HarveysWBs

He can’t hurt it, that much seems clear.

Trade value going up by the minute!

Not Donnie Hart! And now Jackson just lowered his ERA by like 4 whole runs! Who else can I reverse jinx? Yelich and Hader have plateaued. Braun and Cain are washed up. Shaw and Burnes will only be AAAA players going forward. Woodruff is a flash in the pan. Nelson will never throw another pitch in the majors again. Arica stinks on both sides of the ball. Hiura will only make us miss Weeks even more. Knebel will return next year and never regain any semblance of control, especially of his off-speed pitches. Stearns will win a World Series with the Mets in the next 5 years. We’ll fire Counsell in the next two years and he’ll win Jeter a championship in Miami. Did I forget anyone?

I am stunned at how frequently AAA results has absolutely zero bearing on major-league success, especially for our pitchers. And it goes both ways! Hader and Burnes had horrible numbers in AAA (granted, it was Colorado) and were good when called up. All these guys we shuffle back and forth from AAA have great numbers on the farm, and then they all seem to blow chunks when they come up. It’s astounding.

The chamber is empty, the last torpedo has been fired, we’ve sounded the depths of this depth chart and found it lacking. Two years ago, I wrote a post about how the Brewers’ theory of roster construction was depth over everything, especially concerning the pitching staff. I never imagined that a team with really only one really major pitching injury (Knebel) could still blow through all this depth and have no answers. I’m not calling for anyone’s jobs, though—last season has bought everyone (save perhaps Hook) a mulligan in my eyes. The fans will always have a serious knowledge problem in terms of evaluating management and coaching performances anyway, since most of the work of the job is done behind closed doors, so I find the “fire x and y” rants to be pretty worthless anyway. But, even assuming this season is slipping away, the hot seats have got to be piping hot going into next year. A gift like Yelich is a horrible thing to waste with the same old inability to find good pitching.

Morosi stirs the pot, as is his wont: https://www.mlb.com/news/noah-syndergaard-trade-possibilities I find it hard to believe this is in any way likely, but we aren’t too far removed from Stearns having the reputation of a man who zigs when expected to zag, so I suppose anything is possible. The linked article states that, according to the infamous unnamed sources, the Brewers are “monitoring” Syndergaard, which presumably means—well, that’s unclear. Brewers have had scouts at his starts, perhaps? Or they’ve called to express interest, as intimated by the article? Morosi’s tea leaves are murkier than I would find palatable if it were my cup I was staring at, but it’s interesting nonetheless. This gets me thinking about what it would take to land him. The headline itself suggests a king’s ransom, and that is to be expected. The Mets are the Mets of lore for good reason, and it’s easy to start playing the fantasy game of wondering just how poor a trade that organization could make. Peralta, Arcia, Turang...? Surely such a blunder would get their GM fired, and he’s in hot enough water already. By any objective standard, those three don’t approach 2/3’s of Thor’s value, and at least another high-end prospect would be required—Ray at minimum, no doubt, and the Mets would want another pitcher, too. Steep, indeed, and a painful subtraction from the team’s future. But the legitimacy of a Syndergaard-Woodruff pairing going into any potential playoff series is quite tantalizing, no?

I don’t understand all this talk about who you would rather be. People talk like the Brewers are a moribund franchise. They have a few holes after some things didn’t pan out this year. But apart from Braun, there are no albatross contracts on the roster. Players can bounce back or grow, and some holes can be addressed in the offseason. The Cardinals, meanwhile, have some bad contracts and haven’t been strong contenders for years, despite all our mental scarring about them being the boogeyman. For the rest of the division, it is rather silly to remove this topic from context—which is what it took to get where all these teams are now. The Cubs are looking like paper tigers, and sure, they won their title, but now they are saddled by a litany of questionable contracts, especially for pitchers. We talk about the spending advantage of the Cubs, but big deals to Hayward and Darvish especially look like handicaps not advantages. All of this brings me to my main point: the Cubs’ success—and the talent, such as it is, of the Reds and Pirates—owe mainly to years of absolutely woeful products on the field during prolonged rebuilds. This is the most important context which the “who would you rather be right now?” question ignores. I’d rather not be a fan of a franchise that milks the fan base for years while not even trying to field a competitive club, all while lying about how it was the only way to build a contender. And we know it is a lie, because we saw the proof in 2017 and 2018. The Brewers/Stearns method, call it an abbreviated tear down, or accelerated rebuild, or “not putting limits on the team” kept the lean years to a minimum, netted an MVP caliber player and the most wins in the league last year. I’d much rather see that than the hell the Cubs, Reds, and Pirates fans lived under recently. Put me down as still being proud of these Brewers. I wouldn’t be nearly as proud of any of those other clubs, and it isn’t even close.

The park is just so small the camera can’t zoom out far enough to provide context. He’s doing his best.

Watching the Brewer pitching staff struggle this year (and especially this past month) got me thinking, and I’m interested in a little informal poll about a hypothetical: if Jimmy Nelson never slides back into first base, then: A) the Brewers win a pennant in 2018 B) the Brewers win a title in 2018 C) the Brewers still come up short of hardware in 2018 Rationally, I get the whole randomness of baseball, and you can’t really repeat something like a baseball season, even hypothetically, in the way I’m imagining. If Nelson is an ace and healthy that probably changes a lot of decisions made by the brass last year, and who knows what happens as a result. But assuming all other things being equal, I have to think Nelson starting a couple games in that NLCS tips the scales to Milwaukee in what otherwise was as dead-even as a seven-game series can be. Put me down for A, though, because the Red Sox looked pretty tough last year.

Just because Hiura isn't going to fix every problem on the team doesn't mean you don't let him come in and fix one that he likely can. —YES! Especially when that solution is practically free! We can argue all day about what will help win more games, improving the pitching or the hitting, but getting better pitchers is going to be hugely expensive at this point. Getting a better hitter in the lineup was only a plane ride away for the last month. If Hiura isn’t an above-average regular in the lineup this year, i’ll be disappointed. But if I was a gambling man, I’d just about wager this month’s mortgage payment that he will hit better than either Shaw or Perez’s OPS+ going forward, and that’s probably good enough to give the Brewers a +1 or 2 in the win column. Why can’t we all just be excited for that?

Wooo for batting the pitcher 8th!

Great squeeze play!

Really? You must be seeing something I'm not then. The Brewers are certainly not a top-notch defensive squad with Moose at 2B, but I haven't seen any concerning issues defensively. Play around with the table here https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2019-standard-fielding.shtml to see what I mean. The Crew is average this year in terms of fielding percentage (Moose has the 2nd most errors, if one puts stock in that kind of stat) but most of the advanced metrics look brutal for our team defense. You can even tab over to the 2018 figures to compare with last year’s stellar effort. I really think team defense is a huge missing ingredient this year, and deserves more attention.

I was about to type that a real 2B would make that play, but I could see Hiura putting that throw to the backstop, too. While all the headlines go to pitching issues, defense is quietly poisoning this season.

If you walk an American League pitcher, he should get to go to second. That was sad. (Yes, I know Leake spent a lot of time in the NL, still inexcusable)

Still plenty of time. On June 30th of last year, the Dodgers were 43-39. A couple pitchers and hitters progressing towards the mean and the team won’t look so wobbly. Time to get it in gear.

And the Dodgers didn’t even go on to win. We lost to the losers. The more distance I get from last year, the more I think the 2018 Crew was even less than a fart in the wind. So much optimism and hope from September on. Now I see cruelty and tenuousness. I need a beer. Or a winning streak. Maybe both?

Your daily reminder that the young man is down on the farm doing heavy chores: last night’ doubleheader (conclusion of a suspended game) saw Hiura go 4-8 overall with a bomb, 4 RBIs, and two walks.

Considering where this series started, a satisfying split. Let’s hope that was bottom and it’s all rebound from here, as opposed to a dead cat bounce...

He needs to come up. No reason to delay the hiura era. No reason Shaw still only went 1-4. Hiura partisans maintain the high ground.

I would like to amend my previous statement. The entire Reds roster may be, upon further review, trash.

Who is this #21 fellow? Do we have a player by that number that hits bombs? I can’t recall.

I’ll say this for the Reds: their team is still trash even after what must have been a soul-crushing, scorched-earth rebuild, but they have some arms now, so that’s cool.

I appreciate the optimism but I don't see the comparison to Houston. They had an outstanding farm and numerous young pieces. We don't. To make explicit what I hoped could be read between the lines (see “I know the comparison is far too pat...”) yes, of course, the comparison between Mil and Hou should not be read as me saying the Brewers are destined to be a league-wide juggernaut like Houston. Naturally, the Astros have sevral organizational advantages, owing to not just their status as a slightly larger media market, but also their scorched-earth rebuild (which, by the way, I am not jealous of, and despite the title which I deeply crave, I’d oppose such a strategy by Milwaukee on general principle. Years of intentionally wretched baseball is morally reprehensible, and I’d always be a bit embarrassed as a fan if I in any way supported it, even if a title acted as a post-coital cigarette. And if that imagery crosses the line for our user conduct, I apologize). My point was simply that teams don’t always develop in straight trajectories. A few underwhelming weeks should not cause anyone to look at a team with legitimate title hopes as suddenly being without a short-term window of opportunity. I see no reason to start playing for five to ten years down the line and punting the present. It sounds like some are contemplating such an action, and I disagree with the wisdom of that. That is all.