2018 Season Discussion

[hallzi43]

If you take Yelich's 5 for 5 game out his stats would be a little concerning

He has a hit in 4 out of 6 games. Even if you randomly took away his best game he would be batting better than half the team.

[gopackgo87]

On the bunt, with runners on first and second, he's not bunting it to first, because he's looking and going towards a potential force. WOng was going to bunt towards third. So, should have Shaw charging. As I have said this team is lucky to be 6-5. Feel pretty happy they are over .500 and haven't played well. Agree 100 percent crewfan on Arcia at the plate. Also as you said first pitch it's like he's swinging no matter what. He has swung at at least 3 pitches that almost hit him and he's backpedaled out of the box after the 1/2 protective swing.

[crewfan13]

And with a pitcher (inexperienced baserunner) running, there’s a very good chance we get the force out at third as long as the bunt isn’t perfect, which it was. Any more off the line and albers likely has a throw to third. Any shorter and pina gets there and has a throw to third or first. Sure, it’s easy to say we should have made someone else charge but a perfectly executed bunt is going to work in that situation regardless. The only other option is charging both first and third and giving up 2nd base. You’ll move the shortstop to 3rd and the 2nd baseman to first. But in that case, you are really risking a slash bunt or swinging bunt having a crapload if ground to find a home in.

[twellner9]

I don't understand the linups we throw out there sometimes. First, I don't believe the bench needs regular playing time. Perez doesn't need to be getting starts. He's a utility man that should be used off the bench late for switches or in case of injury. I largely feel the same way about Sogard, he should be used almost exclusively off the bench.

Now yesterday that lineup was full of holes. I get that Yelich and Cain were hurt, but IMO if both those guys are out of the lineup you modify your plan and start Braun. Who cares if its his scheduled off day, one extra game isn't going to kill him. I'm okay resting Braun when you have 3 healthy good outfielders and Thames/Aguilar to play first. But with all 3 of Braun/Yelich/Cain out there's just too many holes in the linup.

[hallzi43]

Can I just emphasize again that I don't ever want to see Barnes in a saving opportunity? It isn't like I just came to this opinion over the last several days. The guy is junk. I understand seeing what some of these other guys have like Hoover and Williams, but Barnes proved last season he wasn't anything good.

[hallzi43]

I don't understand the linups we throw out there sometimes. First, I don't believe the bench needs regular playing time. Perez doesn't need to be getting starts. He's a utility man that should be used off the bench late for switches or in case of injury. I largely feel the same way about Sogard, he should be used almost exclusively off the bench.

Now yesterday that lineup was full of holes. I get that Yelich and Cain were hurt, but IMO if both those guys are out of the lineup you modify your plan and start Braun. Who cares if its his scheduled off day, one extra game isn't going to kill him. I'm okay resting Braun when you have 3 healthy good outfielders and Thames/Aguilar to play first. But with all 3 of Braun/Yelich/Cain out there's just too many holes in the linup.

For an embarrassment of riches we have for batters we sure seemed to thin out pretty quickly. Looks like we are using Perez in CF today after optioning Phillips down. On the bright side we look to have brought up Guerra for some work.

[crewfan13]

Can I just emphasize again that I don't ever want to see Barnes in a saving opportunity? It isn't like I just came to this opinion over the last several days. The guy is junk. I understand seeing what some of these other guys have like Hoover and Williams, but Barnes proved last season he wasn't anything good.

Career 3.5 era with peripherals to support that. But yea, the guy is junk. Sucks that we can’t have an entire pitching staff made up of sub 3 era pitchers like everyone else.

[hallzi43]

Career 3.5 era with peripherals to support that. But yea, the guy is junk. Sucks that we can’t have an entire pitching staff made up of sub 3 era pitchers like everyone else.

Slob on his nuts all ya want. But he had 5 blown saves in 7 opportunities last season. Already off to a terrific start here.

[crewfan13]

For an embarrassment of riches we have for batters we sure seemed to thin out pretty quickly. Looks like we are using Perez in CF today after optioning Phillips down. On the bright side we look to have brought up Guerra for some work.

I mean, we lost arguably our two best hitters. No team has an embarrassment of riches to cover that. The idea is that we likely could have afforded an injury to Braun, Santana or thames (and I used Aguilar) without seeing much drop off. Unfortunately it was the Gus we were counting on who look like they’ll miss time.

And that’s a fair point all around. I agree, we are lucky to be sitting at .500 right now. But that being said, this is our 4th series and 3 of the 4 have been against teams with legit playoff aspirations. And we had 5 outside acquisitions this offseason, in chacin, yellich, Cain, albers and Logan. 3 of the 5 have missed time already. Plus we lost our all star from last year as well. And we’ve had some bad pitcher luck. We’ve played 4 against the cubs and saw their top 4 pitchers. As of this post, we’ve played the cards 5 times and caught their ace twice.

Baseball is all about weathering the storm. No team plays super well all season and no team struggles all season. Also, with off days, injuries and rainouts, no teams pitching staffs line up the same. Right now, we are hitting our luck that we seem to catch the top of everyone’s rotation. There will come a point where we end up playing an easy schedule and will start catching the bottom of teams rotations.

All in all, we’ve battled and weathered the storm. Hanging around and finding ways to win games when your luck is bad is usually the sign of a decent team. Then when our luck changes and guys get healthy, hopefully we can make hay against some inferior opponents. That’s baseball.

[crewfan13]

Slob on his nuts all ya want. But he had 5 blown saves in 7 opportunities last season. Already off to a terrific start here.

He had two this year, one that wasn’t his fault and one that was. But outside of that, blown saves for non closers is the dumbest stat to quote. You can blow a save in the 7th, but you can’t get a save in the 7th. So if you aren’t te closer, you’re going to have a ton more blown saves than saves. So you also need to factor in holds, which are non 9th inning save scenarios. In that case, he blew 5 saves in 31 chances, which is basically identical to kelvin Herrera last year. Is Herrera also garbage?

I just don’t get the expectations. Barnes is a good reliever. Should he be the closer? No, that should be knebel, but he’s hurt. Hader is better in multi innings and doesn’t have a history of working back to back days very well. Albers has like 5 career saves and blew one this year too. It’s not like we have Barnes closing over a bunch of all stars.

[hallzi43]

He had two this year, one that wasn’t his fault and one that was. But outside of that, blown saves for non closers is the dumbest stat to quote. You can blow a save in the 7th, but you can’t get a save in the 7th. So if you aren’t te closer, you’re going to have a ton more blown saves than saves. So you also need to factor in holds, which are non 9th inning save scenarios. In that case, he blew 5 saves in 31 chances, which is basically identical to kelvin Herrera last year. Is Herrera also garbage?

I just don’t get the expectations. Barnes is a good reliever. Should he be the closer? No, that should be knebel, but he’s hurt. Hader is better in multi innings and doesn’t have a history of working back to back days very well. Albers has like 5 career saves and blew one this year too. It’s not like we have Barnes closing over a bunch of all stars.

He wasnt blowing those saves in the 7th though.

[crewfan13]

Yes he was. If you come in during the 7th inning and it’s a save situation or a hold situation and you give up the lead, it usually counts as a blown save. And that’s my point. Blown saves are an awful way of judging non closers.

20 guys had 6 or more blown saves last year. Of that 20, only 7 had more than 20 saves (which I would consider a full time closer). A few had like 20 saves, so they were part time closers. But at least half we set up men. And that’s because anytime you lose the lead in a close game late, it’s a blown save. (Starters don’t get a blown save for losing the lead in like the 3rd).

I just checked his game logs. He never entered a game in the 9th inning in his blown saves. They were all as a set up man.

[twellner9]

Saves get blown all the time, especially when they're just 1 run leads. Honestly I feel like 1 run saves and 3 run saves should be entirely different categories. Almost never see 3 run blown saves.

[hallzi43]

Nice to see Guerra get a quality 6+ in today. Bullpen needed it.

[hallzi43]

Can't say I am very much a fan of this Facebook live MLB stuff. Takes the game off of local broadcast essentially leaving a **** ton of people in the dark from the game. I don't mind that they want to put a game on FB but that is a pretty ****** component to it. Also I find it funny how many people are at the game watching the game on FB. What is the point?