RockCoCougars

I don't know, I'd be very concerned if I was a Cardinals fan. As Brewers fans, we've seen a lot of 'Higuera/Sheets situations' start out this way..... pitcher leaves the game....injury termed 'not-serious' by team.... 'will miss a few starts'.... goes on the DL .... 'will start throwing at the beginning of next month'.....' back after the break'.... out for the season..... surgery performed after the season ends.

I need to see it to believe it. Prince absolutely tore up the 'low A' Midwest League at the age of 19. Lawrie was very pedestrian there at the same age. Prince also didn't have the benefit of playing on all of the 'national teams' that the Brewers allowed Lawrie to partake in. If I've learned anything from being a Brewer fan for almost 40 years, it's there is no such thing as a can't miss prospect. Though he may have all the 'physical tools', Lawrie has a long way to go before he should even be mentioned in the same breath as Braun. Frankly, the odds are a lot greater that this guy is going to be a bust than a star. At any rate, he has a ton of growing up to do.

I won't quote my reply, but the picture above sealed my deal in thinking that Lawrie is a tool. As far as his quotes go, what exactly has he done to be so arrogant? Not much at the pro level- certainly not enough to be able to choose his position.

Did they actually do the entire '82 season? I am only semi-Twitiliterate, but I can only find the pre-season stuff. At any rate, whoever did this must have been around in '82.... I can tell from the 'have the Topps cards came out yet, Donruss and Fleer suck' comment and the good riddance comment on the Reggie Cleveland tweet.

Umm, Kareem? Allen? Vin Baker was traded for Terrell Brandon who we traded to get Cassell. So we traded Marbury the 4th pick for Allen the 5th pick, drafted Glenn #1 overall and traded a former lottery pick in Baker for Terrell Brandon who we later acquired Cassell for. Cassell/Allen/Robinson were all acquired using lottery picks. Kareem #1 overall pick. We were contenders with Moncrief (5th overall pick), Junior Bridgeman (8th overall pick) and Marques Johnson (3rd overall pick). The only time the Bucks have ever had contending teams is with high draft picks. The problem is Kohl wants to "win now while rebuilding" which leads to a bunch of 30-40 win seasons, not good enough to beat good teams and not bad enough to draft high enough to get star talent. It's amazing how the Bucks decline started when Kohl bought the team. Kareem was drafted before my time, I said during my fandom. At any rate, he was a once in a generation type player. The success of the Bucks throughout the 70's and 80's can be largely attributed either directly or indirectly toward winning the coin flip with Phoenix. I'm not sure whether anyone in the organization is shooting for sustained mediocrity, because I'm sure that almost everyone (fans alike) had higher expectations for this season. This may have been more true back in the early 90's when they were trading first round picks for Danny Schayes. All I'm trying to say is that relying on high draft choices is a gamble. Though I will agree with the basic premise that you need one 'megastar' to win a title in the NBA, if you draft high, you are just as likely to end up with a Michael Olawakandi as you are a Tim Duncan. Going further, the draft this year is universally considered weak, so I see no need to tank games at this point.

Hindsight is 20/20. Salmons played absolutely out of his mind for a contract last year. The team would have never went on their 'push' without him. In my opinion, his complete disappearance this year has probably been the primary reason that they have tanked. As for the Maggette deal, most were on board because they were dumping Danny Z and Bell. I'll admit that I was in favor of the Gooden signing as well, but lots of others hated that one from the start. Frankly, I think the decision to let both Ridnour and Kurt Thomas to walk probably hurt the team more than the new acquisitions. The injuries haven't helped matters either. I'm not sure that you couldn't say that the Bucks weren't gunning for the 8 seed last year, because everyone wanted to blow things up then in early February as well, with most questioning the Salmons trade, etc.. As for tanking to get a high pick, I've been a Bucks fan for nearly 40 years and they've had the #1 pick three times during my fandom. They got Kent Benson, Glenn Robinson and Bogut. Hardly franchise altering players. Take a look at the top three picks over the past several years, and you will see many more megabusts than franchise players. Many of the #1 picks were complete flops.

My how time flies. It changed the course of Brewers history forever too. If Muser doesn't get hurt, Trebelhorn would have never gotten the managerial job.

Attendance may be fairly stable- though it's way down since Karl broke up the Big 3. I'm more concerned about the general apathy toward the Bucks, statewide, but particularly in Milwaukee. Many people pay little or no attention to the team and are either resigned to the fact that they will move and/or don't care. This sort of apathy will definitely hamper any push to get a new arena built. I think back to the mid to late 80's relocation rumors. This when the team was very good and much more closely followed statewide. Good thing the Pettits and Kohl stepped up as the saviors of the team. I don't see that happening again. Any out of state buyer will relocate the team, and without a new arena, I don't see anyone 'local' taking the mantle from Kohl. As we've seen with the Brewers, even a short term period of moderate success will cause the bandwagon to swell. The NBA is definitely nowhere near as popular as MLB these days, but had the team built on last season and won a couple of playoff series, you can bet that there would have been tons of 'lifelong Bucks fans' around the state who don't give two spits now. As a franchise, they are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. I can see the logic behind blowing everything up and rebuilding, but that is no guarantee, and the timing is really bad. At any rate, this has been an extremely disappointing season. Though there is a lot of second guessing going on now, lots of pundits were praising the moves that Hammond made over the off-season, and a lot of people had the Bucks as a legit contender for the Central on paper.

I most certainly can tell you that. The best hitters might not be any different but the replacement level is way higher than before. You used to face 3-4 scrub hitters in almost every lineup so you could ease up when they came to the plate. You also could throw a much higher percentage of fastballs and players didn't work the count nearly as much. Trying to compare pitching now to pitching even 25+ years ago just isn't going to work, the games are just too different. Pitchers could certainly go a little deeper than they do now but if you take Blyleven and stick him in today's game he wouldn't have thrown nearly as many innings as he did. I think the best 'game has changed' argument for pitchers not going as many innings is the fact that umpires constantly squeeze the pitchers by not calling the strike as it is laid out in the rulebook, I'll give you that. As far as lineups go, I disagree. Most N.L. teams still have 2-3 non-pitching spots at least where the hitters are not world beaters by any means. The Brewers, in particular, had 3 for most of last year. Some A.L. teams have some putrid offenses as well.

I disagree with the premise that hitting is better today then it was back in the 50's and early 60's. I may give you the late 60's and 70's, but you can't tell me that the pitchers of the 50's (pitching in mostly bandboxes with only 16 or 20 teams in all of baseball) had it easier.

You are spot on, which is exactly why pitchers are babies these days. Nolan Ryan once said this in an interview. Do they have 'pitch count' limits in little league yet? Even back when I played, they had limits on innings one guy could throw, but that was in place more to neutralize dominant pitchers. How can you run a marathon when you have been trained to run sprints your whole life?

I'm with Bert Blyleven on this one. Pitchers are babies these days. Harang never looked like the perfect physical specimen out there....he looked like he ate at Old Country Buffet every day. If he can't throw 63 pitches three days after getting knocked out of the box, how did he ever make the majors before being injured? Don't pitchers throw in between starts? I can't imagine that he wasn't ever overused in Legion ball or little league for that matter.

Point taken. I didn't necessarily say that it was a dream scenario, I just think that it may happen. I'll admit that I am rooting for them to make the playoffs just to make things more interesting, but I have no illusions that they have any chance at winning the championship (or even a series for that matter). The best thing that would come from this scenario would be a spark in fan interest as we saw last year. I'm not sure if it would be good for the franchise to completely dismantle and be 'really bad' for an extended period of time in the hopes of retooling. Interest is not very high now, and I couldn't imagine the level of apathy that there would be if we saw a couple of back to back 20 win seasons.

All of this doom and gloom reminds me of last year at trade deadline time. Amazing how that 'playoff run' changed people's perception. Not that it's any prize, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised if this team made a late push and snuck into the playoffs again. The schedule is heavy with home games- including 6 of the next 7- and is fairly soft. The teams ahead of them are no great shakes, so if the Bucks win 6 or 7 out of 10 they could be in the eight position.

The Cardinals were a mediocre to bad team last year despite a few guys pitching out of their minds, so I don't see how they will be competitive this season without Wainwright. I think that the Reds will be the team to beat for the Brewers.

They should have snapped Soup back up when he was still available.

I find his honesty quite refreshing. Instead of spouting the typical cliched responses, this guy actually says what is on probably 99% of the players minds. If he starts ripping the organization that could be a problem, but I have no issues with his take on the press and autograph hounds.

He could be. It should be an interesting spring. Call me a skeptic, but I want to see with my own eyes that Betancourt is really the worst shortstop ever before I start believing it..... WAR be darned.

I stand by my assertion that Lawrie is a complete tool. Why should he get to choose his position? At third base, Gamel (who has proven much more at the minor league level, might I add) is already blocked. If Lawrie is such a 'world class athlete', he should have had no problems playing shortstop. He reminds me of those basketball players who everyone says are one of a kind athletes and 'can jump out of the gym', but seem to always lack a defined position and never amount to much.

Not really a dumb idea at all. Montreal was a great franchise, and I believe that they set or came close to setting some sort of attendance records during their glory days. Two things killed that franchise- poor ownership once the brewery sold the team, and the '94 strike. That '94 team was absolutely loaded.

Even the Betancourt doomsayers have to admit that he was almost certainly a poison pill (e.g. salary dump) that the Brewers had to accept to get the Greinke deal done. Despite this, the man hasn't even taken the field for the Brewers yet. I'm willing to watch him play before running him out of town on a rail. Michael Young has always been overrated and he's getting old- put him at shortstop and you have a slight upgrade at best- the Rangers moved him from shortstop because they didn't think that he could field the position anymore. He may hit .300 for you with a little pop, but is that really worth $50 million over the next three seasons? I don't think so. It would basically be akin to giving Suppan $40 million because the Brewers had Victor Santos pencilled in as the number two in the off-season.

In my best McEnroe voice.... "You cannot be serious!". Again, I ask- where can this money be better spent? The Gregg Zaun/LaTroy Hawkins/David Riske combo platter, or about half of the money necessary to bring a mediocre starter or overpaid position player to town. For God's sake, Jayson freaking Werth got $100 million this off season. As for extending Greinke and/or Marcum, that money is already there with the contracts of Fielder and Wolf, which will both almost certainly be off the books after 2012. This money should allow for all the raises due guys like Weeks, Braun, Hart, Gallardo, etc, while still allowing wiggle room to extend at least one of the pitchers.

I only buy Metallica music on these Russian sites. Greedy jerks. At any rate, though I'd probably be more concerned about giving these Russian sites any personal information (banking, etc.) than the illegalities of the site, I wouldn't be surprised if some overzealous ambulance chaser started going after Americans who used it at some point.

Young is like Suppan after the first year- three years remaining on a horrible contract, and he's 35-ish to boot. Too bad that he can't play shortstop anymore, because I'm sure that he will be available for little or nothing on waivers in July/August. I'm sure the Brewers will stay far away- as they should.

These guys just can't resist burning loonies can they? I guess who's to blame them with the White Sox bailing them out on Rios and the Angels bailing them out on Wells?