DuWayne Steurer

In '05 and '06, Sheets started 22 and 17 games. This year, he'll once again fail to reach 30 starts. Call it dumb/bad luck, but whether fair or not, "injury prone" is an apt tag for Benny at this point. It doesn't matter if none of the injuries are related, it doesn't. What matters is they keep him from starting games, and it now looks to be a problem for the third season in a row. Sheets took a huge step towards being a true ace in 2004, and hasn't stayed healthy or lived up to the numbers (or really even come close) that he put up going on 3 1/2 years ago now.

I've seen a few comments that Salty is either not living up to his hype, or is not as good as people had heard he was. He's 22, and putting up an .850 OPS in his first 100 major league at bats. Has Ryan Braun skewed people's ability to rationally project what rookie hitters should be capable of?

2nd in the NL in runs scored...can you imagine the outcry if they were 4th? Yeesh, lay the sarcasm on a little heavier. With Hall on the DL, Hardy having cooled off quite a bit, and Weeks totally forgetting how to hit, I don't think it's a stretch to say that "right now, the offense could use a boost". I know I didn't say that directly word for word, but I figured it was implied. I also don't expect Fielder to continue to hit an HR every 10-11 at bats for the 2nd half, and if pressed, I'd guess Hart's going to cool off at some point as well. One can argue that Roberts isn't much of an upgrade over Graffanino, and I could see that argument, but I don't think that adding a bat that might help the offense should be out of the question.

As I said in the Roberts thread, I think the offense needs a shot in the arm. I don't think Vargas is really part of the future here, but I think he's got some value right now to a team who might be struggling to put the back end of their rotation together for a stretch drive. I don't know how much of a bat you could get for Vargas, maybe he'd be a part of a bigger deal. It's great to have pitching depth, but I don't think trading away one starter hurts that depth too much. You can only keep Villy and Gallardo in the bullpen so long.

I would do this. With Weeks having no clue at the plate currently, coupled with Hall on the DL indeterminately, the offense could surely use a shot in the arm. Roberts is not a bopper, but he is a nice offensive player, and given his age comparable to Graffy, I'd expect Roberts to stay the same, maybe slightly improve, while Graffy is probably safely on the downswing of his career at this point. Anyways, if it's only for the rest of this season, I still see Roberts outproducing Graffy by a decent margin for 70 some games.

I'd guess there's currently less than a 1% chance that either Capuano or Suppan get sent to the pen. Just as the people who were giddy at Suppan's excellent start, the people who want to tear him to shreds now that he's been struggling always need to realize that a 162 game season has ups and downs. Suppan is what he is, and what he's not, is a bullpen arm.

I don't have any numerical expectations other than hoping they play much better than they did on this last road trip. I expect that 4.5 game lead to grow a bit also.

I liked Monster House. The ending was sorta lame, but didn't take away from another wise good movie.

Ok, several points here. I'm not a Mike Bay fanboy. He is what he is, a Summer Blockbuster director. He knows it, we know it, there's no reason to be surprised when we get a movie from him that's a little light on character development, but heavy on action. When I go to a movie, I pay to be entertained. With that in mind, I go with an extremely open mind, with the whole idea that I'm going to kick back and relax for a few hours, and not be overly critical about what I'm about to see. There's a legion of Transformer fans, as well as self appointed movie critics (not to say that's a bad thing) who were going to hate this movie, no matter what. Their minds were made up before they went in. Point in case, I am not at all a fan of Pixar, but we went to Ratatoille this weekend, and I decided to watch it instead of hating it before I actually saw it, and enjoyed it. Ok, that doesn't mean Transformers was a good movie (by certain standards), I guess it just means that I can enjoy just about any movie for what it is, instead of disliking it for what it isn't. Was Jon Voight's character overly cheesy, over-acted, and poorly written? Sure. After sitting back and thinking about it, I have a hard time deciding if I was supposed to take him serious, or if he was the "comic relief guy who's supposed to be in charge". Jon Turturro was really out of place in this movie, and didn't do a good job with what (little) was given to him to work with. As for the action/combat scenes, I guess the "herky jerky can't tell what's going on or tell who's who" doesn't bother me, because I think combat, by it's very nature, is extremely chaotic. Sure, in the context of the movie, it's nice to know as a viewer what's going on, but to be honest, I did not have a hard time picking out "who's who" during the action scenes in this film. There's faults with any film, some (way) more than others. Every viewer has different tastes. I know some people like to say that for certain movies you have to "turn off your brain" to be able to enjoy it, but I don't think that's really accurate. Like I said before, when I pay to see a movie, I try to really enjoy it for what it is, not for what it fails to be.

A bit off topic, but went to a drive in last night and saw it too. Did you go to the HIghway 18 one out in Jefferson? It was my first drive-in movie, I had a great time, and the night was awesome for it. This is a long shot, but I chatted Brewers for about 15 seconds with a guy while in the concession line. Any chance you were that guy? I was there, but I wasn't that guy. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif I guess I'm not sure why people treat pixar films as childrens movies. There wasnt a single character in the movie under 21 years of age. one of the main characters was massively drunk at one point during the film and the other was a rat. I'm just pointing this out because Children's art---literature, films, music, etc...usually has a younger slant...the only thinkg about ratatouille that made it a childrens film was that it wa animated. I can assure you it dealt with more mature content than any of the other big comedys that came out this summer, and it felt a heckuva lot more developed than any of the sequels Very good point Pogo, to be sure. As I said in another thread, I do enjoy just about any movie genre out there, I just seem to have a hard time wrapping my mind around and enjoying most anything disney puts out these days. Their older stuff (in my opinion of course) is so much better written than most of the schlock (shrek, I'm looking at you) that they shove through development. You're right in saying that this was a much more adult oriented story, with enough lighthearted elements that kids would be able to enjoy it as well, without getting into too much "adult theme" material.

I likened the people that enjoyed the movie to kids that enjoy Christmas lights. Man, pardon me, but that seems somewhat unnecessary. Someone can have different tastes without having to take backhanded jabs at a person's intelligence because they have a differing opinion. I like all kinds of movies, be they arthouse flicks, indie deals, action/adventure nonsense, and all the rest. (Save chick flicks). That doesn't mean I have to be slackjawed and drooling to enjoy a Michael Bay picture.

I really don't care for Pixar (or animated "kids" movies in general), but I really thought that this was a good film. We took it in at the drive-in last night, and it definately far exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations. I do have to say that (aside from having Larry the Cable guy) I didn't think Cars was all that bad.

Mind boggling. If there's a day in the middle of the season in which you can go ahead and "burn" your bullpen, it's the last game before the Break. No reason at all to let Cappy hang there. Terrible.

I didn't mean to come off as harsh Robert, I just like to talk movies, and if we all agreed, it wouldn't be a whole lot of fun now, would it? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif I get what you're saying, (granted I have not seen this one yet), and just from the commercials, some of the situations look a little bit "out there", I guess I just look at it, like you say, with a Die Hard movie, you know what you're getting into.

I'd have to say the "implaus-o-meter" would go right off the scale as soon as Mr. McLane gets involved for the 4th time in his life in a terrorist plot to blow up a building/steal money/take over the world. In my opinion, if you're going to worry about reality in a Die Hard movie, that reality takes a huge bite simply by the fact that it's staggeringly improbable to be involved in this many terrorist activities by sheer chance (except 3, where he's a specific target).

I know that mathematically, good teams lose a number of series each year. I know mathematically that a good team will lose some series to bad teams. I know mathematically that a good team will lose a series on the road as often as they'll win them. That all still doesn't stop me from being righteously pissed that we STILL can't go into Pittsburgh and play some decent ball. against a team sporting a flat .700 OPS, with a whopping 2 batters who have an OPS over .800. This series is no bigger than any other, yes, I know, blah blah blah. Just let me be chapped for now, and I'll get over it eventually.

I LOVED transformers when I was a kid, between them, GI Joe, and Star Wars, I lived the crap. I loved G1, I never missed an episode, if I could help it. So why does it matter if the plot/look/sound, etc, etc, etc is all the same? I don't want to see the same thing I loved as a kid, I want something new. In no way does the new stuff "ruin my memory" of the old crap. I don't get that. I'd consider myself a "purist", but in my opinion, I don't see any reason to make them look and act and sound just like the originals, or there's no point in doing an update. At the end of the day, I guess you can't make everybody happy, but I took the family tonight, I loved it, my 12 year old son has proclaimed it the best movie he's ever seen, and my wife even enjoyed it. If anything, to me, this only reinforces my strong memories of enjoying the transformers as a kid. My 2 cents........

I said GOOD site for minor league stats. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif I'm not a fan of the cube, fwiw. It's awfully balky, from my experience.

Where is a GOOD site for minor league statistics, that's up to date and has player links that show career totals? I could google, and hunt around, but I know there's people here who'll point me in a good direction.

Cordero had a 5.56 ERA in June (small sample, yes) coming into today, so it's going to get a whole lot worse when the stats update. Not exactly a stellar month to cap off his all star resume. I remember the 2nd half performance of the last Brewers closer selected to the all star game.....http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/frown.gif

Not at all the offenses fault. Scoring distribution doesn't matter, they gave the staff 5 runs in 9 innings, and handed their (supposed) all star closer a 2 run lead. It seems more often than not anymore, Cordero insists on putting runners on the corners with less than 2 outs.

Cordero needs to get his act together.

Warming up Cordero with a 5 run lead with one out in the 9th. Honestly, I almost think Ned hopes these teams score to create save situation so he can totally blow Cordero out by August.

"I hope you got an ATM in that torso of yours, LiteBrite."

I saw it, and had no idea what it was til I read this thread. I just figured alien invaders were scouting us out.