Bombers

Axford should be the only one returning ... The rest can just be gone.

Count me in on resigning Marcum for a 1 year deal. I am all for it.

Let's go crew!! Big game today! Let's get the sticks going early and often

Now if could only get that elusive clean 9th inning ... Way to get it done K-rod. Here is to the start of our 20 game win streak

0-2 count, here comes a HR

walk him and setup the DP ... that has to be the solution, correct?

He is who we thought he is

How about now?

As the 7th or 8th inning guy

No kidding, that would have been horrible

BOOOOOOO! The Ax man strikes this team down again.

Why is he stil our closer?

Actually it is one of the best moves they have made to the playoffs. It adds more optimism for more teams and more importantly it makes the wild card teams burn their best starting pitcher in the play in game thus giving an advantage back to teams who win their division. There is pretty much nothing but positives from this. Also the concept of the regular season deciding which team is better is pretty silly when they play unbalanced schedules. A wild card team in the AL east is a much better team than a wild card team coming out of the AL Central assuming the same number of wins. I agree with this. If you take a team in the AL east (lets say finishes 89-73 and is in 2nd place.) But the Tigers finish in 2nd place at 90-72. Which team is better? I guess the un-balanced 162 game schedule says the Tigers are. But they also played the Royals and Twins, who are horrible, a bunch more times than the AL East team. So I would say the AL East team deserves to be in too. I think the new wild card is great.

Send him back = more playing time. Keep him on 25 man = good bench bat for Brewers. I agree with SoCal ... Probably go back to AAA for 1 month. Be greatful for the opportunity and come back in Sept ready to contribute. In the end, the offseason decisions of Lucroy, MM, Gamel, Hart and to a lessor extent Green / Kottaras will be an interesting one - that is for certain

Martin Maldonado is a great story this year. If only J Luc had experience playing 1B we could insert him, Hart back to RF and Aoki to CF. It would be a solution for this year but probably not long term. What would you do with Gamel? Maldonado has outplayed the Gomez/Morgan platoon. The Brewers have an interesting situation looming with J-Luc coming back. What do you do with Kottaras? Trade? Even so, isn't it better for Maldonado to play every day? So then you send him down to play consistently, right? Just a bad reward for a guy who seems to give it his all and is playing well.

No problem. You go to sleep for about 2.5 years while MLB is on strike and we'll get this done. It's not like MLB has taken giant steps in the right direction. It's not like the Yankees are expected to let Swisher go because they don't want to go over the luxury tax. It's not like the Brewers sitting at nearly 110 in payroll this year, and making record profits AND are stepping into a new TV deal next year. There is inequality in every sport. Probably nearly as much in the NBA which has a salary cap as MLB which doesn't and never will. And there is still a ton of inequality in the NFL. Just the words salary cap don't mean a whole lot if a team has several ways around it and can spend significantly more than what the "cap," is. There is inequality in every sport. That is true. But what I think JB was getting at is ... with a salary cap in football, the discrepency of money spent on players isn't nearly as large as the Yankee's vs Rays. There is no other sport that would allow that.

37-50 is a pretty bad turn from last years 102-60

The Brewers have not lived up to expectations this year. They are a good team, with plenty of talent, who has just been on the short end of the stick. If I had to point to one thing, it would be easy to look no further than the bullpen. They have lost too many games for us. If our pen repeated last year's performance, we could easily be 45-40, instead of 40-45. The bad news for the Brewers, is not only the fact that they are 8 games out, but that they have a losing record. If we look to history, those odds are clearly against us. As I have been reading on here, that some posters have optimism (I do as I stated before, they are a good team / just having bad "luck") and some posters don't. Some refer to the Brewers as needing a miracle to win the division. I would lean more toward this than leaning away. Take a look at this glance at the standings from 2009 - 2011. It shows each year, sorting each division based on record near the break. I then highlighted and bolded the teams who won the division. (Asterisk for the wild cards) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmICjtzcczp0dDBoaGRJRm9YYUc0YkJhQTF0YnB0UHc In the past 3 years, no team has had a losing record at the break, and made the playoffs. None. Zero. Zilch. And I would assume a small sample like this, would still be pretty reflective if you went 10/20/30 years back. Not that there would be none, but probably less than 5%. The wildcard. Yes, there is a SIGNIFICANT change this year. The extra wild card. Does that change the odds to make the playoffs? No doubt. They have a chance at a wild card birth, but overall, Wild Card or Division winner, the odds are certainly against us. One last point I will make is, unlike other teams with losing records, this Brewers team had realistic expectations to not only finish with a winning record but make the playoffs. While a true miracle would be the 2012 Royals making the playoffs, the Brewers making it would still be pretty historic based on the position they have put themselves in. As always, let's go Brewers!!!

Awesome! Good luck Jeff! Make the most of it!

I am really hoping Bianchi is the one called up ... Let's see what he can do

Maybe he should personally pick out his bullpen as well. Lol - awesome

Him giving up a 3 run shot didn't help things either

Really ax? .... Carlos now might be able to make today's game

Ya I can't totally fault RRR there. It was a lefty lefty matchup, our pen hasn't exactly been lights out and Wolf pitched a good game.

His call on Ramireze's walk yesterday off was bad. It went something like: (mono tone) ... "Ramirez fly ball to CF" (Ramirez has barely left the batters box - everyone knew it was gone) ... (after the ball goes over the fence, a little more excitement but not much more) "and this one is out of here, the Brewers win" ... Really, that's all you got?