DuWayne Steurer

That 8th inning homer against Pittsburgh to go up one was definately meaningless. I guess Cam should not try as hard when the outcome of a given game is no longer in doubt one way or the other. Perception is the bane of most reasonable baseball discussion.

If McClouth didn't have the breakout season at the plate, there's no way he wins this award. And I'll say it again as I've said it before. When they gave a gold glove to Raffy Palmeiro for the 28 games he played in the field during 1999, this award 100% ceased to matter anymore.

Ugh. No thanks. Cabrera has trended downward each year he's been a full time player and Betemit is Branyan with about half the power. (And he only walked 6 times in 160+ PA's last year)

That's like aliens and ghosts. The people that believe will continue to believe, regardless of the evidence or lack of.

But when you constantly, constantly strikeout by swinging at pitches a foot or two out of the strikezone that gets frustrating. Vlad Guerrero has some of the ugliest at bats you'll see. OPS doesn't take into account the aesthetical qualities of an at bat. If you swing and miss by a foot, or an inch, it's still ony one strike. As for the predictive value of a ball in play, nobody here is comparing strike outs to hits. They're comparing them to outs. A guy with an .800 OPS and 150 K's will create as many runs as a guy with an .800 OPS and 70 K's. Again, over a century of statistical evidence supports it. Teams that strike out higher than an average amount don't score less than their expected totals based on just about every formula out there.

In Hockey, you cant have 6 offenseive minded defensemen because when you're up 5-4 with a minute left, you dont need to score a goal, you need someone who can defend. In basketball....haha....well....look at the debacle that Team USA was up until this year. And in baseball, you cant stack a lineup with power hitting right handers who strikeout a lot. Baseball is nothing like those sports, where each play relies on intricate interaction with your teammates. Baseball is a series of 1 on 1 encounters. The statistical truth, borne out by over a century of evidence is that OPS, OBP*1.6 + SLG%, or OxS (pick your favorite) tell you how many runs a team will score. Style points matter not at all, and a player with a .800 OPS and 160 k's will create more runs than a guy with a .740 OPS who "does the little things" and strikes out only 40 times. Cam's an above average offensive centerfielder, warts and all, who plays superior defense. He had a crappy September, but if you can find me a guy who doesn't have a bad month a year, I'll show you a hall of famer.

They could move Hart or Weeks to CF, opening up a spot for a LH bat. True, this move has risks but so does paying $10 million to a guy who might strike out 180 times. I'd rather have the guy that strikes out 180 times and has 50+ extra base hits than the guy that is capable of grounding out to the 2nd baseman and occasionally moving a runner up a base.

All things being equal, I think Cam is worth one year at $10M. But I am open to the possibility that if that option comes at the expense of other areas (namely pitching or not being able to afford Hardy, Hart, or Fielder) then perhaps it might not have been the best move. Of course if a future move shows that this wasn't the best option, it's easy to say "well, we shouldnt' have done that". But Doug didn't have the luxury of looking into the future. The Cam decision had to be made this week. The known quantity of Cam at 10 mil vs. an unknown quantity of maybe Edmonds, or maybe Dave DeJesus or maybe someone else who might not WANT to come to Milwaukee is, in my opinion is a no brainer. Hindsight is great, but at this time, we don't have the benefit of it.

Mike Cameron hates puppies. If Tony Gwynn is our starter in CF for more than a handful of games, I'm rooting for a different team. He's fast and left handed. Aside from that he offers nothing of any value at all.

Dog Soldiers was good, but not really creepy. It's kinda like Aliens, but with werewolves instead of Aliens. I thought 28 Days Later was one of the best zombie movies ever, but then again, it's at times pretty gory. Most of the time, the gory movies are a turn off to me. At a certain point, you just become numb to the buckets of blood that are splashed all over the place. I watched Poltergeist the other night, and was amazed at how when I was 8 years old, it scared the daylights out of me. By today's standards, Poltergeist would almost be rated G. (Minus the scene where the dude rips his own face off, bit by bit) On a side note, I'm somewhat eagerly awaiting the bigscreen version of Stephen King's "Bag of Bones", which was probably one of his best "spooky ghost stories" ever. Sadly, I'm sure the adaptation will suck.

A pitcher who gets 24 starts, averages roughly 7 IP, and has a WHIP around 1.15 will face close to 700 batters, which means he'll have as much impact on runs allowed as a batter can have on runs scored, over the course of a full season. The "he only plays every 5 days" thing is nonsense, as a SP effects half of every game he's in, whereas a batter can impact 1/9th of it. Benny is frustrating, make no mistake, but 150 IP of a 3.00 ERA pitcher is as valuable as a very good offensive performer.

Sorry for back to back posting, but I do have another story, that I can't help but enjoy sharing. Back in 2001 I was a sweep tech contracting for Time Warner in the Milwaukee area. Right after school had let out, we were given the Marquette campus to activate and QC the reverse sweep for high speed internet. The buildings on campus, being old, had the amplifiers in some odd places, utility closets, sub-basements, you name it. Now some of you Marquette alum will know the geography better than me, but there's a building, I believe it's called either North (or West?) Hall on the North side of Wisconsin Ave, heading west, out towards the edge of Marquette's buildings. It's 8 or 9 stories tall. We had been on this project for about a week, and I had 2 amps in this building, and one in another building to finish the campus up for good. I went in, being after school there's only one person in building manning the desk for utilities and stuff. I told the young lady why I was there, and looking at my map, it appeared that one amp was on floor 7, and one was in the sub-basement. Unfortunately, that's all the info we had, and we had to really look to find them. I went up to floor 7, and yes, it's empty and quiet, but not believing in ghosts and whatnot, I'm not at all unnerved by this. I find the janitors closet, find my amp, and set down (takes maybe 10 minutes or less to sweep an amp) to work. About 5 minutes in, I hear a door slam, quite loud.. I'm not startled, but I wonder how a door would slam, but figure, 7 stories up, maybe a window is open somewhere, and all these bedroom/dorm rooms doors are standing open. A few minutes later and I hear another one slam. Ok, not cool. I finish up my amp, go to the end of the hall where there's a community bathroom, and as I'm washing my hands, I swear I heard the stall door creak. Now, this is just stupid, I don't believe in this stuff, and I don't need to start a panic reflex action, so I force myself to calm down. I head back to the lobby, I ask the girl how to get into the sub basement, and she calls a campus security guy. He says because the boiler room is down there, he has to let me in. We go down a flight, and then another to a steel door, which is locked. He opens it, shows me where the boiler room is, and says, just show myself out, make sure I close the steel door, it locks when you close it. Ok, no prob. I find the amp, right next to the boiler, and when that sucker kicked on about 5 minutes in, I about crapped. I laughed, calmed down, and finished up. I go back the way I came (anybody who's ever been in a basement on Marquette campus knows it's a maze, it's all connected, and spans several city blocks) and find, to my utter dismay, the door is closed, and locked. My cell phone is 2 stories underground, and no signal. It's gonna be 3-4 hours before I'm expected home, 2-3 hours after that before the wife would start to worry, and 1-2 hours after that before she'd proably call my boss, and the only thing they know is that I'm "somewhere on Marquette campus". There's not a lot of light down there, and definately creepy. There's no way to describe it I guess, but when the only thing you can hear is your own breathing and your heartbeat, and you're locked away from everything with no potential escape for 6-8 hours or more, your mind will start to play tricks. I started looking for another way out, and the more I walked, the more I was CERTAIN I could hear footsteps behind me, and I had to force myself to believe it was echo, my mind playing tricks, so on and so forth. This went on for 45 minutes, maybe less (probably less) when I heard a door slam, from a direction I'd already come from. I went back, and the door I thought I heard was shut and locked. Now again, I'm not a believer so to speak, but it's really hard to keep the panic instinct from taking over in a situation like this. The more you look over your shoulder, stop and listen, and think about it, the harder it gets to control. The shadows start playing tricks on you, the echos start to become voices, and you can't convince yourself you're alone. I was just about on the verge of total panic when I opened a door and felt a breeze. It was pitch black, but I could hear vehicles. I went in, found a stairwell, went up, and found a locked chain link gate that opened into a parking garage. No problem, as I had heavy duty side cutters in my toolbag. Now several months later, it was October as a matter of fact, I was sitting on the computer, looking at an article about haunted places in Wisconsin, more out of amusement, when I came across Marquette U. I found the exact building I had been in, and there was a snippet about a supposed ghost of a student who had supposedly died in the basement and now haunts the place by slamming doors, moving small objects and so on. My wife from 5 feet away said she saw goosebumps go up on my arms, which is funny, looking back. I still don't believe in ghosts, I don't claim to have seen anything supernatural, what it comes down to is hearing a few doors slam that maybe shouldnt' have been able to close on their own, but still...........

I have a couple, one "sorta" supernatural, and another not. Over the last several years, having moved to a house in a semi-rural area, the wife and I had taken somewhat of an interest in astronomy and basic star watching. We became halfway decent at recognizing most of the constellations, as well as the features and major individual stars. 2 summers ago my brother was over, it was about 9:30 pm, we had stepped outside (my brother's a smoker) and it was a nice, cloudless evening. My brother looks up and says "Ok, what are these 2 bright ones right there?" Just to the east, about 75 degrees up, there's 2 extremely bright spots, about 10 degrees apart, brighter than any other star in the sky. Not being a fanatical astronomer, but a decent amateur hack, I looked up, and just below what's known as the summer triangle (three bright stars in a pyramid shape, prominent in summer) and there they are. Not being any sort of authority, but a halfway decent amateur hack, whatever they were, I knew they didn't belong there. My brother after about 15 seconds says "they're starting to move". Sure enough, if you looked close, you could see them move from one side of the power line in our line of sight to the other. They started out slowly, moved to the south east for about 15 seconds, and then quickly faded from sight. They didn't go beyond our line of sight, they just faded. Now I'd seen plenty of satellites, but nothing ever close to that bright, that fast, or that faded so quickly. Now, I'm not saying we thought it was alien spacecraft, but it was weird, and since we couldn't tell what it was, by the technical truth of the term, they were (for us at least), UFO's. It didn't take long to hit the ol' interweb however, and find that it was indeed the space shuttle and space station. I can't remember the site, but there's a good one that lists all the times they'll be visible, and when and where. I guess the resolution of the story makes it not so very spooky, but at the time it was kind of weird and cool in it's own way.

Well, to be fair, he had 2 points, which was probably two third place votes from the 2 local writers.

Given the decision making criteria for this award, it's hard to even care. When Raffy Palmeiro won it some years back while playing 28 games in the field, any slim amount of credibility this "award" had was completely lost.

Some time ago fishermen in Spain and Portugal went on strike when gas went over $11 a gallon in those countries.

During the game Saturday night, I had brought a 13" tv into my living room with a splitter and another cable, and had the Brewers on the regular tv, and the Badgers on the little one. I worked sunday, so I watched neither that day of course.

Russ, I think some people just like it when you're wrong.........even when you're not. There really was no way at all to predict CC would be so devastatingly dominant in half a season. It's not like anybody else can say "we saw this coming".

Suppan has missed one or 2 starts, and been mediocre. Hammonds played the equivalent of one full season (and poorly at that) for the three years that he was signed. There's no comparison.

OK, again, Ibanez in LF+Braun at 3B. What sort of combo do you think the Brewers could reasonably acquire that beats that option? I know Clancy, Ibanez and Braun. You've said it in several threads. The point is, Ibanez is nowhere near enough of an offensive threat to be worth offsetting almost ALL of Brauns value by putting him at a position where he was one of the worst to ever play the game. It's real easy to maximize offensive value if you pay no heed at all to defense, and I think just about everybody here knows that one of this teams major weaknesses this year was defense. Braun will at best be -20 defensively at 3B in a full season, and that's being optimistic. Given that the Brewers won the wildcard by one game, I'm not sure why we want to automatically give 2 games away (at least) with his defense to put Ibanez in left. Ibanez is also going to be 37 years old, so to expect him to keep producing at the same level is a stretch. The constant moving of players around the diamond may or may not have an effect on their offense, but several of them have been vocal about being moved around, or not wanting to be moved. These guys are't strat-o-matic cards that you can just write new positions on when you want to get another stud bat into the lineup. I'm sure Braun will be the FIRST guy to say he'd much rather stay in left field than be thrown back at third base where he knows as well as anyone, he's a butcher. Never mind the fact that he's a year removed from fielding ground balls or trying to prepare for the position all over again.

As for third... it really depends. I would keep Braun as an option - if only as a 2009 stopgap - particularly if there is a good LF willing to come for a year. I earlier suggested that the Crew ought to sign Raul Ibanez, whose OPS+ has been over 115 for the last five years. He's probably better offensively than any third basemen we could get. Is it perfect? No. But I'm not sure a better option is out there right now. There's not a better option than putting one of the worst 3B ever back at the hot corner, where he'll negate almost all of his offensive value? He had to have an OPS over 1.000 to keep his defense from making him a league average player when you consider defense.

I'm about 99.98% sure that Russ' comment is about how people said that Suppan was signed because he's a "big game pitcher" because of his post season success with St. Louis. Craig Counsell is still considered "clutch" by some because of a basehit he had in a world series half a decade ago or so.

As long as Corey Patterson stays away from Dusty Baker he plays decent. Maybe Baker lets Patterson get away with some things that his other managers haven't allowed him to get away with and that is why he plays better than when he is with Baker. His 2006 and 2007 seasons were alright for a #7 or a #8 hitter. I still wouldn't sign him but I would rather have Patterson than Pierre. The 2 years you quote as his "good" years he had an OBP of .304 and .314. Getting a guy with a OBP you'd expect from a backup catcher is really counterproductive to what this offense will need. I wouldn't read too much into what he did with or without Dusty Baker, he's just not a good ballplayer. At least with someone like Byrnes, you're looking at a guy who's good years were actually.......good.

I think keeping alcohol off a bus is a touch easier than making sure no kids anywhere, ever, drink.

Hot stove talk will be a lot more fun trying to figure out what has to happen to go deeper into the playoffs than figuring out how to avoid another September collapse.