As expected, Brewers rookie Keston Hiura has landed on the injured list with a strained left hamstring, per a team announcement. Hiura pulled up lame while running out a groundout in a costly loss to the Cubs on Friday. It is a grade 2 strain, per The Athletic’s Robert Murray, which will keep Hiura out a minimum of two weeks and certainly puts the rest of his inaugural season in jeopardy.
In corresponding roster moves, Ben Gamel and Travis Shaw are on their way back from Triple-A. Both Gamel and Shaw played major roles for the Brewers this season, though their contributions have been relatively punchless. Gamel’s been the better of the two with a .243/.330/.376 line while providing capable defense across all three outfield positions and popping a couple big home runs.
Shaw’s season has been an unmitigated disaster. He’s run out a .162/.276/.279 line across 229 plate appearances – a frankly shocking output for a career .255/.333/.475 hitter. After back-to-back big year’s for the Brewers (3.5 fWAR in 2017, 3.6 fWAR in 2018), Shaw detracted from Milwaukee’s playoff hopes with -1.0 fWAR before being supplanted in the everyday lineup by Hiura.
On the bright side, he’s gotten his game back on track in San Antonio by hitting .286/.437/.586 with 12 home runs in 42 games. The Brewers will need Shaw to bring the good vibes to Milwaukee to keep the Brew Crew’s thinning playoff hopes alive.
To make room for Shaw, right-hander Devin Williams was optioned to Triple-A San Antonio. Williams, 24, has a 4.00 ERA across a small sample 9 innings, though it’s been a bit of a breakout year for Williams in the minor leagues. Across Double-A and Triple-A, Williams pitched to a 2.21 ERA with 12.9 K/9 in 34 outings.
Brewers are done, kaput. Stearns bears great responsibility for not addressing the starting pitching last Winter. Combine that with key players that underachieved and the Brewers really regressed as a team from last year.
With Moose and Grandal likely leaving the Brewers may even be worse next year. Fans loyally supported the Brewers this year and they let them down.
Correct.
I will add that Counsell seems to plan well, but lacks in game strategy/player adjustments — reminds me of Mike McCarthy.
Would like to see Moose back if they don’t overpay.
More on Stearns — the boy wonder is losing his touch — Segura, Hanniger, Miley, Santana, even Aguilar who could have been traded offseason for SP. The late season trade of Dubon was plain stupid.
Bad year for Brewers. Put the fork in.
Totally agree. Stearns has made some very bad moves which are obscured by last year’s success.
I also would like to see Moose back but he is going to get 2-3 years at 12 million from someone. He has been a warrior and leader in Milwaukee.
Would be awfully glad if Brewers found a way to move on from Arcia. Can’t believe how much hype surrounded this guy when he came up.
One “bad” year. Compared to other NL mid to small market teams, fans need to relax as Mr. Rodgers once said.
Good to see Stearns writing in
One bad year after many — One playoff appearance in last 8 years, including 2019.
You must be a Padres fan Dewey.
Yeah but Stearns only took over in 2016. Hard to blame almost all of those missed playoff appearances on him. Peeps have such a short memory when it comes to GMs
Peeps–Really? What kind of a fan are you? Certainly not a Brewers.
Look at the Brewers playoff history, as well as their records Einstein..
It’s called lost patience..
Nope. AL. Sox fan who believes Evans, Tiant and yes Munson were screwed out of the HOF by PED use and prejudices. Many others such as Albert Belle. Anyway, I don’t follow the Brewers but given their market size, I alway thought the team since they picked up CC for a playoff push has pretty much over performed to compete with the Cubs and Cardinals.
I am not a brewers fan. I am a baseball fan who doesn’t base his opinion on who he roots for.
In a conversation seemingly about Stearns losing his touch and his failures, you brought up how the brewers missed the playoffs before his tenure. I assumed that you didn’t realize how long he had been at the helm but I guess it was just a non-sequitur.
Seems silly to me to be angry at the current GM for previous GM’s failures but everyone is entitled to their feelings.
Also: Haniger was traded by the previous administration
As a life long Brewers fan, I am well aware of their history, and will share my thoughts about them, even to people like you, who don’t have a clue.
I support your sharing of your thoughts but when you are reduced to insulting others, you may find that your opinion carries less weight. Please point out where I “don’t have a clue” and I’d be happy to discuss it
Sterns took over after the 2015 season. You can’t blame him for moves that took place before he arrived.
It was a mistake to count on 3 young pitchers joining the rotation in the same season.
The mistake he hasn’t made is signing former near-ace pitchers to long term contacts and being payroll crippled for a long time. Anyone complaining about his failure to sign so&so to a long term contact should be forced to watch some old games that Jeff Suppan or Matt Garza started..
I watched Suppan/Garza/et al, but it has been a VERY LONG TIME since the Brewers were entering a season -2019 – after missing out by one game of going to the WS.
The complaint against the boy wonder is his lack of improving the SP staff going into this year after last year, as you pointed out about the 3 young
Perhaps his worst error was not keeping Miley. The Brewers should be better this year than they are.
to add on, randy wolf and Kyle lohse. all three year deals (I think Garza was 4 now I think about it) that went horrible by the end. I dont believe he was necessarily wrong about believing in the young group. I figured two (burnes and peralta) were going to be good and woodruff wasn’t. I was pretty wrong..but anyways wade miley should have been resigned and they should have done whatever they needed to convince Derek johnson to stay. that was the real mistake. counsell cant manage to save his life either. sorry for the brick wall I’m still mourning.
Brewer fans loved the rotation prior to the year, but I was the idiot that said it was horrible. lol how things change
Brewers fans were wrong but one that’s true is you’re still an idiot and will continue to be.
Brewers fan here….hated the rotation before you ever said anything, and I still hate it. Spent tons of $ on grandal and moose and neither will be here in 2020. Should have spent that on Dallas Kuechel on a multi year deal. Team needs an ace badly and there isn’t a future one in the farm that is anywhere close.
Agree… lots of hot air trolls here today, most who don’t know squat about the Crew.
nah I dont think Dallas would be better than Grandal and moose combined. they have had good years on short term contracts. especially with how bad shaw has regressed.
Should have re-signed Scooter Gennett, he could have been the second baseman for a while. Lol
They could sign him today and have him eligible for the post season…
If you’re talking about when he went to Cincy, it was at his (Gennett) request to be released (waived, whatever). At the time Villar was thought to be the 2b of the future.
Gennett was given the chance to be a utility man, cried, essentially refused, at which point an attempt to trade him was made. Nobody wanted him.
Letting him go, at the time, wasn’t the wrong move.
Unfortunately Villar decided he didn’t like playing intelligent baseball, and every move made since to fix that..with the exception of acquiring Moose..also failed.
This is just not true.
The only thing true you said was about Villar.
Scooter spent the entire spring playing as a utility man. He was more then willing and even said so himself.
In fact when he 1st went to Cin they used him as a utility man.
Letting him go was the absolute wrong move. The fact he still had an option left made it an extraordinarily bad move.
It’s about time others have begun to criticize Stearns. He’s a disaster. Yeah he got Yellich, but this team was in position to have a 4 year run. All it needed was a starter or two last season. Instead he gets Schoop in a panic trade. It was the last trade before the deadline.
What were the results? Their entire bullpen was overworked and boy does it show with at least 5 key potential starters, setup men, or closers going down or underperforming. It doesn’t help that Counsell had guys like Hader warming up in the third inning only to come in four innings later. This was occurring with all of their bullpen and began in early September. Basically Counsell didn’t trust the starters that Stearns provided and it decimated the teams strength much like the Mets destroyed their young starters during their last World Series run.
His trades at the this years break were also terrrible and
They now need AT LEAST two starters, 2 setup men, 1 catcher, 1 3B, a 1st base upgrade, and a SS upgrade. Now, he will have about 35 to 44 million to spend, but he also has the worst farm system in baseball. Very unlikely he can replace Moustakis and Grandal and still be able to buy some pitching. Expect another rebuild soon and say bye to Yellich. What a shame!
Good stuff WEO.
To add to CC’s managing prowess, the last game of the playoffs last year vs Dodgers at Milw.,, he was completely lost..
I’m not ready to quit on sterns yet. Did he flop this year…well of course. However most of his moves have been good from my standpoint. Machado and Harper aren’t walking through that door anytime so he has to gamble on unproven or semi proven guys and hope they hit. Shaw and chacin are perfect examples of that…great 2018s and then total flops in 2019. I don’t blame him for that because NO ONE saw either of them collapsing like they did.
I’m willing to give him another offseason with money to spend and see what he does. I also wouldn’t totally hate the idea of trading yelich to get the farm restocked. (I’m talking some teams 1-5 top prospects….all of them)
As for the trades he made….pederazz is terrible. Lyles has been our ace the past month, how is that terrible? He looks like a good piece to add to the rotation with woodruff and suter….and maybe nelson.
1. Stearns has been far from a disaster. In three offseasons he rebuilt the Brewers into a team which was one game away from the WS. Did they overachieve? It appears they did andnhave come back down to earth this season.
2. As for the pitching issues this year, you can’t blame relievers struggles on being overworked the previous season. There are plenty of factors which have played into this year’s struggles. First and foremost lots of our younger pitchers benefited from not having a scouting report to work off of so big league hitters were guessing more. Now that players have seen guys like Hader, Burnes, Woodruff and Peralta they are able to make adjustments which is allowing them to have more success. Second, when the season started we had a plethora of starting pitcher options (Chacin, Anderson, Davies, Woodruff, Burnes, Peralta, Houser, Wilkerson, Brown and Nelson). Signing Keuchel would’ve been a colossal mistake since he was asking for $20MM+ and is putting up similar numbers to Davies ($2.6MM) which likely meant we wouldn’t have had the $$$ to sign Grandal who is having a stellar season. Third, the impact Derek Johnson has on our pitching staff is even more glaring now that he left for Cincy. People don’t give pitching coaches enough credit and tend to shift it good or bad to the GM. But there have been numerous articles written about how well highly he was regarded by and the culture change and confidence he instilled in our pitchers.
3. I agree we will need two starters, a catcher, third baseman and one veteran reliever but believe Thames has produced well enough to pick up his team option ($7.5MM) and Arica while lacking offensively is an elite defender who is worth keeping in the line up to offset the defensive woes of a player like Huira.
So my thought is we can resign Moose ($3yrs/$30MM), Grandal (3yrs/$45MM) which will cost $23MM combined next season. This still provides the Brewers with $21MM to spend on pitchers (Bumgarner/Keuchel/Quintana type – $15MM, older veteran like Gio Gonzalez $3MM and a reliever for $3MM). We also have an $8.5MM option on Anderson who has had a solid bounce back season which might be picked up too.
I will agree CC can struggle with in game adjustments but sometimes he makes the right move but the players fail to execute which again he takes the blame for which isn’t fair. The players love playing for him and he’s willing to step outside the box and take some risks (i.e. starting Miley and pulling him for Woodruff to start the Dodgers lineup with right handed hitters).
Finally this all or nothing, boom or bust mentality most Brewers fans have gets old and tiresome. We are in the bottom 3 in market size yet since Mark A has taking over our payroll consistently ranks in the 14-17 range. So we had a great season and just miss the playoffs the following season. So what? We still have a solid core of players who make us a very competitive team day in and day out. 3-4 moves this offseason and we can be right back there in the hunt competing with the Dodgers and their $300MM payroll.
We definitely need Stearns to work some magic this offseason to plug some glaring needs but I’m still confident he is capable of righting the ship and getting up back to the playoffs soon enough.