wiguy94

Moving off of Mears was a no brainer. Even though he has positive fWAR his underlying numbers have mostly been really lousy outside of his FIP. You're unfortunately right about Collins. I think we certainly missed the depth he provides when Chourio was injured but his defense has looked nearly unplayable since the ASB last year. It sucks that Zerpa got injured but we didn't appear to lose much with what we gave up.

Our bullpen has actually been really good on the year. Top 10 in basically every performance stat. One of the reasons I have always liked using WPA for the bullpen is because nobody cares if a bullpen has a good ERA if they aren't locking down the leverage spots and that has been the issue. Even after tonight the Brewers bullpen is 22nd in WPA at -0.32. Fan appreciation of a bullpen basically correlates directly with WPA.

Maybe I'm not remembering but seemed like Contreras might have wanted that first one down? I feel like by his movement it didn't look like a pitch that was supposed to be high but missed low. I know Jack wrote an article about how they have incorporated some low fastballs in with Megill with his velo down trying to draw some called strikes because he's not really getting the whiffs at the top of the zone.

Fine dude. There was nothing wrong with it. Happy? Was this multi-week temper tantrum worth it?

If I had to guess he might still be set to start on Saturday so was only limited to one inning today as his "between start bullpen". Just a guess though. Could be totally wrong.

I don't know how long you're going to keep this bit running but this happened because he had a 115 wRC+ when you said he needs to pick it up then you acted like you were talking about his whiff rate not his overall performance after I pointed it out. If I say Mitchell does need to pick it up now will you stop doing this bit every single time he gets out?

Pretty sure Fischer got ejected arguing a strike 3 call late in the game on Sunday. It wasn't an injury thing.

I imagine you will see Bauers or Yelich in LF so Vaughn can play against some RHP. Probably not worth it today with Sproat on the mound. Might need to value the defense but with Misiorowski or Harrison on the mound you could probably go a bit lighter on the D

He's baaack!

Angles matter just as much as exit velocity. Lara hits the ball slightly harder but the vast majority of his hard contact is on the ground. Lara has 51 hard hit balls on the year. Of those 51, 28 (55%) have negative launch angle. Hitting the ball harder is good but if that contact is just being smashed into the ground it doesn’t really mean much. Sweet spot rate is rate of batted ball between 8 and 32 LA. This is the ideal launch angle to hit a baseball for maximum damage. Lara on sweet spot batted balls has a 95 Avg EV and 61% hard hit rate compared to Ewing’s 91 Avg EV and 43% hard hit. In that regard Lara looks much better but the difference is Lara only has only hit 23% of his batted balls on that angle compared to Ewing’s 56%. That’s why Ewing’s contact quality and underlying numbers are far above Lara’s. It’s an angles issue not an EV issue. Lara has a .285 xwOBACON compared to Ewing’s .427. Here are a couple MLB players with similar xwOBACON to Lara this year - Spencer Horowitz, Luke Keaschall, Sal Frelick Here are a couple MLB players with similar xwOBACON to Ewing this year - Brandon Lowe, Ronald Acuna, Brandon Nimmo

Ewing has hit the ball on much better angles than Lara. Avg LA is 16 to Lara’s 9. Barrel rate is 12% to Lara’s 6%. Those two things lead to his expected slash absolutely dwarfing Lara’s. Ewing - .319/.386/.577 for a .412 xwOBA Lara - .222/.336/.348 for a .312 xwOBA Basically Ewing’s contact quality has been substantially better than Lara’s.

Was curious so I looked and his underlying numbers have been way better than Lara’s down in AAA.

Antunez had a second 114 EV batted ball only to be outdone by Frias who had a 117 EV batted ball

Antunez just hit a 114.6 EV tank off a hanging slider

Interesting comparison and I definitely understand the logic. I feel like it's not as simple of a comparison though because I don't think NFL draft picks especially the early round ones need as much development as an MLB draft pick needs. If you draft a pass rusher in the first round of the NFL draft the expectation is they should be day 1 ready to make an impact. MLB draft picks have a much lower rate of success than the NFL with a lot more development needed. That's what makes me wonder if it would be better to invest the money into profiles the Brewers have shown to be really good at maximizing then targeting power through trades where you can either trade for prospects that are closer to MLB or trade for current MLB players. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. I just think it's an interesting thought experiment. I think we all agree that some power influx is much needed. We just have different ideas of what is the best way to get said power.