AdvantageSchneider

Like I thought earlier you can stick a fork in the Reds. 4 games under .500 10.5 games out of first and the bullpen is a disaster. Pretty much every time I look at them their bullpen is blowing a lead. They might get De la Cruz back this week but he's not a relief pitcher so it won't matter. Heard an interesting stat about the Cubs this week. Their AAA pitching staff has the worst ERA in the international league and the 3rd worst ERA in all of AAA which is hard to do considering how much of a hitters league the PCL is. So it would seem the cubs are unlikely to get any pitching reinforcements from their farm system.

Elly De La Cruz to the IL with a bad hammy. Going to miss at least 3 weeks. They are a game above .500 right now. I assume this is the end of the competitive portion of their season.

They bullpen was subpar/bad before they lost him so are they going to be able to acquire multiple bullpen arms to get it to adequate? Will they even be buyers by the time other teams are selling? They've got other issues they would probably need to address too.

Big hit to the Reds today, Graham Ashcraft their best reliever goes on the 60 day DL with a UCL sprain. The Reds bullpen has been a weak spot for that team. They are close to the league leaders in blown saves. So a weakness gets even worse. In a tough division hard to see them surviving this with the other issues they have.

He's played it but I'm not so sure he's played it well. Looking at fangraphs in single A he made 18 errors in 54 games or 1 error every three games. In 2024 in double A he cut it down to 10 errors in 50 games or one error every 5 games. In 2025 in triple A he made 10 errors in 15 games. With the Brewers in AAA he's made 3 errors at SS in 5 games. I don't ever see him playing SS for the Brewers baring emergency circumstances, all other SS on the active roster are unable to play the position. Much like Braun continuing to field at SS during batting practice before the game saying he was available in an emergency.

A) Hamilton provides backup at SS so you can PH for either him or Joey depending on who starts. Otherwise I suppose you have to move Turang to SS and Rengifo or Williams to SS. Or roll with Williams at SS. I don't know enough about their defense to know what is better. B) Hamilton is also an elite pinch runner for Vaughn or Sanchez at least. Rengifo is not.

The Rengifo game. When you are being outhomered by both Joey Ortiz and David Hamilton it's time to go.

Should have cut him yesterday.

Game report sorry nothing to add about Uribe, didn't even know there was anything going on until after I got home. Crowd of 33k not bad for a Tuesday night, but based on the lines to get into the stadium you would have thought it was a playoff game and standing room only. No idea what the hold up was. It looked like they might have been using new metal detectors. I don't know if that was the problem. I will say they might as well get rid of them all together because it looked like everyone was getting waived through without having to put their keys or phones in the little plastic bins. If you can go through the metal detectors with that much metal and not set them off I'm sure you can sneak in a knife or a gun. It seemed like several brewers changed up their walk up songs, most notably Contreras and Bauer, but then later in the game it seemed they switched back. So no idea what's going on there. I'm not a big fan of the whole tarps off thing, but they are enthusiastic. In the 9th they were yelling several players names and the players gave them a wave. They did Mitchell, Frelick, Bauer, Chruio and even Rengifo. They actually had an announcement in the second inning that if you wanted to participate in that section you should head over to the miller lite landing. Will see how much legs this thing has. Nice to have a couple of studs at the top of the rotation. Best 1-2 punch since prime Burnes and woody? Or Grenke and Gallardo or CC and Sheets?

I was a fan of his signing when it was announced. I thought he would be an excellent bounce back candidate. But I was wrong(and so was our front office). He's got a giant fork sticking out of him. He gives us nothing offensively or defensively. He is worse offensively than both Ortiz and Hamilton by pretty much every metric. He's also horrible on defense. He should have been credited with three errors in one inning tonight if not for a generous scoring decision and a tremendous play by at first by Vaughn. There is no baseball or financial reason to keep him around. So when should be be cut? Well, I wouldn't want a rookie to face the defending world champions. And the series against the cardinals would also seem to have a little more importance to give a rookie his first taste of the bigs. However after the Cards series there is a Thursday off day followed by a short 3 game road trip in Houston before a 4 game homestand against the giants. Neither of those teams are playing great baseball so that would be a good stretch to get a rookie's feet wet. In fact after that the play Colorado and the A's. 4 series against average at best before they play some tougher competition. So I'm hoping Rengifo is DFA's Thursday May 28th. Nothing against the guy but he just can't play.

Dynamite drop in Monty.

Fangraphs did a deep dive into this a while ago. The video evidence seemed to indicate that Arraez was getting big credits for only slightly above average plays, except for one that seemed to be a legitimately good play. So while his defense appears to be overstated the early results are that he has improved defensively from previous years.

That was before the game tonight when he struck out 2 more times in 4 plate appearances. That's not going to get it done.

That doesn't seem to explain why Lara's slug and Iso and HR totals are so much better than Ewings. Launch angle is nice and all but at some point results matter. Ewing did have a very nice debut tonight.

I'll grant you that Ewing has a better launch angle over 41 at bats but Lara's EV appears to be a bit better. Lara has 7 HR Ewing has 0. It's hard to make an argument that Ewing's contact has been all that much better than Lara given the results.