owbc

Stuck on 299 career home runs

I've never seen anyone with splits as insane as Sal's. He's at an MVP-level 0.490 wOBA against fastballs. Compared with 0.190 against breaking pitches, 0.088 against changeups. And the sample size is now up to a couple months. I'm not sure why anyone would throw him a fastball at this point. Meanwhile, we're winning!

Sal has issues with breaking pitches, to put it lightly.

I assume we're going to be picking up Canha's 11.5M option, right???

It will be interesting to see if the lower seeds have success again this year. Last year both of the 5 seeds and one of the 6 seeds advanced out of WC weekend. Then both Atlanta and LA lost in the second round. Honestly, the WC series will be terrifying and I don’t like the Brewers’ odds of getting out of it against one of these teams that has nothing to lose like Chicago or Cincinnati. I’d almost rather take my chances against Philadelphia, especially given how well we just played them. The plus side is that the teams that do survive WC weekend carry a ton of momentum into the NLDS.

It was reported that there was some clubhouse discontent after the trade, but the players recognized that it was somewhat earned through their poor play. I bet the reaction would have been different if the Mariners were holding a playoff spot at the time of the trade. And Sewald is far from a traditional closer and certainly not a star like Hader.

I’m on a 30ish-person fully remote team, we’re spread across all 4 time zones in the US. It’s quite obvious that being able to source the entire US for our talent pool is going to yield better applicants than restricting to a handful of locations. This year especially as more people are being forced into RTO. I haven’t seen a single downside to a fully remote team and there are numerous advantages both from a business and personal standpoint. The high performers like it the most for sure.

Manfred should void this. Such blatant salary dumping that messes with the playoff race should be illegal.

Julio Franco came in handy again today.

I remember Woodard’s debut as well. It was a better pitched game than Strasberg but it was in front of about 1,500 fans. “Strasberg mania” was like a playoff game. Unfortunately Woodard’s second start was also memorable because it ended our 9 game winning streak and his career was pretty much all downhill from there.

See above. They have to pay out the entire thing. No insurance. Someone on reddit posted an analysis of the value vs. expected value of the 90 completed contracts in MLB history worth $100 million or more (inflation-adjusted). Strasburg ranks 90/90 on that list. Prince Fielder's contract with the Tigers is ranked 87/90.

TT looks like he should be a corner outfielder or DH.

At least they have the video feed working now

Yep, same. I guess I'm watching the Mariners instead today.

Heat index of 107? Yikes. At least it will be snowing in two months.

I think the ship has largely sailed on trading these guys. The time to do it would have been last offseason and we're lucky we didn't because nobody saw the Cards' collapse coming. Letting the Cubs coast to an 80-something win divisional title would have been an embarrassment. Given all three of them being on the same timetable, it seems silly to trade only one or two of them. Adames would be the most obvious to ship, but the return doesn't seem worth it. I would hang on to all three and use that as incentive to get Counsell to come back for one more year. The biggest risk is that the Cubs or Reds break out in 2024 and the Brewers are out of contention at the deadline, in which case they can sell and get returns that will be nearly as good as what they would get in the offseason. And it's not like they would walk for nothing in free agency, we can get the compensatory draft pick(s) and you are tacking another year onto the competitive window which is quite juicy right now with the division being weak and having enough top-tier pitching to get to the NLCS if the stars align.

All the Brewers' woahs will be solvdd if only they call up Hiura.

Mariners fans think they are going to pass Houston+Texas and win the division. Hard to argue with their optimism right now. Nice to see Carlos Santana come up with a few key hits. That’s what he does.

The AL West is turning into a three horse race. The Brewers have plenty of fans in Seattle this weekend.

Urias hit two grand slams on consecutive pitches (over the course of 2 days, but still…)

Im ready to play a different team.

Eventually US cities will get with the picture and build a safe network of protected bike lanes...but we're a long way from that.

I think we're mostly on the same page. Many large cities in the US now have plans to get to net zero. The blueprint is pretty straightforward -- it's pretty much 1/3 buildings (including industry), 1/3 transportation, and 1/3 electricity generation. Everything else is a rounding error. Reducing the number of car trips is worth about 2-3x the CO2 savings vs. transitioning to EVs. Much easier to do in big cities. I wish someone would come up with a good carshare system (possibly if we figure out autonomous vehicles) so that the average person no longer needs to own their own car. That could result in a significant reduction in car manufacturing. Assuming we're aiming for 2050 net zero, then if all new cars are EVs by the 2030-2035 range (which we're on pace for), then the ICE vehicles will be pretty much gone in the US by 2050. China is way ahead of us in that 25% of their new car sales are EVs already. China is also way ahead of us in solar. It helps that these transitions follow exponential curves. The mining and waste stuff feels like whataboutism that comes straight out of the playbook of the oil companies. It's nontrivial but it's not big enough of a deal to stop the transition. The recycling market will clearly emerge as more EVs age out and there is more supply of used batteries available. Remember when China stopped accepting our recyclables about 5 years ago? That problem has been largely solved already. I agree on carbon capture, this will probably be for big single source emission sources like concrete manufacturing. If we get good at carbon capture (for cheap), it represents a potential pathway to getting negative CO2 emissions which would be useful if we shoot up to 2.5 or 3 C and need to quickly get back down to 1-1.5 C. Fortunately the climate responds quickly to emissions reductions.

You never really know, the Tatis Jr signing looked like a disaster for a while but is back to looking like a smart deal again. And then you have Julio Rodriguez who is clearly feeling the pressure of trying to live up to his mega-deal (but still has a 110 OPS+ despite swinging at literally everything).

Toro is versatile in that Counsell gets nervous watching him play defense at multiple positions.