Greenleaf1

In honor of Brett Phillips' return to the Majors, a look at his AAA stat line so far this year: .143/.571/.429 He's hitting 1-for-7 with 7 WALKS!!! 4 strikeouts and his 1 hit is a triple.

I'm honestly not particularly worried about losing Knebel for an extended period. It definitely makes our bullpen worse in the short term but I'm more than OK doing closer by committee with Jeffress/Albers/Hader/Barnes based on situations, with Williams hopefully getting called up and being trusted later and later in games as he goes. Knowing Stearns/Counsell, they'll use this as an opportunity rather than a setback. Hell, even Drake is pitching pretty well thus far, and Jennings has mostly looked pretty great too for a 6th guy/LOOGY. I'm just not all that worried about the bullpen right now.

In this case, the depth at outfield while Yelich is out (or anybody is out for a day or two) is extraordinarily important when you think that injuries like this happen to most players one or two times per season. The depth allows us to be careful with small injuries, let players rehab a bit, and hopefully avoid long term injuries and DL stints. It also means that when they do play, they'll be healthy.

I'd imagine there's no odd man out until players have distinguished themselves over others. If Thames hits .400 for the month of April and Santana hits .200, my guess is Thames is going to get a lot more playing time than Santana in May.

Kinda seems like Hiura might end up taking the Francisco Mejia route if he lives up to expectations, where his bat is major league ready long before his defense and he gets held up in AAA for a bit to work on that even though he's major league ready at the plate. Being restricted to DH might only make this worse, and I wonder how likely they would be to move him up multiple levels this year if he's not playing 2B no matter how well he's hitting. Or maybe he'll take it easy for 2 weeks and go back to tearing the cover off the ball while playing passable defense and we'll forget all about this. Luckily TJ isn't as big of a deal for a guy that throws from the right side of the infield to 1st base.

He's 1-11 against Martinez, Sogard is 2-6, so my guess is it's more about Arcia not doing well against Martinez. Not sure it matters much with that small a sample size, but after Martinez walked the world in his last start I wouldn't mind having more patient guys in the lineup tonight.

If he has a .350 OBP (currently it's .400 but extremely small sample size alert), why does it matter if he strikes out a lot? You can't move over runners when you're batting leadoff. I like Thames up there, and he has looked pretty great so far this season at the plate. I think he's going to have a much bigger year than people are giving him credit for, he's even looked pretty good against lefties so far. Of course it's only been like a handful of PAs so the jury's still going to be out for a while but I like putting Thames in a position where his walks will help the team best. He can score from first on a double, that's fast enough for me.

These last two posts have really gotten to the point of what it is Stearns is trying to do. Quality depth is key to a playoff calibre team, and the Brewers don't have the money to go out and buy depth like we currently have at some positions, they have to cultivate it and not give it away for peanuts (none of the rumored trade targets this offseason seemed worth giving up Santana in my opinion, unless he was packaged with a lot of prospects). I also think we need to see what this rotation looks like in June/July. I guarantee it will not be the same as it is now. Stearns is making the best of a difficult situation and holding the line as best as he can until our top prospects and Nelson are ready to contribute. So far, even if you want to look at the small sample size, I'm ok with the 4-1 result of having too much offense and not enough starting pitching.

Here's the initial roster. Where is Hiram Burgos?

That's sound logic, to be sure, but this also assumes that a starting pitcher of merit was available in a trade for Santana. I also think Stearns is committed to giving the young pitchers their chance this year (Suter, Woodruff, Burnes at least). He's turning Nelson's injury into an opportunity and counting on the fact that with our current level of talent it's unlikely that even if all those guys aren't that great, we still probably will have a chance to turn it around in June/July. Certainly our current roster is not optimal, but it's not like it's that much of a problem either.

I know people on this board aren't always the biggest fan of Haudricourt but I have to agree with him that Cain/Yelich weren't acquired to sit on the bench. Have to believe that unless there's a real reason that they need to be sitting (slump, nagging injuries) that they will be playing every day. I think Braun is going to get playing time when healthy and then Thames/Santana are going to have to play less than they normally would (unless there's a major injury/slump). Thames has hit the ball very hard in both games he's played, so while Santana has played decently too, I think they're going with Thames today and see if his bat stays hot. Sucks for Santana in the short term but my guess is this will all balance out over the course of a long season.

In response to Santana sitting 2 games in a row and to Counsell's insistence that "depth is a good thing", I don't think anyone is arguing with that. The question is whether or not our current depth is optimal for winning the most ball games. In the event of a major injury at OF/1B, this level of depth is going to be hugely important, but if everyone stays healthy, I think we'd be far better served had we been able to pull off a trade from our excess depth to acquire a #1/#2/#3 type solid starting pitcher. The question remains, however, whether or not that was even possible this offseason, and I would guess it's not, so if that's the case I'm glad we have what we have. You could also go back and ask why we acquired both Cain and Yelich instead of just one of them, but given how great they've looked so far, I'm not sure I even want to entertain arguing against having both of those guys on the team. So where does that leave us? In terms of production on the field this year with this team, we're obviously better off having the extra player than not having the extra player (extra 2 players I guess now if you say we have 6 guys competing for 4 positions on a daily basis, or even 7 if you include Choi now), but this hopefully also puts us in a position to revisit the trade market this summer and see if we can find a good fit for our depth. Anybody else have any ideas/opinions in this general area? I keep talking myself in circles about the way Stearns is approaching this team this year. Having quality depth is so important in a long season, but are we best optimizing our current players/money to field the best team we can? I think these decisions will spill over into the pitching staff, because the moves Stearns didn't make this offseason to upgrade the staff are going to leave some openings for young prospects to prove that they belong and can maybe contribute as much to the team as any veteran signing/trade could. Nelson's return and Corbin Burnes' arrival could very well determine the course this team takes over the next few years. It becomes a lot easier to keep an ungodly amount of outfield depth if by the end of 2018 your rotation is a good Jimmy Nelson, a good Chase Anderson, a good Brandon Woodruff, a good Corbin Burnes, and even an average Jhoulys Chacin. A lot would have to break right there, but that's also not completely out of the realm of possibility and there's more pitching depth near the majors where that came from (don't even get me started on the crazy minor league bullpen depth we could employ this year yet). I've now officially rambled on too long, what do you guys think?

Do we think there will be a move made on Friday when Woodruff makes his first start? I'm starting to think they may just roll with a 7-man bullpen for now rather than risk losing Aguilar. Personally I think I'd rather see Williams up in the pen and try to get Aguilar down to AAA now that we've got Choi as a backup at AAA already, it's not as big of a deal if we lose Aguilar to another team. Even if he does well somewhere else, now that Braun to 1B is going well and will likely be a part of his playing time for the rest of his contract, there's just no playing time to be had for Aguilar and he deserves a chance to stick somewhere else. I guess we'll see what they do come Friday.

Makes me glad to have you guys to talk to during the game. Great game, guys. Great series. This team is going to be a LOT of fun to watch.

A little strange that he's sending Barnes in there to go against 3-4-5. Maybe Knebel isn't available?

That's why they pay you the big bucks.

Interesting, Barnes for the 9th. Hopefully low pressure way to build on his first outing. Clearly our best bullpen this year involves Barnes holding down a late inning role.

Non-save situation but with the day off tomorrow I'm guessing Counsell still goes with Knebel if this stays a 4-run game.

Counsell doesn't usually pinch hit the other catcher, especially early in the game when he doesn't have to. Particularly when our emergency catcher has already pinch hit in the game. Pina would be the last guy off the bench today at this point.

I gotta say I know our bullpen has the upside to be really great but I'm baffled by how often national pundits/broadcasters talk about how we have one of the best bullpens in baseball. Jeffress/Albers/Barnes could all be great this year but it wouldn't surprise me much if all had average or subpar years too.

My mind is a little rusty but how often was Aguilar brought in as a defensive replacement for Thames? I know it happened some but I also figured that might've had something to do with Thames just needing any time off they could give him with his bad legs. Anyways, looks like Thames is staying in the game.

Thames could easily be 2-3 with 2 BB and 2 2B tonight. He's going to have to fight for playing time this year but he's looked good tonight. Can't believe he stole that base eariler too.

He was 94-96 which is pretty typical. Wasn't paying super close attention but the highest I saw was 94 and a lot of 92 and 93. Kinda seems like that's his typical range and then with 2 strikes he goes back for a little extra and gets 95-96, which he did multiple times tonight so I think he was fine.

I'm amazed that wasn't closer. Villar has beaten out plays close to that in the past.

He was 94-96 which is pretty typical.