TooLiveBrew

As he walked away I said something of the effect, "See you in Milwaukee," to which he flashed a confident smile. A month later Braun was called up. Awesome story, Patrick! That's pretty phenomenal. The deranged part of my brain told me Braun kept your son as a human sacrifice.

I went to grade school for a while with Vuke's son. The only thing I really remember is that he was a chaperone once on a field trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum, and at the time I was fascinated by his gator or snakeskin cowboy boots. I can't remember which skin it was (he told me when I asked), but I just thought it was pretty awesome.

Rock just mentioned on the broadcast that Attanasio said yesterday the Brewers would like to extend Weeks, so I guess that's a good sign. However, BA wasn't up to speed yet that Weeks had hired Genske... he noted that Babby had moved to a position with the Suns, but not that Weeks had replaced him.

I think Gamel would be roughly equal because he can get to many more balls than Casey. He'd be like Rickie, though -- making plays others can't & booting plays others can make more regularly. He'd just be bad in a different way imo from McGehee, but overall I feel about equivalent.

Just posted earlier this afternoon... I hadn't heard about the other no-hitter until I read this article. Pretty cool. Wednesday Dish: Double Dose of No-Nos By Jim Shonerd, Baseball America Prospects Blog The minor league season is a long grind, especially for players who haven't been through it before. The grind looked like it might have been getting the better of Brewers righty Jake Odorizzi. That is, until the 20-year-old fought back in a big way on Tuesday, throwing eight no-hit innings as part of a combined no-hitter against Cedar Rapids. Odorizzi, who's traversing his first year in a full-season league with low Class A Wisconsin, was 6-1, 2.98 through the end of July, but August had been a different story. Having thrown 90 2/3 innings to that point, he'd already easily surpassed his career total from his first two seasons (68), during which the Brewers had kept him in Rookie-ball after making him a supplemental first-round pick in 2008. In his first three August starts, Odorizzi gave up 13 earned runs on 21 hits in 17 1/3 innings. He also struck out just nine hitters during that stretch, easily his worst of the year. The last of those three starts was against none other than Cedar Rapids, who touched Odorizzi up for a season-high six runs (all earned) on seven hits in 4 1/3 innings. Given another crack at the Kernels Tuesday night, Odorizzi found his grove again, mixing all four of his pitches, led by his low 90s fastball and plus curveball, to baffle Cedar Rapids' hitters for eight innings. He struck out 10 and allowed just three baserunners—on an error, a hit-by-pitch and a walk. He was removed after eight innings having thrown 118 pitches. “I was fired up at the moment,” Odorizzi told the Cedar Rapids Gazette about being pulled. “Wasn’t too happy about it then they told me how many pitches I had. You just have to let it go. Your career is more important than just one game.” Righthander Adrian Rosario came in for the ninth and pitched around a one-out walk to finish the no-hitter, striking out Kernels first baseman Jose Jimenez to end it. The no-hitter was the fourth in the Midwest League this year, though just the second that went the full nine innings. Three Cedar Rapids pitchers combined on a nine-inning no-hitter against Kane County on April 30. You'd have to go back to June 30, 2004, when Burlington's Chris Coughlin threw a perfect game, to find the last solo nine-inning no-hitter by a MWL pitcher. -- Two Of A Kind -- Brian Peacock is still looking for his first professional win, but he can still say he was part of a little history on Tuesday. The 20-year-old lefthander with Rookie-level Idaho Falls threw the first seven-innings of the minors' second no-hitter on Tuesday night. Like Odorizzi, Peacock's fortunes hadn't been going well lately. A 31st round pick in 2009, Peacock started the year in the Chukars' bullpen but moved to the rotation in late July. The move hadn't taken so far, as he was 0-4, 7.71 through his first six starts. Peacock's not going to blow his fastball by hitters, as it resides mostly in the upper 80s, but he has a good curveball and he settled in quickly against the [ARZ Rookie ball affiliate Missoula] Osprey. Pounding the bottom of the zone, he retired the first 16 batters he faced before an error allowed one to reach in the sixth. He issued a leadoff walk in the seventh, but that runner was promptly thrown out trying to steal second. Peacock finished the frame and was taken out of the game having faced only one hitter over the minimum over his seven innings. He struck out eight, a season-high. Righthanders Jason Mitchell and Alex Rivers pitched the eighth and ninth innings, respectively. Despite his fine effort, Peacock didn't get a win to show for it as the game remained scoreless until the Chukars pushed across three runs in the bottom of the eighth.

What on earth makes you think the Brewers should start Gamel over McGehee at 3B? Higher offensive ceiling, LH bat, at worst equal overall value on defense EDIT: Gamel made the "Dish Pieces" in a recent BA Prospects Blog post: Cubs righthander Chris Carpenter made his Triple-A debut with Iowa last night but was greeted rudely, giving up a two-run home run to Nashville third baseman Mat Gamel in the first inning. Carpenter, who was 8-6, 3.16 with Double-A Tennessee, went on to give up three runs (all earned) on seven hits in three innings of work. He struck out four, walked four and didn't figure in the decision. The homer was Gamel's 13th of the year and he went on to finish the night 2-for-4. After missing the first two months of the season with a shoulder injury, Gamel's been coming on strong over the last few weeks. He's hitting .393/.453/.702 in 84 August at-bats and .322/.396/.536 in 289 at-bats for the year. On the other hand, his defense has still been a sore point, as he's made 15 errors in 67 games at third base and has started seeing some action in right field and first base.

Keep in mind that while Strasburg's mechanics have always drawn some skeptics, Prior's were always considered to be crystal clean. Prior came from the USC inverted W school of mechanics, though, right?

Thanks for checking. Not great, but maybe he's coming around. Yeah, given your comment on not remembering many errors from him recently, I got my hopes up. I still think he should be stuck with at 3B, just because his value there is so much higher than at 1B or RF. He really reminds me of Weeks on defense -- elite tools, trouble translating them with consistency. Even though Rickie hasn't turned into an asset at 2B on defense, I'm happy the Crew has stuck with him there. He's an average to below-avg. fielder there overall at this point, but an .850 OPS at a corner OF spot really isn't nearly as hard to find (I'm not sure Weeks would have been any better in CF defensively than he is at 2B). His WAR to this point is 2nd among MLB second basemen, trailing only Robbie Cano's tremendous season. I think Gamel's defense could improve similarly to Weeks's, which would make Mat more of an asset imo on defense than McGehee has been for us.

Yeah, I just finished watching it (I'd DVR'd it). It was so well done. Narrated by Matt Vasgersian, to boot. Ken Macha got a sound byte. Oh, and "Dave Kerwin" even makes a couple appearances in the last 5 min. or so (he was their pitching coach in '94 iirc).

Hoffman probably wouldn't get traded unless he signed off on it himself. So if he's game, the Brewers should move him.

Brantley's MRI didn't show any significant damage, and he expects to be back in the lineup tonight, fwiw. Link

As long as Cain is getting the majority of the starts I'm fine with it. That's how I took this quote from Macha in Witrado's initial Gomez blog post yesterday: “Let’s say we have three centerfielders right now,” Macha said. “There well could be an open competition. There’s nothing wrong with competition. (Cain) is in the lineup tonight and he’s playing centerfield. That should be enough of a statement.” I guess that could just mean that all Macha wanted to say about Gomez's comments was to talk about that night's game, but I read a bit more into it.

I agree that it's nice to have multiple pitchers to get excited about in the system. You really do get to follow at least one very good pitching prospect on any given day.

Are there game logs somewhere that give error results, hopefully including whether they are throwing or fielding? The MiLB.com box scores discern btw. throwing/fielding errors. In the Sounds' past 32 games, Gamel has made 5 errors, 4 of them fielding. One of the errors came at 1B, the other four were at 3B -- including his most recent throwing error on Jul. 23d.

Riske's highest avg. fastball velocity for any season was 90.5 mph, back in 2003 (Link). Maybe he touched something like 93 occasionally, but he certainly wasn't operating in the mid 90s.

The Haudricourt blog post is really good. This part was kind of concerning, though: "Word is going around Miller Park that the Brewers are determined to play Gomez and get something from him to prove the Hardy deal was not a bust." Maybe that's only referring to this season, but AAA is where Gomez belongs right now.

"I think I’m still the man on this team" Wow. Delusion, or delusion+entitlement? I'd been rooting for Gomez up to this point.

No, you have no way of knowing whether or not it was the first offer. It's very plausible that, since there wasn't much interest in Hardy at all, there wasn't much looking around for Melvin to do. Who are you claiming would have possibly given up more for Hardy at that point? What kind of player would you have rather gotten? Hardy wasn't going to get a useful SP, so aside from that I really don't know what you want from Melvin. He traded a disappointing player for another disappointing player, but at least the one he got back still had room to grow & plays a premium position.

Off the top of my head, Hideki Okajima for the span of 2007-2009 for the Red Sox. He's stunk this season, though. Not sure how much of that has been due to his injury woes (hamstring, calf).

Once he got back to full health, Gamel has ripped apart AAA pitching just like he did last season prior to getting called up & sent back to AAA. It's good to see and all, but this guy belongs in a major league lineup, not AAA. I just hope it's the Brewers' lineup & not someone else's.

What breed is he? Looks like a sled dog.

Yeah, impressive is almost putting it mildly. Think about how excited we've been about Lawrie's success in AA as a 20-yo -- he's not even two full months younger than Montero. The Braves are going to (continue to) be gooooood.

Nice catch, AT, thanks for sharing that. Glad that the Boras fears were unnecessary http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Nitpicking, but Montero is a couple months younger

Sometimes, things just don't work out for whatever reason. Why do we all assume that because something didn't happen (usually after the fact) that Melvin didn't even try to do it? I agree with your stance in general, but the fact that Morrow was traded for a relief pitcher is what stirs the pot on this particular deal. Wouldn't have taken much to get Morrow, but apparently just about every other GM in the league felt Morrow wasn't worth a higher price.