Bertz

That ballpark was tailor made for him, sending him to New York for a potential contract year was definitely doing right by him

Philly is in an interesting spot, this was sort of supposed to be their year. As the proto Preller there's no way Dombrowski folds his hands for the second offseason in a row and coming off of *that* exit.

Craig did say he's probably not going to be able to provide "bulk" again this October. So I'd assume 2 inning stints max

(I almost always do this for big games)

Contreras was so obvious and over the top I kind of think it was just headgames. Unfortunately unlike the stupid "we had Priester warming up in the bullpen" gambit I think it worked.

About a third of Peralta's starts against us are clunkers, and his last two times have been strong. So we're clearly due.

Even as this board's resident Ben Brown fanboy slash xFIP truther, I think starting him over Boyd today would be crazy. Saturday (assuming we get there) as the tip of a bullpen game spear? Hell yeah let's ride. Not over Boyd though.

His career postseason ERA is now more than two runs higher than his regular season one. Not small sample either, nearly 200 innings. Crazy.

Awesome I think too if Mathis rakes that's a great sign. When the AA/AAA guys go and crush it that's largely just meeting expectations. Mathis is far enough down the ladder it'd feel like it means a bit more.

This is interesting! Though I'll say the fact that the Marlins are the best in the league makes me a bit dubious. But I think it's notable that even if you play around with GameDay zones it stays true. This isn't just a backdoor to showing that PCA and (to a lesser extent) Swanson's helplessness against the bellybutton high fastball is dragging the team down. It also made me curious about the Iowa bats, since that's a logical place to look to improving this for next year. It looks like this year at Iowa: - Jonny Long swung and missed a little more, put the ball on the ground a lot more, but still continued to hit the hell out of the ball. Thumbs up overall - Kevin Alcantara thrived. Again a higher GB rate but whiffs came way down and hard hit rate skyrocketed. This is probably instructive. Most likely the Cubs are one or two dead red fastball hitters short of ideal, but overcommitting to fixing this issue risks giving you a Miami Marlins' lineup - Mo is weird. His hard hit and barrel numbers jumped, while his whiff rate fell, yet his xwOBA was mostly flat. I assume he's popping up or barrelling with little in between? Overall positive though - Caissie got absolutely eaten alive by velocity. Looks like it happened last year too. That's...concerning So the internal reinforcements should help here, but definitely feels like something that needs to be kept in mind when assembling the bench.

The team is losing very little to free agency outside of Tucker, basically just all the veteran short relievers (and they hold an option on Kittredge, so maybe not even him). Beyond that the roster's fairly young, so in aggregate you wouldn't expect much decline from the holdovers. So i think it's fair to expect the team to be similar quality next year as it was this year. Tucker staying or going doesn't swing the bottom line a ton IMO, it just shifts how the roster is balanced. Are they an elite position player group (3rd in MLB) and an okay pitching staff (19th) like this year? Or do they maybe end up more balanced, around 10th on both sides?

I actually don't agree with this at all. Jess Rogers is an idiot, but hes a very well connected idiot. It's pretty obvious that he's frequently hearing directly from Jed.

Oh he has my attention for sure right now. ~650 spin rate on his changeup/splitter/whatever is insane. That's damn near top of the scale in terms of killing spin https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=CH|FS|FO|SC|&hfAB=&hfGT=R|&hfPR=&hfZ=&hfStadium=&hfBBL=&hfNewZones=&hfPull=&hfC=&hfSea=2025|&hfSit=&player_type=pitcher&hfOuts=&hfOpponent=&pitcher_throws=&batter_stands=&hfSA=&game_date_gt=&game_date_lt=&hfMo=&hfTeam=&home_road=&hfRO=&position=&hfInfield=&hfOutfield=&hfInn=&hfBBT=&hfFlag=&metric_1=&group_by=name&min_pitches=0&min_results=0&min_pas=0&sort_col=pitches&player_event_sort=api_p_release_speed&sort_order=desc&chk_stats_spin_rate=on#results

I think letting Shota go would be a knee jerk emotional reaction to the past two weeks. Thankfully I think even Jed's biggest critics would agree he doesn’t do knee jerk emotional reactions. I understand if the team wants to try a gambit to not commit to 2028 this far out. That feels fair. I suspect Shota would not opt out of his deal. He'd certainly beat his 2026 salary on the open market, we saw just last year team's desperate enough to give frickin Walker Buehler 21 million, but that player option for '27 likely makes up the difference (and then some?).

Yeah i think knowing now what the sticker price was for SP IMO the answer is that Taylor Rogers should have instead been David Bednar or Griffin Jax.

Craig is doing the Busch gambit, I approve

I like Eno Sarris, but its horsefeathering asinine that this is not the default way of doing things. Like "the blue on the map is clearly land" level stupid.

This caught my eye. I was pretty positive that Priester did not have big splits. Reason being is I remember being surprised when we faced him earlier in the year by that fact, sinker/slider guys generally do. when we faced him. So I went digging: https://www.fangraphs.com/players/quinn-priester/25977/splits-tool?position=P&splitArr=5&splitArrPitch=&autoPt=false&splitTeams=false&statType=player&statgroup=2&startDate=2025-3-1&endDate=2025-11-1&players=&filter=&groupBy=month&wxTemperature=&wxPressure=&wxAirDensity=&wxElevation=&wxWindSpeed=&sort=-1%2C1 It looks like Priester just suddenly stopped being able to get lefties out starting in August? Curious what the hell happened there. But yeah I like the Turner/Busch gambit. I also agree sliding Happ down is a good idea. He's broadly a high ball hitter righty and a low ball hitter lefty, so with the Brewers going from a lefty sinkerballer to a righty I'd ideally want him to avoid Ashby and on the other hand want him to face Priester ASAP after he comes into the game.

Catching up on some Athletic articles from this weekend: - Craig obviously wouldn't say anything so definitive, but sounds like Tucker's probably not going to see the field again this season - If Horton comes back, it's going to be as a reliever - Steele is currently tracking towards Opening Day-ish next year. I would expect a couple rehab starts, both for his sake and for roster management reasons, but still I was not expecting anything before Memorial Day

I didn't expect 12 pitchers again but it makes sense with the off days