Last game of the year - Brewers/Dodgers Game 2

Brewers scoreless through 4. 

They've scored 20 runs in the last 9 and half games. 

Why can't tonight be Friday? I like watching Woodruff deal but I gotta get up early. 

@PackerHawk posted:

Why can't tonight be Friday? I like watching Woodruff deal but I gotta get up early. 

He's been oustanding. 1 hit, 8 strikeouts and no walks through 4. 

His last 12 innings have been scoreless and he's given up 3 hits, 1 walk, and struck out 18. 

Subpar defense costs Woodruff a double play to get out of this inning. Let's see if he can overcome it. 

And the Dodgers get a leaky single up the middle for the first run (after Gyorko can't dig out a relatively easy hop for the double play)

And now he has to face Betts with 2 guys on. 

Ballgame. Bad defense will kill you almost every time. 

3-0

Yelich with another strikeout. 

Isn't that better than a ground ball out?

A new hitting coach should be on the way to Milwaukee. 

I don’t blame the hitting coach for bums like Smoak and Morrison.  I do blame him for how awful the giys with actual talent looked at the plate this year.  Hiura in particular looked very undercoached.  Yelich..., maybe getting over the knee injury changed his approach and the hitting coach never was able to right him.

Anyways, I agree with Ammo, that hitting coach really did a poor job this year, just tons of guys underachieving.

Hey, I heard the Brewers played a couple games this week? How did it go? 

Yelich is signed until 2029 for 188 million guaranteed dollars. At the time he signed that contract, I was almost giddy. To get a guy that good locked into Milwaukee for that long was a huge deal. 

But he was awful for the entire year. Yes, I know the year was screwed up, but he played 60+ games. That's not a small sample size and he looked like Eric Thames - a guy that would hit some home runs but not do anything else that well. 

In 2018 and 2019, Yelich had a .327 batting average, and averaged 40 HRs, 105 RBIs and had an OPS of about 1.050. 

To get to his average of the last two years if they had played a full season this year, Yelich would have had to have gone 133 for 331 in 100 games with 28 HRs and 85 RBIs (.402 batting average).  

If Yelich can't get back to at least 75% of what he was in 2018-19 that contract is going to be an albatross. He's still only 28, but he was really, really bad this year. He may have looked even worse than his stats. He was swinging at some pitches that would hit a foot in front of the plate. He hit 0.132 with RISP. 

@Music City posted:

Hey, I heard the Brewers played a couple games this week? How did it go? 

I know you watched or looked at the box score, but here's my account anyway.

Their second best starting pitcher of the year had a great start where he was scoreless through 4 innings and dominating and then gave up a couple of weak flares for singles. He induced a perfect double-play ball that would have got him out of the inning, but the defense botched it (both a mediocre throw and a failure of Gyorko to catch what was not a difficult one-hopper). The next guy hits a weak single up the middle and then Betts doubles. Game over. 

The bullpen was great. The offense was shut down by an all-time great, but there were shut down by some not-great pitchers all year. 

The pitching is in as good a shape as it's been in a long time with two stud starters coming back in Burnes and Woodruff. The bullpen is great. The offense needs a total revamp in addition to Yelich and Hiura returning to form. 

@Music City posted:

Hey, I heard the Brewers played a couple games this week? How did it go? 

About like the Bucks. 

But, unlike the Bucks, the Brewers result was expected. 

Well at least the Brewers won as many games in the playoffs as the Cubs.

And almost as many as the Bucks.  With a lot smaller salary $$$$ I think. 

@MichiganPacker2 posted:

Yelich is signed until 2029 for 188 million guaranteed dollars. At the time he signed that contract, I was almost giddy. To get a guy that good locked into Milwaukee for that long was a huge deal. 

But he was awful for the entire year. Yes, I know the year was screwed up, but he played 60+ games. That's not a small sample size and he looked like Eric Thames - a guy that would hit some home runs but not do anything else that well. 

In 2018 and 2019, Yelich had a .327 batting average, and averaged 40 HRs, 105 RBIs and had an OPS of about 1.050. 

To get to his average of the last two years if they had played a full season this year, Yelich would have had to have gone 133 for 331 in 100 games with 28 HRs and 85 RBIs (.402 batting average).  

 

If Yelich can't get back to at least 75% of what he was in 2018-19 that contract is going to be an albatross. He's still only 28, but he was really, really bad this year. He may have looked even worse than his stats. He was swinging at some pitches that would hit a foot in front of the plate. He hit 0.132 with RISP. 

It really was crazy how poor Yelich was.  Hiura too, leading the league in strikeouts.  I haven't checked in a week or 2, but Hiura was actually a negative WAR in terms of metrics for quite a while.  Not good for someone your organization was counting on to be a lynchpin for the future.

The underachievement of those guys just seemed to ooze to almost everyone else.  Gyorko and Arcia maybe were the only 2 guys that didn't necessarily UNDERachieve.  Vogelbach was a nice shot in the arm for a couple of weeks, but I would imagine he's not a long term solution. 

Overall.... the non-pitchers on this team were just absolutely awful this year. The pitching was pretty good, not great, but good enough that they should have had a much better record than they did.  The everyday lineup needs more new blood, and possibly some coaching changes as well to improve from the disaster they were this year.  

Maybe the scariest thing about it all is just how mediocre the farm system is.  There just aren't many top 100 type prospects in the organization right now, so there's not much in terms of trade chips, or even hope for someone to come up and have an All-Star type future.  

@Cheezers posted:

Well at least the Brewers won as many games in the playoffs as the Cubs.

And most importantly.... the Cardinals are gone too thanks to their choke job in game 2.  I dislike the Cardinals about 10x the level I dislike the Cubs.  

NL Central and AL Central teams went 0-7 in the first round.  Ouch 

Fly over country sucked.  

@fightphoe93 posted:

It really was crazy how poor Yelich was.  Hiura too, leading the league in strikeouts.  I haven't checked in a week or 2, but Hiura was actually a negative WAR in terms of metrics for quite a while.  Not good for someone your organization was counting on to be a lynchpin for the future.

 

Yelich had a WAR of 7.0 in 130 games last year and a WAR of 7.3 in 147 games the year before. That averages out to 0.05/game. He played 58 games this season, so that would have been 2.9 WAR. He ended up at 0.1. 

Hiura was 2.0 WAR in 84 games last year. He was -0.6 this year (his defense is really bad). Based on last year he would have projected out to about 1.4 WAR in 60 games. 

If just Hiura and Yelich would have played at last year's level, they have 4.3 WAR instead of -0.5. That 29-31 record becomes 34-26 and they finish with the same record as the Cubs (actually probably get in front of them because one of those extra 5 wins would have likely been against the Cubs) and they are playing home games in the wild card round. 

If Hiura and Yelich were only half as good as last year, they get another 2 or 3 wins and end up 32-28 and leapfrog the Cardinals, Reds, and Marlins and get a 5 seed. 

Overall, their positions players were a cumulative -1.6 WAR in 60 games this year. That's brutally bad. Last year over a full season, the position players were a cumulative +20.5. 

Their pitching staff had a cumulative WAR of +6.8 in 60 games (18.3 over a full season).  In 2019, the pitchers were a cumulative +12.6. 

They need 2020 pitching and 2019 offense. I'm more optimistic about the pitching than I have been in a long time. The offense needs Yelich and Hiura to be productive. Losing Cain made a big difference, but he'll be 35 next year and won't have played in a year and it's unlikely he'll look like the 2018 Cain again. 

A small cynical part of me wonders how much the performances (throughout the league) were affected by the crackdown on sign stealing.

Not that this is any consultation but Grandal and Moose didn't advance either.   You have to think with their production the Brewers would have been much better.  Maybe both wish they would have stayed. 

So someone stole the hit sign to Yelich?

Yeah, that’s exactly what I meant.

@justanotherpackerfan posted:

A small cynical part of me wonders how much the performances (throughout the league) were affected by the crackdown on sign stealing.

That occurred to me as well, but Yelich was unbelievably good both home and away in 2018 and 2019. In 2019, he was better at home, but his road OPS would still have been the best OPS in Brewer history on its own (from baseballreference.com)

I'm worried it's the a hangover from the knee (psychologically not wanting to foul a ball off inside off his leg again). 

I think professional players thrive off routine, and for Yeli coming off an injury and 2020 being 2020, I'll give him a pass.  Huira is still a pup, give him time.  

Yeli's 2020

.356/.430/.786

Some random guy's 62 game season one year

.390/.409/.799

FYI- the random guy recovered just fine

Kinda funny how the Brewer fans are all salty, talking shit about the Bucks as if that’s some sort of burn. 

Except I’m a Brewer fan, too. I simply recognize they had no earthly business playing post season baseball. The lineup sucked, they had 2 starters worth a shit and they backed into they playoffs. Then when one of those starters went down, they had no chance. 

I think there’s truth to the way the season started having a negative effect on Yelich and Hiura. Could always go either way- could start out scorching hot or stumble. The Brewers have started out slow quite a bit in recent memory- guys were still settling in after 1/3rd of the lineup was replaced. 

But in ‘21 they could have something. I think the lineup is still pretty good, but the starting pitching needs to keep the ball in the yard. Woody and Burns could be a dynamic 1-2. They need more. 

The problem with the Brewers is they are so money conscious and take so many flyers that they need most if not all of their moves and assumptions to work out to be really good.   And if most of their core players don’t perform at a high level you see what you did this year. 

Knebel didn’t recover, Houser took a step back, Hiura and Yelich were below average.  Woodruff and Burnes and Williams were very good and Hader was decent but that’s about it. 

If this is how they are going to run this team they have to deal either Hader or Yelich for more depth and more players.  You cannot continue to bank on has been or never were players to be key contributors.   

Could live with dealing Hader. Yelich is the sort of player that puts his stamp on a franchise and makes you a life long fan.

@Blair Kiel posted:

Could live with dealing Hader. Yelich is the sort of player that puts his stamp on a franchise and makes you a life long fan.

I agree on moving Hader. He’s been outstanding but his advance metrics are trending down and he’s about to become very expensive. And relievers often lose it quickly. I’d move him for a couple mid level starters and a decent position player.