DuWayne Steurer

2 things here........ 1.) I do believe we could and should have a better bench. We have no power, and our backup catcher sucks as much as one player can suck. 2.) If you look around the league, almost everyone has a sucky bench. The Braves have Hinske and Ross, and the Phillies have a nice bench. But for the most part, as you go around the league, you're going to find a bunch of .550 - .650 OPS guys taking up most of the room on just about everybody's bench. They're bench players for a reason, because they're not good enough to be starters. It'd be great to have a bench full of .800 OPS guys, but it just doesn't work that way. Like I said though, I'd like to see at least ONE guy that could at least potentially come out late in a game with some pop.

Maybe this belongs in the minor league forum, as Harper's a minor leaguer, but all I can say is........wow. Kid, you're barely old enough to shave. http://content.usatoday.c...per-kisses-one-goodbye/1 This ball was in the stands before he even considers running, and then he blows a kiss at the pitcher. I am not at all one of those 'you gotta respect the game' type of people, but something tells me this kid can expect a few beanballs pretty quick. Hopefully someone in that organization will sit the punk down and explain life to him a little bit.

Pros: Rotation has been as good as advertised. Narveson's a bit sketchy, but what do you expect out of your number 5? Fielder, Braun, Weeks, and Hart are all performing up to expectations. Most of the guys in the bullpen have performed above expectations The CF platoon situation has turned an area of weakness into at the very least, a league average output. Roenicke, for all his other faults, has seemed to find a usage pattern for Gomez that minimizes his major weakness, getting on base. Cons: Axford and Loe, the 8th and 9th inning guys, have struggled. Axford's save numbers are great, but that is a stupid stat. How many times can he wiggle off the proverbial hook before the 1.5 WHIP starts to bite him in the butt? So far so good, but he needs to stop putting himself in trouble with leadoff walks The left side of the infield is a hot mess, offensively and defensively. Betancourt has zero range, and McGehee's defense overall this year is pretty bad. Betancourt's been worse than advertised on offense, but McGehee's failure has been a bigger disappointment, as he was being counted on to be the #5 guy in a power packed lineup. The bench overall just kinda sucks. I won't argue that Kotsay's .340 OBP is a pleasant surprise, but we have 2 readily available replacements for Nieves in our own system. Meanwhile, situations like this past weekend where a .400 OPS player is coming to bat with 2 outs in a key situation are happening, and the predictable happens. Counsell's too old to be useful anymore. Hopefully Josh Wilson can continue to at least just not suck, and our backup IF situation at least looks marginally better. Overall, I think the pro's outweigh the con's to a fairly wide margin. I'm hopeful that the return of Saito helps out the 8th inning situation somewhat, and I'm hopeful that somehow, someway, Melvin finds a SS around the deadline who can cover more ground than about 10 square feet. McGehee, hopefully, will at least hit the rest of the season to the tune of a .750-.800 OPS, and Roenicke falls out of love with Nieves, and we bring up either Rivera or Kottaras. 93 wins, NL Central champs.

Stanton mailing it in today. That was as close to 'pathetic', as I've ever seen a major league swing.

Ryan Braun did that already for me on FridayBrauny's hit helped, this would guarantee a winning road trip.

How many people are in that park today? 3,000, MAYBE? What an embarrassment.

We already got the series split we wanted, hanging on to a 4 run lead going into tomorrow with Greinke going would be absolutely HUGE. This could completely wash the taste of that last game in Cinci away.

And that's the way it should be. Just going off of camera shots in the dugout, Gomez sure looks antsy when he's not out there playing.

Aside from Dom Brown, the Phillies have 4 guys on their bench with OPS below .700 The Marlins have 3 guys on their bench with OPS below .600. In fact, all around the league, everyone has a bench full of guys that shouldn't be starting. That's why they're bench players. I'm finding teams that if you cumulatively add up their bench numbers, I'll bet they don't OPS .600. The Braves with Hinske and Ross are the one team I can find with a nice bench. Point being, you're not going to find too many starting caliber guys riding the pine around the league.

They're absolutely fine 1-6. This is way better than some of the "Sunday Day Game" lineups we've seen. I find it difficult to believe Counsell and Wilson could underperform what YuniB and Casey are doing right now.

McGehee needs to sit down a few games. Last night was hopefully an absolute lowest point for his career. I like that lineup with Morgan 2 and Hart 5 otherwise though.

Good lord, is ESPN awful...... 2 excerpts from the same article here...... Sanchez (5-1, 2.57 ERA) is likely to offer the Brewers a stiff test.The right-hander is 4-0 with a 1.15 ERA and 57 strikeouts in 57 1/3 innings over five starts. So........he's averaging over 11 inning pitched per start, eh? The Brewers look for their longest road winning streak of the season when they attempt to sweep a road series from the Florida Marlins for the first time in 12 years Sunday. So......if the Brewers win today, are they automatically forfeiting tomorrow's game to the Brewers? Good grief ESPN, proofreading is your friend.

I said that the other day myself. He really seems to play with 'angry' energy an awful lot of the time.

Where is this "Bill Hall was a cancer" stuff coming from? Is there some behind the scenes stuff that nobody knows about?

Pick him up for league minimum, and see if we can catch lightning in a bottle for a few months. He's likely done, but it's not like he can hit worse than anyone on the bench other than Kotsay.

Yeah, but you have to go back to the fact that the Crew blew a 3 run lead to begin with in this one. Shouldn't really have come down to needing a PH homer plus a heart stopping 9th to get the win.

Almost got Turnbow'd there. Axford needs to be 'effectively' wild, not just wild.

I don't think Braunie could have hit that ball any further. Axford needs to hang on here. Really would love to start this series off with a W.

I realize we're on the road, and you lose on the road. blah blah blah. Can't keep blowing three run leads like this. There's no plausible reason for this team to suck so much ass on the road. I know others have said it as well, and well, I'll go ahead and repeat it. Nieves sucks, and needs to go. Wolf needs to get over whatever problem he has with Lucroy.

There's 2 seasons left. They wrapped season 6, and said they wanted to get 8 seasons in. Like I said before, that show is Friends + Barney, but Barney makes the whole show. And they make him just human enough once in a while to be likable, beneath the scuzzy womanizer.

I realize 7 AB's is the absolute epitome of 'small samples', but Votto now has an OPS over 2.000 against Loe. I guess I just want to echo other's sentiments that running Loe out every night in the 8th inning just doesn't make sense. You were facing the best hitters in the Reds lineup (Phillips, Votto, Bruce), why would you NOT want your best reliever out there in that situation? People complained about Macha's lack of personality and yadda yadda yadda. I remember more than a handful of occasions last year when he brought Axford in the 8th inning when the situation warranted it. I think (and I could be wrong here, this is by recollection) Axford had something like 7 saves where he recorded 4 or more outs. I never wanted Macha fired, and I'm already wishing we had him back. EDIT: I went and looked at the game logs. Axford had 9 saves in which he pitched more than 1 inning, and a handful of other appearances in which he did multi-inning work as well.

well that hurts. Another 'shoulda' in the books. This series is horribly marked with terrible pitches to Votto and Bruce with men on base. Should be leaving Cinci with a series win.

The sample size is definitely too small to draw any conclusions from, but it at least merits discussion. I've said on more than one occasion, if the guy is simply not able to play a full game more than once a week, he needs to retire, so that roster spot can go to someone who can play. It's not like keeping him around as a LH pinch hitter is a necessity, they've got Kotsay for that. I'd like to see Counsell play 2-3 times a week, but if he can't do that, then he needs to hang them up. Also, if he can't do that, I'd have to wonder if there's something physically wrong with him. I realize he's 41, but it's not like being physically active at 41 is unheard of, by any stretch of the imagination.

That's never been why I watch it. However, that won't stop me from being critical of the heavily formulaic format in which the show is written. Other stuff I'm watching right now........ River Monsters. I usually find fishing shows gawdawful boring, but this one for some reason keeps me hooked (ha!) Known Universe. I hate that every episode they spend 15 minutes describing how the current subject matter could potentially destroy the Earth, then very casually slip in quietly (but that won't happen, it's too far away!). I mean, just cover the science. I don't need to see the doomsday scenario to appreciate the science of it. How I Met Your Mother. If you take away Neil Patrick Harris, this show is essentially a remake of Friends. Barney makes the show worth watching occasionally.

I love watching House, but I did a breakdown of 95% of all House episodes a while back on Facebook. 1.) Someone close enough to Boston to get to Princeton Plainview has a mysterious illness that no other doctor can figure out. 2.) The illness is usually imminently life threatening (Death within days or weeks) 3.) House and his team can't figure it out, and will often mis-diagnose 3-4 times. 4.) House will be having a conversation with someone else about something COMPLETELY unrelated to his case, the other person will make a comment that somehow is analagous to the case he's involved in, and House will have an epiphany. 5.) House prescribes the cure, which usually has the patient heading home the next day, none the worse for wear.