7/29-7/31 Red Sox vs. Brewers Series Thread

It's not as bad as the trade where the Sox sent a young Cecil Cooper to the Brewers to bring back both George Scott (who gave them one good year before becoming very washed up) and Bernie Carbo (who the Brewers insisted that the Sox take back, which they did until they stupidly released him in June 1978). Cooper would blossom into a really good player, even hit above .350 in 1980 (the year George Brett was hitting .400 in September before winding up at .390) and he would absolutely kill the Red Sox every time they faced him. I swear he hit .800 against them. He and Carlton Fisk would absolutely destroy Red Sox pitching.

The Sox got a measure of revenge poaching Troy O'Leary from the Brewers (I don't think it was a trade), one of Duquette's astute 1995 bargain basement pickups.

Something tells me that this deal won't amount to much either way. I do think Renfroe will help the Brewers will another division title and then he'll price himself out of Milwaukee. We got to confirm that JBJ is washed up with the bat and it looks like neither prospect is going to amount to much. Binelas has power and takes walks, but strikes out a ton and can't hit and has defensive questions. He's going to be one of those players who has nice numbers in Worcester but struggles in the majors, or at least that's what I think he'll be. Hamilton has great speed but is unable to steal 1b as he can't hit either.

I remember Fisk hitting a HR off the LF foul pole (now the Fisk Pole) against the Red Sox. Somehow it just didn't have the same impact that his 1975 WS Game 6 shot did. lol.

I do remember Opening Day 1981, the first Opening Day I ever watched, where the Red Sox were playing the White Sox and Fisk hit the go-ahead HR in the 8th inning off Bob Stanley to beat the Red Sox (I think it was a 3-run HR that turned a 3-2 deficit into a 5-3 victory for the White Sox).

I remember how awestruck I was by the 1982 Brewers. I remember the Red Sox having a 5 game lead at some point during the season (June?) as I had never seen the Red Sox in first place at that point in my life. The Orioles got off to their usual bad start. The Yankees truly sucked which was nice.

And I remember Yaz getting off to one helluva start. He had like 8 homers by early May or something like that. He tailed off in August when they put him in CF for a few games.

I remember Carney Lansford getting into a collision with Lance Parrish at home plate and losing that battle. The injury prompted the Sox to call up some 3b I had never heard of before, some career minor league guy, who in his first two games, which happened to be against the Brewers, he muffed groundballs at 3b and cemented his reputation for the next several years as a bad defensive 3b although he turned out to be pretty good at the hot corner, but man, that Wade Boggs dude could hit. He was around .350 all year and finished at .349. They moved him to 1b when Lansford came back. He probably would have won the batting title but he didn't have ABs.

But I remember how that Brewers lineup beat up the Red Sox. That was the toughest lineup I had ever seen up to that point. I think they got off to a slow start, fired their manager Buck Rodgers, and hired Harvey Kuenn, and from then on Harvey's Wallbangers were awesome.

I remember that lineup. Molitor (3b), Yount (SS), Cooper (1b), Simmons (c), Thomas (CF), Oglivie (LF, another guy the Sox let slip away), Money/Howell platoon at DH, Moore (RF), Gantner (2b). And I remember they had Pete Vuckovich, Mike Caldwell, Bob McClure, and eventually Don Sutton in the rotation with a pen headed by Rollie Fingers who got hurt and was then headed by Pete Ladd (a former Sox farmhand they dealt away in the Bob Watson deal in 1979 - at least Watson raked for half a season before leaving for NY).

The Brewers had a 3 game lead over the surging Earl Weaver Orioles (his teams were scary great in September) and the Orioles defeated the Brewers in those first 3 games to tie them going into the last game of the season, but then Yount, the MVP, socked 2 homers and behind Don Sutton, they crushed Jim Palmer and the Orioles to take their only AL East division title. Meanwhile, the Sox settled for 3rd place with 89 wins, just six games out. Not really in it, but sort of on the periphery.

And Cooper had a key hit in the deciding 5th game of the ALCS after the Brewers had been down 0-2. That was a big choke by the Angels that got dwarfed 4 years later against the Red Sox. Unfortunately for the Brewers they had the Cards down 3-2 in the World Series but couldn't win either of those last two games to claim the World Series title, and they still haven't gotten that close.

Seeing the Brewers makes me think of that fun 1982 season.

Might mean that Bello's innings are going to be limited going forward.  He's at 99 right now

In the micro, I’m glad to watch Bello throw tonight and I’m hoping for five good innings. In the macro, it’s unsettling that the Sox have to start Bello, Pivetta and Winckowski in a three game series.

Vazquez's -8 runs on the basepaths is already the worst single season since 2017. He's on pace to hit -13, which nobody has done this century.

Billy Butler is all over this leaderboard. I haven't heard his name in a long time.

We are all human. I think any player who was traded from a team is especially lock-in when he plays that team.

Kikè is a very good outfielder...and that’s where most of his value comes from. Renfroe was much more more productive with the bat, however. and that was more what I was referring to.

He was 4% better offensively than Kiké. If you're talking about offense as far as actual results, i.e; WPA, he was much better than Kiké, but much worse than Verdugo. He's also been significantly worse by WPA than Verdugo this year. 

Renfroe has had negative clutch every year of his career. I generally think clutch as a metric isn't super predictive, but his pattern is so consistent that it suggests something real is there to me. He has 600 PA with men in scoring position and a wRC+ of 83 in those PAs. I wonder if this is another reason they didn't keep him, if there is something real here it suggests he'd be even less useful than expected in the playoffs. 

Remember the playoffs? Kiké was babe Ruth. Renfroe was franchy Cordero.
Also very interesting to see big Fudge starting. I like it. Gooo Ssooxxx

Bello is not starting. Instead, they are using an opener, Austin Davis.