adambr2

Just a great sequence all around by Villar. Gets the leadoff double, swipes 3rd after the K to open up the sac fly chance, and scores on a pretty shallow fly to ensure the chance isn't wasted. Well done.

Serves you right for that dumb lollipop throw, Chacin. Real bright.

Look at it this way. Worst case scenario he goes home and has the rest of the summer to spend with his daughter and still gets every last penny of his $2.3M contract.

Yelich in LF where he belongs, Thames in RF, and Braun 1st bat off the bench looks even better.

They're moving on. Otheewise they would have just optioned him again. So either they just decided to move on, or Eric didn't want to go back to the minors again this time which is his right as a veteran. Either way he's not going to Colorado Springs.

Villar's 2016 across the board was better than Whit's 2017 and he did it at SS while being 3yrs younger. WAR has Villar the same for them those years yet on paper - across the board - Villar was better and did it from SS. It's not even a legitimate comparable. Villar 2016 and Merrifield's 2017 were very comparable. FWAR was the same, bWAR had Merrifield as easily the more valuable player. Basically identical power and slugging. Both can take a base, Villar took more and got caught more. Villar's biggest offensive advantage over Merrifield was OBP -- .369 to .324, which isn't a small number, but this advantage was totally negated by Villar's defensive deficiencies. I don't understand how you can twice cite Villar doing it from SS as a good thing when his defense at SS was atrocious. Yes, a bat at SS is more valuable than a bat at 2nd, but not when that bat at SS is a defensive hack. If he was in any way serviceable at SS, he'd probably be playing there every day right now.

Perspective of Merrifield's value seems to be all over the place. I suspect it has some something to do with him being a late blooming player. I think we'd have similar difficulty valuing Shaw (and I'm not comparing Merrifield to Shaw in any other way but that.)

Maybe I'm wrong but I think Realmuto could be at least as big of an impact for us as Syndergaard or DeGrom. Not only is he the best overall catcher in baseball currently but such a massive upgrade for us at the position and enormous impact bat in the lineup. At full strength with JT its a scary lineup which it seems to me has been a bigger culprit than starting pitching when things go wrong for us.

Why does Keon need regular ABs? He's not a young prospect. He's fine as a 4th or 5th OFer who can bring speed, power and defense off the bench. My main question on Keon is -- can he play corner OF? Because you're not going to generally sub out Cain late. Also, we can all agree he definitely took a HR away this time, right?

Cardinals are already treading water in the central. The Cubs are a good team and it looks like the Brewers are really good too. The Cardinals aren’t going to get the wins it will take barring some big time moves at the deadline. A lot of national writers are calling for just that, but I’m not so convinced they will do it. That’s a really bold prediction that the wild card race will come down to the three 2nd place finishers. I’d ask for how you got to that conclusion, but I don’t know if I could handle it. We don’t NEED to win any specific series. I never get that talk. It isn’t even an important series. No series is more important than another. Yeah, you are doing yourself favors doing well against good teams, but it doesn’t count anymore than any other win. I mean what happens if we get swept? Pack up the bags for the year? Are you ever able to engage in conversation without snidly implying that the individual you are addressing is completely stupid? It was just last year that both WCs came from the NL West, so no, it's not always a foregone conclusion that all the divisional 2nd place teams are the contenders for the wild card. Yes, divisional series' can be more important than others because you're directly causing a loss for your main competition while also winning yourself. No, they would not pack their bags and go home if they get swept. I will rephrase. "It would be nice to at least split the series against the Braves to stay at the top of the NL and perform well against a potential playoff opponent. It is not the end of the world if they do not."

I think Phillips has probably lost a pretty good amount of value. He's reverted back to his 2016 numbers which is an especially bad thing for Colorado Springs. He has value still, no doubt, but I don't see anyone valuing him as a borderline top 100 anymore. I would agree that Woodruff is pretty frequently undervalued. As you think Whit is being strongly overvalued I think you're strongly undervaluing him. Goodness, he was a 3.8 WAR player in 2017, is improving on that again in 2018, and is far cheaper and better than Gordon. There isn't much not to like besides age and lack of infield versatility. Look how we valued Villar post 2016, and imagine he had another great 1st half in 2017 instead of falling flat on his face. Would you have traded him for a Dubon type then? I think not. Speaking of Dubon, if we think he can be 285/335/720 with good defense at SS (and I'm not saying he can't,) if we think Arcia still has strong value, we should be shopping the hell out of Orlando.

While obviously you'd rather not have seen Knebel give up the HR in the 9th, it made everything else matter. Broxton's HR robbery mattered. Orf's HR -- mattered.

So with Cain's return looking imminent, should Broxton stay or go?

Whatever Derek Johnson makes to constantly carry a team with a perennially underperforming offense on his back, it isn't enough.

If you thought it's been bad so far, Joe West is the home plate umpire for Wednesday's game. From what I see, Joe West can't hold a candle to how bad Doug Eddings is.

He was pretty obviously safe. What a train wreck of an umpiring crew. Doug Eddings has my vote as the worst umpire in baseball.

I know he didn't put it in blue and this is the internet...but come on, guys.

I go out of my way to avoid being a homer? I've been on record gushing about the depth of our system, but sometimes you completely stretch the boundaries of reality. Sheffield is a high end pitching prospect well deserving of his ranking and comparable to Hiura in terms of value. He's been suggested in numerous proposals to the Brewers the past couple years because of his upside and arm and has dominated the high end levels of the minors. Florial might be a bit overrated as a prospect but to compare him to Broxton is ridiculous. For God's sake, the kid is 20 in High A. He's years away. The fact that the Mets have outfielders doesn't reduce his value. If Mets trade DeGrom, they're rebuilding. In which case they're looking for value, not specific needs. I never said Gray had a ton of value, I just said he was an interesting reclamation project and he makes sense coming back for the Mets. Frazier was a top 5 draft pick, a very highly rated prospect both with the Indians and Yankees (so you can't just blame it on the market), and has started to have some success at the MLB level. Again, the Mets want to max out value. Loasiga is a borderline top 100 guy, probably more comparable to Peralta than Sheffield is, who can throw 98 and could probably move right into the Mets rotation himself. This is a loaded package offer that includes strong value with every piece with the exception of Gray. Sometimes when you start talking about how farm system rankings are tilted in favor of large markets, I do agree with you to an extent. But then you dismiss a strong DeGrom offer here as a 'depth package' and it comes off as complete homerism.

I would like to see the Cardinals start to fade in the Central and turn it into a 2 way race in the Central with the 2nd place team standing a good chance at a WC. The WC race is going to be interesting this year. I think between the loser of the DBacks/Dodgers race, Brewers/Cubs race, and whoever takes 2nd in the East (Nationals should hang around), it's going to be a very tight wild card race that comes down to the wire with 1 or 2 very good teams on the outside looking in. Big 4 game series coming up at home vs. the Braves. Need to at least split.

On a side, why do these national articles find a way to propose these trades there the Yankees get to keep their best prospects and do a quantity package but for the brewers they go straight to the top prospects? Its not really up for debate that degrom is more valuable than realmuto, yet we are giving a better prospect in the realmuto trade than they are in a degrom trade. How does that make any sense? We have just as much farm depth as the Yankees. Which of their top prospects are they keeping in this proposed deal? Florial and Sheffield are both high end top 40 prospects, Loasiga is I believe top 75 according to Baseball America, Frazier was a very high prospect before graduating from lists, and then they get Sonny Gray too as an interesting reclamation project to replace DeGrom. That's a really strong offer for DeGrom and would beat our offer even with Keston unless the Mets are really in love with Keston.

Every time I hear people complain that MLB is unfair to small markets (and I agree to an extent), I'm grateful that MLB is not the NBA, where basically 1 or 2 super teams have a shot each year and everyone else just kind of goes through the motions for 82 games. It's an awful product and getting worse.

I'm just not seeing the confidence theory with JV. Arcia was an elite prospect heading into 2016. If Villar wasn't aware that he was a placeholder at SS, he should have been. He is far from the first player that was asked to change positions. If spurning Scooter Gennett from the roster to make room for Villar and offering Villar a $20M+ extension didn't give him confidence and show how much the Brewers had in him, I don't know what would. He was handed the 2B job with absolutely no one looking over his shoulder in 2017 and was given a long leash when he struggled. He lost playing time because we were in the exact position we are now -- contending but with several holes in the lineup. I think it's far more likely that Villar is a marginal player who played well above his norms for a season -- one of many in baseball history. With all that said -- I don't see a better option on the current roster, but there may be a better one in the organization if his glove is ready.

You guys are missing my point on Nottingham. I'm not expecting Colorado Springs numbers up here from him. Kratz isn't good. Pina would be an acceptable backup catcher. Catching situation is a hole in the lineup, so why not give a good look to the guy who actually could be a catcher of the future here?

Yet he's much better than Jett Bandy and Andrew Susac. Not many teams have good catchers let alone back ups. If only we had a seemingly competent young catcher in AAA who could take over as starter and push Pina into that role of 'good backup catcher.'

The Kratz honeymoon is over, folks. He isn't good at all.