NBBrewFan

I think the Brewers were really unlucky with the timing of building MP/AmFam. At the time the big driver was luxury boxes and overall attendance. Huge TV money (local and National) and MLB.TV (what is the internet?) were so far in the distance that they didn't have a clue about maximizing the location. Where they put it made perfect sense at the time and 10ish years later having ancillary developments around the park to feed the Baseball revenue started to become a "thang".

Good call. At least Conforto will just cost money and not an interesting prospect and outside of some waiver pickups there aren't any other options.

I wanted to add some context to the numbers bouncing around for the 2 candidates, but had other demands on my time. If we look at player rankings (min PA = 150) for 2 acknowledged metrics (wOBA & wRC+) we have Hiura ranking 27th/31st (0.366 wOBA/135 wRC+) in MLB and McCutcheon ranking 157th/170th (0.317 wOBA/102 wRC+). Here are the Brewers numbers (no rankings):

So you'll wave the start flag of incredulity if they don't insert Keston after Yarborough comes in?

OK. I screwed up the title. Yes that should be 2022.

OK, first attempt at a poll so bear with me if I screw this up.

Hiura vs McCutcheon (wRC+): Yep, CLEARLY no reason. FYI those great numbers from June 1st on that get quoted so often are almost all 4 weeks in June.

So would you agree with the sentiment that Hiura is adjusting to how he is being pitched and while some of those adjustments may improve previous attempts to pitch to his weaknesses, those adjustments may lead to new areas where he is worse? I think he's making adjustments to pitchers adjustments. While some of those adjustments are working (better barrel/HardHit/EV/wRC+) they are also leading to some less favorable outcomes (more K's). I haven't looked at his increased BB% (went form 7.x% to 10.x%), but I wonder if some of that is laying off pitches that are high and sometimes that high pitch comes in as a strike (K) and other times a ball (BB). His Swing% is down and his Called Strike% is up so he maybe he is being more selective without looking at more data I don't know if that's situational (with more strikes he's more selective) or just an overall change, or where those pitches might be that he's not swinging at.

I agree, I was only addressing one way, not every way that K can influence BABIP or how they might track based on swing/mechanics. I don't really believe that a majority of what we saw from Hiura and Yelich from 2019 to 2020 is do to external factors (i.e. a huge change across every opponent in how they pitch to both). I think for some reason there was a decision to change them in some way to get better outcomes or that they both thought 10 is great, let me crank this up to 11 and see what happens. I'm old school with players in that you don't fix what AIN'T broken. Go with what you are successful and adjust when you aren't going as good. I think there's way to much of the Mike Pettine school of thinking (and he wasn't the first, he's just a familiar example) where you coach to a scheme (launch angle) instead of coaching to the talent you have. [Rant] My god, when you know that a run team is the biggest hole in your scheme you should be able to come up with an adjustment to your blessed scheme to reduce the bleeding!!!!! [/rant] These guys have gone through years of development before they are even drafted working on what is the best approach for them. For some there are clearly issues that can be addressed, but I think there's less fine tuning as complete recreating going on. It's crazy that they are compared to a fictitious better hitter/pitcher and then coerced, forced, induced to change so that they fit that other mold. Launch angle, launch angle blah. A good coach should be working on getting each player to their best optimizing their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses, not put them into a system where they won't thrive and then replacing every player to fit the mold (wasting tons of investment with what you already had), And I'm somewhat incensed by this because to me it's a big part of the reason that baseball is so friggin boring in 2022.

Increasing strikeouts as a percent of total outs mean your denominator in the BABIP calculation gets smaller so BABIP goes up. I don't think a strikeout would just be another out if it wasn't a strikeout. It's another outcome that's based on your hitting overall so if you don't strike out you are likely to make another out or have a hit or walk or hit a HR, etc. So they are linked. Kestin is an enigma because even with a high K% he still is having a productive year (singles, doubles, triples) and of course the HR, but they don't count either since they aren't in play. A hitting coach rarely comes in and makes instant changes when they start. Likely he was spending much of 2019 learning the hitters and working on those having the worst results. It's true that it's likely more than just Haines and is more an organization ideology, but it's always 'fun' blaming the hitting coach.

Do you really think that teams don't know his current/past tendencies and just choose to throw him mid/low?

I agree with Adames being excellent this year at defense. I would say #2 should be that the teams approach of relying so heavily on HR and encouraging swing for the moon batting is the problem. While Adames may be the poster-child for that approach, it is a team-wide issue. I posted in another thread that given that the team has starting pitching where the top 3 are elite and the top 5 match up well with almost any other club (i.e Run prevention with better defense) and with a goal of keeping the score close/low that they should be more focused on situational hitting and getting runners in the "old way". Instead they seem to think that solo HR are the route to go. I know that they are have been putting a high amount of capital into contact hitters in the draft, but at the MLB level they have stayed with the all or nothing approach. Sure, the talent of the team may be that higher BA/contact isn't possible, but the current approach seems to be too hit or miss or miss or miss or miss or miss or miss.

I don't think it's a coincidence that both Yelich and Hiura, our best hitters in 2019, had huge drops in BABIP (-27%, -32%) and ISO (-34%, -26%), with HUGE increases in K% (52%, 13%) in 2020. And it's not bad luck. Hiura's K% baseline was much higher than Yelich's, but Yelich still went from 20% K% in 2019 to 30% K% in 2020. If you look at both of them they are eerily similar in their drops from 2019 to 2020. There's been a lot of theories discussed including injury (Yelich) to pitchers adjusting (Hiura) to bad luck, but maybe the hiring of Andy Haines was far worse than any of us ever thought.

Oh no! If that keeps up we might have to pay the Luxury Tax in 2483.

Here are Hiura's stats by season. His 2022 looks much more like 2019 than 2020+2021: His wRC+ is almost identical to 2019, his WAR scaled to the same PA as 2019 would be 2.3, his OBP is significantly higher than his AVG because his BB% is way up (and much better than 2020+2021). Yes, K% is high, but he is still being productive even though he's making so many outs by strikeout. Personally I'm less concerned about his K% if he can maintain his ISO and wRC+ going forward. His AB/HR is 12.9 which is still very high. His Exit Velocity, Barrel% and HardHit% are all BETTER than 2019. In several ways he is an enigma. The nice thing about his HR on Saturday is that he "guessed" correctly what he was going to get and the general area (I think) because he just crushed that ball. Based on EV/Barrel/HardHit it may be that a part of the jump in K% is that he is just guessing wrong on where and what type of pitch he is getting on the strike 3 pitch . I just hope he gets consistent AB for the remainder of the year.

So we aren't going to give up a Top10 prospect to get a bat and increase our chances of taking advantage of our best SP rotation ever. Instead when the top 2 walk at least we'll have prospects that may or may not be MLB caliber.

I do recall several posters pointing out that the pitching (based on Runs Allowed) wasn't as elite as we were thinking and the response was that it's a defense issue not a pitching issue. I think we are deep enough into the year and with the injuries that we can agree that the overall pitching hasn't been so elite. The positive is that if they make it to the playoffs, A shortened rotation of Burnes/Peralta/Woodruff/Lauer can still be elite.

Yes, I understand. The issue just isn't that it's a reduced dataset, it was a game played in empty stadiums with teams isolating and a lot of stress/uncertainty. Also, as Never Outhustled pointed out he was going through 2021 with his mom going through Cancer treatment. That data could also be impacted by things outside of baseball. Sure we can ignore that and say that a 23/24 YO should just shake that off and be mentally tough or we can entertain that it is noisy/poor quality data. As to his BABIP, yes I don't expect it to continue at that level, but one thing that has been evident is that when he reduces his K% the BABIP drops. That makes some sense as Ks aren't included in BABIP (so those strikeouts convert to regular outs and his BABIP drops). The other thing that's true is that as he lowers his K% his wRC+ goes up. July/August has been his best "month" for K% and his wRC+ is off the charts. Yes, all of that data is small due to subsetting a small amount of data, but there is some hint that he may be able to give back some BABIP while lowering his K% and still be a productive hitter. I agree that if he keeps his K% high (like 99th percentile MLB high) that he will likely not have a decent wRC+.

I'd support keeping him even if it means a 3 year deal. Cain, Hader, Narvaez and McCutcheon are all off the books. Spending say $15M total ($5M/yr) on Jace would be a better investment than almost any $10M per on a 1/2 year deal they bring in from another player. My issue with Urias is that I don't think his defense will work at 3B and his offense isn't horrible, but is not great for a corner IF position. I'd support shifting him to 2nd, but that means we need to find a 3B and those aren't easy or cheap. If they did sign Jace to a multi-year and kept Brosseau then I would advocate they platoon them at 3B, move Urias to 2B and look at Turang in CF. Then the savings left after Arby increases can go to a RH Platoon at 1B for Rowdy and resurrect the relief pitching. While that may only tweak the formula from this year, it would keep most of the team intact for another run in 2023.

I recall shortly after the Pandemic year that the consensus was that 2020 was a whacky year and we should probably not pay any attention to it or it should be weighted heavily down. Now, August 2022, it appears that multiple posters have no problem lumping that into any other data. The fact that it has creeped into the conversation is usually because it supports a posters point, not as a general principal. I think your point is valid that at 25 we still have a lot of unknown in what his baseline is and it would be great to treat the 2020 data as an outlier for everyone and move on.

Is "second half" the mlb definition (i.e. post- ASG) or the real world (i.e. games 82-162)?

It's been a progressive decline from 2019 to 2021 then a big drop this year. He seemed to have a good glove last year, but even that was much worse than his 2019 and his 2020 (although abbreviated) showed a decline from 2019. I'm just surprised he is so bad this year. It's usually a slow decline like he had from 2019 to 2021, not the bottom falling out.

Thanks Monty for looking up the data. I did a quick check yesterday for Brosseau and Pederson platoon compared to Urias and there was also a compelling argument they should platoon at 3B and Urias should be the super utility guy (which is moot until Pederson is back). If we were at full strength a little platooning around the diamond could get more production without any cost.

He was actually pretty bad the first 3 months then settled in and did most of his offensive damage the last 3 months. There was an adjustment period that's hidden in the aggregate yearly data. Turang would have even less time until the end of the year and I really doubt he would be playing every day, but maybe CC has a surprise left.

The really mind-numbing part of sabermetrics is that somehow bunting is NEVER ok. EVER, NO MATTER WHAT! If someone went up to CC in the dugout, pointed a gun at his head and said "bunt or else", CC would give the swing for the heavens sign and they would be cleaning his brains off the dugout wall. I can't fathom that situational bunting doesn't have a role especially in an offense/pitching combination as the Brewers where they are relying on a pitching staff to keep the score low and an offense to just scrape up enough HR (err runs) to win. Well if those HR aren't coming how about some situational hitting. Especially in extra innings. I think the problem is they look at run expectancy tables to make their decisions, but the problem with that is most (if not all) rely on every PA with a specific outcome using data for every hitter and every pitcher. The run expectancy for scoring from 2B with 0 outs is almost the same as 3B with 1 out so they don't bat the runner over in extra innings. But it doesn't take into account the current hitter or the current pitcher. If the hitter has an OPS of 0.56 and is a great bunter, I bet it's a better outcome to bunt and then see what the next hitter looks like with a runner on 3rd and 1 out. HOW the data is collected is important! Just because every hitter/pitcher in MLB for years worth of data indicates that X has the same probability as Y doesn't mean that in some circumstances you need to think about it and not blindly follow the aggregate data?