Brock Beauchamp

On March 13th, 2022, Brewer Fan became Brewer Fanatic. We have a lot to celebrate; join us! Brewer Fan was a well-established site that catered to the best and brightest of Brewers fans, offering insight and coverage - particularly minor league coverage - you couldn’t find anywhere else. Our goal was only to accentuate the best attributes of that community and enrich it with new features, more visibility, and additional Brewers coverage. Nine months later, we couldn’t be happier with the results. We have a long way to go, but 2023 looks like a fantastic year for both the site and the Brewers. Let’s get to the numbers! From that day in March through New Year’s Eve, 304 new users joined us to discuss the Milwaukee Brewers. In all of 2021, Brewer Fan had 44 user registrations. In 2022, Brewer Fanatic published 616 stories, with @Tim Muma leading the way with 58 entries. Thanks, Tim! From March 13th through yesterday, Brewer Fanatic users posted 1,710 topics and a whopping 61,731 comments. Since the site transition in mid-March, 172,928 users have stopped by the site. In all of 2021, 97,303 people swung by the Brewer Fan forums. Even if we go back to the wild, action-packed 2019 season, our nine-and-a-half months of 2022 edge out the 153,831 users that checked out the site. You have to go back all the way to 2008 to find a year that Brewer Fan drew more users than we did in nine months of 2022. None of this would be possible without the amazing community that has supported us, added constructive criticism when needed, and felt comfortable enough to tell us when we’re getting it wrong. Leading the way has been our triumvirate of minor-league reporters, so let’s take a moment to give them the accolades they deserve. Without their daily - and exhaustive - minor league coverage, we couldn’t do the work we do behind the scenes to make sure their work gets as many eyeballs as possible. @Mass Haas, @damuelle, and @Joseph Zarr thanks for your amazing work in 2022 and we can't wait to see what you have in store for us in 2023! Secondly, the moderation group kept this ship afloat for years without fanfare or compensation. Without their diligent maintenance of this community, this site would have folded years ago. Let’s give a round of applause to the largely unheralded group of moderators that kept the lights on all these years. Our moderator crew consists of these great volunteers: @Eye Black, @CheezWizHed, @RobDeer 45, @Team Canada, @owbc, @reillymcshane, @splitterpfj, @BillScottCanRake, @sveumrules, @pitchleague, @homer, @DuWayne Steurer, @PeaveyFury, @madbad2000, and @hawing! And finally, take a bow, Brewer Fanatic community. You stop by here every day and give your thoughtful takes on the team, and we cannot thank you enough for choosing this site as the place to chat, cheer, and sometimes mourn the Milwaukee Brewers. 2023 will be the first full calendar year of Brewer Fanatic. I cannot wait to see what comes next, and GO BREWERS! Forty-five days until pitchers and catchers report, folks. Let’s do this! View full article

Welcome to Brewer Fanatic!

Not all teams are bumped from the top six lottery after one season. Large market teams can only be a lottery pick one time, it is disqualified from a second consecutive lottery pick. Mid and small market teams are allowed two consecutive lottery picks and are disqualified from a third. Pretty sure that’s how it works, anyway. I read about it when it happened so my memory is a little fuzzy.

Welcome to Brewer Fanatic!

All in all, this is very much threading a needle. It’s impossible to please different kinds of users with different behaviors while trying to maximize growth for the health of the site. I try to do the best I can to compromise but ultimately, some goals directly conflict with one another.

This is something I'm constantly evaluating and re-evaluating but for the time being, editorial articles are going to stay in the forums. I'll try to articulate my reasoning for this as best I can. 1. An "orderly" forum is often an uninviting forum for new users and/or infrequent users. Having an 18 page thread titled "Corbin Burnes" might appeal to you (who seems to be a "forum completist" in that you read everything) but is daunting for new or less frequent users. But a one page topic titled "Are the Brewers going to extend Corbin Burnes" and another topic "Predict Corbin Burnes' Numbers in 2023" and another topic "My Arguments to Trade Corbin Burnes" is more descriptive and inviting to more users, even though the overlap between the three topics is considerable. 2. Right now we're in "grow the site" mode, which makes #1 really important. I have numbers for BrewerFan going back to 2005 or something like that. Over the past 4-5 years, traffic has been on a considerable downturn to the point where despite traffic bumping upward +100% over 2021, Brewer Fanatic's user count is just a bit over where it was in 2018 and 2019. That's how much traffic has declined over the past few years. If we're not bringing in new users on a regular basis, the site can easily go from "decent but kinda slow conversation" to "ghost town" in a matter of months. 3. We're trying to promote front page content because that's the best way to keep a site lively and active. So far it's working but we still have a lot of work to do in this regard and we're at maybe 20% of the traffic we need to be what I consider "thriving". That means BrewerFan, less than a year ago, was less than 10% of that traffic number. 4. This isn't forever. Right now it's the offseason and nothing is happening. The forums would be a draaaggggg if not for the articles refreshing page one content every day. The same threads would be sitting above the fold for days, if not weeks, at a time. As the season starts ramping up, we'll see a lot more user-generated topics populating the front page. 5. Ultimately, my goal is to have ALL articles go into their own forum. It's what we do on Twins Daily because there's so much content at that site we need to have articles go into their own forum. Twins Daily also has the kind of traffic that the forums - particularly the Twins forum - does a good job of "churning and burning" topics off the first page merely through user-generated content. Twins Daily usually has more than double the number of posts per month we receive here on Brewer Fanatic. As we build up the front page, increase the content count, and bring in more users to participate in the forums, I hope to do the same here.

That Burnes start was spectacular. It was a real bummer that his final start mattered so little because he played the role of ACE so hard in that start.

And that's why owners need to be smart (something they haven't done well in the past) and, for the good of the sport, get 24 owners in line to agree to better revenue sharing. They don't need 30 teams, they need 24... and given how some of those drift between 20-26, I suspect it'll take 21-22 owners to agree. If they do that, I suspect the MLBPA will come around to a salary cap and floor. The game, as it as always been, is in the owners' hands. If they want to fix it, they have the power. Don't blame the guys on the field.

One thing I've been thinking about lately is that I think it's really dangerous to under/overrate the 2019-2021 draft classes. Those three classes were so screwed by the pandemic that I think there will be a ton of untapped gems mixed in with overrated flops. We're only now in 2022-2023 starting to sort out where some of these guys might end up in the long term of things.

Oh, I think Frelick is the better prospect (I mean, obviously) but given the way baseball and its economics work, I just think Mitchell will get first shot at CF. Trading him for something useful would be a big win, in my opinion because ultimately, I think the position is Frelick's anyway.

As much as it pains me to say, I would not be entirely against this if the market is there to haul back 5-6 really nice prospects in A+/AA/AAA, which should be a reasonable haul for three players of that calibre. This process isn't my first choice but it's a reasonable choice given the economics of baseball.

I think they could extend one or the other. I struggle seeing them extend both.

I have literally no idea what to expect from Mitchell in 2023. His BABIP was absurd in 2022 and his xwOBA was equally scary looking. It was also in 68 plate appearances so *shrugs* I think he probably has to be the Opening Day centerfielder though, right? I'm not sure Frelick can really do enough in spring to displace a guy who didn't get embarrassed in his first cup of coffee (I put little to no stock in spring stats so it would require a pretty massive shift in other things for one rookie to get bumped for another in spring if a hierarchy has already been established).

The only real way to compete is to share television revenue. A salary cap won't matter if the Pirates still spend $80m a year or the Brewers spend $120m a year. The union will never, ever ever agree to a salary cap low enough to support the smallest market teams. That means MLB team will need to start sharing revenue in a much broader sense than they currently do.

Sorry about the repost on this, the server hiccuped running some cron jobs and for some reason, the original was deleted.

I can't believe they didn't learn their lesson with Hader. If you can trade one of the big three in the next month and still field a competitive team in 2023, that's going to go over with fans better than what happened last August.

The look and feel of Brewer Fan may have changed with the transition to Brewer Fanatic, but the great content remains. Here are our most popular community discussions of 2022. On March 13th of this year, Brewer Fan relaunched as Brewer Fanatic. As we close out our inaugural year, we’d like to take a moment to thank all the great community members, moderators, and contributors to the site who are vital to the growth we’ve seen over the past several months. On Brewer Fanatic in 2022, users created 1,690 topics and posted an impressive 58,597 comments. Let’s take a look at the most popular discussions of the year. Josh Hader Traded to the Padres Unsurprisingly, the biggest shock of the year generated the most views. Amid another run at a postseason berth, the Brewers traded fan-favorite closer Josh Hader to the San Diego Padres. While many expected this to be the first move to shore up offensive weaknesses, this proved to be the defining move of the 2022 trade deadline for the Milwaukee Brewers and is still a point of contention among fans today. Hat tip to @Eye Black for creating the most popular discussion of the year! 2022 Trade Market Not long after the season began, Brewers fans were concerned about the team’s ability to compete at a high level over a 162-game season. As Brewer bats started the season ice cold, most were concerned about the offensive firepower after veteran bats like Lorenzo Cain, and Andrew McCutchen stumbled out of the gate. Over the next few months, the discussion continued to almost every rumored trade candidate available on the market. Kudos to @nate82 for starting this discussion. Putting Yelich on Waivers Well, this one was controversial and perhaps not the most well-researched topic. A user asked whether GM Matt Arnold should place Christian Yelich on waivers. News flash: that wouldn’t change whether the Brewers are on the hook for the rest of Yelich’s massive contract. With the removal of revocable waivers in 2019, the option for teams to “dangle” veteran players to see if another team wants to take on the contract while reserving an option not to lose the veteran on waivers was removed from major league baseball. 2022 MLB Draft Pick Discussion, Rounds 1-10 The MLB Draft is a big deal on Brewer Fanatic. A really big deal. In a thread spanning over 400 comments and tens of thousands of views, you’d think the Brewers had a top-five pick in this draft. This community’s dedication to the minutia of baseball is incredible and one of the things that makes this place such a wonderful place to discuss all things Milwaukee Brewers. 2022 MLB Draft Pick Discussion, Rounds 11-20 and UDFA Signings Rounding out the top five is a discussion of the latter rounds of the MLB Draft, which speaks volumes to the level of dedication of the Brewer Fanatic community. While the MLB Draft is undoubtedly exciting in the early rounds as we all dream of future Brewer superstars, the second half of the draft often feels like throwing darts at a board while blindfolded. There are undoubtedly young gems to uncover, but we won’t know who they are for years. Those are the top five discussions of the year based on community views. Once again, we’d like to thank every commenter and contributor to Brewer Fanatic over the past nine months and here’s to an even bigger year in 2023! View full article

That's a fair prediction. Obviously, the latter would be more fun. ?

I also really wanted Myers because he plays outfield, which seems like a natural fit alongside Winker and Yelich vs LHP. But Longoria is a fine substitute, he's probably my first choice of remaining free agents.

Oh, I definitely think Winker is a better option, I would just keep Hiura as a 26th man who slots in as often as seems prudent. Given that about 70% of starters are right-handed, he’d get his reps. Which is also why I’d be happy to replace Hiura with someone who hits lefties.

I agree that Hiura is walking a tightrope that has virtually no margin for error. After watching Miguel Sano turn into a really bad player almost overnight, I'm very aware that Keston could implode at any moment. With that said, lacking a better option, may as well roll him out there until he proves he's either good or bad at hitting a baseball. My first choice is to find a lefty masher to replace him but I'm increasingly convinced that is not the route the Brewers will take.

Congratulations, everyone, after reading this thread I am now convinced that Keston Hiura will both be out of baseball within the next two weeks and will ultimately turn into a right-handed Ted Williams.