MJLiverock

With the time wasted in baseball games singing, sausage races, and manager's arguing calls I think getting the calls right is worth it. I realize people like the sausage race but honestly after seeing it 100x I just use the time to hit the restroom or hit the concessions, same with roll out the barrel, America the Beautiful, etc. They can easily have an ump in the booth who can buzz down to the home plate ump with the correction. We all see it on TV in seconds. There is no need for the ump on the field to view the play or even leave the home plate area. The reduction in manager strolls out to half hearted argue or throw full blown tantrums will save time.

That's the spirit! A show of humility!

The original post called it the stupidest lineup ever when Segura was still in the 2 spot before getting scratched. Does it really matter if Lucroy is off tonight or tomorrow? Either way he was going to get a day off. The lineup wasn't further weakened until just before game time with Segura out so you expect RR to switch catchers right before game time? Furthermore sitting Lucroy tonight and playing the weaker hitter vs the rookie and saving Locroy for the Kershaw match up tomorrow when runs will be at a premium makes perfect sense. I know you didn't say he should never sit but there was plenty of the circular argument last season by a few who criticize every move by RR as terrible, or stupid, or costing the game. I swear there are some people who think this team would be 162-0 if it weren't for RR.

He's gotta get a day off now and then, or we get the whole series of complaints of the past that RR plays him too much and at the same time RR is an idiot everytime he doesn't play.

So who hits second and fourth? Gonzalez? Maldonado? There is only so much that can be done with the plethora of sub 240 hitters on the team. Based on the guys available and how they've been playing this lineup is about as good as it gets.

Agree. Including the one in the playoffs with Mark Kotsay starting in CF. Oooo, maybe only the second stupidest. That game was way more important. And I call these posts the height of hyperbole and hysterical theatrics. What totally awesome lineup with current roster blows this so obviously out the water?

Dhonks, if you like the stock app, try the seekingalpha app, great for news flow, the market currents section provides up to the minute key news items like earnings releases, analyst moves/comments, and news that is moving stocks. The website is pretty good as well, the app is just a version for the iphone with the same info. You can build your list of stocks to track the news on and/or look at the news flow for the entire market that is moving stocks. The Market Currents section blows away Yahoo finance, or any other news service I have seen for providing relevant, current news and not just articles on junk sites like Motley fool or old info like Forbes or Barons.

I love the NFL draft. I used to skip school as a kid to watch it. I DVR the draft now so I can skip the interviews and some of the commentary but love watching the film breakdowns and discussion about team needs and expectations for players. I tend to remember a lot about the draft day discussions and enjoy seeing the guys play or fail in the NFL. I prefer the NFL Network coverage to ESPN as they seem less bombastic and less overhyping of favorite college teams/players, plus Mayock blows Kiper and McShay away in my view. Gotta agree with you on the NBA, although I did watch a lot of the finals last year because I thought the match up was good and they both would actually be trying all the time for the whole series, unlike 80% of the regular season where teams seem to sleepwalk.

I hadn't really even noticed them or given it much thought until seeing some half hearted complaints on here. Just seems like usual filler for the bump to and from commercials or wherever they place them in the broadcast. It's not like they have bikini clad lingerie models breathlessly asking viewers to watch the Brewers. Pretty innocuous stuff in my mind. If it wasn't them it would Craig Coshun or Davey Nelson or a dancing robot, filling that 10 second spot.

Check out the hops on this 14 year old basketball phenom. Callipari must be salivating at trying to get him on campus for a year.

I'd add that it isn't like Lucroy is Prince behind Braun. I doubt pitchers are too worried about that .237 avg and .281 OBP Lucroy is sporting. For as much grief as Weeks gets it isn't like Lucroy is setting the world on fire and just screams,"get him to the top of the order." As of right now weeks OBP actually higher than Lucroy at .284 to .281 on the ESPN game stats.

I agree with Oxy that Miller Lite or Chevy (national brands) really don't care where in the state you live and will pay based on the total number of sets and as Baldkin says there must be some regionalization of the content but a 30 sec spot targeting the Eau Claire market probably doesn't cost as much as a 30 sec spot targeting the Milwaukee market. I fast forward on the DVR through most commercials and watch the games after my kids go to bed so I rarely notice which commercials are on anyway. I do notice a lot Piggly Wiggly and Time Warner stuff, which are pretty useless to the Madison market since Charter is the cable provider there (aside for the usually satellite and telco offerings) and the only Piggly Wiggly's around are in small towns.

The 2 biggest drivers of TV contract revs are number of potential viewers and number of actual viewers. ( Advertisers pay for number of impressions, not necessarily the cost of living in a city, NY cost a lot to advertise because there are a ton of people and hence ton of impressions per ad, typically broken down by cost per impression) The report I reference doesn't give the details on every team, it was written as an investment report on the cable companies and how much the sports contracts are costing and how they may or may not be profitable to the cable companies. The resets in prices, i.e. money paid for the team broadcasting rights are being negotiated fully aware of how many people and what advertising costs are. As I said I had the raw whole numbers for some teams not the number of subs, but just in looking at the MSA for Milwaukee vs. San Diego the difference in population is 1.9MM vs. 3MM according the 2010 census, are about 1 MM total, 50% bigger than Milwaukee. Adding in the rest of the state of WI won't change the rankings, (they may already be including the TV Market rank, it doesn't define each one) once the other cities have their surrounding areas added in as well. KC was 31, has a MSA of just over 2MM, Milwaukee was a bit smaller at 1.9, but San Diego is 50% bigger at 28. You can add in the whole state of WI and only get to 5.7MM. The problem with that is it doesn't do a Milwaukee company anything to advertise to the whole state, only the Milwaukee market matters to them. So by having a disbursed audience the rates go down as the channel offers a local spot or two to the Eau Claire market or Madison market. Having half your potential audience not even in the market for the ad makes it worth a lot less than knowing 3MM viewers are in the San Diego market. The caveat that matters as well is the Padres own 20% of their RSN, the Brewers own zero. Also to consider is not just the population of the area but the number of subscribers to the channel. If the RSN is on a special tier that cable/sat/telco viewers can avoid, is the RSN available over the air, how many games are on the channel. The big money driver for the RSN is sub fee paid by the cable/satellite/telcos that carry the channel. In the case of Prime Ticket which just lost the Dodger deal, it is estimated that only 15% of their revs came from advertising and that is in the L.A. market. Most money was made by the $2.30month they get for each of the 6MM subs. (note subscribers, i.e. billable accounts not people). In any rate the problem the Brewers have and will likely always have is just pure demographics. There just aren't enough people in Milwaukee and by further extent WI to come close to generating the dollars needed to be on equal footing with the rest of the teams. Milwaukee will always be in the bottom 10% for TV money.

A recent research report on the cable companies and cost of sports listed Seattle at the 12th largest TV market. Milwaukee was ranked 34th and the smallest in baseball. Cincinnati actually ranked 35th but the author acknowledges that doesn't include Dayton, Cleveland, Columbus which have some following for the Reds and push them over Milwaukee. The next closest to being as small as the Brewers are the Royals at 31 and the Padres at 28, Orioles at 27 (but they share D.C. which is #8) and the Pirates at 23. The Brewers only received a reported $20 million per season for their new TV deal at #34 while the Padres at #28 got $60 million. I don't have the exact breakdown on the numbers of subs covered and the like but that seems like a big discount for the Brewers vs. the Padres. The difference being the Padres own 20% of their new RSN labeled Fox Sports SD versus nothing of the prior RSN Cox Channel 4.

The pitchers for the losing team hit 11 guys with a pitch. Sounds like just standing in the box to take a swing and miss would be an adventure. I can't fault the winning team it sounds like they tried to get the game stopped or offered to make outs but the ump and losing team kept going. Clearly the losing team has no business playing the other team and maybe shouldn't do much more than scrimmage themselves if they are truly this bad. I never really fall for the blame the victors approach unless it is pretty egregious running up the score like leaving the best players in and throwing bombs going for it on 4th down stuff in football. I lost in a softball tourney subbing for a team once 40-5 in 3 innings, it was a drubbing but I survived it, sometimes you just have to admit a team is way better than yours, but it doesn't cause some long lasting harm. A sure causes less harm than swinging at a pitch that hits you just to take a strike from an awful pitcher. I'd be more mad at my kid getting drilled just to saving little Timmy's ego on the other team. Whether a team steps on the plate to take the outs or swings to take outs, the losing team knows they got trucked and are horrible in comparison so no one's feelings are really being protected. There are soccer leagues that don't keep score but the kids still know who won, who is good, who is terrible, etc.

I haven't seen anyone rationalizing it away or saying there was nothing wrong with drunk driving. I see pointing out differences in opinion on whether anyone who gets drunk needs to go to rehab, if 20 somethings should ever get drunk, if anyone should ever get drunk, if people handle alcohol differently but I have yet to see a post where anyone says he didn't do anything wrong. I think some people just don't take to the moralizing and soap box of others, from both sides of the do as I say not as you say arguments.

My sources for the profitability are right in the company's SEC filings. I have software that brings up all the ratios easily for me but the numbers out there in annual reports and filings. GOOG makes all of its money (well 90%+ of it) from web search/advertising. They make virtually nothing from Android operating system, it is just a portal that lets them sell other services like search/advertising. At one point Microsoft actually made more direct money from the Android operating system due some some royalty agreement with Samsung. Google likely doesn't make any money on their ISP stuff, it is probably written off as R&D in their mind with hopes of someday finding a way to make money on it. From dslreports.com "Google Fiber offers users in Kansas City symmetrical 1 Gbps fiber connections for $70 a month, or symmetrical 1 Gbps fiber connections and a full array of television content for $120 a month. Users in targeted neighborhoods also have the option of paying a $300 up front fee to have their home connected, then getting free 5 Mbps service for as long as they'd like. However delicious such pricing and speeds may be, national deployment continues to remain unlikely. Google Fiber remains sort of a strange public relations experiment and new technology testbed more than a serious entry into the broadband market. The effort allows Google to collect real-world network data on residential broadband networks (which ISPs fiercely protect), while testing next-generation video advertising technologies. As an added bonus, Google gets an endless stream of positive national press attention for deploying the kind of low-priced, ultra-fast services that have yet to materialize in the uncompetitive United States broadband market. However, estimates peg a full national Google deployment at somewhere around $140 billion, with less than half of the country costing around $70 billion. Those are numbers even Google won't want to eat. It remains most likely that Google Fiber sees deployment in only a handful of cities, making those cities selected all the more fortunate." EDIT: after writing all this I ran across this very detailed article on the costs and profitability of the GOOG networks. Granted it is just one guy's opinion but at least thought out in great detail with some hard numbers that are realistic. http://seekingalpha.com/article/778871-challenges-and-opportunities-for-google-s-fiber-project-a-reality-and-sanity-check I didn't say nobody will ever want faster, it is just that until consumer feel what they have is too slow will they be clamoring for faster speeds. There a still a lot of people who don't stream video at all, don't subscribe to Netflix, don't care much about using the internet for more than reading ESPN, sending some emails and looking up some recipes along with a little Facebook. A lot are only using the mobile networks for this. I just upgrade my home service from 15 mbps to 50 mbps down and 20 up as TDS ran fiber to me. As I said I would probably only upgrade if they offered me a deal and they cut my bill by $10/month for increasing the speed from 15 to 50. After 12 months my pricing goes from $35/month to $45/month before taxes, etc. I can say that I don't even notice a speed difference. I ran the speed tests, I am getting what is expected but streaming on demand on my computer or thru the DirecTV box is maybe a few seconds quicker, I could always watch almost instantaneously. TDS offered 100 mbps if I took their TV offering but I felt it was inferior to my DirecTV setup so I didn't switch. As you said more is being hosted on the cloud but we are still long ways from mass adoption of it and mass adoption of storing everything there. Even so when I use the cloud from Apple or movies from UltaViolet, speed isn't usually the issue, it is paying for the storage. You are also likely much more tech savvy than the average Joe who is just getting comfortable with Amazon vs. the mall. I agree that the network speeds will improve, I researched edge routers for IPTV over 6 years ago when everyone in the tech community was claiming IPTV and cloud storage of TV shows/movies was just around the corner and the need for all this equipment was going to explode and cable was doomed (Craig Moffet thought DirectV was going to lose all their customers in a couple years, instead subscriber growth mushroomed). 6 years later and fios, uverse, etc are still niche players and we have nowhere near the level of cloud storage predicted. Cord cutting is virtually nonexistent in comparison to the predictions. It all takes time and usually a lot longer than industry insiders predict. I have the ability and know how to stream much more but zero desire to given the current state of interfaces. I want to be able to quickly peruse the offerings and change channels quickly (on top of needing access to live sports). Trying to cobble together some system of Apple, Hulu, Netflix, CBS.com, Amazon.com, through various computers, blue ray devices, RoKKU players, or TV menu's through out the 4 TVs in my house isn't worth it at this point. I have the ability to watch DirecTV thru my iPad anytime and have yet to feel the need to watch it versus the 60 TV in the basement. It also goes to the point of lament that places like Hong Kong or Seoul have high speed everywhere faster than the U.S. Those are small densely populated areas, as Google has shown they can run 1GB service in a city here, but connecting all the cities is a huge expense and not likely profitable for a long time. My parents still have dial up service, they live 30 miles outside Madison, just off a U.S. Highway, no one has run anything faster past their subdivison. It will probably take something like the rural electrification act in the New Deal era to get high speed everywhere in the U.S. The builders of the networks probably won't turn a profit on them and it will be the ones who buy them out of bankruptcy that will finally make a go of it at reasonable prices. Just like the original build out of all the ISPs in the 90, most are gone today, bankrupt while the buyers of the assets at auction are the operators today.

What Yo did was stupid and I am not defending it, certainly compounded the stupidity of any athlete with the income levels to afford a cab and the league's car ride systems to drive that impaired. I knew reading the thread would someone would inevitably bring up the out too late, go to be by 10 and nothing can go wrong attitude. I always find these ideas to be complete poppycock. People with the ability to cause and get in trouble pay no mind to the time of day and plenty of night people stay up late and get up late and are just fine. I worked in a factory for a summer in college and saw plenty of lifers on the assembly line go straight to the bar at 3 PM, get hammered, be home in bed by 8 and back at work at 6 AM the next day or the third shifters drinking at 8 AM drunk by noon only to sleep it off until work started at 11 PM. Sun Prairie just had a Lutheran Bishop hit and kill a pedestrian at 1 in the afternoon while drunk. Tougher penalties and laws can only do so much. First offenders don't think they are going to get caught and probably don't worry about the penalties if the do because A. they don't know them, B. aren't making the best decisions anyway C. don't think they'll be caught. The people getting 7, 8, 9 DUI/OWI's just plain don't care what the penalties are. They likely don't have a license, often drive someone else's car or have the car in someone's name, and raising the fines, suspension, etc. are no deterrent to them because they are raging alcoholics and the only fix for them is no more drinking which is their biggest issue in life. Yo getting blitzed doesn't mean he needs to go to rehab unless it is a regular occurance. I don't care what his age is, he is allowed to once in a while have to much, just not drive. I'm 39 years old have had to have my wife pick me up after a Badger football game at least a couple times in the past few years. I have no idea what my BAC was but it was well above 0.08 based on how felt that day and the next. That was a result of spending almost an entire afternoon/evening after the game drinking and eating with a group of guys I rarely see anymore and given my lowered tolerance getting drunk even into my 30's as a father and husband can happen. Alochol tolerance does exist, regular and hardcore drinkers can handle and function better than others with the same BAC. (doesn't mean they won't be or can't be impaired) I know I can feel the effects from just a couple drinks vs in college when I drank much more than today. I've seen the ability of friends who had alcoholic parents to function and act perfectly normal while probably legally drunk because their BAC never went to zero and they lived a completely different life than most people. But 0.05 BAC doesn't feel the same to a long time alcoholic as it does to someone who rarely drinks. WI does not have Dram shop laws where the bar can be blamed for a drunk doing something wrong. I think it is a good thing given the litigious nature of our society. I bar tended in college and saw plenty of people walk in the door drunk, even if not served there would still be people trying to say they left bar XYZ and killed someone. Or a person can pound a bunch of drinks at one bar, walk next door, appear fine, drink one drink and all the shots, etc from the last place hit and they appear drunk really fast. Not to mention trying to keep track of everyone's drinks, who bought for who, etc. At least WI doesn't let under 21's in bars like some states and pretend the underagers aren't getting drinks from their friends. At some point people need to be responsible for their own actions even if they were impaired by their own free will.

Most of this argument is about the last man on the bench (or the 4th or 5th string 1B) and the last men in the bullpen so you kinda defeat yourself on that point.

I agree completely with Patrick's assessment. A bunch of cliches and coach speak is all I expect. The reporters rarely ask anything interesting and it ends up being just a rehash. If amazingly, something useful is said it is all over Twitter in about 30 seconds so I pretty much change the channel as soon as the game ends. Makes me think of the sideline reporters and their uselessness yet the media people insist they are helpful and get all bent outta shape when they get blown off. Watching the coaches head to halftime at the basketball game last night was perfect example. I don't even remember which coach was being interviewed because the answers could have came from either. Reporter asks generic question about game, coach, "They hit some shots, we hit some shots, it is a really good game."

Nobody is saying he should take a first pitch strike. Nobody. The problem is that Gomez isn't' selective enough. Almost all players have their best results on the first pitch. This is because is a player is swinging at the first pitch, it is usually the pitch they were looking for. This doesn't mean they should swing at the first pitch. Really, no one? Read this thread, even just a few posts above my original post an you see people trying to correlate the number of pitches seen to success. I even pointed out selectivity not patience is the key which I think you are agreeing with. But you can't convince me there aren't plenty of negative posts whenever Gomez or YB or a whipping boy make a first pitch out in the game threads or in this thread. Nobody is going to bat 1.000 on anything so I'll take their much better results on pitch 1 than being patient and seeing more pitches. My original post adresses the selectivity he isn't laying of balls, he's just not taking as many strikes. Not perfect but not blinding hacking or taking pitches for patience sake.

Patrick man...You nailed this on the head. Rogers doesn't seem like he will ever be the starter we hoped he would. As a one inning guy though, assuming his velocity comes back, would possibly make for a great internal option. I'm not sure about his secondary pitches and how quality they are but I would definitely explore this option. Isn't getting velocity part of the problem with Axford? Reports were that he was only hitting 91-92 on the gun in his last outing. If he is suffering from dead arm or is injured they can't keep trotting him out. If his velocity is back I'd let him go out again. Homer on opening day, that happens, especially to a LHer with that short picnic area available in right. The 2nd Fowler HR was on a curveball IIRC, maybe Axford didn't trust his FB since he didn't feel the velocity either and started throwing 2ndary pitches as a result. I think the near term decision will come down to if Axford can keep the fastball in the mid to upper 90's or not.

I don't have a problem blocking transfers to conference foes. The last thing we need is players hopping around in the conference making super teams and the like. I kinda like the rule requiring a year sitting out. One it doesn't keep a kid from changing a school completely, still lets them actually go to school, and keeps the recruitment of players who have already made choice in schools down. If players could freely transfer at anytime to any school with no sit out period I guarantee teams would recruit existing college players. I can only imagine John Callipari calling up Jordan Taylor during his senior year at WI and pitching him on hey we have boatload of talent but they are young, we could sure use a senior point guard to lead us to the national championship. How'd you like to go out on top? They ended up not need it but plenty of teams would go looking for that last missing piece for a title run.

Carlos Gomez career OPS when swinging on first pitch .890 Carlos Gomez career OPS after falling behind 0-1 .524 I have no problem with guys swinging at the first pitch. Taking pitches for the sake of taking pitches doesn't make one a better hitter. Being selective does, not swinging at balls, but just taking, nah, just a fool's game. EDIT: Gomez swinging at balls outside the K zone since 2010: 37%, 33.6%, 36.6% Gomez swinging at strikes inside the K zone since 2010: 64.3%, 67.3%, 75% Gomez overall swing percentage since 2010: 50%, 50.7%, 54.8% Gomez Contact on balls outside the K zone since 2010: 63%, 55%, 60% Gomez contact on strikes inside the K zone: 84%, 85.3%, 84% Gomez overall contact on swings: 76%, 75.4%, 75.7% Over the last three years Gomez hasn't really been laying off the balls so much as he has been swinging more at the strikes. If anything his patience hasn't gone up, he's attacking the strikes more often then letting them go by, in other words maybe even swinging earlier in the count if the pitch is a strike which given his contact rate on strikes vs. balls is a good thing.

Which moves are you referring to? There is plenty of evidence that Lohse had quite a bit of AA meddling and Yuni is squarely on Melvin's shoulders. Other than that, we really have not made any moves other than cutting players in camp and that would fall squarely on the manager. I haven't seen any evidence MA made Melvin sign Lohse. The conjecture is that just because the owner talked with the agent he made the call which I disagree with. Same thing happened with Suppan. Melvin may run big free agent deals by MA, may talk them over with him but just because the owner eats a dinner with the first FA signing of his newly bought team doesn't mean he forced the GM to do the deal. Same with Lohse, and MA didn't even have a dinner with him yet right away the idea gets put out and accepted by some that MA made Melvin sign Lohse rather than Melvin making the call. For all we know Melvin had Boras working on MA because MA didn't want to approve the deal in the first place. It's not like Melvin has some great track record of signing FA pitchers even to lesser deals like Davis, Looper, etc. As far as the second part of the question it was already in this thread blaming RR for the lack of a viable 1B when I argue it is Melvin's responsibility. In past years there have been other complaints blaming the manager for things like Gamel, Green, Henderson, etc. not being called up all of which are the GM's duties especially when 40 man roster moves have to be made to accomodate them like Morris or Halton. Acquiring a legit 1b from outside the system also falls on the GM, as Briggs pointed out Ishikawa is a journeyman 1B that is a better option than using YB or Gonzalez at 1B, plus all the other journeyman guys that moved around in the spring.