coolhandluke121

The problem with all those guys isn't that they came and went, it's that the Bucks thought they were worth building around in the first place. There's so much happening in basketball that doesn't show up in a box score, and it's much harder to see than in baseball for example. Guys who score can make an offense worse by not taking good shots, guys who are good one-on-one defenders can make a defense worse by not rotating off the ball, and guys who get more rebounds than average can make your team rebounding worse by not boxing out. These are things that the people in charge of the Bucks have no understood for years, and that's why they always sucked despite having some prospects who many people thought would be good. Another big issue is motor. Two guys can have the exact same stats and remarkable skills, but one guy can be 10x more valuable than the other because of what he's doing on plays that don't result in stats for him (rotating to impede a guard's progress to the basket, even though it's not his man, screening a guy two passes ahead of an easy layup that only the scorer and passer get credit for, boxing out so someone else can get a rebound, constantly moving off the ball to keep defenses off balance, etc). Look at Cousins and Towns compared to KG and Duncan, for example. Two stupid, lazy players who will never amount to anything compared to a lot of other guys with similar numbers. There should be no concern whatsoever about Giannis being a flash in the pan.

Schoop career vs LHP: 693 OPS Hernan career vs LHP: 737 OPS All that tells us is that the Brewers understand basic splits. And Schoop is about 60 points better against RHP's than LHP's for his career. Assuming there is nothing physically wrong with Schoop, a Schoop/Perez platoon makes a lot more sense than paying an aging, mediocre guy about the same money you'd have to give Schoop. Is Schoop ideal? No. But I think he's one of the better bets out there. If he had played so badly for 2.5 months for some other team and was a free agent right now, I bet a lot of people would be advocating a 1/$10m contract for him as a strong bounce-back candidate, but the sting of choking so bad for the Brewers probably changes the calculus for some people.

Other than Moustakas, I would rather just take a chance on a Schoop/Hernan platoon for another year. Schoop has the reverse splits (60 OPS points better against RHP's for his career) and Hernan is good against LHP's. Moustakas will get more as long as he doesn't overplay his hand. He doesn't have the qualifying offer hanging over his head and he's still a pretty good player. I think he gets about 3/$30m with an option.

Really kind of odd that Moose would turn down a 1/15 option from us if his market really is 2/16. Unless he just already knew we weren't going to exercise 1/15 from our end either. They had Moose at 5/85 last year, so they really whiffed that one. There was the rumored 3/45 offer early in FA that was turned down, but of course Boras is going to deny that after the way things played out. I expect another long winter for Moose. No inside info here obviously, but I tend to believe the rumors that there was a decent offer early in free agency and they turned it down. There was some money early on in free agency, and a few teams could have used him. He eventually signed for a much worse deal after teams realized how much of a buyer's market it was and the money dried up. It's probably a fallacy to think his current deal was "market value" last off season. It's more likely that he rejected a market value deal and was left holding the bag. And as you said, Boras is very good at keeping things like that under wraps. Also, lest we forget, the compensatory pick was a huge deterrent for any team interested in his services, and that's not there now. I have a very hard time believing a consistent ~110 OPS 3B with solid defense who just turned 30 will have to settle for 2/$16m.

I was real big on less innings for starters and more innings for relievers last off season. I called it piggy-backing because I thought that's what it meant when you plan to pull your starter early for a long reliever, but I guess some people consider piggy-backing to be set rotation tandems, which is a little too inflexible. So I don't advocate piggy-backing per se, but the general idea is there. This would require "starters" to pitch on 4 days rest more often. Obviously you lose innings overall when you ask a guy to pitch more games (a starter can easily go 150, but a closer can barely do half of that), but you can make up the difference and then some by having long relievers give longer outings. Most relievers are under-utilized because frequent short innings are inefficient. There's too much manipulating of late game match-ups because of dogma and irrationality, but not enough manipulation of early and mid game leverage situations. Many more long relievers could go one time through the order and maybe a little more without much loss of effectiveness - especially if half your bullpen is full of serviceable or promising starters. And the Brewers have enough guys with options to make it work. So yeah, I think something vaguely resembling piggy-backing could be on the way. I think there's enough evidence suggesting it could work. It will happen slowly and experimentally at first but will catch on eventually. You get to PH for your starter more, manipulate outings more to avoid bad match-ups (I've always hated how often an LHP starter has to face a great RHB lineup just because it's his turn in the rotation, for example), and of course avoid that third time through the order.

I like it. Not worth it for that money. Maybe it's just past tense because he's talking about a year that's over. Christian Yelich could say "in 2017 I was a Marlin and in 2018 I was a Brewer" and it wouldn't raise any eyebrows just because he didn't add "and I still am".

Coles resigned, he wasn't fired. The Brewers, it seems, would have brought him back. In this piece for The Athletic, there's a quote from a prospective candidate for the hitting coach position: “I don’t know, man,” said the potential candidate. “He’s a good hitting coach. Good hitting coaches don’t get up and leave without a legit reason.” Could very well be that he deemed a number of players on the Brewers too hard to coach and didn't want to be blamed for their bad plate discipline anymore.

I think it speaks to the value of not over-committing. Braun's age and no-trade clause are a problem. There's so much value in having a chance at an all-star on a 1-year deal. That's where Schoop and Moustakas could be huge. Schoop in particular just turned 27. I think we need to be more than a few days removed from the disappointment of a few terrible months when it mattered most before we can all be totally objective there. I think he'll be a Brewer unless they can trade him for something of non-negligible value. And that's coming from one of the most vocal critics of the trade, who's hardly criticized any personnel move they've made in 2 years.

If it was based on career years only, Schoop could make $25m next season and it would still be an easy choice to keep him. Sogard was terrible his whole career and then had one good year. Schoop has had multiple seasons to justify keeping him. The problem is that his most recent one was so bad, but he just turned 27 and his only other bad year was at 22. Really it's the people saying there's no way they should keep him who are basing everything on one year.

Huge difference between KC and Milwaukee in OPS. Moustakas recently set a KC record with 38 hr's. Journeymen can do that in Miller Park. That doesn't completely invalidate your point, but the years of salary and the fact that outfielders are easier to replace should make it easy to see why someone can simultaneously want Moustakas and not want Braun. Moustakas also has been healthy.

I'd rather just keep Schoop that pay anything remotely close to that to a much older player on a multiyear deal. A lot of the guys available aren't even much better than Schoop for their careers, and could go full Neil Walker at any moment now. Granted, some of them are less streaky, but I think the idea that Stearns hates free-swingers is a little overstated - they got Cain and Yelich because they're much better players than anyone they had, not simply because they were less strikeout-prone. The fact that they acquired Moustakas and Schoop at the trade deadline and kept Santana on the playoff rosters shows that they're just trying to acquire the best talent possible. Schoop just turned 27. That's right around the age when guys like Gomez and Segura turned it around after being every bit as bad as Schoop (arguably much worse) for most of their careers. I don't really like players like Schoop and I hated the trade because they had Shaw, Perez, and Villar at 2b, but with Moustakas likely gone and Shaw moving back to 3B full time, I think keeping Schoop and hoping for the best is almost a no-brainer.

The market is very different right now than it was then. You can't just divorce the player's production from the context like that. It was a weird time where a lot of teams couldn't even find a 1B who could OPS .850 with a mediocre OBP and shaky defense. Usually those guys are a dime a dozen, but for whatever reason teams like the Brewers had to play guys like Alex Gonzalez and Yuniesky Betancourt at 1B for a while there. At his age, his value is more comparable to Logan Morrison or Lucas Duda last winter. Logan got $5.5m with a $1m buyout. Duda got $3.5m. A lot of teams were reluctant to even give them that kind of money, let alone give up prospects on top of that. No reason to think a trade that happened 3 years ago would be more relevant than those transactions in setting the market. For this reason, and because they lack a LHB 1B/RF option (should have kept Choi), I expect Thames to be back next year.

He's about as good a 5 hitter as anyone on the team against LHP's. They all chase junk pitches. They're all free swingers. But not a lot of them are bad against LHP's so Hernan was often there by default.

There's not a reliable 3-hole of clean-up hitter on the team right now. There are lots of guys who have looked up to the task for maybe half of the time over their last 2 seasons, but most of them are short of even that standard. I suppose you could make a case for Aguilar seizing the spot again, but it's hard to reconcile what he did in the first half with what he did in the 2nd half and for 10 years in the minor leagues. The problem is, it's not easy to find an upgrade, and it's not like they'd be the only team hitting 5/6 guys in the 3/4 spots. They'd be one of the only contenders doing so though. Choi may have been better than any of them this year.

I hated Gomez. He was just immature, and his enthusiasm would lead to dumb stuff that hurt the team. Big difference between that and just being excited and demonstrative. He completely lost me when he tried to start a fight with Gerrit Cole over a being cursed out, but Cole was walking away and Gomez deserved to be cursed out anway for admiring a triple instead of turning it into what would have been an easy inside-the-park home run. He was a punk. Still is. No control over his impulses. I agree about Puig. Bad social sense, but not malicious or unstable.

I think next year will be pretty similar to this one, both in terms of success and in terms of who's involved. It's harder to improve on 96 wins than 86 wins. It's harder to improve on a 3 WAR player than a 1 WAR player, because it's so rare to get a guy like Cain or Yelich at a reasonable price. They like to wait for good values and they don't have tunnel vision with regard to needs, because needs change so fast. 1 or 2 vets might be traded, but they won't trade all the guys who might not be part of their long-term plans (Anderson, Davies, Thames, Broxton, Santana, Hernan) because offers won't be that great and because they value the depth they provide. Some of the young guys will break through, but not all of them. They value the ability to stash a lot of depth at AAA, as they should. I don't think they'll want to commit to multi-year deals in free agency, but they'll be interested in 1-year deals. For this reason, I think there's a decent chance they keep Schoop and Soria. A better option may not be available on a 1-year deal. So I'm just going to predict that it's basically the exact same 40-man roster next year except for Moustakas, Gonzalez, Miley, and Granderson (Dubon, Nelson, Stokes, Supak?). I know it won't be, but I think that's a realistic way to maximize my percentage of roster spots guessed correctly.

Having so many guys with options helps a lot. I wouldn't expect a dramatic overhaul next year. They will preserve their depth and give guys like Davies and Anderson multiple starts. They will stash some talented players in AAA. They may treat Burnes and Woodruff the way the Dodgers treated Buehler this year, knowing they wanted to limit his innings but have him strong for the stretch run. I predict there will be lots of frustration with making some of the young guys wait again next year, but I think it will prove wise in the long run because it will limit everyone's workload and be a hedge against injury. They won't trade Anderson or Davies unless it's likely to be a pretty good trade IMO.

The same Ryan Braun that we are now stuck with? Not sure I want to go that route again, would rather revisit this idea in a couple years rather than make that comittment this early. They aren't stuck with him because of the extension, which was a good decision. They are stuck with him because they foolishly held on to him way too long.

Jansen's cutter is murder on LHB's. I think RHB's actually hit him better. So CC saved Granderson for that. Damn.

Don’t cry because it’s over, Smile because it happened! <3 Salt the earth with their remains.

I hope you are right and this isn't a big season to remember. The only way that happens if if this team makes multiple playoff appearances and World Series appearances in the next 5-6 years. If that doesn't happen, I sure as heck am going to remember this as a great season regardless of what happens tonight. This season has been the most fun I've even had watching this team. Winning the division in Game 163 on that great run was pretty awesome. But I don’t care how great the ride was, losing in the NLCS is just not something to celebrate 10 even 5 years down the road. Yeah you will remember it, but surely not that much. I mean no one even mentions the 2011 team these days unless it was about how it has almost been a decade since we did anything. Man, I will just remember it because it was so fun. That's it. I didn't have nearly as much fun in 2011, for example. Part of me just had more trouble rooting for that team, what with Roenicke at the helm and some bad defense and the stars-and-scrubs formula and a higher payroll than this one, with a farm that had been decimated and most of the best players near the end of their primes.

I is ready for that.

I've never been a big Aguilar guy at all and I bit my tongue a lot during his hot streak, but you have to be realistic. He's going to get another chance to prove himself and he deserves it. I think the lesson here is a lot of maintenance and rest and a rigorous off season conditioning program, because he hit the wall months ago. Still pushes a few over the wall thanks to raw strength and keeps his numbers from sinking too low, but any mediocre 1B should be able to do that. If you soft-platoon Aguilar and Thames enough, maybe you can keep them both sharp and finally get a full season of solid production from 1B.

Again, LHB's had an OPS under .600 against him this year. That's literally better than Hader's OPS against RHB's. You also have to take in account recent trends as well. But he's a LOOGY, so recent trends for a month are less than what a starter sees in a day. A few ground ball hits skews those numbers to the extreme.

Obviously. The division he creates among Brewer fans alone should be a clue.