Brock Beauchamp

That was here, it was from Matt a few days ago.

The Twins catcher crawled to first base because his legs gave out. Everybody gets a pass for anything that happened that day.

Huge dogs for sure but if I face Atlanta with the Brewers staff, I want a five game series to do it. The Brewers’ starters have the best chance of stymying the Braves that way.

If the Brewers are clicking, I think every team is "scared" of them in a postseason series. To me, the key is Peralta. If he's really going well, being able to trot out aces or borderline aces in the first three games, or all five games of a five game series, is damned scary. There's still a month left to go and a lot can happen so I'm cautiously optimistic.

Those breaking ball numbers, though.

Yelich is the most obvious candidate, as pretty much all the young guys are centerfielders and it's a real waste to put one of them at first base, especially given the number of question marks about their offense for various reasons.

From a roster-building perspective, this makes quite a bit of sense. And Yelich doesn't need to man 1B full-time, he can rotate back to LF regularly. I don't like the idea of having a dedicated DH unless you have a player on the roster completely incapable of being anything else (Nelson Cruz, for example). In most cases, it makes the most sense to rotate your best hitters through DH when you want to give them a half day off or they're banged up a little.

Welcome out of the shadows!

This is an amazing post. I love it so much.

But if the team isn't going to offer him arbitration and has no plans to give him another legitimate shot this season because they feel they have equivalent players already on the roster, may as well get the prospect back. Is that the decision I would have made? I'm not sure. But I also think it's a reasonable place to land on a decision.

To continue this entirely pointless conversation, I think the 0.5 take is correct because teams don't always play 162 games. Of course, the caveat to this is if a team is in contention, they absolutely will play 162 games but given that there are regular examples of teams agreeing to skip a rainout and play 161 because no one cares, I'm sticking with the 0.5 take. To point out a specific case this could happen, a team is tied with another team for a postseason position but have already lost the tiebreaker to their rival. Their game 162 is against a last-place team that was rained out in August. Both teams could choose to not play this game at all. That would finish the season with that team finishing 0.5 games behind first place. I will not die on this hill, for the record.

Yeah. If the team isn't going to use a guy and will decline retaining him in the offseason, may as well trade him. And given the Monasterio/Anderson duo, I think that was a pretty reasonable decision.

Oh, I get the reasoning, I should have specified "why is the opposite used so rarely?" It seems to me there are specific cases where using the opposite approach is beneficial, like having a groundball pitcher on the mound with the expectation your defensive third baseman will bat twice and then exit the game, even if that starter is still in the game for an inning or two. You get the bulk of that starter's innings with the best defensive alignment possible but also try to minimize that defensive player's offensive liability.

I've often wondered about this. Why do teams prioritize scoring in the first 2/3rds of the game and then defense for the final 1/3rd? Why not the opposite?

I'm out of the loop, having not watched a Brewers game in ten days (thanks, MLB blackouts!). As I get back into the flow of things, I'd like to lean on the community a bit for upcoming things of note. These could be 1,000 hits, ten years of service, whatever you think is interesting. This will help me immensely as I create graphics for social media and site usage. If you know of anything coming up soon, please share it here!

Here are the results, thanks to all who voted! Ranked ProspectsJackson ChourioJeferson QueroSal FrelickJacob MisiorowskiTyler BlackRobert GasserBrock WilkenAbner UribeCarlos F RodriguezLuis LaraCooper PrattMike BoeveEric Brown JrJosh KnothLuke AdamsEric BitontiYophery RodriguezLogan HendersonDaniel GuilarteBradley Blalock

Yeah, long relief is always an option but as you pointed out, the field becomes more crowded for Gasser if that's the route the Brewers take in September.

I really dislike MLB's new 28-man rule. I get cutting down from 40 (which was absurd) but only adding two guys doesn't leave a lot of flexibility. Even allowing rosters to expand to 30 would be better. The reason I'm mentioning this is because Gasser has been starting all year. Using essentially the only pitching roster spot for a starter has limited use. I think it's more likely the Brewers add a one-inning reliever, which easily slots into the roster and has an immediate use in games.

Maybe I'm being naive but I feel the chances of the Brewers leaving Milwaukee border on zero. It would be cutting off their nose to spite their face, which MLB is definitely known to do from time to time but there are mitigating factors this time around, I think. First, there are no truly appealing markets to slide into. When you're talking about places like Nashville, your long-term prospects at a new location aren't great. The Carolinas have some appeal but I just haven't seen a ton of effort locally to bring in a team (if that was the case, the A's should be moving there). The Brewers had fringe top ten attendance from 2017-2019. They were mid-pack last year and will likely end up there again this year, despite a disappointing 2022 (ticket sales trail performance by one season). Where else is the franchise going to get that kind of long-term support? Sure, they can probably get a shiny new stadium and 3-4 years of packing the place but what happens after that? Milwaukee has a long tradition of supporting baseball in solid numbers. It's not going to be easy to replicate that anywhere else given the size of the markets we're talking about here. I think it's interesting that people have largely ignored just how middling MLB expansion has gone, which is an indicator that finding a loyal market for a team is really hard to do and takes decades, not years. The last four expansion teams are Arizona, Colorado, Miami, and Tampa. Colorado is the only one of the four that doesn't live in the bottom half of MLB attendance most years. Even Arizona, which isn't regarded as a failure like the Florida teams, doesn't draw particularly well, doubly so once you consider that Phoenix is one of the largest metro areas in the country.

Oh, definitely. I was only speaking to something tangible and numeric on which to judge ownership.

Yep, as far as ownership groups go, I think the Brewers have it pretty good. Look at what Cleveland has been doing the past few years. They're a similar market size to Milwaukee and also competitive but their product is far less watchable because of the way ownership operates.

When it comes to ownership, what I care about most is the payroll number. Attanasio does a decent, if not good, job in that regard. Milwaukee is the smallest metro market in the sport, yet the Brewers regularly sit in the 20-24 range in MLB payroll.

What they're discussing here goes well beyond repair and upkeep, though. Think of it as your dishwasher breaking so you buy a new one versus tearing out your entire kitchen and remodeling it. Which is fine, AmFam is getting a little long in the tooth right now and could use some modernization. The devil is in the details.

Right now, I think that's where I land, too. Maybe my opinion changes in the next three weeks, though. I *definitely* put Chourio on the Opening Day roster in 2024 unless something goes horribly wrong between now and then. I want that draft pick if he wins RoY. It's a good gamble given Chourio's talent level.

Yeah, I don't know if Chourio is ready to make an impact in Milwaukee but I won't rule it out, either. The good thing about an extension to a teenager is that it can be really, really long and the guy will still reach free agency before he's 30. He gets guaranteed over $100m in case of injury, the Brewers get guaranteed control, and he's still open for a potential bank-busting free agency deal.