2008 Silver Lining Thread

[benji]

First post. We are all upset and complaining about being 11 games over .500

[thablingster]

St. Louis made no major trades to help their ballclub.

 

The Pirates and Reds have gotten weaker, and the Astros are moving laterally at best. We've still got a chance.

[rluzinski]

The Brewers have played like complete garbage for a week and are still tied for the wildcard lead. Now the race has gotten mighty crowded over that time but I'll take crowded over "season over" any day.

[twobrewers]

I think the Brewers needed this slap in the face.

 

The Cubs are better. The Brewers need to step it up to really compete with this team.

 

I feel the Brewers learned a lot about themselves in this series.

[hawing]

Among regular season months, I'd rather see the Brewers peak in September than in July.

[giffted1]

It's not like we need to search long for things to be optimistic about, we're tired for the wildcard lead.

 

And if anything, this series may have turned off some of the ever-annoying bandwagoners.

[brewjihad]

Yovani Gallardo told Jim Powell that he hopes to come back in September as a starter.

 

(I don't mean to start a whole debate about him coming back to early, but it's certainly a bright spot/silver lining).

[NievesNoNO]

New series, new outlook, new results (hopefully)!!

[Fear The Chorizo]

If the season ended today, the Brewers would be in the playoffs for the first time since I was 2...

 

The next 13 games the Brewers play are against teams with a current cumulative record of 181-253

[hawing]

I consider it a silver lining that this thread keeps getting posts.

[pitchleague]

I see, the Brewers lost this week's home games on purpose. They got into that tie for first and decided the division was going to be easy so they tanked some games to give them a challenge.

 

Well, it's GOT to be the reason, since we're battling SOOOO well tonight (6-0) lead and the Cubs did NOTHING against the lowly Pirates.

 

Right? RIGHT????

[TooLiveBrew]

It's nice to see the reactionary posts down after a 9-0 thumping. But where are the positive posts? ONE post in the Silver Lining thread? Something tells me some of the theories & proclamations that got thrown around look sorta silly when the Brewers actually win again.

 

 

Florida got beat 5-2 at home by the Rockies, the Mets lost at Houston 7-3, the Cubs lost at Pittsburgh 3-0, St. Louis won 6-3 over the Phillies.

 

The Brewers still have the fewest losses of any team chasing the WC, and are the only NL team aside from the Cubs that has yet to reach 50 losses.

 

Mike Cameron continues to show that Melvin made a smart decision in signing him.

 

Prince Fielder hit his 23rd HR... can we please finally stop hearing 'Prince needs to eat meat!'

 

Soup threw a solid 7 innings

 

The Brewers put the hurt on Chuck James, even though we 'always lose to SP like him'

 

And... yeah, 9-0! Way to go boys! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[yount19.u]

It's rare that I even look at this thread, but I actually cheered myself up after thinking about the Brewers hideous performance with RISP this year. Except for the first few weeks, they have been terrible at taking advantage with men in scoring position, and since the All Star break, they've been enimick. But, they were still able to string together 8 straight wins while getting worse at hitting with risp, and despite the drubbing the Cubs gave them, they won the series in Atlanta where they traditionally struggle. Again, all of this while pretty much conceding innings in which they have risp. So as bad as they've been, it can't get worse (literally, the statistics these past few weeks are about as close to .000 as you can get). If it does get better, which it should, they should be able to put together another string of wins together given the upcoming schedule. The Cards have yet to get cold this year so this could all bring the Crew a nice wild card lead by the start of September. I mean, my God, all they have to do is bunt every time there is a man on 2nd or 3rd and there numbers will improve.

[TooLiveBrew]

So as bad as they've been, it can't get worse (literally, the statistics these past few weeks are about as close to .000 as you can get). If it does get better, which it should, they should be able to put together another string of wins together given the upcoming schedule.

 

Yeah, this is incredibly encouraging. The Brewers have had a bunch of good fortune in winning games with a run differential not too far from 0. I feel there's been quite a bit of bad fortune (for the team in general) in seeing Weeks's prolonged poor start to the season, Hart's long slump, Braun still not showing much discipline, etc. So hopefully the individual performances can rise up a bit more & help the run-scoring.

[razzzorsharp]

Another solid road trip. Hooray.

[TooLiveBrew]

I guess these Brewers can win after all. Hooray v2.0!

 

Nice to see Rickie drop in a monster game... I still believe in him big-time.

[fondybrewfan]

Now that the Favre fiaso is over we can get on with our lives and pay more attention to the fact that as of this day we would be in the playoffs for the first time in a bazillion years. The Brewers last made the playoffs before I was born and the only Packer QB I ever remember was Favre, so if I am going to see a new Packer QB I might as well see some Brewer playoffs as well

[tigerbrew]

Our backup catcher Mike Rivera is pretty good, hope he plays more so that Kendall is not overworked.

[jjfanec]

Even though they did not cash them well in the Brewers walked 13 times. For this team that is a positive sign. Also the pitchers struck out 15 batters while walking just one. Outside of one Gagne inning the pitching has been lights out this series. Now I know the Nationals are bad offensively but that is still encouraging.

[jhart05]

Our backup catcher Mike Rivera is pretty good, hope he plays more so that Kendall is not overworked.

 

 

I'll give you that he's been a good offensive player. I doubt he could keep up this type of production if he had to start for a long period of time.

 

I hope they bring up a catcher or two in September so they can PH him a few times.

[2008 world champs]

It only can get better for Gagne....right?

[tigerbrew]

Yeah, Rivera is good offensively. But he also did a good job working with the pitchers, calling the game and framing the pitches, don't you think?

[crewcrazy]

Gagne looked solid until Zimmerman's marathon AB that sucked the life out of him. I thought Kearns' HR was a pop-up off the bat, judging by the weird camera angle, but maybe it looked like a bigger bomb in person.

 

Even though they failed to cash in so many times in extra innings, it was good to see that they never really gave up -- every inning they managed to put together some solid ABs and get guys on. Kapler's HR was definitely unexpected, but if you're going to put together a great season, you're going to need guys like him to come through when you're least expecting it...looks like someone told him it was April again. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif

 

The Brewers now lead the Cards by 3 games and the Mets by 4.5 games in the wildcard...it's definitely nice to build up some cushion there.

 

As far as Rivera goes, it seems like Manny is extremely comfortable with him on the mound, which makes sense considering he was the guy who caught his perfect game and they spent a lot of time working together in Nashville. I wouldn't mind seeing Rivera kind of become Manny's "personal" catcher -- it'd keep Kendall fresh by giving him an off day every 5th day, and Mike could get more ABs without becoming too exposed.

[PrestigeWorldwide]

After 118 games, the Brewers and the defending World Series champs have identical records.

[lcbj68c]

I can no longer complain about our bullpen. Boston blows a 10-run lead tonight.