LouisEly

"And that leads to this. Melvin's comments on Yuni B...... "I thought Yuni Betancourt was a better player than what his critics said. I thought he did a very good job. If you look at the on-base percentage, that's the thing that always seems to hurt him. I thought he made a lot of good plays, a lot of outstanding plays. I like the way he starts a double play. He's as good as I've seen doing that. He made some outstanding plays. I'm very surprised at the critics of him, personally. I know a lot of it is the analytical studies defensively. I'm not a total believer in that. Sure, he made some errors but he also made some outstanding plays." Yuni B. will be a Brewer next year." This same person also said he was "not motivated" to trade Lyle Overbay. Means nothing in terms of what his plans are for next season.

"I just mentioned it but the more I read, I don't understand why some people seem to want to overhaul a 96 win team. We are losing Fielder (most likely) but that is it. Have our whole rotation back. 4 of 5 IF's, 4 of 4 OF and need a few more people in the pen. I don't get the trade this, this, this, release this, this, this, and move him there or there, or there. Realistically, do any of you really think DM and RR want to completely flip this team when they are already built without Prince as a possible contender? Team has chemistry and an amazing club house, all the guys love each other.....do really want to mess that completely up?" This. Yes, statistically/theoretically/in fantasy land they should have won 90 games. 1) Even if they won 90 games they still would have made the playoffs, and B) no, they should have won what they did considering how much time Grienke, Hart, Hawkins, Saito, Braun, Weeks, Braddock, Stetter, Parra, and Kintzler lost due to injuries plus Lucroy getting minimal work in spring training due to an injury. They won 96 games with no LHP in the bullpen. They won 96 games with Loe as the setup man for half the season pitching to lefties. They won with the combined awful bench production of Counsell, Nieves, Lopez, Almonte, and Gamel. Anyone remember Nieves starting 16 games? If Fielder goes, then Gamel or Hart to 1B and the other to RF. Trade one of Narveson, Estrada, or Fiers for an upgrade at SS. Green starts at 3B except against tough lefties. McGehee is your backup 3B/1B, Hairston replaces Counsell as the backup MI. Gomez and Morgan keep platooning in CF, and Schafer is your backup OF who comes in as defensive replacements late in games with Gomez. If Fielder takes 5 wins with him, it's almost not possible to not pick that back up with improvement at SS, 3B, bullpen LHP, and offensive bench. Plus a year of experience under the belt of a rookie manager who made mistakes and hopefully has learned from them. That's it. Trade from their surplus of above-average 5th starters for an upgrade at SS, get just a .740 OPS and average defense from 3B, and have two of Stetter/Parra/Braddock healthy in the bullpen to neutralize LH hitters in the late innings and they should be back over 90 wins and in the playoffs again. As we saw with the Cardinals this year (and in 2006), just get in the playoffs and get hot in late September and anything can happen.

right now..call him into the office, and send him packingWas it Yuni who gave up all the home runs to the Cards? Or gave up 12 hits to Freese? Or made three errors the last two games responsible for four unearned runs? He's not the reason they aren't going to the World Series.

Simple solution; I will not watch any MLBNetwork, ESPN, or Local News for the next week. You don't have to worry about ESPN - they'll be too busy showing football highlights from today. You can't even get college football highlights on a Sunday because they think people want three hours of Gameday. Well... it was a good season. And the Nyjer walkoff was something special. I think that celebration may have taken too much out of them. It seemed like the Cardinals were destined to win with how their pitchers were hitting the corners and their OFs were catching everything over their heads. The Jay catch in the 9th was fitting of the series. Thanks Brewers, and Brewerfan.net, for a fantastic season. Here's to hoping they trade Hart + Gamel for a good SS and resign Fielder.

I wonder what the record is for posts about a player in a game? Kotsay has to be on pace for a record.

Great Prince celebration photo

Great Prince celebration photo

I don't know if you caught it, but immediately after the game, Sam Ryan of TBS started to interview Prince. He walked away almost immediately, & it was clear it was because he'd been (or still was) crying & was way too emotional to give an interview. Crazy moment. I noticed that too. Did you hear what Prince said to her? "I gotta go. I gotta go..."

I don't know if you caught it, but immediately after the game, Sam Ryan of TBS started to interview Prince. He walked away almost immediately, & it was clear it was because he'd been (or still was) crying & was way too emotional to give an interview. Crazy moment. I noticed that too. Did you hear what Prince said to her? "I gotta go. I gotta go..."

I think TBS regretted that move...

I think TBS regretted that move...

Who would have thought that the two most maligned players on the team - Yuni and Gomez - were responsible for winning this game and the series.

Who would have thought that the two most maligned players on the team - Yuni and Gomez - were responsible for winning this game and the series.

Yuni may just have made up for an entire season's worth of poor play in one AB. #fingerscrossed

Yuni may just have made up for an entire season's worth of poor play in one AB. #fingerscrossed

Not sure why they need the iPhone. Train their salespeople on how to compare/contrast the HTC Evo to the iPhone and people won't leave. The Evo is better than the iPhone, IMO, and if they market and sell it correctly they should sell plenty.

"Lift heavy and/or work out at high intensity. Lots of people reccommend biking or running marathons or hopping on the elyptical or whatever (what I like to call "long slow distance, or LSD), but that's a way less efficient use of your exercise time than a 15 minute, high intensity workout, or a heavy lift. Not only will you burn more calories during the workout, you'll also get a much greater "after burn" effect and a hormonal response that causes you to produce more testosterone, which is great for burning fat too. " I agree with just about everything you say. However, like "not all calories are created equal", not all calories burned during exercise are equal. Some calories burned are fat calories, some are muscle calories. For some the short intense workout is best. I did that for a while (lots of CrossFit), but made minimal gains. Then I started doing long slow eliptical workouts of 45-60 minutes focusing on a heart rate of 120-130 bpm. Then the fat started melting away and I got down below 220 for the first time in at least four years. The short intense workouts for me were burning just as much muscle as fat. It wasn't the most efficient time-wise, but the results are better. I haven't abandoned short intense workouts; I just do them less often and eliptical more often. Again, like I said earlier, I strongly believe that no one thing works best for everyone. You have to try different exercise and lifestyle routines and find the ones that work best for you.

I'll be back in Hoboken tonight around 8PM, so if anyone wants to rendezvous at The Madison or Liberty B&G (14th St., 2-3 blocks from the ferry) let me know.

Some words of advice - maybe this will be of help to RoCo and Al. For those who like to eat, myself included, something I haven't seen mentioned much is eating 5-6 small meals a day versus the traditional 3 meals. One of the problems with reduced calorie dieting is trying to do that while eating three meals a day. The body is genetically programmed after thousands of years of a hunter-gatherer diet to store calories in time of need. Too much time in between meals causes the body to get overly hungry and eat too much. I have a moderate breakfast (low sugar protein shake w/fruit, and oatmeal if I have time), then a snack around 10am (usually a protein bar), then lunch. Having the protein bar really helps keep me from overeating at lunch. It can take 20-40 minutes for your brain to register that you are "full", which if you are overly hungry from too much time between meals causes 20-40 minutes of unnecessary eating. Then I have another snack around 3PM, a snack after work before I hit the gym (protein and fruit), and a low-carb dinner after the gym (often chicken breasts + veggies). I've found a new favorite afternoon snack - Blue Diamond Salt & Vinegar flavored smoked almonds. I eclipse the "can a week" that they ask for. Something else I'll recommend is a book called "Live Right 4 Your Type". It is the first book I ever read that suggested different diets and lifestyles for different people. I strongly believe that no one thing works for everyone. I'm really sold on the book because when I read the section on type O blood it was describing me to a tee. The foods it tells me to avoid are foods that don't make me feel good/give me gas/cause me to get stuffed up from an allergic reaction. The foods it says are beneficial are foods that make me feel good. It says lean beef is beneficial for type O's, and when I have a steak for dinner I am hungry the next morning and can feel my metabolism increase. It says that "Atkins" type protien/low carb diets are good for type O's and vegetarian diets are not because type O's tend to have highly acidic stomachs (and thus like to eat because they get hungrier easier). Other blood types that tend to have low acidity levels in their stomachs tend to do better on vegetarian diets because they don't have the acids to easily digest proteins. RoCo and Al, I'd highly recommend reading that book and finding out your blood type. It may help you find the diet & lifestyle changes you need to hit your goals.

Terrible that they conflict with the Packers. Is the Broncos game is in the Milwaukee ticket package?

I think perhaps the main point of the film was expressed very well - character is revealed by adversity. They commented at the end - very astutely and IMO very accurately - that the entity who handled this situation with the most class was Bartman. If you think about the "character is revealed by adversity" theme, what does that say about the Cubs fans and the city of Chicago? The fact that a fan base and a city blame 100 years of futility on a goat and a guy who tried to catch a foul ball hit at him, and assume that the ball was going to be caught by a guy who peed on his hands, is pathetic.

I am in need of one ticket for Game 2. Willing to pay market/above face. PM me if you have one to sell. Thanks! Edit: of course the games are Saturday and Sunday. I have Badgers tickets for Saturday and Packers tickets for Sunday. If Saturday's game is early enough to make the Badgers game then PM me if you have one or two tickets for sale. Thanks!

Thank you Greg, and I enjoy reading your posts as well. I do want to emphasize that I am a stats person, and I reference stats frequently in my posts. I just believe strongly that stats aren't the end-all of the discussion. Stats definitely are a part of the picture, however they aren't the whole of the picture. Don't stray for too long.

The problem I have with advanced stats is that some are not true math. Uzr and WAR are examples. Sure some amount of these stats involve math to make them look and feel objective, but they're not. FV, you just hit on one of if not the main issue I have with advanced stats. Those who know me know that I am a numbers, math, and statistics geek. Straight A's through college calculus, someone who uses algebra to center pictures on a wall. But some things just don't make sense. I tried getting into advanced baseball stats a few years ago. I remember going to Fangraphs website and looking at their value/WAR chart... and they had Nyjer Morgan (then with the Pirates) as having more value than Ryan Braun. Damn near fell out of my chair and never went to that website again. Someone made a good analogy with Yuni... yes, he's below average at the plate, you don't need to look any further than OBP to tell that. Likely he has below average range. But people bring out defensive stats - many of which such as UZR and others that have significant elements of subjectivity to them - to say that he "sucks". OK, how do you account for the fact that he has one of the strongest arms in baseball? Some of the throws I've seen him make just leave me in amazement. But that's not measured - it's what % of balls hit to him he gets to, blah, blah. How many more outs does his arm generate whereas an average arm wouldn't get the runner? The reality is that all defensive metrics have significant elements of subjectivity to them. Another example is McGehee. Yes, he's having a bad year at the plate. But over his first 1000+ career plate appearances - no small sample by any means - he demonstrated being a ~.800 OPS hitter. Why the dropoff this year? I don't think many folks remember, or even caught, that a poster earlier this year said he heard through the grapevine that McGehee was having marital problems. Add to that a child with a significant disability (IIRC cerebral paulsy), and those two things combined would distract anyone. Is his off year due to being a bad player, or because of distraction caused by major stress off the field? Why is Grienke so much worse on the road, when Wolf is fairly neutral and Marcum so much better on the road? The reality is that stats can tell us part of the equation, but can not tell us the entire equation. They can tell what happened in the past with precision, but for many reasons are not precise in predicting the future. The bigger point of Whitlock's article, which some have caught, is that sometimes when people offer non-statistical reasoning to explain things that the stats crowd jump down their throats with stats as the end-all of the discussion. And that does tend to happen around here from time to time.

While I and Whitlock agree that there is value in using stats to evaluate players, his point - which I agree strongly with - is that "it’s difficult to interpret baseball these days. The stat geeks won’t let you argue. They quote sabermetrics and end all discussion." I agree with Whitlock that there is more to the game than statistics, and that some stats people do ruin the discussion by acting as though the stats they reference are absolute: http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/sabermetrics-moneyball-stat-geeks-are-ruining-sports-092211