Entering the 2018-2019 offseason, there remains a contentious debate among many Brewers fans about the need for the Brewers to improve starting pitching. Who can blame these fans? They just spent three weeks watching national analysts bludgeon the Brewers roster construction, bemoaning at nearly every chance that an ace would be preferable to whatever the […]
Tag: Brent Suter
Trouble
The Brewers pitching staff is in shambles. Between role regression among key pitchers, injuries to a group of key early-season pitchers as well as crucial trade deadline acquisitions, and an essential end to the rotating “shuttle team” to Triple-A Colorado Springs, the Brewers have lost their ability to prevent runs. Based on Baseball Reference Three […]
Aces Don’t Exist: Third Time Charmers
The Brewers are gaining a reputation for becoming a bullpen squad, part of the MLB bullpen revolution, and rightfully so. Over the offseason, the Brewers lost out on all the major free agency starting pitchers, and never consummated a trade for one of the (presumably, oft-rumored) available aces, instead remaining satisfied with marginal moves involving […]
Weekend Recap: Suter and Cain
Another week, another chance to mention that the Brewers are in in first place. After starting the week by winning a home series against the Cardinals, the Brewers did suffer a setback to start their road trip. The interleague schedule granted Milwaukee three winnable games against a terrible Chicago White Sox team, and the Brewers […]
Run, Pitcher, Run: A Dave Bush Story
A baseball season is long, and weird things happen as a result of teams trying to pace themselves through 162 games. The 25-man limit forces managers to get creative, and in-game roster contortions create amusing situations where players are put in positions they are not comfortable with. Everyone has their favorite; there is an entire […]
Using Deserved Run Average
Baseball Prospectus officially released the new Deserved Run Average (DRA) this week, fresh with a new set of improvements, as always. The main site will have more information coming soon to highlight some of the specific methodological tweaks that were made for the latest DRA. In the meantime, the data are here to play with […]
How to turn one Josh Hader into two and a half Chris Sales
With Corey Knebel sidelined, many are clamoring for the excellent Josh Hader to take over the all-important “closer” role. The Brewers have mostly resisted so far, and don’t really seem interested in moving their fireman out of his current role, which is a good thing because in his current role, he’s essentially changing the way […]
Trust the Rotation
Entering 2017, the Milwaukee Brewers employed a rotational turn consisting of five righties: Junior Guerra, Zach Davies, Wily Peralta, Chase Anderson, and Jimmy Nelson. Coupled with Matt Garza on the disabled list, this major group was 20 runs below average over 845.3 innings in 2016. The sole positive producers were Guerra and Davies, the former […]
How the Brewers Beat the Cubs
For all the noise about the Cubs’ issues throughout the 2017 season, and there were real issues, the club finished with an offense approximately 73 runs better than Wrigley Field / 2017 National League. While this is quite a decline from the monstrous +103 RS the Cubs posted during their storybook 2016 campaign, there is […]
Boring Paths
The 2017-2018 offseason winter meetings begin, and the Brewers stand in a bizarre position within a league rocked by the most awaited transactions: The Marlins ownership group’s refusal to capitalize payroll indeed resulted in a bargain bottom deal for Giancarlo Stanton, who will now call the Yankees his team. The….Angels won the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes, […]