Anyone else losing their patience?

[ThisIsMyCrew]

Do we have a timeline on Nelson yet? Or are we speculating for June?

[brewerfan82]

I am ready for these guys to stabilize the rotation. Tomorrow marks 1 month since the Yelich trade/Cain signing and I haven't gone a waking hour since without checking here, Twitter, MLBTR, etc., to see if the follow up rotation move has been made, lol. At first I thought a Santana trade was a for sure piece of the original series of moves, but obviously that never materialized and if they can pull off a Braun move to first, this offense has a ton of fire power.

 

With that said, the rotation is simply unacceptable. If you're not going to lead your staff into the season with a true ace or a couple number ones, you can't have the mess we have battling for the 5th spot. Get Cobb and use the beginning of the season to let Chacin and Woodruff show what they can do in the 4/5 spots until Nelson gets back. If Woodruff shows he's too good to demote, move Chacin to the pen at that point. Otherwise, send Woodruff down to the minors for more seasoning. Once the trade deadline comes around decide if it's worth exploring a trade for a TOR arm to make a real playoff push this year.

 

So please go get Cobb now. Once that's taken care of see if any other lingering free agents come at a deal too good to pass up to really solidify the roster at 2B (Walker), C (Lucroy), or the pen (Holland).

[bluescale]

It doesn't take much improvement to get in the top 5 - 6 in offense. Dodgers averaged 4.75 runs which ranked 6th in NL and Brewers averaged 4.52. So a quarter of a run per game improvement is all they need which is like 40 runs per year. I'll leave it to the stat heads to figure if Yelich and Cain alone can garner an extra 40 runs over the course of a season but I'd wager they probably could.

 

The Fangraphs projections have them scoring 4.72 runs per game. That puts them 7th in the NL behind (in order of best to worst) the Cubs, Nationals, Rockies, Dodgers, Cardinals, and Diamondbacks. If things break right for the Brewers, and wrong for one or more of the teams above them, I could see the Brewers sneak into the top 4 offenses in the NL.

 

I just don't see the problem being run scoring. They should be at least decent, and could easily be very good. Run prevention is much is a much bigger question mark. Most projection systems seem to think that the Brewers over preformed in this area last year. I guess the season will give us a better idea whether the projections, or last year's performance, are more accurate indicators of true talent.

[brewcrewdue80]

Respectfully have to disagree with you Boomer. MLB network just did there top 10 lists, granted not a perfect model. They ranked Yelich 6th and Cain 5th of ALL outfielders. How does that not improve them drastically when we trotted Keon Broxton out there for 120 games? Yelich is 26 and could be due for even greater numbers, his swing is a thing of beauty. This team should be more balanced than the homer dependent team last year.

This is what we keep coming back to. Great, the offense is better. Is it better than the top five or six teams in the league? Because the pitching isn't so if the offense isn't either then this is a marginal playoff team at best.

 

It doesn't take much improvement to get in the top 5 - 6 in offense. Dodgers averaged 4.75 runs which ranked 6th in NL and Brewers averaged 4.52. So a quarter of a run per game improvement is all they need which is like 40 runs per year. I'll leave it to the stat heads to figure if Yelich and Cain alone can garner an extra 40 runs over the course of a season but I'd wager they probably could.

 

Sure taking Villar, Sogard, Perez, and Broxton as bats- BRef run value was -32runs

Yelich and Cain came in both +16 or 32 runs. It's not quite 64 runs as the 4 Brewers had roughly 300+ more PAs and Yelich/Cain missed very little games.

 

Of course, I believe Yelich will hit at least 8 more HRs this season if not 10-12. His Launch angle is so low and suit Marlins Park so a minor adjustment to lift more he'll clear more here.

 

But the problem will be 1340 PAs between Yelich/Cain this year as last year. If we're splitting more time or one goes on the DL just once they won't reach that.

 

But yeah, this offense is a lot better with these two 1/2.