MrTPlush

My favorite is when he plays mindreader by telling us what someone is thinking and gives us imaginary quotes.

I think that is the longest home run to LF in a game with the longest being 480 ft by Branyan to RF. Marcell Ozuna’s first Cardinal homer was 479 to LF. Matt Holliday had a 466 foot homer to LF too. While impressive it is probably somewhere in the back end of the Top 10 to LF.

I thought the same thing. That’s a rare spot to see one end up, even in BP. Here is Ryan Braun’s...definitely a place not often traveled. EDIT: This one was 474, so Garcia is definitely not the farthest to LF. I bet there are a few others farther than Garcia’s too.

~445 foot moonshot. Massive Recently I recall Ryan Braun hitting one to the top of the LF seats and an opposing hitter. The Braun homer was a mind boggling 474 feet.

Vogelbach would have gotten thrown out at second.

Shaw has been so clutch.

That was arguably the worst swing attempt I have seen (including pitchers) as far as my memory can go. What in the heck was he doing?

It’s hard to screw us when he was clearly out by the width of a base. The guys in New York are probably distraught they had to change that.

Is Jeff this annoying on the radio too, constantly says such stupid stuff. *Woodruff strikes out Molina* “And there’s Woodruff proving it was the smart choice to let him hit last inning” Dude it’s only the first out of the inning. *Next batter homers to tie game* Yup...exactly. So annoying.

And Vogelbach is at first still...lol. Even when we do something right someone is still doing something wrong.

Imagine if we got from almost/should’ve won the Super Bowl to Blake Bortles starting at QB.

So what...Stearns can never be wrong as long as he doesn't give a $100mil contract to a career 5.00 ERA pitcher? Stearns has a laundry list of guys he has signed the last two years who have been absolutely atrocious. We don't need to cherry pick which players he should or should not get blame for honestly. One just needs to look at the big picture and see he has failed massively to put together an offense. He needs to be able to evaluate guys and see they are about to regress/disappoint or he needs to be able to see a guy on the brink of success when it isn't obvious on past results. If everything was predictable the highest payroll teams would win the World Series every single year. He won't be perfect and will have his fair share of bad signings...but the last two years is either really bad talent evaluation and use of resources or he is a really really unlucky man. Or maybe all of those things in one package. Not saying Stearns sucks, but his ability to get an offense together has been really a total disaster the last few seasons.

Have to explain it somehow when someone infers Jackie Bradley Jr. wasn't expected to be a big contributor because he was 4th on the OF depth chart. Didn't see that stated anywhere. The issue seemed to stem from someone's claim that Bradley wasn't the 4th OF on the depth chart, when, in fact, he was. Vogelbach barely made the team and was supposed to be a bench bat only, Bradley Jr was brought in to be the 4th outfielder, and Shaw was supposed to platoon in a four man 3B SS platoon with Urias, Arcia, and Robertson. To me that would be inferring a 4th OFer is not a big contributor, which may be the case often times, but I don't think that was the plan for Bradley Jr. at his salary. I usually don't think of a 4th OFer as a huge part of a team...but then again they usually aren't signed in FA at the price tag we gave Bradley Jr. Though to be fair, when they are signing him he wasn't automatically the 4th guy. He could have easily ended up being the 3rd guy ahead of Garcia (who was terrible last year compared to Bradley Jr.) or even second best ahead of both Cain/Garcia.

If they don't want their service and still have Bally on streaming services it makes a lot of sense why it doesn't exist this year. Why would the streaming services agree to one year deal that is just going to tick off their consumers once that year is done?

Fun theory until you consider Lux plays decent 2B and Hiura can't even play passable 1B. That probably tips the scale on who is more valuable at this point. Imagine going back to 2019 and being told in two years people would want to trade Hiura for a guy with a career 68 OPS+

Have to explain it somehow when someone infers Jackie Bradley Jr. wasn't expected to be a big contributor because he was 4th on the OF depth chart. His 400+ PAs he was likely to get or his massive salary should be enough to explain how big of a contributor he was expected to be.

Daniel Vogelbach would have never been a Brewer if Stearns didn't create such a horrid 1B situation last year. Bradley Jr. was brought in to get pretty much just as many ABs as any other outfield...except maybe Yelich. He isn't a true 4th OFer. You can say these guys weren't intended to be major contributors, fine, but really it is just another example of how bad Stearns has been at his job of finding reliable positional players because these bench bats keep finding their way into the starting line up on a daily basis even though they aren't playing very well themselves. I don't think firstbase was supposed to be a horrid situation, Huira was counted on as the second best bat in the lineup. Unfortunately that has been a complete disaster, worse than even the biggest pessimist could have predicted. Travis Shaw playing everyday at 3b and putting up a .720 ops isn't really a huge problem. In the outfield we've had massive injuries. If Yelich were in the lineup everyday you could live with a part time centerfielder next to him with a below average bat. Bottom line, if you would have told me before the year that we'd have a bottom 5 in all of baseball offense with Yelich injured and Huira demoted to AAA I would have believed you. Well, people hoped Hiura would rebound...but that was far from assured. He was considered the second best bat coming into the season because the rest of the supporting cast we that dismal and people were (in my opinion) a bit to optimistic with him. Knowing the risk of Hiura coming into this season an insurance plan of Vogelbach was kind of disappointing to me. In reality it is even more depressing than expected. Travis Shaw putting up .720 at 3B wouldn't be bad in a good offense, but it is pretty bad when that makes you a middle of the order bat. When we signed Shaw I thought him having a year like last year wouldn't be bad (.717 OPS) so I am not overly upset with him...its what I expected with some upside. Hard to really fault him the rest of the team is that bad.

7/$163mil is a lot of money for a guy who is already 30 years old and a small market team already saddled with a Yelich contract that already isn't giving great results.

What starting spot did you think he was being handed when signed? He was intended to be a 4th starter...not a bench bat that starts occasionally. There is a difference between Jackie Bradley Jr. being brought in as the 4th guy versus just putting Tyrone Taylor on the roster as the 4th guy...or like a Kirk Nieuwenhuis or Ramon Flores.

Daniel Vogelbach would have never been a Brewer if Stearns didn't create such a horrid 1B situation last year. Bradley Jr. was brought in to get pretty much just as many ABs as any other outfield...except maybe Yelich. He isn't a true 4th OFer. You can say these guys weren't intended to be major contributors, fine, but really it is just another example of how bad Stearns has been at his job of finding reliable positional players because these bench bats keep finding their way into the starting line up on a daily basis even though they aren't playing very well themselves.

One minor correction - Morrison was signed to a minor league deal, and hit his way onto the ballclub with a good spring. He was always nothing more than a "lightning in a bottle" type flyer. I agree on Smoak, Sogard, Gyorko and Holt, though. All four were signed for relatively inexpensive deals, but were expected to be big contributors, and outside of Gyorko (who the least was expected from) they were failures. And this last offseason he brought Vogelbach, Bradley Jr., and Shaw on to be big contributors and 2/3 have been disaster so far. Shaw has had big hits, but even he is barely keeping his OPS over .700. I expect some dumpster diving to some extent, but Stearns is having to do it at too many spots on the field and almost every one of those attempts is a total failure. Then the rare time he invests a bit more capital into someone he just gets so little (Garcia in 2020, Narvaez in 2020, Bradley Jr. , and Cain every year except 2018). Hopefully Garcia/Narvaez provide something this year, but jeez...he has got to be better at finding offense.

Hard Pass...I have no problem dumping Vogelbach to throw something else at the wall....but this guy is not it.

Is this true, or are you making a joke? Both are funny. Just curious. That is what the article said. I am sure they just talked face to face most of the time, but probably did the zoom to make sure they could leave a trail of following proper protocols.

He or the team made some comment about it in like January when he didn't officially retire, but obviously wasn't signing to be ready for spring training. I think if that's what we were basing this on, and if I recall correctly, wasn't a lot of that sort of 'never say never' or 'we'll see what the next few months brings?' With literally no news recently, I think the assumption should be that Braun is retired retired, not COVID retired. I guess it all depends on how one wants to take it. I think he is retired for good, but I have thought he would 100% retire and run off into the sunset once 2020 was done. Can't blame him.

Lol, since in person recruiting wasn’t allowed he just went upstairs and did zoom calls with his dad.