adambr2

I've seen it a lot from Santana, frankly. Bill Hall was notorious for a little walk down the first base line as he admired what he thought was a HR before having to sprint just to get to 2nd. Why don't these guys freaking hustle? These are, presumably, some of the best athletes in the country. Is it really that difficult to sprint 90 feet, 2 or 3 times a day?

#1 future Ace, Former Ace, #1, and today #2 future 1. Oh and Yelich's bat missing. Wow, talk about putting lipstick on a pig. Quintana is not a "future 1." I don't even know how you define him like that. He's 29. He had a 4.15 ERA last season. He's certainly hittable. Darvish pitched well, but he is not a "#1". "Former ace?" Really, that's our excuse for not getting to Lester? Tim Lincecum is a "Former ace", that isn't something that's relevant in the present day. Martinez is great, I'll give you that, although the Mets knocked him around the start before. The offense is struggling and its ok to say so. We've been shut out in 30% of our games. It's not solely just a "tip your cap" situation.

Because guys don't hustle on plays they think will be made, or so I was told. I cannot believe more people aren't upset at Santana and Villar today. Hustling is free. We are not good enough to win without trying our best.

Another opportunity lost simply because of not hustling. Incredible. We are not good enough to beat the Cubs without doing the little things.

Wasn't the offense supposed to be good? 0, 0, 5, 2, and so far 0 runs in our last 5 games. Pitiful.

Pina misses a HR by 5 feet and strikes out. That's the way it's going.

The Brewers have not finished above 20th in runs scored in the Darnell Coles era. Yet even with a revolving door for other coaching positions, Coles and Sedar remain.

I could probably count the amount of players in baseball that would have ended up at 3rd there on two hands. Players just don’t hustle on a play like that often. Because 99% of the time the player catches it or is a homer. 99% of the time? Its a little thing, but it cost us a run. You can rationalize it if you'd like.

I really want to like Villar again, but even when he does something good, he does something bad. There was no reason for him not to wind up with a triple on that if he's hustling all the way, and that could end up being the difference between scoring and not scoring this inning.

I'm worried when he isn't destroying lefties. I know it's early, but he just isn't the guy he was several years ago. 2016 was his last flash of greatness, and we missed the window to unload him. If he is the best hitter on this team by a wide margin as some say, this offense is in serious trouble.

You must have a very loose definition of TOR arm if you think there was a deal to be had for one involving Santana. Let's give Stearns some credit, if an actual ace was available for Santana he would have pulled the trigger. He is not dumb. He was interested in dealing Santana all the way back at the Winter Meetings in December before there was any sign that Yelich and Cain were going to be Brewers so the fact that Santana was not dealt even after those deals is a pretty certain sign that the trade market for Santana was extremely underwhelming. I wish Santana, or Braun, or at least Broxton, had been traded. But the OF trade market stunk. It is what it is. Guys like Corey Dickerson ended up available for basically nothing.

Picking up right where we left off yesterday fundamentally I see.

Yeah, I tend to ramble. Condensed version: Burnes has been awesome and we should find out if he can be awesome here too since our rotation isn't good. We only need to wait until April 13th to promote him and still get that 7th service year. He'll be Super 2 eligible eventually but that's ok because if he's great the extra cost will be worth it to have him and if he's not we can send him back down. We should give him a shot now.

So Burnes was Burnes yesterday for the Sky Sox. And while you can't overreact to just one start, it's not really about the one start. It's about the sheer dominance that he's had at every level, High A, AA, and AAA throughout his time in the system. And even though he's just shy of 2 years in the system, at 23 with a seemingly high level of maturity, you can't necessarily even say he's not ready. Heck, Zach Davies has been doing his thing here since the age of 22. So, I'll make my case here for a Burnes promotion now, and here's why. I know it's early, but the starting pitching need is clear. This isn't 2011 with some starters just struggling out of the gates, we just simply don't have a good rotation, and I think we all pretty much knew that coming in. This is not a situation where we have a good rotation and we just need to be patient -- I think the majority of us are in agreement that this rotation could use upgrades. I think it's quite apparent however, that based on a lack of offseason pitching moves, and a lack of willingness to move Burnes in the offseason in a deal, we consider him to be a future mainstay in this rotation, and I fully believe we intent for that to start this season. The issue right now is, we're playing the service time game with him. And that's understandable. But here's the thing, we can still do that, and bring him up now. Here's why: A player needs 172 days of service in a season to accumulate a full service year. Therefore, we need only to wait until there are 171 days left in the season to promote Burnes and still control him all the way through 2024, his age 29 season. By my own calculations, that date appears to be April 13th. Yes, if he sticks, he will be Super 2 eligible after 2020, and this move will cost us millions more than waiting until July. But couldn't you argue that if he DOES stick, that his production and the difference that could make in us being a playoff team this year or not, justifies that expense? After all, this doesn't even need to be a permanent move. We can give him until June when Nelson returns, and if it appears he's just not ready, he can be sent back down for Nelson to move up, no harm, no foul, and he can continue working in AAA. The important thing either way is that we control him through 2024. But if it IS working out, we've added not one, but two major pieces to the rotation by June, and that could make an enormous difference on our end of season result this year. To me, it hurts nothing to find out right now if he can be a difference maker, other than having to find a 40 man roster spot for him. Suter goes back to relief where he's a much better fit, and by June, if things work out, we'll have a very good problem on our hands trying to figure out who goes to make room for Nelson, and that question should answer itself by then. That's my case for rolling with Burnes now. I know it's probably not going to happen, but I think there's some logic to it.

I guess this isn't totally out of left field, since they still have the OF pretty well covered and don't necessarily need another active one. Thames isn't going anywhere IMO unless they are extremely high on Choi. Maybe Aguilar if someone came calling with a good offer but I think the 1B trade market is going to be real weak.

How so? Everyone knew there could and would be injuries at times in the OF. I mean my money would have been on Braun or even Cain for the first DL stint but it's always a possibility for everyone of course.

I don't totally disagree but a great deal of his ABs this year have looked absolutely horrendous, and it's not like he couldn't use a maintenance day anyway as he's on pace for 130 starts which is probably a little on the high side. Like I said, not the right day for it with Quintana on the mound, especially with Yelich mow out.

So much for returning on Monday. Guessing Phillips or Broxton up. Phillips probably makes more sense as they're lacking a LH bat in the OF.

I was kind of hoping to see Braun take a seat today, but against a lefty in Quintana doesn't really make sense. All righty lineup, Thames and Shaw off against the tough lefty, Perez gets a start at 3rd and Aguilar is in. I'm good with this today.

I remember when Counsell was hired I wondered - what credentials did he have to be a major league manager? I was in the minority who wasn't thrilled with his hire. He still doesn't. Don't get me wrong I like Counsell and think he's good for the team. But when you have a long-term manager I think it really takes years for their legacy to be defined. And a guy can be right for the situation and clubhouse one year and then 3 years later with different personnel not be the right guy. I remember when Ron Roenicke got hired here and won 96 games and a division many fans thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread and assumed he'd be on everyone's short list if we ever let him go. Then several years went by and for whatever reason things got stale and we had to move on. As far as I know he hasn't even been seriously considered or interviewed for any managerial vacancies since then much less landed one.

Burnes was Burnes. Great start from Medeiros too, really good to see.

Maybe we're going about this all wrong. Jack up the rates for these games beyond any other rate in baseball, bleed them dry, and use the excess money on a free agent ace.

Of course it does. The demographics also are what they are, and they're not moving us to a different division just because we don't like how many Cub fans show up at Miller Park. I can appreciate that they tried to do something about it, but it was pretty futile. They can stop jacking up the prices on their home fans for these and stop doing dumb Illinois friendly things like having Charles Tillman throw out the first pitch. That's about it.

Watch some Brewer/Cubs games from 2014 when the Brewers were good and the Cubs stunk. Full, but not always sold out crowds, and not nearly the ratio of Cubs to Brewer fans as we have now.

Yeah everyone wants to avoid selling to Cub fans and buy from other Brewer fans in a theoretical and hypothetical world. Until it's your money and you need to fork down $500 for a few marquee seats, or until it's your tickets that you need to get rid of by Tuesday and you have a buyer for over face value and you're far too busy to deal with anything other than collecting the money for it. I'm not saying this applies to anyone here, I'm just saying, what one believes they might do may not always coincide with what they would do in practice. And the marquee pricing makes it worse, not better. I guarantee you already have people avoiding going to Brewer/Cub games at Miller Park because the atmosphere stinks because you go to a game hoping to enjoy it with other Brewer fans and instead get stuck in a section with all Cub fans. Now tack on the fact that you just paid an extra 50 bucks more than usual for this "experience" and it's no wonder Cub fans have taken over Miller Park.