On The Burners Of Baseball's Hot Stove

The powers that be in baseball have gathered this week in Las Vegas for their winter meetings. From the majors on down through every level of the minor leagues, baseball officials are on hand. There will be some wheeling and dealing, certainly, but also a look at the state of the game.

For example, baseball is looking at eliminating defensive shifts. Yes, these have been much more pronounced in the last couple of seasons, daring left-handed hitters to bunt or punch the ball to the thirdbase side of the infield by overloading the right side. But defensive shifts have been around since the days of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams. Hard to legislate this.

The NL Central Division got a lot tougher with the St. Louis Cardinals trading for 1B Paul Goldschmidt. He's got one year left on his contract, fills a need. That makes St. Louis more dangerous

While the Cards were adding to the line, the Milwaukee Brewers were subtracting. They let 2b Jonathan Schoop walk rather than head to arbitration, where he probably would have gotten in excess of  $10M (he ended up signing with Minnesota for just over $7M). Milwaukee's decision was a good one. Schoop struggled when he came over from Baltimore, and letting him leave gives the Brewers a little more cash to either keep 3B Mike Moustakas.

The team has to figure it has the future covered at second with Keston Hiura, who had a solid season with the Carolina Mudcats (AA ball). Hiura hit .320 in 50 games with 16 doubles, three triples, seven home runs and 23 RBI. The question about him when the Brewers drafted him a couple years ago was his defense, yet he DID NOT commit an error in 2017. They could bring him up in June (thus extending the time the club has him under contract) and make do with Travis Shaw and Hernan Perez.

Of course, if Moustakas signs elsewhere, Shaw heads back to third.

Still, for the Brewers, The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades -- that song, done by Timbuk3 (the duo met while one was a student at UW-Madison) pretty much sums things up. The core of  players is solid -- players like Orlando Arcia, Lorenzo Cain, Christian Yelich, Corbin Burns, Brandon Woodruff, Josh Hader.

Yelich won the Silver Slugger and was the near unanimous NL MVP. Why does a knucklehead in Arizona pick pitcher Jacob deGrom (the Cy Young winner) as MVP? A once-every-five-days performer who helped the Mets to 77 wins is valuable? All Yelich did was grab onto Bernie Brewer down the stretch and pull him to the NL Central title with 96 wins. But I digress.

Milwaukee went 33-14 down the stretch and came withing an eyelash of reaching the World Series. For a small market club, the Brewers drew over three million fans, averaging nearly 37,000 per game (that's 85% capacity for Miller Park). And in the four playoff home games averaged 42,804 -- and Miller Park capacity 41,900!