Greenleaf1

Seems like with the Roku app, they made a change this weekend. On Saturday I watched the game after it was over and was able to fast forward through commercials. On Sunday, I also watched after the game was over and they cut out all the commercials and replaced them with just one Stirred ad or whatever it's called that you can't fast forward through and is REALLY long. If you fast forward past the end of a half-inning, as soon as you hit play you're forced to watch the ad, and the ad is much louder than the game, so I had to watch that ad like 17 times on Sunday. Bally app is terrible.

I feel like the excuse to leave Cain/Yelich out for so long is so when they're ready to play, they're ready to come back 100%. Kind of demoralizing that a day after bringing them back and sending Tyrone Taylor down, we have Pablo Reyes starting in LF. At least they finally bumped Urias up to the 2-spot. If Wong wasn't doing so well, I'd argue that Urias would be a pretty ideal leadoff hitter.

Good find, his xwOBA is really interesting. I know it was plugged in several spots a few weeks ago that he was one of only a few players that were 90th percentile or better in both sprint speed and hard-hit rate. I know he's been slumping but I do think Garcia is going to get a good long leash to get going again when the underlying numbers are that promising. Meanwhile, Taylor cooled off a bit in his past 3 or 4 games, kinda made the decision easy to option him here.

I was pretty shocked they pulled the plug on Lauer last season so quickly. I don't remember his 2nd start, but his 1st start felt like a LOT of bad luck ground balls finding holes, and I remember thinking he pitched well. I'll be happy to see him get a longer leash in the rotation for now, even if his next start is bad. I don't really see a better option right now.

It's definitely COVID-related, otherwise Zimmermann would be the 41st player on the 40-man roster. If vaccinated players have close contact but aren't symptomatic, they don't have to go on the COVID list, so either Corbin is vaccinated and showing symptoms (extremely unlikely), or he's actually got COVID or was exposed to someone with COVID and isn't vaccinated (which is disappointing). Either way he could probably use the rest at this point in the season.

Jordan Zimmermann joins the 40-man roster, he has 2 options remaining but is well over service time requirements to refuse optional assignment.

Jordan Zimmermann joins the 40-man roster, he has 2 options remaining but is well over service time requirements to refuse optional assignment.

2B Wong 1B Vogelbach C Narvaez 3B Shaw RF Taylor LF McKinney CF Bradley Jr. SS Urias P Godley

Zack Godley has been added to the 40-man roster. He does not have any minor league options remaining.

I was close:

Looks like Fisher hasn't seen any spring training action yet. Seems more likely he's the roster move today: viewtopic.php?p=1352968#p1352968 For the active roster, Ray seems like he'd make the most sense.

Either would make sense as an active roster move, but a 40-man move gets a little more complicated. Fisher makes the most sense, either move him to the 60-day IL or DFA him. Otherwise, there are some pitcher options. Bickford probably seems most likely there, but if they've completely lost faith in Lauer I suppose that might be an option too (if he's not getting called up here, when would he be?). Sobotka/Weigel are probably safe, and I doubt they'd cut File or Bettinger without calling them up first. Another outside the box choice would be Vogelbach if they think they have enough protection at 1B from McKinney. I don't think they'd DFA Corey Ray yet. Maybe if it was a few months later and Taylor was continuing to rake, then Ray becomes a bit more expendable, but not now. For now I'll guess either they 60-day/DFA Fisher or DFA Bickford.

Yeah this kinda seems like an innings eater kinda day unless we score a lot early. We seem set up well for the Dodgers series though with Peralta/Woodruff/Burnes/Houser. Hopefully we can at least split that series. For today, best case is we win another series, worst case is hopefully that at least our bullpen is rested for the big weekend. But a win today counts as much as a win against the Dodgers, so I hope they don't roll over too easily.

I doubt they drop Taylor while he's this hot. Stearns/Counsell have been pretty good about creative roster management for keeping hot bats on the roster (Choi, Vogelbach come to mind). As of now, it's not going to be hard to get Taylor some starts this week, as you can pretty easily just bench McKinney (maybe they even give him a start at 1B this week). Garcia/JBJ could each have a day off in the next week too. Taylor's real barrier to playing time is once Yelich/Cain come back, and there may be a tough decision to make there, but given the injury bug going around, who knows what happens between then and now. If, in the meantime, Taylor cools down, an option makes more sense. If he stays hot, they'll find a way to keep him out there.

Some of the troubles I had yesterday with the Bally Sports app: 1. Login to Spectrum failed repeatedly until about 9:00 when I finally could connect. This might've been a Spectrum issue, not sure. 2. No option on the Roku app to start from beginning of game vs. join live. I got lucky and hit the game during a commercial then immediately started rewinding to the beginning. 3. After I rewound to the start of the game, later I tried to rewind and could see arrows going backward but the result was it actually did fast forward instead. I had no way to rewind again. 4. After you fast forward a bit, the whole screen is dimmed for 5 seconds before finally returning to the game proper, which is annoying when I'm trying to skip through a game a little more quickly because I can't see the bar at the bottom of the screen right away after pressing play. This morning, the Bally Sports website won't let me login at all. The website and the android app both have a big headline about the Brewers' win right as you enter (I assume the Roku app does too based on the setup I saw yesterday), which means if you're a day behind it's pretty much impossible to get to the replay of the game without spoiling the game for yourself (in fact, if you go to the Brewers team page, "Latest News" is above "Replays", you have to really block the screen to try to get to the replay unspoiled). The website also displays latest MLB scores across the top of the screen, so good luck avoiding the score if you want to join a game late (plus the aforementioned issue with only being able to join a game live). This Bally Sports setup is complete trash compared to the Fox Sports Go app, and is going to directly result in me watching less Brewer games, unfortunately.

Pablo Reyes has been added to the 40-man roster. He has two minor league options remaining.

A couple of days ago, I was wondering when was the last time the Reds were 1st in the division and the Cubs were last? Today, I ponder when was the last time we were in 1st place and the Cardinals were last? Seems like the division might be a little more evenly matched than I was originally expecting (kinda expected the Cardinals to run away with it, to be honest). Looking forward to a 3rd series win against the Cubs this weekend.

We do face a couple of lefties next week, so let's hope that can get him going. Kind of amazing our offense has been as potent as it is without Yelich/Cain/Wong and with Hiura being a black hole in the lineup. He's got too much talent and history of hitting well to just completely bottom out like this, I hope it's just something mechanical that he can figure out, but whatever it is, he didn't figure it out between this year and last year.

My guess for a lineup: Urias SS Garcia RF Shaw 3B Vogelbach 1B McKinney LF Pina C Taylor CF Peterson 2B Houser P Maybe Taylor leading off? Or JBJ I guess. Let's put a real day game lineup out there.

The following players have burned their options for 2021: Alec Bettinger Phil Bickford Dylan File Eric Lauer Chad Sobotka Patrick Weigel Mario Feliciano Luke Maile Corey Ray Sobotka/Weigel/Maile will be out of options for the 2022 season (although I think Weigel might get a 4th option so we'll see on that).

Yesterday was JBJ's first game without a hit since April 8th. Even including yesterday, in that time he's hitting .297/.333/.459 and playing really solid defense in left/center field. During that same time, McKinney is batting .280/.308/.480, which isn't bad for a bench guy but it's not like he's outplaying JBJ (who has been more consistent in that time, 3 of McKinney's 7 hits in that time came in that one game against the Cubs). Does McKinney deserve playing time as long as there are injuries and we're facing righties? Sure. Should he be replacing JBJ at all unless he needs a day off? Probably not. I imagine he'll go back to only playing as needed.

I actually think the exact opposite. Woodruff was absolutely dominant after the 1st inning, and even in the 1st inning he looked sharp to me, but a tight zone and some good ABs from the Padres made it an interesting inning before he just shut them down after that. McKinney just got hold of one, but the Urias/Taylor homers weren't cheapies, and Musgrove pitched very well but we still managed to take advantage of mistakes. None of this I would interpret as luck, but a very solid performance against a tough team. That's how you win games against good teams is by doing everything you're supposed to do and taking advantage of their mistakes. I thought it was a very solid win, made more impressive by the fact that we're missing 3 of our starters long term. This team continues to impress me with its resilience. Hopefully we can get an early lead and keep the pressure on tonight and let Burnes do his work.

There are a bunch of people set to burn options today, but they haven't spent 20 days optioned until midnight tonight (or, really, after the game starts tonight). I'll either update the thread tonight or tomorrow, but if someone gets recalled today, then I don't believe they've burned an option yet.

I was surprised to see how many of the Pirates hitters seem to be off to a good start. I don't know anything about this Evans guy but I did some Googling and Pittsburgh seems pretty high on him after success in a small sample size last year (not even the full short season, he missed a bunch of time due to an injury) and off to a good start in another small sample this year. He'll be one to watch, for sure. I'm glad we have Woodruff/Burnes set up for the Padres series, but that does leave us a bit vulnerable against the Pirates. Hopefully at least Houser/Peralta can pitch well.

Just reading through these contract proposals now, but I started a thread with what I was thinking: viewtopic.php?f=63&t=40426 I'm not great at guessing long term salary figures, but neither is a big bonus draft pick, so giving them 5-7 years (including options) and like 50-60M guaranteed plus club options for more seems like it'd be hard for them both to turn down.