Turning2

MIL needs a power hitter for a serious pennant chase and WS championship. Period. There is only one obvious choice on that list. I would trade his lacking defense at 3B for 20 HRs in the back half of the season. But that is only IF I thought they should go in that big. Not sure I do. Depends on the prospect cost for a 3 month rental. Everyone other than Saurez is either a move mostly trying to upgrade for 2026, or not a serious upgrade (McMahon shouldn't even be in the discussion). They can probably only afford , or have the will to make one big upgrade. It's pretty much Suarez from that list. None of the SS options have the power to make enough difference in my view.

Seems a little scrawny for a catcher, but he's young. A little disappointed to see Burke not being the thumper he was expected to be, not yet anyway. MIL desperately needs a big bat at 1B for the near future. Judge is still out on Vaughan.

Yeah, not much there that peaks my prospect interest. Am thinking of going to a game (never been at Appleton) to see if Burke, Areinamo and Dinges have a future.

I watched the condensed version and they skipped entirely over Nestor's innings, so I assumed he did well.

I try to mix in a few innings of at least one farm club most weeks. With MIL off, I caught the back half of this game. Have to say, NASH carries the least amount of prospect interest to me currently. Quero missed so much time again, so I'm trying to see a few ABs from him. Black seems like a dude whose window is closing fast. Seigler's time there was kind of interesting. With the exception of a few pitchers, most everybody else strikes me as career minor leaguers necessary to facilitate having a team to develop prospects.

That option eluded me. Good suggestion.

I suspect piggybacking is far more likely than moving him to the pen. Ashby or Hall would be good candidates.

Good points. First being the placating of casual fans by doing something / anything. Yeah, most casual fans are like low information voters - ignorant of the big picture and facts, needing instant gratification. Second, Suarez is about the only real impact power upgrade at 3B. But as other big market contenders are likely also in the hunt for such.... he's probably going to quickly travel outside of MIL's reasonable budget boundaries. Durbin has been good enough for what this team probably, really is this year (which is, still a 2nd tier team with too many needs than they can afford to fix via trades). Still, inquiring on the asking price for Suarez would be prudent. Just don't sacrifice too much prospect capital for a band aid rental. Third.. and this is a kick in the marbles... yes, MIL has a surplus of MLB quality SP, but probably no meaningful way to leverage it to address their current needs. Usually, teams that are contending don't have this surplus to trade with. More typically, teams with quality pitching, and not in the race are selling starting pitching to bolster their farm with prospects. Their buyers are typically contenders. The Brewers don't need prospects for the future, they need a couple of thumper bats NOW. Very few impactful bat options exist, and most are on teams that won't trade from their big league roster as you mentioned. Now that I type that last bit, the more I lean towards being OK with a packaged deal for a few months of Suarez IF MIL decides to go for it. Henderson, Black or Mitchell and Luis Pena? Just spit balling of course... If prospects are all they can acquire for surplus pitching, I'd vote for some OF prospects who project to 15+HR type power.

The injury to Hoskins might make Cortez more expendable. Somewhat hinges upon how Vaughan plays.

Not sure if Hoskins makes that or not. Either way, that was a huge defensive play that I think went somewhat overlooked.

Fans love that Passan recently said (paraphrasing) he believes MIL needs one big bat to be a serious WS contender. Well... now they need two. The unfortunate timing of Hosk's injury has a big ripple effect. It was enough of a stretch debating whether or not MIL would (or should) make a significant trade to upgrade the power on offense already, and where (3B, SS, OF?) That issue still remains. Now we're speculating about them also trading to fix 1B if Vaughan is mediocre. I don't see it happening. If anything, I think Hoskins getting hurt made Arnold's decision to dance with the girl he brought easier. The amount of prospect capital needed to add not 1 but 2 meaningful bats is too steep of a cost, There is an outside chance they catch some bottled lightning with Vaughan however which reverts the scenario back to pre Rhys thumb injury.

As an addendum... my instincts owe to old time sentiment that values developing and retaining rosters. I have wondered if the Brewers won the WS, if fans 20-30+ years from now would remember the players as fondly as us older guys revere the '82 team. Today's rosters change so much. (Yes, the 80's Brewers brought in a couple of hired guns too I realize.)

My instinct is they should do nothing because they need more than 1 big bat. It would probably cost far too much in prospect capital to acquire 2 big bats. Although we have a surplus of the very valuable commodity - starting pitching, there doesn't appear to be a good fit for a trade partner that has what MIL needs for a pennant chase. Maybe you could swing something for a 3 month rental of AZ's Suarez. Again, is the cost worth it? Doubtful. My (and others') instinct to stand pat partially owes to assuming the pitching will be solid and competitive again next year. And that's the sticking point. Maybe it won't be. Maybe the phenomenal pitching they are getting this year should be taken advantage of by taking some bigger risk, and adding some serious firepower to the offense.

No apologies necessary. I have a soft spot for the underdog too. I like all our underdogs. The annoying reality of modern MLB economics is that MIL has too many of them. I very much root for Ortiz, Collins, Durbin. But emotions are a fool’s guide.

What are you seeing that gives you reason to hope that a 28 year old who has never hit with meaningful power or a high batting average, is going to start doing so all of a sudden?

Not exactly, The flow of the thread topic and rebuttals begged for a comparison. Collins is good value for a nice price for an aging player with little experience. Perhaps that qualifies as market inefficiency, but it usually doesn't lead to winning much more than consolation prizes. Our current OF offers almost nothing for power hitters outside of Chourio. Mitchell may never achieve his potential. Sal has become an excellent contact / singles hitter. Perk is glove only, Yelli is largely a DH now. Collins might get you 15 HRs in a career year, but he's not likely to become a consistent power hitter. He's never been one and it took him a long time to reach the bigs. Twenty seven year old low power leopards don't usually change their spots is all I'm saying. I like him, I just think sometimes fans rationalize a bit too much when their team can't afford hitters. They need to start getting some more thump, or be content with consolation prizes.

Suarez is enticing as the team is woefully lacking in power, but honestly, they need more than one bat. He might help them get past the WC, but the expected prospect capital and the salary cost wouldn't be worth the rental. If Mitchell was healthy and pounding HRs as many expected, if Contreras' hand injury wasn't stifling his bat, if Hoskins was banging like MIL thought he might, then you bring in a guy like Saurez. Brewers should have 5 guys with 20+ HRs on the season. Suarez as a 6th, with this pitching staff and defense would have made them very formidable. Damn injuries.

Defense and speed are affordable tools for small market budgets. Multiple good hitters that can carry a team with power and batting average aren’t.

Let’s go hitters!

Nothing to complain about Durbo’s defense so far

We need some “outfield” singles… there ya go Chourio. Will take the dingers too!!

Yes, they need to add a couple of consistent bats. Isn’t going to happen though. Score 6+ runs today, take the series., and we’ll forget about Saturday.

I'm not in the mood to point / counterpoint with individuals today, so I'll post some general thoughts regarding my view of the Moneyball era metrics. First thing, that movie came about based on the A's 2002 season and the supposed, innovative approach to player evaluation. With few (if any?) exceptions, none of the teams that need to resort to this data spinning alchemy has ever won a World Series by utilizing it. Perhaps small market KC beating the Mets in 2015 might qualify, yet they were 7th in overall payroll that year too. That's not exactly a David vrs Goliath victory like these metrics are supposed to deliver. Moral of that story... money STILL talks, BS walks. Revisiting a search for how WAR is supposedly calculated brought me to Baseball-Reference.com WAR Explained | Baseball-Reference.com. It only reinforces my beliefs. The wording of the definition makes my argument for me. Full of theoretical fluff rather than the calculable, traditional, time tested means to evaluate talent. The bold parts pasted from Baseball Reference tell me - and should tell everyone, what they need to know about the new mousetrap which a bunch of spreadsheet folks invented. How to Use WAR The idea behind the WAR framework is that we want to know how much better a player is than a player that would typically be available to replace that player. We start by comparing the player to average in a variety of venues, then compare our theoretical replacement player to the average player and add the two results together. There is no one way to determine WAR. There are hundreds of steps to make this calculation, and dozens of places where reasonable people can disagree on the best way to implement a particular part of the framework. We have taken the utmost care and study at each step in the process, and believe all of our choices are well reasoned and defensible. But WAR is necessarily an approximation and will never be as precise or accurate as one would like. Nobody ever argues about the validity of the traditional stats for a reason. That's because its black and white, real data crunching based on the actual rather than actuarial suppositions and projections. I think for myself and that rocks the boat of conformity sometimes. So be it. When folks get blathering on about some silly stat or another, I just laugh and skim over it. Others stand in line for the next new thing, ready to trumpet whatever they're told it is as being far superior than the old thing. I've seen it time and time again in the corporate environment. Lemmings doing lemming things. And then.. years later, it comes full circle, and the next wave of "go getter, full of themselves" smarty pants revert back to the systems and processes that worked previously, lauding them as the "new" continuous improvement implementation. I despise this mentality, and resent how it has infected the game I love. I hate seeing the players having to check their little cheat sheets on the playing field, drowning themselves in a minutiae of information that tells them what players of the past knew from observation, experience and baseball instinct. I understand the world changes, progression does occur. Sometimes for the better and sometimes not. It's a matter of distinguishing between the two of what actually present value, and what is a bunch of noise.

Sure, that ******** the development of some players, but it's also a bit of rationalization if we're going to be honest with ourselves.

I stepped away from following pro ball around 1986 when salaries and such were beginning to get stupid, and teams couldn't retain their players. So, no, I don't know anything about the Braun / Fielder era teams. The game has been taken over by the moneyball front office mindset thanks to Bill Gates providing the software to overanalyze what baseball didn't need to obsess about for over a century. In my mind, stats are calculable, whereas metrics are highly subjective and can be twisted to serve talking points and a cottage industry developed by computer nerds. When I speak of power, I don't mean it is the end all be all. Of course, you have to have more to your game than just power. That's what HRs, batting average, RBI's traditionally provided. On base and slugging percentages are useful too. But I put no stock in any of the Wins about replacement because from what I've read it's how much value you bring which equates to W's versus your replacement. You simply can't measure that because there are 8 other guys / positions whose performances have to be accounted for in a W or L. These supposition metrics just provide often useless data that some use to create new employment opportunities. The data paints a picture that doesn't necessarily reflect reality. I have to question how baseball managers ever managed to win without all these new measurements. Purely dumb luck? No, they indentified guys who could hit, play defense, pitch, run and had baseball instinct and smarts. They also recognized guys who had the competitive fire and heart for the game. There are no metrics that can spit out data on that. It's a new era for a younger generation weaned on video games and XL spreadsheets and I'm old... it is what it is LOl. 😁