Matt Breen

One of the drawbacks to doing the Top 25 after the trade deadline is that the post-season poll is really not that much different from the mid-season poll. The minors only really have about another month at that point, so those four week are not going to change our perceptions of players that much. A couple of guys usually graduate off the list in this time (like Arcia), so that'll shake things up a bit. But in reality, the team doesn't change that much. There are usually no trades (getting Cordell is the exception) in August-October that change a roster that much. Some guys get released or become minor league FAs, but those are - at best - borderline Top 25 players. I don't think anyone was voting for Sam Freeman to be in their Top 25. Same thing goes for Rule 5 draft. The guys we lose - or gain - tend to be fringy players. They might get a few votes, but they usually aren't Top 25 types. We will still do a post-season poll, but let people know exactly when.

When is the AFL season?

Korean Players in the US. I think you can see there are mixed results. Thames' numbers in Korea (listed at the bottom) certainly indicate he could translate into a solid player in the US. Note: I tried to keep numbers within three years of leaving Korea. I don't think quoting stats from age 20 is that relevant for a 30 year old player. I think showing the three preceding years is most telling. Jung Ho Kang OPS in KBO: 2012 (25) - .973 2013 (26) - .876 2014 (27) - 1.198 OPS in MLB 2015 (28): .816 2016 (29): .876 Byung Ho Park KBO 2013 (26) - 1.039 2014 (27) - 1.119 2015 (28) - 1.150 MLB 2016 (29) - .684 Hyun Soo Kim KBO: 2013 (25) - .852 2014 (26) - .884 2015 (27) - .979 MLB 2016 (28): .801 Dae-ho Lee Lee came to the majors last year at age 34, and spent the last four years in Japan - not Korea. But I thought seeing his numbers between Korea and Japan were interesting. KBO 2009 (27) - .908 2010 (28) - 1.111 2011 (29) - 1.011 Japan 2012 (30) - .846 2013 (31) - .878 2014 (32) - .816 2015 (33) - .892 MLB 2016 (34) - .740 Eric Thames KBO 2016 (29) - 1.101 2015 (28) - 1.288 2014 (27) - 1.111 Thames has a .727 OPS on 684 ABs in the majors.

I've adopted the Indians for the playoffs. May the ghost of Ricky Vaughn, Lou Brown, Harry Doyle, Pedro Cerrano, Roger Dorn, Jake Taylor, Willie Mays Hayes and Jobu propel them to a World Series win. Let me get back to you, will ya, Charlie? I got a guy on the other line asking about some white walls.

We'll whip up something in the next week or two.

The following are Brewer Top 20 entries in the National League for 2016. Some of these things are not necessarily good (like caught stealing or home runs allowed). Batting Villar - 13th in run scored with 92 Villar - 15th in hits with 168 Villar - tied for 9th in doubles with 38 Carter - tied for 1st in HR with 41 Braun - tied for 12th in HR with 30 Carter - tied for 13th in RBI with 94 Braun - tied for 15th in RBI with 90 Villar - 1st in SB with 62 Perez - 4th in SB with 34 Broxton - 12th in SB with 23 Villar - 1st in caught stealing with 18 Nieuwenhuis - tied for 8th in CS with 9 Perez - tied for 14th in CS with 7 Villar - tied for 8th in walks with 79 Carter - 10th in walks with 76 Carter - 1st in Ks with 206 Villar - 3rd in Ks with 174 Braun - 10th in batting average at .305 Villar - 16th in OBP at .369 Braun - 19th in OBP at .362 Braun - 8th in SLG% at .538 Carter - 18th in SLG% at .499 Braun - 9th in OPS at .903 Braun - 16th with 4.4 bWAR Carter - tied at 18 in Hit by Pitches with 9 Nelson - tied for 14th with 7 sacrifice hits Carter - tied for 2nd with 10 sacrifice flies Pitching Nelson - 20th with 179.1 inning pitched Nelson - 9th with 186 hits allowed Davies - 20th with 166 hits allowed Nelson - 1st with 86 walks allowed Nelson - 1st with 16 losses Peralta and Anderson - tied for 11th with 11 loses Jeffress - 7th with 27 saves Thornburg - tied for 19th with 13 saves Thornburg - 2nd with 8 blow saves Davies - 20th in ERA at 3.97 Guerra - 13th with 4.2 bWAR Davies - 20th in WHIP at 1.25 Nelson - 1st in hit batsman with 17 Nelson - tied for 11th with 8 wild pitches Nelson - tied for 9th with 25 HR allowed Anderson - 5th with 28 HR allowed It should be noted that Guerra didn't pitch enough to qualify, so his excellent stats - like his 2.81 ERA - don't show up here.

He must have been lower than 798 going in. I didn't even look. 798 was going into saturdays game where he went 0-4 with a bb. Im not sure where it ended up after that game. He dropped to .788 after Saturday's game.

Milwaukee set the record with 1543 strikeouts in a season. We're good at something!

Ryan Howard completed his 5-year, $125M extension today (he'll get a $10M buyout for his 2017 option, but that's included in the $125M). In that time, he had -4.4 bWAR and a -2.0 fWAR. That's gotta be one of the worst, or maybe even the worst, investment of all time in baseball.

This doesn't really need a thread. But I wanted to share my joy at the Cardinals missing the playoffs. My season goals go like this: 1. Brewers win 2. Cardinals lose 3. Cubs lose After that, it's kind of fluid, but the Cardinals losing was a big deal since I knew we weren't going to do well.

Brewers have 1531 strikeouts going into Sunday. Egad. I must have seen stats that were not updated. Thanks.

That would be huge tracts of land

HR for Carter! And a game winner at that. Now tied for league lead. One more to go! 1-4 today. He can't go worse than 0-2 or he falls below .200. ERA ended up at 4.86 with a good game. 8 strikeouts today. Now sitting at 1517. Getting too close for comfort.

The narrative was never 'dismantle' anything. The narrative from the team was how do we build a team that can be competitive on a consistent basis. You aren't rebuilding or retooling or dismantling or whatever term you want to use just to 'start over.' You're putting in a plan to create a winning structure - a structure that will hopefully last for an extended period of time - not just a year here and a year there.

With two games left, here are some individual and team accomplishments (good and bad) that are within reach for the Brewers: - Chris Carter hit his 40th HR on Friday - he's one behind Arenado. While the 40 HR number is a significant achievement, let's see if Chris can have a big game or two and win the NL HR title. - Carter has 148 career HRs. Let's see if he can get two more and reach 150. - Jonathan Villar is sitting on 19 HR. One more HR and he joins the 20 HR / 60 SB club - a club that includes only Ricky Henderson, Joe Morgan and Eric Davis. - Domingo Santana has a .798 OPS. Let's home for a few hits and bump him up to .800 for the season. - Martin Maldonado has a .201 batting average. Let's see if he can keep it from falling below the Mendoza Line. - Maldonado has 8 HR this year. One more would be a personal high. - Wily Peralta's ERA is at 5.10. He is scheduled to start on Saturday. If he has a good game - such as giving up only 2 earned runs in 6.1 innings, he can get his ERA below 5.00. It's the small victories! - The Brewers have struck out 1509 times as a team this year. The NL record is 1529 (2010 Dbacks) and the ML record is 1535 (2013 Astros). - With 30 doubles, Scooter Gennet is within reach of his own personal record of 31 doubles, which he got in 2014. - Blaine Boyer has a 4.02 ERA. If he can at least 2 outs and not give up any runs, he'll get his ERA under 4.00. That'll look good on his baseball card. - Jimmy Nelson, who is scheduled to start on Sunday, needs nine strikeouts to top his personal high, which he did last year when he struck out 148 batters. Go Brewers!

Welcome, Muddie! I think you're going to have a pretty interesting team next year. Enjoy.

The worst part it was the friggin' Cardinals. I just hate them. It's irrational - but I hate them.

It was ridiculous that Price took that long to get out there. He should have done that immediately.

It would be unwise to trade the face of our franchise, the most beloved player since Robin Yount, for two guys who you hope Stearns can flip. The flip talk drives me crazy. It isn't as easy as most think to "flip" other players. I hope Braun stays a Brewer, but is seems to me like we are going to have that idiot Puig on our opening day roster one way or another. In BrewBalls defense, he said to flip Puig and McCarthy. His proposal is adding a top 20ish pitcher in De Leon or a top 50 guy in Bellinger (plus a couple of other guys who are probably on the cusp of the Top 100 area). So the real prize is a potential top of the rotation arm. Personally, I'd be all over that deal - but I'm skeptical that the Dodgers are offering that much on the prospect end. But that's just my guess.

Holy crap. I didn't realize that. Even with the loses, how does bWAR have him at 1.6 WAR. That seems awfully low.

To me, the biggest thing about Garza is that he blocks other players from getting a chance. I don't think he's ever going to fetch much by way of trade - now by the trading deadline next year. But whatever you can get for him, you get. Because by moving Matt you open up the rotation spot for other guys. I'd rather figure out the rotation with Nelson, Davis, Peralta, Guerra, Hader, Anderson and Jungmann. That's seven guys right there, and then there's fringe guys like Suter. But all these guys are with the team longer term, and I would rather give them the ball every fifth day than Garza.

Anyone who actually reads this board knows that statement is obviously false. Even if its falsity weren't obvious, you haven't even tried to back it up. Making an obviously false, unsupported claim about how true and well-supported your own views are makes you look not very credible. When your false, unsupported, self-aggrandizing claim also insults the "majority of people on this board," it makes you look . . . just not good. There's strong, serious evidence that Garza has declined sharply over the past several years. People have made those arguments, and the arguments the other way, very well on this board. You should read it sometime. Your first line is false. People on this board have made comments about how Brewers fans not on this board know absolutely nothing, in general about how baseball teams operate as well as the Brewers. Back it up? So you want me to post a hundred links? You're a big boy so go do what big boy's do - research. Glad to see you speak on behalf of the majority of the board being insulted. Garza is a prime example of what I was referring to (I have read it, on several threads, hence not only my statement you quoted but also the rest of that same comment I made that you chose not to quote). Take your head out of the sand and you'll see it too. Peralta is another. Nottingham another. BRAUN another (go read the Alex Gordon thread where both players were compared heading into this season based on performance/comp/value/injuries - the general consensus was Gordon is better, especially for the value, and Braun needs to be dumped immediately (including citing the value of his contract, which the majority of people here were wrong in that regard as well given his contract clearly is a better deal than what folks got in FA this year and it'll only get better for Braun). I said Braun was better than Gordon in every aspect of the game over their entire careers except defense, and continues to be, and I literally was laughed at. I'll even cite Flores as another example based on my comment - people look at his overall numbers and say he's not even a halfway decent backup OF and has no career. Yet if you watch him play you see a guy who can play all 3 OF spots average or above average (depending on position) with a decent arm, understands the strike zone, puts the ball in play line to line and has some pop and base stealing ability. He's had a lot of success in the upper minors and needs a bit more MLB experience (see Hernan Perez). But he's written off because he's 24 and didn't perform amazing this year in his first year at this level. "There's strong, serious evidence that Garza has declined sharply over the past several years." Not sure if you're actually stating this or alluding to other people making this remark. But if it's you saying this then you're a hypocrite on the basis of your response to me. Since this topic is about Garza lets look at your (or others) statement while using statistics. Lets define "several" as past 3-4yrs. I think we can agree on that number. 2013 - 155.1ip, 150h, 42bb, 136k, 3.82 ERA (3.88 FIP) *split between Cubs/TX - TX 4.38 ERA and had 1 terrible start otherwise 3.93 with TX in line with career* 2014 - 163.1ip, 143h, 50bb, 126k, 3.64 ERA (3.54 FIP) 2015 - 148.2ip, 176h, 57bb, 104k, 5.63 ERA (4.94 FIP) *had 26 starts and if i recall correctly he was injured too playing a factor but i could be wrong. but in 21 of those 26 starts he had a 4.03 ERA, which means his FIP is going to be lower than that most likely given the difference between his overall ERA and FIP. 5 starts ballooned his ERA to 5.63 so he wasn't this unbelievably horrendous pitcher the overwhelming majority on here speak of* 2016 - 101.2ip, 117h, 36bb, 70k, 4.51 ERA (4.32 FIP) *missed first 2.5 months due to freak injury then came back and took 1.5 months to settle in (first 2 good, next 5 not good starts). since then, over the past 2 months and 12 starts, he's sitting at 65.1ip, 66h, 23bb, 48k, 3.72 ERA. in 10 of those 12 starts he's sitting at a 2.65 ERA. see above regarding FIP over these past 2 months* So, based on statistics, it's clear to see that he's essentially performed at his career norms the vast, vast majority of the past 4yrs. Where exactly is this "strong, serious evidence" spoken from with such conviction? To touch on Peralta as well, he showed promise/potential in 2012/2013 then took that next step in 2014. Last year, similar to Garza, he wasn't nearly as bad as what everyone says and complains about. in 16 of his 20 starts he had a 3.34 ERA. Those other 4 starts took his ERA up to 4.72. But when you look at his overall numbers it looks like he sucks. Like Garza, when they have a bad start, it's usually a terrible start (6ER in 3ip) that greatly affects the ERA, etc. Peralta this year started out terrible the first 13 starts - his velocity was down, control wasn't there and that all contributed to his poor performance; clearly things were wrong and needed to be corrected. But poor performance isn't always indicative of one's ability. Clearly when he came back his velocity and control were back - changes were made and his past 9 starts he has a 3.12 ERA, which is consistent with 80% of starts in 2015 and all of 2014. And he's 27. So basically everyone saying Garza and Peralta suck are looking at everything, over the past year or so, on the surface without digging into it further. These numbers don't lie. The only "strong, serious evidence" here is the general consensus on this site saying both aren't good. Hence my comment. Now, I agree that both players need to be traded but only because they're 1-2yrs out from FA. It's consistent with what Stearns is doing. First, I would argue that it's impossible to say if the majority of this board evaluate players and the team based solely on the past year. But I like to think we are more educated group, and many people do take a holistic look at a player. That a person weighs the last year of data is logical - and often times a wise thing. In the end, I think your statement - Majority of people on this board only evaluate solely based on the previous season rather than body of work in combination with breaking down performances and using their eyes - is not a fact - just your opinion. Are there people like that? Sure. And they definitely come out when a player is struggling. But I don't know if it's the majority. That's my opinion. Second, I do think there are signs Garza is a declining pitcher. He's displayed higher walk rates and lower strike out rates the last three years (2014-16). His ERA and FIP have gone up the last two years, and his WHIP the past two years is 1.500+. His velocity isn't much different over the last three years - maybe his slider has lost a mile or two - but things look pretty even. Matt had a fine 2014 - solid numbers all around - but two mediocre/bad years start saying that his work this year is the norm - not a aberration. It's not uncommon for any player to just lose a little of something around the age of 30, so that he starts showing some signs of age wouldn't be shocker. I also worry about his nearly yearly injuries (he hasn't started more than 30 games since 2011). Perhaps they are just eroding his all around skills. In Garza's defense, the team defense has been less than stellar during his time here. Finally, I am really wary of removing results - saying things like "If you don't count this block of At Bats, he did much better" or worse or whatever. Without question, it can come into play in evaluating a player. If someone was playing for a month with an injury, I can understand that. But just removing a pitcher's five worst starts just isn't how to evaluate a player. You can't take away the bad and just say those crappy performances don't matter. They all do. Good and bad - it part of each person's makeup as a player. In the end, all of it counts. Not just the good or the bad - but all of it.

Yep. I agree. And some writers are saying the same thing. No one is suggesting we're a playoff team, but if some guys develop as expected and maybe a break or two, there's a chance we could start sniffing the .500 mark.

I noticed that Garza has a 1.4WAR with Fangraphs. His bWAR is -0.4, which makes for two very different views of the guy. But maybe a team will see something in Matt that will make them want to take a flyer on him.

To me the only thing the Brewers get in a deal for Garza is a little salary relief. Plus moving him opens up a roster spot for a young player. I look at it this way - if Garza was a free agent at the end of the season, what would he fetch in the open market? I'm guessing $2-3 million - maybe with some incentives. Just a guess. Once you establish Garza's value, that's how much the Crew gets back in salary relief. If he's worth $2.5M, then we send him to the team that wants him - along with $10M (that is the balance of his $12.5M salary for 2017). We get a nominal non-prospect in return, and save $2.5M (plus we open a rotation spot for one of our young players). If we increase the money we send - say $11M, we get a different prospect (a better one). How much a $1M buys a prospect is another question, but you get the idea. Garza's option for 2018 doesn't have a chance to vest at $13M (he needs 110 starts from 2014-17, and has 71 right now). That means he has a $5M team option for 2018. If he pitches okay, that's not a bad price. So perhaps that adds a little value to his deal - but right now, I just don't see it as anything that gets people too excited. He still has to pitch okay, and he's had two bad years in a row, so that doesn't instill a lot of confidence.