Brock Beauchamp

One year of peak Burnes is way more valuable than two years of Williams, IMO. The problem is that we haven’t consistently seen peak Burnes in awhile now.

There's a ton of chatter about the MLB postseason format and while I think it's blowing current issues out of proportion - we have all of two years of data from which to draw - I believe there is some merit to the criticisms. There's a relatively easy fix, though, and it can actually reduce the length of the postseason by a day should MLB wish to take that route. First, there are complaints about the number of teams in the postseason. I rather strongly disagree with this take; as a fan of multiple teams and a person who runs sites for several fanbases, it's simply more fun watching fans engage with their team until the end of September instead of losing interest in mid-August or earlier. The more engaged fanbases there are in the sport, the better the health of the sport overall. Plus, the postseason makes MLB buckets of money. Whether you like it or not, 12 postseason teams is going to be the standard moving forward. There is plenty of room to prioritize the regular season within this format. Here was the 2023 format: Oct 1: Game 162 Oct 2: Off Day Oct 3-5: Wild Card Games 1-3 Oct 6: Off Day Oct 7: Division Round Begins Most of the complaints of the current format revolve around two issues: prioritization of the best regular season teams and prolonged off-days for bye teams. As a response, I suggest removing off-days and stacking the Wild Card round even more in favor of the third division winner and the best wild card team (seed #4). Instead of a three game series, extend it to a five-game series with the home team receiving a "free win" going into the round. A similar format is used in the KBO (Korean Baseball Organization) and I think it's a good example to follow. This means the three and four seeds in the Wild Card - those two teams who host the round - have to win two games to win the "five game" series while the road team has to win three games to advance. This stacks the deck considerably against the lower-seeded teams, which is what most people seem in favor of doing. As a bonus, MLB might get more postseason games out of fourth Wild Card games. Secondly, get rid of the off-days, which impacts everyone in the Wild Card round. No longer do they have much hope in setting up their pitching and bullpen for the Division Series, they might back into that series having played as many as 7-8 games consecutively without a day off. If you add a potential game four and remove two off-days, this actually reduces the time off for the first and second-seeded bye teams by a day, reducing potential complaints about "rust" and "too much rest". Additionally, removing that first off-day after game 162 favors the Wild Card host teams, who are more likely to have sewn up a postseason spot days earlier, allowing them to enter the Wild Card round with their pitching set up for the postseason. My new format would have looked like this in 2023: Oct 1: Game 162 Oct 2-5: Wild Card Games 1-4 Oct 6: Division Round Begins Thoughts? What are your issues with the current postseason format and is this solution a good one?

Oh for sure, it's a less than great position to be in. Generally, I'm in favor of the "take a bunch of decent shots" over "take one or two great shots" but the Woodruff injury is really devastating to this team given the pending free agency of important players. Instead of letting them walk. I'd move a couple of them, patch together a decent team in 2024 and hope things break right for 88 wins, then really knuckle down and compete in 2025 and beyond.

The Woodruff injury really flipped my opinion on this. My goal would be to trade Burnes and Williams while extending Woodruff to a one-year deal in 2025, then retool as much as possible for that year. Also, extend William Contreras, please.

I'm coming to the opinion that the Brewers should move both Burnes and Williams this offseason. Make a patchwork attempt to compete, probably for a Wild Card, in 2024 and look more toward 2025 as the next wave of competitive baseball.

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I absolutely 100% do this. Chourio is soooo young that you can give him ten years and he still hits free agency at 30.

This comes out of left field but makes a lot of sense upon further examination. Terry Francona, long time Guardians manager, has retired and Cleveland is looking for a capable replacement, reports Will Sammon of The Athletic.. Francona has long been regarded as one of the best managers in the game, an attribute now shared by Counsell. Initially, what surprised me most about this is that the Guardians are notoriously cheap... what I didn't realize is that the one place they haven't been cheap is manager. Counsell is one of the more highly-paid managers in the sport and the departing Francona actually made more money. It's still unclear whether Counsell is actually interested in leaving Milwaukee - his childhood home town - or if he's trying to leverage other teams into a better paycheck from the Brewers. View full rumor

It's that time of year as Brewer Fanatic concludes its second season. It's time to give back to the community that supported us along the way. Image courtesy of Brewer Fanatic & Brock Beauchamp The Brewers had a more successful season in our second year of existence, but unfortunately, October was unkind to Craig Counsell and the Brewers once again. After cheering on a team for 162, it's frustrating to see this happen so many times in a row. Thankfully, in baseball, hope springs eternal. We have a long offseason ahead of us with many important decisions to make at 1 Brewers Way. But before we get into that, let's look at the 2023 season and the users who provided some of the best content that kept us all coming back daily. Most Popular Post The most popular post of the 2023 Brewers season was in the thread Upcoming Brewers Milestones, started by yours truly. Enter @Underachiever, who went above and beyond by listing a gaggle of upcoming milestones, which rightfully earned it the most popular post of the baseball season. Thank you for such a quality contribution, Underachiever! As a gift, we'd like to offer you this really cool Brewers dugout mug, carved out of a baseball bat and emblazoned with the Crew's logo. Most Popular Post Runner-Up Draft day is always an incredible event in the community. It's 2-3 of our most active days of the calendar year, and in this Draft Day 2 Thread, @Jenkins5 celebrated this moment of newly-drafted Cooper Pratt liking their tweet. Cool little moments like this are what make a community so much fun. We all follow the Brewers - probably at an unhealthy level at times - and getting small feedback like this and celebrating it amongst like-minded fans is rewarding. Thanks again, Jenkins5! Most Popular Blog Blog traffic is still pretty light around Brewer Fanatic. I encourage all of you long-term users to check out that section of the site, as it's a great place to voice your thoughts in a long-form way, and every blog post is promoted through our various social media channels and reaches thousands of Brewers fans. It's a great way to get your voice out there if you're interested in trying your hand at writing without any kind of scheduled commitment. Our most popular blog entry during the 2023 season was this piece from @Ghostbear about where baseball's future might be. With analytics taking over so much of baseball, where can the next gains be found? How can teams like the Brewers extract maximum value from individuals? It's an interesting read, and thank you, Ghostbear, for taking the time to write it up! As a gift for this blog, we'd like to offer you this cool Bernie bobblehead! Most Prolific Posters These are the people who keep us coming back to Brewer Fanatic on a daily basis with their multitude of content, takes, and contributions to the site. During the 2023 season, the two posters who received the most system "points" through thread creation, commenting, blogging, and receiving reactions are @wiguy94 and @Brewcrew82. Thank you both for your dedication to the community and all you bring to it! That's all we have for this installment of the community awards. Thanks again to every community member who reads, writes, and reacts to the thousands of voices we have on the site. You're the glue that holds this place together, and now, let's see an exciting offseason and GO CREW! View full article

This is something of a shock. While Counsell-to-Mets rumors have been swirling all year, the Brewers still have their manager under contract through the end of the World Series. Teams will often grant permission for their employees to be interviewed by other MLB clubs but often only if the job opening is a step up the ladder for the employee. Obviously, this is not the case with Counsell, who is interviewing for a lateral position in New York. Counsell is already one of the highest-paid managers in the sport but when it comes to pure spending power, no one in the sport can compete with the Cohen-owned Mets. More to come as the situation develops. View full rumor

Maybe 12 out of 30 is too many but if MLB expands to 32, as they probably should have done a decade ago, is 12 out of 32 too many? I feel like 12 out of 32 is a pretty good ratio. Maybe a bit on the high side but definitely within reason.

This is kinda how I feel. I just don't see many great reasons for Counsell to go to Queens.

I considered starting a brawl by mentioning Ben Oglivie in the same sentence.

I was just waiting for one of you minor league lunatics to weigh in on this. 😄

Well, the Craig Counsell rumor mill has begun churning in earnest, thanks to Jon Heyman of the New York Post. In the end, it feels like no one has any idea what Counsell is thinking or where he will end up in baseball, if he remains in baseball at all. One aspect of this story stuck out to me. I knew Counsell's situation in Milwaukee is rare but I didn't realize it was this rare: "Counsell is believed to be the only one of 30 managers who lives year-round in the city he manages, so there’s a definite home-field advantage for Milwaukee." That's crazy. Ultimately, it might come down to money though Counsell may not be swayed by a small pay raise. He made roughly $21 million as a player and his salary as a manager is reported to be around $3.5 million, which puts him near the top of manager salaries in baseball. Would Counsell risk the bright lights and cut throat media presence in New York to leave his home town team? Only Craig knows for sure and it feels really weird to be talking in this context about a manager instead of a player or even a front office executive. View full rumor

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For example, if you look at one of our prospect rankings pages, when you scroll you'll see related articles and videos. That is merely displaying the three most recent pieces of content that are tagged with "Jackson Chourio", which anyone can also do in the forums. In the wiki, we could extend this beyond articles and videos, including forum posts and user blogs and whatnot. We could also include links to various resources like B-Ref or whatever we want, really. https://brewerfanatic.com/milwaukee-brewers-top-prospect-rankings/jackson-chourio-r14/

The forums containing some of that utility is part of the reason I'd like to create something like this. If users begin using the tagging system, any thread with information on the player could be listed on that player page. It's essentially a catch-all page for all content related to said player.

For all players, minors and majors... but the minor league guys are more of the long-term play with this idea, as it's much harder to find information about them. Also older players who were middling, like Larry Hisle. Basically, I see this working best if it's strongest in the players most of us know the least about.

We've been floating this idea around for years now but it always seemed so cumbersome and difficult that we never went anywhere with it. Well, my slate is mostly open this winter and I'm interested in taking a longer look at the mechanics of such a thing. What I'm envisioning is a community-generated player page for Brewers players. We'd start with zero and any of you hankering to start a page for a player could do so. These pages would include a short bio, user-uploaded images, and would automate links to all Brewer Fanatic content that has that player tagged in it (news, videos, user blogs, forum topics, etc). We could throw in user excerpts of interactions they've had with the player, the sky is really the limit on what we can put on the page. In essence, we'd build a "player hub" for each player. If you want to find all of Brewer Fanatic's content on Christian Yelich (plus his bio information), you'd just hit Christian Yelich's player page. But NO STATS. Stats are their own separate issue and we don't want to replicate/compete with B-Ref; they do a better job of that than we ever could. We'd probably include a B-Ref link to the player's page should anyone wish to check their stats. Is this something some of you would be interested in participating in? Is it a fun project? I just want to hear what you think of the idea and open a conversation about it. Maybe include some kind of system where if one of you users edits a page, you get points for it and can use those points for... stuff. I don't know, sponsoring your favorite player's page or a t-shirt or something. I don't know. I have a pretty good grasp on the technical aspect of this but haven't quite figured out what interests all of you in participating in the project.

I think it's a bit unfair to lump the Diamondbacks and Rangers together. The Rangers missed a bye by losing a tiebreaker to the Astros. The Diamondbacks are unimpressive, sure, but the Rangers are quite good.