TooLiveBrew

To anyone who missed the Real Madrid--Man City match today... go watch it archived somewhere. What an unbelievable final 40' or so! This .gif file pretty much sums up the intensity... http://abload.de/img/ejsubh.gif Absolutely unreal finish, and easily one of the best matches I've ever seen.

Ooh, I love these mustard-yellow throwback caps for the Bucs.

He basically said he could play, but would be hurting the team (link). He partially tore his plantar fascia in his left foot, not sure how you can hold him accountable for it not being healed yet.

With Beltre, you can make a legitimate argument that he's been the best 3B defender in MLB over the course of his career. Ramirez certainly isn't a liability with the glove, but he's nowhere near the caliber of Beltre.

I honestly worried, after reading the thread title, that Selig had named TLR as his successor. I still can't get that nightmare scenario out of my head.

Young players can't handle the pressure of a postseason chase, everyone knows that

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m36mlktSrL1ru7ftzo1_400.gif

Huge 7th inning for Wisconsin!

Nail-biter so far... c'mon T-Rats!

This is awesome.

After David Wright took a called strike three in the 9th inning, Uecker had one of the funniest quips I've heard from him (not 100% sure I have this verbatim): Nearly had me in tears in the car.

Yeah, I realized that those words would likely be synonymous at this point for many. I'm not really sure myself what my expectations are yet. I think this road trip for me will feel like letting that last Plinko chip drop.

I didn't want to post this in the optimism thread, & couldn't find an old thread that I felt was relevant, so I started this one. The Brewers obviously have a three-game set this weekend with NYM, and play their final six regular season games at home v. HOU & SDP... so not much to complain about in terms of strength of schedule on the front & back ends of the remaining games. But sandwiched in-between, and beginning after the last off-day of the season, is a ten day/ten game roadtrip: PIT (3), WAS (4), CIN (3). To borrow from TH, it's "big boy time." So what expectations do BF.netters have for this road trip? What do you think the Brewers should be expected to do, and what will they need to do to stay in the playoff hunt? What about some good tidbits about the opponents -- which players are out or struggling? Of which players should the Brewers be wary? Any guesses as to which SPs they'll face? Talk amongst yourselves http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3o9FUDlJrSw/TQE4Yv7dDWI/AAAAAAAABeo/WjvDbNlX9Ts/s640/Coffee_Talk_Linda_Richman.jpg

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Really nice work, Brad. Some great images in there.

Appreciate the reply. Honestly, the main thing I realized in reading through your posts on Greinke & Hamilton (in that order) was that I really don't want to see the Brewers spend big FA money on any player. Obviously the Braun and Luc/Weeks/Gallardo type contracts are good ideas, but imo in free agency Melvin's better off sticking to guys on relatively low contracts. Finding production like Ramirez's on affordable contracts is what any GM in Milwaukee will have to be adept at doing to 'win' in FA. I love the idea of adding a bat like Hamilton's to the lineup, but I don't think he's worth what he'll likely command on the FA market.

Really? First off it's not a one game playoff to be the last team. If you win the 2nd wild card you are technically in the playoffs. You can hang a banner for it and everything. So by default, yes the Brewers are in a pennant race. Second off, fighting for the 5th best record in the NL? The Cardinals last year, the Marlins twice, The Red Sox in 04, the Angels in 02 all have won the world series as the wild card. I highly doubt they were "fighting for 4th best record". Since this thread is all about optimism, I'll try to be brief & then duck out. The reason I'm having a hard time getting excited about the Brewers possibly qualifying for the play-in game is that the team as a whole doesn't inspire confidence in me, in terms of being able to do anything once in the playoffs. I fully understand that other teams with subpar regular seasons have gone on to win the WS, and 'anything can happen!'. I'm just not drinking the blue Kool-Aid at this point, since I've seen the 2012 bullpen too many times to be able to genuinely get my hopes up. Anyway, just wanted to explain myself since I played the part of Debbie Downer earlier. Carry on.

Fighting for a chance to get into a one-game playoff to be the last team in the postseason is definitely not a pennant race. I realize this is the optimism thread, but the Brewers are fighting to finish with the 5th best record in the NL.

In your post on the MLB forum (the 'young pitchers thread' iirc), you noted that you don't believe Greinke at ~$23M will be an investment where the return will match. I don't disagree with that. However, to then state that you would have zero hesitation about giving Hamilton comparable money, and imply that the team would get good return to match the value of the contract, seems odd. I don't think Hamilton isn't a good hitter, but his unreal performance in 2010 imo elevates expectations for him. His career .914 OPS seems like an accurate guesstimate as to what you'll get out of him at this point, and his avg. # of games played/season is just 123 (and that's with assuming 150 games for '12). He's not at all what I would describe as a good bet to provide production equivalent to $25M/yr. I really don't have a major beef with the idea of signing Hamilton, it's more that you dismissed Greinke out of hand as being unlikely to match $25M/yr. with production, and then have no doubts about the injury-prone, addiction-demon-battling Hamilton, who will enter his age-32 season in 2013. This post isn't meant as COMEATMEBRO, but I'm genuinely curious to hear why you wouldn't want to see Greinke given $25M/yr., but would have zero problem with paying that to Hamilton.

Please... do it!

I love this guy. Really hope he can come back & contribute again down the stretch for ATL.

Wow. There's 'slow', and then there's Martin Maldonado.

That was one of the oddest things I've ever seen at a baseball game. The HP ump awarded him first base, but then the Burlington manager came out to home plate to discuss the call (he wasn't angry or arguing strenuously)... the HP ump conferred with his base-ump partner, so I just assumed the argument was that Garfield had actually taken a swing... but the base ump never gave a hand signal for a swinging strike or checked swing... and then the HP ump just called Garfield back from first & indicated he'd have to return to the batter's box. Erickson argued with the ump for a while, included grabbing Garfield by the wrist at one point & showing the ump the mark that I assume was still easily recognizable on his hand. I mean, I had a perfect view of this HBP & I have no doubt it hit Garfield on his left hand. What made this so strange is that it really looked like the HP ump let the Burlington manager talk him out of his initial call, which appeared to have been correct. I'm wondering if there was some rules nuance here that I missed. I guess the T-Rats were going to leave Garfield in to run the bases, but Garfield must've said something once he was called back to hit, because the trainer looked over his hand and I guess didn't want him to grip a bat. Just an odd situation, & I hope Garfield is ok. EDIT: Here's Chris Mehring's response to me asking about this sequence:

Goforth didn't look great through the first five innings or so, in terms of command. But then something clicked, and he was putting almost every pitch right where he wanted it. Honestly, innings 7-9 were easily his best frames. Really impressive. Fwiw, he was operating most of the game with some form of a FB that was clocking in at 84-86 on the stadium gun. I couldn't tell if it was a cutter (?), but he did run a more classic FB out there (sparingly) in the 90-94 range and it looked to have solid lateral movement from my vantage point behind home plate. I was expecting to see his FB in that 90-94 range, so I guess I didn't remember his repertoire correctly... but a 2-seamer isn't typically an 8-10mph dropoff from the 4-seamer, which is why I thought he was maybe throwing cutters. If anyone can weigh in on this, I'd appreciate it. By the time Goforth was in top form (latter half of the game), he just had everything working. He started off a lot of Burlington hitters with a CB for strike one; I really should've counted how often he dropped that on guys with the first pitch. His CH was also working very well, and he was pitching backwards effectively enough that he broke out the low-90s FB more than the 85-ish version in the later innings. The Bees hitters were completely lost against him in the later frames. McMahan's HR was an absolute rocket blast -- made me think of a Rickie Weeks trademark HR shot. Off the bat, I wasn't sure it was elevated enough to clear the double-tall LF wall, but obviously that wasn't an issue. Man, did he scorch that ball. Ramirez's HR wasn't squared up as purely as McMahan's, but it obviously wasn't a cheapie. Those back-to-back shots were fun. Oh, also noticed Mike Vassallo (Brewers' dir. of media relations), Bruce Seid, & some other Brewers brass in one of the suites.

I'm heading to the T-Rats' game tonight, hopefully to see a W!