Ennder

Doesn't take much pizazz to say he shoots from 3 and the defender doesn't bother even trying to stop him. BA can do that just fine. Sure it does. By your logic, then anyone can call a baseball game like Anderson does. FWIW, I think he does a solid job calling college basketball games, along with Brewers baseball, but i'd take Gus Johnson over Anderson any day for basketball. This year Gus was under contract to only call 20 Bucks games and i don't know if he'll continue working for the Bucks, but i hope he does because for me, a Gus/Marques duo would be near perfect. Well I was talking about NBA which is one of the worst sports product out there right now, the state of the NBA is just awful.

My kids played baseball while growing up, they had players on their teams that liked to rub success in the opponents face. At no point did I find this fun even though we were winning, I found it to be obnoxious that nobody was telling this kid to respect the other team instead of showing disrespect to them. Excessive celebration, especially those that are thick with attitude like Joey Bats or Cam Newton are just really bad for sports. They spit on the idea of sportsmanship and demeans the sport as a whole.

Its kind of funny, I agree with you in general but I think the Bautista bat flip was probably the worst all year long. Not only was it showing up the pitcher it was uncontrolled and violent and could have easily hurt someone. I'd have tossed him from the game.

Doesn't take much pizazz to say he shoots from 3 and the defender doesn't bother even trying to stop him. BA can do that just fine.

It would be slightly annoying but worth it if it is really saving a significant number of injuries. I'm generally more worried about a kid getting hurt at my 15 year old's games than I am at the major league ballpark though. Foul balls flying all over the place at those games.

They are both pretty mediocre but I have to agree, there are a lot of really bad announcers out there so mediocre works just fine for me. As long as I don't have to listen to someone like Hawk Harrelson who makes me want to tear my ears out I'm ok.

If he pitches like he has every single season of his career outside of last year he will be traded. Garza still has decent value as a mid season trade unless he is awful like last year. Seems more likely that last year was just a fluke considering pitchers have fluke bad/good years like that all the time. I mean at 32 he could just be done, it happens sometimes. More times than not it is more gradual than just falling completely off though. If he has any sort of positive start to the season he'll have value for a contender.

I think you will be surprised. People seem to think he is nothing but a filler guy but outside of the few weeks last year that he pitched while injured he has been better than Peralta in his career. It won't surprise me if he is the best pitcher in the rotation next year.

Not sure what you mean? Fowler had no choice. Baltimore looks to have pulled everything when the Gallardo deal was put in limbo and it sounds like what Baltimore was leaking they were offering was not what they were really offering. No other team wanted to give up the draft choice for Fowler so he was stuck with trying to get back on the market next year. Not how I saw it all. The Orioles players thought Fowler was signed, they were even told he was on his way to camp. The Cub deal came completely out of nowhere and was a shock to the Orioles who still had the offer in place. The deal he took was significantly below the offer they had out. Basically he had a change of heart and went for the best chance at a ring. The deal was also a shock to the Cubs as he just showed up and nobody had any idea he was coming at least on the team.

not exactly my point. I can count on one hand how many times I saw sport shows discuss the slide at home rule after April last year. It just wasn't a big issue in the game. MLB adapted to it very quickly with almost no controversy. If this rule does as well as that one everyone will be happy. I'm guessing this one won't be quite as seemless.

In what way? I thought the collision rule at home was a major success last year. The players adapted to it very quickly and we got rid of something that was hurting the game. I mean if we have to live with 'old school' baseball why do they get to use gloves and wear protective gear. That is how baseball "is supposed" to be played. You forgot the blue on that right? Umpires randomly calling runners safe when they were out by 20 feet and every play at the plate being challenged because neither the umpires nor the reviewers have any consistent interpretation of the rule. I would agree that the players have done a good job of "playing safer" but those who enforce the rules don't have a clue what they're doing. I expect the same thing with these plays at second. No it wasn't meant to be in blue. I watch a lot of baseball and a lot of sports shows and it was not a major topic of conversation. It seemed to go way better than it was expected to. It certainly wasn't as bad as say was it a catch in the NFL.

I don't really get what Fowler is doing, I guess he just wants a chance at a ring. He left a lot of money on the table to do it though. He should have just taken the qualifying offer if that is what he wanted. As for the Cubs OF glut, someone will get hurt, whether it is in the OF or the rotation and they can use the extra OF to plug the hole.

In what way? I thought the collision rule at home was a major success last year. The players adapted to it very quickly and we got rid of something that was hurting the game. I mean if we have to live with 'old school' baseball why do they get to use gloves and wear protective gear. That is how baseball "is supposed" to be played.

Cubs need pitching not hitting.

50% of a win or loss is one team, 50% is the other team. Strength of schedule plays a large role in the number of wins a team has as does the timing of when they face certain opponents. To use a silly example. If the Brewers played my High School baseball team every game they would probably win 162 games. If they played a 81 win MLB team every single game they'd likely win somewhere in mid to high 60s. If they had to only play the best team in baseball every game they would lose over 100 games. The talent on the Brewers doesn't change in any of these examples but I'd assume you agree their win total would change. They can only control half of the game, the other team gets to dictate the other half. There is a reason that year to year win rates are all over the place for most teams and why even consistent winning teams just have flat seasons thrown in even though the players might not change much. Wins are just not a good correlation with talent over a single season of play.

I agree the Davis trade was pretty bad, but Lind was worse. Nottingham may not stay at catcher but at least he has a tool that projects to the major league level and is a legitimate prospect. The guys in the Lind trade are just guys you'd have to round out a minor league pitching staff. All 3 of those pitchers project as plausible major league arms and all are really young so hard to project. If even one of them makes it that trade is just fine. I don't really have a knock on Nottingham as much as I just think Davis will keep showing his power and by the all star break he would have brought back more. None of the trades were actually bad imo.

Best - Segura trade. Diaz is going to be a major league player and I believe Chase Anderson will be the Brewers best pitcher over the next 2 seasons and will be flipped for something better than Segura at that point. Worst - Kris Davis trade. I think by the all star break he would have had more value than he has now.

Every single season a GM says they didn't play up to their talent level. This shouldn't be that difficult of a concept to understand. Some teams have better years than they should, some have worse. Trying to define it simply by wins is just silly. The 2009 Mariners are the perfect example. The team lost 101 games in 2008 and only marginally improved their talent yet won 85 games in 2009. A lot of people were saying they were going to be a playoff team in 2010 yet all of the data about their true talent level said they just played way over their head that year and projected a last place team. After adding more talent the following seasons they won 61, 67, 75 and 71 games the next 4 years. 2009 was just a season that they won way more than the talent the team actually had. If I remember correctly they outpaced their Pythagorean record by a large margin and won way more 1 run games than teams usually do. Wins are not a great projection of talent levels. To start with, 50% of each win is completely out of your teams control. So at best it can be 50% accurate. Then you take into account things like health, run distribution, how variable year to year player stats are etc and you end up with wins just not telling the compelling story that you seem to think they do. If someone could tell with no doubt in my mind that a team had 81 win talent entering a season I'd expect them to win like 71 to 91 games but it would not surprise me in the least if they won over 91 or under 71. If they put 81 win talent on the field over and over it would still average out to 81 eventually but the actual numbers each season would have a very wide distribution.

To get it as wrong as it was cannot be explained by good health and playing over their heads. Like i said all models have flaws. But yes overproducing 2 years in a row can just be a complete fluke. I don't think the Royals are a 76 win team but I also don't think they are a 95 win team. They are a mid to high 80s win team that just had things go their way last year.

Well there are flaws in any projection model. But the Royals likely have played over their heads. Especially last year when they were insanely healthy all year long.

I don't think Santana will get enough PA to break the record which is probably Adam Dunn + someone~. Davis and Gomez struck out a ton as well, not like this is going to be all that worse than last year.

Trading players is not tanking. Tanking is when your existing players lose on purpose for the draft pick. It is more of a NBA and NFL thing than MLB. This years team could win more than last but it won't be a 'better' team than that one was. Wins are made up of more than just talent.

KATOH farm system rankings lists Brewers as #1 overall. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/katohs-farm-system-rankings/

A 68 win talent team will likely win between 80 and 56 games, baseball really is that volatile a sport when you are looking at a signed teams results.

It is highly unlikely we lose 100. That is really hard to do and the rotation probably has too many major league quality pitchers to do it