HarveysWBs

Sweep the Dodgers and hold them to four runs in three games, most of that Ohtani? Sign me all the way up. Brewers better be careful, or they’ll play themselves into full-on go for it position…

0-4 no more! Atta boy, Chourio!

Fantastic work by Megill. It is all right there, now. Frelick on 2nd, 2-3-4 in the order to get him in. Let’s get the sweep!

Nah, Miz should go.

Heck. Yeah.

Not a fan of Ohtani’s antics on pitches that are just off the inside corner. Kinda dramatic, but I’ll admit my tolerance for shenanigans is low for someone who is supposed to be on baseball Rushmore someday.

If we’re shopping at the Diamondbacks store, Josh Naylor would sure be nice, but that isn’t happening. This probably isn’t the year to take a big shot anyway.

@markedman5 had the list above, and it is equally stunning and troubling. The 2nd most pitches were by deGrom, who has 50. Miz has 18 already, good for 7th all-time. At this pace, he’ll be halfway to 2nd after his next start, meaning the rate at which he is going is practically unprecedented. We’d all be thrilled with a deGrom outcome, obviously, but he tore his UCL during his first year in the minors, came back and was a stud for the next decade, and then needed another Tommy John in 2023. That feels like the absolute ceiling for Miz, but that elbow has to be the world’s most high-stakes game of Jack-in-the-box at this point. Considering the Brewers don’t offer stud pitchers second contracts under normal circumstances (Peralta and Ashby got deals before they really showed their true form, Woody got a make-good deal after injury), plus the real possibility of finishing ROY taking away a year of team control, and it just seems like the value clock is racing almost as fast as he climbs that chart of most pitches over 101. To be clear, I hate having to think like this. I wish we could play the game like the Dodgers, using the IL to stash injured superstar arms left and right while we bide time to get them back for another pennant run, but we can’t operate that way. The team needs to maximize value, and I suspect the most likely way to do that is to trade him before injury and while he has the most number of cost-controlled years. I’m equally convinced that that will never happen in a million years, so I’m left with just hoping he beats the odds. I’m over the moon at how he’s started, after all that’s said and done. He will struggle at some point, of course, but he could be as good as it gets, and having him wear the Brewers uniform for several years is still a dream come true.

The sakura, or cherry blossom tree, is revered in Japan not just for its beauty, but for its poignancy. Blooming for at most only two weeks every year, they are cherished while in full flower, as picnickers and revelers bask in the fleeting glory and ponder their own mortality. I thought of this as soon as Miz got the call and is already in the top 10 in all-time number of pitches over 101 mph. Such things are not meant to last. The human body is not designed to throw like he is throwing a baseball, and if he keeps doing this, his arm will inevitably fail, and likely sooner rather than later. But just like one cannot bid the cherry blossoms to cease their unfolding, one would not tell such a rare talent as Misiorowski not to pitch. In a vacuum, the only logical thing for the Brewers to do would be to trade him, probably as soon as this winter. I don’t think such a pitching asset—so much talent over so many cost-controlled years—has ever hit the market, and the return would probably be astronomical. What could the franchise become after a trade like that? The mind fairly boggles. But, of course, the average fan would hate the organization for that, maybe for a generation, and I see no way of explaining the move to even the clubhouse, much less the fan base. So instead, I suppose the brass and the fans alike have to hope against hope for eternal springtime, willing the blossoms to cling to their branches, at least for a few hundred innings. But what a sight those precious few years promise to be!

So can we just skip ahead to when we’ve got the surprise hot NL wildcard team (idk, maybe the Giants this year?) at home in a game 3 and Megill holding a slim lead with two on and two out? Because at this point, I’m not sure our Brewers know how to tell a different story…

Yeah, his sub.700 ops would certainly fit in nicely. In all seriousness, I always liked him too, until he went to them.

Just got done coaching a little league game and wasn’t watching. Any idea what Mis did to himself? NVM, just saw the above—thanks all.

The answer has been out there all along: the guy who never should have left.

It is pretty early to be doing postmortems and all that, but if we’re in the mood and you want my .02 (and even if you don’t, then too bad, we all sidled up to the same digital bar and that has consequences), I, for one, happen to think it would not be the absolute worst thing in the world for this season to be a small step backwards. For one, we’ve enjoyed quite a bit of recent regular season success, and it is a bit unreasonable to think that it would continue unabated indefinitely. Progress, as they say, is not linear. But more importantly, there is no reason to think the brass would see a down year as a reason to radically tear down and rebuild. In fact, scuffling in the first half would be a good excuse to flip a few temporary resources for either major league help, prospects, or both. I think one could make the case that the future looks brighter starting in 2026, with position player reinforcements on the way and healthier pitching (Woody notwithstanding), than this year’s outlook seems. A quick infusion of even more minor league talent to strengthen the pipeline or stock up on trade ammo may be just what the team needs to build momentum into a better contention window. So I’m not stressing this at all. As long as the young core does not sustain career-altering injuries of some kind, it’s all kinda gravy to me this year. But I’m the guy who predicted 90 wins, so what do I know?

So, welcome back, Jaire! Maybe you’ll clear 50% participation rate this year…

I know it’s the Browns, so of course they did this, but at some point, how can the franchise make the same mistake over and over and over again without learning anything? Manziel? Mayfield (who became serviceable elsewhere but was fairly immature coming out of college)? Watson? Now Sanders? Just being a starting QB in the NFL is enough of a circus already, choosing to add extra drama is just an unforced error, and they keep doing it to themselves. It’s insane.

Sounds like Sorrell can rush inside or outside, which is a helpful trait. I wonder if Sawyer would have been the pick there if still available. I have no opinion on the matter, just a curiosity.

Guess I’m pregaming with Maalox this year. This is shaping up to be a lot of open receivers turning into 50/50 catch propositions.

Yeah, having a worse drop rate than Wicks—11.8%!—is not exactly confidence-inspiring, is it? Makes me wonder what they want him to do that we can’t try with existing personnel. I don’t know, guess we’ll find out.

So much for liking the WR room. Message delivered: we’re going to have tryouts, because the passing offense wasn’t good enough.

They’re the kid brother who finally got a taste of big bro’s Schlitz last year, and now they think they’re big man on campus.

I’ve wanted Green Bay to try power football, running identity and aggressive defense pretty much ever since Rodgers started to slide. Hafley is certainly more aggressive than our usual fare on that side of the ball (leaving aside the part about the player quality he is working with, draft capital aside), and now they’re clearly finding some big fellas to play on the line, which is also a step in the right direction. But I was hoping to see moves that close the gap between 11 wins and 14. I’m not sure Belton was it, at least for this year.

This is usually my thought, too. If the guys who make the lists that tell everybody what is a “reach” were even mostly right about these things, they’d be in the war room, not the studio or their basement talking to fans. Reaches no doubt happen, but I suspect they aren’t nearly as common as the media trains one to think—teams probably have good reason to suspect a player they like isn’t going to make it back to them.

They’re not giving the bag to both Walker and Tom, so a major investment in the O-line makes sense in a better a year early than late sort of way. But I hope both Morgan and Belton contribute this year, since we’re in a state of “urgency” per our GM. The time for impact is right now.

On the whole “Packers don’t draft well” narrative, the eye test to me concurs with those who say Gute has gotten solid value after round 1, but hasn’t found very many stars, particularly with his first round picks. But, then again, the Packers often pick in the bottom third, so parsing this thing out would have to boil down to comparing the pack’s 1st round success rate to other teams that consistently pick at the end of rounds: KC, SF, maybe BUF? Would there be a better way to settle it than this?