bjkrautk

"Slumping Brewers try to regroup vs. D-backs" is the link to Gameday on the front page. ...I didn't know that losing one game in a series constitutes a slump. Apparently 'only' winning 4 of its first 6 games after the All-Star Break isn't good enough for some people.

...one of the Doobie brothers?

The Nintendo DS. (So many good games!)

Like a free podcast off itunes? It has the entire video of the pilot episode? That's how I got to watch it. (I'd post the .rss for the podcast, but that would require me to look it up.)

For anyone who's interested, the Flight of the Conchords podcast includes the entire first episode. (It's the only episode I've seen...which is a brutal reminder not only that I don't have HBO, but that Season 3, part 2 of Entourage doesn't come out on DVD until October!) I really enjoyed the first episode, much more than I did their comedy special. I'm afraid their humor is that special kind of inane that you really have to be in the right frame-of-mind to enjoy.

If Rickie's not playing every day in Milwaukee, he should be doing so in Nashville. I can see the organization's thinking -- that it will be better for him to be with Prince, J.J., and the rest of the team while he works out his problems (not to mention the major league coaching staff), but I don't know how he's going to do that when he's getting 1 AB a night. Out of curiosity, who do people think the Brewers should call up if Rickie goes to AAA? I follow the minors on a very infrequent basis (and mainly only look at the prospects), but Callix Crabbe's line jumped out at me a bit: .287 / .373 / .418 / .792 isn't exactly what we'd expect out of Weeks in AAA, but it's not that bad for an organizational soldier / defensive call-up. I'm also aware of his performance in AA and below (link), which makes me wonder if this will end up as a career year for the guy. The other guy in the picture would have to be Rottino (.288 / .362 / .443 / .805), which I don't think anyone here would really have a problem with. Echoing Hauser on his point, for all the griping that Ned sticks with 'his guys' too long, I don't really remember any complaints about keeping Weeks in the lineup.

To take the thread in a different direction: Does Balfour have any options remaining? I'm guessing that, if he did, he'd still be in Minnesota. Is he up for good, or will he have to clear waivers?

I don't want this to become a political thread, but I would assume that most of the funds from this are going to be coming from research grants, not taxpayer money. I'll just assume that you mean private research grants, and leave it at that. (Took me a few seconds to make the distinction.) In this case, the press release even cites the MacArthur Foundation as having provided a grant. Whether or not this is political grandstanding may largely depend on how much of the study is paid for with private money v. how much is being picked up by the department (and thereby, the university).

I don't think you can look at the two without a focus on how the contract systems came into place. Basketball has a salary cap; baseball doesn't. The NBA's cap was severely loosened when the league and the teams agreed to the "Larry Bird rule" which allowed teams to go above their salary cap in order to sign its own free agents. Due to the teams' inability to restrain themselves on the open market, additional exceptions to the cap were created (I think they have 2 currently: a mid-level, and a full, but I don't really follow the NBA much anymore). The notion of a "sign-and-trade" deal has also emerged as a way to use the Larry Bird exception to allow the receiving team to pay the player more money. The MLB is far more of a free-market environment: there's nothing stopping the Texas Rangers from paying A-Rod $25-million a year for a decade....just like there's nothing preventing them from continuing to pay half of that amount for A-Rod to play for someone else. (About the only restriction at play there is that A-Rod can't agree to lower his salary in order to be traded....which is why he's not wearing a Red Sox uniform, IIRC.) Likewise, an MLB team has far greater freedom to trade a player(s) to serve their long-term interests. An MLB-style "fire sale" would violate NBA rules for contracts. (Can you imagine having to take on contracts nearly as bad as the ones you were getting rid of?) I don't think you get to the Larry Bird rule without first imposing a cap on salaries....and that's not something that the Player's union has ever been in favor of. Without a cap, the only real change would be that teams like New York would put more effort into acquiring potential free agents before the trade deadline (players which they could then pay more for after the season).

As much as I'd love to say that I'd keep it / sell it, I don't think I could do that with a piece of baseball history. - Picture of me handing over the HR ball directly to Barry Bonds. - Autographed bat, referencing the HR ball. ...If I got greedy, maybe tickets & accommodations to see a Brewers-Giants Series in SF.

http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i144/bjkrautk/simpsons-fish.jpg (Just thought it seemed appropriate.)

Nintendo's e3 conference, IMO, was a bit of a letdown. They didn't announce anything I wasn't already expecting....and the new things they did announce (Golden Sun 3 and another Advance Wars game on the DS, a U.S. Release date for Fire Emblem on the Wii, Donkey Kong Bongo blast on Wii, etc.) at e3 weren't even mentioned at the conference. I haven't touched the Wii in at least a month now; I will eventually go back through and finish Zelda, but only after I beat FF12 (upscaling on my PS3). 70% of my gaming time is taken up by the DS. That being said, I will have Mario Galaxy, Fire Emblem: Goddess of Dawn, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl before the end of the year.

I'm on my second Belkin Tunecast II. It works. In fact, the only reason why I had to buy the second one was because the AC adapter for the first one stopped working properly. (FYI, there are two versions of the TuneCast II -- the black version has a car adapter, while the white one has an adapter to connect to a separate power adapter which costs about $20. The tuners themselves cost roughly the same amount.) It's programable over nearly the full FM spectrum (I think it cuts off at the low end), and the signal strength is strong enough to overwrite a weak OTA signal (which is necessary if your car gets good reception). My biggest gripe is that it's "power saver" feature has been known to kick in during quiet songs or podcasts; it's fixable by raising the volume lock on your iPod, but it's still a pain. If you don't have a car adapter, it will devour AAA's (but I think most transmitters share that problem). It's also kind of pricy, between $30-35. I'm curious to see if anyone else knows of a better alternative.

And the comic relief again...way too much. Not to mention, some of their material was entirely inappropriate for a family audience. (You can probably guess the scene I'm thinking about.)

anytime you combine two of man's favorite three things you are gonna get this kind of attention (the three things being sports, attractive women and the third being food). Not to go all Freudian here, but the lengthy pole in the photograph probably isn't exactly helping things either.

I didn't run into this exact problem, but I did have a similar issue with respect to cover art. Updating the track info for the file on your computer generally won't affect the status of the file on your iPod. Try deleting the songs off of your iPod, and then re-downloading the songs (with updated track info) back onto the iPod.

ESPN ...I didn't get to watch the HR Derby live tonight. I tune in to the 11pm re-air, block off the ticker on the lower-third so that I wouldn't see who won. I could deal with them airing the softball game first. What I can't live with is the 11:30 "SportsCenter Update" coming on to tell me who won the event I desperately wanted to watch without a spoiler. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/indifferent.gif

I second that, Toby. Italian food and Giada, what more could someone possibly want or need in a TV show? Haven't caught the show in awhile, but I'll invariably stop the channel surfing when "Everyday Italian" is on. My shameful show is "PlayMania" on GSN (with the caveat: I only watch when Shandi is on). Gotta love the concept: attractive female hostess entices people to spend $5 a night text-messaging into the show, for a chance to answer a trivia question for a few hundred dollars. Add in the gorgeous blonde who will say some of the dumbest things when put in front of a camera for 2-straight hours, and that's something worth tuning in for.

IIRC, if you purchase one of a select group of entrees (they have a baseball sticker by them on the menu), you get a voucher for a game ticket (monday-wednesday, IIRC, probably in nosebleed territory). I don't know if it's still going, but it was a week ago.

Without getting too spoiler-y, a big plot point takes place on a dam in the movie....and I was so waiting for that exact moment. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/frown.gif As a big fan of the original series, I'm surprised how many positive reactions I've seen in the thread. My biggest problem with the movie is still how little any of the transformers not named "Optimus Prime" had dialogue that was in any way reminiscent to their 80's counterparts. ...and that's when they actually had dialogue, and the story wasn't focused on the SecDef and cliche super-hackers too old to still be living in their mom's house. (The script is a much bigger problem to me than whether Bumblebee was a VW....although a Chevy Aveo or Pontiac Vibe would at least preserve the feel of the character.)

Watched it on Tuesday. It's very much one of those movies that you can enjoy only if you shut your brain off and just accept that all of these things are happening. It looks great, and the acting is good enough....but the script/plot is insanely awful. I didn't like the character re-designs (too many angles, as opposed to the simple-by-necessity look of the 80s Transformers), but I feel like I could have looked past that if the script wasn't as bad as it is. For a movie about giant "Robots in Disguise," they seem to hide an awful lot as giant robots. Of course, that's when they're actually on the screen. Half to two-thirds of the movie is seemingly spent dealing with the human characters. Aside from Optimus, none of the transformers have dialogue that even remotely resembles their cartoon counterparts. ...oh, one more thing...I don't mind product placement in movies - generally speaking - but Bumblebee literally speaks through the power of XM Satellite Radio. (Sidenote: if you're going to make a yellow sportscar into a Transformer, and make him nothing like the VW bug from the cartoons...call him Sunstreak and not Bumblebee.) The more you remember about the Transformers series....the less you should want to go and see the Michael Bay version. [FWIW, I think they make the noise once....at the very beginning of the film.]

One of the things I've been meaning to return to ever since posting my little experiment is to note that OXS was virtually unchanged (which makes sense, based on the formula). That being said, the realization that a team will project to the same number of runs, so long as it's individual players maintain a consistent OXS, reminded me of my college economics courses. Not being up on all of my sabermetrics, has anyone ever compared productivity maximization in baseball to Indifference Curves? Conceptually, I can visualize a series of parallel curves on a grid, representing each OXS line (OBP on one axis, Slg. on the other). Adding better offensive players would move the team's production to one of the higher curves (more projected runs scored). Moreover, this model reinforces the conceptual problem that caused me to create this thread in the first place: demonstrating that a shift in the relative contributions of OBP and SLG along an individual curve will result in the team scoring the same number of runs. (Not sure if this helps anyone but myself in conceptualizing the numbers side of baseball....but I'm keen to find out.)

Jenks is having a nice year but that is because he is playing to his strenghts this year. ...and why wouldn't the team try to play to his strengths if he were here in '08? I have no problem seeing Jenkins on next year's team, provided he's paired with a platoon-mate who can hit left-handed pitching. Even if the Brewers could find someone who could be as productive as Jenkins for less-than $9 mil., could we sign that player to a short-term deal? This year's draft all but cemented my opinion; if things go as planned for LaPorta (IMO), he should be up for a September '08 call-up. If that holds, then signing a new left fielder would waste far more cash down the line: why would a free agent outfielder with average-to-above-average production sign anything less than a 3-year contract? Signing anyone else would lock up sallary that could be used to extend the core guys. ...and if LaPorta's not ready by the end of '08, the team can address the need at that point (with a better read on the whole farm system: Gillespie, Katin, etc.).

Partially inspired by today's game....but I think it's something that has been discussed here before: Is there any reason why a manager would actually list his starting pitcher as the # 9 batter when submitting his starting lineup while on the road? When a team does bat around in the first inning, not having listed the starting pitcher would allow the team to pinch-hit for the pitcher's spot without peril. If the Brewers were to, for instance, list the prior day's starting pitcher on the lineup card, the only player they'd "lose" is one who would never have otherwise appeared in the game. After the first half-inning, the manager would insert the starting pitcher in his traditional spot in the order, and the game continues as normal. About the only rationale that I can think of for not doing this (besides from a rule that I just don't know about) is that the position player called on to pinch-hit in the first inning could be severely missed if an injury were to occur....such that the risk of losing the player outweighs the value of a PH when that situation actually occurs. That being said, just once I'd love to see a manager try this.

Just to throw out an anti-virus option, I run Avast on my laptop. I don't know if it's "good" or not....but I don't have any viruses that I know about.