long ball

All the way to Lake Michigan!

I’ve thought about it quite a bit recently and I don’t think the Brewers will offer Bauers the QO. He’s been massively important this year and it will sting to lose him, but I’m operating under the assumption he will sign elsewhere. it will be very interesting to see how the Brewers address Megill, Vaughn, and Contreras. All 3 have been important contributors and are entering their final year of team control. If we make a World Series run or heck win it, that probably lends more toward running it back with at least 2 of these guys. If we lose in the NLCS or earlier, it’s probably business as usual and at least 2 of these guys are traded. mitchell is obviously the other guy. He’s been quite good this year in his first healthy campaign. We have enough at bats to go with a 4 man outfield group of Chourio, Lara, Mitchell, and Frelick but I totally understand the concept of hoping to entice a team into giving up some long piece(s) for him given his injury history. You could include Frelick in this bucket too, but since he will be coming off his worst year in the bigs I don’t see an acceptable trade package coming our way so it makes sense to hope he bounces back next year. We don’t have a ton of OF depth at the high minors, but maybe the Brewers move off of Mitchell and try to add a more potent corner OF bat and slide Frelick into more of a 4th OF role. ortiz is another interesting guy. Huge second half turn around at the plate to where he’s nearly league average offensively on the year. If I had to guess today, our infield to start the year looks a lot like it does now with Hamilton, Pratt, and Ortiz manning 3b and SS. A Made extension would certainly change the equation here though. Otherwise I see Made as a May/June call up. woodruff would be interesting to bring back, but I don’t think they can or should commit much money to him. If he wants to re-sign here for under $5m, I think I’d be good with that if he comes out of this rehab in good shape. Baddoo, Wilson, may, Romero, and Senzatela are unlikely to be re-signed. I could see them bringing Sánchez back if they decide to trade Contreras. zerpa is the most interesting non-tender decision. Looks like grant Anderson will be arb1 next year, and I think we will retain his option so he seems like a perfectly reasonable 7th man in the pen and should be tendered. Zastryzny is a non-tender.

Win enough games to secure a bye. 1 or 2 seed, I’m pretty indifferent on. Ideally Hall, Romero, and Senzatela continue to get high leverage appearances. See what we have in them a playoff role. figure out a role for Gasser, May, Harrison, Drohan, and even Sproat. Where do they fit in the playoff pitching picture? Get guys maintenance days. Get as much rest for the high leverage bullpen arms as possible. Hopefully no more 3 appearances in 4 days type thing (the off days will help ). At this point I think I’d let guys like Ortiz, Pratt, and Lara take any pivotal at bats they’re set up for rather than pinch hitting. a .500 record down the stretch against a pretty soft schedule should be sufficient for a bye.

A lot of things didn’t go our way in the first 8 innings, but just about everything that could go well did go well after the Kelly 2 rbi double. -Murph pulled Megill who wasn’t good, but also didn’t want to run him into the ground once the lead was given up. -trusted Hall to come in against Crow-Armstrong and he absolutely delivered. Keeping it at a 2 run deficit was huge given the shape of the cubs pen. -Yelich battling back for a PH single -Chourio tank -Mitchell with the throw and Hamilton with the tag -frelicks bloop finding the grass in no-man’s land -Lara getting the pep talk and delivering the game winner after having a pretty rough game at the plate. If any of those 5-6 things didn’t go right, we probably lose. Tonight those things went our way and it was so fun to experience.

This is where I’m at. I wouldn’t advocate for trying to “manipulate” our playoff opponent like you sometimes see down the stretch of the NBA regular season, but I’m indifferent on the 1-2 seed. I am holding out slight hope for 100 wins just because it would be really cool, but we obviously shouldn’t go balls to the wall chasing that.

I don’t know how to even look this up, but anecdotally… it feels like Murphy uses his best pitchers more than Counsell did. Murphy will chase wins when we are down 1-2 runs. This might partially be the result of different personnel though. More good pitchers and/or better hitters. now this says nothing about the underlying metrics, but it feels like winning a few games Counsell would’ve conceded in the 6th inning while still holding onto the same number of leads is enough to push the team from low 90s to mid-upper 90s wins.

I hate ring culture. Im 36, so maybe some other posters can verify if it’s always been a thing or if it’s mostly stemmed from the Michael Jordan vs Lebron James debate that’s basically been had since lebron was in high school. the fragility of the baby boomer/gen x sports commentators trying to protect the legacy and supremacy of Michael Jordan from anyone coming from the next generation feels like it’s the root of this. And then the millenial generation heard the “embrace debate” era of ESPN and now the ring culture has overrun all sports discourse online. It’s miserable.

Twist the knife tonight. We’ve done the bare minimum of what we needed to do in these 7 head to head games. Everything else will be about seeding, but since I live in the Chicago area, it’s extra sweet when we beat the cubs.

Hell ya

I’m not worried about the division race. We have very little to worry about regarding that. however, we are lined up to pitch Misiorowski against a possible playoff opponent twice over the next week. Since we are doing that, I have the added desire to walk away with a win. Same goes for Henderson tomorrow/next week.

Wilson’s injury probably saved Grant Anderson from getting optioned.

Holmes is probably the Cubs best SP. so pitching matchup, this is probably the toughest one. Getting this game would help calm my nerves a little even though it’s pretty irrational to be worried about the cubs at this point.

Last inning Smoltz was Saying Our Pen Was Over worked) but depending how you feel about the Workload of Patrick. I actually think Our pen usage has been fine other than Ashby

I get bears pre season football. (I'm watching on MLB tv)

I would be shocked if brought up anyone not currently on the 40 man. im guessing we will make at least 2-3 roster moves with the pitching staff in September. Other than Romero and Uribe, I strongly suspect we will see at least one outing for Crow or Sproat in September. Spencer mentioned on the BF pod that the Brewers could gain an extra year of control for Naylor if he gets less than 10ish days of service the rest of the way. Now I’m not sure the Brewers care THAT much about Naylors service time, but it’s worth mentioning at least. Naylor and Lockridge are really the only guys who make sense based on the current active roster.

At the very least it gave some of us fans a sigh of relief.

This is actually a pretty sobering cautionary tale for our current SP group. not that all of our current SP are flame throwers, but we have a bunch of pre-arb SP who are contributing at the big league level now and are under team control for at least another 4 full seasons. It would be probably foolish to expect Misiorowski, Henderson, Harrison, and Priester all to be contributing members to the rotation in 2029 and 2030. (I left out gasser and Drohan since they’re a little older already)

Assuming we make the NLDS, we will need 4 starters/bulk arms and May is clearly one of those guys. I’m not sure I would’ve considered him that before we acquired him, but he’s certainly looked it in his first two outings for us. here’s to hoping the pitching group stays healthy and can continue to get extra days of rest down the stretch. harrison feels a bit like Priester last year. We as fans felt pretty good about him as a playoff starter all year… until we didn’t. Let’s hope he looks like early season Harrison heading into the playoffs.

Obviously I have no idea what the clubhouse was like in the past or is like this year. We’ve heard the brewers have a “no ******* policy”. I haven’t necessarily noticed what you’ve noticed, but my theory would be that they’re not getting too high or too low during the regular season. They haven’t had the long winning streaks like last season. They haven’t been particularly “hot” either. They’ve just stayed incredibly consistent, winning 2/3 in a series 4-5 games a week. So they haven’t had the emotional highs and lows since they’ve just been consistently good all year. I’m sure svuem could tell us their best and worst stretches of the year, but it “feels” like there haven’t been any bad stretches and have only been a few “hot” streaks. just win.

Obviously could include the bigger names like Contreras and megill on this list too. I think it depends how this season and post season play out. If we go to the World Series or hell, win it, it’s going to be a very poor look for fan engagement to trade any of the major contributors. also with the CBA negotiations looming, who knows how active the trade market will be. Especially if things get delayed all the way till February/March. I’ll add one note on grant anderson since he’s probably the least interesting player mentioned here, if he retains that option (haven’t checked to see how long he spent in AAA) then there’s no reason to offload him. He’s a perfect guy to have in the pen in that role. Reasonably effective in low leverage, can fake it in medium leverage, has an option, and most importantly seemingly has a rubber arm.

So I’ve sorta been operating under the assumption that Bauers would be in line for a similar deal to what Ohearn hit last off season which was about 2 years for $30m. Similar age, position, handedness, spotty track record. However, if Bauers maintains this the final 5 weeks of the season he’s going to have a notably better walk year. Even if we work under the parameters of 2 years for $30ish… I might prefer the 1 year commitment of the qualifying offer. so I almost think you offer it hoping he takes it and you don’t have to commits to a multi year deal with him. sf70 makes a valid point, you don’t want to be trotting out a line up of 50% first and second year players. You need some stability.

Ya... I'm kinda thinking if Ortiz is going to end up on the IL, Adams makes sense if they think j he can handle third base for a few weeks.

Especially if its a matchup against the Phillies. Wheeler, Sanchez and luzardo is certainly pretty scary in any playoff series let alone a 3 gamrry

Have a chance to win the series with Misiorowski going tomorrow. Facing the rookie from Tomah. picked up a game on the cubs and Braves already. Hopefully the dodgers too. good night.

I think people get a little too worked up about the ABS stuff with Sánchez. I agree with you though.