The elite guys this year throw out close to half, the crappy guys throw out 1 in 4. He also only has 4 errors, which tells you he isn't throwing the ball away very often...especially if you factor in all his pick off attempts. I actually just got around to looking it up and was about to post the link, was surprised how easy it was to find. 10th in the league. Leader is at 47% and only 4 guys above 38%. Note our old boy Maldy is 4th at 41%. Pina also has 6 pickoffs, one other has 5 and no one else has more than 3. And obvious we all know there's been what seems like well above a normal amount of pickoff attempts with few errors, and many close to getting outs. http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/stats?season=2017&category=FIELDING+II&group=1&time=0

I continue to be surprised by how often opposing teams still try to run on him. he's proven to be very good on this all year, combined with all the pickoffs, so I don't know whey teams continue to push it vs him. I guess I don't know the stats and how he ranks, but sure seems solid to me and rarely has a bad throw.

Guerra's results at AAA: 2.45 ERA 25.2 IP 16 K 10 BB 0 HR 1.36 WHIP So not stellar or anything, but the ERA and WHIP aren't "high" or "poor", especially not for CS. I must have misread somehow. What i found on baseball reference was a 5.0 ERA but don't recall exacts on the other. Maybe I had some dyslexia going on with the categories or something, my bad if so. ETA: figured it out. I put the .500 win % in the ERA category. 5.6 K to 9 though isn't ideal but yea for CS the rest is OK. Control was the issue up here more than anything and the BB rate isn't terrible, but also isn't good either in order to think it's still not an issue. But yea I'd think a key datapoint missing is the velocity.

Of course you can trade them later. That wasn't the point though. If you feel someone like Anderson is going to regress from what they're doing this year, why wouldn't you sell high on him and get back more now than have him for a couple of years pitching worse and then trade him for less than you could've gotten? Agree, if they're expert opinion is that Anderson is a fluke then they should try to rip someone off in a trade. Like they did with the relievers last year. But to the "why wouldn't you sell" question, well because you're trying to win games next season and make the playoffs and that's the goal of the team. Not to win prospect rankings by magazines in the offseason. I prefaced by saying that if he finishes this season well, if he does that I just don't think people are going to think he's a fluke. They're not going to bank on a 2.89 ERA but I think they'll be confident they have a solid 3.5-3.8 type guy under control until he's like 32. To the other post about not trading until the young replacements are ready. Well as of right now you'd only have 2 spots filled by Nelson/Anderson. I like Davies and overall he is solid, but still his wins this year on the backs of huge offensive support. I like going into the year with him, but he's no lock going forward either. Even if he is, you still have two spots left to fill and with our history of pitcher development I don't see how any of us have confidence in filling that going forward. Essentially I'd rather hold onto extra guys rather than worry about a number crunch right now, when we still have 2-3 spots to fill. There's no guarantee on any of the young guys. There's plenty of opportunity for those guys, no reason for them to feel like they're blocked. The team should treat it like a numbers game, the more you have the higher your chances are on getting the 4-5 you need at the same time.

Thing is you control both through their prime ages since they started in the bigs at later ages. If they both finish this season well, thus giving everyone confidence they're legit, then they are kind of the dream for a small market team. You'd control them until their early 30s for cheap and can trade them later rather than re-sign when the time comes. Or since they know they'll hit FA late you can lock them in very cheap now (since they'd want to bank money and not risk tommy john) and buy out a year or two extra. And the way this season has gone I think it's pretty tough for them to justify trading one this offseason and not trying to win next year. So if you think you have two #3ish, maybe close to #2 level of starters locked in for this cheap for 3-4 years it gives a small market a great starting place to build from. Basically not having that in 2008-2012 is what held that group back. Essentially I think we'd all expect to be .500 or above next year primarily on the backs of young cost controlled players. And the team would have tons of financial flexibility to fill remaining holes to move that expectation from 84ish wins up to 90. Regardless, you're going into next year fully expecting to compete for the playoffs. I wouldn't say it's a realistic to expect to make the playoffs, but it's realistic to expect to be in the conversation until late in the season.

Can't speak to his velocity but the results have been bad. High erea, poor whip, poor K to 9, still too many walks. If we're in contention I feel like he'll be low on the list to start.

I'd think we can all be fairly comfortable that Woodruff will be the #4 starter come September. Also, I would think he'd be back before that in order to have him post season eligible, the way I understand the rules anyway. So who knows, maybe even if Garza gets beat up by SF they'll bring Woodruff up for Garza's next start and then sort it out after Sept comes around. So the real question is on who they'll use as the 5 when needed. Would come down to Garza, Suter, Jungmann at this point I would think. This really rides on how Garza does the next two starts, if he recovers he carries on. If not I'd think they'd give Suter a couple runs at it when he's back.

Not even close to what I was saying. Of course a team of 5 Clayton Kershaw's would beat a team of 5 Garza's over the course of a season your runs saved would be lower compared to Garza's. That is not the comparison I was making it was replacing Garza with the next available person Woodruff in this case and putting Kershaw or whoever at the top. You wouldn't give the least amount of starts to your best pitcher. If you were to put Kershaw as a #5 even Kershaw's win expectations for a season would go down as he is not getting as many opportunities as your #1 pitcher. On average your #5 pitcher gets about 20 starts a year which if you had Kershaw replacing Garza would mean you are missing about 1/3 of Kershaw's value to the team. So if you are really replacing Kershaw with Garza as your #5 starter then yeah your win expectation is not going to go up all that much as you are missing about 1/3 of Kershaw's value. Nate you have to compare the same number of starts assuming no injury, each starting pitcher in the majors typically gets 32 starts, maybe adjust if a team goes to a 4 man rotation during the pennant run. For the purposes of this futile exercise you have to compare 32 Matt Garza starts to Chris Sale's starts. I'm guessing you would get 8-10 more wins (maybe more) with Sale which equates to a TON!!!! I would argue a great #1 starter can have a greater impact on a team than a great hitter and he's only pitching every 5th day. Didn't Robin Yount win the MVP on a last place team? Give me #1 starters any day of the week and I will build an average offense with high OBP guys (no superstars) and I like my chances. I laid exactly that out for the Sox and Sale a few posts back. Another thing I forgot in that is the Sox this year have basically played without Price all year. People take WAR stat way too literally. They should use a different title like Overall Player Value or Efficiency, something like that

Your point that an offensive player has more value than a pitcher because he's involved in so many more games is a fine and reasonable assertion. Where it gets foolish is trying to use Sale/Sox as an example and implying he made no difference in their wins. Ignoring that they lost Papi who was awesome last year. And off the top of my head a few others like Betts have played a bit worse this year overall. And they created a blackhole at 3B giving away Shaw. Look at this way, replace Sale's 35ish starts with Garza/Guerra type combination of guys and think whether that team will only win 1 more of those starts? For real numbers, Sox are 18-7 when Sale pitches for a 72 win %. And if my math is correct they'd be 53-45 in non Sale starts for 54%. And in those losses the Sox scored 1, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1, 3 and all were close games. This also doesn't factor in that he helps the team in those other days when he's not pitching because it rests the bullpen for him to consistently go deep in games. If 35 starts at 72% that is 25.2 wins and at 54% it's 18.9 wins. He's probably literally the difference between them being in 1st place and being out of the playoffs right now.

Yea seems like a no-brainer cheap platoon situation. Combined their stats together and you should have darn good 1B production.

He's pitching his way out right now. have to think two more bad games and he might get yanked from the rotation for Woodruff when he's back. Then it's probably a given he won't be back

If you think about the next few years could be the peak period of WI overall sports. Rodgers still makes GB a contender every year, have to find a way to get 1 more before he's done. Bucks have their first real superstar since the 70s. Brewers should be about to go into a winning period for the next chunk of years (and yall just pointed out the Cubs might not be the monster we feared). WI football is still primed as consistent top 15 every year. WI basketball has best recruits coming in they've ever had and I'd say a legit FF and title shot in the next 5 years. As of now I'd probably go with fall 2011 as the best spot I can remember. Bucks were trash. WI basketball was good but not great. But Packers were defending champs and on the 19ish game winning streak at the time. UW had Russell Wilson and looked primed to be national contenders. Brewers were up 1-0 in NLCS. But then of course the MSU hail mary happened to UW football and the David Freese happened to the Brewers. Hope the next few years trump that time, I remember talking about how there was a legit shot we'd have 3 champions at once for podunk WI

Toronto seems to be playing well lately and getting back involved in WC race, which is crazy how many teams are in it in the AL. Something as simple as us getting 2 in CO and Cubs losing 2 this weekend would be big.

For the most part I don't get bothered by them in baseball and basketball, and that's a good thing. A guy like Gus Johnson doing Bucks games though I don't like, that's what I don't want from an announcer, making it about him. NFL announcers are horrible though for the most part. I guess it's more the 'color' guys for me who want to act like a coach in the booth and get over the top with all this stuff to show they're experts. Though I'm the rare WI person who doesn't hate Buck/Aikman, I find them generally bland. Which is fine, just don't be annoying and obnoxious.

Some info on how it works in this article. For example, they're not using the offcenter camera in CF that we see on TV http://m.mlb.com/news/article/158512610/electronic-strike-zone-would-be-a-game-changer/

I'd like to see their % on what could actually be considered close calls, I bet it's a heck of a lot closer to 50%. And I don't blame them, it's nearly impossible to get that right as they can go either way when you have one look at it when it's going 95mph. It's just that you have technology there to fix it, why not use it. Ump can have a buzzer on his arm similar to what you get when waiting at a restaurant, buzzes for a strike. That way the ump can still have his head up for everything else he needs to do. It would eliminate all complaining and whining by teams and fans too, which would be a big plus for me. Also, the curveball argument made above. I think technically what you describe would accurately be called a strike. If it crosses the plate at that spot it's a strike.

I'd be good with this. Just give me the crowd noise. I actually do watch a ton on silent. Baseball is such a slow game that it's easy to pop on a 2nd TV and have it going on the side. Football is a bit faster game but I find most NFL announcers to be unbearable. Often times making themselves a distraction and annoyance. Herbstreit is great overall though for CFB, aside from overuse of the word Tempo in recent years. All I want is a guy to say what's going on without being obnoxious and full of themselves, BA does that just fine. I really think the setup they have where BA misses a bunch of games is a good thing overall from the fans perspective. Baseball season is so long that a change of pace every once in awhile just to hear something different is a good thing. I suppose that's something to credit BA for, he's good enough to be called away so much that this happens.

I think they'll find a way to go 5-4 and keep hanging around. If somehow they can get to that Cubs series on Sept 9th weekend and still be in it then anything is possible.

Probably take Judge out of there and get Trout and Altuve instead.

Could be in first as soon as tomorrow night.

No it is the fact there is a pretty large pile of garbage announcers out there so people should stop pleading for Anderson to be fired cause he calls his HRs later than others(among other petty complaints). People want to get rid of Anderson when they don't even know the alternative and being Milwaukee it would probably be someone pretty cruddy. You basically just backed up my point. Sooo, should they just not have announcers? They're all going to do stuff you get sick of, make mistakes, repeat the same things, etc because there are so many games. It's simply that there is above a 95% chance that whoever they get to replace BA would be worse than BA. Might even be closer to 100% since if someone is better they're doing national stuff, their teams won't let them go, or they would have no interest in the smallest market that is not viewed in any way as destination place to be. Maybe people would like that, more stuff to complain about I guess and that seems to be what a lot of people enjoy.

I really think MKE would be better off with a legit PG and Giannis as the screener on PnR, doing tons of slashing in the lane and finishing, where he's pretty much the best in the league. Plus his ridiculous open court abilities. He'll get his 25 that way. Their half court offense is garbage when Giannis is dribbling around and his guy sags 6 feet off him. Of course, that could change big time if Giannis learns to shoot, but as of now I think they'd be better served with a Lillard type PG or even a Tony Parker of 6 years ago type guy. That said, Kyrie has never shown the PG skills. He has the shooting and individual driving, but not sure about the passing, vision, ball movement that I'd want. Maybe he can do it but with LBJ playing point he couldn't show it, who knows. Throw in that he's godawful on D, likely won't stay here, and I don't think I'd offer that much. I do think MKE would be a spot where he could consider himself 'the man' though since he'd be the lead ball handler and driving force on O. If you could do that trade with Jabari instead of KM I'd probably do it. Otherwise, I think I'd hold tight and see what guys come available in the next two offseasons (like PG, Butler, Kyrie, Paul, etc did this year).

Some good Braun info here: http://www.jsonline.com/story/sports/mlb/brewers/2017/08/16/notes-hard-hit-balls-dropping-ryan-braun/570475001/

IDK, seems a tough proposition to sell making a trade like this to a division rival they're so close to in the standing. Maybe a few more days of MKE winning and them losing and then they can kind of consider themselves eliminated and do it. Right now i'd guess they think they still have a shot with just one hot streak.

Right. But what are the Sky Sox going to do? They have no position of power on the Brewers since they're the worst location. Heck, the Brewers should do it just to try and tick the Sox off so they get kicked out and can go somewhere else. Anyway, huge win. Can't see these guys losing more than 2 or 3 games the rest of the year.