MrTPlush

The difference between the basketball team and the football team: Football team had high expectation (I guess since they were ranked #12 coming in) and the basketball team has pretty low expectations. I don't think it is a good basketball team at all. I think they might be better than their expectation which is like #10 in the Big Ten, but it seems like it may be a rough year. I just cannot see Brad Davison leading a young team to the tough wins they will need to make the tourney.

It has been two days and someone still believes Urias caught that ball?

Honestly, this is the most optimistic I have ever been going into an offseason. Last offseason I had a lot of uncertainty on how legit Burnes/Peralta were and both dazzled. Peralta hit a bump in the road towards the end of the season, but even if he isn't a total ace we don't need him to be. The offense is a mess, but I think Attanasio will spend money to fix it and we don't need a bunch of .900 OPS hitters with our pitching. Just get competent dependable guys. That isn't hard to figure out in the offseason. I also think Stearns makes a big move or two via trade to shore up the offense. Lastly, I am pretty confident about our chance to again win the division. Cubs/Pirates are no threat, Reds are 'meh', and I think people will overrate the Cardinals chances due to the hot end of the season. It won't be a slam dunk with zero competition, but I think we are easily a big favorite.

I don't care what his career WAR is, almost all of it was prior to the extension. We paid Braun over $100mil over five years for him to average 1.7 WAR, that is what matters. What he did prior to that extension just doesn't mean anything. We could have paid Braun like $40mil over 9 years for 35ish WAR. Now THAT would have been amazing. They didn't do that though. They gave him $100mil+ half a decade before he would hit FA as a 32 year old. Of the five seasons of that extension Ryan Braun failed to have a WAR over 1.0 three of the years (via Bref). Another year was only 1.7 WAR. That is terrible, any random OFer off the street can give you 1.7 WAR a year. Tyrone Taylor had like 1.5 WAR this year. Keon Broxton did that twice for us. I am glad Ryan Braun wasn't Vernon Wells...or apparently Christian Yelich, but it really just wasn't a wise decision and really didn't end up that great.

I am guessing it is largely because not a single person on the planet thought the Seahawks should have even been throwing the ball in that situation. As miserable times have been for Wisconsin sports fans over the years I am seriously glad we don't have something like that to look back on. In my opinion that is easily the worst playcall in sports history and maybe the worst outcomes on a "last play" for a team ever.

The first order of business is him accepting he can't be Christian Yelich of his Miami days. Step two is accepting he can't be Christian Yelich of his early Brewers days. He isn't a 40+ homerun hitter, those days are just gone and over. If the bat speed isn't there because of injuries or whatever he has to change to way he hits and approaches ABs. Ryan Braun got hit with injuries, notably the thumb thing. He spoke openly about how it really messed him up because he didn't have the bat speed and had to start swinging earlier. In 2014 he had a .777 OPS, two years later he had a OPS over .900. Braun made changes and did so over his entire career to to find the most success out of his rapidly declining abilities. Players do it all the time and really any player wanting to play into their mid 30s has to do it. Christian Yelich is either going to adapt and adjust or he is going to be one of the biggest disaster/overpaid players in baseball and one of the most hated players in Brewers history. He cannot do anything with breaking balls, why? He rolls over pitches daily, why? I have no doubt Yelich has the potential to be a mid .850 OPS player. I think he even has to potential to see .900 in a season again. But he isn't going to do that hitting 44 homers and he isn't going to do it hitting .330. You don't go from hitting to the tune of a 1.100 OPS and then two years later have the potential to hit .725. I don't care the injury or if you were shooting up on HGH daily. You don't lose .400 worth of talent/potential like that. His results right now are .725, but the talent and potential is not that low. It is up to him on how to figure out how to be a respectable player again.

Okay lets pump the brakes a bit... IF....IFFFF....Yelich is this bad forever and never really becomes a mid .800 OPS player again I don't think this is that insane of a take. I could see 9 years of depressing agony having to watch Yelich outweighing two good years. I certainly wouldn't look back and think "I am so glad we made that trade still."

The Ryan Braun deal was for 5 years. The deal was signed prior to 2011, but that extension did not start till 2016. He averaged 1.74 WAR during the extension years, that is bad....I mean it just is. The reason the extension really ended up being "meh" is for two reasons: 1) Salary inflation. There was so much time between signing and starting the extension the rapid salary inflation we saw during that time helped out. This was largely due to the TV deals getting signed. It made Braun's salary looked less daunting compared to his peers, but in reality we were stuck in a crummy/outdated TV deal so all that salary inflation didn't really help us out personally. I am sure the Brewers knew salaries around baseball were about to take off and it played into giving him the deal. 2) Our payroll wasn't high because we were rebuilding or coming out of that rebuild. This is largely luck and something the Brewers really could not predict. Had our payroll been more of a numbers crunch during the extension this extension would have been a lot more horrendous to deal with. I still think it was a bit unfortunate on the payroll to deal with though as the payroll did get crunched a bit in 2019/2020. Extending Braun for his 32-36 seasons five years before it would even start was just flat out idiotic to do. I mean extending any player five years before the deal would even start is just a stupid idea. Consider the fact at the time Braun wasn't even an MVP at the time and the previous two years wasn't even top 10 in MVP voting that could have been even more dumb than it ended up being.

There is no way Stearns didn't support that contract. Attanasio isn't like how he used to be by going off and basically signing guys if he feels he needs them. I really doubt present day Attanasio would have forced it had Stearns told him it was basically a really terrible idea. They signed Yelich after two insane years and Yelich was arguably a Top 3 player in baseball the last two years prior to the extension. Signing him for what they did wasn't an insane idea. Heck most fans (not all) celebrated like it was christmas when it happened. Loads of people on here, that I find logical posters, went into detail why it wasn't a bad idea off the bat. If not for the Braun contract in the past I am guessing there would have been almost zero pushback on this extension happening. I was one of the ones that didn't really like it. I recall thinking it was pretty amazing, from the standpoint of Milwaukee extending that caliber of a player, but from a competitive baseball standpoint it was pretty horrendous. I mean if Yelich would have had a career arc of Joey Votto I don't think anyone would have complained. It could have been an okay extension...or even good. Thus, it is a nightmare before ever starting.

Doug Melvin traded Carlos Gomez.

Everyone’s gets on the Packers results after they won the Super Bowl. Yet the Russell Wilson led Seahawks have consistently put out garbage defenses for years wasting their QB and the Patrick Mahomes led Chiefs might just be getting in the car to go down the same exact road. The Chiefs are like the dead last team in the NFL on defense so far.

So Ryan Braun

The lame duck season thing is such a non issue. A) He would really have no idea what his future might hold after this year. He could decide to test the waters, but he wouldn’t really know how it would end up. He could just end up signing here long term. Maybe the Mets would hire him…but maybe not. The Mets may just suddenly go a different direction. B) Pretty sure Stearns has the professionalism to not just recklessly run the Brewers. If he has any inclination of doing that he would probably tell the Brewers to go with someone else. C) Recklessly running the Brewers and being a poor GM in 2022 would be dumb and how would other teams view that when considering to hire him? D) The Brewers literally let lame duck Doug Melvin start one of the biggest rebuilds in team history despite having zero shot of being the long term GM.

I mean, he has done things before and pitched Hader out of the 9th inning. Twice in the 2018 NLCS he pitched three innings. The first of which didn't include either the 8th or 9th. Postseason baseball is different. Counsell couldn't stop toying with making sure he used all three catchers. Not sure he does stuff like that in the regular season. Does Peralta get pulled dominating through 4 innings in the regular season? Does Woodruff pitch on two days rest in the middle of a game? None of that happened all season till then

Yes, Williams is good so he isn't a slouch against either. However Hader had a .376 OPS against LHH with zero homers given up. Williams had a .692 OPS against LHH with 4 homers given up. That, to me, is a massive gap. Hader's splits on the other had were not far apart this year against either. He pretty much dominated anything.

I was just about to say this and scrolled down to see your post. Watching Ashby suck was a bit of a bummer. Maybe Suter would have been no better, but certainly would have been in the game over Ashby last night.

You would need a three team trade and then flip the prospects for a PROVEN bat. Trading for prospects would be ill-advised due to risk and the fact they may not hit for years.

So a bunch of stretches to say Williams would have mattered. The negative in Game 1 is inferring some guy would have not killed us in Game 3 had Houser not pitched in Game 1...mind you we scored zero runs in Game 3. I could see the negative impact of not having him in Game 4, but it is too hard to even decipher what on earth Counsell was trying to do and what he would have done with Williams. I am betting he tries squeezing multiple innings from Ashby regardless. I think having Williams would have reduced the chance of seeing Woodruff at all versus seeing Ashby less. If we had Williams last night I am not convinced he even pitches that 8th inning instead of Hader if the scenario was the same. Wouldn't shock be if Counsel went with the lefty Hader against two left-handed batters. One of which is Freddie Freeman.

Not sure we ever got to see the ill effects of losing Devin Williams. Game 1 - We won Game 2 - Scored zero runs Game 3 - Scored zero runs Game 4 - Josh Hader blew it So where did not having Williams really hurt us? I just don't really see a vastly different result in Game 4 having Williams. I also don't get the young pitching really hurting us. Seemed like it did pretty darn well.

On the bright side, probably won’t have to worry about innings limits for the starters next season. In all seriousness, I think a season will happen next year, but I would bet against a full season. I have a feeling they’ll come to some sort of agreement in the spring of 2022. They will play a full season. It may be a messy winter trying to figure it out, but I think both sides know these days bickering to the point of missing games benefits no one.

The only way I thought they'd bring Burnes back on short rest is if they were down 2-1. They were and this was clearly a game where 6+ innings were needed from the starter. Counsell made the wrong call. It was not a good series for him as he was outmanaged considerably. If we needed six innings he made the right call and his only option. No way Burnes could go on short rest and pitch six innings. Sounds like he couldn’t go at all. Burnes is great, but it is like people think he can pitched every day and even a sore/weak arm on short rest is just going to mow down everything in sight. History says he would probably been as effective as Lauer.

The big thing with this is: After we deny the Mets they will go a different direction signing someone else. Thus Stearns (if he would even have interest) won’t have that option next offseason. Increases the odds he just resigns with us and calls it a day.

Good luck bolstering the offense via Hader. You might get a younger/controllable/cheaper Avisail Garcia type after you trade Hader for prospects and flip them for a bat. Just make Attanasio open his wallet for a marginal bat if that is what you want. Not sure I’d support any trade involving Burnes/Woodruff/Peralta. Just implode the farm. It won’t matter in 3-4 years.

I am with you here. Way too little was being made of the we got it locked up. If they didn't sweep the Mets they are a wild card. Counsell didn't push them down the stretch hoping the switch would get flipped. Bad call. They won the division by five games, they could have probably got swept and won the division.

Gotta believe Rowdy is there too. The infield is set. Hopefully we bring in someone else in case he isn’t that great. Hope a few postseason homers doesn’t erase the fact his OPS the last two months was like .700