tomwopat

It's hard to imagine how little interest there was in the Brewers in the early 2000s, even with the novelty the new stadium. You'd never see anyone wearing Brewers gear and the franchise was too cheap for standard things like pre and post-game shows on TV. Jeffrey Hammonds, the largest FA signing at the time was a colossal flop that made Suppan look like a minor bump in the road. Even the early Doug Melvin years when things seemed getting better, the team was pretty hard to watch at times, it took years to undo the rot of the years of negligence. The mid 2010's rebuild never had that feeling of hopelessness. 2007 was especially hard since the team seemed like it had the momentum to not only have it's first winning season since 1992 (!) which they narrowly missed in 2005, but also make the postseason for the first time since 1982. They had a commanding lead in the division early on and were leading as late as mid-September, but ended up losing the division by two games to the Cubs after fading down the stretch. Ned Yost was not a popular figure (https://web.archive.org/web/20071011113433/http://firenedyost.com/) which makes me chuckle a bit when I see the criticism of Murph.

There's been a number of Brewers chants throughout the series, so surprising they got duped there.

I can't imagine Murphy is making the decision to pull Vaughn without some sort of analytical backing. Or at least some acceptable rationale to the FO, however far-fetched that might be. Managers being fully autonomous is nearly extinct, a change he's definitely had a hand in enabling.

Uncompetitive AB.

Given how much he is usually never afraid to call a spade a spade, I'll give him a little grace for sugar coating this one.

Makes me wonder if this was leftover parts from failed attempts at landing a SP? I can see the benefit of getting more catching depth but Yoho seems like a lot to get that. Unless the org was really low on him and just simply wanted to be rid of him, of which there's indications that was the case.

Having been about 1.5 games into the opposition's broadcast, two things are striking: SNY in both its pre, post, and in-game broadcast pulls absolutely no punches when talking about the performance of the team. I suppose it's a bit expected (and a bit comical?) at this point, but is a stark contrast to the generally complementary, but critical when necessary Brewers broadcasts. Is Keith Hernandez... ok? I've heard about how he's been increasingly sentimental as he's gotten older, but his tone and anecdotes make me wonder if he's genuinely depressed.

Shows how good a teammate Yelich is, picking his teammate who failed to GIDP with a GIDP of his own.

They will just declare bankruptcy and force the league to bail them out again. Then start the cycle fresh.

I was about to compare his dropoff with a certain ex-Cardinal who stunk it up for a number of years with negative WAR until the organization finally had the bravery to tell him he was finished.

Joey Ortiz HR and Yelich XBH, someone has activated the secret cheat reactor underneath the field.

Pirates challenging the call in a 13-2 game. We used to be a proper country.

I had a bad feeling that insurance run would come into play.

Are there any other racing XXX that are actually good? I guess the bar is pretty low for the mid-inning entertainment, but it seems like most of them just kind of exist for the sake of existing.