JoeHova

I think Milwaukee's best hope to keep Prince (assuming they aspire to) is that most of the big money teams have a 1b in place that they are happy with. I guess the Angels don't but they are probably still hoping for a Morales comeback. The Dodgers are broke so I doubt they are in the mix. The Cubs will probably go after Pujols if they want to spend huge money (which is questionable anyway). So, if Prince is only drawing interest from teams like the Braves, Orioles, Mariners, etc., the bidding may not go nearly as high as he hopes, which could leave the Brewers in the picture (assuming he doesn't rule them out at the start if they make a low offer). And if the top bid is 6/$100 or something like that, the option of trading Corey to keep Prince becomes a lot more realistic than it does if Prince is being offered 7/$150. I doubt they keep Prince but I agree that I would much rather have him than Corey + 2 random relievers. I've always believed that small market teams should spend big money on premium players, not above average ones. The real reason I can't realistically see the team hanging on to Prince is because I assume they want to re-sign Marcum and Greinke. If they somehow do that for John Lackey money, that's $32 million a year for those 2 starting in 2013. Hart gets $10 million that year. Yo gets $8. Rickie gets $10. Ryan gets $8.5. Add Prince in at (a possibly unrealistically low) $17 million and that's a total of $85.5 million for 7 guys (yes, they're the only 7 on the team worth a damn besides Lucroy and maybe Wolf, Morgan and Axford, but still). That's more than they are paying for the whole 25 man this year and that with what could be pretty conservative estimates of the contracts for Marcum, Greinke and Prince. I wish it was possible for the team to keep all these guys but I don't think they can unless they are prepared to up the payroll to the $120 million range (which would probably require them to win the World Series this year, which would probably mean that some of the guys had excellent years and post-seasons, which would mean that they would want more money, which would mean that the team would still be unlikely to be able to keep everybody). The Twins have recently upped their payroll to that level but they just got a new park and they have a much larger market than Milwaukee (and their cheapskate owner died). I don't know if Attanasio has the money to risk a payroll that large and even if he does and wanted to, I'm not sure Selig would allow him to try it.

By WAR, the best 2 Brewers by a landslide are Yount (76.9) and Molitor (60.6). That fits with conventional wisdom, I'm pretty sure. No other Brewer (hitter or pitcher) is above 30. Braun is at 17.3 for his career so far. Yount has 3 of the top 7 individual Brewer position player seasons by WAR, Braun has none of the top 10 (Molitor has 1). I think Yount has Braun handily beat in terms of peak and in terms of career value. Yount's an all-time great player, perhaps not in the inner circle of the Hall of Fame, but just outside of it. His 1982 is one of the best seasons by any player ever. The only shortstop to have ever had a better season is probably Honus Wagner. I'd like to see Braun have an MVP caliber season (he's off to a great start this year but he has to keep it up for 105 more games) before I'm willing to compare him to Yount.

I think Troy is the only guy in baseball with a longer contract than Ryan's, so I think the answer to that is yes, he would have been willing to commit.

Maybe Ryan should be the one to take over 1st base after Prince leaves, instead of Gamel. He might be a little better there because he was mostly an infielder while he was developing. Maybe it would be more natural for him than the outfield is.

Uggh, Lopez/Betancourt is my all-time least favorite DP combo. If they are reunited in Milwaukee, I might have to find a new team until they're gone. I can deal with Yuni (barely) but adding Lopey would be my breaking point.

Hi everybody- My wife showed me this picture on facebook today and I can't for the life of me figure out what the person is talking about. I've wracked my brain to think of the album cover they could be referring to but I just can't think of it. It's bothering me to not be able to figure this out. I thought I would ask here to see if it rang any bells for anyone. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/chief119/babyalbumcover.jpg Any help would be appreciated.

I was afraid he would get released when I noticed he was stuck on 1 homer every time I checked his numbers (and his OPS+ kept declining). Hopefully someone picks him up, he hit 56 home runs over the past 2 seasons. He can help a team.

This appears to be stupid. However, lots of names mean something mundane in their original language. For example, Amare means love in Latin. Ichiro means first born in Japanese (ichi = 1). Felix means happy in Latin. Derek meant chief in old german. Ryan means king (or little king) in Gaelic. Prince means prince in English.

Robin Yount is a more ideal number 2 hitter than Corey Hart, but isn't a lot of that simply because he was a better hitter than Corey Hart?

I haven't watched it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Real Sports is the best sports show, by far, on TV so I'm interested to see how they deal with Ueck.

Gross. Sorry to hear about that. Hope you feel better.

No. I agree that it seems a little unlikely that Green is anybody's favorite player but it would also seem unlikely that a 4th string catcher is anybody's favorite player, yet that is the case. So, you never know. Maybe some kid out there is named Sean Green and likes having his namesake on his favorite team. Or somebody went to Green's high school or met him at a minor league game or he helped them change a tire on the side of the road or whatever.

Yay Mike! Glad to see one of my favorite players back. Of course, somebody who has Green as one of their favorite players is probably sad right now, so now I feel a little guilty about being happy.

That is mountain biking legend Ned Overend. Good luck on the rest of the hunt.

Um, what? How does one follow the other? Jackie Robinson's number is retired because he was the first black player in the modern era, as there was an unwritten rule at the time against allowing black people to play major league baseball. There was no such prohibition against Latinos, as there have been Latinos continuously in MLB since at least 1911. There would obviously have been a prohibition against African-Latinos such as Clemente, but he was not the first player to break that barrier. Minnie Minoso was, 6 years before Clemente made his debut. I'm not saying Clemente wasn't a great player or a great man but retiring his number league-wide doesn't make sense. Retiring Robinson's makes sense as a symbol of MLB's shame in its pre-1947 history and of its pride in helping usher in the Civil Rights era (however small of an effect it may have had, it certainly couldn't have hurt to integrate team sports, which are obviously a symbol of teamwork and brotherhood).

That makes sense too. Which would also mean that the results are not necessarily applicable to other situations.

This argument doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Microbrews are more expensive (some are much, much more expensive) than the cheap swill the big breweries focus on. I don't know much about how the wine market is segmented but judging by your wine argument and this analogy, you seem to be making the case that Miller will abandon Miller Lite if a tiny percentage of beer drinkers decide to drink microbrews instead. I think we can all agree that is not going to happen so I don't see why you would assume the equivalent would happen with wine. Your argument seems to boil down to claiming that quality doesn't matter, unless it's cheap. I don't get that, it doesn't seem consistent. Or, the other way that could be read is that most people are stupid and ignorant and what they can or can't do doesn't matter. Unless you are going to decide what you like based on what me and some other guy say.

The reason your argument is misplaced is because if you subscribe to the idea that there is no known way to to tell whether one thing is "better" (whatever that may mean) than another thing, than any distinction between things of the same type is lost. And then you mention that Consumer Reports likes Yellow Tail. By your standards, so what? According to you, any distinction between wines is meaningless, so what does it matter that one testing group likes the wine? This seems to be a case of you favoring a reviewer who has a favorable view of a cheap wine that you like, or, in other words, confirmation bias, the same thing you are accusing the wine tasters of. I also don't really understand the idea that wine is the one thing that is going to get better and better as it gets cheaper and more mass produced. Every other product's quality suffers (at least to some extent) when it undergoes that process, but for some reason, wine will be the exception. As to the overall talk of experts, when you start to discredit the work of the entire body of experts in one subjective field, you sort of necessarily cast doubt on the idea of experts in any subjective field (again, not a view I am totally unsympathetic to). So, I don't see why you would hold the work of social scientists in any greater regard than you hold the work of oenophiles (in other words, none).

One tip- while you're there, make sure you go over the falls in a barrel. There's nothing like it. It's technically illegal so be ready to make your getaway but it is definitely something everybody should try at least once.

Yes. I debated that, but decided that (so far, at least) the king is kind of an adjunct of the Lannisters.

It's funny that in any thread like this, there is always someone who disclaims the very idea of quality. That is to say, according to them, there is no difference between something that is well-made by adepts using quality components and something that is cheaply made by cretins using whatever components they can get for the cheapest possible price. I'm not sure why this line of argument is so attractive to various people, even when it is self-evidently false in general and in particular. Perhaps the argument is made to provide cover for personal parsimony. Perhaps it is a reactionary response to the idea of "experts" (a response I empathize with to some extent). Perhaps it is a fear of being sold pyrite as gold. Whatever the reason for the argument, it is misplaced. Anyway, I came in here to ask for Riesling recommendations. I like to cook with Riesling because Riesling often comes with a screw-top instead of a cork (apparently because that is more appropriate for bottle aging?), meaning that using the wine multiple times is easy and I don't have to hunt around for my replacement cork things. I don't like a super dry wine but one that is too sweet is also out because when it reduces, it will get even sweeter. So, any recommendations would be much appreciated.

I've never read the books (I had never even heard of them until I read an article about this show a few months ago) but even still, I haven't found it to be nearly as confusing as a lot of people have claimed it is. That's what put me off of starting to watch it, all the talk and reviews about how many characters there are and how involved it is and everything. I was kind of forced to watch the first 3 episodes yesterday to clear some room on my tivo and I find myself wishing that the rest of the season was also on there waiting for me to watch it. That's the sign of a good show, to me, so I guess I like this. I found it engrossing. Perhaps it doesn't seem that complicated (yet) because all of the major families have pretty clear motivations (so far). The Lannisters want to maintain/increase their power. The Starks want to be left alone in their northern fief. And the Targaryens want to regain the throne by any means necessary. That gives viewers a little bit of a way into the series, I think.

Wow, Quade is an unlikable guy. It would be one thing if he was coaching a little league team or something but these are grown men. To whine so much about getting beaten in what you consider inappropriate ways is just unseemly. Stop crying and take it like a man. If anything, he's giving other teams a competitive advantage by letting them know he agonizes so much over these trivial incidents. There's no way he'll ever be able to mentally handle a pennant race. Luckily for him, he manages the Cubs so he won't have to worry about it.

Braun will be 36 after the 2020 season, plus there's a mutual option for the 2021 season. The Brewers presumably must have backed a dump truck full of cash up to his house to get him to forego the possibility of hitting the open market anywhere near his prime.

They just mentioned this on MLB Network too, during the Reds/Diamondbacks broadcast. I wonder how long a "long, long time" is? edit: I should clarify, the announcers didn't just mention the aforementioned tweet, they said there would be discussion after the game about the extension.