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Thurston Fluff

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Everything posted by Thurston Fluff

  1. Thurston Fluff
    Losing Weeks means we can get someone who plays more than one position. I just don't think the bench was versatile enough and Weeks was a huge reason why.
  2. Thurston Fluff
    Braun is going to get his thumb fixed so we can get him back to something close to his old self. The starting pitching was good and all coming back and we have options for the back end of the bullpen on the roster already. Davis and Gennett both went through their first full season in the majors and should learn from that on how to handle it better. Segura started to come around at the end. I think he will be better offensively next year. With Weeks and Overbay gone we can get some more versatility on the bench. This should be an interesting off season. The Brewers could choose to trade a lot of guys on the last year of their contract and rebuild rather quickly or acquire a few players and go with a fairly veteran group and see if they can pick up the extra five or so wins they need to get in the playoffs. I'm honestly ok with either route though I would prefer to go the rebuild route.
  3. Thurston Fluff
    I don't think we can expect that at all. Sure, that could happen, but there is just as much chance they will regress. Actually, Davis and Scooter tailed off already in the 2nd half of the season. You could make the case one or both are headed down the Segura path. Hot MLB start, then cool off and stay there indefinitely. Please make the case because I don't see it. You might want to start by what the Segura path means.
  4. Thurston Fluff
    I think we can expect more from Davis and Gennett and think we can expect somewhat of a bounce back for Segura as well. I don't think any player had an exceptional season that they won't be likely to replicate. Keep in mind, despite the last month or so, the team actually did score the 6th most runs in the NL this season. The real key to me is to sustain it throughout the season. That is where the added experience from some young guys and a better bench can help.
  5. Thurston Fluff
    We won't find out much more this year, since RR has inexplicably relegated him back to the bench throughout this cold offensive stretch and handed the reins back to Overbay. I don't know how inexplicable it is. Overbay got a start and went 2 for 3 with two doubles and a walk which led to a second start.
  6. Thurston Fluff
    I had no reason to feel that way but I thought at the time we hit bottom the last loss vs Miami. This team is good enough to put a run together and I think it started yesterday. Conversely I think the teams we are chasing are not so good that they won't allow us back in this thing.
  7. Thurston Fluff
    I think comments like those are more about an attempt to get to people relax and play better than not caring. Brett Farve talked about farting in the huddle or cracking a joke in an important situation to get people to laugh. Same sort of thing. Relax and play.
  8. Thurston Fluff
    Exactly. Gindl looked like he belonged in the majors last year. He wasn't great or anything, but he had a respectable .779 OPS. Maybe he just got tired or frustrated and let it get to him. But I thought he had a future in the majors. Not so sure anymore. Maybe next spring we will find out he had some injury or another that he couldn't injure further, so he played, but he will be better in 2015. Hard to believe they would have removed him from the 40 man roster if that were the case. They could have brought him up to the majors and placed him on the 60 day DL and protected him from waivers.
  9. Thurston Fluff
    I doubt there was any chance at all of either of them making the post season roster unless of an injury anyway. Given how wrong I was about how easy it is to DL someone does it matter? If they really want them on the playoff roster the guy they didn't want on it will get "injured." Good call on Gindl BTW. Well not really you were off by a couple days.
  10. Thurston Fluff
    Well their pitching has held up after they traded their two best starters in the first half and they've run a number of guys out there. They picked up Jacob Turner for depth too. They can certainly afford a Lester and one other lesser name too. They also have chips with which to deal for pitching. It will be interesting to see what they do with Edwin Jackson who've they have tied up for two more years. I'm not saying they are going to be favorites, but that there is a path for them to go from worst to first. It's not that big of a climb anymore. The chips they have to trade means they lose some of the phenomenal offensive depth. That isn't even touching the idea that even great minor league players are not all going to be great year one. Nor do all of them pan out at all. The Cubs should be better but I still think they are a couple years away. Anything can happen but worst to first is a long way to go in this division. I am more worried about the usual suspects next year than I am the Cubs. 2016 might be a totally different story.
  11. Thurston Fluff
    Keep in mind you need more than just 5 starters to win over an entire season. The Brewers stayed relatively healthy this season and still needed 7 starters. They are going to get some pitching help via free agency but they need a lot more than just a couple starters. The major problem they will have is how to get quality backup options if a starter goes down. It seems to me the best depth options come from a farm system that has guys who are ready but blocked by the current starter. The Cubs might have to settle for fringe starters like Estrada or Cappuano types. That isn't a terrible thing but it costs a lot for the return and isn't as good as calling up a Fiers, Nelson or Wacha type player.
  12. Thurston Fluff
    Raising awareness always seemed to me to be code for "I really don't want to lift a finger to help but would like to feel like I am." Raising funds seems best done by actually giving funds.
  13. Thurston Fluff
    With Roenicke as the manager, the Brewers tend to use their bullpen less than most other teams in baseball. He has an obsession about trying to get 6 innings out of his starter. I think managers who don't have an obsession with getting six innings out of their starters are mostly ones in the unemployment line. Or soon to be on it.
  14. Thurston Fluff
    Gorzelanny has been back a little over 2 months and has pitched 14.1 innings. Wang was here for a little over 2 months and pitched 17 innings. The reason they used the guys they did was the games dictated we use the best pitchers available. The most likely replacement for Wang would have been Wooten. Unless you think they would have used Wooten over Thornburg, Duke or Smith in tight games you are barking up the wrong tree.
  15. Thurston Fluff
    The 2011 Cards were pretty damn good. They were a 90 win team and 3rd in the NL in run differential at +70 behind the Brewers and Phillies. 2006.....well, not so much They got hot and won but I think most people would agree they weren't even the best team in their division that year. A team who leads the division virtually wire to wire and finished with a title is better than any wild card team.
  16. Thurston Fluff
    Looks like Manfred was just elected the next commissioner. Good for him. I always liked people who part their teeth in the middle. https://sports.yahoo.com/news/mlb-executive-rob-manfred-becomes-the-game-s-next-commissioner-144427418.html
  17. Thurston Fluff
    As (possibly) the lone Ned Yost fan on this board I am glad to see his team having some success. Hopefully I don't get lynched by saying that.
  18. Thurston Fluff
    I am hard-pressed to believe that a substance like HGH, which primarily helps with recovery time & not as much with muscle growth, wouldn't have a massive impact on pitcher stamina & therefore maintaining success deeper into games & seasons. A starting pitcher's job, to a large extent, is recovery from fatigue. They haven't really been testing for HGH until recently so I'm not really sure we can track it's impact quite yet. Steroids testing, on the other hand, has been around long enough to see a trend. If pitching is helped more by the things we don't test for than the things we do test for then it stands to reason scoring would be down. Once we get HGH testing for a few years I wouldn't be at all surprised to see the trend reverse somewhat. Not all the way back but to somewhere in the middle. And one final thought is that I think it's setting oneself up for frustration and/or disappointment to view the past season or two as when 'PEDs are no longer being used. I do not believe all the players are clean. I never thought the program's success should have been judged by that strict of a measure. I do believe it reduced the number of cheaters and is moving forward at reducing it even further. Especially that they now test for HGH and that also makes finding synthetic testosterone easier. I think it also helps players now know if their contacts get some heat and turn on them they are screwed even if they don't test positive.
  19. Thurston Fluff
    The problem I have with this argument is that it inherently assumes that no pitchers were using at any point, or that significantly more hitters were using than pitchers all along the way. That just doesn't make sense to me. The HR isn't the only stat that being stronger & more powerful would impact. That is very true. But I think that can be explained by the type of skill used for each. Just like I think a runner would be more likely to get a bigger boost compared to a golfer I think the hitter gets more out of it than the pitcher. I am basing that on the fact scoring was up when PEDs were being used. Both from what they were previously and after. It's just hard to ignore the numbers and the timing of the scoring surge. While there may be some other reasons for it, better relievers, bigger parks and the like, none so closely correlate with the surge in scoring as PED usage does.
  20. Thurston Fluff
    This - and I don't think enough emphasis has been placed on this. If the appeal for Braun had taken place as intended (meaning we never find out about his failed test in the first place), we're talking about 14 players being suspended without a single failed drug test. That's pretty alarming, and should be fairly obvious that the players who are cheating know how to beat the system. Except the system was not designed with only the testing component to find users. Given the fact scoring is down and people have been caught both from testing, in both the majors and minors, and through investigating allegations of use it seems pretty clear the system has reduced the number of users. I googled scoring down in baseball and saw articles over several years discussing lower scoring and the possible reasons why. While there are multiple reasons why it is obvious testing is one of them. I think the best summation I found about the effect of PED testing came in this article. http://www.getsportsinfo.com/all-sports/mlb/why-mlb-scoring-is-down/
  21. Thurston Fluff
    Has it though? I don't think there's any evidence that it has. I mean, we have a rumored list of 90 more guys from the Biogenesis case alone. There's no way Biogenesis was the only place MLB players could get PEDs. Offense has been down and the number of pitchers with ERA's in the 2's and 3's are up. While that isn't necessarily a causal correlation I do think the timing of this decease in offense is at least noteworthy. One thing to remember though is testing was never the only thing MLB did to stop PEDS. So to say MLB isn't doing enough by claiming testing doesn't prevent all cheating is off base (no pun intended.) MLB set up an system to investigate cheating beyond just testing. Obviously that seems to be working. To me the testing is one of several prongs to limit the amount of cheating. While it doesn't eliminate it by itself I think, when used in combination with other mechanisms, it has helped reduce the amount of use and/or users.
  22. Thurston Fluff
    MLB testing doesn't work. If they really wanted to stop the use they would give teams the power to end contracts after 1 positive test. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the games best players are doing something. Somehow I think Ryan Braun disagrees with you. While it doesn't get all the cheaters out of the game it sure as heck put a dent in the number of users. I care, but I guess I'm just "sanctimonious". I promised myself I would try to stay out of these conversations, but I can't help myself with posts like this. This whole thought that you must be "holier-than-thou" if you care about PED usage. No, I just don't care to see the game I grew up watching and loving turn into a cartoonish video game version of itself. Well put. I would add that I don't want my favorite players to die early because they were trying to keep up. If we want freaks doing super human feats through the pharmacy I'll watch the California penal system league. For MLB I want natural players doing something because they are gifted and work hard.
  23. Thurston Fluff
    Nothing admirable about it. It really isn't all that hard being wrong.
  24. Thurston Fluff
    While I would have preferred Fiers simply to keep a long man in the pen Estrada has had as good of stretches for as long of time as Fiers ever did. Fiers also has had every bit as bad of stretches as Estrada. I think ultimately Fiers career with Milwaukee will look an awful lot like Estrada's has. So I'm not going to get all up in arms about this.
  25. Thurston Fluff
    Couldn't agree more on the lack of flexibility exercises leading to injury. It is the most overlooked aspect of proper training sports today. Getting bulked up is fine as long as the bulk is flexible enough to not strain tendons and muscles. If you are stronger that muscle being used full speed can go further than it used to. If it hasn't been stretched to that further length it leads to strains. As far as allowing PEDS back to take care of injuries the problem is it still gives a player the performance benefits even if it is helping them heal. There are two ways to increase your injury risk. Doing too little or too much. If you tweak your body to the max to get better performance then it is fair you have to deal with all that comes with it just like if you do nothing to stay in shape. If a player chooses not to max out his body but still stay in shape he will probably stay healthier. Choosing the safer option of moderation should come with some sort of reward. yet they allow cortisone and the NFL allows painkillers that are very addictive. The NFL medication philosophy is a travesty heaped on a charade as is it's PED testing system. I would much rather the NFL use MLB as an example of how to go about drug use than the other way around.
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