adambr2

Mitchell needs a day off or two.

500 ball the last two series against the two worst teams in the league. Not great.

This team really could use a bullpen arm or two. There’s Megill and Uribe and then a whole lot of crossing your fingers.

This was a winnable game that we never seemed to intend on playing to win, both prior to the game and during the game.

Not a great call to send Patrick out for another inning.

Getting to be late. Can’t afford to give up any more here.

One really refreshing thing about how this team has evolved is you no longer feel like there’s any real black holes in the lineup. It wasn’t even that long ago, seeing the murderers row of Perkins, Rengifo and pre-3B Ortiz that you might as well go get something done if the bottom lineup guys were coming up. And to his credit, Murphy hasn’t forced himself to play Perkins lately. I often forget he’s actually not in AAA.

Hanging around. This would be great to steal this one.

Not super pretty, but Mitchell sort of redeems himself.

Dropping a can of corn routine flyball is the bottom of the barrel worst offense you can commit on defense in the majors. It’s a 2-1 game at worst without that right now.

That’s the 47th double play we’ve hit into this series, or something close to that

Good start to the inning. Let’s get some runs back.

Anyone else on the Giants with 0 HR this year looking for a self-esteem boost this series?

Always good to donate runs via walks and errors in a game against a pitcher that you have no success against.

Yeah that’s unacceptable. That’s have a seat for your next game territory.

Mitchell has really cooled off from where he was a couple weeks ago.

Probably don’t want to have a chat with Gary about not challenging a borderline pitch or we’ll be out of challenges by the 3rd inning.

None of the points that are made about Yelich's bat still being about average address the fact that other options have started to emerge. Yelich OPS'ing .700 is really not that big of a deal when your alternative options were Blake Perkins and Brandon Lockridge. We're deeper than that now, so the bar is higher. The breakouts of Lara and Pratt are great for the team. They also are two more mouths that need to be fed. Eventually, you run out of room at the table if your performance isn't up to snuff. The fact of the matter is that Yelich is a DH only player, and this hurts his standing considerably. If he were an average fielding 3rd baseman, he'd be playing every day and his bat would be no issue. The DH is the leftover after you've fielded your 8. This locks in Contreras, Turang, Pratt, Chourio, and Mitchell, plus two of Lara, Vaughn, and Bauers, plus one of Ortiz or Hamilton. That leaves one single spot in the lineup open for one of Yelich and whichever one of Lara, Vaughn and Bauers isn't in the field and whichever one of Ortiz and Hamilton isn't in the field. This isn't even counting Sanchez, and when Frelick returns you still have another one to figure out. The fact of the matter is that a 95 OPS+ isn't good enough when this is the competition. And this is all assuming that they make NO other starting additions and that guys like Made and Fischer are still over 2 years away — big assumptions to make. No one is saying Yelich is a disaster. He doesn't need to be a disaster to be benchable. He needs to be a worse option than 9 other players, and he is getting there.

I’m not just dogging Yelich here either, I’m trying to think of ways to get him going. Isn’t it possible that he has too high of expectations for himself and it’s causing him to press and hurting his performance? Isn’t it possible that he’s out there every day thinking “they still trust me at the top of the order to get this offense jumpstarted, and I’m failing”. And isn’t it possible that it would be beneficial to sit him down and tell him “hey, we don’t need you to be that guy anymore. We still believe in you, but you don’t need to put pressure on yourself, we’re going to hit you 7th for awhile no matter what happens, and let’s just focus on getting you comfortable again?”

There’s no reason to have him in either one of those places when he clearly isn’t among the 6 best hitters on the team. As someone pointed out in yesterday’s game thread, as long as you have Pratt and Ortiz producing like they are at the bottom of the order, having one of your better hitters at leadoff becomes more important to cash in on those scoring opportunities. If making the pitcher work is the first quality you look for in a leadoff hitter then Lara is perfect for the role.

The thing about Yelich up until about 2 months ago is that you took the bad with the good because you always knew he was capable of torrid stretches where he carried the offense. In the first 8 games in June Yelich had 6 multi hit games by June 9th. Since then? 5 total. He’s in hitters purgatory right now, not terrible enough to completely sit down but not good enough to really make any kind of impact. It’s almost always a 1 for 5 or 1 for 4 with a walk in the box score. So someone will point out like a couple games ago that he’s hit safely in 13 out of 15 games which sounds good until you notice that 12 out of those 13 were 1 hit games. The 7 spot is perfect for him right now. As @liveforoctoberpointed out, with the way the bottom of the order is hitting right now you need guys at the top of the lineup who can cash in for you like Turang. I don’t necessarily agree that he has to play just because he is a 28M a year DH, there is some sunk cost fallacy in that statement I think. The decision to pay Yelich was made long ago and he is making that money whether he is starting, on the bench, or at home - that is independent from what he does on the field and there is nothing we can do about it now. So the only factor should be whether he is one of our best 8 hitters or whether we can still expect him to be. It’s pretty borderline right now but justifiable. If his OPS starts to slip into the 600s with no real sign of rebounding than the conversation is going to get more difficult.

I really don’t think so, I don’t think there’s anyone above him in the organization who lacks the emotional intelligence to want him to do what’s best for the club. The Brewers organization has become pretty good at staying in their respective lanes.

Not sure how yet, but he’s going to spin this as if moving Yelich to cleanup jumpstarted the offense.

Literally not even good for a fly ball out to get a run home.

Keep it mind he should have 17 less pitches.