coolhandluke121

I think it's strange to put so much emphasis on who's a starter and who's a reliever considering the Brewers are at or near the forefront of a bullpen revolution, extracting the most possible wins out of a rather unspectacular roster by using great relievers more often and in higher leverage situations. It's doubly strange now that we're so close to September call-ups and bullpen starts, which are what got the Brewers back in the race after an epic mid-season collapse last year. Miley or Woodruff, honestly don't think it matters. They might only need/get 3-4 innings anyway, especially once they finish their west coast trip. You could even let match-ups dictate which one "starts" on any given turn, depending on the opposing lineup's splits.

The only thing I kind of disagree with is the "pretty happy" thing. I think people should be ecstatic considering where this club and farm system were when he got the job. His success rate on moves and non-moves is unbelievable. I compared it to Ted Williams hitting .406 - it just doesn't make sense to ask if he's getting a "free pass" for the times he wasn't successful. Of course you're going to make some outs, but holy cow. It also seems like people are acting like the team would be better off if they had gotten their way. Like, "OMG I would have kept Scooter, what a terrible decision!!" Yeah, and what else would those people have done? Would the team have Aguilar, Thames, Shaw, Jeffress, Chacin, Cain, Yelich, Peralta, and Guerra? Think of all the trades he's made, all the other players he could have chosen to trade instead, and all the other prospects he could have acquired instead of the ones he did. Think of all the other prospects he could have traded for Yelich, instead of the ones whose value has plummeted since the trade. It's amazing that he got so much value out of those trades. Now do the same exercise with his free agents, like Chacin, Thames, Jeffress, Albers, and Cain. Out of all the myriad possibilities, he literally chose some of the best values on the entire market and otherwise stayed out of it. It's downright incredible. I guess I don't see the point of being at all unhappy with him. Ted Williams surely chased a bad pitch and struck out a few times when he hit .406, but it would have been obnoxious to complain about him.

They deserve a lot of credit for getting anywhere near the playoffs considering where they were 2 years ago at this time. You* don't deserve a good team if you let this kind of excellence turn you into a complainer instead of appreciating it. That's called being spoiled. *Generic "you". Not necessarily directed at you.

When a guy hits that many ground balls and is still on pace for nearly 3,000 hits after this many years in the majors, you probably have to dig a little deeper into the batted ball stats. He has a great swing, hits to all fields, hits LHP's well, and seemingly hits grounders a little harder than average. He seems to have excellent command of his bat and I think he's a sustainable ~.300 hitter despite his high GB%. Big difference between a professional slap/spray hitter from the old school like him and an RHB who grounds out to SS every other time he comes to the plate.

Nuh uh, not falling for it this time. I actually do think he's probably still going to regress a fair amount this year.

.547 OPS with bases loaded, only 14/15 this year in the NL, can't be historically bad. AZ only has a .519 OPS You're right, not historically bad - but bad and a huge reason why the offense struggles. 0.547 OPS basically means the whole team turns into 2018 Arcia at the plate when the bases are juiced. Yelich and Phillips both have bases-loaded triples in the last 10 days. And I doubt very many teams have good stats with the bases loaded. You often end up facing a really good reliever in that situation, and even if you're not, your best hitters are often the ones on base which means you might be slightly more likely to be at the bottom of the order by the time you get them loaded. That inning sucked though, no doubt.

With a slightly above average QB instead of Rodgers the Packers are basically the Lions over that time frame. Rodgers has covered up a lot of ineptitude with the Packers. He is so great he can will a bad team into the playoffs and even win a playoff game or two, that doesn't make McCarthy a good coach. Melvin inherited a better situation than McCarthy and Thompson, even with Rodgers. A GOAT QB is the most important single position in team sports, but there are over 50 guys on a football team and the Packers had little else at the time. Meanwhile the Brewers had spent 10 years accumulating one of the best minor league systems this century, with some decent veteran assets at the ML level as well (Hall, Jenkins, Cirillo, Overbay, Posednik, Doug Davis, Kolb, Sheets, Turnbow, Capuano). They should have averaged 90 wins for about 7-10 years, but they squandered it with impulsive moves and were little better than .500 overall during what should have been a long window of contention. And what do we get for it? Not only did we have to suffer with one infuriating, under-achieving Brewers team after another, but we have to listen to the b.s. narrative that Melvin and Mark A. "brought respectability back to Milwaukee by making the playoffs twice" forever besides. Makes me want to puke.

That doesn't explain why he might have lost some power. It doesn't even attempt to. A lot of his batted ball peripherals are very similar to 2017. If everyone figured him out, his other peripherals would be worse. He's just not driving the ball at all. It's like he's trying to turn himself into a singles hitter. Could be statistically insignificant or there could be some explanation. It wouldn't be the first time a guy was at risk of losing his position and tried to change his approach, doing more harm than good in the process. I wouldn't be surprised if he realized he was striking out too much and tried to make more contact, but merely compromised his power without actually improving his k%. Or maybe he got a little complacent in the off season and didn't come to camp strong. Or maybe he wanted to get a little lighter and faster, like I initially suggested. His bad defense in RF was the 2nd-most discussed Domingo topic this off season, right behind trying to trade him. I'm pretty sure he heard that talk, and he did turn himself into a much better defender from what we saw. Any one of those explanations is plausible, but saying everyone just figured him out is kind of lazy and not supported by evidence.

I should certainly hope so. He's already made the correct decision in so many moves and non-moves that it's mind-boggling. He gets more hits in 6 months than most gm's get in 3 years, and he's not exactly working with a stacked deck. Love the complainers who see a gm basically doing the equivalent of hitting .400 and decide it's time to whine about the outs he makes though.

Santana was surprisingly good in the field this year. I almost wonder if he slimmed down a little and sacrificed power to improve range in response to all the criticism and trade rumors. But he's always going to be up and down, like Corey Hart. I think guys that tall often have holes in their swing because the strike zone is bigger when you're tall. It's not that he's a free-swinger - he has a good eye at the plate - but he's still going to strike out a lot. I don't like Braun but he is a little better than his stats this year and I think Santana/Braun is pretty close to a wash. Santana's availability is better though, which as others have mentioned is obviously the issue with Braun. But if neither of them is going to hit ~.775+, you may as well have Broxton and Phillips on the 25. Cross your fingers and put Thames in RF or LF a few times a week and pull him for defense when it's time to PH too. When the alternative is Broxton or Phillips, it's probably pretty close to a wash and playing time should be determined by match-ups and ballparks.

There is more pitching now, but the Brewers were still able to get guys like Greinke, Sabathia, and Marcum with their "2nd-tier" position prospects. So if it just comes down to wanting Stearns to make more win-now moves, I don't think it matters whether you're talking about pitching prospects or position players. If anything, the fact that the current farm system is more balanced is all the more reason to stand pat unless you get an opportunity that you can't pass up - like not being real enthusiastic (speculation of course, but very plausible) about your #1 prospect and then being able to trade him for Christian Yelich. Those teams wouldn't have been able to get enough pitching to field a contender without some trades or free agents, but this team could address most of their holes from within if they're just patient.

They weren't top heavy at all. There were plenty of prospects of the Burnes/Arcia caliber but they were overshadowed. Also, the Brewers traded a lot of them away and a lot of them didn't pan out, but there's surely a lot of prospects who won't pan out in the current system as well. Calling the current system deep and that system top heavy is a bit like calling the Brewers' current rotation deep and calling last year's Dodgers' starting rotation top heavy. It's not like those Dodgers didn't have plenty of pitching depth too.

Not a chance. Thanks for contributing! That viewpoint is compelling. Eh, he's right. Fielder, Braun, Weeks, Hart, Hardy and Gallardo were all better prospects than nearly anyone the Brewers have had since. If it seems like that era didn't have the same depth, it's only because they had so much blue-chip talent that the other prospects were afterthoughts in comparison. La Porta, Gamel, Manny Parra, Lucroy, Escobar, Brantley, Cain, Odorizzi, and Lawrie were pretty good prospects too. That was one of the best minor league systems any team has built this century, and they did an absolutely terrible job with it. All their short-sighted moves resulted in just a few playoff appearances and roughly a .500 overall record in the first decade of the Mark A era. That's horrible considering how much talent they inherited. They should have won 85-90 nearly every year for 10 years, with a few better years thrown in and maybe a couple random 78-win hard luck years. But all their short-sighted trades destroyed their depth, and they ended up with a stars and scrubs team nearly every single year - even in 2011. They have a stars and scrubs team now, but the difference is that they're not going to lock themselves into having that type of team for 7-8 of the next 10 years just to patch some of the holes now, when they can eventually patch nearly all of the holes with players under team control for years.

There's still plenty of inconsequential players on the 40. I'm not worried about the rule 5 draft at all. And Ted Thompson's strategy was correct; he just didn't execute it well because of scouting deficiencies. Stearns has the right strategy and is executing it incredibly well. I'm obsessed with sports and especially the personnel side of it, and off the top of my head the only team in my lifetime that has consistently gotten more incredible value for their payroll and assets is the Spurs. These guys obviously don't have the same lengthy track record, but the percentage of decisively successful moves (and prudent non-moves) they've won is absurd. It's like playing hearts against the windows 96 A.I. and shooting the moon every 3rd hand.

Whether through tanking in the early 2000's or the brilliant bargain bin talent-mining of the last few years, the Brewers have built an extremely bright future twice this century. There's something profoundly ironic about anyone suggesting that mortgaging that future to make the playoffs about half as often as you probably should with that kind of foundation is what would make the gm truly brilliant. Because trading away the future for rentals is so shrewd and it gives you a huge advantage over teams who haven't thought of that strategy, right?

Yep. The armchair quarterbacking is unreal. What's really laughable about it is that you just know you could look through the posting history of the people criticizing him and the team wouldn't be even close to this good if they got their way. But they're definitely right this time. Whatever.

Yes. "Wow, he's due to throw it right down the middle. I shall close my eyes and swing!"

I was kidding about getting him for his bat. I'll be glad when every Saladino, Perez, Sogard, Miller, and Orf goes the way of the Taylor Jungmanns and Michael Blazeks of the world, but it takes time.

And another one tonight. You meant two, right? They got him for his bat.

He'll be gone as soon as the Brewers have a better option. It's going to take a little time to replace all the bad players on the team, but they will. It's a shame because he could have been a good utility player if he'd take a pitch, but everyone figured him out after 2016 and he hasn't adjusted at all. It's kind of embarrassing.

Agree completely. A few other wild card contenders have played 100 games and some of them will be able to play the same game, but the depth of this bullpen is nuts - especially with Burnes in there and Albers on the way back. I wouldn't be surprised if getting to those September bullpen games and having Burnes with low mileage so he can go 2-3 innings at a time is part of the plan. They did a great job with bullpen starts last year.

Counsell hasn't worked many miracles lately. I can only assume he's having some sort of mental breakdown, and I sincerely hope his family can get him the help he needs.

Really disappointing. Love the guy and think he's a little underrated by many. This was probably a factor in some of his recent struggles, but now for years we'll have to hear how his e.r.a. was almost 5 even though he was a very steady, consistent #5 for almost all of his time with the Brewers. His bat and glove were good enough to be factors in his value as well. Count me in for Woodruff or even Burnes, but I think they'll go with Miley and that's okay too. I'm a little worried about Davies' health, not to mention the fact that he actually deserves some of the excessive criticism that Suter often got for not having "good stuff". I don't expect Nelson back, and I'm going to need a bigger barf bucket if it's Wilkerson. They've been getting by with some smoke and mirrors in the rotation most of the year and it's catching up to them. Just hang in there and don't do anything stupid. Get to those bullpen games in September and they'll have an advantage over the other wild card contenders. They almost caught up in the wild card chase in September last year after a similar nightmare stretch, and this year I think they get over the hump.

The starters aren't very good and the defense is a big part of their success. Another factor that I haven't seen mentioned as often is the amount of inherited runners the bullpen strands. However, doesn't that just show how important having some of your best pitchers in the bullpen really is? Leverage innings count for a lot. The fact that they can have so much success with mediocre starters doesn't mean they have to start Burnes or Hader. If anything, it's vindication of the way they're using some of their most talented arms. Guys like Jennings, Barnes, and Williams are somewhat predictably coming back to earth and I want them to continue to have a superb bullpen. It's been a huge part of their success. They're a strong playoff contender and it's okay to use a few guys in the way that likely helps them the most now, especially if it minimizes the stress on their arms while they develop. The downside is valid, but not nearly as big as some people are making it out to be.

Ted Williams' career OBP = .482. Is he getting a free pass despite making an out over 50% of the time he came to the plate?