What We Learned: Season reviews begin to come out

Brewers News & Notes

• Adam McCalvy of Brewers.com has his review of the 2015 season up now. His season review looks at the high points and low points of the year, as well as names some of the best players for the Brewers in 2015.
• David Stearns' first day as Brewers GM was highlighted by the dismissal of five coaches, but there's still a lot more to be done this offseason. Adam McCalvy looks at what Stearns has to work with right now and what decisions he will have to make this offseason.
• Over in the FanPosts, Aaron128 looks at what players could potentially be traded at the Winter Meetings this year.
• The Brewers have previously had a top five pick 12 times in their history. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a full list of players that the Brewers have drafted in the top five.
• Nicholas Zettel of Disciples of Uecker looks at the standings for the Brewers based on runs scored and runs allowed, as well as park factors and other improvements seen in the 2015 season.
• Reviewing the Brew began grading the seasons of the 2015 Brewers, giving Francisco Rodriguez an A and Adam Lind a B.
• Ryan Braun has been named as the Brewers nominee for the 2015 Hank Aaron Award. Voting online is now open and will remain open until October 11.

Minor League Update

• Marcus Young of Miller Park Prospects has a review of the Timber Rattlers season.

Postseason Update

Today's Games

AL Wild Card Game
Astros @ Yankees - 7:00 pm
Dallas Keuchel vs. Masahiro Tanaka

Around Baseball

• The Athletics promoted GM Billy Bean to executive vice president of baseball operations and and assistant GM David Frost to the GM position.
• Astros outfielder Carlos Gomez expects to play in tonight's Wild Card game. He had missed several games with a strained intercostal muscle, including the final weekend of the regular season.
• The Nationals fired manager Matt Williams and his entire coaching staff following their failed attempt to make the playoffs. Williams had been named Manager of the Year in the 2014 season.
• Yankees starting pitcher CC Sabathia has checked himself into an alcohol rehabilitation center and will not be available for the postseason.
• The Athletics fight to move to San Jose may be over. The Supreme Court rejected the petition to hear the Athletics case against MLB for blocking a potential move to San Jose.
• The winner of jersey sales this season is Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant, who led the league in sales throughout the 2015 season. Giants teammates Madison Bumgarner and Buster Posey came in second and third.
• This year's playoff field features a mix of high-payroll teams and low-payroll teams. Chris Schubert of MLB Daily Dish notes that playoff teams this year spent an average of $1.6 million per win.
• What World Series matchup do you want to see? With the playoffs set to begin today, Mike Oz of Big League Stew ranked all 25 potential World Series matchups.
• The hiring of young managers has been on the rise in recent years, but is it a good idea to hire one without managerial experience? Mike Bates of SB Nation believes that the Matt Williams experiment in Washington is evidence of why hiring managers with no prior experience in the minors is a bad idea.
• It was only a matter of time before daily fantasy sports had a scandal come up to question the integrity of the game. Recently, a DraftKings employee won $350,000 on competitor site FanDuel, and it has raised questions about how the games are handled and what additional regulation is needed.
• MLB's efforts to drop the time of games has succeeded a little. The average time of a game fell six minutes this year to 2 hours, 56 minutes. In addition, in the minor leagues, where pitch clocks were used, the drop was even more drastic.