Non-Cub Playoff Megathread Chit-Chat

[Soul]

8 minutes ago, Tangled Up in Plaid said:

woops. He was so easy for them to replace to guess I forgot about him

Yeah they didn’t miss him that’s for sure.

[Derwood]

Brewers BABIP with RISP must be like .990 this series

[gflore34]

Brewers are very good.  Dodgers are also old and broken, this is the beginning of the end for them.

[Bertz]

I'm curious if the Dodgers retool in response to this.

The team is old and obviously getting older.  They're still good enough to win next year's World Series, but now's kind of the point to act if you want to gracefully transition to the next Dodger team instead of Dombrowski-ing it.  Especially since the new CBA will probably have some mechanism in it to make running a $400M+ payroll more painful than it is now.

[17 Seconds]

the brewers deserve to win 

[Soul]

If there’s a code the Crew cracked surely it’s to frustrate the pitcher.

[Stratos]

On 10/13/2026 at 10:47 AM, Rcal10 said:

Used to be a time I would have a huge issue with then home run trot like Contreras. I am a fan from the time guys would absolutely not do that or get the next pitch they saw thrown right at them. But I have come to accept that is what is done now. Younger fans accept that. Players today all accept it. I am no longer the target market for baseball. So I have come to accept it and have no issues with it. And, I absolutely would not be embarrassed if a Cub player did that. This is especially true in the situation Contreras hit the homer in. If it was the 3rd inning in a game in April, maybe that is another story. But again, it is what fans like, so whatever. 

I didn't see anything unusual in what Contreras did in his trot that isn't done every day in the MLB these days.  I didn't see if he even flipped his bat, so I've routinely seen far more obnoxious celebrations.  You know I'm not a big fan of it but I don't get the big deal on this one.

[Stratos]

59 minutes ago, 17 Seconds said:

the brewers deserve to win 

F*** the Brewers.

[NorthsideAvenger]

I've come to believe that the Brewers winning it all is inevitable, though I still have hope if their is one team that can out Brewer the Brewers it would be the Rays. If the Brewers do win it, hopefully they developed a complacency that begins a slow decline to mediocrity. 

[soccer10k]

Hope the Brewers close it out in 4, then get rusty sitting around for a week waiting for the AL winner.

[Geographyhater8888]

On 10/13/2026 at 10:29 AM, Bertz said:

The league is broadly optimizing towards pull in the air, and the Cubs are actually top dogs there.  The Brewers and to a lesser extent the Rays are zagging.

I suspect this is doing two things

1. To your point, the Brewers hit a lot of mediocre balls that in 2026 defenses are generally not well positioned to make a play.  Especially since the Brewers are the fastest team in the league

2. Further upstream, Brewer swings are different.  They have flatter swings and more oppo oriented attack angles.  This is likely why they seem to come through so much in the clutch.  Much in the same way that the Theo era Cubs ended up getting their legs taken out from under them by the relief pitcher meta shifting to high fastball/low curveball, I suspect the Brewers zagging is letting them feast on in vogue pitch types

The question is how much runway can they get out of this.  The A's were ahead of the curve on the flyball revolution and they got maybe 2 years before the league caught on and they started having to pay retail for talented players.

How similar are they to the 2015 Royals philosophically? That’s the only other extreme outlier I can think of that won a championship recently.

[Geographyhater8888]

7 hours ago, Tangled Up in Plaid said:

how is Bauers sitting on a fastball after 11 slow pitches?

I wonder if AI can be used to spot pitcher tells. There’s no question that they know what pitches are coming.

Edited 22 hours ago by Geographyhater8888

[mul21]

3 hours ago, Geographyhater8888 said:

I wonder if AI can be used to spot pitcher tells. There’s no question that they know what pitches are coming.

Yeah, they definitely know what's coming and it may just be that they're incredible at picking up pitchers tipping, because they didn't have a chance against Snell early and maybe they saw something in game.  

[mul21]

8 hours ago, Stratos said:

I didn't see anything unusual in what Contreras did in his trot that isn't done every day in the MLB these days.  I didn't see if he even flipped his bat, so I've routinely seen far more obnoxious celebrations.  You know I'm not a big fan of it but I don't get the big deal on this one.

He came to a full stop between 2nd and 3rd and gestured to the crowd.  I'm all for bat flips and pimping home runs, but that was bush league garbage.  Run around the horsefeathers bases you turd.

[squally1313]

1. The Brewers don't uniquely have some pitch tipping pickup ability, come on guys, players move between organizations all the time, what did they swear a blood truce or something

2. PCA runs basically the whole diamond with his chest out to the crowd and does multiple things between third and home, drawing a line in the sand on the fact that Contreras is stopping for a few seconds is pretty soft. 

I hate the Brewers and their batted ball profile is definitely making me rethink some basic underlying beliefs of how to be good at offense, but the Dodgers have also been annoying as hell for years, so...whatever. 

[cl smooth]

the contreras brothers are two players that you horsefeathers hate if they're not on your team. if william was on the cubs doing this horsefeathers, we would love him. i rather have that than some non-emotional walking booger like kyle tucker.  

[BigSlick]

I’ll say this: the Brewers current wave of domination bothers me less than the 20 years of Cardinals domination from the late 90s to the mid 2010s. I hated those guys with a deep, dark passion that the brewers can’t ever match. Also the Cardinals managed to win a World Series with one of the worst teams to win ever, which adds to the evil. 
 

[Outshined_One]

20 minutes ago, BigSlick said:

I’ll say this: the Brewers current wave of domination bothers me less than the 20 years of Cardinals domination from the late 90s to the mid 2010s. I hated those guys with a deep, dark passion that the brewers can’t ever match. Also the Cardinals managed to win a World Series with one of the worst teams to win ever, which adds to the evil. 
 

A thousand times this. Kyle Schwarber deserves sainthood for jamming a stake through their hearts in 2015.

[Jason Ross]

I'm not a wrestling fan (and no shame to those who are) but there's one thing wrestling promotions understand: you have to have a compelling bad guy. It fuels the sport. I enjoy having something to hate. Whether the Cardinals, or the Brewers. 

[Outshined_One]

Just now, Jason Ross said:

I'm not a wrestling fan (and no shame to those who are) but there's one thing wrestling promotions understand: you have to have a compelling bad guy. It fuels the sport. I enjoy having something to hate. Whether the Cardinals, or the Brewers. 

Comparing the Cardinals to the Brewers as 2000s-era WWE villains, though, you were more likely to watch when The Rock was top heel compared to when Randy Orton was top heel.

It's like, sure, Orton was and is a perfectly capable villain, but it's just not the same.

[Rcal10]

9 hours ago, Stratos said:

I didn't see anything unusual in what Contreras did in his trot that isn't done every day in the MLB these days.  I didn't see if he even flipped his bat, so I've routinely seen far more obnoxious celebrations.  You know I'm not a big fan of it but I don't get the big deal on this one.

My point wasn’t meant specifically for the Contreras home run trot. I am talking about any bat flip, slow home run trot, with flair. There was a time I hated it. But now I have come to realize many fans younger than me like it. If players accept it and fans, for the most part, like it, I couldn’t care less what they do after homering. Back when I started watching baseball and became a fan, anyone who did half the antics players do when hitting a homer would be knocked down the next time they came up. But the game is different now. 
 

[Stratos]

1 hour ago, mul21 said:

He came to a full stop between 2nd and 3rd and gestured to the crowd.  I'm all for bat flips and pimping home runs, but that was bush league garbage.  Run around the horsefeathers bases you turd.

I think he launched a bazooka, possibly towards the Brewers pen.

[Soul]

1 hour ago, mul21 said:

He came to a full stop between 2nd and 3rd and gestured to the crowd.  I'm all for bat flips and pimping home runs, but that was bush league garbage.  Run around the horsefeathers bases you turd.

That’s his “thing” and it’s over the top for sure. He did it in San Diego and needless to say they didn’t appreciate it very much. Uribe also has his way over-the-top stuff too, notably absent last night when he was a gas can. People get upset with PCA but Contreras makes him look tame.

[Soul]

40 minutes ago, Rcal10 said:

My point wasn’t meant specifically for the Contreras home run trot. I am talking about any bat flip, slow home run trot, with flair. There was a time I hated it. But now I have come to realize many fans younger than me like it. If players accept it and fans, for the most part, like it, I couldn’t care less what they do after homering. Back when I started watching baseball and became a fan, anyone who did half the antics players do when hitting a homer would be knocked down the next time they came up. But the game is different now. 
 

I get that but Contreras and Uribe direct their stuff to the other team in the dugout and the opposing fans. It’s clearly designed to be antagonistic and even Murphy has said it’s bush league (at least in Uribe’s case).

[Soul]

1 hour ago, BigSlick said:

I’ll say this: the Brewers current wave of domination bothers me less than the 20 years of Cardinals domination from the late 90s to the mid 2010s. I hated those guys with a deep, dark passion that the brewers can’t ever match. Also the Cardinals managed to win a World Series with one of the worst teams to win ever, which adds to the evil. 
 

This.

There’s also a built up history of hatred between the Cardinals and Cubs that goes back decades and decades, before the Brewers were even a team. It’s not possible for the Brewers rivalry to match that. Brewers fans can’t understand that because their team is too new. Younger Cubs fans should realize my Dad and Grandpa passed this down to me.