DuWayne Steurer

I only meant lackluster in the sense that the headliner fight has a guy on a 3 fight losing streak in it. Excited to see Hardy and Lytle stand in the center and just bang though. Any idea where to go for tix? I went to the UFC website, and they don't have this event listed yet.

*** SMALL SAMPLE ALERT *** Just thought it would be funny to point out at this stage of the season, the guy that's been brought up so much in this thread, Nick Punto, has a higher OPS than Albert Pujols. Punto .751 OPS, 110 OPS + Pujols .739 OPS 105 OPS + *** SMALL SAMPLE ALERT ***

I'm on board with most of the others here.........I'm indifferent at worst on the Reds, and loathe the Cardinals with every fiber of my being. And I just saw the highlights from yesterday's Cards/Reds tilt. Classy Tony is Classy..........http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/eyes.gif

There are fans who are going to defend whatever player is putting on their team's uniforms, no matter what. I don't have a problem with it, but it's not always going to lead to a completely rational discussion about things like who should be getting playing time, or 'we need to upgrade X position' type discussions.The problem is that some here over-exaggerate how bad some of our players are. If some one points out the over-exaggeration, they suddenly are labeled as a player's "defenders", and the claim is made that the won't listen to reason. Yet it is the "over-exaggerators" who are the ones failing to listen to reason. There are some who over-exaggerate in the other direction as well. Such as those in this thread claiming that Kotsay is the same player as he's been throughout his career (he is below-average in the field at this point). Their is a lack of rationality among both groups that over-exaggerate a player's strengths/weaknesses. Also, in this post you talk about "needing to upgrade X position". Once again, a person can say that, but if there are no legitimate alternatives at a certain position then repeating said "need for upgrade" over and over is itself not logical, but merely is a case of whining. I'll agree that Kotsay and Nieves can and should be replaced (or at the very least that Kotsay should be used primarily as a pinch hitter). Some other positions, however, where no immediate capable replacements available, we'll need to sit tight until replacements become available. I don't disagree with any of this, honestly. Kotsay shouldn't need to be replaced though. He never should have been brought onto the roster to begin with. He's a replacement level player, which Doug is paying 800K for. Replacement level, by definition, *SHOULD* be available for league minimum. That doesn't mean it's always the case, but it's at least a guideline. Nieves......don't even get me started. We have 2 clearly better options in house in AAA as we speak.

Netflix night last night........ Inception. Wow. I find that a lot of the time these FANTASTIC movies end up being victims of their own hype. So many times I'm let down by something I expect to be an epic film experience, only to find the movie I watched was 'pretty good', and that, compared to my expectations, wasn't what I was hoping for. So, with that all said, I went into Inception with appropriately high expectations....and came away completely fulfilled. I don't need to do a full blown review. I'm sure most everyone that reads this thread has seen it anyways, but all I can say is that I absolutely got what was advertised. A fantastic film that stands with the best of it's genre. 9.5/10 Monsters Inc. As incredible as it sounds, I had never seen this before last night. Somehow this one has managed to sneak it's way over, around, under, and through my movie watching madness, and finally fell on the plate last night. I wouldn't put it in the class of Up or TS3, but it was watchable, and coming from me, that's high praise for a 'kid's movie'. 7/10

There are fans who are going to defend whatever player is putting on their team's uniforms, no matter what. I don't have a problem with it, but it's not always going to lead to a completely rational discussion about things like who should be getting playing time, or 'we need to upgrade X position' type discussions.

Never been a UFC in this area, so I've never had interest in going. Going to have to check into tix for this for sure, even WITH a lackluster card!

I saw that lineup on Facebook and though "this has to be a bad dream, right?" Pinch. Nope. Came here and saw the same lineup. Why is our Sunday Giveup lineup out there? It's Wednesday.

Escobar? Betancourt. Whoops.

Oh, I definitely agree, it was fun to see. Definitely some nice fielding 'eye candy'. I guess Bowa's (and other people's) point is that a good shortstop makes that play without the flash, because he's square to the ball when he fields it. There was an almost identical play in the Rangers game the same night, and they did a side by side. Andrus ranged just as far as Escobar did, but he was square to the ball when he fielded it, therefore the glove-behind-the-back flip wasn't necessary, and the play wasn't nearly as exciting, but actually a great display of how much better Andrus' range is, compared to Escobars.

Larry Bowa on Baseball Network critiqued the play, saying that it was 'very flashy', but that most other shortstops make the play rather routinely, without requiring a behind-the-back flip and such.

Way too many years of watching guys like Wolf be our #2, and guys like Narveson be our #3. They're perfectly slotted now, and it's kind of a good feeling knowing that.

For big chunks of the game last night I couldn't help but just about drop my jaw at how absolutely filthy his pitches are. I remember a slider he struck Maybin out looking on that looped in and just nicked the inside corner and Maybin's knees buckled and I was like "there's about 4-5 hitters in baseball who would have been able to pull the trigger on that".

It was. Number 1 on Sportcenter's Top 10 this morning, and absolutely deservedly so. It's funny though, even on that play, watching the replay and watching Yuni go up the middle I'm thinking "come ON dude, get on your horse and get to that ball!" He reminds me of Jenkins in left field back in the day. Jenkins would make a spectacular diving catch, and everyone would be "OMG! Did you see that CATCH?!?!" and in reality, it's a ball that 75% of guys who play the position catch on the run without having to dive, because they just have a better jump and better wheels. I digress, I'm not taking away from Yuni on this particular play. It WAS an absolutely fantastic play.

This upcoming 7 game winning streak WILL be a defining moment. Starting tonight. BOOK IT! :D

...and the other options were?? I'm sure everybody would've been thrilled putting Yuni there. Maybe Wil Nieves? He should've played Morgan more, but he seems to get a LOT of flak for batting Gomez #2 when he really was hamstrung by injuries and didn't have many options Anyone other than Gomez or Betancourt. He could have put Kotsay there. Lucroy. Heck, even Kottaras when he was with the team. Counsell when he starts. It's hard to NOT have someone else on the roster not be a better choice for the 2 spot than a guy with a .275-ish OBP. Pretty much sums it up. Putting him out there once or twice wouldn't kill us. His quote made it sound like he really didn't want to do it, but since Morgan's hurt, he may do it once or twice. I would prefer Boggs, but I'm not going to get too bent out of shape unless he makes it a regular occurance. While I don't think Boggs is a world beater by any means, at least he's a bit of an unknown quantity. You at least have a slight *chance* of catching lightning in a bottle for a few weeks or months. And Boggs did seem to look at least passable in CF during spring training. Still, if Kotsay keeps up with a .360-ish OBP, I'm not going to scream about him playing CF once every 2 weeks (until a critical missed flyball or something costs the Crew a game).

Yeah, I have noticed my irritation factor with Gomez goes WAY down when he's batting 8th. I just wish he'd quit making boneheaded outs on the basepaths.

I think this would have to go on for months, and I also think it would require players complaining about Sveum for him to get fired at this point. As ugly as it is, this past week slump is a result of 2 things. 1.) A few guys having down weeks. 2.) Having a lineup that routinely includes 2 or more guys who OBP below .300 When you have guys like Gomez, Nieves, Betancourt, etc, etc, getting regular playing time, that only compounds the offensive woes if some of your regular thumpers go into a slump. Sveum isn't going to change that.

At this point, anyone besides Betancourt would be an upgrade over Gomez in the 2 spot though. I don't think Lucroy is an ideal #2 hitter, not at all. But a .277 OBP guy hitting in the heart of your order is reducing the RBI chances of the big boppers by a lot.

Actually it doesn't. I did a research/article on this for another website about 3 years back, and divided the games by 0-1 runs, 2-3 runs, 4-5 runs (being average) 6-7 runs, 8-9 runs, or 10 or more runs. What I found (to my surprise) was that the teams that scored a lot of runs, but did so with a lower slugging percentage actually were more to the extremes, having more games where they'd score 0-3 runs, but also more games where they'd score 8 or more. This caught me completely by surprise in all honesty, to see the so called 'slugging' teams show more consistency in their run scoring distribution. It's not on this computer, it's on my old PC downstairs, so I'll look later and see if I can dig it up and share it.

If Casey were to start hitting, a shortstop with more range might make up for some of Casey's defensive shortcomings. I say *some* because range isn't Casey's only problem this year. He's made some real head-scratching plays over at the hot corner.

So.......yeah.......... Tron: Legacy Nothing more than what I expected. It wasn't bad, it wasn't great. It was very formulaic, but it told a story, and the visuals were great. Good popcorn flick 7/10 Inglorious Basterds. Just watched this out of the instant queue yesterday. This one falls into the same category for me as Pan's Labyrinth. I heard how awesome it was from everyone. I'm also a fan of Tarantino, so I figured, "well this time, I can't go wrong, right?" Well.......sort of. I wanted really badly to like this movie. I find myself wondering if it's got such a great score at IMDB because, well, it's a Tarantino movie, and you have to give them good scores. This movie was like my brother's storytelling about his day. He takes 5 minutes to tell you a story that should take 45 seconds in the telling. The dialogue in this movie is just..........so.........drawn........out. And no, I wasn't expecting an action film here. So that's not the issue. It's just every scene was 3-4 minutes longer than it needed to be to make it's point. Every character (except Aldo) speaks dramatically slowly. Every character puts dramatic pause between 2/3rds of their sentences. There's so much fluff here that it gets hard to just stay interested. The dialogue wasn't bad, the writing is great, it's just that there's so much of it that there were times I was watching, and thinking "when is this guy/girl going to get to the POINT?" The movie is filled with all the usual Tarantino devices, some of them cheesy, some formulaic, and that's ok. Like I said, I'm a fan of Tarantino, so to me, those bookmarks aren't going to be a put off. I just think that it could have been edited down by as much as 45 minutes, and have lost nothing essential to the storyline. As is, I can only give it a 6/10, and say that it's hard for me to recommend. It's interesting to me that I'd give Tron a higher score, I think ultimately Inglorious Basterds is a better piece of cinema, but I think ratings are based a lot on "what were you hoping to get out of this?" as much as the final experience. Tron met my low expectations. IB didn't meet my higher ones.

Yeah, Ethier's got a hitting streak going, that always appeals to people, but statistically, Brauny's been far superior.

It would be fair to make this point if it were possible to talk about one player without ever referencing another. Trouble is, that isn't at all possible or practical. When talking about Gallardo, and the question is asked whether his previous poor outing came about as a result of poor pitching or poor defense (Prince/Betancourt etc), I think it is fair to address whether Prince or Betancourt negatively effected the production of Gallardo. That isn't turning this into a Betancourt or a Prince thread, it simply is centered around why Gallardo had the results he did. Since baseball is a team game, it is impossible to have a thread about one player that is completely absent of discussion of other players present on the team. To expect that kind of uniformity in posting is ridiculous IMO. It's always fair to bring up other players, but as sooooooooooo often happens, a thread can go completely off topic in a hurry. Maybe I was a bit pre-mature in my post complaining about Betancourt being the topic of discussion in yet another thread, but the dude is a hot-button topic here right now, and another thread about Betancourt's shortcomings (or lack thereof) just probably isn't appealing to anyone right now. (I'm still not sorry though) http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

It only bothered me because you said it 3 times, and caps locked it once: Betancourt. Richard Sexton approves of your spelling correction. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif