Stealofhome

Update on my end - field is nice, kids love the play area and the smaller food portion restaurant is a good touch. But don't even think of moving seats in the 8th inning! Ushers at every stairwell and kicking out people even sitting down in empty sections.

Good point!

I'll be at this game - is it too much to ask for a grand slam?

What types of players do you mean by this? A return to the three true outcome style hitter?

I was looking into the Collective Bargaining Agreement, but couldn't find the exact wording. I believe the 20 day max for position players and 30 day for pitchers was adopted in 2003. https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/league-info/cba-history/

The rule for a position player rehab stint is 20 days maximum. https://www.milb.com/altoona/team/transaction-speak According to the Brewers transaction log, his rehab stint started June 10, so June 30 would be the last possible day where he would either have to be called up or optioned.

The Cubs might have beat the Brewers today, but they didn't this day:

Joey Wiemer looks pretty bad at the plate--does he end up going down a level?

Roller DFA was my thought for the Garrett Mitchell 40-man spot. Hopefully Koenig can come back quickly.

I updated some of the stuff I was looking at and came up with Gerald Perry. Left-handed hitting 1B with more speed than power. Solid career with an all-star selection.

Glad I got this entry in just before his grand slam against lefty Jacob Latz! Hoping it's a sign of things to come.

Fridays are for the classics! Down 3-2 to the California Angels in game 5 of the 1982 ALCS, Cecil Cooper hits a single to LF to score Charlie Moore and Jim Gantner in the bottom of the 7th and send the Brewers to the World Series. cecil_cooper_2500K.mp4 And on defense, Robin Yount runs and dives to save and finalize Juan Nieves' no-hitter in 1987. nieves_no-no.mp4

Yerlin Rodriguez looked pretty nasty closing out the 9th. Fastball hanging out at 97 and a slider to the final batter that I swear looked like a curveball.

The Brewers hit with the highest winning percentage added all year in 2023 came from Jahmai Jones in his debut with the team. a4283736-60d33639-04f86390-csvm-diamondx64-asset_1280x720_59_4000K.mp4 And a pitching highlight as well, for all the grief Andrew Chafin gets, this was the biggest WPA play for a pitcher last year (of course, the single, walk, E1 to load the bases didn't help his cause): 390d6133-1d8a7838-b53e9889-csvm-diamondx64-asset_1280x720_59_4000K.mp4

In the spirit of the optimism thread, I thought it would be fun to put together some favorite highlights of the team. When things are going bad or the team is struggling, it would be nice to watch reminders of better days. I'll start with one of my favorite moments from last year, Mark Canha's grand slam. https://www.mlb.com/video/mark-canha-s-go-ahead-slam?partnerId=web_video-playback-page_video-share canha_slam_91623.mp4

In fooling with some minor league comparisons in relation to Tyler Black, I came up with Troy O'Leary. Some pop, above average speed, walks a bit, and doesn't strike out too often.

Right, and I wonder if there is more to Altuve's success than just his history. Does the batter's setup prior to the pitch affect the height the umpire thinks that the strike zone should be? Or do they not even concern themselves with the batter's height as they swing and instead just call their zone? Also, of these only Altuve and Madrigal are right-handed, so that may play into what zone the ump calls as well.

Yep, looked like it bounced off the middle of the chain link fence above the line. But definitely not a clear replay.

Yophery Rodriguez had a home run that hit over the top of the fence but was called a double. Then got caught stealing third during the next PA.

@Outlander mentioned the possibility that umps are calling higher strikes than normal against Sal Frelick as a reaction to a particularly impactful missed call against him in Wednesday's game against the Angels. The Ump Scorecard: I couldn't find a quick way to visualize strike calls against Frelick that were mapped to his personal strikezone, so I decided to make one. Using Baseball Savant's search, we can pull the data from strikes called against him this year. The x-axis should be ideally be consistent for all players, though with Frelick being a left-handed hitter, he might be more likely to get the outside strike called against him. Then I looked through the video and found the Z values of the pitches that were right at the top and bottom of the strike zone on screen. They do seem to match up with the rule book definition: Here are the most borderline top and bottom pitches: Top at plate_z = 3 Bottom at plate_z = 1.31 And here are all the called strikes against him this year, viewing the pitches from the batter's perspective, so Frelick would be standing on the right side of this plot. There are quite a few high strikes getting called, but is that abnormal? If we set the zone of interest between +- 1.04 in the x-direction and 3-3.37 in the z-direction, Frelick has taken 23 pitches, with 14 called strikes and 9 called balls. All of the pitches called balls are either inside or outside. None of the balls over the heart of the plate are called. According to Baseball Savant's Delta Run Expectancy, those high strikes are responsible for -0.856 runs. The most impactful was in the Tigers game against Beau Brieske, when Frelick had two runners on an dropped from 2-1 to 2-2. I couldn't find win expectancy values, as the impact to the game on this one was minimal with a 10-0 score at the time. In this particular area of the zone, the MLB average is 28% ball and 72% strike. Frelick is 39% ball and 60% strike. But that doesn't account for the height of the player. Frelick's average strike zone top is around 3 feet, but Aaron Judge's is north of 4, so we would expect him to get more called strikes in that area. If we filter down to players that have an average strike zone height below 3, we come up with six players: Garrett Stubbs, Jose Altuve, Frelick, Nicky Lopez, Nick Madrigal, and Miles Mastrobuoni. Their collective percentage of balls to strikes in this zone is 48% ball and 52% strike. Of the six players, only Jose Altuve gets the ball called more often than the strike (67% balls on 27 pitches). It's hard to say with this information how much it is affecting Frelick, but it does nevertheless show that shorter players are forced to expand the upper part of the zone, unless you're a former MVP, 8-time all-star, 2-time World Series champion, and 6-time silver slugger.

Padres announcers said that their top two arms (Suarez and Estrada) are probably not available today. Availability chart.

You can look at the Baseball-Reference splits for the Brewers after 0-2 this season and their sOPS+ is 119, meaning they have been much worse than league average at that split. Last year they were 90, the year before that 80.

The Sounds are playing as the Oat Milkers tonight, a promotion from a Swedish oat milk company. I went to one of their promotional games this year and nobody had any idea what the purpose of the promotion was. The only thing they changed was swapped out the team name with Oat Milkers all night.

Agreed, that's one of the big things - so few appearances against them this year.

The Brewers signed Rhys Hoskins last offseason to be a power bat in the middle of the lineup. It was a bit of a gamble by the team, as Hoskins missed all of last season with a torn ACL, but a measured one because of his consistent ability to hit. Coming into 2024, Hoskins had over 2,800 plate appearances with a 125 wRC+ and turned 31 toward the end of spring training. By all accounts, he is great in both the clubhouse and community, and was clearly a fan favorite during his six Major League seasons in Philadelphia. But despite his consistent seasonal output, he was also known in Philadelphia to be a streaky hitter. If we look at Hoskins' offensive output by month over his career, we can see some of that inconsistency, where he'll struggle for a month or two before rebounding (splits data all from Fangraphs). The last data point in the plot is this month, June 2024, one of the worst months in his career to date. Much of that inconsistency can be attributed to right-handed pitching. In particular, according to Baseball-Reference, it appears that Hoskins struggles against power pitchers. Those are defined as "in the top third of the league in strikeouts plus walks." His OPS is much lower against these pure strikeout pitchers. It is possible that in the months he is struggling, he is facing more power pitchers or getting poor match ups, playing in difficult stadiums, or it might just be randomness. But most of it occurs against right-handed pitching, which is to be expected, since Hoskins is himself right-handed. His career splits show that he has been a pretty good hitter against everyone, but that he has particularly taken advantage of his platoon splits against lefties. And that brings us to 2024. The right-handed, first base-playing, power bat in the middle of the Brewers lineup has a 66 wRC+ against left-handed pitching this season. Instead of hitting like Ronald Acuna Jr., he's hitting like Martin Maldonado. He has a wRC+ below 100 against southpaws every month this season, a streak in his career matched only by the second half of 2018. In May of that year, Hoskins fouled a ball off his face and landed on the disabled list with a fractured jaw. He returned 11 days later and demolished right-handed pitching but struggled against lefties. This year, he has dealt with an injured hamstring and his return to baseball after an entire year and has yet to prove that he can hit opposite-handed pitching. What is happening in his approach that is causing him to have a .172 batting average, 5 total hits, one home run, and a .261 wOBA against lefties? His Baseball Savant page can give us some clues. All of the following statistics will be against left-handed pitching. He has a .327 wOBA against the fastball but .181 and .111 against breaking stuff and offspeed, respectively. But his walk and strikeout rates this season (11.4% to 17.1%) are actually better than his career numbers (17.9% to 20%). He is seeing more fastballs (65% compared to 52% in 2022 and 59% in 2021) and is whiffing on them a little more (24% fastball whiff rate in 2024 vs. 18% in 2022). His barrel rate against all pitches is down this year, from 14% in 2020, 19% in 2021, and 15% in 2022 to 8% in 2024. So he isn't necessarily swinging and missing, but swinging and missing the barrel against lefties. He has a 100% ground ball rate against breaking pitches and 43% against offspeed this year, up from 33% for both in 2022. His pop-up rate on fastballs this season is 38%, up from 12% in 2022. Taking in all that information, it appears that Hoskins is getting under the fastball to pop it up and getting on top of the breaking and offspeed stuff to ground it weakly to shortstop or third base. Hopefully he can get back to mashing lefties and providing high quality plate appearances against right-handed pitching. But for now, he is one of the main reasons that the Brewers are struggling mightily against southpaws this season.