JoeHova

Angel Salome's OPS+ (not park adjusted) is now 161. That's the 2nd highest of any prospect in the Southern League, trailing only Matt LaPorta (who is a year older and ahead by only .004 points of OPS). That is pretty impressive, even though there are caveats with Angel (size, BABIP, defense). It's pretty weird that a 22 year old catcher who is hitting like this is not getting more attention, although I guess it might be because of the suspension. I mean, compare ANgel to the NL All-Star catchers this year. Russell Martin was the same age in the same league and put up an .853 OPS. Geovany Soto was 21 when he was in AA and put up a .750 OPS and followed that up with a .699 at AAA when he was 22. Brian McCann was is the majors at Angel's age, but when he was 21, he put up an .835 OPS in AA and got called up for good. Obviously all players are different, and I'm not saying Angel will necessarily become an all-star, but his numbers are getting pretty hard to ignore, imo.

I said "used to", as in "in the past".

My wife would be quite upset if I slept in another room, though I guess I can see why some people might want to do it. The thing is, my wife and I are very different sleepers too but compromises must be made, I guess. I always used to think that people only slept in different rooms if they disliked each other and were involved in a sham marriage (in other words- that's why the people I know who have separate bedrooms do it, no offense Brian and FTJ and anyone else) but some of the reasons you guys are stating make sense too. When I lived alone, I liked to listen to music and read in bed before I fell asleep but I've stopped doing that because my wife doesn't like it. It might be fun to do that again, but then again, sleeping with someone is fun too.

If they trade for a player, they could easily just demote (or cut, if he's out of options) Nix. He adds nothing and there will probably be a bunch of OFs (Gwynn, Stocker, Branyan, Dillon, Nelson) called up on Monday.

It seems bizarre that even Villy's defenders are saying he's in the wrong. Not sure why you're not allowed to do a fist pump. Plenty of people are known for doing that: Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter, K-Rod, Rafael Nadal, heck, even the Obamas. I've never understood why people think it's so disrespectful in some contexts. And even if it is, so what? Get over it, you bunch of queens.

To be fair to Boras, he's not the one that cost Harrington the big payday. Boras took over for Tommy Tanzer, who is the guy who blew the $4 million payday from the Rockies. When Harrington got drafted for the 2nd time, the Padres offered $1.2 million, which was not close to the $4.95 million the Harrington family originally wanted. Boras had Harrington play in independent ball and he was terrible and the Padres took the offer off of the table. At some point, Harrington or his family had to take some responsibility. Boras had little to do with it, Harrington just wasn't any good and overplayed his hand. For all of Boras's failures (really only 3 that I'm aware of: A-Rod, Rogers, and Sheffield- plus were they really failures? A-Rod got an even bigger contract than he previously had and Rogers and Sheff weren't interested in maximizing their value), there are plenty of successes. Look at what he did for Hochevar, he got him more than $1 million more plus the prestige of being the #1 pick. He got a badly declining Zito the largest contract ever for a pitcher (to that point). He had JD Drew opt out of a contract that many people thought already paid him too much but he got him even more. He's an unsavory character, that's for sure, but he does tend to get results.

When I was at PNC last summer, you couldn't even park on the street downtown during the games, the meters were closed during games. I don't know how the Pirates got Pittsburgh to shut down their downtown during games, but it was a hassle. I don't think tailgating would be easy because the parking is all structures (don't think they'd let you fire up a grill in one, could be wrong though) or tightly packed under a freeway (like at Summerfest in Milwaukee). Not the most appetizing spot and I'm not sure somebody wouldn't run you over.

Milwaukee: Ribs: Speed Queen Burgers/Custard: Kopp's Gyros: The Gyro Stand Pizza: De Marini's (original) Mexican: Los Comales Lunch Meat/Sausages: Usinger's Popcorn: Knight's fine dining: none

Rob Neyer was just on ESPNews and he said he thought Nelson Cruz was "absolutely" a big leaguer and not a 4A player. He said he thinks he could have 3-4 good years after this one. He thought Cruz wouldn't be quite as good as Ryan Ludwick has been this year but that he'd be a credible major leaguer. Neyer also said he thought Texas waited too long to call him up and wasted his season. Of course, Neyer is just one guy, but I thought people might be interested in hearing a summary of a national baseball reporter's thoughts.

Plus, the Brewers may want to keep Riske. I assume teams may have thought that claiming him was pointless because the Brewers would just pull him back. OTOH, if that isn't what they thought, I guess Doug made a mistake with that contract.

what am I thinking of then? September call-ups not counting towards Rookie Of the Year service time eligibility maybe? Either way, 3-4 weeks of service time is unlikely to be a big deal at any point in the future. Huntsville plays its final game on Sept. 1st and won't be in the playoffs. Milwaukee plays their final game on Sept' 28th. That would give Angel about 27 days of service time if he is called up immediately after Huntsville's season ends. Players can earn 172 days of service time during a season (seasons are about 10 longer than that though). I don't foresee any way that Angel being up this September will cost the Brewers any years of Angel's career. I suppose it could make him more likely to be a super two depending on what their long-term plans are for him, but if they plan on having him spend most of next year at AAA to get better on D, even that becomes unlikely. The reason I don't see a callup being a problem is that either Angel is good enough to make the team at the beginning of next year or he has to stay down until May 15th or so to make sure that 2009 won't be his first 172. Considering they left Braun down well past the 15th, I don't see them being afraid to leave Angel down if his defense still needs improvement. Weird, I always thought it was fun to see guys get their first callups. Now I guess we won't be seeing any good players be called up if it could potentially cost the Brewers a year of service. That's a shame.

September call-ups don't add service time, in my (incorrect) understanding. Also, the minor league seasons are over well before the MLB season is, so it's not like a call-up (if he got one) would cost Angel much playing time, if any (see below).

Britain's display during the closing ceremony was shamefully lame. A bus stop?

I'll be watching the game. I'm pretty excited. Spain was no competition at all during pool play, but you never know.

It was an Aussie dude, I'm pretty sure.

I'd love to see Bolt anchor that 4x400 and I think that the Brit's taunting may have made that more likely, but I still don't think they'll do it. It's too risky, depending on how much Bolt has run that distance in practice. If he really hasn't done it much, they'd be risking him going out too fast and dying before the end of his leg. I know his coach said a couple days ago that he didn't want to burn him out at one meet.

Fair enough. But would it be kosher for other drivers to call the cops and incessantly whine to them if you were going 5 over? If you think it would be, fine. I think it's unseemly for the US (or anybody) to complain about getting beaten when they were clearly the #2 team. To me it would be like if the Lakers found out Rajon Rondo was actually 16 (making him ineligible to play in the NBA) and then whined and whined about how they should get to be NBA champions, even though the alleged cheating is really more of a bookkeeping thing than something that is giving an advantage. If anything, it's more impressive that those girls are supposedly 12 or whatever. If gymnastics has a problem with their best athletes being 12, they should change the rules (and not with an age limit) so that can't be the case. What other sport bans their best performers from competing? It makes no sense.

China has been falsifying ages in international competitions for awhile, the twist is that instead of making people look younger (to facilitate the winning of age-group championships), they've done it to fit their athletes into the idiotic gymnastics age requirement. The age-group cheating strikes me as worse, the cheating they're accused of now just seems like skirting an arbitrary rule, so I don't care at all about it. That said, looks like "good old-fashioned American complaining" (to quote The Simpsons, iirc) will carry the day again.

As an aside, the East Germans were all women, at least at the time, as were the Americans. The IAAF and IOC introduced "gender verification" in 1966, partially because of persistent rumors involving Irina and Tamara Press, who had combined to win 5 golds for the USSR during the previous 2 Olympics. The sisters immediately retired upon the implementation of the testing. Gender verification continued through the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. There are still remnants of it today, but it's not mandatory for all competitors. Additionally, post-operative transsexuals are now allowed to compete in the Olympics if they've undergone at least two years of hormone therapy.

So do the American "women" from that era. That's why I don't like to speculate about that kind of thing. Sure, there are reasons to believe many of the eastern bloc competitors were doping. There are also reasons to believe that the best American track athletes of that era (Carl Lewis and FloJo, in particular) were doing it.

Arrgggh, now the US has failed to qualify for both 4x100 finals because of fumbled exchanges. Disastrous meet for the US, although they had a few runners do well and still claimed a good amount of medals.

Bolt is unbelievable. One of the greatest Olympic performances ever. I'd think only Carl Lewis 1984, Paavo Nurmi 1924, Jesse Owens 1936, and Florence Griffith-Joyner 1988 are on the same level. FloJo didn't get the world record in the 100 during the Olympics, but she already had it (it still has never been approached except by her) and she set the 200 WR twice including during the final (that record still stands too). She added a gold in the 4x100 and a silver in the 4x400. Lewis didn't set either world record, but he dominated the competition in much the same manner as Bolt and set an OR in the 200. He added the long jump (first of an Olympic record 4 straight Golds in the same event) and the 4x100 golds. Owens won the same 4 golds that Lewis did, though in less dominating fashion than Lewis. He already had the 100 and long jump WRs from a meet at the U of Michigan in 1935. He gets extra credit for sticking it to Hitler. Nurmi won 5 golds in 1924, though 3 of those events are no longer contested. He won the 1500 and the 5K in WR times despite the finals having less than a half hour break between them. The 1500/5K double wasn't matched until 2004 by Hicham El Guerrouj, arguably the greatest miler ever. Nurmi also won the 5K cross country race and the 3K team and 5K cross country team events. Those 5, to me, are the greatest Olympic performances. The ranking is difficult, but Bolt's performance was so unprecedented that I'm still basically in shock. Literally 2 weeks ago, my wife asked me which track records I thought were the most unassailable. The obvious answer is FloJo's 100, but Johnson's 200 was next. Nobody had come within 3/10ths of it. Many people thought Johnson's performance was the 2nd most dominant in Olympic history, paling only in comparison to Bob Beamon bettering the long jump world record by almost 2 feet in 1968. Now Bolt has destroyed his rivals by even more than Johnson did. He wasn't able to lower the world record by nearly as much as Johnson did, but to better it at all is absurd. Johnson didn't even qualify for the Olympics when was as old as Bolt is now (Johnson had a lingering injury that season though). The question now is whether Bolt can keep this up for the next 8-12 years and become the greatest Olympian and/or runner ever. Only Carl Lewis repeated as the 100 meter champion (and that was only because Ben Johnson was DQ'd) and nobody has ever repeated as the 200 champ. Obviously, a lot of former champions didn't compete more than once because of arcane and stupid amateurism rules, but still, repeating is a daunting task. If Bolt can do the double again in London, he's probably the greatest ever, in my opinion. If he can do both in addition to adding the 400, as has been rumored, he'll be superhuman. I'm not even sure if that would be possible given the heat schedules, but we'll see, I guess. Sucks that we have to wait four years, I'm so excited. Johnson didn't peak till he was 29. That would be Chicago (hopefully) 2016 for Bolt. I can't wait to see what he can do in the interim.

coach- many of us like Angel a lot. There are a few posters who really don't like him as a prospect, but that can be expected with any prospect. I wouldn't take the criticism of a few people as representative of the feelings of the board as a whole.

why would the brewers need anything other than an emergency 3rd catcher in September? Ned has shown that Kendall will start 90+% of the games no matter what, so I don't think that will change in September.

I meant X doesn't like Salome as a prospect, I should have been more clear, my fault. I know more goes into catcher defense than 3rd base defense, but Gamel is totally not ready for prime time at 3rd either. His career fielding percentage is .876 and this year its .913. Neither of those will play in MLB, as we know. I still think Gamel gets a bit more of a break than Salome for no great reason.