squally1313

Oh so some of you nerds are waving off a 28 PA sample size but now want to point to a 1 PA sample size huh???

He’s literally never been good against lefties besides this invented 28 PA sample size. It’s not a ‘bad stretch’

Seriously how the horsefeathers do they do this

Honestly, hat tip to Busch. We probably don’t get Suzuki and Hoerner v a LHP if they weren’t clearly worried about Busch.

It feels stupid to bring up Zips on October 6th, but going into the year, with a healthy Steele, Zips had us as the 9th ranked offense and the 18th ranked pitching team (17th for SP, 21st for relievers) in baseball. There was one obvious position on the offensive side to upgrade, we made some sort of attempt to get Bregman, we didn't get him, and we did basically nothing else with the money (Flexen and Turner technically signed after Bregman, but....yeah.) The list of pitchers who signed after the Bregman deal is admittedly not impressive, basically just Quintana and Patrick Corbin, but A. it was clear we needed at the very least innings, if not talent, and B. it's Jed's job not to be left with a pile of money and a weakness he was almost certainly aware of. This is probably an unnecessary shot, but it's almost like he got high on his own supply with the (both objectively good) Swanson and Bellinger contracts, waiting out the market and getting a good player for less than he maybe would have cost otherwise. But he didn't make enough improvements in the offseason, and he certainly didn't make enough improvements at the trade deadline. (I'm also aware that if you would have asked me about this topic in July I would have said that upgrading from Colin Rea to Shane Bieber or Zac Gallen would have improved our WS odds from like 6% to 8% so who cares and I'm in about as close to meatball mode as I'm going to be. But I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.)

All fair, and really chose to respond to you specifically because I figured I’d get a fair response. My point was more that a well run organization shouldn’t A. Leave $20m-$30m on the table and pretend like it was earmarked for midseason acquisitions in an era where 20-25 teams are going to be in contention in July, and B. Not worry about an alcantara or Triantos or even a Wiggins being an overpay in a very clear playoff year where there was very obviously a weak spot. Just develop another one, or (conspiracy theory) game the system like I have the suspicion the dodgers do so that it seems like you’ve developed another one.

Yeah but I think you're being a little unfair in a couple places. One, making the comparison to Wiggins multiple times, who is ranked higher than Stephan in the highest Stephan ranking, and also looked at around here as the next Horton. And two, calling it seven starts, because he's making an EXTREMELY important 8th start in a couple days here.

I think I'm mostly just talking to myself here as a guy who has been accused of being a Jed/front office apologist. We ended the offseason with a big hypothetical pile of unspent cash and myself and others were like 'it's fine, we should be good enough to win high 80s-90 games (which at the time, seemed more than enough to carry the division)....let's keep the powder dry for the midseason acquisitions that are definitely coming'. And then July came and went and it was like 'well, that would have been stupid to make a meaningful acquisition'. And here we are, at least a starter short, probably more, with that pile of cash sitting safely in Tom's bank account.

I'm so torn on this because it feels like we're, again, letting Jed off the hook here. I know Jaxon Wiggins is the hot pitching name at a time where we are, as we are currently discussing, very short on pitching. But like...just using the FG list, which is making the price paid seem as high as possible.....would anyone be that upset right now about Alcantara (30ish slots higher) having gotten moved for Bieber? Which would be even more of an overpay. Should I be? Maybe, almost certainly on a aggregate WAR or WAR/dollar basis. But man, I have to tune in tonight and hope that they pick the right time to turn to Colin Rea before Shota gives up a dong when we are 11 wins away from a World Series. And that sucks.

He gets noticeably better results with guys on base than he does with the bases empty. If he's capable of those kind of results, why doesn't he get them when there are no guys on base?

Nice, we can use full season offensive stats again.

I would go with something like: Turner - he's not our best hitter vs LHP, but Busch is our best hitter at the moment and we should optimize how many ABs against RHPs he gets Hoerner - he's fine here against both, elite here against LHPs Tucker Suzuki Kelly/Swanson - pretty indifferent here Happ - need him here to split up the RHBs for down the stretch Kelly/Swanson PCA Castro - unlikely Ashby pitches this deep, prefer Castro over current Shaw against a RHP with extreme splits

I don't think you specifically are doing this here, but I think there's this somewhat purposeful confusion between past accomplishments and results and what we should expect going forward. It's like, the reverse of the Dansby in RISP conversations from this year. Assad has gotten the job done in the broadest, arguably most important sense, which is 'prevent runs from scoring'. In the same way that a guy who hits .440 in this 140 PAs with RISP should get extra credit in his MVP discussions, and in the same way that Dansby being terrible in those situations absolutely hurt the team. But my general baseline when looking forward is to eliminate all context outside of the pitcher trying to get the batter out, and the batter trying to not make an out. And there are statistics that have good predictive value and there are ones that don't. Which column from the below strikes you as being the most broadly different based on the different contexts, and how much weight do we want to put on that going forward? As a hint, his fly ball rate is actually highest when there are runners in scoring position.

Do you think this is an actual skill, and if so, what about it makes it unique in the fact that he can't replicate that same success in situations where there aren't guys on base?

I remember Ross and then Counsell last year getting all sorts of criticism for how they handled the bullpen and supposedly pressing the wrong buttons or whatever, and my opinion then was that they were stuck picking between a bunch of bad options and it wasn’t going to end well regardless. This is kinda where I’m at with this decision and the rotation in general. Which is a Ricketts thing, and a Jed thing. Yeah, I know, they were expensive. I…don’t really care? This needed to get figured out, we knew about it in December, we knew about it in July. And here we are, mad that we picked an exhausted above average starter over Colin horsefeathers Rea?

But that’s not the decision because you need a backup catcher regardless. He comes up to be a…platoon DH? pinch hitter? and we’re essentially punting on the chances of him ever being a serviceable major league catcher. A 135 wRC DH only guy is marginally value in like, a lesser version of Seiya Suzuki way. A 135 wRC bat who can also play a mediocre catcher is one of the most valuable players in the league.

Because he can’t catch and our DH is a better hitter.

In a perfect world we bring back the same four outfielders and Ballesteros gets 2026 to learn catcher and hit .400 in Iowa. Given the way the payroll has been trending, one of the outfielders, at least, is likely gone and Moises is the DH next year.

What happened to chourio?

I think the flexibility is nice because it lets you add a pitcher for Alcantara without worrying too much about contingency plans. Happ looked bad, but can't see them going away from him, especially when you factor in that Ian Happ against the NL Central is a borderline HOF player (if we want to stay in the neighborhood of sample sizes that probably don't matter).

Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, but I don't really see a situation where we don't want Happ/PCA/Tucker/Suzuki all in the game.

Yeah, I didn't realize Megill was back, which is unfortunate. Between those two lefties and Uribe and Megill, they basically run the same way in that they have four guys and then there's a clear decrease in quality, but I think the Brewers group is a definite step back. But....the hitting is better, their pitching is fresh, and we won't have the luxury of being at Wrigley the whole time.

Busch seems so locked in right now. Going to get another heavy dose of RHPs, as I expect every starter we see will be righty. Koenig and Ashby are good LHPs, they're a step down from Morejon but there's two of them. Need Happ to get it together and this lineup has some real length to it.