DuWayne Steurer

I'm not big on the value-return on the trade, but after the run on WR's yesterday, I'm sure they didn't want to take the chance that the guy or guys they wanted today would still be hanging around at 53.

I think he knows he kinda does, but he's just playing with people's hearts (as you said) Randall Cobb is like 53 years old in WR years. Allan Lazard runs like a 7.4 40 (but he sure can block!) Sammy Watkins will probably be healthy for like 6.7 games this year and A. Rodgers is not ready to be a WR2.

I'm not stylish (or young) enough for such brazen fashion.

haha, sometimes sarcasm/jokes are hard to pick up without the subtle inflections of body language and facial expressions.

Johnson's character concerns aside, a guy's jacket being cause for concern is an unfair characterization. There have been a lot of guys that have worn some pretty outlandish things to the draft. It's a loud, brash event, and it's a glitzy, outlandish event at that.

So what you're saying is, 80+% of the guys picked so far are 22 or younger, meaning there's not actually really any data to be gleaned from the data, and it's pretty much just random? huh....

This was always the danger when the only pre-draft addressing of the WR room was adding Watkins. I'm sure there's a plan B, but I'm also sure plan A was probably taking one of the premium WR's in the first round.

Lions knew what they wanted.

I remember after the Bucks won the title last year, Nets fans were out en masse on twitter, that night, declaring themselves 2022 champs already. Like others have said..... building a superteam does not guarantee a championship. There were people lamenting the Lakers getting Westbrook and wondering how the Lakers would be stopped after amassing that amount of talent.

If I throw a dart at a dartboard, if I aim for the bullseye, I will either hit it, or I won't. I can assure you I will not hit the bullseye 50% of the time, even though by this logic it is a 50/50 outcome.

I'd like to think that most sports fans have players who make it into the inner circle of "favorites" who are obscure to some degree, odd, or just regular, average guys who might be bench warmers, or even guys who never made an impact of any great degree on the game they play. As Brewer fans, I feel like we've probably had more than our fair share of guys that we've had weird attachments to, fan-crushes, and quirky dudes like Tim Dillards, Keith Ginters, and so on. Guys that maybe aren't making commercials and millions of dollars and getting all star and MVP votes, but endear themselves to the fans or one of us individually none the less. I know my FAVORITE player when I was a young kid was Gorman Thomas. Now *there* was a star. The guy socked homer after homer. He played center field. He had an awesome mustache, and he smoked in the outfield! He even had a great name and a cool as heck nickname. I remember in early 1983 when the Brewers traded him for Rick Manning. I can't even begin to imagine what baseball executive would trade a bonafide superstar like Gorman Thomas for Rick. Manning. I think I must have just rode my red, black and white BMX bike around in a haze for a few days just trying to comprehend the stupidity of such a move. I'm still not over it. I look back at Gorman Thomas' 1983 stat line though, and older me understands the data driven side of why the Brewers did what they did. I still will never forget, even if I am able to forgive. But let's fast forward to 1986. The Brewers had struggled through a brutal 1985. Not a lot went right. 1986 was going better! The Brewers had a new slugger, with a decent mustache (Rob Deer). I don't know if he ever smoked while patrolling the outfield, but he was pretty cool. They were hovering around .500 in June. Things were looking a little better. So it was that my younger brother and myself came to be going to the Janesville Mall for the "Grand Re-opening" to see one Ernest Riles, shortstop for the Milwaukee Brewers. Now, the Janesville Mall is a little mall, in a medium sized town, and Ernie Riles is not exactly a star draw, so there weren't a ton of kids there. My brother and I both had Topps Sticker albums (remember those? Those things were GREAT!) and Ernie signed them for us. My dad let Ernie know we'd be coming to Detroit to see the Brewers play the Tigers near the end of June, and I think he didn't believe my dad, as he laughed and said "see ya there!" Fast forward to June 27th, 1986. Our family of four gets walk-ups to the vast, gray, cavernous Tiger Stadium, underneath the right field overhang. Tiger Stadium was so different than County Stadium to a young kid like myself. Just a huge diamond shape, and it had a much more enclosed feel, not quite claustrophobic, but very dark (to me) and I remember it feeling "old". Even as a precocious 11 year old, I remember having a strongly defined understanding of the history and age and just the weight that this park held. We ambled over into the right field corner where none other than Teddy Higuera was signing autographs. What a great start to the day for us this could be, if we could get Teddy Higuera! My brother leans out, trying in vain to get Teddy's attention, and finally Teddy takes...... my brother's pen, to sign someone else's program! My mom, never a shy one, scolds Higuera and says "If you're going to use his pen, the least you can do is sign an autograph for him!", and my brother got Teddy Higuera's autograph on a square of plain folded brown cardboard. We wandered over to the Brewers dugout, where several Brewers were milling about, and a few more guys were playing long toss. Ernie Riles is throwing, sees us, and yells "Hey! It's the Janesville kids!", and stops throwing and comes jogging over. It's hard to describe that feeling of being a young kid, and being recognized by a major league baseball player, who stops what he's doing to come say hi to some kids he saw in a mall from two or three weeks ago at a signing event. That's like a top two or three moment in a little kid's life at that point. We had bought Brewers mini-bats, and he signed those, and something else, and talked ball with us and our dad for a few minutes (it feels longer in my memory, but it was probably in reality 30 seconds), and exclaimed that he couldn't believe we came all the way from Janesville to watch a ballgame. We didn't tell him that this was just one stop on our family vacation to Niagara Falls, and other points. It was a planned stop, but we didn't drive JUST to Detroit to see the Brewers. But Ernie didn't need to know that. If he wanted to believe we drove 10 hours to watch him play shortstop in Detroit, that's great. I remember the Brewers losing to the Tigers on a Kirk Gibson walk off bomb, 4 - 2. I looked it up, and Baseball-Reference confirms that my memory serves me well. Kirk Gibson hit a one out homer in the bottom of the 11th off of Dan Plesac, for a 4-2 Tigers win on June 27th 1986. I was always a huge Ernie Riles fan after this. I played the crap out of Strat-o-Matic baseball (and a bunch of you guys did too, even if you won't admit it) when I was a kid, and I put a full HOMERUN on 3-8 on Ernie's card. It made him more of a power hitter than he was supposed to be, but I didn't care. Ernie was my guy. He was never more than an average at best shortstop/utility guy, but I didn't care. He was a *good* guy, and genuinely nice and good guys are hard to come by. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rileser01.shtml https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/DET/DET198606270.shtml

I'd like to add a few things. I'm just a mod, not an admin, so I feel like my 2 cents are (fairly) impartial. 1) I appreciate Brock taking the time to give us this information in a transparent way where it's easy to digest for everyone. 2) As a mod, I appreciate folks keeping their "I hate ads" comments and suggestions in this post and the suggestions/issues forum, rather than the game threads, thanks! I was a member and admin of a super excellent sports-fan site for years (sports-boards.net) and like Brock said, we had a super cool, excellent thriving community, that was probably a few 3000 - 5000 strong at its peak. We had fan boards for almost every major sports team in North America, and a dedicated college sports forum, and probably had 3000 to 5000 posts per day. Some days was well over 10K posts Like Brock said, a few people left, a few more people left, and then one week we literally had less than 100 posts per day, and I was looking at the list of unique visitors and it was 8 - 12 registered users, and handfuls of bots and guests. Forums without additional content can die, just like that. Brewerfan is lucky in that we serve a super-dedicated, tight-nit and niche group, but if ya'll haven't noticed a lot (a lot!) of long time posters are leaving, and not a lot of people have been replacing them. I stayed at Brewerfan for 20 years because of the unique, Brewers baseball community we had, and still have. This new ownership gives us an opportunity to grow and have something more than just a forum with a 2008 interface. I don't know about any of ya'll, but I didn't go to Brewerfan for the interface, I posted daily for the people I got to talk baseball with. I said all this back at the "old" brewerfan, but I'll say it again, even if it sounds bit cheesy. This is going to have growing pains, change sucks but it can be fun and exciting and frustrating and any other expletive you might throw at it. Ads suck, nobody is gonna tell you different. Like I told the guys in the moderator chat, I HAVE to use my phone at work because I'm not allowed to use my computer for personal browsing. This site is pretty rough on mobile, as any of you who have tried it knows. But when I have down time, I check in and see who either liked a comment or told me I'm wrong about something, because it breaks up my day. Alright, jumping off my soapbox. ✌️

I agree that confidence is a factor. I don't think Darvish's comment had anything to do with it. I think he got hurt. I think that was compounded by the short spring training and a short season in 2020. I think he has had a hard time coming back, and has been hard on himself trying to find his stroke, and has (possibly) tinkered a lot/too much with his swing, stance, mechanics, and even the mental aspect of his batting to get back to where he thinks he can and should be.

The knee injury, followed by a short season marred by Covid, seems like a way more plausible reason than one guy vaugely saying "he looks away during at bats" for a .400-ish point drop in OPS.

I can't for the life of me imagine or believe that Darvish saying Yelich looks away during at bats could even begin to explain him going from the best hitter in the NL for two seasons into a sub - 700 OPS schlub. There's just no way. none at all.

Pretty big deal right here.... the big outburst will give the pen a (hopefully) an easy night to roll through the back end of the game and (again.... hopefully) let whoever closes the last few innings out just go out there and throw strikes and not worry about nibbling in a one or two run game.

Willy really needs a day off.

Mike Hampton.

Maybe Adames is starting to heat it up.

*Friendly reminder* during the game thread, if you're having issues with ads, or want to complain about the ads, please put those issues in the suggestions/issues forum. the ads issues are being worked on, and the game thread being cluttered up further with people complaining about ads doesn't help. if an admin pops in and asks, in the game thread about ad issues, respond in thread! otherwise please keep those comments in the proper forum. Thanks!

I know it's a small sample size, but if you look at Cain's batted ball data at fangraphs.... it ain't pretty. His exit velo is down, his hard hit% is WAY down, and according to statcast, his barreled up is 0. Yes, 0. Not only that, and I hate to say it, but he doesn't pass the ol' eye test. He just looks absolutely burnt. I know we had a short spring training, and on top of that, Lorenzo Cain has never exactly looked "athletic". He always looks like he's in every imaginable ache and pain just to jog out to CF and back, but he looks absolutely, 100% done. I hate to agree with the DFA crowd, but I think it's time.

I haven't noticed it. There's a slight delay every time I refresh the page for new posts before my cursor is "clickable", but my page doesn't bounce multiple times as each ad loads.

Alright. Wily got it back. Nice.

106 pitches. Take him out.

When I was a kid, I had a fairly strong belief that "prospects" like Billy Jo had statistics in AA and AAA that would translate rather simply to major league success. That being said, I had no idea that "park factor" was a thing, and that certain leagues in the minors were more hitter friendly or anything like that. I saw Billy Jo's stats for El Paso, and was CONVINCED he was going to be the next Don Mattingly, at the *very least*. Needless to say, I, like all Brewers fans, ended up with nothing but disappointment, but that never stopped me from using Billy Jo's mug for my avatar at the old site for like 5-6 years.