MJLiverock

Yes there were a couple guys who outplayed expectations but mostly they were part time players. The guys who badly underperformed were full time players. What full time players other than Hardy badly missed projections on offense? Corey Hart? Jason Kendall? Bill Hall? Sorry but I just wasn't surprised by their production one bit. Counsell, McGehee, and Lopez picked up the slack for the injured Weeks and the black hole that Bill Hall was. The offense was better than expected given Hardy's decline because of great years by guys like Lopez, McGehee, Braun, Fielder Counsell, even Cameron. I would think all of these guys met or exceeded expectations. So that leads me to one guy, Hardy, playinig below expectations, plenty of guys meeting or exceeding expectations, and two guys Hart and Kendall pretty much as advertised. I wouldn't have predicted ERA quite that high for Parra and Bush but the rotation as a whole, yes, I wasn't surprised they were bad. The Brewers weren't expected to be a big factor in winning the division or the playoff race by many many people so it wasn't really going out on a limb to think the team would end up around .500 last year. I think most of my own predictions were from anywhere from 78 to 83 wins. It wasn't really prescient, just not buying into guys who have struggled or have been inconcistent suddenly all having career years like Parra, Bush, Hart,Suppan, Looper. The loss of innings by Sabathia and Sheets was poo pooed by many of the posts where high 80 wins were expected. I cna go back and find the post where I layed out how difficult it would be to replace those 300+ innings of elite pitching. This is why I thought the Brewer staff would be bad, replacing 300 plus innings of elite pitching along with zero rotation depth leads to a huge drop in production. unless somone thought there would be zero starts missed for injury and everyone would have great years at once including two very young pitchers in Gallardo and Parra and two guys where the past performance is pretty consistently average when good and really bad when bad in Suppan and Looper. The only real big stretch of prediction was expecting dramatic improvement from guys and then acting like it was just bad luck or down years because the team only won 80 games. I would bet anyone not wearing Brewer colored glasses wasn't surprised by one bit by the team's record.

On the Netflix site it has a list of compatible Blu-Ray players. Here's the Sony model: Sony Network Blu-ray Disc player Model: BDP-N460 Experience Blu-ray Disc™ movies in Full HD 1080p quality with HD sound plus instantly stream entertainment from leading internet providers with the Sony® BDP-N460 Network Blu-ray Disc player. There's also a Samsung, LG, and Insignia model. Not sure if those are the only ones or not. They also stream on Internet Connected TVs from LG and Sony in addition to TiVo's HD DVR. Sony must be a new addition to the list as the previously Netflix didn't have an agreement in place with Sony when I bought my first Blu Ray. That was what annoyed me with the whole thing since Panasonic and Sony are much higher up the food chain in quality and cutting edge than the other brands. Samsung isn't bad, their company philosophy is to be a close follower to Sony and Panasonic, sort of let them come out with the new highest quality feature rich gadgets and then follow up shortly after as soon as prices come down a bit for the components and all the bugs are worked out. Insignia is pretty much a low end cheap device make and I would never own any LG consumer electronic device, way too many issues with their TVs and phones. My problem with almost any streaming is video quality and screen size. Watching MLB or football on my computer while a 60" LCD and a 42" Plasma are available just isn't going to cut it. I have run my computer to both and the video quality is usually poor but I haven't upgraded my laptop to HD output yet. Buffering and such is pretty annoying as well. My coworker watches MLB games on his work computer occasionally and even with our T1 line the video buffers fairly often. Until the pipe providers, (DSL, Cable, etc.) can provide enough bandwith consistently to avoid latency(i.e. skips and jumps) and buffering the market for streaminig will be hampered. As more and more people hop on the net to watch even an episode of something on Hulu or even YouTube clips the bandwith of the networks will be stressed even more which will ironically tick off more and more people as they try to use the streaming services. This latency and capacity is what is keeping true IPTV from rolling out everywhere. Think of it this way, when you search the web and say stop on a Brewerfan site and load a page you may sit there reading it for 30 seconds or more, meaning the network doesn't have to keep sending you bits of data, or if it loads a little slow it doesn't matter too much. But with video any disruption in that continous steam of data results in a skip or buffer. With static things like pages the network can fit your Brewerfan page data in between your neighbor's ESPN page data and another's CNN page but with video it doesn't work, the stream has to be a continous unbroken string of data. As more and more people are trying to pull those different continous streams through the pipe it starts getting clogged.

And within that season we had players like McGehee play very well out of nowhere, Felipe Lopez put up an over .400 OBP and something like an .850 OPS, which is as much or more than could have been expected from Weeks. Craig Counsell found a wellspring and playeed above anyone's expectations as well. It wasn't like there weren't upside surprises to disappoints like Hardy who was the only guy who really performed below expectations on offense. I wasn't really shocked by the rotations performance, going into the season I figured that as being below average so 80-82 was inline with many expecations.

The real problem cable will be hit with is the launching of 3D channels. It is early in the evolution but some of the upcoming World Cup matches and the 2010 MLB All Star game will be broadcast in 3D. DirecTV is planning on launching 3 3D channels in the next year now that their new satellite is up. The cable companies are currently hard pressed to find capacity for HD channels on their systems and as the 3D trend grows they will really be hard pressed to find capacity for that addition. They have been trying to get rid of all analog channels for at least 7 years (analog signals take up more capacity than HD in the cable world) and still can't get rid of all the analog channels. IIIR, any of the cable channels you watch without a box on the TV are probably in analog which they desperately need to drop if they want increased bandwith. Like any new technology 3D will be expensive at first for anyone wanting to buy the new 3D TV's that are coming out but that will drop if adoption takes off. The Netflix streaming would be nice but they need to expand their partnerships, I have a Sony Blu-Ray player and a Panasonic Blu-Ray player, neither of which stream Netflix despite being top of the line players. I have no interest in getting a PS3 or XBOX360 just for the streaming, I already have a Wii that barely gets played. I don't know about the HD streaming of Netflx but I won't bother to watch a movie that isn't in HD anymore.

I look at the Mariners as the winner mainly because he trade a horrid pitcher with a bad contract for a decent player with a bad attitude and contract. He at least has some upside with Bradley being a decent player, Silva was bad with no upside.

I know they will never do it in the Majors because it is to unconventional. I threw it out there mainly because it would just be a realization that Suppan isn't going to go deep in games with any consistency so why pretend? The bullpen isn't shorter if you do it, because Suppan would end up getting yanked an inning later after he gets in trouble so you still have to rely on the pen. I was trying to think of a way to keep both guys getting regular work, a set routine, and see who can be effective, maybe even a little better if they know they are only going 4 innings each. It may actually even save the pen instead of using Suppan for 4 2/3 brining stetter or someone to get one out, then bringing another guy for 6th, maybe 7th, 8th, 9th. Then having to do it all again the next day when Bush/Parra have another 5 inning start.

They could always just piggy back them. Tell Supan you start, you go all out for 4 innings, Narveson you come in a be prepared to go all out for 4 innings. I know major league teams don't like to do it but if Suppan rarely goes more than 5 and change innings why pretend he may go 7 or 8. Just take him out after 4 hopefully solid rather than wait. Narveson would be on a schedule so he shouldn't have any more arm fatigue or worries about stretching out pitching multiple innings every 5th day. The rest of the bullpen, especially middle relief would get a rest day as long as Narveson doesn't need an early exit and even if they just went with Suppan the middle relievers would still have to pick up 3 innings so this may give them a rest and save them for the Bush/Parra days if they go short.

My wife has the first Storm from last year and she likes it. The only thing I have heard about the Droid is there a number of different versions of the Google operating system and it has caused a lot of havoc regarding getting some of the downloaded apps to work properly in some cases crashinig the phone completely. There are probably some internet stories on the issue. It was something I read about in some industry reports. It had to do with the open architecture of the app building and people who build apps not building them for all the different versions of the operating system or keeping up with the tweaks to the system. If you don't download a lot of apps it probably doesn't matter.

I don't know about TWC's DVRs, the DirecTV HR20's have an eSATA input plug on the back so it literally is just a plug and play. The external hard drive becomes the only hard drive and the internal one isn't used, they don't both work. The cable companies typically don't have their boxes made with too much customization. I haven't checked out the newer TIVO branded boxes that work with most cable companies, they are pricey but are usually better than the cable DVR's. What is the capacity of that TWC DVR in terms of hard drive space? An hour of HD taking up that much space sounds like only 15-16 hours of space which is only about 100GB of space assuming MPEG4 encoding, if TWC is still using MPEG2 encoding that could be a 150-200GB hard drive. A 100GB hard drive is pretty small for a DVR.

Honus, I don't know which market you are in but PBS-HD is carried by DirecTV if Madison is your DMA otherwise yeah you have to use the antenna to get the OTA signal and run it through the HD DVR or your TV depending on which model of DVR you have. I have the older ones with the over the air capability to get all the OTAs and sub channels run through the DVR for guide data and all DVR functionality. The pricing stuff is hit or miss they don't call it CSR roulette for nothing. I ususally just jumped on deals even when I didn't need another box because I knew I could activate the box anytime I wanted in the future. The SD DVR sat in a box in my basement for nearly a year before I activated it in the workout room. The black out on ESPN are because of MLB rules not DirecTV or DishNetwork or Cable company policies. It really won't matter which service you have because the archaic rules are MLB's fault. If you really want increased hard drive space buy a 1 TB external hard drive that connects with eSATA, it is simply a plug in the back. I have two Seagate Free Agent's and they work pretty well, I know there are others out now as well. It is nice not worrying that 10 Desperate Houswives have built up on the DVR , all of last season's Lost, all of the last 2 seasons of Big Bang Theory and a pile of HGTV shows are sittiing there when I want to record a football game and a basketball game along with all the current new stuff. That pricing thing for HD is such a gimmick. How do people fall for advertising like this - Company A says you get these 75 channels in SD for $45/month or those same channels in SD plus the HD versions for an additional $10/month versus Company B saying here are 75 HD channels for $60 and see we don't charge extra for HD so we are cheaper. Not only is company A cheaper they give people the option for going even cheaper by just getting the SD channels. But I keep seeing the same ads claiming look they charge $10 extra for HD without pointing out the total cost is the same or less.

I have 3 HD DVR's and 1 SD DVR and have never spent a dime on activation fees. They almost always give you one for free in the beginning, I got a second one for free during some special offer for upgrades about 4 years ago. I got the third one for free when I moved and the offered it up for another 2 year commitment and the SD DVR's are pretty much always free. I have had two HD DVR's fail over the years as the hard drives wore out and both were replaced for a $19.99 Fed Ex shipping charge. The best part now is I have expanded hard drives on 2 of the units which is easily done with a eSATA plug in and the external hard drives are much better lasting and easy to replace without getting rid of the receiver. Of course each unit can now record and store over 150 hours of HD programming so I dont' have to mess around with the dinky small capacity of most internal hard drives. 50 hours of HD capacity doesn't last long if there are a couple of 3 1/2 games recorded during the week along with the season passes for 10-20 shows building up multiple espisodes or all the HGTV shows my wife records. What HD channels are missing from DirecTV? I know it comes down to preferences but I can't think of a single HD channel I don't get that I would want. I do know I love NFL Network in HD which Charter doesn't have even in SD. ESPNU is coming in HD in Q1 2010 but I never watch that channel now since it tends to be a bunch of 3rd rate games competing with much better games on other networks.

Maybe Jack Z has thought he hasn't been good at building a pitching staff through the draft but has been good at drafting bats so he trades for pitching now rather than wait until it is too late. Also interesting to see Wallace moved again. I thought the Cardinals did a good job in acquirng Holliday and now Wallace has been flipped yet again.

The HD fee is another cable gimmick to confuse people, it isn't like the cable companies give HD away for free. I personally pay a $10/month access fee for HD on top of my programming because I have an old package that isn't offered anymore. Basically I have a la carte for the HD/DVR/Locals/programming package. I pay each one as a seperate line item and it works out to $3/month cheaper than the bundled packages they now offer. I hadn't changed my programming in 6 years so I still get the old packaging. Most people sign up now and get a bundle of HD/DVR/and one of 3 or4 programming package (which include locals) choices depending on how many channels you want. Movie channels are an extra a la carte charge unless you take the Premier package which has everything excpet the PPV and adult channels nor the season sports packages like NFL Sunday Ticket or MLB Extra Innings. I use DSL for internet and my land line is basically free with my DSL package otherwise I would just drop it. I don't even have a long distance option connected with it. I get it it all comes down to preferences, some packages work out price wise better for others as well. For some the bundles offered by cable don't even compare price wise either with just a la carting all three, I know of 2 people who recently dropped Charter's bundle because it was cheaper to go DSL+DishNetwork for the channel package they wanted. I guess my original reason for posting was more about fighting that notion that satellite TV drops out everytime it rains or snows it is like my own personal crusade. We had one of those 9 foot diameter stainless steel dishes in our yard growing up and in the summers at about 3PM to 3:15PM nearly every day the signal would go out becasue of the angle of the sun on the dish or something like that. Those dishes were monstrous but as a kid out in the sticks we had every channel and sporting event imaginable. Nothing was scrambled or subscription based, I used to watch any baseball game I wanted or any NFL game on Sundays. I watched a lot of WWOR TV out of NY with Ralph Kiner and Tim McCarver doing the Mets games in the mid to late 80's which lead to my hatred of the Cubs and Cardinals.

Patrick I think you have to remember that a properly aligned dish does not lose its signal everytime it snows or rains. That is just cable company marketing. This snow storm caused me to lean out my bedroom window and clean the huge amount of wet snow that clung to my dish for the first time in 8 or 9 years of having a DirecTV dish. Up until this point I had never once cleaned off the dish. I happened to be home during the day and turned on the the TV and noticed the loss of signal otherwise it may have been there when I got home after the snow slid off the dish. Rain fade is so non existent for me in either location I have had a dish that it isn't worth mentioning in comparison to the number of times I lost cable when I had Charter due to equipment problems at the head end, squirrels, a car accident, ice, etc. The car accident outage was a favorite, lost cable for 2 days after a pile up on Mineral Point Road in Madison about 11 years ago hit some box the Charter used. I think the longest I have ever experienced signal loss with DirecTV was 10-15 minutes, which if I still wanted to watch TV I just hit a button and the DirecTV box reads the over the air signal for local channels and weather as a back up. I know it is a to each their own thing but I get annoyed when I hear how cable companies have conditioned people to think satellite dropw out everytime it snows or rains which is a gross overstatement if the dish is properly alligned. I lost my cable signal way more frequently and for longer periods (often hours or days) than anything with satellite. My boss loses her cable and internet whenever it rains because there is a problem with moisture in a box somewhere outside her home and Charter won't fix it. As far as hooking up multiple TV's - - the satellite signal runs over the existing cable in the house you don't need to rewire anything. The boxes can be moved easily which wouldn't take any more effort if you are already moving a TV around. The boxes cost about $5/month for extras, you only pay the DVR fee once so for my 4 DVRs in the house I pay the $6 DVR fee once no matter how many DVR's you have, and then 3x$5 (the first box doesn't get charged a fee) for the extra boxes or $21/month for 4 HD DVR boxes. I can't imagine how much more expensive 4 HD DVR's would be with Charter but last I knew it was at least 2x as much. I would also wonder if you are watching cable without a digital box are all channels available or is it limited to the analog signals which most cable companies will soon be getting rid of to free up bandwith.

Why would Gallardo be projected at only 145 innings in those CHONE numbers? Seems that if one is going to adjust Bush upward to account for injury last year why adjust Gallardo down when he is another year removed from injury and another year older on adding to his workload buildup.

Does anyone know if Wang is pitching back to his form of 2 years ago? If not I can't believe anyone would pay too much for him. He was downright terrible last year after coming back from his foot injury in June, 2008. Not Jeff Suppan bad, but little leaguer facing MLBer's bad. After that start in 2009 he bounced around for 2 more months before he had arm pain and went under the knife and isn't expected to pitch until a wide window of April or June. I'd say he is fairly big risk since when he comes back it will be 2 years since he was effective, he is coming of shoulder surgery, he has to regain the form/mechanics to get that sinker working. Without that good sink he is a pretty pedestrian pitcher with low velocity, low K's, and fairly hittable.

I woudn't say it is irrelevent. There is no use in going out and signing two $4MM a year pitchers and getting $4MM worth of production from each vs. paying $9MM and getting $8MM worth of production from 1 guy. This is again my problem with always trying to compare every dollar spent with a linear production line. To get that next level of production it sometiems costs a little more. I don't know if Wolf will be as good as last year but I would bet that Wolf is better than Looper or Wolf plus someone like Narveson can match or beat the production of 2 Loopers. Production/dollar doesn't necessarily equate to good prodcution and looking at the state of the Brewers rotation and what was vailable in the free agent pool Wolf was about their best bet. Harden may have been another choice but his 1 year at $7.5MM plus a club option of $11.5MM is $19MM for two or pretty similar to Wolf's contract with probably more injury risk and therefore less certainty he will be there to pitch. They mitigated it a bit with the club option for year 2 but if he was signed and hurt the team is right back to needing a pitcher in year 2. The team can't go out and signe the dregs of the league because they are cheap or their low pay matches their low production and expect to improve from one of the worst staffs in the league. I don't believe production/dollar is a linear function. There are steps up in that pay for the next level of talent. I'm not saying that Wolf if elite but sometimes I see posts that imply this is a linear relationship and I believe that the truley elite and above average guys will get paid more than just straight lining their lesser counterparts production would imply. There are lots of guys who are average or below average, there are few who are elite or above average so they get paid more just be simply lower supply. Wolf is probably above average, so even if his production is only for example 1.5x better than a Looper he may get paid 2x as much because there are lots of guys who can pitch like Looper.

How come the Brewers never seem to be involved in trades of young talented pitchers and multiple teams to make it work? It seems we always hear how no one wants to trade young pitchers with upside or how difficult it is to involve other teams but every offseason 1 or 2 of these go down. I just wish the Brewer could be involved in one, it doesnt' even have to be a fleecing like the Tigers put on AZ.

My wife and I were just commenting on how much this show has improved from the first season by integrating the other cast members beyond Amy Poehler. I liked the shots where the back of Ron's head was visible and the hair was just starting to grow back. They never mentioned the incident but that subtle reminder was there, very Arrested Development like working in a joke that way. Ron and Andy are starting to become favorites of miine. The Office may have "jumped the shark" this season with making Jim co manager. It just seems they are trying to hard to play up the Jim and Pam story now if they start showing their life outside of work which I fear is the next step it will just make it another lame romantic comedy couples comedy.

They give guns to those guys!? On a similar note a friend and I were hauling a load of landscape timbers out from the west side Madison store a few years ago and the guard got downright nasty because the guy at the counter inside gave us the wrong slip and we just handed it to the guard not even really noticing it was the wrong one. The guy ordered us out of the truck and wanted to search the vechicle and threatened to call the police. We may have had all of $40 worth of materials in the back of the truck and this guy was acting like it was Ft. Knox heist instead of just calling inside to the service counter for the correct slip.

If Marques' post is true does anyone know if the Brewers or Macha have some sort of genetic disorder that leads them to believe aging mediocre catchers must catch 130+ games?

Maybe not in retrospect but even if they are overpaying a guy like Polanco by a few million bucks for a year or two it is probably worth it if they needed someone to play third base during their run who wasn't going to be a horrible black hole or big risk of an unproven youngster called up. I think my point is that sometime overpaying for a guy is acceptable and should occur if it fills a hole on an already very good team. Maybe the team could get a better $'s/production ratio out of some other guy but it probably isn't worth trying to save $2MM/year over.

Tigerbrew's list reminded me about Kingdom of Heaven. I really like that movie as well. I also saw 300 which I know a lot of people really liked but it was another one that just never really hooked me. I watched it, thought some of the scenes were cool but just never got into it. I liked Troy even more than 300. The Da Vinci code reminds me of a question for anyone who liked the movie or books. Was the whole concept Dan Brown wrote about totally new to you or had you heard these theories before? I ask because years ago co worker recommended the book to me as the most mind blowing book I would read. I thought it was good, he makes a good story out of it but she was shocked when I told her I had heard his base theory before and had read other books that layed out a similar case. She thought Dan Brown came up with the whole Mary Magdallen thing on his own. To me the book just fell into the that sort of Clive Cussler, James Rollins genre of action adventure set against a plausible yet fanciful historic or scientific backdrop. Which I like but I just wasn't blow away by the concept.

But if they make the World Series 1 or 2 times in that time would it really matter if one or two of the years didn't work out to him being a bargain or worth the contract? I don't agree at all that every transaction has be an even money deal on a stand alone basis. Sometimes a team should overpay to get the last piece or few pieces for a championship run. Getting Cliff Lee for basically two playoff runs was a great deal for the Phillies, it doesn't matter if 5 years from now one of the guys they gave up turns out to be a great player. The Brewers tradinig for CC was a perfect example. They took the risk of paying a player a lot of money, gave up some prospects, but in turn finally made the playoffs after a 26 year drought and at least a shot at the World Series. A team can't continually sit back and try to only sign guys or make trades that appear so low risk or zero chance of downside that they end up with a bunch of average players. That line of thinking will just end up with an average team. Being average is better than being horrible but after a while the fan base will get bored and move on. Year after year of finishing in 3rd place isn't exciting even if the payroll spent per win is good. Having the most efficient payroll every year doesn't win a lot of fans or trophies, winning games does. I think that is some of the rub we are seeing on the boards here in other threads regarding Melvin. There is some criticism of the lack of creativity in the front office. Everyone realizes the Brewers won't have the resources to match the payroll of the bigger market teams so the only way to compensate is through shrewd moves, some of which will result in taking a higher risk for a higher payoff. Some will blow up but doing nothing or being paralyzed by fear of a mistake won't result in much better returns either, maybe not end up a terrible team but likely not being great either. Striving for middle of the road is not an acceptable goal for me.

A number of those listed are good movies but my top 10 has to include movies that I would watch mulitple times. I think this is the only way I can narrow down a big field. It eliminates some very good movies like No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, The Wrestler to name a few I struggled with on the list but eliminate on the grounds that even when on the DVR I still don't feel like watching them again but I did like them. Most on my list are here because they represent the best of a certain genre or classification of film I liked. In many cases other movies may have followed or lead the way but I liked these the best. 1. LOTR Trilogy - - I loved these books as a kid and have read them many times since grade school. They said the movies could never be done and yet Peter Jackson was given the money, freedom, and time to do them right. 2. Royal Tenenbaums - - great cast and eclectic story that launched Wes Anderson's unique movies into the mainstream. 3. Dark Knight - - I like the super hero movies from Spider Man to X-Men but this one took it all to a whole new level. 4. Snatch - - Guy Ritchies' best and along with 1999's Fight Club (also a favorite) made me actually like Brad Pitt. 5. Oh Brother Where Art Thou - - favorite Cohen brothers film... I end up watching it whenever I run across it on TV. 6. Syrianna - - best of the George Clooney Section Eight Films (although I will admit not having seen Good Night Good Luck yet) I am an economist and history buff so this fell right in my wheel house. I had to watch it 2x just to really take it all in. 7. Slumdog Millionaire - - All around great story and film making withoout being pretentious or slow like so many Best Picture movies. 8. Gangs of New York - - favorite Leo/Scorsese movie even over the Departed 9. Juno - - fantastic characters and well acted storyline. Picked it over Little Miss Sunshine, Napolean Dynamite, Memento, Donnie Darko in that cheaper independent area. 10. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy - - tough call over the 40 Year Old Virgin in the comedic world of Judd Apatow but the movie is like Caddyshack to me. So many great lines and wardrobe and Wil Ferrell's best. A few other movies I really liked but didn't make the list - - Pirates of the Carribean, Blow, Matrix Reloaded, Borat, Almost Famous and Big Fish. I looked over the AVN list and was pleasantly reminded of New World, which I watched once and was taken with the great ability to convey the story without a lot of spoken dialogue. I have seen most of the movies on the list and there were a few that made it that I absolutely hated or thought were so vastly overhyped they just didn't seem good. History of Violence was slow and really not interesting, watched it with another couple and everyone hated it. Kill Bill - - just never hooked me Man Who Wasn't There -- pretentiousness and boring at its best Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind makes a lot of lists I see and I remember I liked it the first time but I thought it was very slow and depressing. My wife loves it but I always seem to fall asleep when I try to watch it again.