SeaBass

Small caveat, the Brewers have still only played 39 games while the Dodgers have played 42. Most other teams in MLB have played 3 to 4 more games than they have. No other team in MLB is below 40 games played and that was before games were played yesterday (when the Brewers had only played 38 games). So I like the Brewers' runs allowed stat but there's likely going to be more runs in those 3 to 4 extra games they need to catch up to most other teams. Though I am in favor of them pitching a bunch of shutouts too!

All true. It just wasn't my angle, it was more a comment on the general sentiment that people around the internet are already talking about Miz having future arm issues and he hasn't even played a full major league season yet. Anecdotally this doesn't feel normal, when guys are rookies and just establishing themselves it's rarely about their heath unless they've already gone through some type of serious injury, it's about their performance. For fans on a Brewers message board it does make sense to talk about it because the conversations are revolving around possible extension and whether that is the best way to go. I guess it comes with the territory when you have a player pushing the envelope of expected high end production. Right now guys like Miz are unicorns. Remains to be seen if more and more players start living in the 100 to 105 mph range like he and a handful of others do.

This is fair. I guess I'm mostly thinking in Brewers terms of letting a pitcher approach free agency and then trading him, not necessarily in the "they need to sign this guy to an extension" frame of mind. Whatever happens will happen. In general I just get annoyed at flippant comments where commenters (I'm thinking like comments on twitter or on youtube highlights) just say, oh he's going to blow out his arm doing that. Sure, that happens a lot to pitchers. I'm just not so sure that Miz is super duper extra susceptible to injury than other power pitchers. He could get injured in his next start (knock wood) and that wouldn't really change my mind on the thinking process behind it. In the end, when I watch him pitch I'm not thinking, this guy is going to blow his arm out. I'm thinking, this is really cool I'm glad he's on our team.

So I had a bit of a back and forth with Google's AI chatbot. Take that for what you will, it's certainly not science. I asked (after several previous questions): AI response:

I see comments all over the internet about Miz's arm blowing out. My question is, is he any more likely to be injured than any other pitcher simply because he has about 3 to 5 MPH extra on his fastball than other top pitchers? Are people just as obsessed over how soon Paul Skenes is going to blow out his arm? I feel like I really don't hear that about him. Pitchers are injury risks, I'm not really sure Miz is that much more of an injury risk than any other guy.

Because they saw him as expendable. McManus is a known quantity, there's no mystery there. Keeping him around to compete when they know exactly what he brings doesn't accomplish much. I get that people are saying if he's expendable now then he was expendable before. Sure. I guess in their eyes he was more expendable now than he was before. Does it really have to be deeper than that? I really think folks need to get past the million dollar bonus and looking for deeper meaning. It doesn't mean anything. They fulfilled a contractual obligation and did so willingly. If the salary cap is $300 million it represents 0.33% of their cap allowance. That's like giving someone 1 dollar out of the 300 dollars you have in your wallet. It's pocket change.

Boy I just love hindsight analysis. Warm and fuzzy feelings. I can just imagine the Packers cutting McManus to save a million dollars that absolutely nobody cares about except as an opportunity to criticize. Then draft night comes and the Packers trade into the 5th round or just simply use a 5th round pick on the kicker they now absolutely MUST take. I mean, by the holy power of hindsight we know the Packers really wanted Smack. Yeah, the internet wouldn't have anything to say about that at all I'm sure. The reality is the million dollars means nothing at all, except to McManus. The Packers weren't forced to take a kicker and could operate however they wished without the extra stress of being just one kicker deep on the roster. It's almost like the decision makers here act with intention instead of a hope and a prayer.

On both occasions (keeping him, then cutting him later) they made what they felt was the best choice in that moment.

Looking at Montas' career numbers I'd say the Brewers got what they expected from him. A near replacement level starting pitcher to fill a spot in their rotation. Likely they hoped for him to perform a little above that but it looks like he did about as expected. Would I call it a huge win? No but I think it fulfilled their expectations. They got exactly the player they traded for.

I have zero regret over Joey Wiemer. Good for him for maybe turning it around with his 4th organization. Maybe. We'll see how the season goes. He had to land with a team that was going to give him playing time in the first place and that team was the one he's now on. Montas was pretty much a replacement level guy as a Brewer. Meh. Junis has been fine but is also on his 4th team in the last 4 seasons. If the Brewers had wanted Wiemer back as recently as this offseason they could have had him at the cost of a waiver claim. (EDIT: Washington very likely had higher priority, so the Brewers would have had to work out a nominal return to Miami in a trade.) Jakob Junis signed with Texas as a free agent so he was available too. So nothing was lost. They're just guys going through the MLB roster churn.

I have no knowledge of the existence of these older magnets or how to find them but aren't these types of freebies typically sponsored? Wouldn't that eliminate the cost on the Brewers side of things?

Yeah, if he just adds something to his game other than the value of hitting singles and his low K% he becomes a more attractive option, adding several somethings is even better. Having the gift to hit like he hits with nothing behind it is kind of sad in general (other than that he's still making millions of dollars to play a game) so I hope for his sake he can keep it up.

I thought this was a fun/interesting article about Luis Arraez on FanGraphs today. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/luis-arraez-is-good-at-defense-now/ I think Arraez is an interesting player to check in on every once in a while, I had briefly talked about him a bit in a recent game thread, not really much conversation there but it's kind of fun to see an article presented where he's actually being praised for his defense. I don't really know how many of you feel about Arraez as he naturally doesn't come up as a topic often here but I imagine he probably doesn't have a lot of fans on this site.

Joey Ortiz: 38 OPS+ Blake Perkins: 22 OPS+ Brutal. And in insane world, Greg Jones is rocking a cool (as in ice cold) negative 34 OPS+. I didn't actually know it was possible to have a negative OPS+. Only 18 plate appearances to be fair.

Yes! Just having speed/baserunning and the ability to draw walks significantly ups the value! He was just a better hitter too.