monty57

Baseball is a streaky game, and July is a long ways away, so anything we're looking at now is pure speculation. We could very well be either buyers or sellers at the deadline, but I doubt we'll go "all in" either way. If we "buy," it will probably be for a rental 1B/3B and/or some bullpen help. Nothing that would cost us any of our few viable prospects. If we "sell," it will probably be trading away someone like Brett Anderson for some minor leaguers. However, I could see us going more "all in" on a sell than on a buy, as someone is going to need a reliever, and we still have Josh Hader who could probably bring back a decent amount in a deadline trade to a desperate team. I doubt we'd do anything more radical than that, as Brewer management knows we have good, young pitching, so even if we're out of it this year, we should be competitive for the next few seasons.

I'd guess a lot of this has to do with injuries, but why is Counsell shifting the lineup so much? I'm not able to watch most games, so maybe this has been addressed by the announcers. We only have a few players who are hitting, so now that Yelich is back, it seems pretty obvious that Wong, Yelich, Garcia, and Narvaez should be the top four guys in your order every night (with Pina taking Narvaez's spot when he's catching). The big question is Garcia, who seems to be in a different spot every night, with him hitting 6th last night. After the top four, I can understand moving guys around, but it seems that the best way to score a few runs is to bunch your productive guys together at the top of the order.

I'm with you on this. OBP is supposed to have a higher correlation to runs scored than any other stat, and players could have an OBP well over .500 if they simply bunted the ball against the shift. Of course, when they start doing this the shift will quickly go away, allowing for the player to hit against a "standard" defense. But hitters won't bunt because they aren't compensated for that. Owners and GM's aren't giving big contracts to guys who do this, so players aren't going to do it. If GM's start paying players to bunt against the shift, players will start doing it. Additionally, the high fastball works best against uppercut, "launch angle" swings. I'd bet that if you put someone like A-Rod out there today, he'd hit just fine. Players can change their swing back to a more level swing just like they changed it to get more "launch angle." But again, they changed it because that's what GM's were paying them to do. If GM's start signing "line drive hitters" who make better contact, then players will adapt. As long as players get paid more to hit .200 with 30 HR then they do to get on base at a .400 clip, they will continue to work on an uppercut swing and not care about how much they strike out. Baseball is constantly changing. The worst thing that can happen is for the "governing body" to start making rules to try to force the game to go one direction. I think our current commissioner meddles too much already. Let the players continue to adapt. They will, and things will correct themselves naturally.

https://www.mlb.com/news/omar-narvaez-improving-with-new-batting-stance This was an article from late spring training regarding Narvaez, and how Haines visited both Narvaez and Garcia this summer to work on things after both had disappointing seasons in 2020. I had a thought that maybe there was a team-wide philosophy of changing players' stances/swings to create "launch angle," but this article wouldn't support that. Sounds like Haines had Narvaez stand more upright so he could see the ball better, not swing at as many pitches out of the strike zone, and make better contact. I found this while looking for a different article I remember reading where Narvaez was quoted as saying something along the lines of "last year I was trying to hit home runs, and I need to get back to just hitting the ball hard gap-to-gap." In other words, I went in looking for "proof" that Haines was telling his guys to use an uppercut swing to produce more home runs, but found the opposite. Narvaez seems to have fallen into that trap on his own, and Haines travelled to his (and Garcia's) home this offseason to fix things and get him to be more of the patient, line-drive hitter he was prior to 2020. Not definitive proof of anything, but it looks like Haines worked with at least two guys this summer, and they're our two best hitters so far this year after disappointing seasons last year.

It's certainly possible. The Brewers may be "leading the launch angle revolution" kind of like they had their pitchers throwing high heat before it became the norm. However, I'd think that would be an organizational philosophy, and not just the MLB hitting coach and that may be why he still has a job. He's doing what the "stat guys" think is the right thing to do. I agree with Warning Track Power and Fear the Chorizo's earlier posts regarding the effects "launch angle" has had on baseball, and personally hope that the Brewers lead the charge away from that philosophy, whether or not the "dead ball" remains. No hitters are becoming more common than triples.

I agree. They've swapped out some players, and if that doesn't work, it'll be time for the hitting coach to be on the chopping block. This offense was built under the assumption that guys like Yelich, Hiura, Cain, Narvaez, Garcia, etc. would put up good numbers. They haven't consistently done that, so our offense hasn't "clicked." It's possible that Haines is really bad at his job, and is giving them bad advice, but it's really the professional hitters' job to hit. They've "shaken things up" by sending Hiura to AAA, which is a pretty big move, so a "shake up" of firing Haines is probably next. But, we all knew that if Yelich, Hiura, Garcia, and Narvaez didn't bounce back from last year's numbers, the offense wouldn't be very good. It just seemed likely that some if not all of these guys should have bounce back seasons. So far, Garcia and Narvaez have, but Yelich has been hurt and Hiura has been abyssmal.

But I bet Yelich outhits Trout over the next 6-8 weeks (the expected timeframe that Trout will be on the IL). We're all frustrated, but it's probably not fair to slam someone for getting injured while playing baseball. Hopefully the Brewers can get & stay healthy and we get a better read on what we're working with. If Yelich hits like he should (All-Star level), then this offense very quickly looks much different. It is a head-scratcher that Haines still has a job. Coaching jobs aren't very stable in the best of times, and the Brewer offense has been down long enough that Haines should probably be worried about his job.

This 100%. The prospect of renting Trevor Story could approach the cost to acquire Nolan Arenado given the disparity in control/supposed albatross of a contract. Now imagine a healthy and return to form lineup that is inclusive of Yelich-Arenado in the 3-4 holes. I will assume the Brewers would have still signed Wong, not signed JBJ and may or may not have signed Shaw. Regardless, the potential to have had a lineup that included: Wong-Cain-Yelich-Arenado-Narvaez-Hiura-Garcia-Urias, while not significantly impacting the already depleted minor league system, would look a lot better than what they are running out there on May 18, 2021. Of course our lineup would look better with Arenado. No one would ever doubt that, as he's one of the best players in the game. There are, however, a lot of questions about assuming that Arenado coming to Milwaukee was an option. Whatever someone thinks of Stearns and/or Attanasio, you'd have to think that they're smart enough to realize that Arenado would be an upgrade for the team, and their pursuit of Turner shows that they were willing to "pay up" to acquire an upgrade. With that in mind, I have to believe that the Brewers at least asked about the availability of Arenado from the Rockies. I don't know what happened to cause the Rockies to send him to St Louis instead of another team, but I would be shocked if the Brewers didn't put some effort into acquiring Arenado. It could have been that the Rockies wouldn't put in enough money so the Brewers didn't have room in the budget, it could have been that Arenado refused to play in Milwaukee, it could have been that the Rockies liked St Louis' prospects better. It could have been a lot of things, but I think it's going way out on a limb to assume that Arenado could easily have been a Brewer and Stearns/Attanasio just didn't want him, or didn't want to give up scraps to get him.

I guess I'd question the "everything in their power" part of your comment. I really don't want to see them trade away the few prospects they have for a slightly higher chance to win this year. The Brewers have talent, and have a good shot at the playoffs this year, but who could they realistically get that would turn them into a World Series favorite in a league that has the Dodgers and Padres? If there is a player that could do that, what would it cost to get them? I'm all for looking for upgrades where we can get them, but I don't think the Brewers have the resources (in money or prospects) to make a "game changing" type of deal. Even if they did, I don't think it would be worth it for them to completely drain the farm or in any way put themselves in a position that a long rebuild would be necessary. It wouldn't seem that hard to find a "rental" at a corner IF spot to upgrade there, but then again, that was the biggest hole to fill this offseason and it's still gaping. We've struggled through a mountain of injuries this season, have had one of our best hitters forget how to hit, and have just generally seen a lot of things go wrong, and we're two games back in the division with a winning record. Our biggest "pickup" this year will probably come from our guys getting healthy. Beyond that, I don't expect any really big moves.

If you're looking at going over budget for a year, I think Attanasio has shown he will do that. If you're thinking of competing with the "big boys" for a top free agent at 10 years/$350+MM, we're going to be out. Signing a "monster" contract while already having Yelich on the team would mean that the ownership group would have to accept putting in millions of their own dollars in annually for years, or filling the rest of the team with pre-arby guys, of which we have a limited supply because our farm is horrible. No business owner anywhere is going to willfully set it up so that they are guaranteed to lose millions of dollars a year out of their own pocket for every year in the foreseeable future. I'll recant that a bit... the old Tigers' owner knew he was going to die, so he didn't care if he spent his money, but he left it up to his heirs to sort out the mess, and the Tigers have been bad since he died. But, he's dead so it doesn't bother him. Any business owner who doesn't plan on dying soon, and doesn't want to leave a mess for his family when he's gone, will not willfully set himself up in a situation where he will be guaranteed to lose millions of dollars annually for the foreseeable future. Yeah, I don’t think anyone foresees the 10-year/$350M deals (so I guess that throws out my dream car analogy), but what I’d be hopeful for is that if he believes we have a real good shot, that he’d increase payroll significantly for a few years to acquire key pieces that may be available for shorter term deals. Kind of like when we picked up Moose and Grandal, but maybe for 2-3 year deals. Of course, there needs to be players that would sign that type of deal within the next few seasons. Attanasio has shown to be open to "Moose/Grandal" type deals. I guess that's a pretty obvious since he signed the Moose and Grandal deals. He might have thought the JBJ signing was that type of deal, as JBJ waited out the market until the very end and "settled" for a short-term deal with the Brewers. Short-term deals have far less potential for harm for a team like the Brewers. Attanasio is a fan, and will sometimes spend like one, but he's a financial guy first and foremost, so he's not going to do something to jeopardize the long-term sustainability of the team. All-in-all, he's a pretty good owner. To keep with the analogy, he's probably the guy who will buy the used convertible without telling his wife. It's not a dream car, but it won't break their bank account, it's sexy, and it can be a lot of fun, but it might mean they have to cut corners elsewhere, so some of the players on the roster will be from the frozen dinner aisle.

Sheets got K's on high fastballs in the days when players had the "chop down at the ball to generate backspin" approach, making it more dangerous to throw high heat. Today, more pitchers throw high heat because players are hitting with more of an uppercut swing for "launch angle." Plus, as DHonks said, the umpires have a more uniform strike zone today, and they'll all call high strikes as strikes. I'd guess that you'll start to see more players change their approach to hit the high fastballs, and to account for the dramatic shifts in today's game. If the "dead ball" stays in the game, that will expedite this change as a lot of balls that would've been home runs are now easy flyouts. Baseball is constantly evolving. That's part of what makes it fun, and whether or not he was a pioneer, Sheets was a fun guy to watch play. I just wish the injury bug would've left him alone.

This is a good summary of my view better expressed than I did above. This analogy is good, but it’s missing one thing. There’s an assumption that you are looking for cars within your budget that would not deplete your savings or take away funds from other budget items. But let’s say there was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get your absolute rare dream car in this scenario. Now, you might decide that it’s worth it to eat into your savings or maybe you won’t take vacations for a few years while you pay off the dream car. That’s what we need Attanasio to do. I know it’s a big ask and extremely unlikely, but if he really believes there’s an opportunity to put together a team that really has a chance at winning a World Series in a few year window, I’m hoping he’d spend more than the normal budget and make that push. If you're looking at going over budget for a year, I think Attanasio has shown he will do that. If you're thinking of competing with the "big boys" for a top free agent at 10 years/$350+MM, we're going to be out. Signing a "monster" contract while already having Yelich on the team would mean that the ownership group would have to accept putting in millions of their own dollars in annually for years, or filling the rest of the team with pre-arby guys, of which we have a limited supply because our farm is horrible. No business owner anywhere is going to willfully set it up so that they are guaranteed to lose millions of dollars a year out of their own pocket for every year in the foreseeable future. I'll recant that a bit... the old Tigers' owner knew he was going to die, so he didn't care if he spent his money, but he left it up to his heirs to sort out the mess, and the Tigers have been bad since he died. But, he's dead so it doesn't bother him. Any business owner who doesn't plan on dying soon, and doesn't want to leave a mess for his family when he's gone, will not willfully set himself up in a situation where he will be guaranteed to lose millions of dollars annually for the foreseeable future.

Kind of a tough situation. Our farm is depleted, so our likely offensive help there is not coming for a while, as it's probably going to be Mitchell replacing Cain when he leaves, and Turang replacing Wong when he leaves. We could trade away pitching (Ashby, Small, Kelly), but they're the guys you hope fill in and eventually replace our current MLB pitching. Maybe, just maybe if these guys turn out, then we'll have "excess pitching" and be able to trade Woodruff for a king's ransom in his final year before free agency, and if we don't go crazy spending trying to "win now," then we might have some money to extend Burnes for a couple of extra years. I get the urge to "strike while the iron's hot," but I really don't want to see us turn our depleted farm into a barren wasteland. We need to have more talent on the farm, not less. At the very least, we need to wait to see how the Yelich situation goes. He's really the key to our offense, so we need to get him back at 100% and see where we stand before we do anything else.

I mean, yes, that's absolutely correct. And I'm fine with that approach. I'm ok with our franchise not committing to the 35+ years of players. I mentioned when Yelich was still under his previous deal that I would have been fine with trading him for a haul with 2 years left on his deal. But it has to be a consistent philosophy to say "yes we can afford to do that" or "no we cannot". You can't give Yelich 7/190 with 3 years left before his previous deal even expires and then say "no we just can't afford 7/150 for Nolan". Yes you can. That's like saying you can't buy a car with a $1,500 monthly payment and then say "no we just can't afford a second car with another $1,500 payment." Maybe your budget only allows one bigger car payment, so any other vehicles have to be less expensive cars with smaller payments. By extending Yelich, Stearns has to leave the Mercedes dealership and shop at the Hyundai lot, where you can find the new Sogard or Vogelbach model. The Brewers are already on the hook for Yelich's contract. That is going to affect their finances until the contract is off the books. That doesn't mean they won't have any money to spend, but it does mean that they will have to be more limited financially than they would have been had they not extended Yelich. There are always risks involved when you are committing to guaranteed payments over an extended period. For the Brewers, with a more limited payroll than some other teams, the risks are magnified. That's why an injury to Yelich or someone like Hiura falling off a cliff derails the Brewers, while an injury or bad year from a Dodgers player isn't nearly as cumbersome.

I think Bradley became more necessary when Cain said his exercise regime over the past year has been "mostly chasing after his kids." That's proven itself out so far in that Cain has missed most of Spring Training and most of the season with various injuries, not to mention all the time Yelich has missed. Bringing in Bradley to cover for the possibility that Cain wouldn't be effective and/or that Garcia wouldn't rebound made some sense. That Bradley has hit far worse than he has ever hit in his career probably wasn't something Stearns could/should have foreseen.

We have three straight playoff appearances, and have one of the best records in the NL at the time of this post. We can argue whether we should have won as many games as we have over the past 3+ seasons, but here we are. If we assume that we have won games because we do have some talent on the roster, than we should look at how long we will retain that talent. The only free agents we're losing after this season are Brett Anderson, Travis Shaw, Brad Boxberger, Manny Pina, and Jordan Zimmerman, with Garcia's option likely not being picked up and Bradley possibly opting out of his contract. Everyone we're losing should be easily replaceable, so we are highly unlikely to "tear it down" this season or next season. So, when is a "tear down" possible? I'd say the closest possible timeframe would be after 2023 or 2024, because all of Woodruff, Burnes, Houser and Peralta (and Lauer if that matters) will be free agents after 2024, and Hader is a FA after 2023. I would guess that if the Brewers really wanted to "tear it down" and start trading away players at the 2023 deadline and/or offseason before 2024, they could rebuild their farm pretty quickly by trading away the aforementioned talent. Plus, the only eight figure contract we have on the books past 2022 is Yelich, so we should have plenty of financial flexibility for whatever path Stearns wants to take. I wish we had a better farm system, as small market teams need that, and of course I wish we had even more talent than we have... who doesn't? However, I don't think the future is quite as dark as you believe it to be. We should have really good pitching for at least three more years after this one, and that's a strong base on which to build some playoff runs.

Incentivize players to change their swing to hit more home runs, with K's being a necessary result, and then introduce a "dead ball" so that many of those home runs turn into easy fly outs. The result is the 2021 baseball season. How many no-hitters will we see? I think Stearns was trying to be ahead of the curve by looking for high-OBP / contact hitters. They should be hurt much less by a dead ball than the "launch angle" guys will be. Pair that with good pitching and defense, and you can win on a low budget. Of course, they don't help anything when they're watching the games while riding out an IL stint.

Yeah, most of my life has been spent wondering if we had anyone good enough to trade away at the deadline, and wondering when (if ever) we'd finally see another Brewer team with a record over .500. It's nice to finally be able to expect playoffs every year, but there's always reasons to complain. We're a small revenue team, so there are always going to be holes. I'm glad that our strengths outweigh our weaknesses, so we're winning more than we're losing. I think that this offseason, Stearns was looking for a team with a better approach at the plate. I hope that eventually plays out, as watching guys strike out isn't all that fun, but we won't know until the M*A*S*H unit that is the Brewers gets healthy. That they've been able to win in spite of all the injuries is kind of amazing.

When you have young, cost controlled pitchers who are performing at a high level why would you spend big money in that area? I think it's more about what we have than what his tendencies are. Stearns became GM of the Brewers on Sept 21, 2015. How long have we had young, cost controlled pitchers? The 2016 staff consisted of Matt Garza (32), Zach Davies (23), Jimmy Nelson (27), Chase Anderson (28), Junior Guerra (31), and Wily Peralta (27). Not the worst staff in Brewers history, but I wouldn't say they were "young and performing at a high level." This is Stearns' sixth full season as the Brewers' GM. He's been here long enough that he should get the credit and/or blame for the makeup of the Brewers' system top-to-bottom. I'm glad Stearns has built a team with "young, cost controlled pitchers who are performing at a high level" so that we don't have to spend big money there. Maybe if we keep finding and developing young pitching, we will be able to trade away some good MLB arms when they're nearing FA without taking a big step backwards.

In a year in which the Brewers have been besieged with injuries, I'm surprised that so many people would give up one of our regulars for nothing, even if the player in question isn't performing that well.

Hiura has had 683 PAs at the major league level. He was great in the first 348, and not-so-great in the last 335, which included the crazy season of 2020. It's way too early to give up on him, but I'm glad they're sending him to the minors to figure things out. I hope they take as much time as he needs, and don't rush him back before he's ready.

It's hard to know exactly what's best for a young "top prospect," but I think that if anything the Brewers are guilty of giving too much "leash" to their top prospects. Players are always learning, and most guys don't hit the ground running. It's common to have growing pains, and there is nothing wrong with sending young guys back to the minors to figure things out. Once he's figured things out, he can come back up as a better player. Keeping a young player in the majors just because they are/were a heralded prospect and were named the "starter" can be worse for a player's long-term career than simply letting him work things out in the minors. This isn't a permanent move. Hopefully Keston can get some pressure-free time in the minors and come back as the player we all know he can be.

Bradley's career line (including the small sample from this year) is .237 avg / .319 OBP / .409 SLG / .728 OPS, good for -10.7 fWAR for Offense and 47.1 fWAR for defense. He is hitting .190/.256/.304/.560 for the Brewers, so they probably expected better offense than they have received in his first 86 plate appearances, but as the WAR numbers show, he was almost certainly brought in for his fielding more than his hitting. You don't bring in a guy with 3,300 career PAs and a -10.7 offensive WAR and positive 47.1 defensive WAR for his bat. Just a guess, but when Cain said his off year workout regimen was "mostly chasing after the kids," and then he had some injury issues in spring training, the Brewers probably figured they needed some insurance. They had some money to spend, so they figured they'd spend it on a guy with a better resume than "some guy" they could get for 1/13th the price of Bradley. In addition to this, they did pick up "some guys" in Fischer, McKinney and Reyes who were cheap, "lightning in a bottle" types. With all the injuries they've had this year, I'm glad that Stearns had the foresight to stock up on OFs. We've needed a lot of them. Hopefully Yelich and Cain get healthy and take the playing time away from the backups. Then we can have a debate over whether we're getting "bang for the buck" out of our starting OFs. You don't provide any "bang" from the IL.

As a team, the Brewers have scored the 5th most runs in the National League. How is that a below average offense? Is it because they are not scoring runs the Earl Weaver way, via the 3-run HR? They have good pitching, probably the best defense in baseball (even with Hiura/Vogelbach at 1B and Wong and Cain missing time due to injuries), and have scored the 5th most runs in the NL. That's why they're in first place. As to the point of the thread, which is our outfield and how they are playing vs what they're being paid, I agree that we aren't getting enough out of them. Of course, we have played most of the season with at least 2/3 of our projected starters on the injured list. Many argued when Cain was signed that the last few seasons would be overpays, and that's probably what's going to happen this year. Bradley was likely signed because of concerns over Cain. They need to figure out what's wrong with Yelich and get him back on the field.

Yeah, it stinks that we ended up getting nothing for Davis, who had a pretty good career with Oakland (7.7 bWAR, 6.2fWAR). Sometimes you win with "proven-for-prospect" trades (Peralta for Lind) and sometimes you lose. I had high hopes for Nottingham, and wish him the best of luck, but Narvaez and Pina are clearly the better players right now for the Brewers.