TheCrew07

Bah, he gave up a run, he stinks!

Long time readers may remember how bitter I was about that trade. Not because I thought Fryer was going to be special, but because Wright had no chance of being special. Also the trade was touted by Melvin and the organization as solidifying the starting pitcher depth, which I felt was a croc. Congrats to Eric, though I'm as suprised as anyone that he's being used again as a catcher. I quit following him after he was traded.

Maybe... then again maybe Rickie doesn't get resigned, maybe Jemile goes to KC instead of Escobar or Cain, etc... there's many different ways having another legit prospect in the system could have swung things.

After 4 injury plagued seasons, where's any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that Furcal will stay healthy enough to be a factor in the post season, and is worth any kind of long-term deal, regardless of the contract? Furcal is doing exactly what the average player does as they age, spending more and more time on the DL. Some players buck the trends in the injury nexus, most however do not, and Furcal falls solidly into the significant injury risk category. When will people around here quit suggesting long-term deals for these aging and declining players? Is it ever a good idea to have to plan to replace 20+% of the season's production with a replacement player? Especially since the system doesn't have many replacement players to offer?

Thornburg, Nelson, and Arnett... I was going to be hateful but I'll just say it's interesting that lowest draft pick of the 3 is having most success.

I haven't talked much about Brownstein since he returned from injury, but I'm still into his versatility and he's certainly a gamer. After spending the better part of 3 successful seasons in A ball, Chris Dennis is still only 22 years old. However, it's time for him to start progressing up the chain if he's any kind of legit prospect.

There are certain injuries that are basically impossible to objectively diagnose. If a player has a high pain tolerance and is a good actor, there is literally nothing the training staff can do. I do not and will not ever agree with that premise, whatever the athlete tells you should be tempered by knowledge gained through experience. This isn't amatuer training staff, these aren't kids fresh out of college working their way up, this is a professional organization. If you want to form an opinion on the treatment of the injury itself then google hip flexors and see what the recovery time is for a bad strain and reasonably work backwards from that point. We see hip flexors early every season because the kids that get them don't stretch or basically do anything all summer except play video games. A minor hip flexor injury (the overwhelming majority that we see) requires 7-10 days at minimum to be fully healed, significant injuries much longer. It's an injury that simply requires rest, ice, and stretching to overcome, but is extremely easy to re-aggravate. What's the point in 3 innings? Why not just have him focus on rehabilitation skipping 1 start and move on? Obviously if they thought he was completely healthy he wouldn't have been limited to 3 innings in the first place.

I'm ready for a Kris Davis promotion now that the first half is over.

I only got to watch the first inning of this game before the storms knocked out my dish. It sounds like Grienke pitched his best game as a Brewer and Hellickson was indeed mediocre as Stevo predicted.

Yo said he could and did pitch with an ACL injury too. Right, but that's not exactly apples to apples there. That was diagnosed on the mound, they didn't have MRIs at that point, or give him a work out. Hardly comparable. It's much easier to test for an ACL injury on the field than a hip flexor. Either way.. hip flexors usually heal pretty well in 7-10 days, I'm not sure why they'd want to turn a minor injury into an injury that could linger. And this isn't the 2nd time it happened, it's like the 20th time it's happened between all levels of the system since I've been following Brewerfan. Honestly I don't care what the player says, it's the trainer's responsibility to protect the player from himself.

Also, the problem with the spray charts from fangraphs is that they don't allow you to filter by context. Even Suppan's spray charts really didn't vary from season to season or start to start. What I would really like to see is the spray chart of balls in play by location, and by result... that's where you would find some meaning.

I've intentionally avoided rehashing 4-5 years worth of debates regarding certain metrics with the usual suspects in this thread but I do have a couple of comments. I like stuff as much as anyone, and who has better raw stuff in MLB than Edwin Jackson? The problem is he's never been able to locate consistently, there are plenty of pitchers who never reach their full potential. We have a LHP on our DL that can hit 95 MPH... you can count those guys on one hand, and he didn't have success. There's much more to baseball than pure statistical analysis. I love to talk about peripherals, in fact on the minor league forum you'll see me posting about raw stuff and peripherals all the time, but at some point the actual results have to count for something. If you look at Greinke's career as a whole, what year is the outlier? Greinke's fantastic K rate this season has relatively little to do with his FB location, he's getting those Ks off his secondary pitches. The poorly located FBs and the occasional hanging slider are the pitches that are getting rocked. You will find an occassional pitcher's pitch that is hit for a HR, or some lucky garbage like golfing one out off of one knee, but those are events that happen a couple of times a season, they are extremely rare. How many hitters do the Brewer's have that can hit a pitcher's pitch consistently? I'll submit there's 1... Braun. Morgan has slapped a couple of hit of hits on them as well, but I haven't seen enough to make a judgement about him yet. Everyone else on the team is a mistake/fastball hitter. If people refuse to believe that pitching is all about location (which includes pitch selection), then there really isn't anything to discuss ever. The game isn't played in metrics, there is no "cause" in any metric, they only measure results. In baseball the power lies with the pitchers and by extension the cause mostly rests in their ability to execute a given pitch. If less than 50% of HRs can be classified, then GB, LD, and FB% are all pretty meaningless aren't they? If we can't classify what happens on the best possible outcome for a hitter, how can we classify the rest? Wait that's right, we don't care about HRs because BABIP doesn't include them in the calculation. We've reached a stagnant place where a poster can't say a player has done X over Y number of games without the same tired stastical analysis regarding sample size, sometimes being horrible or good over a small stretch is the point of the discussion. Something causes those stretches other than luck, I'd love to see many of you coach... don't worry about it son, your BABIP is just low, you'll be fine, the hitch in your switch has nothing to do with it.

I'm a Rays and Indians fan. As my focus has changed over the years I've grown into a huge fan of how the Rays built their team. I think the way they exploited the market and innovation like James Shields' contract have gone largely unnoticed by baseball fans, they've been ahead of the curve every step of the way. I have personal connection to the Indians, they treated him very well, so I have an affinity for that organization as well.

Jungmann is just incredibly difficult to get a read on. I haven't decided if he's just extremely confident or an arrogant jerk... he's said things like he doesn't want to hit at all, wasn't thrilled to be drafted (was happy for friends and family), wouldn't even return Melvin's phone call, and his continual "we'll see". He's also been less than inspiring in the NCAA tournament which happen to be the only times I've actually had a chance to see him pitch, and the pitch I like the best he throws the least. Outside of his track record at Texas and raw ability he certainly hasn't given us much to be excited about, I actually found myself wondering on Saturday night if he'd even be willing to adjust his mechanics. He'd be much easier to root for if he seemed genuinely appreciative or excited to have been drafted by the Brewers at all.

I have a friend who read the books through the 5th? I don't want to give much away but he said later on the books get scattered and the story jumps all over the place constantly. In book 1 the Starks were the basically the central characters, I'm not sure that will continue to carry through, but I really like little Arya. She might be my favorite character. I'm not sure if I want to read the books or not. Typically I do, but in this case, I might just let the series unfold.

Not to mention 3 ROOGY types in the pen. This might be the hardest bullpen in baseball to manage. The only thing left is to call up a different LOOGY while Braddock is in the penalty box. Then we can switch pitchers every batter! Part of that problem of course is the organization and RR himself don't see it that way, but Melvin has never been able to evaluate pitching so it's not exactly a surprise.

I'm even less confident in the offense scoring off Hellickson and Price. Hellickson has been mediocre.By what measure? xFIP? K/9? K:BB? Because by any other measure he's been excellent. He's so mediocre I don't want him at all... or something. He's 24 years old, in his first full season, and once he starts striking hitters out again he'll be fantastic, which by the way is the only reason his xFIP is low right now.

Not sure why so many posters paint Bill and BA as such homers. Because they are? Bill is much worse than Brian.

I was just about to go do other things then Lucroy goes yard. Just when I think I'm out they suck me back in.

I already mentioned it twice in the MLB game thread, sorry.

At least Arnett is actually pitching well tonight, so the night hasn't been a total loss, though it is just R+ ball.

I nominate this for post of the year, it's early, but the bar is now set very high.

Well like Oxy said, he did miss by the width of the plate, it just ended up being a perfectly located pitch... then Yuni bails him out... guh.

Dang, that strike 3 to Kotsay was his best pitch of the inning.

Niemann's command has just disappeared, time to put a crooked number up.