This is a Keon Broxton Appreciation and Petty Fight Breakdown post
Brewers legend Keon Broxton signed a minor league deal with Minnesota, which is also dealing with a fight between Miguel Sano and a former teammate
Happy Wednesday, fellow rich people.
Transparency is very important to me both in life and in this newsletter, so I’m going to begin things with just that.
There was a moment of weakness Sunday night where I considered throwing in the towel not just on Rich People Conversations, but sports in general. ‘What’s the point?’ I thought to myself. You invest time and emotional energy—in my case, probably a bit too much in both of those categories—and spend money and, on occasion, even get your hopes up.
Yet, the end result is the same—and it always involves Tom Brady winning again.
But worry not, Jake and Tom as you read this for the first time after I publish this edition, or our loyal readers aka our moms. I woke up Monday morning and remembered one very important thing: we’re degenerates who, when we lie awake late at night, think about things like “could Keston Hiura actually play catcher?” or “I wonder what Mark Attanasio’s defensive metric of choice is” or “Hank 2 definitely died already….right?”.
I, like Domingo Santana trying to chase down a fly ball, am not going anywhere.
Let’s converse.
Goodbye, Neon Keon, friend
~Curt
It was a random game during the 2016 Brewers season—what game wasn’t that year?—but there was a moment after that I haven’t forgotten.
The Brewers, that pesky fighting cast of Kirk Nieuwenhuises and Blaine Boyers, had just won a game and I walked into the clubhouse following Craig Counsell’s postgame interview session in the media room. Standard procedure would be to slowly creep toward the locker of that day’s starting pitcher or, if he wasn’t available yet, gather in a cluster out of the players’ way. After this particular game, the latter was the case, so the handful of media remained near the clubhouse entrance as Drake’s “For Free” played over the speakers.
Keon Broxton, a few feet away, was jamming out. And I mean he was jamming out. None of his teammates were even close. The man was absolutely feeling himself, busting a move for the entirety of the song. I don’t even think Broxton started that night or made any major contributions or anything like that. He was just happy to be there, in a big league clubhouse, earning his way to playing time and celebrating a win with his teammates.
This is the image that comes to mind when I think of Broxton, who signed a minor league deal with the Twins on Monday, which keeps him in the RPC family. While a relatively insignificant transaction, it does signify that the Keon Broxton Era in Milwaukee has likely come to a close for good.
Isn’t Broxton, you may be wondering, too minor of a character in Brewers history to warrant an “end of an era” post? Especially when he was already on a minor league contract with Milwaukee for 2020 and didn’t see a lick of major league time even after Lorenzo Cain opted out? Probably. But Broxton packed about as much into a 4-WAR career with the Brewers as you can and also this is my newsletter and guess who makes the rules.
Let’s go over my five favorite Keon Broxton moments as a Brewer.
When we realized Keon Broxton might actually be good
Broxton’s Brewers career got off to, frankly, an awful start.
He made the Opening Day roster in 2016 after coming over in a trade from Pittsburgh for Jason Rogers, didn’t get a hit for two weeks, was sent down, was called up again in May and wound up with eight hits and 33 strikeouts in his first 75 plate appearances. The Brewers demoted him again.
Broxton came back up to the bigs in late July and something was noticeably different. He had his hands much lower in his batting stance, ready to load. Then he started punishing the baseball. Regularly.
Broxton batted .299/.404/.555 from over 162 plate appearances from July 28 until his season ended on September 16 when he hurt his wrist crashing into the wall at Wrigley Field which, for some reason, is allowed to have ivy and ivy only keeping fielders from running into a load of bricks.
The highlight of that stretch was a five-hit game in Arizona in which he became the sixth player in franchise history to reach base safely six times in a nine-inning game.
Add in Broxton’s excellent defense and there was legitimate optimism that he was the team’s center fielder moving forward.
Not one, not two but three
Sure, Lorenzo Cain’s Opening Day home run robbery in 2019 was cool, but come talk to me when he does that three times.
First, he took one away from Anthony Rizzo to hang onto a 2-1 lead in the ninth in 2016.
Then, in 2017, he robbed Randal Grichuk of a go-ahead homer to end the game.
Broxton still wasn’t done. He took a dinger away from Brian Dozier (sorry Twins fans) on July 4, 2018. While it was a 3-1 game at the time, the ensuing batter took Corey Knebel deep for what would have been the tying shot had Broxton not thefted.
Broxton goes to the moon
I was at a Buffalo Wild Wings in St. Cloud, Minnesota, with Jake, the two of us stopping for dinner before heading back to Willmar after covering state high school baseball, when I got the notification.
Keon Broxton homers to left-center field off Michael Wacha. Brewers tie the Cardinals, 2-2.
That description didn’t do this bomb justice. Our trusty pal Statcast measured the tank at 489 feet, the longest homer at Busch Stadium tracked by Statcast.
On the Rox
Broxton’s career postseason stats: 2 AB, 1 H, 1 HR, 1 RBI. There can’t be a whole lot of guys with a better career playoff OPS than Our King (lol, Brandon Woodruff is one).
The dinger came in the ninth inning of the clinching Game 3 in the 2018 NLDS at Colorado. Broxton put the victory on ice against Wade Davis, in whom the Brewers have an ownership stake but that’s a segment for another day.
Cut It
I obviously watched a lot of Brewers baseball while covering them in ‘16, but only I can only recall a few specific walk-up songs. Ryan Braun chose “Summer Sixteen” by Drake, which is sorta fitting considering it was, um, the summer of ‘16; Rule 5 Draft Great Colin Walsh chose “PYT” but we never really got to hear it because he couldn’t hit and never played; and Chris Carter went with Lil Wayne’s “Mr. Carter” which was p cool.
My favorite, though, was Keon Broxton who blasted “Cut It” by O.T. Genasis, a rap song about, well, cocaine. A friend from college who was working as the Brewers new media intern that summer sat near me in the press box. Any time that Keon did something good in ensuing seasons, one of us would text the other a scissors emoji and nothing else.
Keon Broxton, remembered.
The Eddie Rosario-Miguel Sano breakup, broken down
~Jake
In any sort of break up, things can get ugly. That quirky tic that you once thought cute? Actually, it’s disgusting and I wish you stopped.
It’s been less than a month since Eddie Rosario officially joined the Cleveland Baseball Team, and here comes the ugly part of the breakup.
The dismissed veteran outfielder recently pumped himself up, fairly, on the “Me Gustan Los Deportes” podcast, hosted by former big leaguers Arnold Santiago and Carlos Baerga. It started innocuously enough:
Rosie thinks his skillset is undervalued while mashing strikeout machines get all the love. It’s not a take I would have, necessarily, but I’m not the career .277 hitter who just got DFA’d.
But then, OUT OF NOWHERE, enters Miguel Sano:
Now, keep in mind, this is very important: Eddie Rosario never called out Sano for this. But Sano, owner of 131 career homers and 834 career strikeouts, thought, “Yo, this is probably about me,” and tried to bring #analytics to the conversation.
Sano says “[...]Compare my (plate appearances) with your PAs and compare my homers with yours, and then even all of my strikeouts are a small issue.” Let’s look at that.
Miggy has 131 career bombas in 2,256 career plate appearances. Compare that to Rosario, who has 119 in 2,830 plate appearances. That’s ... [dusts off calculator] ... yep, that’s a point in favor of the big guy. Sano hits a homer about every 17.2 plate appearance, compared to 23.8 for Rosie.
He also bests Rosie in career walk rate (11.7% to 4.7%), home run per fly ball rate (27.1% to 13.7%), career wRC+ (119 to 106) and average exit velocity (93 miles per hour to 87.9).
But wait, there’s more.
EDDIE BOMBA ROSARIO LITERALLY....scratch that....FIGURATIVELY SONS SANO.
Again, the math: Rosario says he weighs 185 pounds and, well, Miggy’s weight > 185 pounds.
We’re a long ways away from this, folks:
Brothers fight. It happens. But no brotherly fight has affected me this much since the great Schultz bout of 2015. Like most brotherly fights, though, this proved to be of the petty variety. It probably goes without saying that pettiness is a hallmark of this here newsletter, and nothing is pettier than doling out blame in a Very Online Fight.
As great as it is that Sano tried to bring numbers to the fight, he did so at a rough time for his game. The slugger is coming off a year in which he posted a career worst in walk rate (8.8%) and strikeout rate (43.9%). He did post a career-best 95.2 mph average exit velocity but that’s basically all that went well in 2020 for Sano. In 2020, Rosie actually hit the same number of home runs (in 26 more plate appearances) while striking out 29.2% less.
So, yeah, Miggy had a higher HR/PA rate, but that’s about it. I wouldn’t be bragging about that.
On the same hand, Rosie definitely deserves some blame for throwing his former teammate under the bus. Even if it was inadvertent, as he claimed, Sano is clearly the poster boy for masher with strikeout issues: nobody struck out in a higher percentage of his plate appearances than Sano did in 2020, and nobody hit more pitchers at least 110 miles per hour last year than the big fella, according to Baseball Savant.
Like with most petty fights, both guys calmed down and eventually apologized, at least publicly.
We learned a lot from this fight: 1. It’s not wise to put yourself in the middle of a person’s hypothetical. 2. Miguel Sano very likely has some self esteem concerns with his game. 3. I am available as a researcher for any and all big leaguers looking to start a petty fight with another player.
The Brewers and Twins have won their divisions
Look, we make the rules in this newsletter, but not when it comes to PECOTA standings, so looks like we’re just going to have to accept these projections as gospel.