TooLiveBrew

I'm not exactly sure what you are looking at man....She is stunning! Her hair the past few broadcasts has looked straight out of the low-flow showerhead Seinfeld episode, and her wardrobe choices have unfortunately meshed well with that. Not sure how there was any confusion as to what I meant. Her job is appearing on TV, stuff like hair & wardrobe are a big part of that (& no, not just because she's a woman).

Same here. Made the games completely un-listen-able.

Wow, does Sophia Minnaert need some wardrobe & hair help.

The most I'd throw K-Rod's way would be a 1 yr./$1M offer. I wouldn't want to spend any more on him, and I question whether $1M would even be a good idea.

Just like they did last season in picking Braun over Kemp

Thanks markedman5 -- don't know why I didn't remember that

I also wanted to specifically add that I thought it was cool of you to make this follow-up post. It was fairly easy to tell that you got caught up in the emotions today after the excruciating loss, and perhaps I shouldn't have responded at all given that context. I totally get why you were so frustrated.

While I agree with you that he should not be dumped I feel like he no longer has any business closing games. Axford is basically a two pitch pitcher with a plus fastball and a plus curve. Problem is this entire year he lost the ability to throw that plus curve for strike so he has become a fastball only pitcher. Sometimes guys just lose the feel for a pitch. Sometimes for an inning and sometimes forever. Axford may have become a victim of the later, which hope isn't the case. He has a spot in the Brewers pen next year for sure, but I'm not too interested in having him close games any time soon. Just quoting your post to respond to you, FMC, & turbo... I was only responding to the claim that Ax should be dumped. Didn't say that I want to see him handed any kind of specific job. Although I do think he's going to bounce back next season & both easily win and retain the closer role. Also, I disagree that he's only a two-pitch pitcher -- he seems to have turned more to his formerly-rarely-used slider this season as he's struggled so much with his CB command. I would argue he's a three-pitch reliever, with two of them (FB, CB) being plus pitches and one of them (SL) being just so-so. I think that's a pretty huge arsenal to work with, going forward, for a guy with the kind of FB velocity that Axford has. His profile is exactly what I'd want Melvin to be looking for on the FA and/or trade market to help shore up the 'pen heading into 2013. One more specific point I wanted to respond to - Imo there's a distinction between a pitch being a good or average pitch on its own, and the pitcher's current/recent ability to command said pitch. I don't mean to be pedantic, but I still think Ax has a good CB even though I completely agree that he's lost the feel for it for most of this season. One more thing to factor in is that Axford and his wife welcomed a new baby into the world this season. Maybe that has nothing to do with anything, but there's always far more possible causes for dips in player production than I think we as fans either recognize or want to admit.

Sell low on a guy with an upper 90s heater, along with two solid breaking pitches, who's under team salary control through 2016 because he's had one bad season after two dominant ones? While we're at it, let's fire up that time machine & DFA Hart & Weeks for nothing when folks were calling for that, too. RPs are players whose production jumps all over the place from year to year (aside from the elite guys like Mo Rivera). People need to calm down about Axford. He's got dominant stuff & has shown the ability to do the job at the MLB level. Obviously he's stunk in 2012, but to call for him to get dumped is nothing but fan overreaction.

I've seen him state that he wants to re-sign, but can you link to where you saw that he said he'd be willing to take a hometown discount?

Adam McCalvy's post-game tweet on Peralta:

Yeah, but only once it got to about mid-May. The first month-plus was ugly -- it might as well have been Franklin Stubbs hitting behind him. That's not actually true -- he really only had a bad first 10 games (.317 OPS). From April 18th (his 11th game) to now, his OPS is .940... and from April 18th through the end of April, it was .932. What took until mid-May was for his season stat line to overcome the slow start through 10 games.

What is up with this? Where did it come from? I just don't get it. I hadn't seen it anywhere else aside from Pittsburgh, and now it follows the Brewers to Cincy? Odd.

I didn't say anything about Evans. I'm not a fan or hater of either ManU or Liverpool. Honestly, the most just ruling would've probably been a yellow in both cases. EDIT: Also, it looked like Shelvey's studs may have scraped up Evans's leg from his shin to his thigh, and if that's the case, the agony wasn't simulated. And the guys on the postgame said it was a great acting job. I realize that. But listen to the explanation the commentator gives in the video you linked -- it was Johnson tackling across the body of Valencia that drew the call (he also points out that Johnson clipped Valencia's right heel, but I doubt the ref was able to see that in real-time).

There is no way that was malicious or anything close to it. It was a solid play on the ball. He actually got a lot of the ball first and barely, if at all hit the Man U. guy who did a great Greg Louganis impression. There's no way? I disagree (obviously). If you watch the clip you linked of the penalty, the commentator is agreeing that it was absolutely a penalty.

I thought the Shelvey red card was warranted, but that's based on a subjective analysis -- I thought he went in with malice. On the penalty, not sure what the ref was supposed to do when Johnson tackled across Valencia's body the way he did. Yes, Valencia went down easily, but the actions of Johnson alone looked like a penalty to me -- he caught Valencia's left leg entirely with his challenge & didn't really come close to getting the ball.

Us will see you tomorrow!

Logan "Fire Marshall Bill" Schafer

Yep, DM came out & said they didn't scout the NPB. It later came out that Counsell did the scouting via video & signed off on Aoki's swing translating to MLB.

Not sure if this response was to my post or not... pretty sure it was. Being a star in NPB doesn't necessarily translate to results in MLB. I think CC does deserve credit (obviously, given my last post) for scouting his swing.

The only thing that bothers me regarding Aoki is the narrative the Brewers & the FSN guys push that he can hit lefties. Even as just the v.RH platoon guy he looks to be, he's an absolute steal on his contract. Craig Counsell should be proud of the video scouting work he did, and kudos to Melvin for scoring huge on this FA signing.

Wow, great read. Thanks for linking that, MJ.

I agree with this post, expect for the middle paragraph's lead sentence. Pretty much everyone who read up on the scouting reports on Segura knew/knows that's what his ceiling is. Now let's just hope he gets there. He's already practically all the way there on defense. His arm routinely makes my jaw hit the floor; it's really an impressive gun.

Coshun is poor in general at speaking correctly on-air, but he does seem especially bad with names

Rogers actually wasn't healthy in 2011 (carpal tunnel in both wrists, only notched 44.1 IP), which makes what he's done in '12 all the more impressive imo. My vote is Peralta, because of the upside. Even without a changeup, he's probably a decent bet to fill a back-end rotation spot for the next six seasons or so.