Jake McKibbin

Frelick with four (from memory) balls hit over 90 mph, just not falling for him tonight but his quality of contact has massively improved, don't look too much into his box score here!

It's essentially highlighted his issue. He's not great at laying off pitches, and these baseball's seem to create more wild command either center cut or off the plate, as well as the pronounced movement (I remember an article talking about another minor league pitcher gaining 3-4 inches of induced vertical break on his fastball with them) So chourio swung at too many poor pitches, but it's also important to note those movements are similar to MLB level pitchers but with less control, so still a ways to go. He's just so damn good recently at putting bat to ball though, his last month's strikeout rate is absurd

The Brewers had 4.5 million before signing their two college drafters in 11-20 range, the 7-10 picks (all of whom are likely very cheap) That by my count leaves ~ $1.4 million among the cheapest picks and for some of the HS guys in later round! May have ability to spend one million or so on on the 11-20 risky picks

That's way cheaper than I expected. Much much cheaper

Our next ten games are three against the Reds and seven against the Braves, so absolutely! A big big effort leading up to the trade deadline, series against the Reds may again be crucial. Also Fried's start got pushed back, but he may be coming back in the second series vs MKE

Freddy Peralta has been an enigma so far this season, with glimpses of his best form, and more than enough of his worst. However, like Corbin Burnes, he's showed that he could be firing on all cylinders after the All-Star break, making some significant strides along the way. Some seeds of success began to take root earlier in July, and blossomed into a one-hit effort against the sizzling Cincinnati Reds offense. How did he do it? Image courtesy of © Albert Cesare / The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK Freddy Peralta has been an enigma so far this season, with glimpses of his best form, and more than enough of his worst. However, like Corbin Burnes, he's showed that he could be firing on all cylinders after the All-Star break, making some significant strides along the way. Some seeds of success began to take root earlier in July, and blossomed into a one-hit effort against the sizzling Cincinnati Reds offense. How did he do it? By this point, we know what Freddy Peralta has in his locker, and it’s enough to mesmerize and overpower any offense in the league when he’s got some semblance of command. The lack of control, however, brings about an inconsistency from game to game, and even a slight improvement in this area will bring marked improvements in his performance. So far this season, Peralta has shown with a healthy shoulder the type of velocity we used to see from him only as a reliever, but it hasn’t shown much in the way of added value, in part because of how poorly he has located either it, or his secondary pitches. It has become a regular thing for Peralta to get ahead 0-2 and throw multiple uncompetitive pitches in the at-bat, leading to excessively deep counts, high pitch counts, and a lot more pressure in games wherein he should have the stuff to wipe out opposing hitters. He has 22 2/3 innings pitched in 0-2 counts this season, and 28 innings pitched with a 2-2 count. Contrast this with Corbin Burnes, who has 29 2/3 innings in an 0-2 count and just 26 innings in a 2-2 count, because hitters are forced into making decisions behind in the count, and generating much more swing-and-miss. Typically, in an 0-2 count, a pitcher will try to reset the hitter's eye, and throw an uncompetitive pitch--something to set up the following sequence. Then, the 1-2 pitch will be used to generate a chase off of that. So let’s compare Burnes and Peralta in this way: As you may notice, Burnes has three pitches (the changeup, curveball and slider) all with chase rates around 50% in this count. Peralta has just one pitch (his curveball) with a chase rate above 30%. It’s a big reason why he struggles to go late in games, and also why he gets forced into the zone more than he would like, when hitters are doing damage. In 3-2 counts, hitters have a .300/.539/.540 slash line against him, which just can’t happen when you get into these situations as often as he does. During his career-best 2021 season, Peralta ignored walks for the most part, and tried to stay nibbling around the zone, getting a lot of strikeouts and limiting the number of hits against him to the point where he had a .179 batting average against him. In fact, Peralta has had three straight seasons of BAA being under .200. That’s changed this year, and is a large part of why he hasn’t been as effective. So what has changed in July that’s made him so good, so far? It’s really simple: He’s landing his breaking pitches on the edges of the strike zone, in particular the curveball. There are slight increases in the changeup and the slider, but he’s landed his curveball around the edge of the zone 50% of the time across his three starts this month, a significant improvement on the 35.5% mark he had in June, and landing it in the strike zone 57.1% of the time overall. However, interestingly, opponents' in-zone swing rate has dropped from 68% in June down to 37.5% in July, meaning he’s stealing strikes. In doing so, Peralta is forcing batters to chase significantly more on his slider and his changeup, and more on all four of his pitches in two-strike counts in July. Hitters will eventually adjust, and he’ll have to keep tweaking his pitch mix as he goes along, but landing these pitches is so crucial to his success. Hopefully, we'll see more of it in his next start. View full article

He could play either realistically, I think with Yelich performance in left this season, it's more likely they'll option Perkins or DFA Tapia. I'd maybe play Frelick CF and Joey in right but either would cover a lot of ground, some great outfield defense there

Also, I'm convinced Josh Knoth was underrated by the scouts, it seems his fastball velo took a massive jump this Spring but most reports had him 90-92 mph rather than 94/95 topping at 98 mph It'll be interesting how it pans out, but seems to be an approach similar to the Brewers in the international market, picking up several top 30 guys rather than one superstar

Also Eric Bitonti (who they apparently have good relations with) And they haven't gone massively undeerslot, I really like Knoth, and Wilken has a massive upside if he can develop an opposite field approach of sorts. I like it, they've got a lot of potential in the system if they sign 1-10

Soroka hasn't adapted all too well so far this season, and their own rotation is waiting on Fried to come back still, with a lot of filler pieces in there. It's vaguely similar to facing an on form Reds at this point, although the offense is much more consistent Brewers will likely need contributions up and down the lineup to take this series, but for Soroka, his sinker has been less effective and has sub optimal movement on his four seamer Has almost no swing and miss in zone so far this year, so good swing decisions should result in a lot of balls in play. Soroka came in relief his last appearance for three innings of work, but was stretched out before the all star break well enough. Averaging two home runs per nine so far this year, and hoping the Brewers can get on top of him early, and put some pressure on the Braves for the next two games

https://www.mlb.com/brewers/news/brewers-prospect-sal-frelick-drives-in-career-high-six-runs?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage Also a quick chat with his hitting coach, and what's been coming around for Frelick. Really promising signs

And THAT is the Sal Frelick of last season. More pop than you realise, gap to gap power. He's more than someone who just puts wood on the ball

Let's see if I can do the same for Peralta!

Burnes is almost certainly (especially if he keeps this dominant stretch going for any length of time) going to ink a 200 million + dollar deal somewhere, and the thing with contract is that if he signed for five years at that rate, he'd be taking away the years that produce most value from his next contract, Realistically if you're paying him say 8 years, 30 millions a year, you'd expect 40 million a year value the first four years, and 20 million for the next four years (roughly) Plus pitcher injuries are inevitable. So unfortunately don't think it'll happen, but Brewers would snap him up on that in a heartbeat if they could

He isn't injured! Missed most of last season, played some AFL before getting injured there too

Wiemer being rested too.. wonder if we'll see more of Perkins in CF every now and then, especially if they do find an OF to come in and man right field

It's a tightrope last thing you want is an injury causing the need for someone like Mejia, but I guess he's not exactly all that irreplaceable. It is for a spot at the front end of the bullpen too, so not huge leverage but it is something that let the Brewers down in the first half of the season

Thanks my friend! Always nice to know they're going down well

Yeah it depends how much they want to make sure they have the options, and how much better Uribe is (I think he's definitely an upgrade, but how big of one in Counsell's eyes?) DFA Sousa seems a no brainer, a few players will be looking at 40 man spots and worrying

I will say I've quite liked Mejia pitching so far, looks good to me, and a valuable part of the shuttle squad. Bit unlucky his first start, but we'll see!

Also given Hader is due a payday now no matter what, and it won't affect his arbitration value, much easier dynamic wise to fit him into 8th inning role. However the Brewers have almost no need for him as a late inning guy with the strength of their BP so far

Yep, can spend 150k base line, anything over that counts against the bonus pool

On Friday night, Corbin Burnes looked every inch the version of himself we expected this season. He notched his first double-digit strikeout performance of the season, totaling 13 over the course of six innings, including a hat trick for Elly De La Cruz. Image courtesy of © Katie Stratman-USA TODAY Sports On Friday night, Corbin Burnes looked every inch the version of himself we expected this season. He notched his first double-digit strikeout performance of the season, totaling 13 over the course of six innings, including a hat trick for Elly De La Cruz. Having gone cutter-heavy (over 70%) in his last outing against the Cincinnati Reds, Corbin Burnes used it just 45% of the time on Friday, instead relying more heavily on his curveball (29%) and (the third time through the order) his changeup. The breaking pitch was on form, averaging over 54 inches of vertical break–something I’ll come back to in a moment, as it’s key to how he’s used the pitch this year. A big change for Burnes was how he used his cutter in this outing, noticeably going much higher in the zone, and getting rewarded for it, with not a single hard-hit ball against his cutter all day. (In fact, the Reds had just one hard-hit ball against any of his pitches.) Hitters have been doing a lot of damage when Burnes leaves his cutter over the heart of the plate, and (because they’ve been sitting on it, and spitting on other offerings that usually dip out of the zone) he’s been having real trouble racking up strikeouts. His outs have mostly been generated from ground balls, something with which he did excel in the last two years, due to the prolific movement on his cutter down in the strike zone. Going very cutter-heavy in his recent starts against the Reds, Guardians and Pirates while using the upper part of the zone is an effort by Burnes to address the predictability of his pitching. This time, however, the crucial ingredient was his curveball, and how he used it off his higher cutter. By playing off the pitch up in the zone, Burnes could keep his curveball in the strike zone for longer, starting higher, and thus forcing hitters to make decisions far later. When playing off the cutter down in the zone, the curveballs looked far less competitive and were out of the zone far more often. Our Tim Muma identified the need for Burnes to use more of the zone way back in early April. In June and July, Burnes’s curve has been in and around the edges of the strike zone 41 percent of the time, up from 32 percent in May. What this has done is made these pitches more relevant to hitters, and as such, improved the chase rates against them massively, allowing Burnes to be more effective at putting away hitters in two strike counts. Looking at the above graphic, it’s clear to see the chase rates on the curveball and changeup in two-strike counts have drastically increased in July, and will be key to Burnes’s effectiveness moving forward. Even when chasing the changeup, hitters are generally making some form of contact, but look at how the usage of these pitches in two-strike counts has impacted the whiff rate when chasing his other pitches in two-strike counts. By having a pitch like his curveball, which hitters chase over half the time in two-strike counts, and on which they whiff over 75 percent of the time on those swings, Burnes is able to wreak the kind of havoc we all expect from him. On top of this, you can see how the whiff rate on the cutter has also gone up massively, and by varying his location, he can prevent hitters from getting quite so locked in on his approach and make them a lot more uncertain in the batter’s box. Burnes has been mightily effective when he gets ahead in the count all year, but due to a lack of chase outside the zone, he’s been struggling to get ahead as consistently as in the past. Hitters have a .465 on-base percentage when they get ahead in the count, and a .925 OPS. Since May, however, he’s staying in the zone more often with everything except the curveball, with his zone rates rising by at least 15 percentage points on each of his slider, changeup and cutter. He’s being more aggressive, and it’s showing results with his cutter, especially in terms of the damage done against it. The expected slugging average against his cutter was .527 in May, but has dropped to .373 in June and .341 in July. The variety in his approach caused a called and swinging strike rate (CSW%) of 35%, on top of a 33% whiff rate against the cutter, something we haven’t really seen all season long. If this can be maintained, we have Cy Burnes back in business. View full article