owbc

Complete rebuilds have fallen out of fashion. When was the last one that actually worked? The downside to a big rebuild is far, far greater than the upside. The current playoff structure also favors a retool approach with the goal of making the postseason. It's not worth fighting $200+ million payroll teams for a first round bye. The 'ideal' scenario is that retooling is a constant process, there are constantly younger players waiting to step up. Unproven talent doesn't always live up to expectations -- the Rays have certainly gotten worse at SS in the short term without Willy Adames around. However, the Brewers' pitching core isn't getting any younger and will continue to lose both actual value and trade value with every year that passes by. At some point it comes down to your trust in management's ability to evaluate and grow talent. On one end of the spectrum, if you had zero confidence in the Brewers' organization, it would be an easy decision to want to hang onto our current talent as long as possible. On the other end of the spectrum, if you had full confidence in every highly-ranked young player turning into a stud, it would be an easy decision to cash out and replenish the pipeline, even if it meant getting worse in the short term. The 2022 Rays certainly seem to be suffering from the "got worse in the short term" reality, although the rest of their division getting better isn't helping either. And they will probably make the postseason anyway. Personally I feel that the Brewers operate with an opportunistic mindset and they are not going to lock themselves into one extreme or the other. I could easily see them signing Burnes to a long-term extension and trading Hader in the same offseason, depending on their take on the market and the projected value of their various assets. In the Melvin era it felt to me like management was rigid in how each asset fit into their plan and was strongly biased toward short-term goals. In the Stearns era I feel like they operate more on a set of principles vs. having a plan for any particular season or asset. When the opportunity comes along to make a move that will further either their short term or long term goals, they won't hesitate to make the move. I think they have a general plan on when they would trade or extend Hader/Woodruff/Burnes, but their main principle is flexibility, and they will quickly evolve to the rapidly changing (and unpredictable) landscape of MLB. We don't even know what the rules will be in 2023!

Probably 2012

I love when this team shows what it is capable of against playoff-caliber opponents.

Rowdy also reminds me of Burnitz -- who can forget the 99 home run derby when Jeromy apologized to the fans for making the final round. Also, I had a reliable source tell me that Burnitz was known to show up at Culver's in Brookfield right when they opened (to avoid being recognized) and order a family sized chili cheese fry for himself. What could be more Wisconsin than that?

I used to live in Miami and once my buddy and I decided to skip work and go to a noon Marlins game on a Wednesday. I was expecting a crowd of 5,000, but it turned out it was "school day" and it was the largest crowd of the season, 35,000 kids. Torture.

How is Ji-man batting .287? That's incredible for someone with his speed.

He had the smile of a guy who didn't catch it...

Glad I checked in early today, nothing like some 9 AM baseball to make the workday go faster.

Phil Nevin is clearly a piece of work but at the end of the day these are two underperforming teams making themselves look bad. Those suspensions are going to hurt any chance the Mariners had of getting back into playoff contention.

There is no unemployment problem, only a wage and benefits problem. Much of the 'quitting' has been people getting better jobs. Employers have shown almost no loyalty to employees and they only way to get a decent raise these days is to change jobs. I don't see any of these trends reversing. There are plenty of $15/hour jobs out there, so nobody is going to want to work retail or food service. The excess jobs will be automated or be eliminated. I would say my biggest concern is that many jobs that previously paid a middle class income are starting to fall into the low wage category. Teachers, government jobs, nursing in some cases. Anyway...for investment purposes the excess cash that was around during COVID is clearly gone. Speculative investments like tech and especially crypto have already corrected. If it wasn't for the Ukraine mess I bet inflation would already be cooling off. I do worry about crypto fully collapsing, which would reverberate into the broader economy. Otherwise I'm guessing that we'll have our mini-recession and things will at least stabilize. I'm curious to see Q2 earnings but generally I'm guessing it will be a good time to invest again by the end of the year.

Never forget that John Axford pitched for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2021.

Usually when oil prices spike, American oil companies invest the profits into additional production. They have been burned by this in the past because prices drop by the time they can actually increase capacity, which takes years. The expectation is also that oil demand will either stagnate or drop because of the increasing electrification of the transportation network. So there isn't any point in increasing production. Prices will stay high. In the long run it was a miracle of fracking technology that temporarily got prices down for an extra two decades. That's over now. As for the economy as a whole...the era of free money had to end. Things are going to get worse but at least we're being somewhat proactive this time which is unusual for the government. I don't know what's going to happen to the majority of people in this country who are struggling to get by. I'm also curious if they are going to make me repay student loans again in a couple of months. I'm guessing they will use the impending recession to punt on that again...certainly I'm not planning on making any payments prior to the midterm elections.

It hasn't been proposed yet but I wouldn't be surprised to see the Brewers take out 2,000-4,000 seats in the Terrace to convert to a beer garden or another alternative type of gathering area that can generate more revenue than cheap tickets. Similar to what Cleveland and Colorado have done. I get the "expensive to attend a game" thing but the cheap options are still there if you want to take advantage of them. Anyone on the email list knows that they are constantly advertising $10 or less ticket deals.

People who buy cheap tickets and tailgate to avoid paying for food should be the lowest priority for the Brewers. I'm sure they will always have cheap tickets and a lot where tailgating is allowed but it is logical to reallocate some of that space to other purposes and consolidate some of the parking into a garage. They are also falling behind other teams in not extracting revenue from outside-of-stadium sources. Even something like this would be a nice upgrade: https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/seattle-mariners-sign-long-term-lease-to-redevelop-pyramid-brewing-building-and-open-a-restaurant-and-brew-pub/

The Bucks/Brewers comparison is interesting. The Bucks draw a different demographic than the Brewers. The Bucks crowd is younger and more diverse and more from Milwaukee. The Brewers have an older crowd and draw more from the suburbs and beyond. AmFam Field looks really weird to people not from Milwaukee, alongside a highway with a sea of parking lots and tailgating. You almost expect the cars in the lots to be 1970s Chevys. It's certainly weird to me now going back to Milwaukee when I'm used to riding the bus to a baseball game and walking through a sea of restaurants and vendors to get to a baseball game. Seattle has no problem drawing people from out of the city for weekend Mariners games -- they tend to make a day of it and do other tourist activities + spend money. And the stadium district in Seattle is not in downtown, it's next to it, with both freeway access and good public transportation options. The sad thing about AmFam field is that it's just a little bit too far away from downtown to be fully connected with the amenities. It would be better if it was located where the casino is -- still accessible from the highways w/ parking but closer to other options. Trying to create another district in close proximity to all of those options is going to be challenging. If it penciled out they would have already done it -- hence why they need public funding. It's going to be hard to build from scratch but they can start with tearing down the highway and adding a few things -- perhaps some condo or apartment buildings? I think they will need permanent residents to make this work and they also need to find a way to connect to the rest of downtown via public transit or another shuttle option.

The Mariners have too many outfielders and need relief pitching. They are going to have a logjam when Mitch Haniger comes back from his injury. I don’t know who Jerry Dipoto is going to want to move but we should try and pick up the odd man out. Similar to getting Willy Adames at the right time. Kelenic would be first on my list, has struggled in the majors but is 22 with a high ceiling and from Wisconsin. Currently tearing it up in AAA. Not sure if Dipoto would move him but the price wouldn’t be cheap. Kyle Lewis was crushing the ball in his brief return from the DL, but isn’t 100% and can’t help on defense in the short term. Probably not getting traded at this time. Taylor Trammell doesn’t have as high of a ceiling as the others but is playing well lately and is only 24. He might be had for a reliever. And there’s Jesse Winker. Off to a terrible start in 2022, but playing better of late. More of a LF than a CF but a juicy option to buy low.

Oh man, you weren't joking, Cain's statcast sliders are bruuutal.

With the universal DH, it's becoming more common for MLB teams to play a defensive specialist at a high value position. Catcher is the most common spot, but it makes sense to do so in CF as well. Cain can't hit anymore, and there doesn't seem to be a pathway to him regressing to even an average CF offensively. But Cain can still play defense, and he's giving us value there. TT is not an elite defensive CF like Cain is, but TT is above average defensively and he's more than making up the difference with his bat. The Brewers are certainly well aware of this and it's not surprising that the playing time is being allocated accordingly. To me that situation is resolving itself just fine. It's not a surprise that most of Cain's production came on the front end of that contract. He met expectations in my view. The bigger problem is that you can make a case for TT over Yelich right now. If Cain does remember how to hit, then Yelich is the one who should lose playing time.

Great, we upgraded over JBJ's 35 wRC+ from 2021.

Attanasio is the best small-market owner in MLB. There isn't another small- or even mid-market owner who has come close to matching his combined success both on and off the field. He keeps getting smarter and learning from his mistakes. I have no doubt that he wants to win, but he's seen nothing but failures from other teams who have tried to build through free agency. Including many with way bigger budgets than the Brewers. His own attempts to sign large contracts have yielded mixed results at best. I'm sure that he will never sign another contract like the Yelich one. If he overpays, it is for one or two year contracts at most. The Royals are the only small market team to win the World Series in the Attanasio era. The Rays are the gold standard for baseball operations, but any owner that threatens to play 50% of games in Montreal immediately moves to the bottom of the list. I'm going to knock Attanasio, it's mostly for the fact that he hasn't fully embraced the Rays' strategy of baseball operations. The Braun contract hurt us in the mid-2010s and the Yelich contract is the reason we are failing to get over the hump in the 2020s. Before that it was other stupid free agent signings like Garza. He's a fan and has his heart in it, so he inevitably gets too emotionally attached to our star players and doesn't trade them when he needs to, despite the analytics clearly showing he needs to do so. I think he has learned and will trade Hader and eventually Burnes, but we'll see...

I live in Pacific Time and I didn't even make it to the end of the game last night. Turned it off after we left the bases loaded in the 10th.

Two Nobletigers in one game, ugh.

Caught about half the game last night. What a wild hockey game. Clearly the goalies were rattled by the pressure of the series. It will be interesting to see if they settle down in game 2. The Flames are a better team, but McDavid is far and away the best player on the ice. And that's saying something because Johnny Gaudreau is pretty darn good. When it was 1 on 1 the Flames basically just tackled McDavid and drew a penalty. It could have been a 10-9 score last night if Edmonton could have gotten comfortable on the power play. Calgary should win the series, but the fact that McDavid might single handedly prevent that, as he did vs. LA in round 1, makes it fascinating to watch.

Bashing Keston makes him stronger. I hate the guy. Send him back to AAA.

And 3rd perhaps?