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Doesn't matter how good your offense is, you have to be able to win close games. Especially to prevent a couple of bad games from snowballing. Great stuff.

Chance to steal a win here.

I said we got what we paid for. If we needed something better than a .650 OPS then we shouldn't have signed a guy with a sub-.700 career OPS. Not defending Melvin at all here, all I'm saying is that Yuni B showed up every day to play in 2011 with a positive attitude and put up a performance that was right in line with his career averages. I liked his smile. He seemed like a good teammate. One look at the guy told you he wasn't born to be a shortstop, but he just did what was asked of him.

That's a shame. I loved the guy, he seemed so happy go lucky despite being the worst regular starter on the 2011 team. Never really understood the hate for him, we got exactly what we paid for. Oh well, we'll always have his home run in game 1 of the NLCS. (I had apparently blocked out of my memory that we brought him back in 2013 and somehow let him accumulate -2.7 bWAR...)

Nobody can accuse this team of not pouring it on.

We'll know something fishy is up when Ohtani decides to retire from baseball and play basketball for the LA Clippers.

This is a pretty nice summary (from /r/baseball on reddit): The prosecutors presented the evidence they have against Mizuhara: Ippei set up Ohtani's bank account for him since his arrival to the US. Ippei was the one responsible for making all purchases for Shohei to help him get settled in the country. Within a few years, Mizuhara changed the settings on Ohtani's account and linked it to his phone. He has had full access to Ohtani's accounts since that time. Prosecutors have forensic computer evidence in the form of IP addresses and location data that show all transfers and bets came from Ippei's house and devices. -Prosecutors have multiple call recordings with Ippei and the bank where Mizuhara is pretending to be Ohtani and is authorizing large wire transfers -Prosecutors confiscated both Ohtani and Ippei's phones. They read every txt message and communication sent between the two over 7 years. There were zero instances where betting or wiring money ever came up. There are thousands of messages between Ippei and the bookmaker, including texts where Ippei admits to stealing from Shohei -All of the gambling winnings that Ippei made were transferred into his own bank account and not Ohtanis -The bookmaker has admitted to prosecutors under oath that he knew Ohtani was not a client and that Ippei admitted the truth to him. -Ippei didn't just steal money for gambling but for multiple other leisure purchases, including over 325k to buy baseball cards on ebay -Prosecutors have every bet slip that was made with the bookmaker. They number in the tens of thousands. Ippei did not make any bets on baseball. Ohtani did not make any bets at all nor was he aware of Ippei's betting.

It feels like the championship window might be already closed but there's still at least some hope of them making it to the finals this year and having the opponent catch an injury bug or something. It has certainly happened to us. Nobody in NBA fan circles seems to think that Doc is capable of coaching a championship team, but they said that about Bud as well until he actually did it. Next year??? Pray that they find some diamonds in the rough to be the supporting cast? Get Wemby to teach Giannis how to shoot? I don't know...

We are good.

Rate hikes are not going to help with shelter and insurance. Those will have to be solved with policy.

Awesome take by JV. I'll give an optimistic take -- for as long as I can remember it's been near impossible to get any reform in MLB despite the rapid changes that everyone has experienced. Both the league itself and its fans have leaned toward the "traditionalist" take of letting the game evolve without intervention and the result of that was that the product on the field changed into something that people didn't really like and it wasn't until that evolution had swung completely out of whack that anything was done about it. And even so, the changes that went into effect in 2023 were highly controversial prior to implementation although it only took maybe a week or two into the season until they were widely lauded. Theo Epstein deserves a ton of credit for that -- the changes that did get implemented prior to Theo coming on board were done poorly (e.g. replay/challenges) and nobody trusts Manfred or MLBPA to act in the broader interest of the game. Plus, some new rules like the "Manfred runner" remain unpopular. So it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the 2023 rule changes are only step one of what is probably going to be a half dozen major rule updates that are needed to correct the game, not to mention additional ones to correct problems that we can't even conceive of yet. The reason I'm optimistic is that I think the "traditionalist" mindset of baseball fans still largely dominates, but instead of advocating for things to be left alone, the majority of media and fans are pushing for rule changes. Nobody likes a parade of relief pitchers and everyone is pushing for starting pitching to return to prominence -- but as Verlander noted it's going to take a long time to unwind the current state of the game. Interestingly, it seems the one area where traditionalist beliefs go away is an acceptance of technology. Once we had Pitch F/X and especially Umpire Scorecards, it was inevitable that people would eventually start clamoring for ABS.

In 2023, national gas prices went from $3.54 in March to $3.68 in June to $3.95 in August. This year we were also at $3.54 in March. So anything less than a ~$0.45/gal increase by August is going to make the inflation numbers look good. The upcoming commercial real estate crisis is the real looming threat, but it doesn't look like it's going to be a serious problem until after the election...2025 or 2026. I think the wall street folks are expecting a bailout. Local government budgets are going to be completely screwed. I agree that rates are going to stay flat, there's no reason to do anything until the recession starts. We all know it's coming, it's just impossible to know exactly when.

Having moved to a coastal city, coming back to Wisconsin is like going to another country. Everything is ridiculously cheap. Brewers games included. I went to a Sunday game last August (first time going to a Brewers regular season game in like 7-8 years) and I remember being shocked at ticket prices. The loge infield box, which I consider to be a premium seat, was going for like $45/ticket. And parking was $20! What a deal! And the Brewers fees are maybe half of the Ticketmaster fees. I had a group of like 8-9 people and it cost me like 350 bucks for everything. I remember very distinctly as a kid that the upper grandstand at County Stadium was $8/ticket in the late 90s. If you throw that in an inflation calculator, it comes to $15 in present day money. You can easily get Brewers tickets for $15 and often less than that. And even those prime matchups with the Yankees have $21 terrace outfield seats. So I just don't see how it's all that bad. With what things cost these days, we're complaining about twenty bucks to see the Yankees on a weekend???

The one thing I don't like about dynamic pricing is that the goal is to maximize profits rather than maximize attendance. They would rather have empty seats than sell tickets for less than their perceived value. Anyone who tracks dynamic pricing will tell you that it almost always pays to wait. Wait as long as possible. Buy the tickets after you parked your car and are walking to the gate. It will almost always be cheaper than buying in advance. What I've found frustrating is that the dynamic models have gotten smarter in the last year or two and it's near impossible to get ahead of them. They started jacking up prices in pre-sales and right when tickets go on sale, so now it makes even more sense than ever to skip the early purchasing and wait for prices to drop.

Literal walk off.

I didn’t know that Brice Turang’s dad played for the Mariners.

You have to watch it on Root Sports NW.

All I know is that the criticisms of the current Mariners offense sound similar to what people were saying about the Brewers in 2021-22. Top heavy, no speed, too dependent on slugging and HRs,

I may be thinking more of 2021...

I think they overcorrected after an 88 win season in 2023, but Jerry Dipoto can't help himself when it comes to trades and the only way to make a ton of trades was to dump some payroll to make room for new additions. Lots of selling low and buying high. Feels like they rearranged the deck chairs and will end up wasting elite pitching with a mediocre offense like the 2022 Brewers did.

I like that my two favorite teams get to play each other every year now. Gilbert-Peralta is a great matchup -- two guys who could be dark horse Cy Young candidates this year. The Mariners offense has been awful so far this year, ideally the Brewers keep them in the dumps but I have a feeling they will hit better after getting out of the 45 degree Seattle marine layer. They can't hit any worse than they have so far (.550 OPS). Seattle's defense has also struggled so far this year, so the Brewers have a huge advantage in that category. Luis Urías also makes his return to Milwaukee this weekend.

My interpretation of Garza's WAR is that replacement level pitching is always worse than we think it is. In 2017, it looks like replacement level xFIP was around 5.4. So closer to 2017 Junior Guerra, who started 14 games and racked up -0.1 bWAR, -0.7 fWAR. So as bad as Garza was, the 2017 Brewers still had to cover about 25 starts with guys who were worse than him.

You could win a World Series with a roster of former Seattle Mariners.

I think he's the next Robin Yount of this franchise and I think many others do as well, but that's a big weight to put on the shoulders of a young kid.

An .850 OPS at Nashville is basically the equivalent of a 1.000 OPS in the PCL.