Lathund

Baseball Prospectus dropped their midseason top 50 today. It features Chourio at 33 and Wiemer at 44. It includes this on Chourio: "Of all the prospects on this list, Chourio might be the one we are most confident will be higher than this come 101 time." Much of the various rankings of Chourio seems to be a case of "He's only been doing this for a couple of months, we need to see him keep it up. We're very confident he will, but we still need to see it".

Brewers average 4.47 runs/game. League average is 4.34. As far as I can tell, that's not below average.

Over the last two weeks, Brewers 129 wRC+ leads the majors. Obviously too small of a sample to really say too much, but if the offense during the losing streak was the worst of all time and the sky was falling, I assume we'll be seeing the same posters proclaiming us WS champions now. Or is that not how it works?

I don't see a big rebuild coming at all. They've said they're looking to do more like what the Cardinals do, and I think they will. The need for a rebuild comes when either you've messed everything up, or more commonly after you've been "all in" for a few years, with a lot of expiring contracts taking up the entire budget, and having traded the prospects who would otherwise be ready to step in. So as long as you don't put yourself in that situation, you don't need to do that kind of teardown. You stagger the trades, go for AA/AAA prospects as opposed to R/A, maybe extend a player or two if possible to do it cheaply. I'd also argue the farm isn't weak anymore; it has gone from one of the absolute weakest after 2018 and 2019 (With the trades for Yelich, Moose, Pomeranz etc, and most of all the graduations of the entire pitching core) to slowly but steadily climbing to being average-ish. And it has done that climb with hardly any trades for prospects at all (The Phelps trade is the only "major" one I can think of), while still using trades to improve the team via trades. It's a good sign that it can improve without outside additions. So what I expect is that we will see the team hold onto their major prospects for the most part, and try to develop them into major leaguers. There will be a "selling" trade or two most years (Hader seems almost certain this offseason IMO, quite possibly alongside one of the starters), with young major leaguers or high-minors prospects as the return. They will at the same time be buyers too, but more in the sense of the Brosseau or Rowdy trades, giving up lesser prospects to do so.

I think that what decides whether Benintendi is in play as an option for the Brewers or not is how the front office view his ability to play CF. Not every day, but some sort of platoon with Taylor, as well as giving Yelich more DH time and have Benintendi play LF on those days. But even if it's only a couple of starts per week, Brewers still value CF defense highly so he needs to at least be competent there. He only has 500-odd innings there between 2016-2019, which is nowhere near enough for the publicly available data to tell us anything, so hard to know how the Brewers view it. Anyway, I don't know if it'll be Benintendi; I expect they'll generally go for smaller/cheaper than that. But I don't think that the bat added will be another 1B/DH only, at least that won't be their preference. But we know how value-focused the FO is though; they might not want a 1B/DH, but if they can get a good hitting 1B/DH for a lot less than they think he's worth, that's what they'll do. As for Narvaez trade as discussed above; Only way I see it happening is if the Brewers are way out of it at the deadline. Which they won't be. I'm also optimistic about the catcher depth, but I don't much of a benefit to an in-season swap. It makes us worse right now, and catchers in particular aren't as "plug in and play" as other positions. And while catcher who can contribute on offense and defense is valuable, the return for an Omar Narvaez rental won't be all that much still. I think he'll see out his contract, enter free agency, and Brewers will move on unless he's willing to sign for a lot under market value.

Exactly. This team is very much focused on winning over the season as a whole, not on winning each individual game. Naturally, those two goals overlap the vast majority of the time, but when they don't it's clear that the Brewers focus more long term. You see it in every aspect of squad building, roster management, reliever usage, pitcher work loads, how injuries are handled etc. Which is where I think the minority of fans who don't think CC is a good manager mostly comes from, not considering the difference between the two focuses.

With Cutch, the narrative that he was getting worse results on batted balls than expected early on did hold some truth. But what had me real worried was that his walk and strikeout rates were the worst of his career, by far. That kind of thing is only minimally affected by luck. But it seems like he has managed to turn that around too, making much better swing/take decisions now, seems to be finding that balance between being willing to swing first pitch and yet still able to take his walks. And I love to see the hustle on ground balls too; quite a few infield hits and many more close plays to go with it. Statcast says 90th percentile sprint speed still. I wouldn't expect the June pace to keep up, but he legit looks like a much better player, and is starting to give me faith that he can be a useful contributor. And he seems like a really, really likable player, so I hope he plays well to stick around.

$10m for Wong is not a bad deal at all, but if the team plans to retain their core and keep trying to compete that'll come with some serious salary increases in arbitration to Burnes, Woody, Lauer, Hader, Williams, Adames, Urias, Tellez and others. There are a ton of arbitration eligible players on there. And I don't think we can expect to see the payroll budget go up much, sadly. So they either need to trade a high earner or two, or they need to do things like decline the option on Wong.

Brewers are the best team in the division. It looked obvious to me before the season, and the projections agreed. It still looks clear to me. Cardinals are overachieving, Brewers are underarchieving. A losing streak doesn't change that. Brewers will retake the division lead in the upcoming Cardinals series, and keep it the rest of the year.

I don't know when the day of service "counts", if it's one minute past midnight, at game time or whatever. But with so many stories out even after the DFA about reaching 10 years, Cain's own reactions and comments to it all, and the fact that it would be the most dickish move ever, I'm as sure as I can be that the Brewers didn't screw him out of that. Like what possible reason would there be?

This is an absolutely baffling comment to me. Woodruff pitched 179 innings of 2.56 ERA only last year. You must have some extremely high bar for "success", ... or as it turns out, you prefer to blame the offense's struggles on Woodruff. Let's dimiss being top 10 in run prevention, to instead ding Brandon Woodruff for the inability of the offense to score runs. W-L record is essentially taking two stats that tell us useful things about a pitcher (Innings pitched and (E)RA), and adding one that tells us nothing about the pitcher (Runs scored) to make it worse.

Looking at Statcasts xwOBA (i.e quality of contact + strikeouts + walks), the Cardinals rank 22nd for pitching and 23rd for hitting. Brewers rank 7th and 13th respectively. Looking at other predictive pitching metrics, Cardinals rank 22nd in xFIP- (Brewers 2nd), 25th by SIERA (Brewers 3rd). "But their defense!!11!!" you say; well, by DRS the Cardinals rank 10th, by UZR 11th, by OAA 13th, by defensive efficiency 11th. That's solidly above average, but not the kind of defense that can make up for bad pitching. Point is, they're not a great team. We're still at a point of the season where projections are much better than season-to-date W/L at predicting rest of season performances, and the underlying metrics all line up with the projections still. Given somewhat similar luck with injuries, sequencing etc. Brewers will be the better team RoS, of that I have very little doubt. Now will that randomness/luck factor actually be even? Remains to be seen. But I also think that it's easier to improve at DH, CF (At least from the current level of performance...) and middle relief like the Brewers need to, than it is at catcher or in the rotation like the Cardinals do.

You're not the only one, but you won't hear much of that during a bad streak. Mind you, I don't think it's a great offense. But when you read these forums, you'd think it was some historically bad offense, when it was always projected as, and has been so far, league average-ish. And with more upside than downside based on the more predictive metrics. Of course I'd like it to be more than that, but combine average offense with elite pitching, above average defense and above average baserunning and that's a playoff team for sure, especially in a weak division. Now what this team needs is primarily to improve offense in CF and from the DH spot. Get anything even close to league average production there and it's an above average offense already. I just hope MA is committed to getting an upgrade there; his talk about "stretching the budget" for a 1-year deal for McCutchen doesn't bode well.

Curious to see why these two (Bettinger a day or two ago) moves came now; there has to be some reason they wanted to free up these two roster spots.

Remains to be seen if they can make it work roster-wise with Yelich, McCutchen, Cain, Taylor and Renfroe all there already, depending on whether they want to release popular veterans or not. Could get in the way of a trade. But I definitiely think he's someone Brewers would be looking at in free agency after the season, with Cain and McCutchen free agents. Just strikes me as a Brewers-like free agent for some reaosn.

A year ago today. With the impact Willy Adames himself had, the effect on Luis Urias, and the subsequent trade of Richards for Tellez, this is looking like a fantastic trade so far. It's also one of the rare win-win trades; Willy would never have done this well in TB, and Rasmussen wouldn't have had the opportunity to start regularly here either. Both teams traded from a position of strength and got what they needed. EDIT: Also, as always, some hilariously bad hot takes (Regarding both this trade, and the Grisham/Urias trade) in the early pages.

I had meant to put Darrien Miller on my list but in the end forgot. I don't know enough about his defense, but young catchers who look like they can hit are something I value greatly. I also remember doing the initial draft of my ranking and thinking "I really gotta make sure I move Wiemer up before the final version". And then not doing that.

The "dead wrong" part depends on the motivation for the trade. If it was a "sell high" type of argument, expecting him to crater, then yeah it was dead wrong. But depending on what has been, or will be in the future, offered for him a trade could have been the right thing to do regardless of how good he's been since. I was, and am still, a believer in that if a Hader extension isn't happening (And everything this FO has done so far suggests they won't be giving a $100m+ deal to a reliever. And Hader might very well prefer to test the market) they should look to trade him sooner rather than later. The issue is that from the outside we have absolutely no idea what teams have been offering for him. Maybe they made a mistake not accepting some offers for him, or maybe they've been 100% correct all the way in turning down offers.

I'd be open to trading any of our star pitchers (Starting or relief) that's not controllable beyond 2-3 years (So not Ashby or Peralta) if it's not looking like they're open for an extension. But to me that's different to shopping Woodruff, or anyone else, around. These are all guys who could something pretty decent in return even with 1 or ½ a season left on their deals, so there is no rush. Listen to offers, if someone blows you away with an offer then any one of them should be available. If they don't, we just sit tight and enjoy what we have. I wouldn't want to trade Burnes, but I am curious about what teams would be willing to give up for him. Chris Sale might be the best recent-ish comp for such a trade. That got the #1 prospect in baseball (Moncada) and 3 others. Teams seem more reluctant to trade true top prospects in the years since tho, which is why I'd love to know what kind of value he has. Like if Bobby Witt or Adley Rutschman were on more ambitious teams, would those teams build a deal for Burnes around them? Probably not. Seems like a lot has changed since then, including what people would give for an Aroldis Chapman or Andrew Miller. Anyway as for Woodruff, I agree with Sveum above that he might be the most likely (From purely a age/baseball type perspective, their personal preferences will obviously impact this greatly too) of all these guys to sign an extension. And for that reason might be the one we want to keep most. But ultimately, we should look to trade anyone we can't extend. That's just the nature of a team whose market/owner limits their payroll to what the Brewers have to play with. But I wouldn't be in any rush to do it. Having 6 excellent starters (And I think Ethan Small is a 7th, but remains to be seen) is fantastic. There will be injuries, there always are.

I think it depends on how spicy hot the take is. The "Numbers have been bad the last few years, I think this could turn out to be a massive overpay and a really bad contract"; then it's not very useful to. The poster was just wrong, even if the analysis was superficial and didn't support those strong statements. But the hot takes that aren't a good faith attempt (albeit poorly executed) at debate? Absolutely. I'm not petty enough to go back and check which posters were genuinely happy that Wade Miley was injured so he wouldn't be put on the ML roster (OK, I totally am that petty. But I won't. This time.), but dumb takes like that should be called out. Especially the hot take merchants who will (repeatedly) bring up the bad takes that somehow came true to pat themselves on the back deserve to have their (far more numerous) terrible ones called out. Obviously don't want to take that too far either of course, shouldn't have people afraid to share their views. But in moderation, it could help improve the quality of posts if people stop to think for a second before pressing "Submit". IMO there are better places to post the poorly thought through hot takes or immediate reactions, and plenty of shows and websites and podcasts that cater to the people who want to crucify players based on 15 plate appearances etc. Hoping this place can be better. At times it is, but there's not really more than a handful of posters who seem to see it that way. But to bring it back more to the topic of the trade: These things take time to evaluate. After 2020 it looked bad, but it was 2 months of baseball, where both Lauer and Urias missed most of both "pre-seasons". The stance should have been, as it should've been when the trade happened, to wait and see as a lot can change. Which it has. And still might, but at this stage it seems very likely that Lauer + Urias will give the Brewers more than Grisham + 10% (or whatever) of Darvish will going forward.

I don't think Yelich will be the kind of HR-hitting machine that he was in 2018-19, I think that type of hitter is gone. But I think that with the plate discipline he has, he can be a productive hitter even if the ball stays on the ground a lot. Over these last two seasons he had some real issues (Extreme passivity combined with lower contact % than ever in 2020, and fixing those things in 2021 but losing all power and the ability to hit it in the air), and his floor has still remained as a league-average hitter (112 and 101 wRC+) because of that OBP. I think that even with just a small improvemenet to the batted ball profile, we'll have at least Miami Yelich back. It is encouraging so far to see that we seem to have the contact ability and plate discipline of 2021, and power a bit more like 2020. Absolutely tiny sample size of course, but I'd rather see a positive trend in that tiny sample than a negative one.

NL Central Standings: Brewers 94 Cardinals 84 Reds 77 Cubs 75 Pirates 65 Brewers Categories Most Valuable Player: Urias Cy Young: Woodruff Most Surpringing Player: Tellez; gonna be a breakout year for him. Most Disappointing Player: Narvaez Under the Radar Player to Watch: Corey Ray Rookie of the Year: Ashby is still rookie eligible IIRC. Otherwise, Ethan Small.

They gave up Sullivan in the Caratini trade, so the Brewers were down 2 catchers, and they got 2 catchers. I don't know how they rate their AAA depth, but clearly they wanted this number of catchers even before the suspension.

I suppose Caratini is alright as a backup. Only issue I see with it is that he doesn't grade out either as a particularly good defender, or a good hitter. From what I've heard he's supposed to be good at working with pitchers though, and seemingly a good dude. So all in all I guess it's the protoype of a backup catcher. Did catch their no-hitter last year fwiw. Also seems like the Cubs fans don't like him as a Brewer, which makes me like it. Personally I wouldn't have minded giving Sullivan/Feliciano a shot and perhaps signed a veteran on a minor league deal instead as backup. But I can see the logic of getting a veteran who will also be familiar with many of our pitchers, even if its from the point of view of the batters box. As for Howell, the hit tool issues and high strikeout rate even in the low minors makes me not that bothered. He may be someone who figures that out, or he'll go the way of Harrison/Brinson and many, many others. Plenty of interesting OFs in the system, so seems reasonable enough.

I think the more worthy ban should be for posters repeatedly calling him Huira.