Brock Beauchamp

Both players had an OPS+ and wRC+ over 100 in 2021. My comment about them being league average or better is entirely accurate. And referring to living, breathing human beings as dumpster trash is pretty bad form. Try to not do that, please.

Now Renfroe and McCutchen are dumpster diving? Yikes. While I was mildly disappointed with the lack of improvement on offense, both of those players are league average or slightly better. Dumpster diving is when you back-fill your lineup with waiver wire pickups, not go out and pay legitimate MLB players legitimate MLB money. It's fine to be disappointed they didn't acquire Castellanos but let's at least be fair about this.

I think this is possibly true but I'm not certain it's going to be the case. I think most of the Brewers offensive potency hinges on Adames and Yelich. If Adames' 2021 was a fluke, that's really bad for the Brewers. If 2021 Yelich is the Yelich going forward, that's really bad for the Brewers. But if both of them post an OPS at or above .800, I think the offense will be quite competitive. And it's simply too early to know how those two are going to play out this season.

Yesterday was ugly but today is a new day with a new matchup. Time to take care of business.

Stop moving the goalposts. Seriously, you’re arguing so disingenuously. If you have a point to make, make it and use statistics to back it up.

On a more positive note, Narvaez's "42" chest protector is ?

I think it's funny you believe this will be done in three hours.

Woof, Peralta.

So I went to put the kids to be for 20 minutes, came back, and...

Oh sure, that's an issue. But MLB has been operating the RBI program for literally decades. It's obviously not working and there are larger, much more significant issues in play here... a big one being the ability to go to college for 1-3 years and be paid $20m a year immediately afterward, which is what both the NBA and NFL offer. Plus, the games are *exciting*. Kids play what they want to emulate on television and for the past couple of decades, that isn't baseball.

Baseball fans need to remember they're kind of the problem. The baseball audience has an average age about 15 years older than the NBA and they're far far more white (like lily white in comparison to other major sports). The sport is headed toward decline and I'd argue it's already in decline, we just haven't seen the financials catch up to reality. Baseball can't continue with an audience of old white guys because that's literally the demographic that's most in decline in America. Baseball needs to be different and the pitch clock is perhaps the most easily-changed step in being different.

I see this and similar things being bandied about but the only fair way to do this is to pay players more early in their careers. In trade for this, you have to be prepared to pay 2022 Corbin Burnes $20m. Baseball already has an American recruitment problem and ideas like this make it much worse. If you're advocating for revenue equality and a hard cap, why on earth should there be penalties for signing free agents?

The thing is, that "chess component" is relatively new to the game and has only existed for the past 20 or so years. And frankly, it doesn't serve a legitimate purpose while making the baseball experience worse for spectators on top of resulting in increased pitch velocity, which also needs to be curtailed for the good of the sport. I wasn't as vigorously in favor of the pitch clock until the pandemic started and there was no baseball. I ended up going back and watching a bunch of older games to kill the time and that brand of baseball was so much more entertaining than the product today. And a big reason for it was because a pitch was thrown, the batter stayed in the box, and the pitcher was back into the windup within 15 seconds. Nobody dozed off between pitches because the game was moving so slowly.

Even when Mauer was at the top of his game, there was a contingent of Twins fans that hated him because "not dingers". It was the weirdest experience I've had as a sports fan. Literally EVERYTHING about Mauer should have made Twins fans love him - a catcher, hometown boy, broke records - and instead many Twins fans obsessed about the things he didn't do. In a bizarre twist of fate, one had to actually leave Minnesota to get a reasoned take on Mauer's greatness.

No. I simply refuse to change your username to TURBO.

Too good not to share.

Frankly, I don't get these takes. Do fans really believe that literally the best baseball players on the planet don't know how to prepare for a 162 game season? There's a reason they don't spend the entire offseason throwing; they have to play for six months and an arm can only deliver so many 95mph fastballs in a single calendar year. We can have Burnes throw 91mph and pitch 220 innings or we can have Burnes throw 95mph and 170 innings. There is an opportunity cost to throwing more innings and I wish fans would acknowledge it.

Oh, Twins twitter is burning itself to the ground but reasonable Twins fans realize that the weather was truly abominable for those first six games and the true talent of the team is still very much up in the air. Baseball really needs to push back Opening Day to mid-April again. Playing early April games in northern climates is just garbage, there's a reason why MLB used to start games some time around tax day. There is literally snow on the ground in Minneapolis right now.

The forums are only getting started, as the Brewers are back over .500 and aiming to knock down division opponents over the coming days... Or really, I mean the Cardinals. Are the Pirates even considered opponents at this point? Image courtesy of Brewer Fanatic The forums are only getting started, as the Brewers are back over .500 and aiming to knock down division opponents over the coming days... Or really, I mean the Cardinals. Are the Pirates even considered opponents at this point? Last evening, the Brewers tapped the Keg, taking home a significant victory against the Cardinals in the home opener of the 2022 season. As always, the forums are abuzz with conversation so let's get right into it. User @Ulice Payne asks you What if you were Monarch of Baseball? It's precisely the kind of question that our forums thrive upon, and the answers don't disappoint. I believe hitters should be given the option to run the bases clockwise or counter-clockwise on a whim, but I also believe in burning society to the ground, so maybe I'm not the right person to answer this question. Next up, we look at the lowest-of-hanging fruit in the 2022 season... @MVP2110 gives us a place to trope with the 2022 Brewers offense thread. Considering how the season started following how the 2021 postseason ended for the Brewers, MVP2110 smartly decided to funnel all complaints to a single thread. It was a smart move and unsurprisingly gained quite a bit of traction with other users. The next topic is one of the things I love about community forums, and those are the bonkers-out-of-nowhere ideas that, while seemingly insane on the surface, actually have merit. In this case, @treego14 asks Can MLB teams trade for cash/percentage of TV revenue instead of prospects/players? At a glance, it's completely insane. But upon consideration... is it that insane given the wild inequity of modern baseball? Obviously, fixing the inequity would be the correct decision but let us not make good the enemy of perfect. In the following thread, I will pat myself on the back a little so bear with me a moment. This morning, I asked the question Yelich: a new (old) man or a mirage? And then Christian went out and crushed two balls in almost the same way he crushed a ball just a night or two before. Are we finally seeing a return of the Christian Yelich the Brewers so badly need in 2022? In conclusion, we have to shout out to the home opener thread from the ever-present @Eye Black, the most active moderator on BF that isn't named Mass Haas. Considering how it wasn't only the home opener but also a resounding beating of a division rival, let's take a moment to read Game Thread (4/14/2022): Cardinals (Wainwright) at Brewers (Woodruff) - 4:14 PM CDT. That's all we have for today; see you all next week, and GO CREW! View full article

Weird. It's almost as if that while the first few games of a baseball season count, they may not matter a lot in how the team will perform going forward.

The more I'm immersed in this community, the more I'm starting to realize Christian Yelich is the Brewer version of Joe Mauer. Highly regarded outside of the community but borderline reviled by some parts within. He's a left-handed hitter who makes contact and isn't great at elevation but hammers the piss out of the ball when he barrels it. Yeah, that's Joe Mauer. And it's Christian Yelich. In the case of Mauer, he never recovered from his head injury. I hope the same isn't the case with Yelich with his knee injury and right now, I'm pretty hopeful that isn't the case.

The problem with this is that it accentuates (in a bad way) the ebbs and flows of a baseball season. Say Burnes is having an arm issue at the same time Yelich has a calf issue... what if that happens during a late August stretch during which you play the Cardinals six times during that ten day period? Sure, that can happen now but this plan literally bakes it into the schedule. Baseball is a grind and part of what makes it great is the randomness of that grind. You may get the Dodgers for awhile but then will get the A's afterward. And this is why I'm in favor of the new "play all teams every year" schedule MLB is planning for 2023. The more random baseball becomes, the better it is.

Oh, this is a terrible idea. It allows teams to force players to either retire or accept a lesser (often minimum) contract on a whim if they're underperforming. What happens if you sign a 32 year old player to a four year deal and he just sucks in the second year? Waive him and basically force him to retire or, if he actually wants to continue baseball and can effectively play the sport even in a diminished capacity, he loses a boatload of money. That's such a boon for teams and such a bad thing for mid-tier players who often only earn "real" professional sports money when/if they reach free agency and sign a large deal. Basically, you're allowing teams to exploit those early highly productive seasons at the minimum while also giving teams an out to not pay those same players after signing a contract.

Oh, for sure. I actually refer to what we're seeing right now as SSSS (super small sample size) because SSS (small sample size) isn't entirely adequate. But the early results are certainly promising.