adambr2

While Torres didn't pitch well it was his error, not pitching, that forced Knebel into the game. If he makes a halfway decent throw to second they turn two and he probably still gives up a run but finishes the game. Does it not seem like we have the worst fielding pitchers in baseball? Maybe it's just because Garza and Torres made mistakes that are still fresh in my mind but we seem generally bad in that regard.

Hader and Taylor Williams are two guys I think could be a big boost to the pen this year as well. Blazek, I can't help but wonder if they see something there still as a starter, but he's been very successful in that role. I honestly don't know anything about Archer. Wang was a guy I've called for in the past, but I'm a bit wishy washy on him. The ERA screams improvement while the peripherals generally haven't. Honestly, at the end of the day I wouldn't be hurt or bothered to see any of bottom few in the pen sent packing and see new guys get shots -- I simply think as others have said that those decisions need to be made after close internal evaluation of why struggles are happening and whether of not there is reasonable hope for improvement. With that said, Drake and Hughes have grown on me a bit, I like Drake's effectiveness against lefties but perhaps that just stands out more for lack of a lefty in our pen. Hughes looked fantastic his last outing. I have no idea where it came from. It's probably reading too much into one outing but I'm a bit intrigued to see if he's developing into anything useful before moving on from him.

No, it's condescending because you're being condescending and rude as you often do when people argue with you, when all I was trying to do is get you to understand the point I was making, not argue to argue. Never once did I say Knebel is comparable to any of our other relievers. I simply pointed out, how big of a loss would it be I'd we had decided based on his 2016 that he wasn't a big part of our future based and perhaps traded him. More goes into a decision than just recent results, that's all I was saying. I don't deny that I have said things of a reactionary nature in a game thread based on an emotional response of what happened in the moment. Who hasn't? I find it funny that you try to call me out in arguing and you're no better. Yore emotional to everything. I'll go personal if you do. Not putting up with you and your antics to argue, just to argue. I'm glad that you at least acknowledge your overreacting on the game threads. But back on point, I guess if there is one. Another make believe scenario of now trading Knebel that didn't happen and that I never said I wanted to happen with any of our players. Churning 30 year old relievers from your MLB team to your AAA is not a big deal at all. For some reason you want to make it one. Even though your words just about everywhere else say otherwise. You're not even trying to debate the points I am making. Just rudeness and hypocrisy. I am going to make an honest effort to debate yours, that is what a message board is for. You can interpret that as arguing to argue if you wish, but that is the whole point of all of this, to share differences of opinion. I understand trading Knebel is a hypothetical scenario that didn't happen, I simply suggested, once again, that we clearly would have made a mistake if we decided he wasn't part of the future of our pen based on the results of last season, and we don't want to make that mistake, so we need to evaluate carefully when deciding who to move on from. Again, Drake has no options remaining, so we cannot simply churn him to our AAA team. If that was an option for us, I would agree that is would be a good idea by this point to give someone else a shot. Yes he is 30, but that doesn't mean he can't still have a career ahead as a successful reliever, he wouldn't be the first. As Reilly had mentioned it all comes down to the team's evaluation of him -- perhaps they attribute some of his appearances to bad luck or Derrick Johnson feels he can turn his splitter into a pretty useful weapon. I don't have a ton of confidence that anyone out there in AAA right now, with the possible exception of Hader, can be a significant upgrade in the pen from what we are seeing now. But I do have confidence that several of them will get their shot at some point, but IMO most of the relievers on staff, with the possible exception of Feliz, haven't been as dreadful as we might be feeling like they are so much to the point that they're lost causes to be useful assets in the pen this year. Again, I'm sure they're evaluating and trying to make that determination with every outing. But just throwing out guys like Drake (who has very good numbers against lefties, by the way) for new blood may make things worse, not better. Perhaps for some we're still trying to find the best role for them to be successful in .

No, it's condescending because you're being condescending and rude as you often do when people argue with you, when all I was trying to do is get you to understand the point I was making, not argue to argue. Never once did I say Knebel is comparable to any of our other relievers. I simply pointed out, how big of a loss would it be I'd we had decided based on his 2016 that he wasn't a big part of our future based and perhaps traded him. More goes into a decision than just recent results, that's all I was saying. I don't deny that I have said things of a reactionary nature in a game thread based on an emotional response of what happened in the moment. Who hasn't?

So when you said get rid of guys that are not producing, what you really meant get rid of guys who are not producing as long as they are controllable and highly regarded. Good to know. So...wouldn't Peralta Oh my... first off no, Peralta deserves some time in the pen since he just switched and hasn't been too bad there anyways. If he sucks after while, then yeah, you get rid of him. And secondly, OF COURSE you get rid of guys no matter their service time. This is the major leagues for petes sake. The only different being is if they can be optioned, you can for sure stick them at AAA and if they have no options you face possibly losing them if another team claims them. Whoopty doooo. Not sure what the hell youre exactly arguing here. Churn that damn bullpen as many times as you can and find major league production. I'm not advocating if you suck once you get sent down. The guys I say to move on from have sucked for a long enough period of time now. Can't even fathom what the hell youre arguing here. Just forget it. Just trying to point out why I made the comparisons I did and the disadvantages and risks of giving up on a guy too soon if your evaluation of them dictates that there's still something there that could be useful. Per usual you just get mad and condescending anytime anyone disagrees or tries to debate with you so there's really no point.

So when you said get rid of guys that are not producing, what you really meant get rid of guys who are not producing as long as they are controllable and highly regarded. Good to know. So...wouldn't Peralta still somewhat fall into that category? Also let's not overstate how highly regarded Knebel was. He was the 2nd or 3rd highest regarded piece in a trade for a year of Gallardo. He's been fantastic, but it still kind of remained to be seen coming into this year whether he would turn into a late inning fixture or not. It's easy to say now in retrospect that he was. If Hughes had been fantastic up to this point this year you could easily point to his career ERA and say it was predictable he'd be good. He looked very good in his last outing, by the way, so I have no issue giving him a few more looks yet to see if he has figured something out before moving on from him. And I still think Drake could end up being decent with his splitter if he can fix his command issues.

What are you talking about? You said basically, get rid of anyone who isnt getting the job done. Churn out some more to cycle through. I pointed out hey, Knebel was pretty bad last year, what if we had showed that kind of patience with him? Explain to me how in the world is that apples to oranges? If you cannot see the relevance there than you are completely missing my point. You cannot just throw in the towel on anyone who isnt good for a short time. That's what I was saying. They did, he was optioned last year. Unforunately the current guys don't so they will have to DFA them. Right, and DFAing a guy is a whole lot different than optioning them. Optioning a guy is not giving up on him. Of course if we had somewhere to send Drake and Torres to see if they can work out the kinks and try some new arms up here I'd be for it. I'm not arguing that we shouldn't option some of these guys and try new ones if we had that choice but we don't.

What are you talking about? You said basically, get rid of anyone who isnt getting the job done. Churn out some more to cycle through. I pointed out hey, Knebel was pretty bad last year, what if we had showed that kind of patience with him? Explain to me how in the world is that apples to oranges? If you cannot see the relevance there than you are completely missing my point. You cannot just throw in the towel on anyone who isnt good for a short time. That's what I was saying.

That works both ways, Brew. They picked up guys like Drake for a reason. What if you quit on him too quickly (such as Brandon Kintzler) and he goes on to have a very successful season elsewhere? Most won't. Few will. That's the life of bullpen roulette. Sacrificing your season because you think a 30 year old pitcher may figure it out is not the way to go IMO. Also nothing stopping Drake from going to AAA and getting better where it really doesn't matter record wise. Games count in the pros. The Brewers front office needs to start figuring that out. Knebel was pretty bad last year. What if we had given up on him? I think that would have been a lot more 'sacrificing the season' this year than sticking it out with Drake. You simply cannot just throw anyone who has a few bad outings to the curb, or you'll never have them around long enough to figure out if there's anything there, and your pen will be in constant flux from a game of musical chairs and new bodies every time someone doesn't impress from the get-go. We do need to keep a degree of reliever depth in the minors and therefore also can't afford to be in constant DFA mode with our relievers. Drake has no options left so yes there is something stopping him from going to AAA. I agree with Reilly - everything is based on an internal evaluation. If you feel like Feliz, or Torres, or whoever, is done, by all means DFA them and give someone new a shot . But you had better be right. Or if you think they're just getting unlucky, or you think there's a fixable flaw, or whatever reason, then go ahead and work through it. It's up to the team to make those evaluations. Assembling a pen is for the off-season. At this point, you basically got who you got. You can throw more arms into the mix but most of them are no more likely than who you already have to improve things. So if you want to try to pull off anything significant it's going to have to come from expensive trades or power arms like Hader already in your system.

Not really sure how you can blame Feliz for all but two BP pitchers being terrible this year. Is it Villar's fault that Broxton hasn't lived up to his 2016 second half too? This is where the analytics guy jump the tracks. Baseball players are odd. They really need to know their role and to be comfortable. Not everyone who showed good number pitching the 7th can plug and play and pitch the 9th. High leverage guys pitch well in high leverage situations and of course putting a guy who is ok in general but his warts come out in high leverage spots. We see that in Knebel who has been amazing right up until we made him the full time closer. Broxton and Villar both are bad because they are flawed players. Broxton is not a 'bad' player, and if we really believed that we would have moved on by now. He had over a 2 WAR last year despite playing about a third of the season and being terrible for the first half. Broxton is extraordinarily streaky. When he's hot he'll carry the team for a week or two and when he's not he'll look terrible. Right now he's in the 'not' cycle. I have little doubt that at some point he'll get hot again and get the OPS back up into the .800 range before like he did earlier this year when he was hitting. 119 and people were losing all hope. I still don't believe Villar is a bad player either although he's really not looking very close to turning this around.

They've brought up relievers for 1 game at least once so far this year. And I'm pretty sure he didn't even pitch. So not a big deal then. Okay Would have been a big deal if we had gone 15 innings tonight and run out of relievers or bench players and end up losing. Chances are it doesn't matter, but there's always a chance and there's no reason to play shorthanded if you don't need to. As mentioned we have made 1-2 day callups this year.

There is absolutely no reason that Knebel should have had to be used with a 5 run lead going into the 9th. I mean don't get me wrong we did and it was the right move but it's pathetic. If you cannot protect a 5 run lead with 3 outs to go you do not belong on an MLB team. There are position players who could protect that big of a lead on the mound .

At least Aguilar learned his lesson from last time.

Gotta give credit to Torres, he is single handedly putting opposing teams on his back.

Yep, Joe was a Brave not a Brewer but they were in Milwaukee at the time. Mike Cameron did it once when he was a Mariner.

Think I would give that title to Junior Guerra...however Anderson has been a pleasant success of late. I actually remember a lot of people disliking the Anderson acquisition when it went down. Who? Segura was coming off a terrible year, Arcia was almost ready to come up and Isan Diaz was seen as the real centerpiece of the deal. I can't think of anyone who was unhappy with that trade at the time.

Really? Just let him finish the 8th. Don't put his scoreless streak in the hands of Carlos Torres.

So Chase Anderson has basically been a 3 ERA starter for about a year now.

Does every 50/50 call need to go against us? Wow, didn't think they'd overturn it.

No need to rush it. Either Garza will wake up Wednesday and feel okay or they'll call up Espino to spot start it again. [sarcasm]It is just too bad Tommy Milone wasn't around now.[/sarcasm] If they've already known they were going to be without Garza, they could have brought up another bench player or pen arm for today and tomorrow. They were pretty adamant that he isn't starting Thursday.

The nice thing about having a crappy pen is that there is no garbage time. We always have a reason to try to score a ton of runs. So keep em coming, boys.

LOL, those are the ones that just happen to fall in when things are going right like they are for Sogard.

According to the broadcast tonight Garza will not be making his next start. Really don't understand why they haven't made a move .

William Shatner...from Twilight Zone, to Star Trek...to telling you how you can sue the pants off insurance companies.

Was hoping to see Phillips get at least 2 starts while he is up. Aguilar is 9 for his last 52, don't know why it's so essential to get him back in there after one day out of the lineup.