Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Jeff Curry-Imagn Images It's neither a secret nor a coincidence that, by the standards of big-league ballclubs, the Brewers are run rather like a college team. After all, their manager is one of just two active ones whose background is mostly as a college coach. Pat Murphy has acknowledged that, though he doesn't consciously try to bring the model that made him successful at Notre Dame and Arizona State University to bear in his management of Milwaukee, there's a degree to which his skill set and the way the small-market Crew run things match nicely to what a college program has to do in order to thrive. One way in which that shows up on the field is the collective discipline of the lineup, and not just in terms of swing decisions. When the team brings any of its endless line of young players to the big leagues—or even when they (re)acquire guys who have been in the majors elsewhere, as they did when they dealt for David Hamilton in February—they ask them to let the ball travel. It's important to the team that those guys learn to recognize pitches and to frustrate hurlers' attempts to lure them out of the zone and strike them out. They coach hitters to be patient and to hit the ball deeper in the hitting zone than they normally would. It's an essential part of their offensive DNA, including and especially when it comes time to get a clutch hit. This can make their young hitters look awfully unimpressive, at first. Brewers fans will well remember the ugly early days of Brice Turang, Jackson Chourio and Caleb Durbin, who took anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to tap into their offensive upside. In the meantime, those guys also get deployed strategically, sometimes being held out of the lineup when the matchup favors another player and other times being fed into the woodchipper in a bad matchup so they can learn the ropes. Almost no Brewers hitter comes up and gets to their power quickly. In service to the team and to optimize their development even after they matriculate to the majors, those guys are asked not to swing as aggressively as they otherwise might, in addition to not swinging as often as they otherwise might. Cooper Pratt is the latest exemplar. He came to the majors an unfinished product, because the team has sufficient confidence in Murphy and his coaching staff to finish off development after a player gets to the parent club. Pratt's arrival makes the team deeper and better defensively, and eventually, having him up right now will pay off. He might be better in 2027 than he would otherwise be, because he's here now. He might hit the turbo button and achieve the stardom that is very much possible for him in 2028, because he got some of the toughest adjustments to the bigs out of the way in 2026. That can make the first stint for players like Pratt frustrating, though, because you know this guy has a good chance to be good, but he's not good yet. Pratt entered Tuesday's doubleheader batting .204/.313/.222, with just one extra-base hit in 64 plate appearances. He'd already drawn eight walks and had only 11 strikeouts, but there was little lethality in his lumber. On Tuesday, alone, he raised his career OPS by .091. He came to bat nine times, drew three walks, and cracked two extra-base hits. This week, it seems, Pratt has been let off the leash. Of this 115 tracked swings Pratt has taken since coming up, six of the 12 fastest have come in the last two days. His double down the left-field line came on the third-fastest swing of his young career; his triple to right field came on the 21st-fastest. Pratt is a big guy, and scouting reports have always cited some latent raw power in his frame and his swing. We knew he was capable of more than he showed when he first came up. Now, the team seems to believe he's ready to let it eat. That doesn't mean Pratt will suddenly go on a power binge any time soon. His double was a grounder; two balls he hit on similarly vicious swings Tuesday stayed too low and didn't escape the infield. As our Jack Stern has already laid out, Pratt is more than a small tweak or a few weeks from becoming a full-fledged power hitter. However, he can be more dangerous than he's looked so far. He can get hits, as well as simply keeping the line moving by drawing walks. He can split gaps and find corners. He can make outfielders run backward now and then. We haven't seen much of that so far, because when he got here, the Brewers focused first on ensuring he could organize his zone properly and produce what the team needs in certain situations where the batter's stats aren't the focus. As we've seen this week, though, that talent is still in there. It could burst out of him down the stretch, if only in the form of a lot of singles and doubles, now that Pratt is swinging the way he's always been capable of. The hope when he came up was that he might lengthen the lineup, in a way neither Joey Ortiz nor David Hamilton could. At first, he didn't do so, but that was during an apprentice phase. Now, he's ready to deliver on that promise. View full article

Image courtesy of © Dave Kallmann / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images For many Brewers fans, this move will feel overdue. The Brewers tried to give Blake Perkins time to work through what has effectively been a season-long slump at the plate, but ultimately, they needed more functional depth in their outfield. Perkins, still a fine defender but no longer the elite of the elite in center field and without any offensive value of which to speak, was the odd man out—but the corresponding move is an exciting addition to the 26-man roster. It will be fascinating to see how rookie Luis Lara fits into the team's plans. He's taking Perkins's roster spot, but he'll need a bigger role than the one Perkins occupied in order to justify being brought to the majors now. The team already demonstrated its faith that he can thrive in a larger role than Perkins had, though, when they signed him to a seven-year deal earlier this season, before he made it to the majors. The best role for Lara is one similar to Perkins's best one, in that Lara's best tool might also be his fielding prowess. That makes this move interesting, though, because Garrett Mitchell has a 1.042 OPS over the last four weeks. It seems like this is no time to reduce the playing time of the starting center fielder, so will Lara eat into Sal Frelick's role, instead? Or will Mitchell spend some time in a corner spot or at designated hitter, with Christian Yelich getting more days off—whether he wants them or not? This change, like the one the team made when it swapped out Luis Rengifo for Cooper Pratt, makes the team younger and better on defense at the same time. It also affirms the organization's commitment to developing players and building a lasting pipeline. Though no Pat Murphy team will set aside the goal of winning for any meaningful period, these moves accept a certain amount of temporary on-field cost in the service of improving the team's long-term outlook. That's a luxury Milwaukee has afforded itself, with such a comfortable lead in the division and one of the best records in baseball. They'll have to sort through their options and have at least one or two difficult conversations with team-controlled players, but they're going to win the NL Central this year—and doing this, like promoting Pratt last month, just might help them do so next season, too. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images In a piece Monday at Baseball Prospectus, I introduced a new statistic called Swing Disruption+. The concept is exactly what it sounds like. Using the new miss distance and swing timing data from Statcast (which you can find on Baseball Savant, here), I sought to build a model that would tell us how well pitchers produce value when batters swing, and in which ways. As a batter, your goal when you go to bat is to find a pitch you can drive and hit it squarely. As a pitcher, your objective is to mess with the batter, either via changing speeds and fooling them into a mistimed swing or via extremely deceptive movement. This stat is meant to measure how well a hurler does their job in that showdown. Aaron Ashby is not the highest-rated Brewers pitcher by Swing Disruption+. That, believe it or not, is DL Hall. Of the 368 pitchers who had at least 200 swings against them entering Sunday's games, Hall ranked 12th, with a 121 Swing Disruption+. (The stat is indexed to 100, which marks the average, and higher is better.) It's not just luck that allowed Hall to hold hitters to a .294 slugging average on contact (SLGCON) before he went down with a strained pectoral muscle; he's been good at all three ways that a pitcher can get out of harm's way when a batter swings. Since Hall is out, though, let's talk about Ashby. Really, he's the more interesting case study, anyway, because he's only very good at one of those three ways. To understand the difference between the two, let's dive into those three dimensions of deception. Firstly, you want to disrupt timing. That can take many forms, but it's the most valuable single way to get a hitter's swing out of sync, because it doesn't inherently make it harder to do either of the other two things, whereas those two do push against one another most of the time. Funky deliveries often produce mistimed swings, but the best way to reliably do so is by changing speeds often. If there are multiple pitches you can throw in or near the strike zone and they come in at significantly different speeds, hitters have to respect them all, and they can not only end up badly fooled when sitting on one option, but get caught in between when they try to cover everything. The most important individual skill for missing bats (which is the imperative of the modern hurler) is to get above or below the bat often. Most whiffs involve the batter missing vertically; fewer of them involve horrendous timing or a brutal miss on the horizontal plane. That shouldn't surprise you. Think about the arc a bat traces through the hitting zone, and you can see how there's much less margin for error for the batter vertically than horizontally or in the depth dimension that represents time. The trick with "changing eye levels," though, is that keeping the ball in the zone while creating big vertical separation is difficult—and that the more you can stretch your movement distribution vertically, the less it's likely to stretch horizontally. Horizontal movement matters, too, because while going high and low produces whiffs the best, having enough 'wiggle' to get off the center of a barrel is the top way to avoid hard contact. Batters produce all their best exit velocities when they center the ball on the barrel; getting it off the end of the bat or up on the handle produces weaker-hit balls. To avoid being vulnerable to power, a pitcher needs to be able to move one direction or the other, but again, doing that can often make it harder to move up and down the ladder and maximize swing-and-miss. Ashby's 115 Swing Disruption+ ranks him 34th in baseball, still within the league's top decile and behind only Hall and Trevor Megill among Brewers hurlers. Go ahead. Take a moment, now, and guess in your head which dimension makes Ashby a standout. Here's a brief paragraph about Megill, to give you time to think about Ashby without having it spoiled. The Brewers' newly-minted full-time closer is, as I'm sure you'd guess, elite when it comes to changing eye levels. His high-velocity, high-carry four-seamer and power curveball play off one another gorgeously, almost straight up and down. Hitters who chase the heater as it singes the top rail of the zone are often under it; those who chase the curve are usually over it. Megill is sixth in MLB in Changed Eye Levels+, at 139, which puts him right behind teammate Jacob Misiorowski (143) and three spots ahead of Gravitron (aka Kyle Harrison), at 137. Having a fastball that hitters just can't climb their way to is hugely valuable. Alright, though: back to Ashby. Did you guess correctly? He's elite in one dimesnion, and despite his extremely high arm slot, it's not verticality. Despite his varied arsenal of offspeed stuff (the changeup, the curveball, the slider), he's also just average at upsetting timing. No, what makes Ashby special is his 141 Off Barrel+, fifth-best in baseball. This year's version of Ashby is slightly more walk-prone and slightly less extreme a ground-ball guy than the 2025 edition. He's still been an elite hurler, though, and much of the credit goes to that unique sinker. Throwing from an arm slot from which batters mostly see four-seamers, Ashby fires a sinker that almost touches 100 MPH and has good arm-side run; guys mishit that most of the time. Their eyes can handle that pitch, vertically, but they end up getting it off the end of the bat. That's the key, too—that it comes mostly off the end of the bat. For many pitchers, the sinker is effectively a platoon pitch, throwable only to same-handed batters on whom it can run in and attack the label. But it's much more valuable, on average, to get the ball off the center toward the end of the bat. There are more whiffs out there, and less risk of a bloop hit. Because Ashby's movement is so deceptive from the angle he uses, even righties usually don't get the center of the barrel on his sinker, the way most opposite-handed batters often do against most sinkers. His ratio of balls off the end of the bat to those off the label or handle is well above the league average, which augments his effectiveness even more than pitchers like Mark Leiter Jr., Tommy Nance and Daniel Lynch IV, who have similar Off Barrel+ ratings but lower ratios. That ratio is factored into Swing Disruption+, which is why Ashby rates so well despite only excelling in one area. It's not news to you that Ashby is good. What's fun about this new stream of data, though, is that we can now understand and state a bit more clearly why a pitcher is good. In this case, it's an exceptional ability to move the ball horizontally to where batters don't expect it, in a way distinct even from many other pitchers who share the same broad area of strength. View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images It's a 2-2 count in a tight spot. The tying run is in scoring position, and the go-ahead run is at first. It's the top of the eighth. What are you going with, here? That's a baseball conversation as old as the game itself—or nearly so. While we don't want long, ponderous pauses between bursts of action, one of the great things about this sport is that it breathes. There's time enough between pitches to guess along with the pitcher, the catcher, the batter, the runners and the defense, at least a little. There's even time to do it aloud. You hear it on broadcasts all the time. We enjoy this exercise. There's a vicariousness to it that can make baseball feel more accessible than other sports, even though it's no less difficult when you're actually between the lines. It's also one way we judge players' baseball IQ and their engagement with their craft. How well are a catcher and pitcher communicating? How creative are they being with their sequencing and their efforts to give the hitter something other than what they're looking for? How much trust is there between them? When you watch a Brewers game, though, you can often look smart by simply leaning toward your friend and saying, "Fastball here, I bet." That's been true for years now. While Milwaukee works hard to give as many hurlers as possible multiple fastball looks, they throw some flavor of heater more often than any other team in baseball. That's not an accident. For one thing, they know that doing so can limit the quality of opponents' contact; the surest way to give up an extra homer or two is to hang an extra breaking ball or three. For another, they have a great defense most of the time, and throwing fastballs allows their pitchers to be efficient while utilizing those adept fielders. Most of all, though, they scout and develop pitchers with exceptional fastballs, in various ways. Josh Hader's unique combination of arm angle and fastball shape made him almost unhittable even when he didn't have his slider working. Corbin Burnes took some time to find that the cutter was the right fastball for him, but once he did, he was an ace. Scrap-heap scoop-ups from Trevor Megill to Bryan Hudson to Grant Anderson have not only been targeted because their fastballs are outliers, but have thrived because the team has helped them optimize what they had there. I don't have to rehash the almost superhuman elements of Kyle Harrison (aka Gravitron) or Jacob Misiorowski here; you know their heaters are the two best in baseball. Thus, there's not as much for a catcher to do back there, really. Brewers pitchers rave about the way William Contreras calls games, but the truth of the matter is that he has the easiest job of any starting catcher in the sport. He can resort to the fastball more often than anyone else, and he does. In fact, this year, he's calling some form of fastball about 68% of the time, more than any other player (including past versions of himself) has done it in any of the last four years. Occasionally, that gets brought up as a point of criticism of Contreras. Pitchers might love being exhorted to trust their heaters, but should they mix it up a bit more? Could the team miss more bats and be a better pitching staff by going to offspeed offerings more? Is Contreras holding guys back. Here's a chart that answers that question pretty neatly. This plots all of the player-seasons by catchers with at least 2,500 pitches caught in that campaign since the start of 2023, by fastball usage (the x-axis) and run value per 100 pitches on fastballs (the y-axis). The navy dots are the Brewers' catchers: Contreras (x4), Eric Haase (x2), Gary Sánchez and Victor Caratini. As you can see, they're all clustered toward the right edge of the graph. All but one dot is also on the good side of 0.00 runs per 100 heaters thrown. Contreras is pushing into new territory with the way he's hammering the fastball this year, but in part, that reflects the fact that he's working with two of the best heaters the game has seen this decade. Neither Misiorowski nor Harrison needs to throw much else; their fastballs deceive and dominate hitters in ways that are relatively exposure-proof. Sánchez is the navy dot second-closest to the right edge of the graph, and is third overall in this sample of player-seasons. The Brewers just have a lot of guys with multiple fastballs, a lot of great fastballs, and less motivation to throw other pitches than other teams have. How sustainable this approach is—whether, for instance, you can lean this hard on fastballs and still advance through the postseason to where the Brewers are hoping to go—remains to be seen. It doesn't feel like throwing so many fastballs is why the team has been beaten in October time after time, but it might be worth exploring a change of strategy that prepares the team to do something more unexpected in the playoffs. For now, though, this keeps working. Moreover, it keeps showing up as an organizational imperative, rather than some quirk of Contreras's. That makes the charismatic leader of the Crew a bit less valuable than if he were some pitch-calling genius, but this is one of those areas in which having a defined, top-down approach has lots of value to the Brewers. Should they elect to trade Contreras this winter, it won't disrupt their run prevention. That machine runs on things with more staying power, at lower cost: Chris Hook, Jim Henderson, the scouting and development teams, and a few other people in the front office. They might still be wise to retain Contreras, because his offense is hard to replace at that position and because the team looks to him as such an important figure. If they do move on, though, they'll be able to select their next starting backstop for their hitting ability, too, because they just need someone who can catch fastballs and manage moments well on defense. For many catchers, calling the game is a matter of personality, and even identity. In Milwaukee, it's about identity, too, but the identity is collective, rather than individual. They know what works, because they've built an entire ecosystem in which that simple plan will work. They want a great catcher with a live arm, intensity and offensive value. They don't need that person to also be an elite tactician, planning at-bats with the precision of a military commander. It's a little less romantic than when a team does ask a catcher to be that brilliant, but you know what's better than romanticism? Outs. Outs and wins. 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Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images Since the start of May, Trevor Megill has struck out 30 opposing batters and walked four. He's allowed four runs, and half of those (the only ones since May 12) came in one outing at Coors Field. He threw a tick harder than his season average in shutting down the Reds Monday night, though it was pretty easy to stay near 100 MPH, because he only needed 10 pitches to pick up the save. That was Megill's 11th save of the year. When the season began, the Brewers went with a shared closer model that gave both Megill and Abner Uribe save chances, somewhat to the chagrin of the towering righty. Megill doesn't want to make waves, and he's a well-liked member of the relief corps, but he's never made any bones about the fact that he wants to close. He wants it bad. Being the guy on the mound with the game in the balance is where he finds his joy in the game. The emotion he shows whenever he comes off the mound after escaping a jam to rescue the team is the fire that fuels his triple-digit fastball and that high-spin power curve. At this point, there's no reason whatsoever for the Brewers not to let it ride with him as their ninth-inning guy. Though he counts as old-school for the way he embraces the specific duty of saving games, Megill isn't one of those guys who resents being called upon in tie games or struggles to lock in when protecting a four-run lead on a night when the team gets some late insurance. He just wants to be The Guy, and lately, that's exactly how he's pitched. It was reasonable to worry about him a bit early in the year, when his elbow was grumbling and his velocity was down. He's been thoroughly dominant for the laat two months, though, and has earned every bit of the job he wants so badly. Hitters are helpless against him, and have been for some time. Of course, the Brewers have an ulterior motive that makes it easy to shift all the closer work onto him, too. While the number of front offices who will pony up ill-advisedly for a relief ace based on their saves total has dwindled almost to zero, Megill's trade value will get a small boost if he sees out the season as the team's closer. The Crew also knows as well as anyone what's inside Megill's elbow and how long he might be able to hold up at this level, and to whatever extent he's still a bit fragile health-wise, the closing gig is a good safehouse in which to hide him. Roles like those filled by Aaron Ashby and Uribe in this bullpen require a player with terrific durability and recovery. That's not Megill. They can better keep him healthy this way. Next season will be Megill's last under team control. The Brewers will probably seek to trade him over the winter, partially because saving these games has sent his projected arbitration-determined salary for 2027 pretty high. Dealing a healthy Megill with pretty numbers is the best way to maximize the expected return. Letting him rack up the saves also means some savings when the team goes to arbitration with Uribe, who could sneak in as a Super Two-eligible guy this fall (but will probably reach arbitration in the winter of 2027-28 instead). All of that is for later, but that doesn't mean the Brewers aren't thinking about it. Things have a funny way of aligning when you do everything right, organizationally. Yes, the team might want to trade Megill this winter, and yes, their long-term interests are served well on multiple fronts by keeping him in the closer role and making Uribe his setup man. But from the vibes to the intensity of his stuff, everything is pointing them in that direction in the short term, too. Before any offseason trade rumors comes a postseason, and in that cauldron, Megill is the kind of arm and the kind of competitor you want. The team would love nothing more than to have to make a terribly difficult decision this winter: Can they really trade the guy who just got the final out in the franchise's first-ever World Series triumph? View full article

That's one reasonable reading of the progress of their careers, but I don't think it's the one best supported by the evidence or the one that's ultimately right. Both guys HAVE gotten chances, and they just haven't shown that they can really hack it in the majors. Then, when sent back to Triple-A, each has slowly shown more and more of their warts even at those lower levels. I'll tell you this: in addition to neither appearing to be high on this organization's priority list, neither guy is among the players other teams are most interested in acquiring. I think the underlying truth here might actually be that the Brewers gave two guys who probably weren't quite destined to be useful big-leaguers such a good and viable path that they briefly looked like they would not only be useful, but could be MORE than useful. They just couldn't quite pull off what would have been deeply impressive developmental wins. We'll see! Each could still turn things around. But I don't think a lack of organizational faith is holding either back. I think their talent is doing that. It's just gut-wrenchingly hard to be a good big-leaguer, and as close as they've each come, I don't think either one is going to clear the hurdles and get there.

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images When Jacob Misiorowski takes the mound Friday night to face the Cubs at Uecker Field in Milwaukee, he'll do so on six days' rest. In fact, it will be the second time in a row that he pitches with an extra day—or what those of us born before 2000 would call an extra extra day, because the fifth day of rest between starts has only become as normal as the first four within the last few years. Misiorowski will be making his 31st regular-season appearance and 30th start since debuting last June, but he's only pitched on the traditional four days' rest four times. The Brewers know what they have in The Miz. They also know what dangers he faces. Though few pitchers in the game are better at generating power with their lower half, Misiorowski's velocity and extension—no pitcher in baseball history has had as lethal a combination of the two—mean that his body is undergoing extraordinary stresses when he pitches. So far, he hasn't broken. The team knows they can't take for granted that their luck or his ligaments will hold, though. Thus, they'll continue to treat him cautiously. His efficiency has allowed him to work deep into games, including completing one, but the team hasn't permitted him to throw more than 101 pitches in any start this year. They're also pouncing on every opportunity to stretch out the days between starts for him, as they try to avoid letting his workload skyrocket. In 2024, he pitched 97 1/3 competitive innings, divided between the top two levels of the minors. Last year, counting his playoff outings, he pitched 141 1/3 frames. This season, he's already at 93, and the team fully intends to play not just 162 games, but 175 or so. If he stays on this pace, he could throw 200 innings in 2026, including the postseason. Whatever you might have heard in the past, that's fine. The so-called Verducci Effect is bunk; the columnist for whom it's named did shoddy research and glibly published a piece that had needless staying power because of his ubiquity in the national baseball media at the time. It's fine and normal for Misiorowski to add 50-plus innings to his workload over a full season, even though he did something similar from 2024 to last year. However, while increasing workload doesn't act as a multiplier, per se, the more one pitches, the greater the risk of injury. The harder one throws, the greater the risk of injury. Misiorowski has been impressively available and healthy over the last 15 months, but no one is blind to the risk he faces. Thus, the team will take every viable step to mitigate that risk. Right now, what that looks like is akin to making Misiorowski a collegiate ace. Traditionally, in NCAA baseball, a team sends their top starter to the mound just once a week, and they line them up for Friday nights. It's a handy thing for scouts who want to see pro prospects. It also makes for predictably good viewing for local fans. Most of all, though, putting players on that schedule has helped lure coaches away from an even more ingrained tradition that prevailed before this one: abusing elite arms and burning through them in their early 20s. Misiorowski started on a Friday night two weeks ago against the Phillies. Last week, he got the nod again in the northwest suburbs of Atlanta. For the third week in a row, he'll be the Brewers' Friday Night Starter, this time against the Cubs. It raises the hype and the mania of what was already sure to be an electric ballpark, as the Crew welcome a streaking but ragged Chicago team to town and look to knock them out of the division race for good. He won't stay on the Friday Nights Only schedule next week, but he could bop back onto it soon thereafter. Friday marks the first of 18 games in 17 days, leading into the All-Star break. Having Misiorowski start the opener of such a rough spot in the schedule is a great way to set the tone, but he won't be able to wait until next Friday for his next appearance. That will probably come, instead, in the final contest of this six-game homestand, against the Reds next Thursday. After that, he might start on four days' rest for once, during the Crew's doubleheader in St. Louis—but it's more likely that his final start before the All-Star break will come July 8, to close out that series against the Brewers' toughest challengers for this year's NL Central crown. Presumably, Misiorowski will be asked to start the All-Star Game, but that will just be a brief engagement. Assuming he stays fully healthy between now and then, we could see him land back on the Friday Night Starter schedule beginning July 17, when the Brewers begin their official second half against Miami. They have off days on July 23 and July 30, so if the team elects to go with some form of a six-man rotation (a term Pat Murphy assiduously avoids, but which basically applies to the way they're running the staff right now), Misiorowski could start on July 17, July 24 and July 31, pitching twice at home in three straight weeks of Friday nights. Another run of 17 days between open dates for Milwaukee will force Misiorowski off a once-a-week schedule for most of August. However, it's easy to see how he might get back onto that plan in September. I can get him to the end of the season with 30 total starts, without ever having him truly miss a turn in the rotation. If the Brewers can do that, they almost certainly will. The most remarkable thing about this, though, is not Misiorowski himself. For once, he's not the story, although the story is about him. Rather, this one is about what the Brewers have afforded themselves. In addition to the best pitcher in baseball, they have a legitimate Cy Young Award contender in any other year, in Kyle Harrison; the dominant-when-healthy veteran Brandon Woodruff; and the best depth corps of any team in the league, featuring Brandon Sproat, Shane Drohan, Robert Gasser, Chad Patrick, and the currently injured Coleman Crow and Logan Henderson. They also boast the best farm system in baseball, from which could come more direct help, or from which they could deal to add one more starter before the trade deadline. Almost no other team in the league could afford to slowplay an ace like this. Milwaukee has so many versatile and valuable arms that they can survive five games in six days without Misiorowski getting involved. As they always seem to do, they've also created a buffer for themselves. A slight slip in the standings need not put a bead of sweat on their brows; they have control of the division. The combination of excellent depth and a lack of real urgency to win every last regular-season game in the second half should make taking it easy with Misiorowski relatively easy. The marketing department has to love this. What's easier than making money on a superstar who appears on a predictable schedule? The house is full as often as not during the summers in Milwaukee, but the team can make a real killing by promoting Misiorowski starts that come like clockwork, right alongside the weekend vibes. The front office and the coaching staff wouldn't do it for that reason, though. Misiorowski is being treated like a college arm right now because it's the best way to maximize the chances that he still has this much crackling heat in his arm when the NLCS begins in mid-October. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Throughout baseball history, there have been several bunt hit specialists. During the Dead Ball Era, guys like Wee Willie Keeler and Eddie Collins excelled at placing bunts and using their speed to reach base. Brett Butler had 42 bunt hits in 1992 alone. Juan Pierre totaled 201 in his career. I want to talk about the best bunter in baseball, but we need to start by making clear that we won't be besmirching the names of the best bunters in history by pretending that any of them are active now. The game has changed. To wit, David Hamilton is on pace for over 20 bunt hits in 2026, but that wouldn't even come especially close to the top spot for the last 20 years. That honor goes to Carlos Gómez, who—as a raw hitter and speed demon playing his home games on the artificial turf of the Metrodome—had a whopping 30 bunt hits in his first full season of 2008. However, since Gómez did that, no batter has collected more than 20. That new benchmark was set by Dee Strange-Gordon, in 2014. It's not a record, then, but Hamilton has a real chance to collect more hits via bunt than anyone has since CC Sabathia spent a summer in Milwaukee. The last time anyone bunted for a hit more than 20 times in a year, Pat Murphy was the head baseball coach at Arizona State University; Jesus Made was one year old; and Giannis Antetokounmpo had just picked up a basketball for the first time. No one is surprised that Hamilton is fast, of course. He's been one of the fastest people in professional baseball for his whole pro career, and he's exceptionally aggressive on the bases. However, it would have been hard to predict this level of impact from bunting when this season began. That required Hamilton to develop a real facility for the craft of the bunt, and for many a fast hitter in the game's history, that's proved easier said than done. Hamilton has it down, though—literally. He's become so adept at bunting the ball straight down that he often hits home plate or the hard-packed dirt directly in front of it. That's led to a handful of easy singles, because by the time the ball comes down from a 20-foot initial bounce, there's no time for a fielder to secure it and make a strong enough throw all the way to first base. R0JyenJfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGdNRVVWQldWbGNBQVZ0VFZ3QUhBUTlYQUFNTVV3SUFCRk5XVmxjRUJGVlhCRmRR (1).mp4 Generally speaking, that's not a repeatable skill, but that's been Hamilton's genius. He has seven bunt hits with an official batted-ball distance of 0, 1 or 2 feet, and even that undersells him. Here's a ball on which he so niftily dropped the bat onto a dipping breaking ball that Statcast read the first bounce as upward flight off the bat, calling a ball he clipped straight into the dirt an 18-foot blooper. MnI0T1BfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUZKU0J3Y0NBd3NBQ1ZJS1Z3QUhVMVJXQUFOUVVRVUFVRkFHQlFwV0JsRUJBRk1G.mp4 That ability to move with a ball and almost lay the bat atop it has been marvelous to watch. Hamilton can also punch it a little, though, when he needs to get it away from an especially athletic catcher or the third baseman is cheating in but not close to the line. MTZORHJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQVFaV1ZsUlhVQW9BV2xwV1ZnQUhVZzlXQUFNQlVsSUFBZ0VIQUZZRENGVUFBRlFB.mp4 He also shows the capacity to get on top of high fastballs, which can often foil eager bunters with plenty of speed. Getting this down is almost the whole challenge, though getting out of the box well on such a high, hard one can also be tricky. a0R2WEJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFVQVVnQUhYbEVBQ1ZZSFhnQUhVdzhIQUFOWEJRQUFWMVJXVWdJSFYxQlVBd1FD.mp4 This skill hasn't turned Hamilton into a star or anything. He hits at the bottom of the Brewers lineup, and he's now in a de facto platoon with Joey Ortiz at third base. He's slugging .322 on the year. However, he's also getting on at a .313 clip, thanks to decent plate discipline, some shielding from tough lefties, and those bunts. Moreover, a bunt single (or a walk, or a plunking, or the time he reached on catcher interference, for which the scoring rules give the batter no credit) is often a double for Hamilton, who already has 16 stolen bases in 21 tries. His numbers won't be pretty. He won't be promoted to the top of the lineup. He won't even play every day. In all likelihood, the only chance Hamilton has for any national attention this year is if he collects enough bunt hits to claim the most since Gómez or Butler. But because he's used the bunt to augment his skills while he works to develop the Brewers' patented patient, let-it-travel approach, Hamilton has helped the team score at the excellent clip they've achieved this year, no matter what his stat line says. It's great to see him keeping the art form alive, and even leading its revival. It's also (aesthetically) good, old-fashioned fun when he lays one down and beats it out. The Brewers will take the fun, but it's the value he's finding ways to generate that has them happiest of all to keep penciling him in against right-handed opposing pitchers. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images It would be hubris—hideous hubris—to suggest that the NL Central race is over already. Sure, the season starts early these days, so even though it's only June 18, the Brewers have already played 71 of their 162 games. Sure, they have a comfy 5.5-game lead in the standings table, and the teams who looked most likely to give them a run for their money this year (the Pirates and the Cubs) are even further back. Much can happen in 100 days, though, and that's how much time is left in this long season. One year and one day ago, I wrote an article entitled "The Brewers Can Absolutely Catch the Cubs," and that turned out to be true. They were 5.5 games behind Chicago at the time. That said, though: this thing is pretty close to over. The 2026 Cardinals aren't the 2025 Brewers; those Brewers were better. The 2026 Brewers aren't the 2025 Cubs; these Brewers are better. Milwaukee is a well-run, deep, dynamic team that hasn't even had everything go right this year, and that is dominating, anyway. They're 104-58 in their last 162 regular-season games. They're going to win this division. Even the news that Quinn Priester won't be back this year (hardly news, by now, really) doesn't change that. Specifically, FanGraphs gives the Crew an 83% chance to win the NL Central, the highest point they've reached this year. The projection system there gives the Cardinals, Cubs and Pirates each about a 5% chance to catch Milwaukee, but if you have an 83% chance of winning something, you'd also rather have three rivals dividing the rest of the pie than see one more serious one lurking. There's little the Crew could do to press the pedal harder to the floor, anyway, but these data make it clear: they don't need to. They can afford, for instance, the slightly risky maneuver of designating Luis Rengifo for assignment to install Cooper Pratt at shortstop. They can afford not only to lose Priester, but to give Jacob Misiorowski extra rest between starts so he can still be fully operational come October. This team is living on Easy Street. That doesn't mean they should slow down, or that they shouldn't be proactive as the summer wears on. Whether it's another prospect promotion that encourages medium-term development as well as patching a hole on the roster, or making a trade before the deadline on August 3, the team should work hard to improve their chances. It's just that the chances they work hard to improve should be those of remaining a thriving Midwestern hegemon for many more years, and those of winning a World Series soon. If they make a major addition later this summer, it should be someone who materially bolsters their hopes of getting past the Dodgers this time, rather than a depth starter or fortifying secondary setup man. If they turn over Sal Frelick's job to Luis Lara or replace Brandon Sproat in the starting rotation, it should be because that serves the long-term development of the players they most believe are part of their future, not because it might help them win one or two more games before the end of September. Some teams build great farm systems and string together a few division titles, but find they can't get over the hump in October. Eventually, many of them decide to go 'all-in' and swap some future wins for the chance at present glory. The Brewers almost certainly won't do that, and they almost certainly shouldn't, either. However, they also shouldn't remain unduly conservative. The freedom allowed by a nice cushion in the division standings isn't the freedom not to act; it's the freedom to act with precision and patience. This is the golden era of Milwaukee Brewers baseball. It's never been better than this, and it might never be better than this again. But 'this' isn't confined to this summer. It's also about last year, and the one before, and the two or three or five to come. The Brewers' responsibility over the next six weeks is to show that they understand all of that—that they prove to the fans that they understand the hunger for a championship, without overdoing it and giving up the delirious joy of a team that wins the division almost every year. That sounds difficult, but if you're the Brewers, it's really not. What was difficult was building the best organization in the game, in terms of scouting, development, instruction and execution. After doing all that, risk management is just about rolling the dice and not counting the bounces. View full article

Love to hear that. Yeah, the fan culture on social media deflates me, too. It all seems to come from a place of tribalism, which blinds everyone who immerses themselves in it to good things done by any other team or player and to bad things done by anyone representing their tribe. We're trying hard to be the antidote to that: fun yet serious, critical but never cynical or rude. We won't always strike the perfect balance, either, but it's a lot easier to do that at sites like this than on Twitter or Bluesky or (God forbid) Facebook.

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images When Pat Murphy and the Brewers staff sits down to fill out the lineup card each day, they have a wealth of good options. Frustrating though it might be for fans to watch some of the weak hitters at the bottom of the order bat, Joey Ortiz, David Hamilton, Cooper Pratt and Blake Perkins each have considerable defensive and baserunning value. Ditto for Sal Frelick, when he's right. And even among their more offense-focused personnel, they have several good guys from whom to choose. Murphy has loved having such flexibility all season. Even during spring training, he was effusive about the improved depth of his team. It does make the choices on which they settle more interesting, though. For instance, against a starter without stark platoon splits—and with different approaches based on the handedness of the opposing batter—how do you choose between Jake Bauers and Andrew Vaughn at first base? Earlier this week, our Jack Stern wrote about the team's tendency to default to Bauers, even since Vaughn returned from the injured list at the beginning of May. Jack couched that daily dilemma largely in terms of the platoon advantage, and indeed, with right-handed starter Gavin Williams taking the ball for Cleveland on Wednesday night, it's Bauers starting over Vaughn. But there's a bit more to that decision, too. Firstly, Williams is one of an increasingly common breed of pitcher who essentiually workessentially from two distinct arsenals. Against righties, he leans heavily on a sinker and sweeper, moving east and west to find outs. Against lefties, he switches gears, going mostly with a four-seamer and a curveball and mixing in a cutter. Thus, when evaluating which hitters match up best against him, the Brewers almost have to ask which hitter they trust against the type of pitcher Williams is in those specific matchups—while baking in the demonstrated value of having at least a couple of same-handed batters in a lineup to force a pitcher to switch back and forth between approaches or pitch mixes. Because of the way the team's lineup works right now, this means assessing Vaughn, Bauers, Jackson Chourio, William Contreras and Frelick. In theory, the Brewers could sit any of them, or start all five, but mostly, Contreras's days at catcher and the imperative to use Christian Yelich when he's available will set up a short series of real dilemmas: Is Bauers or Vaughn better-suited to hit the opponent? If it's Bauers, should he go play the outfield for the night, at the expense of either Chourio or Frelick, making way for Vaughn? The Brewers gave us their answer when they issued the night's lineup card. Bauers is in there. So are Frelick, Garrett Mitchell and David Hamilton, over possible right-handed alternatives like Gary Sánchez and Joey Ortiz. Contreras and Chourio made the cut from the right side, but Vaughn didn't. The interesting question is: Why those guys? And now, we can furnish some answers to ourselves, using new Statcast data. Simply put, Vaughn struggles with the sinker-sweeper righty. That might be his toughest matchup. Looking at the distributions of his swing timing in all three dimensions against sinkers and sweepers from right-handed hurlers, you can see that Vaughn is often off the center of the barrel, often early or late, and unable to line up the barrel with the ball vertically as much as the average batter. This data is quite new, so I'm not expecting you to have contextualized the above already. Hopefully, though, you can see the difference between those distributions and these, for Chourio: Chourio can cover both pitches from a righty much better than Vaughn can. Even some of the times on which he's slightly off—early on the sweeper, for instance—result in hard contact in the air, because of his bat path and the way he adapts based on what he sees. Vaughn's best swing takes him through the ball on the inner third, and he struggles to connect cleanly if a pitch appears to be headed there and then ends up on the outer edge, instead. Chourio is much better at it. Starting Chourio over Vaughn, then, would be an easy choice, but that's not really the choice the Brewers faced. They first had to decide whether to give the nod to Vaughn or Bauers at first base, and that meant evaluating Bauers's ability to handle a righty who throws a four-seamer, a curveball and a cutter. The curve is awfully tough on Bauers, truth be told, but he's unexpectedly excellent at covering the four-seamer from a righty—especially up, His ability to line up the barrel with the ball vertically is far superior to that of the average batter, and with his elite bat speed, he's able to punish mistakes on either the cutter or the curve. In the past, we could have shrugged and said that a lefty is likely to hit a righty better than a righty is. Now, we can see clearly that Bauers is better able to stay on time and make solid contact against a pitcher like Williams than Vaughn is. The final option for the team would be to bench Frelick at Vaughn's expense, by moving Bauers out to right field. That's a decision they need to weigh a bit more seriously, unless and until Frelick shows more than he has of late either at bat or in the field. When it comes to hitting a righty like Williams, though, Frelick is much better equipped to make solid contact than is Vaughn. Frelick is superb at staying on time and finding the barrel against this suite of pitches, in this kind of matchup. His very low bat speed and tendency to let the ball get too deep on him are real concerns, but he's still much better against this type of pitcher than Vaughn is against the type of pitcher Williams is against righties. That's not to mention that a defensive configuration with Frelick in right field and Bauers at first is more robust than one with Vaughn at first and Bauers in right. Not all starting pitchers pose such interesting problems. Not all teams have such an array of possibilities when building a lineup. Thankfully, though, we now have some insight into how the Brewers can choose between those options on a fascinating night like Wednesday. Vaughn doesn't belong in the lineup initially, but that doesn't mean there won't be a pitcher later in the game against whom he's the right bat. And the Brewers are armed with terrific data to tell when and whether that moment comes. View full article

Image courtesy of © Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images The Cooper Pratt Era (such as it may be) will begin in earnest Tuesday night. The Brewers plan to start Pratt at shortstop for his major-league debut, and in making room for him on the active roster, they designated infielder Luis Rengifo for assignment. That it's Rengifo's place on the team Pratt is taking is no surprise, but it's of some interest that the veteran has been told to pack his bags, rather than being stashed away on the injured list. It looked as though Rengifo might have an injury worthy of a stint on the shelf, necessitating and facilitating Pratt's promotion. That would have kept the team's powder dry, holding onto Rengifo and keeping him in the mix with incumbent infield options Joey Ortiz, David Hamilton and Pratt, depending on how things develop from here. Instead, Rengifo is now effectively gone. That makes this move a bit more commital than it looked at first glance. Pratt is, effectively, taking over at shortstop, making (semi-)permanent the platoon of Ortiz and Hamilton at third base. This locks everything into place a little more than we might have anticipated. A roaring surge or a calamitous slump by either Ortiz or Hamilton could still change the equation. So could Jett Williams turning it on at Triple-A Nashville. Tentatively, though, it sure looks like the team plans to proceed from here with their freshly extended rookie at short and two players working in a complementary role next to him. There's a little risk here that wasn't there if and when one envisioned Rengifo landing on the injured list. It's not as easy, now, to foresee the team optioning either Ortiz or Hamilton if their performance demands it. The front office is gambling a bit, because this can no longer be an audition of a few weeks or a month. The Brewers need some mileage from Pratt, and their hopes for stabilizing the bottom end of the batting order now rest on the trio of Pratt, Ortiz and Hamilton. Rengifo could pass through waivers, given the money still owed to him, but it's unlikely that he'll have interest in going to Nashville. At this point, it seems like the Brewers can hope only to save a morsel of the money they still owe to Rengifo after signing him for $4 million over the winter. They're jettisoning him in the name of making the runway from which Pratt's career will take off as clear as possible. It was already exciting to see Pratt called up. Now, it's also intriguing, and a little bit risky. The upside for his team just rose considerably. Its floor might have dropped a bit, though. The club will hope the latter never comes into play. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jeffery Bennett-Imagn Images Robert Gasser was a two-fastball guy last year, who was really more like two different one-fastball guys. He leaned heavily on his four-seamer against right-handed batters, and on his sinker—really, a running two-seamer—against lefties. He only made two starts in the majors, but that's what he showed in them, and it roughly matched what he had shown in his rookie season of 2024, before going down with an elbow injury. He comes at you from a low slot, but he doesn't have anything with much depth. Instead, he's working east and west at all times, and his project within each at-bat is to set up and execute a sweeper to get you out. This season, much of that has changed. Gasser's slot is even lower in 2026 than it was in 2025. He's also using more of a crossfire delivery. In this pair of images, you can clearly see the lower arm angle, though the slight difference in camera angles makes it harder to tell that he's striding closed as he comes down the mound. Those adaptations give Gasser a clearer path to being a useful left-handed reliever, but interestingly, the changes he's made to his arsenal push in the opposite direction. He's now something much closer to a true three-fastball guy, who not only has a cutter he trusts again, but throws the four-seamer, the sinker, and the cutter to both lefties and righties. Ah, yes, and about that sinker: it's not a two-seamer that runs but doesn't sink much, anymore. Gasser acknowledged after his first big-league start of the year that he's made a grip change this year. He now throws what he calls a "one-seam" sinker, with more depth. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a one-seam grip places one of a ball's horseshoe-shaped laces between the fingers of a pitcher, letting one seam catch the air and create downward movement via air resistance, rather than spin direction or traditional seam-shifted wake. It's an unusual grip for a pitcher coming from a low slot like Gasser's, but the effect has been to give his sinker much more true sink. Despite the lower slot, Gasser's four-seamer has as much rising action as ever this year, but induced vertical break on the sinker is 6.8 inches, down from 9.6 inches in 2025. Unequivocally, this is a nastier pitch, and mixing it with the good changeup and sweeper Gasser has long had plus the two other fastball shapes should allow him to miss bats and collect weak contact, if the rest of the pieces fall into place. What are the rest of the pieces? In a word: location. Gasser has walked nine of the 87 batters he's faced this season, which is alarming, because control isn't even his biggest problem. Rather, it's that he's also allowed 11 extra-base hits. A handful of those came in Las Vegas, where the conditions weren't conducive to success for any pitcher, but he's been hit hard in each of his appearances so far. He's just making too many mistakes in the heart of the zone to dismiss any of the damage being done against him as a matter of bad luck. Though the tweaks to his sinker have given him a chance to hit better spots with it low in the zone, in practice, he's leaving it up too much—be that in the zone, when it was meant to be below it, or up up. RDFkOXlfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFrRkFBRUdBZ0lBRFFBRVVBQUhCVlFGQUZnTUFnQUFCd1JVQndkUkJnZFdBRk5U.mp4 Living mostly in the 91-93 MPH zone, Gasser doesn't have the margin for error to miss as much as he's been missing, with any of his pitches. He's built a more interesting arsenal than he had in the past, thanks in part to being healthy enough to get the reps in and do so. These were needed changes. To lock them in and enjoy the fruits of them, though, Gasser will have to keep drilling on the mechanics involved. He'll have to succeed at hitting his targets, because the stuff is now good enough to win—but it will never be good enough to make up for missing in the middle of the dish to big-leaguers. View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images Let's get this much straight: Joey Ortiz still is not a good hitter. You don't want to see him anywhere but the bottom of your team's lineup card, and maybe not even there. In the last 30 days, he's batting .222/.364/.296, with four doubles and no home runs. He's only come to bat 67 times, as the Brewers have given David Hamilton a share of his time at shortstop and shielded him from right-handed pitchers much of the time. That's not a good offensive player. If you saw those numbers and made an intrigued, almost happy "huh" sound, it's only because you're so used to execrable production from Ortiz, who has been infamously inept at the plate for the majority of the last two years. Still, we have to reckon with his upturn in production a little bit, because we're likely to see the team reckon with the ramifications of a roster shakeup in the days ahead. Cooper Pratt will join the team Tuesday to make his big-league debut, and that will make him (for a spell, at least) one of the team's regulars. This isn't the kind of player whom you call up to moulder on the bench, even if it appears to have been a move prompted not by the proactive desire to install him permanently at shortstop, but by Luis Rengifo's apparent injury Sunday afternoon. Pratt's playing time can't all come from Rengifo's (presumably) surrendered share. Some of it will come from Ortiz's, and/or Hamilton's. So we need to be able to answer the question now: Is Joey Ortiz, in some important sense, fixed? Or is he the one who should be unceremoniously shunted out of the way to make room for Pratt? Let's dig in. Here's the most important fact about Ortiz getting better, as of about the middle of last month: it started with a concrete approach change. He has generally been a patient hitter (though, at times, a passive one, really), but he went to extremes of not swinging there, for a while. It worked, in that he started drawing walks at a healthy rate and getting on base much more often. But not swinging is not a long-term offensive strategy, especially for a player who doesn't strike any fear in the hearts of opposing pitchers. As you can see from that chart, though, Ortiz began swinging at a healthy rate again, on or about June 1, and his production didn't suddenly plunge back into the depths. So, let's talk about how he's changed in terms of his setup and movements. Here's Ortiz collecting a bloop hit against the White Sox on Opening Day. ek13WDVfWGw0TUFRPT1fQndoVVZWRUZBd29BQzFZRUFBQUhWVkpmQUZnQUJWTUFWRklEQ1FZRkIxVlZBd05l.mp4 The result was nice, but this isn't good process. This stiff, awkward, often lunging swing was Ortiz's norm throughout April, which is how he ended up running a sub-.400 OPS for a significant period. It wasn't working, so in the middle of May, the team and the player collaborated to try something new: a kind of factory reset. Here he is striking out against the Cardinals last month. bGJ3TlZfWGw0TUFRPT1fQndVRVhGWUNBd0lBQ0FNRVhnQUhVMWNEQUFOUkJRVUFBRklOVWdBQUNRcFFVZ2NE.mp4 This looks like a default setting, doesn't it? His feet are even. His hand position is neutral. Everything is very bland. It's no more effective than his previous stance and swing—in the particular cases I've selected, it was less effective—but it does take some of the tension and blockage out of his eyesight and movement. Making Ortiz get into this uncomfortably neutral position helped him reorganize his strike zone a bit, and it broke a few bad habits. Around the beginning of June, the slate cleared, Ortiz and the Brewers restored his preferences—but with a couple of important tweaks. Here he is truly hammering a ball, this weekend against the Phillies. b0d3S1hfWGw0TUFRPT1fVXdrRFhRVUJWZ1FBV1ZvQVZRQUhDVk5WQUZrQ1ZWVUFDMUJRQjFjTlZBVlVVUVlB.mp4 He got a little lucky here. He got a real meatball, right in his happy zone. The thing is, a couple of months ago, Ortiz didn't even have a happy zone at the plate. Although he's still no fearsome slugger, he's regained a sense of what he's looking for and what to do with it. What you can't spot for yourself in these videos, we can illustrate using some Statcast data on his stance and stride. Note that after the cleansing switch to standing straight and level, he's back to basically the same set of angles and the same stride direction now as he had in April—but with his weight a bit more forward. You can see this in the videos, too. His weight starts more even, and he's less coiled into his back hip—not in a way that costs him the power hitters get from their back side, but in a way that loosens his front hip and leg to move more fluidly. He's also moving his head a bit less, which leads to both better swing decisions and cleaner contact when he does swing. I'm not here to tell you the Brewers should trust Ortiz and return him to a full-time role. Some of the benefits and improvements we're talking about here are partially the product of having the platoon advantage more often than is typical. Some of them reflect the salutary discomfort of being less of a regular. When you get fewer reps, sometimes you swing less, and sometimes, that's exactly what needs to happen. Expanding a player's role after watching them improve when their role is reduced is often a mistake. I am here to tell you, though, that Ortiz has made some material changes, even if they seem subtle. He's putting himself in a position to succeed at the plate again, even if it be in a limited way. Given the value he provides on defense, that's all the team needed from him. If Rengifo is out a while and Pratt takes up residence at shortstop, don't be surprised if Ortiz becomes a productive member of a platoon at the hot corner—and, for the second time in three years, one half of the best defensive left side of the infield in the entire National League. View full article