2020-08-10: Twins (Dobnak) at Brewers (Houser) [Brewers lose, 4-2 -- Urías makes Brewers debut; Peralta excellent over 4.0 relief innings]

[folly412]

You can see the ball come out only once he makes the move to open the glove to take it out.

[MrTPlush]

Oh this umpire with his foggy glasses.......oh my. Lol

[trwi7]

You can see the ball come out only once he makes the move to open the glove to take it out.

 

It wasn't tightly in his glove. He was only opening his glove at that point to more tightly secure it in his glove.

[MrTPlush]

Welp, time for some HGTV reruns.

[BruisedCrew]

Another game to turn off early.

[markedman5]

Disaster

[adambr2]

Can we finally end the "Is Houser a starter" debate?

[PinaMadness]

Back to my Knight Rider DVD set.

[Bulldogboy]

When you play these teams that have these deep lineups it makes you real jealous. You gotta bring your bats when you are not seeing pitchers hitting. Brewers just don't seem to have enough this year.

[Eye Black]

...and Yelich pulls back ahead of Urias in the season singles race, 2-1.

[jason21nl]

That’s a big league play!

[adambr2]

I love David Stearns, but the shine on his star is dull from this offseason at the moment. His offseason acquisitions have a lot of work to do to make him look good. They've been woeful almost across the board.

 

Except Urias, of course. Through a few innings, anyway.

[Eye Black]

That’s a big league play!

Good infield defense is fun to watch. Excited for Urias’ future, a lot of his value (when at 2B) will come from his defense.

[folly412]

Awesome, a Seth McClung sighting. My day is complete!

[RollieTime]

When you play these teams that have these deep lineups it makes you real jealous. You gotta bring your bats when you are not seeing pitchers hitting. Brewers just don't seem to have enough this year.

 

When you add the $29 million between Cain to sit out and Braun not playing, plus the $8.25 million for random deferments of prior contracts, plus the $8.5 million owed to Sogard and Smoak combined, you’re looking at $45.75 million of our payroll tied up right there.

 

Not looking to start a payroll debate by any means. Just pointing out that we have a massive amount of our payroll contributing little to none for us this season. Obviously we aren’t paying Cain for this season, but you get the point. It limited our offseason moves.

[MrTPlush]

DFA him now, fire Stearns.

[jason21nl]

That’s not a big league play

[folly412]

An error?! To Appleton with you!

[Eye Black]

Urias made a nice tag on the steal attempt, if you haven’t seen this great tag he made with the Padres you should check it out.

[Eye Black]

This would be a good time to score runs.

[Patrick425]

Adrian Houser on that ball hit up the middle by Polanco:

 

[Oxy]

Arcia is the slowest SS in the league.

[adambr2]

When you play these teams that have these deep lineups it makes you real jealous. You gotta bring your bats when you are not seeing pitchers hitting. Brewers just don't seem to have enough this year.

 

When you add the $29 million between Cain to sit out and Braun not playing, plus the $8.25 million for random deferments of prior contracts, plus the $8.5 million owed to Sogard and Smoak combined, you’re looking at $45.75 million of our payroll tied up right there.

 

Not looking to start a payroll debate by any means. Just pointing out that we have a massive amount of our payroll contributing little to none for us this season. Obviously we aren’t paying Cain for this season, but you get the point. It limited our offseason moves.

 

When you look at the careers of Melvin and Stearns here, I think you'll see that their approaches have been remarkably similar. Both focused on young player development early, only to abandon the approach when the team inched closer to contention. Both did well selling, but only sold when it was clear that their team was a rudderless ship and they had no other choice, Melvin with Gomez in '15 and Stearns with Lucroy in '16.

 

Both aggressively moved to buy when the opportunity presented itself. Both built their team around one or two stars and filled in the gaps with cheap veteran stopgaps and minor trades. Neither has hesitated to gut their farm system to fill in gaps at the trade deadline.

 

They're not the same and I do think Stearns is "better" but the longer his tenure goes the more I see it running along the same axis as the Melvin model. It does make me wonder how much the Brewers GM is really running the show or at least if any Brewer GM needs to be on the same page as Mark A when it comes to organizational philosophy.

 

Obviously, there has been some degree of success here in the Mark Attanasio era, at least certainly more than his predecessors. But this approach does have its sacrifices especially when you face teams who are just loaded with young raw talent like the White Sox and realize we probably just will never be where they are in terms of young talent because that's just not our approach.

[Eye Black]

It was just a fly out to left in the scorebook, but the swings from Yelich are looking much, much better than they did a week ago.

[RollieTime]

Unpopular opinion, but I much prefer Narvaez to Grandal catching. I don’t miss watching Grandal drop strikes seemingly every game which leads to them being called balls or his frequent passed balls. Narvaez also frames pretty well from what I’ve seen. The bat hasn’t come around quite yet, but it will in time. Narvaez looks comfortable back there.

 

Edit to add that Grandal also is ranked 26th out of all active catchers with a 26% caught stealing percentage. He certainly didn’t pass the eye test and his low caught stealing percentage and being one of the leaders in passed balls in the league, it’s crazy how he somehow ranks so highly defensively.