Jopal78

With our without Yelich the Brewers still have only 3 games left against teams with a winning record, and a slew of games against last place clubs. Sure they’re not going to win the World Series, but I think the 2nd wild card is there for the taking and to have the Brewers make back to back play off appearances would be a real achievement

Well sports journalists aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer

Guess it depends. If they need to insert screws and wires into the bone fragments so they heal as one piece that’s much worse than a non-surgical fracture. Either way I think it’s non-weight bearing on the leg for 6 to 8 weeks minimum which means no lifting, running or working out

A fractured patella can be a pretty bad injury requiring immobilization until the bone heals. So Yelich is done for 2019 regardless

Broken knee cap

BA certainly made it sound cryptic. Until we hear otherwise, though, I'm going to assume its a bruise. Radio said Stearns will have statement on Yelich after the game. If it was just a contusion it doesn’t seem like they’d wait until after the game

Short of the Cubs winning the pennant the Cubs will part ways with Maddon after the 2019 season. On the surface its pretty unbelievable they'd consider dumping a manager who took them to four straight playoff appearances (probably/possibly 5), 2 NLCS, and 1 world series title. However.... virtually every member of the rotation and starting lineup has been to the All-Star game. They're second in total payroll (into the luxury tax), dumped a ton of money mid-season into the back end of the bullpen with Kimbrel, caught lightning in a bottle with Castellanos. They're 6th in the NL in runs scored, 3rd in runs allowed, yet only have the 5th best record in the NL. Epstein isn't going to take any heat yet, it is Joe Maddon who will pay the price for not meeting heightened expectations.

It's all water under the bridge at this point. Miller Park with countless luxury suites generates far more revenue for the owner than was possible at County Stadium. While it is true that some of that increased revenue flows into payroll, a substantial portion of that increased revenue flowed into Selig's pocket as well. So I don't really buy the narrative he's some altruistic fella obsessed with pro baseball being in Milwaukee. I will give him credit that his strong arm tactics as Commissioner played a role in new stadiums being built for teams: TEX, CLE, COL, AZ, SEA, SF, HOU, DET, PIT, MIL, CIN, PHI, SD, StL, WAS, NY AL, NY NL, MIN and MIA, mostly with tax payer funding.

If you can’t rely on Peralta, Burnes, Nelson, Faria, Jackson etc to get 7 outs with a five run lead against the worst team in the league what are they doing in the major league dig out

Having survived the Cubs and Astros going 6-3, the Brewers only have 3 games left against teams with winning records. Here is the remaining games left against winning teams for all remaining contenders: Brewers: 3 Cubs: 7 D'Backs 7 Mets: 10 Cardinals: 16 Phillies: 17 Nationals: 17 Unbelievably the door is open for the Brewers to get into the post season. While they have the most work to do outside of New York, they have the softest remaining schedule by far including 50% of their remaining games against last place teams. The problem now is can they buck a season long trend of poor play against last place teams.

Anybody who has lost confidence in the GM most likely has unrealistic expectations to begin with. Stearns knew the Brewers will never signed an elite SP when those players are getting $25+ million dollars a year. He also knew they can’t consistently compete with a rotation of mid-tier free agents and band aids. So he took a shot trying to break in 3 promising home grown starting pitchers. It was the correct move for the long run, but Burnes and Peralta didn’t get the job done. After getting next to nothing offensively at second and catcher last year, he dumped 28+ million dollars into Moustakas and Grandal. Those two players have earned every cent of their contracts. However, the decision to dump so much payroll into C and 2B, meant the GM didn’t have much room to maneuver with bringing in bullpen arms settling for low cost additions: Claudio and Wahl. Also useful players such as Lyles and Miley moves on because the money was spent elsewhere. Again at the time these moves looked good. Then Knebel tore his UCL, Wahl tore his ACL and Jeffress suffered the first of a multiple injuries. Nobody could predict three players the team was counting on to pitch innings for them going down with significant injuries. After Burnes and Peralta flamed out every member of the rotation also went to the DL at some point with injuries: Woodruff, Gonzalez, Anderson, Davies. With the exception of Houser the 8th, 9th 10th best starters in the organization simply weren’t good players . Then again no team in MLB is ten deep in starters. The only thing you can criticize Stearns for in 2019 is being too patient with his players. I can understand the optioning of Hiura in an attempt to finally get Shaw going at the plate. But they gave Nelson a shot after mediocre post-op minor league numbers. They gave Aguilar a couple hundred at bats to try to find his form. It’s actually somewhat shrewd for a small market team with limited payroll to be extremely patient with the talent before pulling the plug on someone. It’s a fair criticism that Stearns hasn’t gotten more out of his drafts especially with a top 5 pick under his belt. But that isn’t a new criticism or reason to lose confidence in September of 2019.

But isn't it the bad/losing teams that have given the Brewers problems this year? 1-2 v. Miami (48-88) 1-2 v. Seattle (58-81) 0-3 v. LA Angels (65-73) 0-3 v. Padres (64-73) Had they merely split those games against bottom of the barrel teams, they'd be in position for the wild card right now with a legit shot at the division. Accordingly, to suggest that they have a run in them yet this year because they play some weaker clubs ignores the facts. Outside of Pittsburgh they haven't played well against losing teams.

What you say makes perfect sense. But, even if we lose 3 of 4 to the Cubbies, it’s not over. If we lose 3 out of 4 to the Cubs it is definitely over. At that point you're 6 back (assuming we neither gain nor lose ground today which is a generous assumption given the matchups) with 20 to play. So then even if the Cubs stumble and finish like 10-10, which is unlikely, you're still needing to go 16-4 just to even tie. And that's assuming none of the other teams we are chasing get hot, we have several teams between us and the Cubs. That's just not happening. Just because something is mathematically possible doesn't make it realistic. It's Cubs series or bust. Its already over. The math says its possible, but reality says they're already playing out the string. If the Nationals go 13-13 over their final 26 they'd wind up at 90 wins. Brewers would need to go 20-5 to tie them. If the Cubs go just 13-12 over their final 25 they'd wind up at 87 wins. Brewers would need to go 17-8 to tie them. For a team that has played under .500 baseball across their last 89 games; expecting some kind of run at this point is the stuff of miracles. It is worth noting: for a team whose pitching staff has allowed more runs than all but 2 NL clubs while the offense has scored fewer runs than all but 5 NL teams, it is an achievement the team isn't at the bottom of the league in the standings. They have a chance to finish with a winning record this year, which would be three consecutive seasons with a winning record. That hasn't happened since Reagan was president.

Lyles is a useful pitcher, but if your goal is to be a contending club he is a player you cycle back to in January for depth. There’s no reason to give him an extension. The millions you sink into him now could very well be the difference between landing a difference making pitcher or not

Yeah, ineffective this year probably related to workload last year, but must not have assumed he was worth 4.3 million dollar club option in 2020.

Because being underpaid thus far in his contract doesn't mean that a team like the Brewers shouldn't try to avoid the inverse going forward? We won the first two years. Hooray! The Brewers don’t pay their own players to play against them with a different club. Jeromy Burnitz is the last player I can recall where they included cash to trade away his contract. That was under a different ownership group. Even shopping Cain with his contract is going to be a non-starter. So given the facts the Brewers don’t include cash to trade players, and nobody is taking that contract at full price. Cain isn’t going anywhere. The point of my earlier post, is Cain can fall off a cliff offensively and still put up a 2.0 WAR based on defensive prowess the next three years and the Brewers would have gotten great value from Cain for their money. Even if his hitting skills in fact go into age related decline, it would be atypical if his ability at running, catching and throwing also diminished

Play their cards right and pitch some stiffs like Jimmy Nelson and Suter coming off TJ and maybe just maybe they can get a top 15 draft pick in 2020

No young man without a crippling disease is going to have a script for Fentanyl especially in the era of the Opioid Crisis where the Federal government scrutinizes providers writing scripts for opioids.. People with laminectomies, knee replacements, amputations get Fentanyl. Not young otherwise healthy pro athletes. He partied too hard and probably was ignorant that opioids slow your respiration rate, and accidentally offed himself. Too bad, but fairly common in today’s world

If the season truly hung on the balance over the issue of Freitas not coming up, then they should probably fire Stearns...

My expectations were heightened after last year so I can't help being disappointed that this team ran out of gas back in July. However, when four of the five initial members of the rotation go on the DL, (Woodruff, Chacin, Davies, Burnes) two are then banished to the minor leagues for ineffectiveness (Burnes and Peralta) and two subsequent replacement arms for the rotation also go on the DL (Gonzalez and Anderson) along with a catastrophic injury to a high leverage reliever (Knebel) and ineffectiveness of the middle relief (Barnes, Jackson, Wilkerson, Williams, Alex Wilson, Burch Smith) I guess I'm sort of mad at myself for getting disappointed in the first place.

If 1 WAR is worth 8 million dollars (which I believe is the consensus from analytics folks) Cain was a 6.9 WAR player in 2019 (according to baseball reference) which at 8 million dollars per WAR comes out to 55 million dollars of value. This year Cain has a WAR of 2.1 (again at 8 million per WAR) comes out to 16.8 million in value. From that metric why would anyone shop Cain? He has delivered 72 million dollars in value while being paid 29 million dollars. While they wished Cain would have hit more this year, I'm sure the front office is fine Cain. Even in a decline he could remain a 2.0 WAR player just based on his defense. The only real downside to Cain's contract is the risk of injury and paying him to sit on the DL, and nobody can predict when injuries will strike.

All year the Brewers have been the worst team in hitting with the bases loaded and less than two outs. It seems 66% of the time they get nothing, and another 20% they get a run.

Deadline deal along with cash for PTBNL.

Someone help me understand the Freitas love around here? I see a 30 year old minor league journeyman catcher. He's been in AAA with 6 different organizations: Oakland, Baltimore, Cubs, Atlanta, Seattle, and Milwaukee. When he has gotten the call to the major leagues, he couldn't hit a lick in limited at bats .214/.270/.313. He was made available in the minor league portion of the Rule 5 draft once, he's been released once, and placed on waivers once. I get that he's on the 40 man roster so its easy to call him up and have a 3rd catcher for September, but am I missing something that this is a player who is supposed to have future potential??

Kind of hard to believe. In 316 games with the Reds he hit 50 homeruns, scored 170 runs and drove in 194, with an OPS of .837, well on his way to cashing in tens of millions of dollars in guaranteed money as a free agent after 2019. But now....he'll be looking at a one year prove it deal. terrible break for Gennett.