danzig6767

Nothing supernatural, but i continually used to have this dream where my father is trying to break into my place to try and kill me. They were very vivid and i'd wake up all the time remembering every detail of the dream i just had about this. The weird thing is i'd often wake up scared by this dream in the middle of the night and remembering exactly where the dream left of. Then maybe a week later i'll have the same dad is trying to kill me dream, but it would start exactly where it left off a week ago. This was been going on for a few years and i get along great with my dad which makes this dream/these dreams about him so bizarre. The dreams were so vivid, freaky, and felt so real that at first, it took me awhile to shake it from my thought process once i woke up for good that day. Then one night i had the dream and early that next day my dad stopped over, he lives only 5 minutes from me. It was a very strange feeling because the dream was still kinda lingering in my head, not just a typical time being around my dad. He was talking to me and the dream was now vividly running through my head of me and him in a vicious fight for our lives with a crazed look on his face. Then out of nowhere, i stopped having the dream.

That's the rub though, Lee has absolutely impeccable command, arguably the best in the game. In 211 regular season innings this year, Lee only issued a ridiculously low 18 walks. That's absolutely insane, is K/BB ratio was a sick 185/18. Velocity obviously matters for pitchers, but when facing so many highly skilled MLB hitters nearly every start, command is the most important thing for any pitcher. I'd guess that at least 40 percent of the pitchers in MLB can throw a fastball 92-93 or faster like the range of Lee, but the majority of them miss their intended location fairly consistently. Le rarely does. It will be very interesting to see how Lee ages as a pitcher.

I think talent matters much more than the manager and we're lacking it right now.Yea, Macha was able to look smart and win a lot of games with a rotation headed by Mulder/Zito/Hudson along with having 4th starter like Harden most of those years, Haren was there in 2006. Even Davey Lopes could have won a lot of games with starting pitching like that. Plus, for all the talk of the clubhouse being less happy under Macha, winning tends to alleviate personality clashes, at least to a degree. It's when teams are out of contention for the playoffs that often personality conflicts between players/manager tend to fester and get worse. It can be to the point where a manager gets fired at the end of a season by one team, then a few weeks later another team hires the same guy. Hell, i heard on the radio that the Pirates either intend to interview Macha or that they already have.

What's to hate about winning nearly every year? That's the only brand of baseball i care about. They won because of their pitching and defense, and in spite of "Sciosciaball." He bunts, hits and runs, and steals way too much.Ahhh, so if it wasn't for that idiot Mike Scioscia, then the Angels would have won an even bunch more games than all the games they won under him? He was holding then back. Just a hunch here, but i think the GM who built all those 90-100 win teams and yearly division winners would disagree with you, unless he also has no clue about how to run a team either. He just got lucky building all those 90 plus win teams who were so stupid to not just wait for three run homers instead. BTW, i'm not against the Earl Weaver philosophy either for winning games if the roster fits, there is very sound reasoning behind that philosophy then. All that matters to me though is winning and i just don't buy your belief that Mike Scioscia not only wasn't an overall asset to the Angels, he instead was a terrible manager that the team won in spite of him. Or basically saying that a GM who was smart enough to build all those yearly winning Angels team, he was also stupid enough to not notice that his long time manager was hurting the team. Mike Scioscia has been around baseball a long time. I'm very confident that if he instead took over a roster lacking in speed/athletes, but full of lots of power hitters and guys who consistently take walks, he would easily adjust and not be trying to have a bunch of slower power hitters bunt and steal bases. He doesn't strike me as a very stubborn man who would refuse to adapt to the rosters strengths he had in place.

You're saying that everything can be found in stats. It comes off that you're implying that since you have stats, there's no additional credibility to the perspective the beat writers have by watching the players play everyday -- or no perspective to be gained that's not already evident in stats. Maybe that's not what you mean. But if it is, I simply think that's a flawed perspective.The perspective that beat writers have are so flawed that they are useless. Things like hitting with RISP are borderline random as has been proven over and over with stats. When you start judging players by things like RBI you have lost all credibility and your opinion becomes moot.They don't write just for guys who spend lots of time reading graphs, spread sheets, studying the 5 new sabermetric stats created, and the countless other data out there that the sabermetric community finds interesting. Even the limited advanced stats they used likely had at least half of their readers looking with partial blank stares. Beat writers aren't going to submit grades followed by a paragraphs full of abbreviations and stats that many fans don't understand nor want a tutorial on what looked like it came from whatever are the popular saber sites of today instead. Those baseball fans that find the stats angle to baseball as interesting as the game itself, they shouldn't be expecting or looking at local papers for that kind of information given local beat writers aren't paid to analyze stats all day so as to get accepting from the advanced stats are everything or you're else you're in the stone age folks. The net already seems to have numerous sites dedicating to studying numbers 24/7 and creating new stats. I have couple of friends who love the Brewers as i do and so does my daughter boyfriend. We go to games sometime or talk the Brewers. While i personally understand some of the countless advanced stats put on this site, none of the other Brewers fans i know are interested in sabermetrics at all. At games, they never talk or debate about FIB or UZR. I gave my best friend the addy to this site and when i asked him what i thought of it, he said it was unreadable because he often had no idea what the hell people were talking about with abbreviations and stats he never heard of and wasn't interesting in reading up on. I'm not saying that makes this site bad in the slightest, just that there still are a ton of baseball fans that don't read Hardball Times and have no idea what is DER, FIP, UZR, WAR, or the many other abbreviations. Here it's everyday commonplace where most fans understand what's being said, to those other fans, many of which are more inclined to just read the local paper, that stuff is a foreign language. Beat writers can't ignore that fairly large base of baseball fans that still follow RBI's and how a guy bats with RISP just to appease the saber crowd and instead fill the grades piece with what the pitchers FIP, VORP, and WAR was. Not that i regularly spend my time reading the comments section under Brewer articles in the paper because when i have it's usually been eye bleeding painful even thought i'm not much into sabermetrics either, but that's largely the crowd the beat writers are writing to. There won't be a bunch of comments/arguing about what the FIP was for each pitcher instead of their ERA.

What's to hate about winning nearly every year? That's the only brand of baseball i care about.

This is a confusing post by you. You mention that Santana has only had one really good season and he's owed 20 million over the next two season, yet you would like to see Melvin trade McGehee and a prospect or two for him? Granted, Santana likely would have put up slightly better numbers in the NL and his numbers this year are probably worth roughly 10 million, but you're also wanting to trade McGehee and a prospect or two for him. Santana has a nice arm so maybe we could get lucky and he has a very nice couple of years with the Brewers if Doug traded for him, but he also just as easily could be a mediocre starter for those two years at the cost of 20 million along with what's traded for him.

Add me to the crowd who is calling Braun and Hart bad defenders. There are very few people on this site who take UZR without a grain of salt. I largely agree with the methodology, and although it is not even close to perfect, it is getting better. My opinions on Braun and Hart are not simply copied from Fangraphs; I've watched them play the outfield all year, and quite frankly, I've yet to find many people who follow the game closely who consider them anything but bad defenders, especially Braun. Add me to the list I'm not really all that interested in all the wide variety of baseball stats out there today, including defensive ones which from my limited exposure to them struck me as far from being extremely reliable, unlike offensive stats tend to be. That said, if the defensive stats do say that Braun and Hart range from bad to terrible defensively, it would just confirm what me eyes tell me when watching both try to play defense. Braun to me simply looks like a guy who has poor instincts in the outfield, especially at reading the ball off the bat. He's extra clueless at balls hit over his head. Hart also struggles reading balls of the bat, but to a lesser degree than Braun. Either way, both to often fail to get to and end up catching balls that more skilled corner outfielders do get to and catch. As for their arms, it's not their arm strength that fails them so often as much as both just aren't accurate throwers. I almost never watch AL baseball so i won't claim that Hart/Braun are the worst defensive corner outfield duo in baseball, but i can't envision how that many other duo's could be worse. As for Prince and McGehee , nobody should need stats to realize that Prince a poor defensive player. Between his lack of height and ability to dig out throws, he does the rest of the infielders very few favors. McGehee i don't know what his defensive stats say, but to my eyes while he seems fundamentally sound in the field, he also offers very little range.

Not that winning or losing games at this point matters much, but how can the bullpen be so taxed after September call up time? Even if the Brewers preferred not bringing up anymore young pitchers, why didn't Doug add another soldier type of arm then just in case a situation arrived of a spent bullpen? After all, this is still a Brewers rotation out there where the sixth inning is like kryptonite and Macha has to start yanking starters. Is it a cost saving issue? If so, what does it cost to keep a guy in the bigs from September 1st through the end of the month?

Cliff Lee is an elite starting pitcher who also eats a lot of innings, that's the most valuable commodity in the game. In the offseason his agent will milk that demand and very likely get a huge offer or offers that would force the Brewers to top which could be very dangerous for the franchise. Dangerous enough that i doubt the Brewers will even try getting involved.

No question that people commenting in this thread have no idea about what teams Doug called in regards to Hardy and what other offers he may have received for JJ. I'd assume that Melvin let all of baseball know that Hardy was available. Either way though, what Doug did get in return looks to be a complete bust unless you think Gomez will ever be able to improve at least fairly significantly at the plate because i'd put the odds of that happening at microscopic.

Just because someone claims to be and takes pride in being a very bland person out of the loop of popular culture, that shouldn't make them deaf and/or blind. It's almost hard for me to buy that Al is 41 and claiming to have never heard of Stevie Ray Vaughn. Is that really possible, we aren't talking about some semi-obscure blues artist like say Buddy Guy? You'd almost had to have lived in a cave to be 41 and not at least have heard of the name Stevie Ray Vaughn. What could he say next, that he may have heard the name Jimi Hendrix before, but thought Hendrix was known for inventing the Rubik's Cube, not for being a legendary musician?

These guys are professionals. They shouldn't need a 'rah rah' guy in the dugout for them to be able to go out and perform their duties (or have *fun* for that matter)I understand that these are professional athletes, but that doesn't remove any human emotions they have simply because they are now getting paid to play the game they love. I also won't claim to know what kind of impact there can be on some teams because of the personality of their manager. I suspect in most cases it's quite minor, but i've never spent 162 games with a baseball team in a long season. On top of that, we don't really know how exactly all the players on the team really feel about Macha. All we get are random quotes here and there from supposed unnamed sources and in the grand scheme of things, i think a lot of fans overrate the importance of baseball managers when it comes to a team's final record. That said, simply from my perspective as a fan watching Macha manage the team and hearing him after games, he doesn't exactly come off as an inspiring guy. Macha often comes off to me that instead of him being the manager of a professional baseball team, he's in the process of doing a study on the history of closet doors in America as he recites his findings to us.

I think I have one of those http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2796/4221670532_572f52e30a.jpg My aunt has a Pomeranian and the first time i picked up her dog, it surprised just how light it was. It looks just like this. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/PomPhoto10.jpg The dog almost felt like i was holding a rodent with piles of fluffy hair because it was so light. How much do they generally weigh, 3-5 pounds?

It's very hard for me to pick only one, but if i could only own one cd and no other music could exist Pink Floyd- Animals

Neither guy belongs in the major leagues

Cubs Cardinals Red Sox

That's why i have little to no faith that Gomez will ever figure things out at the plate. His numbers the last three seasons are amazingly near identical. Hell, last year and this year his BA/OBP are 2009 .229/.287 this year .228/.286, hows that for a guy showing zero improvement. When i watch Gomez at the plate, he's such a mess that it's hard for me to ever envision him turning things around. How do you make a guy with no clue whatsoever at how to approach at bats to being able to know what he's doing up there? Guys like him rarely ever are able to figure it out because the bad habits are just to far ingrained.

I heard this being talked about on the radio and from team to team, some can do various things to make it look like they made less money than they really did. It was mentioned that when the McCourt's bought the Dodgers, the sale included Dodgers Stadium. Well, even though they own the stadium, i guess on their records they say that the team pays 14 or 15 million each year in rent. For a lot of sports franchises, i'd assume there are various avenues to cooking the books that are beneficial to the owners and make it look like they made less money than they actually did. I'm no accountant though and could very well be way off base in my assumptions.

True, but Sale signed for less in exchange for a Septemember call-up, which will put him on the 40 man roster. I think he may have been called up already. Skole accepted a pre-draft deal at #15 because it was much higher than he was projected to go. The Rangers wanted a pre-draft deal in place because that pick was compensatory for not signing last years #15, so it came with no further compensation for an unsigned pick. Its the same situation the Brewers will be in next, right down to the number of the selection. I don't know if the Brewers will seek a pre-draft deal, but expect a conservative selection. I hope not I understand that first round draft picks in baseball generally have higher failure rates than a sport like football, but i personally would rather see the Brewers invest a premium on the first few rounds of the draft even with two first round picks next year than continuing to light money on fire via big spending on 30 plus year old bullpen guys. That's why you have some here saying they would have done things differently. It's tough odds already for just a typical mid-first round high school pitcher to ever even just get to the majors, much less have a good major league career which brings a lot of money with it. Then you add type I diabetes to the equation, it toughens those odds that Covey can make good money by playing baseball. Obviously that was a hard decision for the family after being blindsided by finding this out when they did and i'd agree it's probably wrong to call their decision idiotic because not everyone values money the same, but i do wonder if they'll end up regretting it after this situation has more time to sink in for them. Something around two million dollars is a lot of money in the real world even if it's not in the world of professional sports. A person making a good salary of say 50,000 a year would need to work between 35-40 years to make what Dylan was offered assuming it was still in the 1.5-2 million range.

"Covey said it didn't help that the family didn't have much time to make the decision. Because MLB wanted to hold down bonuses, teams were encouraged to wait as long as possible to make offers. That made it even more difficult to know what to do, said Covey." I wonder if Covey and his family would have chosen to take the contract if the whole process had moved along sooner? If say the Brewers had diagnosed the diabetes sooner and also agreed to still sign him. Sounded like from the father and Dylan that they felt pretty rushed on how best to handle this situation and maybe if they had more time to evaluate everything involved, they might have chosen instead to sign. The Brewers waited until last Wednesday to do the physical on Dylan and thus didn't find out about the diabetes until right before the signing deadline was close to passing. If the team wasn't playing along with this MLB plan of waiting on giving offers until the last minute, the Brewers very well could have had Dylan take the physical sooner, found out about the diabetes sooner, and thus allowed the Covey family to think longer about if signing with the Brewers would work out ok in handling his medical situation. Instead, the family not only learns learns some terrible medical news, they then also had only about one day to decide if Dylan should sign a pro contract or stay in college much closer to home.

Yea Deja Vu was it. Good ride, but broken down so much So when you go to Cedar Point, are ride lines/wait times excessively long to where it's hard to hit every good ride in a visit?

I agree with you that fielding percentage alone often tells a very poor story about how a player is defensively, especially when it comes to outfielders. That said, i do think if you watch a player play long enough without having on team homer goggles, you can easily see that say Ryan Braun is a poor defensive LF regardless of his low error totals. You could watch Mike Cameron and see he was a very good defensive CF. Watch Fielder and see that he struggles scooping throws in the dirt which won't be reflected in his fielding percentage, but obviously hurts the Brewers because that's a key part of the job requirements for any firstbaseman. That Corey Hart has a very inaccurate arm in RF and that he also isn't very skilled at reading hit balls off the bat like the better rightfielders can do. That Casey McGehee doesn't have much range at third regardless if his error totals aren't excessive. I'm not saying the human eye will always be correct when evaluating the defensive abilities of a player, but i do think it can be useful when mixed in with stats to see if what the stats say are vastly different than what your eyes are telling you.

Are you being serious? He's already 32 and his stuff declined this year as evidenced by his numbers, lower strikeouts and higher walks. Now he'd be looking at missing all of next year at least. So he'd then be trying a comeback at age 34 after suffering through injury issues for 5 straight seasons, including the massive injury he just suffered. Plus, Been has always been a power pitcher, now some crafty guy who succeeded via savvy. It IMO would take beating near astronomical odds for Sheets to ever again be 90 percent of the pitcher he was in his prime, much less do it over multiple seasons.

Ken Macha stole it from him. I'm not saying that he was a great player, but he was definitely a serviceable outfielder. Anyone would have a hard time putting up stats getting 5 at bats a week, like Gerut did most of last summer. Once all the injuries forced his hand, Macha played Gerut toward the end of last year, and he put up some pretty decent numbers. I never understood why Doug even brought Gerut back They had Edmonds in the fold who also hit lefthanded and Counsell/Inglett both hit lefthanded all as bench players. Baffling to enter a season with only lefthanded bats on the bench. It was obvious to me that Gerut would barely ever get starts because of Edmonds and Macha would use others first as pinch hitters. Gerut was being paid 2 million dollars to be the 5th OF and last pinch hitting option. Stupid. The 25th player on the roster of a small or mid-market team should almost always be making the minimum, not two million dollars.