OnTheBlack

I'd still have Turang ahead of him, but man, he's been incredible. Another great game, reached base 4 times in 5 PA's including 2 doubles. Still, I see a potential Trea Turner in Turang. I don't stream many minor league games, but I do have to go to Appleton pretty often and love watching them play. But still, he's been incredible.

Apparently Ashby is not going to shut everyone out. Still, for his first "bad" start in Carolina after two games where he went 14 1/3 with just 5 hits and 16 K's, he gave up just 1 run through 5 before running into trouble. Still, not exactly a terrible game line. Cody Ponce somehow blew a save in 1.1 IP despite not giving up a hit, but walking 1 and hitting another. Trent Grisham reaches base in 5 PA's with 3 hits and a BB and is looking more and more like a perfect candidate to take over for Braun after 2020..unless he forces his way into the lineup sooner. He's now making Keston's .330 1.088 OPS look mundane with his .350 1.380 OPS. Hiura did get a hit, but also took the old golden sombreo with 4 K's. Burnes with 2 clean innings and 2 K's.

Ebbs and flows. I've been in favor of sticking with Shaw for the first two months, but we're well past the point that he needs to go back down. Aguilar is starting to slowly show some signs of some life...I guess. But we need Hiura back, I doubt Davies continues to pitch this poorly. We lost 5 in a row right before the ASB last year and then the first couple back from the Break and we couldn't beat the Cubs for our lives. I think we'll pick it up. But yeah, we need to shake things up a bit and the first move should be the most obvious, swap out #3 hitters between SA and Milwaukee, help Shaw get his confidence back...which I have little doubt he'll do and put Hiura into the lineup. If that doesn't work, then I think you put Jeffress, Grandal, Mouse all firmly on the market(as well as a few others that likely won't garner much interest like Cain, Thames and Anderson). Let teams make offers for Hader and if we get a Chapman like return, do it. But too many players have played too far below what they're capable of this year to date. I'm confident we'll get it going in the right direction and if not, then we reload ala Oakland.

Then you don't have much of an imagination. He throws in the mid to upper 90's, has 4 pitches and has dominated in the minors and when extended as a reliever. He's even been dominant at times this year. He's also 24 years old and if he hadn't been so dominant as a starting pitcher throughout the minors, he'd be following the model of Woodruff and he wouldn't have started the year in the rotation, but rather as a top 50 prospect(which he was) in AAA. He has 4 pitches that grade out at 55 or 60, can hit the upper 90's later in games and again, he's shown he can dominate elite competition. Simply because he's struggled to locate his fastball this early in his career hardly means he's "nothing more" than a reliever. I mean...the guy didn't start pitching in full season baseball until two years ago. If you've given up on him as a starter after 4 starts(one of which he struck out 12) then I'm really happen the guys in control are more patient than you. Burnes has been either dominant or terrible this season. When he's terrible, it's because he's leaving his fastball over the middle and struggling with command...not exactly rare for a young pitcher. But again, 4 pitches, can tough 98-99.....and we've seen how good we can be. If you can't envision him being a #5 starter, much less a #2, what exactly would it take? A guy who comes up and never struggles and dominates his entire career? I guess it's pretty much Kershaw or bust for you then. And at that point, you might as well throw in the towel.

That rotation that's a mess could look very different in just a year though. I don't think it's hard to envision Corbin Burnes following Woodruff to be a #2 type starter and we've got depth. Either way, I don't think this team need to sell Yelich and Hader and hope that we can turn around and become a winner again in short order. Could. I mean anything could happen, but I dont see WS rotation or even the makings of a really good 1-3 that can compete in the playoffs. Burnes of all people certainly cant be counted on. True rebuilds are no fun to go through, but after a few years neither are Herb Kohl Bucks "competitive" teams. If the goal really is to win a WS rebuilding may be the best way forward. Alternative is for Mark A to really blow out the payroll for a couple years. I would prefer that, but thats not likely either. I don't think blowing the payroll out is likely, and I agree we need an ace and there are very few of those. This upcoming FA pitching class is loaded. Gerritt Cole should be the guy we target. It's unlikely, but when you've got Yelich signed through 2022 for 15 million or less, Braun's deal coming off the books following next year, you should be willing to go out and spend for a true ace. Re-Burnes, I'll reiterate what someone else said recently, player development isn't linear..not that I'm telling you something you don't know, but the problem with Burnes isn't his stuff, we've seen it. It's better than Woodruffs. He's got a starting pitchers repertoire and we've also seen him dominate in high leverage situations. I don't think it's unreasonable to at least hope that you can get him on track and that he could be a TOR type arm. In this unlikely scenario, you'd have Cole, Woodruff and Burnes with a number of guys for the other two spots. Davies has been really good this year up until his last few starts, but over the course of a season is a reasonably reliable #4. Peralta, Houser or any number of other pitchers could fill out the final spot. The pen figures to be much stronger next year just through players returning and young guys coming up. Rasmussen takes some imagination, but when you're talking about what a hypothetical team would look like, it always does. You can reasonably count on Knebel, Wahl, Houser(if not starting), Hader, Jeffress and again, a number of younger guys who have very good arms. The lineup may take a bit of a hit as I doubt we'd be able to re-sign Grandal, but I'm still of the opinion that Shaw will get it going. Hiura will be entrenched at 2nd, our OF should be set. This is an optimistic view, but I don't think it's some crazy way out there idea. Payroll of ~140 million. But which scenario is more likely, that the Brewers do this and are competitive, or they go through this whole full blown rebuild(one that we were supposed to be doing and I was in favor of, but a few lucky moves and we sped up the time table) and we hit on enough players to build up and get back and build a competitive team? You're taking a risk doing either, but a tear down is hardly a fool-proof remedy. There's no guarantee that we hit on almost EVER pick like the Astros did and that was over about 520 losses over a 5 year period. I don't want to see us in a "Bucks" type situation during the Kohl era(though he was at least trying to win). But that's very different than what we're doing. They were struggling to be one of the top ~20 teams in the league? They were trying to make the playoffs in the weak East, usually just missing or as a low seed.

Gamel is striking out 29% this year and has been a career negative value defender. He is a good baserunner but only has 1 SB this year. Stolen bases aren't really all that important to me when it comes to how good of a base runner someone is. Gamel=Play all 3 OF spots without embarrassing himself in CF, walks a bit more and is more accustomed to playin gthe 4th OF'er role and a left handed bat off the bench. Santana=Terrible defender, good bat, not a good fit with the Brewers. Santana's not a bad player(he is a awful defensive OF'er) but he wasn't a fit with the Brewers. So they traded him for someone who WAS a better fit and they got a starting pitcher as well. There's also the fact that Gamel had a option. I also really don't care about how many stolen bases someone has as long as they get on base and don't make stupid mistakes. We sent the guy down to the minors last year after he struggled badly, we had Braun, Yelich and Cain in the OF. I don't really get what people expected us to get in return for Santana? He's hitting well. I'm happy for him. He wouldn't have the same line in Milwaukee as he wouldn't have gottten the AB's.

As much as you guys complain about treego going over the top in his love for Santana, there are a ton of guys going over the top trying to point out every flaw. He didn't go back, he went sideways and then back almost immediately and didn't get near the ball because it left the bat on a line at 107 mph with an expected batting average of .680. http://viz.mlb.com/play?game_pk=567591&play_id=b0e5ede0-db26-44b6-9fdc-e6b44675f53e&w=400&h=400&rotation=undefined His attempt and route was laughably bad. I don't really care what the exit velocity was or that he didn't make the play, it was how slow to react and how far from making the play he was. And I'm not pointing out "every flaw," I'm pointing out how bad his defense is. And this comment; ...Isn't me going over the top, it's from fangraphs. He's a good hitter. He'd be a much better player if he could just DH. I could see him being a productive player for years and I suspect he will be. I'll guess he ends up playing for multiple teams and moves around quite a bit because his bat will play, but I'd also guess that in the future, he'll primarily be a DH only.

There are better schools if the big east wanted to expand. I would have preferred Temple / St Louis. They fit the mold better. UConn hasn't done much since Calhoun retired, minus a championship with his players. I guess for nostalgia it make sense but thats about it. Wow...that's pretty surprising. I defer to you on this as I don't follow CBB as closely as others, particularly the minutia of BB first schools and conference realignment, but UConn strikes me as one of the premier programs. As someone else said, a true Blueblood. Maybe that was all Calhoun. But kinda surprised you'd rather have Temple or St. Louis. Edit-I read your following posts...makes more sense the way you explained it.

I'd argue that Taylor is every bit as good as Gordon. It's the talent on the offensive line that's the biggest difference. I'm with you that Taylor is a great back, that Gordon had a better OL...but I think Gordon was a much better back. I think he's the most talented back we've had since Alvarez got here and that's saying quite a bit. I think Taylor could be a 2nd/3rd round pick and be a very good NFL back however. It's more to do with how great I think Gordon is. I think some forget that there were quite a few games where Gordon would be getting bottled up and the OL wasn't playing great and he'd find a way to break a few tackles and almost single handedly get the offense going.

It is kinda amazing how hyped that OL was. David Edwards...kept hearing how he was going to be a 1st round pick. I never saw him as even a good UW tackle, much less a mid 1st round type pick. I just think a couple guys were a bit overrated and we never got 5 guys playing together for an extended period of time. And you're right about the Gordon lines. He could do some amazing stuff. At times they'd really be clogging the box and he'd have nowhere to go and he'd find a way to make something happen. At others, like you said, he wasn't getting touched for 8 yards. But I don't blame any of this on Chryst. I just chalk it up to College sports. Guys don't always pan out like you expect, injuries, there's a ton of drama that goes on with College Athletes. I'm just really excited that it appears as though the Badgers have a great coach who's going to be here for the next decade+. I really don't see him leaving and the continuity should help the Badgers continue to real in some nice recruits. And I do think Graham Mertz could elevate this program. With the WR'ers we already have, the young WR'ers and TE's coming in, and obviously the OL, I could see the Badgers throwing the ball a lot more in the next few years making them more desirable to good QB's and there could be a ripple effect there.

When it comes to Badgers recruiting, I don't care unless it's good. You feel pretty confident they're going to be able to take the 45th ranked class and turn them into B10 contenders and a 10 win team. Now if you get a top 20 class with the top ranked QB in the class, that's when it starts getting fun! I was so ready to watch Mertz leave UW for OSU like Shaw and Groulx did(the later not for OSU, but de-comitting). It's amazing how many guys the Badgers are in on before they break out and become more widely recognized as big time recruits. There are still several in the 2019 class that honored their commitments, but losing those two hurts. Still, the Graham Mertz era has arrived. The only question is if he starts this year or if starts later this year IMO.

Trade the guy who's making a bunch of money and is having the worst year of his career? I don't see our phone ringing off the hook on that one. We're better off holding on to Cain as trading him now would mean basically just dumping him and sending money along with him. I don't want to trade Yelich(I could be convinced to trade Hader) when we're struggling, but if we're going to seriously sell, we need to trade people other teams actually want.

That rotation that's a mess could look very different in just a year though. I don't think it's hard to envision Corbin Burnes following Woodruff to be a #2 type starter and we've got depth. Either way, I don't think this team need to sell Yelich and Hader and hope that we can turn around and become a winner again in short order.

That's one way to look at it. As Bucks fans, if only it was so easy to not screw it up, haha. I think he did more than you give credit for in getting value in his picks, winning trades throughout, and maneuvering the cap. For example, his first move as GM was ripping off the Knicks in the Barnagni trade, which you guessed it, led to Poetl, who they used in the Kawhi trade. Plus clearing 22 mil in cap space. I know he wasn't the key piece or anything and I'm sure they find a way to do it anyway, but it was another asset gained. Go through the trades, he's done very well. Also consistently hit on later picks and of course FVV UFA. Sure it's fine Horst won the award, easily could go either way imo and after such a statistaclly dominant season it made sense. But I think everyone overlooked what Tor did because they'd kinda been written off as pretenders for years. Plus, I do get that it's a yearly award so it's tough to give credit for all these previous years moves but imo it should be nuanced enough and people smart enough to dig deeper than "whoever improved most games wins it" He's done an awesome job adding talent to that team while keeping them in contention. And Kawhi didn't "fall into his lap," he went out and made an incredibly risky trade, trading away a fan favorite, a perennial all star to go all for it this year and then believe that the young guys he picked up developed into enough that he'd be able to make a case to sign on long term. The argument that he fell into his lap is the same one that people used to make about Rodgers. They're different scenario's, but if it was so easy to go out and so obvious to get Kawhi, why did only one team do it? I think Horst has done a very good job getting rid of some of the mistakes we'd made. I think Ujiri has done a great job at NOT making those mistakes while also adding young talent. He picked a budding young start in Siakam at the bottom of the 1st. He traded for Kawhi. He signed VanVleet as an undrafted FA. He's drafted Anunoby and Norman Powell, both look like they'll be good players. And aside from Kawhi, he's also traded for Marc Gasol and Danny Green. Traded for Serge. But to me, it really comes down to this. Horst did a good job of hiring Bud. But he had the centerpiece to this franchise in place right out of the gate. Ujiri who was on the "rich mans's treadmill," took the risk of blowing that up to add probably the best player in the NBA. As I said before in this thread, this is one of those awards that had they voted on it after the playoffs, it would have been soooo obvious. And this award is the one that SHOULD be voted on after the playoffs as the goal is build a championship team. He did that this year and he did it by actually adding the best player to his team this year. Host has done an amazing job, we're lucky to have him. But even if you think Horst should have won, how in the hell does Ujiri finish 4th? C'mon.

Well yea the only guy worth clearing the cap to sign. Though exercise though, what if we had trumped Tor's weak offer for Kawhi? I don't think they could have. The top piece going back to SA was DeRozan who was a perennial all star. We could have started with Middleton. I'm not sure what you could have added on. I'm sure Brogdon would have been included. I doubt SA is going to take back any bad contracts to make it work in that deal and you're only at about 15 million right there. And it'd depend on what SA thought of those two. But if the Bucks had been able to? We'd be celebrating right now and probably hoping we could lure someone like Kemba to Milwaukee because I don't think Kawhi would have stayed.

Ok, so you think Hill's going to obviously get waived, these are just the disclaimers so when it happens you aren't wrong. And what team do you think is going to want to pay Hill 18 million to claim him off waivers when they could just let him pass through(as he's going to) and then sign him for a quarter of that? Which team is going to use 18 million in cap space and claim him before the top FA's make their decisions? I think the decision to waive Hill was made about 2 seconds after they completed the trade to dump salary early in the season. There are a number of players who could be signed to reasonable deals that the Bucks could target and then sign Lopez to the full MLE...if he's not too offended by that. Marcus Morris would be a great fit with the Bucks. Patrick Beverly would be a great fit. It's really not a decision between Kyrie and losing everyone...which I believe you know, you for some reason are just choosing to be difficult here...in a thread YOU created to discuss the Bucks off-season.

No, Shaw is just fine. Give him time. Wins/losses are not that important right now. Yeah, they decided to stick with the guy who's put up ~8.5 WAR the last two years after he struggled and was banged up. It hasn't worked out.

Ok, if you watched the Brewers game tonight, then you can't say that you watched Santana and never noticed his defense being that bad! That was a comically bad play. I really don't know what he did. It was a LD to right-center and he ran in on it and not over far enough and ended up nowhere near the ball!

I won't advocate for Bauer because he literally stalked a girl on Twitter for 72 hours because she said something mildly mean about him in one Tweet. Bumgarner, I would understand if the dude was just a "fiery competitor", but it's not about "letting kids be kids" and letting "madbum be himself", he is literally pitching a fit because people on the diamond won't conform to imaginary rules that he has created in his own head. It's stupid, silly, and absolutely unnecessary. That doesn't make him a fiery competitor, it just makes him a super intolerable jerk who behaves like a red-assed immature baby. The other day Max Muncy hit a massive drive, LAID his bat down, took two walking steps, and Bumgarner was screaming at him to RUN, DONT WALK, until the cords on his neck were standing out, and the umpire had to get between him and Muncy. I mean......why?? Just to show everyone how fiery and awesome and what a protector of the game he is? What even is the point of that? If his feelings are that hurt by bat flips and guys watching homeruns, maybe he just needs some frickin anger management.... Yes, I know this. I made a reference to it in my post you quoted. I paraphrased, but that's what he essentially said about the Muncy situation. I just don't see this as being that rare. Pitchers are often clowns. I guess there have been a lot of pitchers that have set the bar pretty low for me. There's a lot of dog whistle talk that comes out of some of these guys mouths or just flat out calling out Latin American players for not playing "their game" the right way...or allowing them to come over there. But I was genuinely asking. Like I said, you do see some pretty openly racist stuff come from some of these guys, so I was curious if it was just a grown man playing a kids game and throwing a tantrum because someone didn't conform to their set of unwritten rules or if he had done other things. I understand if you think the temper itself is enough to call him a clown. I was just wondering if there was more to it that I hadn't heard.

That's one of those things you need to wait about 6 years at best to determine in baseball. A shortage of lefties doesn't mean you draft a bunch of lefties per say. Though if one from the SEC who strikes out 4 guys per inning falls to you, then OK. These drafts seem duller to me...they have the last few years at the time, but they've been far more productive than when they got flashy, higher upside young prep arms.

Or it could mean that it's taking more pitches for him to get through a few innings while he's struggled the last few outings? Most likely, it means both. They're limiting his innings and he'd be going another inning or two if he was getting through an inning on 12 pitches like he was earlier in the year.

Can you name a guy in this situation who's come back, pitched and not had a TJ surgery in the very near future?

You ever see John Rocker, Chris Carpenter, Curt Schilling? I don't know what the definition of "a lot" here is, but he's hardly rare that a pitcher throws a temper tantrum because of a perceived slight. Oh, Dallas Braden just came to mind. Carlos Zambrono. It's actually quite easy to think of pitches who act like clowns. Remember when Kenny Rodgers attacked a couple camera men? I seem to remember Papelbon in the middle of all types of nonsense.

Maybe pitchers should start showboating a bit more in the name of "just let the players play" and see how the batters react to it. The "hothead jerk" pitcher would then be cool and the ticked off batter would be a hothead? It would be interesting to see the double talk and hypocrisy of all the Bryce Harpers in the game. Bum is just what this team needs..... a starter who routinely throws a solid 6IP with some fire in his belly and ice water in his veins for late season baseball. Put him on a meaningful stage, ala Verlander, and his performance will get better as well. Well, Verlander's that rare pitcher that just doesn't seem to be slowing down. Bumgarner, I don't mind him all that much. I'm sure I'd feel the same way about him if he were a Cardinal that everyone else does, I just am kinda numb to the whole "unwritten rule," nonsense.

That's hard to say. My guess is that the closer will be the guy with the best ERA, which isn't CMart. Who's the other young guy who was probably more talented than Hicks? The name is escaping me at the moment, but I thought he was a guy coming back from TJ and was even younger than Hicks. Edit-NM, it was Reyes I was thinking of. I didn't realize how badly he was struggling in the minors this year.