Thurston Fluff

It'll go up becasue it had real hair. Hair grows even after the career is dead.

Sure but guys like Tony Phillips were doing the same back in the 80s when he played basically every position at least a little every year. Flash back to the 60s and guys like Cookie Rojas were doing it. This isn't something new. It isn't new but it was lost for a while. It might be more accurate to say he and Freel revived it vs created it. I wish him the best. He was a classy guy who gave it his all without complaint. While I find it hard to cheer for a Red Sox championship knowing he's on the team would help me feel ok about it.

Balloons are a cheap and very easy way to decorate. We've been doing a lot more weddings this year than in years past becasue of that. It looks very elegant especially if you use pearlized balloons. I'd have to assume there is a balloon artist in the Eau Claire area. It's a bit out of our range but if you want to take a look at some cheap easy things that look very elegant you can look at out website then find someone in your area to do it. getaballoon.com is the site. I would suggest arches and centerpieces. Pearl Arches should cost you about $25-$35 a piece and centerpieces are usually around $5. It will give you immediate visual impact upon entering the room and most rooms can be done pretty well for as little as $100. If you do go the balloon route ask two questions to make sure you're getting a real balloon artist. First make sure they use hi-float on every latex balloon. Second make sure they use Qualatex brand balloons. We have no financial interest in either product they are just great products. Hi-float makes a balloon that would normally last 12-24 hours last 3 or 4 days. Qualatex is simply head and shoulders above any other brand of balloon out there and, yes, there is a difference. If the balloon artist is real they will already know that of not move on. If you make sure of those two things you will not have to worry about them being down before the end of the evening. You could even do them the day before and they would be perfectly fine.

I'm glad to see Macha wants to improve on his weakness. Many don't even acknowledge they have weaknesses let alone try to work on them. I have not been a huge fan of Macha but am willing to give him a fair shot to prove himself. His realization that he needs to take steps in being more approachable is a step in the right direction.

I hope this won't affect the bratzooka that the Timber Rattlers have. So do I. I got two of them already. Don't know what the record is but I'd love to have a shot at it.

I never realized how fun short track speed skating was to watch until this year.

I think the early results in spring won't matter a bit. What may matter more is how well they finish spring training. If Suppan is struggling in his last couple starts when he is throwing all his pitches then he will be in trouble. I don't think it matters at all if he sucks when all he's doing is throwing fastballs early on.

The Cubs have a lot of risk on their team, maybe more than any other team in baseball to be honest. I don't know if anyone could sum up the Cubs an better. As someone who is adverse to risk in baseball I am glad we do not follow the not the Cubs pattern. To me risk = desperation.

I have no doubt at all Suppan would be DFAed if it comes to a choice of keeping him or someone who is as good or better if that someone could be part of the future as well as the present. Doug did that with Hall and Hammonds so I don't see any reason why he wouldn't with Suppan. I could very well see him cut if he is the 7th starter behind Bush, Parra and Narveson and there isn't room for him in the pen. Hopefully he could be traded for peanuts and us taking on a majority of the contract. At least then we could get some AAA fodder or an equally useless player but in a position we have less alternatives at.

And last season's collapse certainly wasn't Hardy's fault. I recognize that he didn't help much, but most people - including me - blame the pitching for the general suckitude. Last years collapse was due to players not playing to their potential. Hardy was one of those players. All those who played as poorly as Suppan, Parra or Bush should shoulder some of the blame for the season as well not just the pitchers. We wouldn't have needed the pitchers to be better if the offense was better. Hardy was part of the offensive problem I'm also concerned about how the move affected the Brewers' reputation with the player's union and agents/free agents around the league. I don't buy the 'Well Wolf signed here' argument either... the Brewers offered the most cash by far, and he was looking for green only. When Hardy and Hall were sent on their way, the clubhouse had to be poisonous. I don't know of too many players who forgo money for a chance to be with a great bunch of guys. While Hardy may have been popular every player in that locker room also knew Escobar was a great young shortstop and Hardy was not performing. I bet every one of those players in the locker room would much rather win with Escobar than lose with Hardy. They all want the best team possible. Anything that goes to that end will make the clubhouse better in the long run. Two (by all accounts popular with teammates) players who came up through the system are jettisoned for poor performance, while the highest paid player on the team is protected by being stashed away on the DL due to poor performance. Any player who thinks he's going to find any team without those type of situations is going to be looking an awful long time. Every team jettisons popular players and have to pay others more than they are worth because of a bad decision made years ago.

No way Hardy played poorly enough to be sent to Nashville when a guy like Jason Bourgeois was called up to waste a roster spot. Hardy had worse minor league numbers than Bourgeois did. Hardy had a AAA OBP of 284 and an OPS of 734. Bourgeios had a 354 OBP, a 755 OPS and 36 stolen bases. If JJ wasn't going to be starting he was a terrible option for the bench. He can play one position and had no offense. Bourgeios could play all the outfield spots and was a good base stealer. Whether or not Doug demoted him for financial reasons or not is not an issue for me. Hardy shouldn't have been one year away from FA anyway. He shouldn't have been on the major league roster his rookie season so all Melvin did was reset his FA clock to where it should always have been. Even if that wasn't the case it's the major leagues and this is a business. I don't begrudge Hart for going to arbitration to get every last dollar out of the team he can. I don't begrudge Melvin for getting every last bit of value out of his players when he can. I won't have a problem with Prince trying to get as much money as he possible can when his time comes either. It'll suck when it happens but it's just business. If Hardy deserved a demotion due to performance, surely Suppan deserved a DFA. Why didn't that happen (The 'we didn't have anybody to replace him with' argument doesn't fly with me either.)? If that argument doesn't fly could you tell us who we should have replaced him with that would have been better? Especially when you consider any option would have been at least $400,000 more than if you kept Suppan. Would another 10 starts of Chris Smith been worth $12,400,000 vs those same 10 starts with Suppan at $12,000,000?

Sadly JJ always has an excuse. It really gets old seeing him play the I had a tough go of it card when he really isn't even close to having a tough time in baseball terms let alone overall life terms. He was given his major league job before he earned it and got to keep it longer than his play warranted. All that article did was make me respect Bill Hall more. He had a reason to complain about how the Brewers handled him but didn't.

The reality is that these things are worth something and Boras doesn't value them in the least because they don't benefit him. If players ever figure this out, Boras will fade away into irrelevance. That's how I want to see him go out. There will always be players who want as much money as possible with no regard for anything else. Nothing wrong with it if that in a work situation but it does mean there will always be a place for an agent who gets max dollars for his clients. Boras' problem may have more to do with not getting the max like he used to. It seems like he hasn't quite caught up with the new reality of baseball economics. He still seems to be caught in the old paradigm that salaries always go up for players. If he was in banking he would have been one of the guys who were surprised when housing prices didn't just go up forever.

If you are in the minority so am I. Hart simply went by the rules of the game. He took a chance that his idea of his worth was more in accord with the sytem than the team's was. Turns out he was right. I also think he was better than he is being given credit for by the average fan. Seems like fans today have a need to say a player is either great or terrible. With no room in between those two extremes. I also think many times that assessment is based on how they thought the player should play vs how they actually played.

I would say that smart teams flip their closer for more players since a closer can be replaced easier than most people think. Look at our string of closers who had really good success over the last 10 years. True but it does hurt if you fail to get one. Look at what happened when we failed to have a good one. We had to trade to get Co-Co when Turnbow failed and had to lose our best setup man in Torres when Gagne failed.

It always bothered me that conventional wisdom says having the Yankees, Red Sox or other large market teams in the World Series was not only good for the ratings but baseball as a whole. It seems as though somehow having a Rays, Brewers World Series wouldn't interest anyone outside of Wisconsin or Florida. I realize the ratings back up that theory but my belief is that is a self fulfilling prophecy. I also think it's a self defeating one. Yes the ratings will be larger due to the city size but if they actaully marketed the entire league they may find people from Wisconsin or Chicago are as, if not more, interested in seeing the Rays play as the Yankees. Doesn't it seem logical if every team got the exposure all teams in football get eventually you would get the entire nation interested in the league not just their team? Then the ratings may even out from big market to small. If that happens the whole game, especially the playoffs, would get a huge ratings boost. Perhaps even set records in a year where the Yankees or Red Sox aren't in them. I always felt good story lines and interesting teams went much further than the city size. Those story lines come naturally from the teams not from the size of their market. After seeing the ratings for the Saints and Colts I have to wonder if maybe baseball and the media have it wrong and are hurting baseball by continuing to program based off the size matters belief. It might be more watched if baseball actually started to showcase all their teams nationally all year instead of 40% Yankees, 40% Red Sox and 20% scraps for all the rest of the teams. If I was commissioner I think the first thing I would do is set up some sort of system to get all teams equal nationally telivised games. Do everything I could to gain national exposure for all the teams. I'd be willing to bet in a couple years of equal exposure baseball would become more of a national game again instead of the provincial, I only care about my team, game it has become. After all Indy and New Orleans aren't even major league cites and they seem to do all right in national ratings. Sorry for the rant but this has bugged me for quite a few years. There is no reason baseball playoffs aren't as popular as football other than nobody outside of their region knows much about many of the teams thus are not interested in them. The teams they do know about they are bored of. Why wouldn't they be? It's the same story told over and over again.

This is a microcosm of how different fans are in why they enjoy a team. Some of us follow the name on the front of the jersey some the name on the back of it. Personally I am as interested in how a team replaces a great player as much as I am seeing the great player. When a player moves on I'm not all that interested in him anymore.

I don't understand where the implication that he might not give 100% comes from. This, imo, is the problem with fan expectations. Sometimes dips in performance aren't related to effort given by the players. For the most part I agree with you but when said player gets lighter from one season to the next simply by doing a harder off season regime it stands to reason he could/should have been doing that every off season and didn't. While I think Hart played his hardest while on the field I think maybe he should have been working as hard every off season as he seems to have this one. The off seaosn work is part of giving 100%.

As I was doing a bit as an ugly nurse this weekend the dude I was doing it for licked my face. On the very next one the guy spit as he talked and sprayed me in the the face. Some flew in my mouth. Not good form to throw up or spit back while doing my routine so I kind of had to pretend like nothing happened. Sometimes you're the pigeon sometimes you're the statue I guess. The life of B list entertainers is not very glamorous but still better than actually having to work for a living.

why isn't it possible that he was dealing with pain for a decent chunk of the season? I don't pretend to know, but it just seems all too convenient to say that the appenix issue doesn't count. I once had a wrestler complain of a lack of strength for a while. Small things like not being able to do as many situps as he used to. It didn't hurt him at first then he felt a small pang for a while so we thought he pulled muscle. Then I got a call that he had an emergency appendectomy. So, yes, I do think it's possible it hampered him even before it hurt him. I used to have more problems with it but now I don't care if any player tries to get what they can nor will I hold it agianst them. It's just the business side of it. I was happy to see Hart say he likes tohe city and understands the process can be brutal. It give me hope he will not hold hard feelings toward the city or the team if it does go to arby. That is especially important since I think Cory may have overplayed his hand and will lose the arby case. Seems like he's a lot more business savvy than his appearance would suggest.

It's easy to Monday morning quarterback an injury. Sheets history showed enough to know he wasn't a good risk. He was coming off a couple injury filled season's and had a lot of wear and tear on his arm by that time. Someone had a chart with all the pitchers injury risk assessment and Sheets was very high in the risk category. I kind of compare it to 20 years ago when Higuera was re signed, and went down with the injury soon after. I can't call that a bad signing. I didn't either but look at how much that hurt the team. He wasn't coming off several injury plagued season's Sheets was. while signing one player wiht no injuries may just be bad luck singing one who had a hisitroy of both abuse and injury it wouldn't have been bad luck. It would have been bad planning. Going further, a team like the Brewers needs to pull out all the stops to keep their own stars, because they aren't getting them from another team. All they will get is slightly above average players like Wolf who have to be convinced to come to the Brewers in the form of extra cash. I Disagree. You have to pullout all your stops to develop stars but when they get risky and or expensive it doesn't matter if they are your own players or not. They cost the same money either way. sheets certainly wouldn't have been cheaper to us over the length of his contract just because he was homegrown. He would be the same 15 or so million in lost resources as any injured player would have been. By the way, in my view, Sheets could have thrown nary a pitch last season and would have hurt the team less than Suppan pitching to his 'career norms' after throwing out his worst 6 starts. A couple more starts by Smith wouldn't have been better than Suppan. It also would have meant no Looper because Sheets would have made about as much than those two combined.

How many teams are spending the most money on their worst pitcher? Which is exactly what we would have done last season if Sheets got a multi year deal like he wanted. We would have paid a guy 10-15 million to go through rehab and then to spend the next one building up to his previous form.

Say what you want about the injuries, I'll take Sheets' 2008 season ahead of Suppan's entire body of work with the team. Would you take Sheets 2009 body of work for 15ish million over Suppan's body of work? Had Sheets signed when he wanted to for what he could have commanded means Suppan's contract would be surpassed by year three. One of which would have produced nothing but a rehab bill. There is no guarantee going forward that there won't be another lost season as well. One more half season of DL time which is possible if not likely the first season coming back and Sheets contract would have made Suppan's look like a steal for us. That is if we assume Sheets is the same pitcher he was. If he has any amount of decline at all it is even worse. I loved Sheets but to have given him a contract then would have been a severe blow to the team for years to come.

Hope he does well don't think he will do $10 million well. His lack of a third pitch means his curve and fastball better be every bit as good as they used to be or he's going to have trouble going very deep in games very often. It would be cool to see that Sheets power curve carve up hitters again but I worry it will be slightly flatter and the fastball will be low 90's instead of mid 90's. At least this season. Maybe in another year he will get it all back. But that would be too late to get him another big payday next season. This is one of those undervalued, money ball type of move Beane is rightly famous for but I think there are better bets coming off an injury than a two pitch starter. Hope to hell I'm wrong because Sheets really was pretty cool and I will never have anything but respect for him. His signing a long term deal when the Brewers were at their lowest made me hold him the highest regard. He could have put his time in and bolted first chance he got but didn't. That type of loyalty to the city and team should be make him an all time fan favorite.

He may have overestimated his worth but it isn't like he is worthless. If he gets back on track and stays healthy he could end up being an underpaid player this season. That said sometimes a player needs to take a step back and realize when it comes to arbitration next season's pay is based on past production not future potential. When he hits free agency someone may once again pay for potential but he's got a way to go before that happens.