Lathund

I think that Sogard will be sent down when Miller is deemed ready, and Arcia will be sent down when Saladino is healthy. Santana should definitely be optioned ASAP though. Doesn't contribute to the major league club at all, and that's not going to change with him on the bench.

Then who do you trade? To get any of the big guns, they are going to have to pay up. Not gonna get a stud pitcher, catcher or infielder without giving up some of our top prospects. I would stay away from the big guns. Find this years equivalent of Neil Walker and Anthony Swarzak but don't give up the top prospects. The way I see it, 2018 isn't the Brewers year; there is no trade we can make that gives us the edge over the Yankees, Red Sox or Astros. As much as they have struggled, I'd still take the Dodgers, Cubs, Nationals over us in a playoff series too. 2019 might be a year for real contention (Or it might not; I think 2020-21 is a better bet) but no need to make a move this deadline for that purpose. So make the smaller trades, and then see what we have, or don't have, in the upper minors. Who looks to be for real among Peralta/Burnes/Ortiz/Woodruff? Is the offensive production of Bethancourt/Nottingham sustainable? Will Hiura's elbow hold up, and how is his defense? Dubon's recovery? Also gives a better idea of the rest of the team: If major injuries happen, or a bunch of players flop, then making big trades is pointless. And vice versa. To build a contender with a small market team, as much as possible of the team has to be built from own prospects, waiver claims, low-key trades etc. Only when positions of needs absolutely can't be filled that way do you make the farm-depleting moves or sign the big FAs. I don't think that we can fill all of C/2B/SS/SP with our own guys; we'd be very lucky to do so, but quite possible some of those holes. So find out which, and then make potentially aggressive moves for the others.

Agreed. If you want Villar in front of Cain/Yelich, have him bat 9th to act as a second leadoff man.

It'll be interesting to see what the Brewers do with pitching in September, when rosters expand. Some guys will likely still be used more like traditional starters, but even just on the 40-man there's an abundance of pitchers who might not all be perfectly suited for regularly going 6-7 innings (though some of them are), but who can go 2-3 innings, go through the lineup at least once; Anderson, Chacin, Nelson (hopefully!), Davies, Woodruff, Suter, Guerra, Miley (Possibly...), Houser, Peralta, Wilkerson. Williams, Hader, Jeffress can go 2 high-leverage innings if need be. Knebel, Jennings, Barnes, Logan (ugh) are more of traditional 1-inning types or specialists. I even left out Lopez and Asher, who I'm not quite sure where they fit. There are even a bunch of guys off the current 40-man who could contribute to the multi-inning roles, primarily Ortiz, Burnes and Derby. Anyway, with the possibility of a 15-20 man pitching staff filled with guys who can go multiple innings to various degrees, there are lots of interesting things you can do. Perhaps you have three starters who reliably go deep and pitch well; let's say Anderson, Nelson, Chacin. Your "#4 starter" could be Woodruff, Suter and Peralta going through the order once each. Your #5 could be Houser, Guerra and Davies doing the same. That still leaves Miley and Wilkerson as long relief, and keeping the current 8-man bullpen available to use as they're currently used. That was just one example of how you could set it up. Injuries and form will necessitate some changes etc. But it's an illustration of where depth will truly be of benefit.

If we're leading the division by a couple of games, playing well, and the Cubs are showing some weakness; Then I'd be OK with bigger moves. Not fully all-in, the kind that sacrifices every season beyond this one, but some significant moves. Anything less than that, and I would not want to do anything more than the Walker/Swarzak types of moves. Cheap rentals, short-term salary dumps and the likes. Now if a Christian Yelich-type moves is there, i.e 4+ seasons worth of a good player in a position of need, then by all means go for that. But I doubt there'll be a lot of that at the deadline. Basically, the big moves are to put you over the top when you already are a strong playoff team. Like Aroldis Chapman, like Justin Verlander. We're not there yet.

Santana has an option remaining (According to roster resource anyway); I'd look to use it. Play Braun, Cain, Yelich. Having Thames play LF or Phillips in RF on their off days may not be ideal (Due to defense and offense respectively), but to me Santana offers nothing right now. He's a poor defender (Defensive metrics like him so far this year, but they need a lot more data to be reliable. So I'll trust his career numbers), offers nothing on the bases. And he's not doing the one thing a DH type needs to do, which is hit. His approach and his numbers don't really suggest he's due to improve either. Not that it'll make a huge difference, but I don't really see much of a reason not to do it.

Jose Martinez batting stance annoys me. A lot.

I think this is a trade both teams will be happy with eventually. All three position players were raw and had questionable hit tools and were more long-term projects that a contending team might not have had room for. But in the end I believe their overall production, however it distributes betwern them, will be good enough to make the trade worth it for the Marlins

I'm kind of 'meh' about this move. But Bandy wasn't playing well, so can't really be much of a downgrade. I'll trust David Stearns as always. Hoping it's Bethancourt having his contract selected though. Or that Kratz is a stopgap for Nottingham.

By Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), the metric used in Baseball References WAR, Brewers have the best defense in the league at +43 DRS. 2nd place (Diamondbacks) are at +36, and 3rd place (Cubs) at +22 so it's by quite some margin! UZR/150 (Used by Fangraphs in their WAR) "only" has the Brewers in 4th. I can't seem to find FRAA at Baseball Prospectus, but Defensive Efficiency there has Brewers in 3rd. Defensive metrics are a bit wonky, and generally need large sample sizes to be reliable, but when several different metrics say the same thing that usually suggests something. And it aligns with the eyeball test as well.

Yeah nothing wrong with giving Cain the occasional day off, and when he does Perez makes sense as a replacement. But a .275 OBP (.283 for his career) leadoff hitter? I don't get it.

It's fairly easy to understand why any stat-based projection system would be negative about the 2017 and 2018 Brewers at least. There were plenty of players on the Brewers roster who didn't have much of an MLB track record going into last season or this season; Thames, Shaw, Santana, Broxton, Aguilar on the position player side to name some. So when a player goes from either a poor/middling record to having a good season a projection system is going to assume some regression, or rather project something somewhere inbetwee the past numbers and the breakout. And that's usually what happens. Of course, a system like that can't know why performance improved. Maybe the player was finally healthy. Maybe there was a mechanical adjustment. Maybe it was a psychological adjustment. Maybe he corrected his vision. Maybe he added some more muscle. Maybe he added a new pitch. Case in point would primarily be the pitching. Jimmy Nelson was one of the worst starters who received significant playing time in 2016. Chase Anderson was 5th starter type innings eater prior to 2017. The 2017 versions of both of them were rather different from the past. They both recieved the Derek Johnson curveball treatment. Chase added muscle and velocity, while Jimmy figured something out with his command. So a previously erratic pitcher with good stuff found a way to throw both his good fastball and his new curve for strikes. And a pitcher with a previously good offspeed offering got some extra zip on his fastball to make it even better, and improved his breaking ball. With that in mind, it'd be reasonable to expect something closer to 2017 than the past for both of them, but from a stat-based approach the opposite would be true. Projections get a lot of crap, but they do offer something different. Sometimes they'll be way off, for reasons outlined above. But sometimes they will also identify teams poised for success or regression that no experts manage. They're more accurate over larger samples, obviously. But I'm pretty certain that an average of a projection system and expert predictions does better than either one on it's own. Which means they do have value. And on a team level, it's only rather late into the season that the results up to that point have better predictive value than the preseason projections. ETA: There were also projections that were more favourable, and had the Brewers in the mid-80s.

Ray is at least a year (mid-season 2019. Likely later) away from the majors even in most realistic best-case scenarios. Who knows what the outfield will look like at that time. Could be that Cain, Yelich, Santana/Phillips and a semi-healthy Braun has Ray blocked. Could also well be that Santana is traded, Phillips is a bust and Braun is never healthy. In the latter case, he could certainly be part of the future. It depends on a lot of things really. How much will good performances actually increase trade value? What players are out there that Ray could be a part in acquiring? What injuries occur? Who else gets traded? I don't think his trade value ever really gets to the point where that's the best option. If it ever gets really high, then it's because he lived up to pre-draft hype in which case I obviously want him with the Brewers. His defense and baserunning gives him a decent floor, where he doesn't have to hit super well to still be a contributor. I'd keep him around and see if he fulfills his potential. Which is probably unlikely, but a solid 4th OF or average starter isn't at all out of the question; and getting that cheaply might very well be worth more than Ray as the 3rd piece in some trade.

I expect that Barnes will be back in 10 days time. Less if there are injuries. A move to get a fresh arm in the pen.

Out of these three, it has to be Villar. I don't think we're ever seeing 2016 Villar again, but he's the only one of the three who at least has the potential ability to be a productive offensive player. With regards to Sogard it's definitely true that he has been unlucky. But at the same time, even if his BABIP doubled, and even if every single one of those extra hits resulting from that was a double, he'd still be only at a 650 OPS (Using some rather simplified assumptions of course). So he's both unlucky and bad. I'll say one thing though; his defense is better than most give him credit for. 1 costly error doesn't change that. Then again, he's obviously far from Orlando Arcia-level defense. And even Villar is a pretty decent defender if he matures a bit; range and arm are easily good enough, so still no room for Sogard. With regards to Orf, I agree with the sentiment that we shouldn't expect miracles. But wRC+ of -9 (Sogard), 51 (Arcia), 61 (Perez) and 80 (Villar) are all within reach. He does play in hitter-friendly Colorado Springs in the hitter-friendly PCL, but even within that environment his wRC+ is 145, and was 134 in 2017. Adjusted stats certainly aren't perfect, but being ~40% above the league average is at least saying something. The fact that Dubon (depending on how long he's out for) and Saladino are already on the 40-man might well be in their favour over Orf though. Sogard being DFAd opens up a spot too of course, but perhaps they're looking to keep that open for Nelson or Burnes?

He has a .158 BABIP with a 26% LD%. He's been incredibly unlucky. That is true; he's due some better results even with the exact same approach. At the same time though, his BB% has been nearly cut in half, and K% almost doubled. The LD% is in line with his career numbers, and not too dissimilar from last season. There's also the fact that while he hits line drives, they're very weak; 10th lowest exit velocity in the majors. He's also more pull-heavy than last year, which also affects his BABIP. It's still a small sample size, so these numbers could still change. But it's really not looking good.

Very few relievers ever hit the 90 inning mark, and no one has hit 100 since Scott Proctor in 2006. Over the last decade there's generally only a handful of guys that get over 80. If they plan on using him for 90-100 innings regularly as a reliever, I'd plan on him having a short career. That brings up the question of whether it's the number of innings pitched, or the frequency of the appearances that poses the injury risk. What effect does it have to repeatedly warm up to then not get put into games for instance? The 1-inning relievers cap out at 70-80 or so, but that also means working on slightly more than 1 days rest on average, and likely going 2-3 days in a row on several occasions. Should pitching 3 innings every 4 days (~120 IP) really carry more of an injury risk than your average starter's workload? Or perhaps more applicable to Hader, 2 innings every 3 days (108 IP) or something similar? Naturally you can't really keep a strict schedule as well as you can for a starter as reliever usage is situational and based on need, but if you make it a priority (And that means passing up some decent opportunities) I don't see why you couldn't get a fairly balanced workload. Make sure he rarely, if ever, warms up when not entering the games and avoid pitching on consecutive days, and I think 100 IP isn't unreasonable. I obviously don't have access to the kind of data you'd need to say anything for sure, but the way the Brewers have been using him so far would suggest they feel fairly comfortable with it.

One slight positive was what I found when trying to see if the feeling that we hit everything straight at the Cubs players was accurate; during this series, Brewers had a .161 BABIP (The rest of the league for this 4-day stretch was between .233 and .383) so there was an amount of bad luck there as well. Mind you, even if that number doubled to a number closer to what is normal and we thus got twice as many hits (It's not quite that simple, but illustrates the point well enough) we'd still only be tied for 20th in # of hits during this time. So yeah maybe it isn't a positive after all. There's still the poor approach at the plate as well.

Facing a guy in Chatwood who's struggling with command, and he's through 5 innings at 60 pitches.

Arcia looks like a pitcher at the plate sometimes. I mean he did at times last season too and then pulled it together somewhat, but I am a bit worried nonetheless.

Brewers currently sporting the 3rd best ERA in the majors! Around 10th when looking at the various predictive metrics (FIP, cFIP/xFIP, DRA) but with a lot of GB pitchers, and a seemingly ever improving pitching staff, that could be off. There's also the fact that our #1 starter, closer and lefty specialist are on the DL and still doing this well.

Just ignore what I said above. From the Brewers twitter account: Corresponding move? Thinking either Woodruff/Williams to AAA and someone else DFA/traded, or Drake DFA/traded.

To me this decision comes down to mainly two things: 1) Are the good performances in ST down to making some kind of adjustments? Whether mechanical or mental or using different pitches or sequencing. Or just a matter of doing the same old thing but with better results through the great deal of variance in this sport? It's not exactly unheard of for a pitcher to suck in Baltimore and improve elsewhere, but then again it's not exactly unheard of for a below average pitcher to stay below average. 2) Some people use the term "depth" in a derogatory fashion, while I certainly don't. I'm a big believer in depth on the starting pitching side, and this move would certainly give us that, by retaining Miley and optioning Suter or Woodruff. But at this point one could argue that there already is a fair amount of depth. At the ML level there's Woodruff who can step in and start already. There's Peralta and Burnes in AAA. Houser and Ortiz in AA. Wilkerson should be back soon, Nelson hopefully midseason some time. There's Derby too. Hader could move to the rotation if the need becomes severe enough. And then there's Johnny Wholestaff alongside a 4-man rotation. Of course none of these guys are really proven, but many of them are talented enough to make it worth giving them a shot. So unless DS thinks very highly of Miley, there is a chance they feel that Miley isn't really needed. Calling up Miley also would mean a 40-man roster move needs to be made.

Not sure what there is to do at this point. Maybe Coles is part of the problem, maybe he isn't. No way for any of us to know really. Replacing him or not depends on who is available to replace him. Playing Perez and Sogard as little as possible is another thing, but when the players primarily playing in their place are Villar and Arcia that doesn't make much of a difference. So looking outside the roster, and then mainly at options for 2B/SS/C which seem to be the weak spots, there isn't a whole lot. Dubon and Arcia ran very similar numbers in the minors and Dubon would likely need some time to adjust regardless. But I don't see how he could be worse at this point; letting Arcia figure things out in AAA while seeing what Dubon can do isn't a bad idea IMO. Of course it could be Sogard or Perez making room for him, but that would also mean likely losing them permanently. And getting nothing in return. Too early for that IMO. Nottingham or Bethancourt could be an upgrade at catcher, but again even if they are it's probably not by much. Apart from that there's Orf (unproven) and Saladino (defensive specialist). At other positions there's Choi, Phillips, Broxton. But there's not really room for them; Santana and Aguilar are out of options, and if you call them up instead of an infielder it'd be rather crowded in the OF and 1B. So yeah, not a whole lot to be done immediately unless there's a trade to be made. But generally a bit early for that, and you'd likely have to pay a premium to get it done. I'd like to see Dubon get a shot though, even if I don't expect miracles. If there's a trade to be made for Perez or Sogard (Unlikely), then make that and call up Dubon. If not, give Arcia some time in AAA. To find some confidence at the plate and maybe work on some things, as well as a wake-up call for plays like the one last night. Arcia could very well figure it out, he's still young, but he has looked lost at the plate for much of his major league tenure.

Why does Maddon even bother with the pitching changes? Strop would finish the game out just fine the way the Brewers offense has been going today.