September can be a gloomy month. For most, it’s the signal that summer is coming to an end, school is about to start, and winter looms just around the corner. Not to count that it’s the final month of the regular season, and most baseball teams are already out of the playoff hunt. But, for some baseball players, the month of September can prove to shine a bright light.

The Milwaukee Brewers have had a dismal season. They have the second-worst record in the NL Central, and they’ve already reached 90 losses. But, perhaps worst of all, they were never in the playoff race to begin with. They got off to a bad start and were never able to recover. That being said, stories like the one of Nevin Ashley can bring a warm feeling to any Brewers fans heart. It represents the culmination of a lifetime of hard work and dedication to the game of baseball, which has finally paid off, as Ashley has finally gotten his shot in the big leagues.

Tons of players get drafted to the big leagues every year, but very few of them ever make it to the majors. For hopefuls, though, like Ashley, the month of September is a good one as it’s the month that has the highest amount of big-league debuts.

(All data was gathered from ESPN‘s MLB debut database).

Not only that, but there also seems to be a trend in the big leagues that more September call-ups are making their debut.

September though isn’t just a bright light on players like Ashley, but also for younger players who are desperately trying to show what they’ve got.

This month, the Brewers, have also called up players who could behaved long-term worth to their big league roster, such as Yhonathan Barrios and Zach Davies. Both players were acquired earlier this season. Barrios was acquired from the Pirates in exchange for Aramis Ramirez, while Davies was acquired this trade deadline for Gerardo Parra.

Zach Davies, at this point, has gotten a longer look even though he has struggled thus far. In 27 innings pitched he’s amassed a 4.67 ERA. Davis was in Triple-A and if he’s able to turn things around, he could become a good long-term contributor to the Brewers, whether that’s in the bullpen or as a back-end starter.

Barrios, on the other hand, has only pitched 2.2 innings, and he’s given up no runs. September, will prove to be a good chance for Barrios, a young flamethrower, to really get his feet wet in the big leagues and gain some valuable experience.

As I’ve mentioned before, the September call-ups are not just a good opportunity for veterans like Ashley to finally get a shot, but also for young players to come up and prove their worth. In fact, the average age of players called up to the majors in September is 24.

(I didn’t include the month of March due to sample size issues).

As you can see, the age is pretty much consistent throughout each month. Therefore, it doesn’t mean that veteran players are more likely to get a shot in the bigs in September, which makes Ashley’s accomplishment even more impressive.

The trend also shows that these age marks are very consistent. There’s almost no fluctuation from year-to-year.

Spending 10 years in the minors can be tough, especially as one gets older, and that dream falls farther and farther away. The great part here is, even if this is Ashley’s only shot in the bigs, he can say that he made it. He made it to the big leagues and no one can take that away from him. He realized his dream, even if it didn’t last long.

Every year thousands of kids play baseball. They play on fields, in their back yards, at school, and at home, dreaming that maybe someday they’ll make it to the big leagues. Some day, they’ll get that one at bat that will be more rewarding than any other they’ve ever had. They dream that some day, they can udder the words; I played in the big leagues. But, for most kids that dream remains a dream, and it dies with their infancy.

Nevin Ashley, on the other hand, realized that childhood dream. On September 9, 2015, he found himself at the plate against the Miami Marlins, got a four-seam fastball middle up, and drove it for an RBI double. It was his big-league moment, the moment that so many aspire to have but never get to, and whatever happens from here on out Ashley will have that moment for the rest of his life, and no one can take it away from him.

FanGraphs || Likely Scenarios for Current Front-Office Vacancies (Sept. 4, 2015)

Kiley McDaniel examines the possibilities for team’s that are either currently without a general manager or who soon might be, with an emphasis on Milwaukee and Seattle, both of whom had already announced plans to seek a replacement at the head of their front office at the time of his writing (McDaniel mentions Philadelphia, who announced that they’d be parting ways with GM Ruben Amaro this week, as a team that might soon have a vacancy). McDaniel points to the Brewers’ sharply improved farm system, small-market status and commitment to a short rebuilding phase as reasons that the Brewers’ GM job might be an attractive one, an issue J.P Breen touched on yesterday for us.

Reviewing the Brew || Milwaukee Brewers’ Florida State League Standouts (Sept. 9, 2015)

We’ve heard all about the star-studded Double-A Biloxi team, who won took a 1-0 lead in their best-of-five series with Pensacola on Thursday night as they chase a Southern League championship behind another stellar start from Jorge Lopez: 6.2 IP, 2 H, 1 R (unearned), 7 K. Michael Trzinski digs a little deeper to note some of the quality performances this season from the Brewers’ High-A affiliate, Brevard County. The top prospect still remaining with the Manatees is probably Clint Coulter, but the outstanding performance at the plate this season came from first baseman Garrett Cooper, who has put up video-game numbers since being called up to Biloxi on August 28: a .550/.639/.690 slash line in 29 at bats. The top pitching performances came from Jorge Ortega and Wei-Chung Wang, both of whom received late call-ups to Triple-A Colorado Springs and impressed over a small sample size there.

Brew Crew Ball ||Taylor Jungmann probably has no chance of winning NL Rookie of the Year (Sept. 9, 2015)

I mean, sure, obviously, but just in case you had any crazy notions, I guess this article exists. Jungmann has had a very nice rookie season for Milwaukee, posting a 2.87 ERA over 17 starts in what is certainly one of the best debuts from a Brewer since Ryan Braun took home Rookie of the Year hardware in 2007. There’s just far too much competition for the award this season in a year where pre-season hype met expectations for super-prospect Kris Bryant. Despite the loud protestations from the Best Fans in Baseball, Bryant has been far and away the best rookie in the National League this year, throwing up a slash line of .267/.365/.482 and mashing 23 home runs despite striking out a league-high 168 times.

For those interested in making the argument for Randall Grichuck, I present the following:

Player A: .281 BA, .330 OBP, .563 SLG

Player B: .300 BA, .323 OPB, .367 SLG

Player A is Grickuck. Player B is Jungmann.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel || Brewers surprise Nevin Ashley with his first taste of the majors (Sept. 8, 2015)

Here at Rolling Out the Barrel, we try to bring you high-quality writing from around the internet every week, and after two months we’ve also never featured anything from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, so make of those two facts what you will. But I really love the Nevin Ashley story and Haudricourt is the only guy who wrote anything meaningful about it, so this is on all of you, really.

After 10 seasons, 870 games, and 3373 minor league at-bats, Ashley finally received the call up to the bigs, a well-deserved reward after the catcher slashed .306/.374/.442 at Triple-A Colorado Springs this season. If you caught the piece about the Shuckers’ road trip we featured in this space last month, you know just how special the call-up can be to even a young player who still fully expects to make it to the show at some point. For the 31-year-old Ashley, though he may not have consciously admitted it, he’d almost certainly already begun to consider the fact that he might never find his way to a big-league roster. It’s a riskless move for the Brewers that gives a consummate professional the taste of the big leagues he’s very much earned.

Grantland || The September Singularity: Longing for Baseball’s 2011 Stretch-Run Drama (Sept. 10, 2015)

In this very short piece, Michael Baumann waxes poetic about the 2011 season, notable for Brewers fans as the year Milwaukee won the NL Central. I think most hardcore baseball fans can remember where they were for game 162 that season, when the Braves and Red Sox completed matching horrifying collapses while the Rays pulled off perhaps the most dramatic comeback in the history of modern team sports when they rallied from seven runs behind in the 8th inning to win the game and sent Tampa Bay to the playoffs – I was at TGI Friday’s in left field at Miller Park.

The Brewers offense was stymied once again, this time by Tom Koehler. The Marlins’ righty tossed eight innings of four-hit ball and struck out a career-high 10 Brewers en route to his ninth win of the year, lowering his ERA back under four in the process. For the Brewers, Ariel Pena made the first start of his major-league career in his second appearance since being called up last Friday. Pena was fine in five innings of two-run ball, which is about as good a start as the Brewers had a right to expect from the 26-year-old.

Speaking of major-league debuts, we’ll tab catcher Nevin Ashley as the Brewers’ MVP in a rough night at the plate for the hometown sqaud. Ashley was making his debut in relief of Jonathan Lucroy, who was held out for concussion-like symptoms and is likely to miss a few games. Ashley doubled to center in his first at-bat in the second inning, plating Khris Davis to give Milwaukee a 2-0 lead. It was a really nice moment for the 31-year-old journeyman, who has spent ten seasons with 11 minor league teams before finally getting the call up to The Show. Though he’s certainly not a part of Milwaukee’s plans long-term, or even next season, he’ll get a long-awaited taste of the big leagues over the next month.

KEY MOMENT

With the game tied at two, a runner on second, two outs, and a pair of lefties due up, Brewers manager Craig Counsell tabbed southpaw Will Smith to get the final out and keep the game level. Unfortunately (for those of us still pulling for the local nine to win their baseball games, anyway), the inexplicable trend of left-handed batters crushing Smith in 2015 continued. Dee Gordon walked on four pitches and Christian Yelich ripped a double to center that cleared the bases to give the Marlins a 4-2 advantage. Martin Prado would follow with a double of his own to score Yelich and give us our final.

Smith’s numbers this year are mind boggling. Here are his splits for 2013-14 (I’ve excluded 2012, when he was deployed as a starter and was mostly terrible against everyone):

In a moderately sized sample, Smith has dominated lefties relative to his work against right handers. The latter are hitting him at a rather healthy clip, but every lefty he’s faced has basically been Logan Schafer. Now, here’s what’s going on in 2015:

If you’re looking at this and you haven’t been following the Brewers this season, you’re going to go ahead and assume I accidentally switched those rows, because his splits this season are almost a perfect mirror of his numbers previous to 2015. This was an oddity in May, a curiosity in July, but now it’s September, and though there doesn’t seem to be any logical explanation for Smith’s struggles against lefties this season, it’s starting to look like something more than a statistical blip.

TWO THINGS TO WATCH

• The Brewers head to Pittsburgh on Thursday to wrap up their season series with the Pirates. They’ll look to continue to play spoiler against the Bucs, who despite a stark reversal of fortunes for both clubs continue to be haunted by Milwaukee, especially at Miller Park. The Brewers have taken eight of the last nine meetings between the two clubs, including a pair of sweeps in Milwaukee. The Pirates are sending A.J. Burnett to the mound tonight; he’ll be making his first start since July 30 as he spent August recovering from a flexor sprain in his right elbow. The Brewers are sending the youth squad to the mound these days, as all five starters in the rotation are now 26 years old or younger.
• The prospect-packed Biloxi Shuckers open the Southern League playoffs tonight against the Pensacola Blue Wahoos. The Brewer’s Double-A affiliate will send Jorge Lopez to the mound in game one, who was edged out for the Southern League ERA title by Tyler Wagner, who will start for the Shuckers on Saturday. Adrian Houser, a part of the trade with the Astros, will start Friday, and both of the first two games in the series will be available on MiLB.tv. The Blue Wahoos surged in the second half after finishing at the bottom of the division in the first half, edging Mobile and Mississippi by a game to secure a spot in the playoffs — Pensacola actually finished seven and seven and a half games behind each respectively in the overall standings. The winner of the best-of-five series will meet the winner between Montgomery and Chattanooga in the Southern League championship series.

Taylor Jungmann has been a revelation with the Brewers this year. All through the minors, despite some encouraging results, he has struggled with his command — forcing scouts and talent evaluators limit their projections for him. However, through 16 starts before tonight in 96.2 innings, Jungmann tallied a 13.2 K%-BB%, the second best mark of his professional career. He walked 8.2 percent of batters faced which is slightly above league-average (7.5 percent) but also his second-best mark. This seemingly new-found command has allowed him to accrue a 2.42 ERA, 3.04 FIP, and 2.94 DRA.

Unfortunately, Jungmann’s command issues reemerged for this start. In the first inning he fell behind in many counts even walking a batter and allowing a couple of hits to surrender the first run of the game. He seemed to overcompensate a bit in the second inning with too many pitches finding too much of the plate. The result was a solo home run off the bat of J.T. Realmuto. Realmuto would later hit an inside the park home run making this the first multi-home run game of Jungmann’s career.

He would exit after only 3.2 innings, having allowed five runs to that point. He was responsible for one more base runner that did eventually cross home plate, bringing the total runs allowed to six. He threw a total of 80 pitches. Fifty were strikes and thirty were balls which is a rather poor ratio.

The important thing at this point in Taylor Jungmann’s career isn’t avoiding bad starts altogether, it’s learning from them when they happen. Prior to this start he’s had maybe two or three poor outings and each time he’s rebounded nicely. It’s never a failure if you learn something from it, and so far it appears that’s what Jungmann is doing.

This was a weird game for the Brewers offense. They were able to muster four runs but nothing more. They had their fair share of base runners, though. Domingo Santana hit a two-run home run. Both Ryan Braun and Jean Segura had three-hit nights. Jason Rogers had a pair of hits. In addition to the four that crossed home plate, the Brewers were able to put 14 other men on base. They just couldn’t seem to manage more than just the one hit with runners in scoring position.

Some people put a lot of stock in the “Left On Base” (LOB) statistic, but they really shouldn’t. It’s really just an unfortunate happenstance. The Brewers batters were still able to reach base 17 times including 13 hits. More often than not that’s going to result in more runs.

KEY MOMENT

In the fifth inning the Brewers worked the bases loaded with just one out. Adam Lind popped up and Elian Herrera grounded out to strand those runners. Two innings later, Herrera would step to the plate with a chance for redemption. The Brewers trailed by three runs at this point and there were already two outs. Jason Rogers had driven in a run that inning and was standing at second base after Luis Sardinas drew a walk in a pinch hit opportunity.

Herrera was able to work a favorable 2-0 count before falling back to an even count. The next pitch was a mistake heater down the heart of the strike zone. Herrera didn’t miss it and ripped a line drive up the middle to bring in a run.

Now, down by two with runners at the corners, Martin Maldonado stood in for the pitcher. It had originally been Scooter Gennett, but the Marlins made a pitching change forcing the Brewers to pull him back. Maldonado was able to work the count full making for an exciting and tense moment in this game. Unfortunately, the inning would end with Maldonado watching a called strike. This would be the best and last chance the Brewers had to tie the game or go ahead.

TWO THINGS TO WATCH

After hitting one in yesterday’s game recent Brewers acquisition Domingo Santana hit another opposite-field home run today. That’s not small feat to achieve in the pitching-friendly confines of Marlins Park. He also drew two walks and singled in this game. He’s been getting the majority of his playing time in center field but is more suited to the corners. However, today on Twitter, Brewers beat reporters Tom Haudricourt and Adam McCalvy reported that Assistant General Manager Gord Ash is at least considering the possibility of keeping Santana at the position to start next season:

“It has to be in the back of your mind,” Ash said. “You’re not going to go out and get a CF just to get one.” https://t.co/c0N0iTvsU6

— Adam McCalvy (@AdamMcCalvy) September 8, 2015

I still think it’s a long shot the Brewers do this. It’s more likely Khris Davis is traded in the offseason, making room at one of the corners. If that doesn’t happen, Santana has been decent enough in the field that it wouldn’t be shocking if indeed that’s where he plays in the very short term. It’s something a rebuilding team can afford to do and the offensive potential that outfield offers is intriguing. And as long as Domingo Santana keeps hitting, the Brewers are going to do whatever they need to get him more playing time.

Domingo Santana isn’t the only player the Brewers will be taking a good long look at this September. They called up Zach Davies previously and today activated catcher Nevin Ashley and shortstop Luis Sardinas. Ashley reminds me a lot of Matt Pagnozzi last year. He was just called up to provide insurance in case Ron Roenicke need to use one of his other catchers as a pinch hitter. He was then let go after the season ended.

Luis Sardinas has a chance to play a larger role with the team. Jean Segura’s name was all over mid-season trade rumors and will likely surface again in the offseason. With that in mind, it’s possible the Brewers want to give more playing time to Sardinas to further assess his abilities.

It remains to be seen if any other minor league players will join the Brewers this month. I wouldn’t be surprised to see one or two Biloxi Shuckers eventually join the big-league club once their playoff run is finished (September 21 at the lastest). The Brewers will have to place a number of them on the 40-man roster to protect them from the Rule 5 draft and giving them a week of major-league service time won’t meaningfully affect the way they need to be handled next year.

Two players come foremost to my mind: Ty Wagner and Jorge Lopez. Wagner is already on the 40-man roster and even has a major-league start under his belt. He also won the Southern League ERA title this year with a 2.25 ERA which is quite impressive. Equally impressive is the fact that his teammate Jorge Lopez finished with an ERA just 0.01 points higher.

I wouldn’t expect either to be able to win a rotation spot going into next season. But they’re firmly on the radar for perhaps a mid-season promotion or injury replacement. And the Brewers have said in the past they like to reward players with September call-ups to show them what they’ve been fighting for.