TooLiveBrew

311 at the Miller Lite Oasis is probably the best side stage act announced so far There's always at least one side-stage show where I do a double take & say, 'Wait, they're on a side stage?" http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Check out this thread http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

How you can talk out of one side of your mouth about how people are just ignoring that Sexson has passion & is a person... then make the snide comments about guys like Capuano & Bush is beyond me.

Ten years from now people will still remember Richie Sexson and no one will remember Ohka, Spivey, Crappy, Graffy, Bush, Jorge, and so on.... Who are these people and do they hang out with this guy -- http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/resources/2008/01/steve-jobs-hippie3.jpg Prince Fielder spoke about his contract situation (iirc) once. In the context of being asked about it directly. Yet he gets piled on & called "whiny"

Don't forget Mike Lowell and John Kruk. And the basketball player from Tennessee whose name escapes me right now. Yeah, add Lester too.

So, we agree that he isn't hitting well. I agree that, by his standards, Prince hasn't gotten started yet. As Brian points out, part of the problem in 'declaring' things about a player based on any sample of < 200 PA, is that the rate stats can change in a hurry. In the meantime, we've just had to suffer along with an (OBP-heavy) .800 OPS & 25 BB over 158 ABs. I know we all hope for & expect more from Fielder, but to treat this portion of the season like it's any different & more descriptive/predictive from any other random sampling of ~ 200 PA is a mistake imo.

At this point, I'd like to see the Yost/Melvin tandem get held accountable for lack of production. Where is Branyan?! How many more absurd reasons are going to get run out there as to why he's rotting in Triple-A?

I love the one button and setting the break point on the 2K pitching. I wish mlb the show had the break point for pitching. The Show kinda does have that this season -- the breaking pitches show you a path of arrows indicating the break direction & appx. amount. Depending on the pitch & where you move the cursor, the 'break path' of arrows shrinks or grows. So, on a curve, the lower you target the pitch, the more it will break, for example. Is that what you basically mean with 'break point'?

So 'by his standards', then? The fact that Prince Fielder slumps at an .800 OPS level should be encouraging. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif His July 2007 line was basically the same as his line to this point. It's just that, at that point in the season, your 'slump' is hidden by not being the first month + of the season, and looks better on the scoreboard. I agree that he hasn't been near his 2007 level, but I personally didn't expect him to necessarily be that good again. It's early enough in the season that once he goes on a HR binge like Braun has lately, the SLG will spike quite a bit.

RBI... not a stat over which a player has much control. 6 HR when you're not hitting well? That's a great total so far.

It's not overreacting at all. Either you're all in or you're not Really? I'm not all in, and I'm not all for. Strange. There are interesting elements of both the AL style & NL style. I don't care if the AL has a DH. I just want to be able to watch baseball as God intended. If Bud Selig takes that away from me, then I'm done with this game. What? Did God intend for players to wear more protective gear (including gloves), use better-balanced bats, & play in retractable roof stadiums? The notion that the DH is the only major change to take place in baseball blows me away.

The dirty secret no one is really talking about is that Prince has been pretty bad this year. .259/.363/.437/.800 -- and that's a slow start. Not sure how you can call that 'pretty bad', unless you mean 'by his standards'

Um, I think he was trying to be nice to you & help you out.

Awful, awful, awful call for the steal. Horrible timing.

Just want to post again on my franchise mode... as I mentioned I took the Rangers (crappy team...no emotional ties to it), and made some trades. I didn't have the 'force the trade' option on, so it was only what the CPU accepted. I honestly don't even remember all the players I gave up, but I'd signed Barry Bon... er, Reggie Stocker to DH, Morgan Ensberg to platoon with Blalock, & traded for SP Ubaldo Jimenez (COL), OF B.J. Upton (TB), & C Ryan Doumit (PIT). There is no way I should have been able to add all three of those guys, but I figure for how many other times the CPU makes a dumb trade refusal... we're even. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif I've got Salatalalamalachia at 1B, with Upton in LF & super-subbing at 2B/3B/OF. Platooning Doumit/Laird, and I got Anibal Sanchez somehow as AAA pitching depth... don't even remember who I traded for him. Anyway, even with my offense seemingly rocking (iirc the game rates the Rangers' bats as like 5th-best in the season), I've gotten my ass handed to me by the CPU each of the last 3 games I've played. I can't wait to get home from work so I can get that monkey off my back! It's also getting a little annoying when there's a ground ball up the middle, I send my shortstop after it, and he runs right over it. I wouldn't mind it as much if they would make it so that he just can't make the play, but the gameplay just looks ridiculous when a guy seemingly hops over a grounder instead of fielding it. Jazzytrav, I had to go dig for this comment. It happened to me for the first time last night. It was with my 2B -- I took an angle to try & get my player more in line with a throw to 1B... so I kind of rounded my route. Think a slight arc starting towards LC, then curving toward the ball's path to the right side of 2B. The ball went right under/'through' my fielder. Yuck. I wonder if it has to do with me arc-ing the route. One related comment, and to be accurate this was fixed for '07 but is even better imo in '08 -- they got rid of this ^^ glitch in the OF. I can handle my IF missing a grounder every once in a blue moon & having it roll out for a single. But I can't handle when it rolls to the wall for a 3B. To clarify, I mean mostly line-drives, not grounders for the OF. If that bug hadn't have been fixed, I probably wouldn't have even bothered checking out '08.

I said the goal (imo) was playoffs for 2007, not 2006. I'm not sure what the Texas fans' opinion of Cordero has to do with things -- clearly the scouting department did their homework correctly on CoCo.

Jason Giambi has bounced back & forth from DHing full time to being the FT/Most-of the time 1B for the Yankees (like his is this season). I think Ortiz is the extreme example, as opposed to a random selection from many all-offense, no-D DHs. Sure, it makes the most sense to put your best-hitting worst-fielder combo at DH, but I don't think that's why the DH was created.

The Lee deal was done with the intention of getting the '07 team into the playoffs imo. Melvin fell a few bad breaks from attaining that goal. I'm sure there's evidence to your point elsewhere, but that trade isn't a strong example (imo).

Pie is very young still ('08 is his age-23 season). If the Cubs don't think he's ready, I'm not sure why they don't just ship him back to Iowa for the season/an extended stay. In keeping him on the MLB bench, imo they run the risk of duplicating their treatment of Murton.

Yeah, I just wanted to clarify my own post -- I understood what you meant. I almost included that I thought he'd be a decent bench util. IF guy. Here is the breakdown of the Cubs home and away games by month: Home Away April- 16 11 May- 17 12 June- 10 17 July- 10 16 Aug- 19 9 Sep- 9 16 Thanks for crunching that out, KB. That really helps keep perspective on the season. It does tend to strike me as funny how fans in general will react to the first month or two of a season like it's not just a part of a 162-game schedule, but instead some form of descriptive/predictive stretch, wherein teams' worth/skill becomes engraved in stone, or at least made mostly clear.

If we can't use hindsight, I don't think anyone would have thought Cappy would have fallen off the cliff. Capuano actually had some peripheral numbers that indicated his 18-win season was a lot of luck. Remember, 'fallen off a cliff' = pitched with a ligament tear in his elbow... not exactly just some huge loss of skill.

I'm not saying he's terrible or he shouldn't be in the majors, but no way should he be expected to hit this well the rest of the season. I think he's terrible in terms of a starting SS. Imho his D is avg. at best, and his offense is woeful on the whole. Both he & Cedeno are way over their heads (though cubfan was objective & pointed out the downsides for both)

If you want the "best" baseball product, then let's expand the active rosters to 50 and have 8 Adam Everetts and 8 David Ortizes playing at the same time. That's a strange argument that has already been addressed. No one is calling for this kind of extreme stuff except people overreacting to/espousing their distaste for the DH.

Wow, my brain must be trying to repress that memory... ick. I stand corrected, and disgusted.

it seems the low batting average/high strikeout hitters are more prone to longer hitting slumps that the high batting average/make contact hitters that might not walk as much as you liked or that don't have a lot of power. I just want to defend JJ... I don't know if you meant to lump him in fully or not -- I can't call him a 'high strikeout guy.' I also wouldn't call him a 'low-BA' guy, I think he's just off to a slow start. Now he's no .325 hitter, but I think his BA projects a good deal higher than Weeks/Cam/Hall.