Lathund

The "rush" is that with an early extension there's a chance to get a discount, at the cost of the risk that an extension might look bad when closer to the expiry of the contract. If you wait until his last year and he's still an MVP-level player, then there's no discount to be had, and probably no deal at all to be made before free agency. So the "rush" is that if we want to keep Yelich beyond 2022 (More realistically beyond 2021), an extension needs to happen relatively soon. There needs to be a decision made soon between whether to try to keep Yelich, or to look to trade him in (probably) 2021. I don't see the Brewers paying market value for a 30 yo Yelich, and even if they do; should they? A market value extension close to free agency is in almost every scenario a bad idea. An early extension at a discount could be a good thing, but carries a lot of risk. I think perhaps what has the best chance of getting a few more years of Yelich without too much risk would be to tear up the remainder of the contract, pay Yelich more in those years (Instead of $12.5m, $14m and $15m say he gets $20m) and in exchange for getting more money sooner try to get a discount in the later years, or get away with fewer years. Though I don't recall that type of thing happening very often (If at all) so probably not likely to happen.

There are a few possibilities. That Contreras injury is worse than we think, or that Caratini is trade bait. But with Contreras having played some outfield, and the Cubs outfield not being very good, there's a chance this move is made to both improve the outfield and get a much better defender behind the plate.

When a trade is happening, sometimes the first sign that it's a done deal is the player saying goodbye and hugging teammates and coaches in the dugout during the game.

Not rebuild, but reset ahead of next year. With almost the entire NL in the WC hunt this team runs a real risk of missing the playoffs entirely even if they make some good deadline signings who turn out to be productive players. Unless the situation changes drastically over the next 7-10 days or so, trading away any impending free agents should be the correct move. That pretty much means Grandal and Moose, since noone else should return anything beyond maybe cash or international bonus pool money, at best a lower-level PTBNL. Ideally Brewers should eat the entire salary to maximize return. Only five players (Moustakas, Grandal, Albers, Chacin, Gio) not under team control for next year. Their salaries coming off the books, and potentially Anderson, Thames, Jeffress (All have team options) and some non-tenders, creates a situation with a lot of flexibility to make moves. I expect some of the above will be back, but the point is that there's a lot of freedom to move in different directions here, and a full rebuild isn't on the cards yet. Depending on who they can acquire, trading some players with more team control might be on the cards too, but that should be an offseason consideration and nothing for this trade deadline IMO. I just hope we don't end up in a situation where the Brewers are buyers at the deadline but fail to make the playoffs. Giving up potentially useful players for a 2020 run, while not getting anything for Grandal or Moose, and nothing to show for it would be bad. Grandal and Moose won't get huge returns, but sometimes the Brett Phillips/Jorge Lopez type return he got last time ends up being a couple of useful players.

This is also an occasion where a combined no-hitter is more meaningful than just one pitcher doing it, as it makes it about the team. This was #45 throwing a no-hitter.

Yet another good example of how well W-L records reflect performance.

I think that if we see any major moves, they'll be for a player with multiple years of team control remaining; I don't think Stearns will be in on the expensive rentals. If no major move like that (And I'm not sure if there are any like that out there) we'll see cheaper rentals. Finding this years Gio, Swarzak or Soria on the pitching side, Neil Walker or Mike Moustakas on the position player side. And I again think Stearns will try to get what he can for prospects on the 40-man (Diplan, Stokes, Taylor) or impending minor league FAs and Rule 5 candidates. Fairly slim pickings overall there, but at least relievers (Certainly ones with some money left on their contract) can be had for relatively little. That's not to say there won't be some more highly rated prospects traded for bigger targets, but I don't think that's the primary focus. And I'm fine with that. I think the team is better than the negative run differential would suggest (Cain, Aguilar, Burnes, Chacin etc. will almost certainly be better in the 2nd half than the 1st), but I don't think it's all that much better. Not good enough that any move the Brewers can realistically make would turn the team into a real WS contender. Any team *can* win once they're in the playoffs, but even adding the best starter and best closer available on the market won't make the Brewers the favourite against the Dodgers, let alone the Yankees or Astros. If our division standings looked like the NLE but with us instead of the Braves, I'd be much more inclined to make bigger moves. But combine how much the team needs to improve, and that said improvement might not even result in getting to the playoffs, and the limited resources to make those moves, and I don't see how any big moves really "move the needle" enough to justify their cost. Deadline deals, especially for the better players, are almost always poor value. And that's fine if they push you over the edge, but bring in a rebuild without nothing to show for the "window" if they don't. I'd also leave any business to relatively late in the month, to better gauge whether there's any point to it to begin with. If both the division lead and the WC slip further away it might even be more prudent to trade the impending free agents (Moustakas and Grandal in particular) instead.

What aspect of DRS, UZR and FRAA and their handling of shifting leads to Arcia's defense being misrepresented relative to his peers? Even peers on teams that shift as much as the Brewers? And since the metrics handle shifting, or more specifically which plays are made by which position as a result of shifting, differently, which one handles it best and thus would represent his defense the best? To me there are two different questions; is Arcia an elite defender? and is Arcia an elite defender at shortstop? I think at least some of the disagreement about Arcia's defense comes from people discussing these two questions interchangeably, when to me they are quite different. The other aspect is looking at his defensive ability or defensive "tools" on the one hand, and actual performance on defense on the other. Arcia undeniably has the tools to be an excellent defender, but does it result in a corresponding ability to convert batted balls into outs?

Do you think we were the only bidder when we got Cain? Yelich? Wheeler is no Manny Machado, I doubt such a bidding war for Wheeler happens. It's more a case of Stearns having a price in mind and not exceeding it (Some agents have said as much) as a result of a bidding war. If the bidding starts at $65m and Stearns is willing to go to $80m he's probably OK with a bidding war. But if it starts at $80m he's not.

Part of the reason the focus is on Arcia over Braun/Cain is that we can't move or option the latter two even if we wanted to. Whether they see less playing time or not, they're going to be with the team the rest of the season (at least). Arcia has options remaining, and while not having a lot of value is someone who could be traded if they decide to go that unlikely route. So it's a roster spot we can theoretically improve upon, while the others aren't. Unless they release Braun, but that's not happening. And while Braun's numbers are poor for a corner OF, there is most certainly a difference between their numbers; .271/.320/.454 (Braun) for a wRC+ of 100 vs .239/.300/.406 (Arcia) for a wRC+ of 80.

The balls are most definitely different; the seams are lower, the balls are rounder, the leather smoother. The AAA almost 50% spike in HRs from one year to the next, after changing to the MLB baseball, is another very convincing data point. Aside from the obvious effects on batted balls, it's noticable for the pitchers as well, many who have said they feel different, give more blisters, have to alter grips etc. And this can't be just year-to-year variance, it has to be the result of a change in the manufacturing process or in materials. Was it done intentionally to create more offense? Or was the change done for other reasons (cost, intending to improve quality, changing suppliers)? I don't know, but I can't believe it just happened by chance. This also creates something of a perfect storm along with some other developments; Pitchers have more tools than ever to develop ways to beat hitters. They're throwing harder, throwing more and better breaking balls, and can analyse and tweak their pitches in a way never before possible. So pitchers are tougher than ever to hit, and record more strikeouts. Another aspect of this is that the pitchers pitch in a way that attempts to counter the uppercut swings that were a response to the pounding of the bottom part of the zone. What's the answer? With a deader ball and/or bigger ballparks maybe the answer is to attempt to strike out less, make more contact. But if it's more and more difficult to get hits, it's even more difficult to string multiple hits together. And so needing to string together fewer hits in order to score runs should be the way to go, hence more extra base hits. And in particular more homers. So you swing harder, sacrificing contact rate for contact quality. Meaning strikeouts are up even more than they already were. Changing the baseball so that warning track power translates into double-digit home runs (See Sogard, E and La Stella, T) just creates even more incentive to completely sell out. (It will also be interesting to see how, with it being harder to string hits together, this affects base stealing. On one hand that's a way to score from just getting two singles instead of three. But at the same time you risk taking away the multi-run HR) I have barely even mentioned the launch angle revolution, partly because I think it tends to get mixed up with swing changes, when it's really more about timing changes, or way to make better contact, and more contact out in front of the plate. Which will see more pulled fly balls even if the swing and swing plane is the same. The juiced baseball, and any eventual de-juicing thereof, could also majorly mess with both players and front offices. Should players try to drastically alter their approach to exploit this? Or stick with what has been working for when/if it returns to normal? And for front offices, do they build their team according to this trend or not? Grandal and Moose are very good players in their own right, but they are relatively speaking better players with the 2019 baseball than with a more "normal" one. I don't think it's the main factor in any decisions on trading/extending them, but it does factor in. What I would like to see is Manfred taking this issue more seriously. Or if he and MLB already are doing that, then communicate that better. And give some kind of indication on what they plan to do about it. HRs are fun, but there's a point when it becomes too much. It's not even so much the monster HRs as it is the other end of the scale, the popups that end up as homers. TL;DR: Baseballs are different. The effects of that change are amplified by other trends in the game, and the juiced balls are driving those trends even further.

How is 2 months of a 4.7 ERA starter worth those prospects? I know you have your ways of coming up with these calcs, that just seems like a crazy price to me. I'll also at baseball reference has him at 1 WAR this season so far, not sure how you project he'll post 1.7 WAR in less starts unless you're assuming he'll be way better in the 2nd half. I don't really like those deals either, giving up anything of real value for a rental, but the answer to the first question is simply that he's not a 4.7 ERA starter. He's at 3.88 for his career, and this year he has the highest strikeout rate and lowest walk rate of his career while HR rate is only moderately up. His FB velocity is also the highest of his career. He's not helped by having one of the worst defenses in the league (30th by DRS, 28th by UZR) behind him, and I don't imagine that bullpen is doing him any favors either. So he's pitching a lot better than is reflected by his ERA. And as far as the Brewers go, him simply averaging 6.26 IP/start would do wonders for the bullpen even if it was at the current ERA. Which it likely won't be. He'd improve this rotation by a lot, no question about that. It's simply a matter of price.

Moose is going opposite more, 29% this year vs 19% last year with the Brewers. The intereresting thing about this debate though is that the rate of going to the opposite field isn't really some kind of indication one way or another of how well someone is doing. Moustakas improved by going opposite field more, Yelich emerged as an MVP by doing the exact opposite thing; his 19% oppo rate (lowest on the team) this year is down from something close to the same 29% as in his Marlins years. Just like Trent Grisham is pulling the ball more than ever as he is having a breakout year. This is because pulling fly balls is a good thing, it's only when you hit a lot of grounders that pulling the ball is bad. If you hit the ball more out in front of the plate, that tends to lead to more fly balls and to pulling the ball more, which is essentially what Yelich is doing, and it's why his fly ball % is soaring as well without making his swing an uppercut one; if the ball is hit earlier in flight, it's higher up, and even a level swing will hit it with more of an upwards trajectory than it normally would. Combine that with the effects of the very much juiced baseballs, and pulling the ball more is even more incentivized as it turns warning track outs into homers. When/if they dejuice the balls this is likely to change to a degree, but for now it makes sense to take advantage of it. Of course it's not some magical solution, not everyone is suited to doing this. If someone like Braun has lost some bat speed, trying to do this regularly might end with a ton of strikeouts and nothing to show for it, and going more to the opposite field makes sense. Those without a great deal of power should probably still not sell out for pulled fly balls, but for Yelich, Grandal, Thames it makes a ton of sense.

After rigorous investigation, and after having consulted several experts, my conclusion is that those numbers are pretty damn good.

So with Arcia supposedly ready to go right after the break, and Dubon not starting today.. is he going to get sent back down without even making his debut?

After having hit .247 for the last 4 seasons, Khris Davis now has 741 hits in 2997 ABs, good for a .247247247... repeating BA. Only hitting .240 so far this season, but since the laws of nature can't be altered we know that he'll hit ~.256 the rest of the way.

I''m not too keen on Rock either, but I don't think I'd like to hear Plesac for more than a few games per year.

This is spot on. Noone would pay what he's actually worth at this point, so it wouldn't even be a case of "selling high" despite the return being great. But yeah, if someone actually offered the kind of monster package he's actually worth, however unlikely that may be, then I'd do the trade. And that package would have to be players who are ready to contribute straight away, or almost straight away. Consider what the Rays got for a couple of years of Archer, or the Diamondbacks for one year of Goldschmidt, and thus the deal would start with two Glasnows/Meadows/Kellys/Weavers. And then prospects on top of that. Exactly what calibre and how many is hard to predict, since reliever value is hard to quantify, but it'd be some significant players. As a sidenote regarding valuing relievers; Normally a straight WAR type of comparison, while a decent baseline, will be a bit skewed for relievers; it's not really their regular season performance you pay for, and their value isn't linear either. They provide quite little raw production, but the value of that production is significantly higher for the Dodgers than it is for the Marlins. And this of course goes very much for Hader. But what's interesting is that he's been so good that even if you were to judge him by WAR like a starter or position player, he'd still be a very valuable trade piece. I can't come up with a good comparison right now, but 4½ years of a proven 2-3 WAR player will fetch quite a lot.

Projections aren't "biased", the spreadsheets don't know which teams players belong to. Or that they're baseball players to begin with. The only manual part is distributing the expected playing time. A projection system can only look at what players have done in the past and project from there, taking into account aging curves and regression. A long track record of consistent performance will lead a projection system to treat that as a player's actual skill level, and react slower to changes in performance than for someone with a shorter track record. So when Aguilar slumps the projections will adjust downwards more and/or faster than if Rizzo had been in that same slump. Largely because it wouldn't have bought in fully to his breakout to begin with. This goes for instance for the Cubs starting pitching; They have a long track record, and whatever is ailing Quintana and Darvish isn't something that a projection system would catch (yet), you'd not expect more than a gradual age-related decline. And the other side of that coin is someone like Yelich who had 2800 PAs with Miami with a SLG of .432. It won't start believing overnight that his now .700+ SLG is sustainable, but will gradually move in that direction. Cubs just happen to have more of the type of players a projection system could end up overrating, and Brewers have a bunch of hard to project players, and those players will be affected more by regressing them towards the mean. And "Fangraphs" aren't doing anything in this case; they simply host three different projection systems, created independently of Fangraphs, and their playoff projections are based off combining two of them. When you also consider that projection systems don't really primarily project wins, but rather runs, it's even easier to see why it'd still believe more in the Cubs. Because while the records are identical, the Cubs are still outperforming the Brewers in runs scored/allowed, and are underperforming their RD, while the Brewers area outperformning theirs.

Making rash and definitive judgments based on the tiniest of sample sizes seems to be a very popular thing to do around here. And well, with fans in general. Like how Woodruff wasn't a starter based on his 2016 ERA in that role, or how Chacin was the worst signing ever a couple of starts into his tenure. And even when it's not SSS-related, the conviction in the hot takes is the same. I remember the reactions to the Wade Miley signing. Or whoever it was calling for Stearns' head for not signing Alex Cobb. And no, it's not about being wrong about those things (I mean it's not like anyone thought Miley would do what he did, not even those who liked the move), everyone is wrong a lot of the time, it's more about how the reactions are so strong, based on so little, and with no regard for the possibility that they might be wrong. Anyway, to bring it back to the original topic; Grandal started 0-12, and he has been pretty good since. Yelich had something similar (Or maybe it was 1-20 or sth?) just this past week. I don't expect Saladino to hit like them, obviously, but stretches like this happen all the time. This one just happens to be the first at bats after being called up to replace a popular player.

Brewers win, and Cubs give up 18 runs to the Pirates.

Terrible news. While I have absolutely no idea about the cause of death, I know that the deaths I remember from soccer players in the past were due to Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which got a lot of attention (and I believe led to better screening procedures) after two high-profile deaths during games about 15 years ago; Marc-Vivien Foé during the Confederations Cup semi-final, a game broadcast around the world. And just a few months later Miklos Feher during a game in the Portuguese league. I remember it so well because at the time I hadn't really heard of anything like it, a 24 and 28 year old, in peak physical form, who just die like that. And in similar circumstances to todays tragic event, Fiorentina captain Davide Astori was found dead in his hotel room prior to a game last year.

They also don't really have a first baseman in SA. Nottingham, Freitas, Hager, Saladino (And probably others I've missed) have played there in boxscores I've seen. So some DH, some 1B, some 3B, some 2B. It won't be an issue.

With the Cubs losing that can only mean the Brewers will too. At least that has been the case for the last 6 days when both teams have played, i.e matching eachothers result.