MJLiverock

These are my regular 9 pack seats but I can't make it today. Great view overlooking 1st Base. Face value is $36/each, looking for $40 total for pair. Tickets can be picked up at my office on the east side of Madison, right off interstate and 151, anytime before 5 PM.

I just went back and read Braun's comments regarding making a move and noticed again he said, (paraphrashing) "they pitched better than we did and swung the bats better than we did." So its not like he placed the blame only on the pitchers and he mentioned making the team better as a whole not just the pitching staff or just the offense. I just don't get why undies get all bunched up over these comments, especially since the comments on here make it seem like he called out individual pitchers and praised the offense. The way people defend the pitching staff you would think their dad played for them and the pitchers psyche is that of a fragile china doll.

I just wanted to stop in this thread again and say I have changed my opinion on Gamel's playing time. At first, I thought he played enough, I did the math and he was getting about 2/3rds of regular playing time even with facing a number of LH pitchers. Lately, meaning the last 10 days or so, he is just sitting even vs. RH's in favor of Counsell playing 2B with McGehee at third. McGehee has been amazing thus far, but Counsell will wear down and is starting to see the numbers drift back down. If Gamel is going to buried as a 2nd LH PH option on the bench I would rather he play everyday in AAA.

No problem at all with his comments. 1. He was asked a question and answered it honestly. 2. Players make comments all the time in all sports about improving the team thru trades or the draft. These guys are professionals, no ones feelings are hurt, no one is crying themselves to sleep in their giant pillow tonight. 3. These comments are probably making more noise on this website than in the locker room. These guys are competitive people, I've played on plenty of teams, good and bad, and there are always coments about improving areas or bringing in the back ups. It is a fact of playing competitive sports.

I think this the point of the argument, how do you know he was overworked? He threw 114 pitches, yes it was over the arbitrary number of 100 but you, I, or some study full of holes has no proof whatsoever that he was overworked or perfectly fine. You've made the declaration that he was indeed overworked but we have zero proof of that being true other than opionion and conjecture based on a flawed study that can't possibly account for all the variables that go into pitching injuries or arm fatigue. The manager, pitching coach, and player seemed to think he could do it.

I also failed to question the type of pitches thrown is the pitcher a curveball guy, splitter, or just a fastball/changeup guy. How many curveballs/sliders in the game? How many breaking pitches on pitch #120+, etc. Imagine thowing 50 screwballs vs. 100 fastball/changeups. I know its extreme but the type of pitch also has an effect on your shoulder and elbow especially.

Anytime I see a study like that where the designer set out with a preconcieved notion and tries to prove it like anything over 100 pitches causes abuse I tend to question the results. Correlation is not cause and effect and I think many of these "studies" tend to lose sight of that fact. For instance, does the study have any mention of that fact that by the time a pitcher is an older pitcher he may have already demonstrated an ability not to get hurt. Just to stay in the bigs until you are old you have to avoid career threatening injuries and the opposite is true, young pitcher may get hurt but they may have gotten hurt throwing 90 pitches every game, we dont' see their results as they get older because they get elminated a la Prior. The study seems to assume that these players wouldn't have gotten injured had their pitch counts been lower. There is most likely some selection bias in the study. The article mentions Isringhausen as abused as a young player, he has manged to have a long career but has been injury plagued for much of it. Is it due to abuse or is he injury prone? His arthritic hip leads me to believe he probably has some imperfect genes and may well just be an injury prone player. I can buy into a guy throwing a large number of pitches having a weaker outing the next time on the hill but does the study adjust for strength of the team faced in each game or the weather, or just the randomness of a pitcher's performance on a given night? What about pitching being an inherently injury prone position? Or the propensity now where guys may go on the DL with a twinge that may have been ignored in past years until the pain was unbearable or the pitcher was ineffective. This doesn't even touch on varied mechanics of guys which has always been mentioned as one of Kerry Woods' problems. If it was only pitch counts that matter why do relievers have arm trouble? Dave Riske's elbow is shot yet he never approached 100 pitches in an outing. The article insuates that days off don't matter as much and it just going over the magic round number of 100. It doesn't mean Gallardo should throw 130 pitches every start but I tend to agree this 100 pitch number is just a convienient round number that really doesn't mean a whole lot. There are so many other factors that play into a pitcher's health beyond a multiple of 10 pitches. Does anyone count the pitches from the bullpen sessions on off days as well?

I am going to contradict a few of the earlier posts here and make a correction on one statement. Quote: "As an inexperienced investor I would not recommend on buying individual stock but going for something like a Roth IRA instead. " A Roth IRA is a type of account not an investment choice like a stock, mutual fund, etf, or bond. You can buy these investments within a Roth IRA. Utilizing a Roth IRA is subject to tax considerations and the like which differ greatly for everyone. It also depends on what your goals are for the money because if you use a Roth IRA or traditional IRA as the account type you may not be able to take the money out until you are 59 1/2. The deductiblity of the regular IRA contributions may be limited if you are covered under an employer plan like a 401k, 403b, or pension account as well (usually depends on what your income is). You may be better off just opening a regular taxable investment account depending on your plans, income level, and tax situation. Quote: "I'd look at what mutual funds have done the best, pick 3-4" One of the most common mistakes inexperienced investors make is buying a bunch of mutual funds and thinking they are diversified. Look at what the investment objectives for each fund are and make sure they are truly different, i.e. Large cap vs. Mid cap vs. small cap. Also take a look at the top ten holdiings for each fund - - quite often the funds end up owning the exact same thing, i.e. you can look at the funds and see XOM, MSFT, CSCO, PG, WMT, etc. as the the top holdings because they are big companies and the mutual fund is basically just tracking an index like the S&P 500. I have seen many a portfolio that holds 10 different mutual funds but all 10 hold pretty much the same stocks and perform almost exactly the same. Funds in the same investment family quite often own many of the exact same stocks regardless of the stated fund objective because the firm has already done the research on the companies in question. Very large mutual funds often just don't want to make a huge mistake like drastically underperforming the market which causes people to switch funds so they basically mimic the benchmark or index they compare to like the S&P 500 or Russell 1000 (large caps) or Russell 2000 (for small caps). Take a look at the fees, which can differ greatly among funds and look at the portfolio manager's tenure. He or she may have just taken over for someone who generated the great historical performance. Or the fund may have been really small, made some great investments, had good numbers, gathered a lot of assets, and now is just going to play it safe by copying an index. Picking the best performing 3 or 4 may just result in someone taking higher risk than they are comfortable with or buying a segment of the market at the top. A year ago all the best performing funds were in emerging markets, energy, and mortgage backed securities. Wanna guess which areas of the market got hammered from Sept. to Dec.? Here are two different tables showing some of the different asset class returns over the last 20 years. http://www.callan.com/research/institute/download/?file=periodic/free/311.pdf http://www.russell.com/indexes/documents/CorePerformance.pdf What this illustrates is owning a bunch of mutual funds or etfs in just one type of asset class probably won't be diversified and unless you can time switching right you are going to have some bad years if you pick whatever did well last year because things on the top don't stay on top. I would check out ishares.com and look at some of the etf information there rather than go the mutual fund route. I agree that as others have said buying individual stocks is pretty risky for most investors (I will admit here that I am a professional investor and stock analyst - - not a broker those are sales people not analysts). ETF's offer the diversification of a mutual fund with lower fees and more transparency of the actual holdings. You can buy an ETF that holds a basket of stocks exactly like the S&P 500, or Russell 1000, or Russell 2000, or China's Major index (FXI), or what have you. You can even buy baskets of government bonds with long, short, medium maturies, corporates, etc. This will give you a great deal more control over your holdings and diversification and risk. They are now even designing ETF that hold mixes of other ETF's to set up a virtual portfolio based on higher or lower risk by changing the weighting of stocks, bonds, international holdings, etc.

It's been 8 whole games since DH games stopped. Three of which were started by LHers (Liriano, Zito and Santana). Gamel started 2 games. He didn't play against RH Baker on Thursday and Gerut was the only PH used. He didn't play against Cain on Friday, probably wanted Counsell in the lineup vs. Cain figuring they needed D assuming a low scoring game and McGehee's hotness. No pinch hitters were used. Zito started Saturday, Gamel came in to PH. Sunday Gamel started at 3B. Monday, vs. Nieves is probably the one game I question his playing time, a RH pitcher, not an ace on the mound, but Gamel did PH. Last night was Santana. He is getting his shots and they may increase as he proves to the coaching staff he can handle the defense and the team faces more RH pitching.

Milledge really isn't doing much in AAA this year and given his attitude problems I wouldn't want to put a whole lot of faith in anything changing. He just seems like one of those guys who supposedly has all the tools and can never put it together- - possibly because he can't just get by on pure athletic talent alone anymore and needs to work a little harder which seems to go back to his attitude again. With McCutchen on the Pirates in CF, Morgan's bat just doesn't support playiing in a corner spot, relegating him to the bench or being a pretty weak corner guy so not a huge risk giving him up if they can somehow get through to Milledge to work hard, run hard, and realize he isn't a superstar yet.

Gamel is getting 2/3rds of the AB's of an everyday player, its not like he never plays. That is a pretty good amount for a rookie just called up, especially when he has questions about his defense. The coaches are probably working on his defense just as much as he would get in the minors. About 25% of his plate appearances since he was called up have been as a DH, I doubt it has stunted his growth at all to have 25 or so PA's and not play defense in a game. The interleague days are over and Hall continues to be terrible so Gamel's chances are only going to go up for playing time. I agree, Macha is taking a prove it mode with his defense and I see nothing wrong with that approach, the team still needs to win games. As Macha and the other coaches see Gamel's progress in infield practice they may well become more comfortable with him in late situations, giving him more playing time. But again he has been getting AB's, its not like he is buried on the bench like Gerut.

I guess I dont' see what the fuss is about. Looking at the last month of games Gamel has been getting a fair amount of playing time in comparison with the other infielders. Just looking at a simple plate appearance total of ABs + BBs (I use BA instead of OBP because my fantasy league has that setting for one month stats along with OPS) Hardy 109 PA's .222 AvG. .621 OPS Counsell 86 PA's .260 AVG. .785 OPS McGehee 80 PA's .389 AVG. 1.158 OPS Gamel 74 PA's .266 AVG. .747 OPS Hall 47 PA's .159 AVG. .441 OPS McGehee has been on fire, making it difficult to sit him and Counsell has been getting the nod at 2nd base but Gamel has still gotten 68% of the plate appearance of Hardy who plays everyday. I would expect Gamel to hold or even increase a little as Counsell may get some time off setting up McGehee at 2nd and Gamel at third a bit more often. As good as Counsell has been this year and for all the criticism Gamel has taken from some quarters, Gamel has pretty much matched his production over the last month. Bill Hall has continued drifting into oblivion except versus LH pitchers and late in game for defense or double switches.

Well I don't want to pretend to know too much about Perez but it just seemed that the Cards fans I know and have read weren't too upset to see him go, especially for an everyday RH player. I dont' know much about those other prospects except the brief stat lines. The two pitchers appear to be relievers in AAA. The OF was only mentioned in a message board posting and has pretty pedestrian numbers at AA but had some success at the lower levels. Looks like the Indians are trying to address the woeful bullpen we all saw in the Brewers series.

No kidding, would it kill the team to have Gerut get a start vs. a RH pitcher for Hart or Cameron once a week for each of them? It would even give the team a RH pinch hitter off the bench besides Rivera for late in the game.

From what I have read, Perez has been pretty wild and LaRussa has been reluctant to use him in any higher leverage situations lately. He was supposed to be the closer at one point this year but lost that job. Long run he may find his control but the Cards needed a RH bat moresoe than an erratic hard throwing RH pitcher in the pen. So far I have been able to find 3 names mentioned as being on the list for the Indians to choose from, all three were listed on a Cardinals board with 2 of those appearing in an acticle on Foxsports.com citing informed sources. John Jay - - only mentioned on message board Francisco Samuel mentioned both places Jess Todd mentioned both places I

Agree completely Ender. The asking price for any SP that is going to make a difference for this team is going to be high. There just aren't many of those guys available and there a number of teams that could use one. Now with Jeffress suspension the Brewers just lost a trade chip as well. The team may well be better off just taking their lumps this year and getting a better deal in the offseason rather than paying a lot for mediocrity that may still not be enough. Almost any trade for pitching is going to require or desire cheap pitching in return, something the Brewers just don't have available.

It isn't really about if the Brewers already have McGehee, the Brewers need starting pitching. The Cardinals already have a better starting staff, they needed offense, and RH hitting offense at that. Their LH heavy lineup has been killed by LH pitching this year according to some Cards fans I hang out with. I haven't looked it up but getting a RH bat makes sense for them. Schumaker is also mentioned as being a complete hack at second base, I haven't watched enough Cards games to form an opinion on his play however. LaRussa could easily just fit DeRosa in wherever depending on the opposing pitcher and who is going to play OF that day. Is it doom for the Brewers? No, but it makes the Cards better and as I said in the trade rumors forum, there is no guarantee the Brewers players will heat up and all the guys on the Cubs and Cardinals will stay cold. I figured the Cards would make a deal for a hitter, there is a lot of noise in STL about not wasting Pujols' prime years and the team is right there in the division. And I remember the threads on here last year where some claimed Ludwick was as good as Braun. I would be surprised if Wallace is the PTBNL, but I know they have a catcher who is supposedly highly thought of and given LaRussa's love affair with Molina there probably isn't a lot of room for him in STL.

I agree somewhat with JB. Not every post has to be sunshine and rainbows about the Brewers. His view seems more realistic than some of the assumptions that everything will fall perfectly into place for the Brewers. Why should it be expected that Hardy and Hart are going to suddenly get red hot and guys like Mcgehee and Counsell will keep it up but Ludwick, Ankiel, Pujols, Soriano, D Lee, Soto, Bradley, a return of A Ram, will all keep stay cold. STL was rumored as much for Peavy as Milwaukee and they could trade for upgrades as well. Every post doesn't have to come to the conclusion that Hardy is going to end up at .270 with 20 HRs or that Hart hasn't been pretty mediocre or worse from nearly a year now. For the Brewers to succeed this season their pitching staff had to have a lot of things work out perfectly. Parra had to throw 180+ effective innings, Gallardo had to rebound from injury and play his first full ML season and pitch 180+ innings, Bush had to find consistency, Soup and Loop had to be average. Well Parra stunk and got shipped down, it doesn't really matter how or why, he didn't get the job done. Bush is on the DL and threw a few poor outgings before either admitting he was hurt or the Brewers didn't diagnose it properly, or he was just bad for those outings. Soup and Loop can't get past the 5th or 6th inning. The bullpen has been fantastic but I fear the innings they are going to have to eat are going to catch up to them. I have stated this many times but the innings needed to be replaced due to the loss of Sheets and Sabathia are going to be a problem, the staff just doesn't have guys that can throw 200 innings or be on a pace for that many by throwing 7 innings a game. Adding another quality starting pitcher is going to be expensive if possible at all. Tradeable guys got hurt and a lot of teams are looking so the bidding will favor the sellers. Is it worth it for the Brewers to overpay for a starter who may not be enough to matter anyway. I don't think guys like Washburn are going to put the team over the top unless he stays red hot for his skillset. Guys like Lilly/Dempster? I don't which guys available are of that caliber but either of them would easily be the 2nd best pitcher on the Brewer staff and would rival Gallardo for best for this season given my belief he will wear down. The Cardinals are expected to get Lohse back soon and he is better than anyone on the Brewer staff right now outside of Gallardo. Coupled with Carpenter and Wainwright makes their staff much better than the Brewers. Piniero is probably equal to Suppan, maybe a little better given Duncan's propensity to get the most out of guys. Wellenmeyer is terrible but as a 5th starter who isn't.

The hard part for hard core statisticians to accept clutch results is going to be arriving at the 1000's of points of data for each player in a "clutch" situation. Results that show clutchiness may be dismissed as small samples, espcially for individual players.

I think we can all see that smoking pot leads to gold medals and ROY awards or vice versa.

Best comment of the day, always defer to the judgement of engineers when dealing with anything...This one made me chuckle a little because I just got back from a two day course on oil and gas exploration taught by an engineer and he said never trust and engineer if the outcome involves risk, (i.e. uncertain outcomes) because they are too risk averse to make the correct decision.

The problem the Brewers have isn't that there is a whole list of pitchers who have been worse than Bush, Looper and Parra over the last 30 days, there is always going to be that list, the problem is all three were in the same rotation. They also weren't hurt by just one bad game during the stretch but by being consistenty bad with an occasional decent 3 run 6 inning effort.

My biggest concern with the rotation at the beginning of the year was the innings. Losing Sheets and Sabathia who were guys that could throw more than 6 innings was going to put the bullpen in a tough spot as the year wore on. I still hold that concern. As the season keeps going and the bullpen is relied on to throw 3+ innings 5-6x a week they will wear down, coupled with a possiblity of Gallardo weakening as the innings pile up the team is going to need to figure something out just to cover the innings. Suppan, Looper, and #5, just don't give over 6 innings, Gallardo can occasionally do it but I think he won't much in the second half. By the end of the season the Brewers may have to look at piggy back starters just to cover the innings.

To play Devil's Advocate on the Nellis comments, how does anyone know his comment was idiotic? Parra has stunk enough to get shipped back down. We all want him to succeed, the Brewers need him to succeed but there is no guarantee he ever will. If Parra never realizes his potential does that make everyone who claimed he was a future #2 type pitcher an idiot? It does seem pretty arrogant to claim anyone who doesn't buy into the future stardom of every player as an idiot, especially given the flame out rate for hyped up guys out of the minor leagues who never live up to their minor league stats.

I despised the Perculator song in college and had completely forgot about it until now. Out of some of the other hated songs, I actually don't mind Hollaback Girl, I take that over anything by Coldplay or DeathCab anyday. Old Metallica (pre Black Album) is great, they have slid further and further with each subsequent release. Rock Star doesn't bother me, I actually kinda like the lyrics, but Nickleback has always reminded me of the GooGoo Dolls for whatever reason and I hated them. My Humps, yep, hated that one and Umbrella was always pure hatred for me. I can't understand the awards and a grammy, well given Jethro Tull's win for best heavy metal over Metallica's And Justic For All maybe I can. My worst song ever -- Cotton Eyed Joe. I told our wedding DJ if I heard that song he would be fired immediately, he laughed and said that he had been threatend for that song before so he completely understood.