adambr2

I'm just done with Aguilar. He is useless.

Can you explain what you mean by that? This sentence doesn't make any sense to me. There's no doubt they're fortunate to have the record they have with the performances all-around so far.

There were people in 2016 insisting that Bellinger for Braun wasn't enough. It was shocking at the time even without the benefit of hindsight now. People get blinded when they fall in love with a longtime player.

This. If you count today as a loss, we are still in contention at 13-10 with a record of 7-6 in games started by Peralta/Woodruff/Burnes. Up until now we have done both at the same time. You continue to point to the record. The record is meaningless this early in the season. The record is not sustainable under the year to date level of play and is largely attributable to luck.

Braun couldn't hit a beach ball with a tennis racket this year and still follows Yelich. So why would you challenge Yelich?

We can either try to contend again this year or we can try to develop all our young pitchers as MLB starters in the MLB rotation. We can't do both at the same time.

Sunday Brewer baseball.

Remember when Aguilar used to actually have power in his bat?

True, but there's one important aspect missing here. None of those guys cost $20M or anything close to it. That's a ton of payroll flexibility that has been lost for very mediocre production. Stearns would never say it out loud, but I don't doubt the Braun no-trade of August 2016 was one of his more regrettable moves that didnt happen.

Terrible, terrible 0-2 pitch to Bellinger.

I can't tell you how many times in my lifetime I've been tempted to say "You can remove that charge, or I will remove it from your tip. Up to you."

Hypothetical "where do we go from here". Say Chase stays in the rotation, and Nelson returns in early May to the rotation. Or perhaps, they sign Gio. What's the plan with Peralta and Burnes? 6 man rotation? Do you consider a move back to the pen for either? Leave Burnes in AAA for the vast majority of 2019?

Would it be a bad idea to start giving Pina more starts and use Grandal at 1st more?

They'd have a dreadfully bad offense without Yelich, no doubt.

Every year there's fluff pieces on a new swing, a new stance, lasik eye surgery making everything clearer, "best shape of my life", etc etc. Most of it never amounts to a hill of beans. Braun is probably done. He's not THIS bad, but he's probably a platoon player now and certainly should never be hitting 3rd. Hanley Ramirez is about the same age as Braun and was also once one of the best players in baseball. He was just DFAed. Age has caught up to both of them.

I need to make a pitching staff related vent here. Last September and post-season, this organization went in a different direction. They ditched the traditional starting pitcher. They stopped worrying about getting X amount of innings from a starter and just focused on the most efficient ways to get 27 outs. They re-defined the role of a middle reliever. It made all the difference in the world, and it took them to within 1 game from the World Series. So going into this season, you could forgive me for thinking, "these guys are going to continue to innovate, continue to re-write the book, and continue to blur the lines of pitching roles". Well as we know, they didn't. They went right back to traditional roles. They pigeonholed all their young pitchers into traditional starting roles and ditched matchup and situational-based roles. The results, as we know, have been dreadful. I understand that over the course of a 162 game season, innovation isn't as easy as it is in the playoffs and September. And I don't know what the right answer really is in the short-term or the long-term. But I do know that right now, our pitching staff is a mess. It's essentially the opposite of late last year, and it hasn't worked well at all. In the second half of 2019, we only needed an "average" rotation. We could bail at the first sign of trouble, because we had multiple young power arms that could put out fires and give us an inning or two in crucial mid-game situations. We no longer have that. The young starters are out there on an island with no help. When they struggle, we can only put gasoline on the fire. It's a problem.

This has been the standard fee for those at my local Applebees for quite some time, but you have to actually agree to purchase it on the tablet first. Do they not even tell you ahead of time that there is a charge for that?

Our record obviously is of little concern at this point, but record is pretty irrelevant in April. I'm a little more concerned that we simply haven't been a very good team in any area. The pitching has been quite bad, and Christian Yelich is our Aaron Rodgers of the offense -- we'd be a Yelich injury away from a bad offense. That being said, there has to be around 15-20 guys severely underperforming expectations on the roster, and that should normalize at some point.

The offense can afford for one of those guys to have a disappointing season, but certainly not all three. Given Braun's age and trends the last few years, he's probably a platoon player at this point for the rest of his career. Aguilar...I don't know. I thought there would be some regression, but not like this. Shaw I'm probably the most confident in rebounding. At least he's still walking, but make no mistake, he's been brutal. He doesn't even have a low BABIP like the other two to attribute any luck to what he's done so far.

Between how brutal Aguilar, Shaw, and Braun have been this year, it's kind of miraculous to see our offense be a strong point this season. Yelich, Cain, Moose and Grandal were all added in the last 15 months, and thank goodness or this is probably the worst offense in baseball.

Probably makes more sense to shift Moose back to 3rd and Shaw to 1st.

That was much more like it.

Pitiful quarter for the Bucks.

I'm trying to recall how his pitch mix as a reliever last year compared to what he's thrown this year. There has to be something different.

Thanks for nothing Shaw.