Thurston Fluff

I looked at where the team ranked in ERA last season compared to 2010. It was 13th for both teams. So much for Macha's crappy pitching staff excuse.

In the golden age of brewerfan.net making an assertion without anything like data to back it up lead to someone challenging them quickly that they were, well, full of it. I think I gave as much evidence as Baldkin did about Macha. Or is it only necessary when defending RRR? Frankly I don't ever remember anyone giving any study at all about what categorically makes someone a good or bad manager. No ranking in importance of strategy vs player management or anything like it. Usually it just ends up the same old he didn't play so and so here or there or why did he bunt there type of stuff. Which is all fine and dandy except it doesn't really mean much if that is as insignificant as I think it is. So perhaps the whole under perform or over perform thing isn't really evidence based anyway. Just excuses for someone if you like his style and blame for someone whom you don't. In fairness I should have pointed out that they were not projected to win 96 games two seasons ago. I don't remember what they were projected to win last season but I seriously doubt anyone would have projected above .500 for a team that lost four of it's five starters by mid season. I could be wrong on that though. If you felt those replacement pitchers were enough to get the team to 90 wins or something please show me some reason why. Yes you should ignore the dramatic change in the pitching staff and just look at the final record. We won more games with RRR than Macha. Therefore, RRR is a better manager. I think my logic 100 teacher just had a slight stroke... If someone was making that argument your sarcasm might be better placed. As someone who remembers the good old days, straw man arguments tended to be challenged as well.

What? Underperformed? Please to explain how they underperformed. They finished 3rd and 4th in the NL in runs scored in 2009/2010. The fault was clearly not his for assembling the horrid pitching staff. I would counter that the last two Brewer teams over performed. You seem to be defending Macha for not underperforming but giving no credit for RRR when his teams overperformed. As far as the pitching goes which group of pitchers helped get the Brewers over .500 last season? Hint it wasn't Narveson, Greinke, Marcum and Wolf. Nor was it their awesome bullpen.

Yes injuries stink and are unpredictable, but trying to utilize MI at all positions is asinine. It didn't make sense to convert Gonzales to be the 1B just because Morris struggled in ST, not even for a month. One would think thousands of at bats over years in the majors vs one good season in AA might have had something to do with it. I think some here need to get over the Morris love until he's shown something more than one good AA season. I still am not convinced that Morris is anything more than Green or Biancci. He certainly hasn't shown he is more at this stage. I would rather have Morris or Halton struggling (who knows maybe they wouldn't) against MLB pitching than watch Yuni B play anywhere in the field. So what if Morris struggles, at least he'll give maximum effort and maybe be better for the experience, it doesn't take much to hit for a sub .700 OPS, just about anyone can do that. Since pretty much anyone can do it why not have guys who can play more than one position? This team started out middle of the pack in runs scored. They average over 4 runs per game. All things considered I don't know how much more anyone can expect from any team who loses their 3, 4 and 5 hitter for about 50% of the season so far.

Yet they scored at least seven runs in the last two games. And scored four or more in the first seven. If we can get that type of production with what we trot out there now imagine what is going to happen when we start to get some people back.

Why count players by primary position? It appear to me they are just finding guys who they can plug in in multiple spots. When missing your two top first basemen, your short stop, third baseman and two utility infielders it might not be a bad idea to just bring in guys who can hit a little while covering multiple positions.

The only thing that could stop me from following them is endless "fire someone" talk or "how bad our manager's strategy is" debates.

In a little Brewer related irony Dave Bush got called up from the minors. He is taking the place of Jeremy Jeffress. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/jose-bautista-sits-again-blue-164432896--mlb.html

I might be one of the few but I agree with roles to a large degree. Obviously you have to have someone who can fulfill the role effectively but having roles allows pitchers to get comfortable to being used in certain situations. If repetition is key to mechanics then it shouldn't be too far a leap to think customary roles aids mental effectiveness as well. Especially considering relievers can't practice on the side. They don't have the benefit of bullpen sessions like starters do. While there is some merit to matchups, outside of lefty righty, I'm not sure what constitutes viable matching? Numbers against certain guys is always a small sample. The hot hand is no better. What constitutes a hot hand and how can anyone predict when one starts or ends? Is two bad games in a row a cold streak or does it take two weeks to think so? How long a leash do you give a guy who pitched well for half a season vs someone who had a hot month? Would anyone think it better to pitch a hot Manny Parra than a cold Aroldis Chapman?

RIP. Movie fans everywhere will morn the lose. A friend of mine used to work at the Music Box theater about 20 years ago and got to talk to him on occasion. Then got his first movie "Scrooge and Marley" reviewed by him last year. Which coincidentally premiered at Music Box. So kind of full circle for him. He as nothing but good things to say about Ebert. The same could not be said of Siskel.

I don't think you see closer candidates until they close for a while. So I'm less worried about who will do it than how long they wait. Obviously it's a bit early to worry yet. The home runs are something that is carrying over from last season. That does concern me.

The genius of Abbot and Costello's "Who's On First" routine is it makes you laugh without poking fun of anyone. Which is probably why it's still funny 80 years later.

I was at Woodmans at about 4:30 Sunday and there was two open registers without any line at all.

I am hoping and praying you are correct! I too doubt he gets 5 starts per week, but 2 or even 3 is not out of the question. Unless an injury hits, Yuni won't even get two starts a week. He'll almost never start for Weeks/Ramirez and Segura is going to show what a talent he is. I just heard on the radio today that combining winter leagues, the minors and such Segura has more AB's over the past year than any other player in the league. So whomever the backup is I wouldn't be at all surprised if he plays more than we might ordinarily expect. Especially early so he can stay sharp later. Frankly regardless of who is behind the starter I like playing bench players often early so they stay sharp longer while also keeping the regulars fresher all season long. If the Brewer plan on Yuni being a bench player all season I want him getting more playing time early than late season. If he's only here until Bianchi or Green come back then not so much.

Kotsay played what five or ten games in center? I can find that many games over an entire season that every manager made a stupid decision on who to play where. I don't think it's accurate to ignore all the other games where he didn't make those choices to say he's going to play Yuni over Segura other than to rest Segura. For the Kotsay argument to work he'd have to have played regularly over Gomez not just a handful of games.

This move adds some much needed depth and means one of those guys can struggle and be sent down and we aren't out of luck. I don't know if depth is what we lacked. The Brewers have a lot of depth. The thing I thought might make the rotation of rookies work was because there was enough viable rookie candidates that a couple of them could fail and the team wold still have enough others to step in. I think they were missing rotation anchors more than viable candidates.

Wasn't the trade for Greinke and Marcum supposed to result in a rebuild by now? Remember how bad our minors supposedly were after those trades? 2013 was supposed to be the doom time if we couldn't resign them. Well now here we are in 2013 and we are still supposed to be competitive. So now people are talking about how bad maintaining that competitiveness now will harm us in 2016/17/18. Even assuming it does crash sometime in the next four or five years if we get a decade or so of good play then have to rebuild for a few years so what? At least we'll have some post season play and maybe even a WS title before one of those doom and gloom predictions turn out to be correct.

With the Astros out of the division they can't be 6th this season. That could be right Thurston but I'll be honest, if I had joined this forum for the first time last year I probably would have quit coming to the forum because of how overbearingly negative a large number of posters are about everything. People have every right to post whatever they want but I'd like to see them step back and realize how all that negatively looks to anyone new to the site. I joined the site when the team was always awful and it was never like this back then even when there was a reason to hate how the team was being run and how futile things looked going into every season. Yea I joined in the early 2000's because it was good to see people look at the future as brightly as I did even though the team was at rock bottom. I'm still one of the optimists here. If we can compete for the postseason more often than not I think we are on the right rack. The more competitive teams you put our there the better shot at getting to the post season. The more post season's we get to the better chance we have of winning one. Since 2005 we have only had three losing records. Recording an overall record of 665-631 over that period. This season appears to have a good shot at continuing that trend.

This is probably convoluted thinking but if his production the next two years are anywhere close to the past two I think he's worth $30 million for two years. So, total package wise, the third season isn't that big a risk when considering the relative value the first two could be.

Isn't the weather underground a militant group from the 70's?

This forum in general has become excessively negative about the team over the past 4 or 5 years which doesn't seem to make sense considering it is probably the 2nd best stretch the team has ever had. Same thing happened with the Packers when they turned into a perennial post season team. All of a sudden people looked at what could prevent the team from getting to a Superbowl instead of what could get them there. I think perspective changes when team's expectations go up. The focus is on what could go wrong instead of what could go right. In some ways added negativity from fans is a sign that the team is good enough to have bigger expectations.

Hawing thanks for the tip on weather.gov. Almost as good as Homer's suggested weather site...only for different reasons.

While I'm not a fan of this signing it looks more like a Wolf signing than a Suppan one. He'll likely give a us a couple years of above average to average production and probably totally waste $11 million the third. Not a good signing long term but it should help us this season.

So you agree they are not below replacement level as you stated earlier then? I'm not trying to come off as a wienie it's just that replacement level has become such a significant concept in today's baseball that it really carries more weight than it should already. Expanding the concept beyond it's original borders both increases it's weight and diminishes it's validity at the same time. I wish baseball would go with a measurement of value based on league average instead of replacement level. At least then we can measure numbers that are based on real players in major league baseball.

I'm glad somebody else likes 25 and snowing. It's not something I can say among friends without getting things thrown at me. Winter is all about having something to do outside. If you do then it becomes the best time of year. Especially if you have dogs because they never get tired. http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200423266932556