Bertz

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

It's mostly BABIP, they have a .319 against lefties which at the team level is preposterous. And it's not earned through batted ball quality, their hard hit rate is simply fine and their barrel rate sucks. Like they're not a disaster against lefties, but I'd say they're noticeably worse. xwOBA is .313 against lefties and .325 against righties. And for whatever issues you can take with xwOBA hard to quibble comparing the same team against itself.

All else being equal you want to throw LHP at the Brewers. If you think Boyd threw so little on Tuesday that this short rest won't hurt him, he's the clear top option. I'd have done a Rea/Bullpen game, but I get it.

How in the world does a splitter have negative vertical break? I thought only fastballs could do that?? This has got to be the most unicorn pitch in the system right? It makes Neely's slider sound boring.

I believe it's simple record, no H2H or anything. So we'd have it against the M's or Tigers but not against the Jays or Yankees.

I think Amaya is healthy he just ran out of time to get ready. Like he started a few games for Iowa, so I think if there was an injury he'd be added immediately. I doubt he gets added otherwise though. Kelly can play every day from here on because of the off days. And McGuire provides better defense than Amaya in a situation where e.g. you pinch hit Mo for Kelly. And I agree I'd guess Alcantara is the guy who loses his spot too. Maybe he comes back if we face the Phillies next round? But otherwise Castro can cover.

Alcantara 44, Rojas 55, Wiggins 66 No Caissie or Mo still, but maybe in his fuller offseason update they make their way back on.

Jordan Wicks ate 3 innings Sunday allowing the bullpen to come into the WC completely rested. Pretty valuable in a series where we were side-eying every member of the rotation coming in. I'd also guess that a minimum 15 day stay is a pipe dream regardless, but we'll see.

I believe Woodruff is out but Quintana is probably back. I'd assume Peralta Priester Patrick Quintana Peralta Though with the off days it's actually doable to go to Peralta and Priester 2x each if you are comfortable with 4 days rest. Might be a case where Quintana goes game 4 if they're up Peralta goes if they're down.

There's a similar one from Fangraphs a few weeks ago https://blogs.fangraphs.com/what-will-the-brewers-do-if-theres-no-meatwaste/ Basically the Brewers are patient without falling into the trap of being passive, but realistically there's a definite talent deficit there.