Fear The Chorizo

there was also Jay's flare and the missed fly ball to Hart...since he actually did need to record 3 outs to finish the inning, the two I just mentioned add up to 5 outs

0-9 with RISP so far tonight...

why is Wolf still in this game?

RR, you just got served.

Kirk Gibson, you are my hero...going for the throat right now

C'mon Rickie - we need a big hit right here

Saunders isn't going to get through this inning

The shocking thing about this is two teams with well over 90 regular season wins have Wolf and Saunders as playoff starters.

a 7 spot would be nice this 1/2 inning...hopefully Gibson leaves Saunders in long enough to let the Brewers back in the game

good lord this is going to be a long game

wow...that's ruled a hit?

nothing offspeed in the strike zone...mightaswell walk the tee up to the plate right now

getting squeezed is not a good thin for Mr. Wolf

great start to the inning...leadoff walk to the freaking pitcher

seemed more like he missed location by about 8 inches on that pitch, too...the issues they were having getting on the same page probably factored into the missed location, too.

well, that's ballgame - +*! was going on between Marcum and Lucroy tonight? Either they couldn't get on the same page ala Randy Wolf throwing to him, or Lucroy's gotta get some white tape on his fingers so the pitcher can see the signs.

Look at the angle it entered at, that shows where it crossed the front of the plate, but in practice the strike zone is really where it cross the batter Um, no - it's where the ball crosses the front of the plate

Value wise the only way this trade works out in the Brewer's favor on it's own merits is if Lawrie ends up being a below average MLB player, which seems unlikely at this point in time. The combination of trades that Melvin made have worked out wonderfully, but both the Marcum and Greinke deals on their own were significant overpays. It's difficult to separate the various deals and view them independently, especially given the success of the MLB team this season, but it's not impossible to be somewhat objective and evaluate the deals on their own merits. I believe the sum of deals is better than the individual parts, the Morgan trade was at least as important to the MLB club as the Marcum trade, and it was infinitely more cost effective. I'll take the two trades, regardless of how much some people think the Brewers overpaid, 100% of the time when put in the context of this being Fielder's last season in Milwaukee. Would I like to have kept Lawrie? Sure, but I'd rather make the playoffs and have a team with a shot at doing some playoff damage than treading water for multiple seasons. The trades Melvin made this year have made the MLB team so much better than it would have been. Without Greinke and Marcum, the Brewers don't make the playoffs this year, and with Lawrie and company from the other trades, the Brewers don't make the playoffs in future years once Fielder leaves if the pitching still isn't addressed.

How about we actually throw some negative criticism for this particular loss at the guy who is more responsible for this loss than anyone else - Fielder. His poor defense led to the only 2 runs the Cards scored, he couldn't get the job done with the tying run at 3rd and less than two outs, and his lack of speed made a force play easy on that bunt in the 9th. Aside from that, tip of the cap to Edwin Jackson for shutting the Crew down...hopefully the Crew can bounce back an even the series up tomorrow. Tough to pinch run for Fielder in that situation - but you almost have to if you're playing for the tie. Put a pinch runner in for Fielder no matter what and deal with position changes in extras if you need to later. There's absolutely no appropriate reason to openly root for an injury to a player, let alone for a player on a team you supposedly support. I thought this board was a good place for Brewer fans to visit to stay away from this sort of crap. We've had alot of fun with all the posts deriding "the classies" in STL recently - some of it's apparently been coming from hypocrites..

getting out of this with only 2 scored would be big here

Seems like winning 21 out of 24 excuses everything, which it absolutely shouldn't. They have been doing this kind of thing all year long. Yup, because teams that finish with records around 142-20 are all too commonplace.

Rumors are swirling that the Cubs are about to ask for about $200 million in public funding to help renovate Wrigley Field and its surroundings. This will be the second time that the Ricketts ownership has asked for taxpayer money...the first time it was shot down by government and public sentiment alike. It just doesn't look good for an ownership group who just bought the team to be asking for public funds, particularly in this economic climate and in a state that's essentially bankrupt already. They have some money coming off the books, but their payroll this year was already over their ideal operating budget - combine that with a significant amount of debt with the recent purchase of the team, declining revenue from game days (concessions and the 2ndary ticket market that the Cubs partially own is killing their bottom line since attendance has been dropping), and a complacent at best level of enthusiasm among even their most loyal fans and I'd be shocked if the Cubs went on another free agent spending binge this coming offseason. From an organizational standpoint, Hendry's gone but they still have the buffoon Crane Kenney acting as team President - he's supposed to be business operations, but he thinks he's part of baseball decisions, too. He's the clown that hired a rabbi to end the goat curse before they got swept out of the playoffs a few years ago. If I were interviewing for the Cubs' GM my first request would be for Kenney to be shown the door. They need to completely clean the front office house, and for some reason ownership changes and some putrid baseball hasn't taken care of that yet.

Are there exceptions? Of course. Does any of us know ahead of time who are the exceptions? No. All I know is it's unlikely that Betancourt will continue to beat his batting projections by anywhere near as much as he has been the last two months. It's also unlikely that Kotsay will continue to bat three-something with RISP. That doesn't make me a pessimist; that doesn't keep me from enjoying this wonderful season. It's just the reality of the situation. So what you're saying is that even though there really isn't any way to accurately predict what could happen over a 2-month stretch of baseball based on even the most sophisticated sabermetric analysis of large sample sizes, you're going to insist that trying to predict the future by using other ways isn't "the reality of the situation"? To me, the reality is at this point in the season, I don't really care what anyone's career wOBA or average WAR is - I'd rather enjoy the ride instead of reading explanations of how a stathead could still enjoy watching the very players sabermetrics despises succeed for their favorite team. Since there are only about 2 months left of baseball that the Brewers could play (playoffs included), put me in the camp rooting for the "small sample exceptions" to the positive for the handful of players on the Crew's roster that have been getting skewered on this board since about February of this year. To me, this is where statistical analysis should take a back seat to fandom, because there will be an entire offseason to crunch all the numbers and fold spreadsheets full of them into paper hats and origami...just think, there will be that much larger a sample size to work with, too! I think sabermetrics' best use in baseball is player evaluation for contract negotiations. If the analysis is done properly by GMs it can really help build solid organizations. However, it's a slippery slope trying use something formulated on past events to predict short-term future outcomes. There are enough exceptions to the rule in baseball to essentially discount "the rule". Projecting a career arc for a free agent deal or arbitration contract is one thing, but continually leaning on sabermetrics to prove/discount small sample randomness is like timing a 100-meter sprint with a sundial.

Cliff Pennington in July hit .341/.386/.476 That's not .388/.405/.575 now, is it?

If it's as widely known throughout baseball that the Brewers are somehow sign stealing at home, one would think it would be pretty easy to change the signs up and put an end to the shenanigans immediately. From my past playing days, while on 2nd we'd always look to see if we could pick up the sequence of signs to possibly relay fastball/offspeed to hitters but frankly it was hardly useful. All it takes is for that sequence of relaying a sign to a hitter to get messed up once and the hitter never wants to bother with it again.