adambr2

Dubon could. I wouldn't totally rule out an Arcia demotion again at some point if he doesn't get it going. Tough crowd. Arcia was hitting over .260 less than three weeks ago. Well, he's hitting .239 now and is nearing his career OPS mark of .667. It's not that he's terrible. It's just that he's got options, he's a below average SS and they have 2 guys who can play SS having really great seasons in San Antonio that it wouldn't hurt to see if you can get a boost there.

Dubon could. I wouldn't totally rule out an Arcia demotion again at some point if he doesn't get it going.

To add to that discussion and be blunt, I absolutely believe Stearns went overboard on the lefty bats. The bench construction is just awkward right now. You've got 3 righties, which doesn't sound bad except you're using 2 of them in the lineup against any LHP as a platoon, leaving you nothing but a backup catcher to use against the starter or any other LHP the manager throws at you the entire game.

Probably my biggest frustration right now stems from the fact that we knew we had a gauntlet of LHP coming up on this trip. We knew we had a weapon that could be useful against said gauntlet, we chose not to use him. And here we are, struggling to score runs against that stretch of LHP.

This is Arcia's 4th year. It's possible a light turns on for him at some point. It's more likely that we're just in "this is who he is" territory with him.

Perez has been fine as a limited utility player, but one of the problems without Hiura is having him in the lineup every day against these LHP gauntlets. Perez is a decent guy to have off the bench, not to start daily on a good club. I think there's a decent chance we just move on from him next year. His arbitration price tag is going to continue to get higher. He was fine to roster when he was making 500K but not for 5M, especially when he can't be optioned. Just replace his role going forward in 2020 with Dubon for the league minimum and have the ability to have a little more roster flexibility as well.

Well, that should be plenty.

Why does this man bat 3rd every night?

Surplus value will fly right out the window if there's a bidding war. I don't think either of the proposed deals will work, I think it would take closer to Lutz. Not saying I think we should do that, just that I expect that to be the market.

Bucks rumored to be near a 5 year extension with Middleton for just shy of the max. https://clutchpoints.com/bucks-rumors-khris-middleton-expected-get-5-year-deal-close-max-money/

You should always want to improve an area of your team if possible, even if it's already good. Improvement isn't just limited to areas of weakness. Always look to get better. No one is saying or thinking that Hiura is going to solve every problem on the team, but all we really need to ask is if he makes us a better team.

Pretty disappointing road trip. The schedule finally softens up and we can't take advantage. Maybe we can win the next 2 and at least salvage a split.

So although it's been a very small sample size, Peralta's starter/reliever splits have been a night and day difference. He's been atrocious as a starter (albeit brilliant at times), but dominating as a reliever. So at this point, where do we go from here? It's not totally out of the blue -- Freddy's lack of a 3rd pitch gives pause on whether he can ever really maintain consistency as a starter. But it does make him even more intriguing as a reliever -- he may be able to operate more in the mid 90's now with regularity out of the pen, looking more like triple digits with his delivery. Is it too soon to think Freddy's future may be as a reliever, with a possible relief ace type ceiling (probably throwing that term around a little too casually. There aren't many relief aces in baseball. But Freddy could be a very good reliever, I think). Now the part that makes this tough right now is that we already have put Corbin Burnes' starter development on hold out of necessity, and we might be headed down the same road with Peralta. Long-term, I'm sure the organization would feel mixed about getting only 1 starter out of Hader, Peralta, Woodruff and Burnes, but getting 2-3 relief aces out of it.

I think the thing about Arcia that causes some frustration with him is that there were expectations, fair or not, brought upon by his prospect ranking that just don't really seem to be coming to fruition. He has good stretches and bad stretches, but for the most part, he doesn't vary much from who he is. He'll go cold at the plate at times, and other times he'll go the other way nicely and look good up there. Defensively, he'll boot some easy balls, and other times he'll dazzle on some difficult plays. Arcia has over 1400 PA's at the MLB level and is in his 4th season at this level. He has accumulated just 0.7 fWAR in those 4 seasons, Baseball Reference being slightly more optimistic at 2.7 bWAR. Both tell the same story -- the things he does well simply aren't enough to overcome the things he doesn't and make him any more than a slightly below average starter for his position. Arcia is a guy who will probably have a long MLB career, and more than likely the last 5 years or so will be as a utility infielder because of his defensive prowess. But as a starter, he's very replaceable and when you look at the state of SS around MLB these days -- Correa, Baez, Turner, Lindor, Story, and others, Arcia is just not a guy who is probably ever going to be in that upper echelon. Now I will disclaim this by saying -- he is still young, and just because he's in his 4th season doesn't mean he won't still improve. Player development isn't linear, and he certainly wouldn't be the first young player who struggles in his early 20's and starts to flip a switch in his mid 20's. But the more likely scenario, I think, is that this is probably just who Arcia is. You can get by with him, but you won't miss much without him. He just doesn't have the track record with the bat, either at this level or in the minors, to make me all that confident that he's ever going to be a plus hitter.

I got no issue if Shaw ends up spending much of this year in AAA.

Agreed, I said this when we acquired Gamel. Not that Gamel isn't a good fit, but the roster construction here makes for some awkward and bad matchups late. Hiura will be back up soon, but not for the bench. They have Dubon and Saladino both tearing up AAA and would probably be quite useful off the bench. With that said the flip side is that we don't have a Sogard or Nick Franklin on this roster like most years.

Good grief Cain.

You know how some of us thought we were going to continue to blur the lines between starter and reliever, heavily use middle relief, piggyback, build on what we did in the playoffs last year, etc? We might as well just go ahead and do that. None of our starters can make it through 5 anyway.

I had to blink when I saw his HR total. When did he find a power stroke?

I personally think we're way overplaying the small sample size game. My guess is that you can cherry pick a one month ish sample size from just about any semi-regular position player in baseball during the course of a season and find a 900ish OPS. For the course of the season, Aguilar has obviously not been very good. Hopefully he can get that turned around now while there's still time.

That's come down a lot for him lately. For his career .276/.297/.451. He's ok. But Hiura isn't here, so yeah with the personnel they have not much better option to use against LHP.

He's played almost 400 innings at 1st this season. More than either 1B on our roster. The only reason EE plays at 1B is because Vogelbach is even less of a 1B than Encarnacion. The Mariners are the worst defense in baseball by far. They have about 5 DHs playing the field. I know defensive WAR is a bit uncertain it isn't easy to be a part-time DH and still pile up -15 career dWAR and be well in the red for 10 years in a row. Nothing about Encarnacion fits into the Brewers playbook. We want to get into a bidding war with the richest team in baseball over a 36-year old 1B/DH that hasn't played in the NL in over a decade??? I'm thankful Stearns has a keen awareness of opportunity cost. It would have been for 3 and a half months. It's a small sample size, but EE has graded out as a better defensive first baseman than both Thames and Aguilar in 2019, and far better than Aguilar. I think you're pretty strongly overstating the defensive factor of not making that move. It would have been a 3 and a half month rental and our current 1st basemen are defensive hacks already. We're not talking about replacing Paul Goldschmidt's glove here. The defensive difference between Aguilar and Encarnacion the next 15 weeks is probably negligible at best. The Rockies had interest, and they're an NL team. I think our lack of interest probably stemmed a lot less from defense and a lot more on just being pretty payroll strapped. It sounds like Seattle's main goal was simply dumping payroll and the Yankees were willing to take on the most.

I think the Braun to 1st ship has sailed, at least for 2019. I do not believe he's a player whose routine they want to interrupt with an unplanned midseason position move.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the Cardinals recently so I just looked at Goldschmidt’s last 30 days before Sunday (May 15th - June 15th). Over those past 27 games he has just four extra base hits total (two doubles and two home runs) as well as a .242 BA and .672 OPS. I know he came on strong later in the season last year, but that is a rough stretch after a good start to the season (versus the Brewers at least). EDIT: He did hit a home run on Sunday. Goldy's pedestrian numbers are a surprise to see because every time he plays the Brewers you'd think he was the GOAT. Lots of time left though and as you mentioned he did start off 2018 very slow only to finish on a tear. Still, it's quite possible, if not probable that the Cardinals will regret giving him 5/130.

It still wasn't a particularly pretty game, but one thing I really liked seeing was Shaw and Aguilar having a nice game. If either or both of them can finally get it going again that will go a lot further for us than this one game.