Thurston Fluff

When it comes to wild duck it's pretty much mallards. I usually cut the breasts out and use the rest for stock. I never have whole wild duck on tap to do this sort of thing with. Fortunately, my dad thought raising ducks and chickens was a great hobby in retirement. So, farm raise duck. Don't honestly know what it is...was. (Should get my tenses right since I ate it.) The stinky part of it is the shrimp paste. It's also something I think can be shipped anywhere. If you can't find that I would try to use fish sauce instead. It's wetter than the shrimp paste so I'd cut the water in half. Same goes for the palm sugar. If you can't find it try brown sugar. The lemon grass can be bought canned if you can't get fresh or google a substitute. Most of the other stuff I think you could fake well enough with dried or powdered. There is a lot of flavor going on so if you miss something I think you'd be ok. Just need a combo of the stinky, sweet and hot.

Most of it I found at a Hmong grocery store in Appleton on East Wisconsin ave. For anyone close enough to go there I highly recommend it. You can find just about anything there. I think if there is a Vietnamese grocer, or any number of Asian grocers around your area you'd be able to find what you need. If you have an asian grocer near you I would recommend taking a picture of the ingredients and bring it along. Some of the stuff may be called something else depending on the nationality of the grocer. Most of the ingredients come in small quantities so there isn't going to be much waste.

I tired a Balinese grilled duck recipe called bebek betutu. Here's how to make it. You take a bunch of ingredients that smells like vomit. Mix them together in a blender until it looks like vomit. Then add half the vomit mix with blanched spinach so it looks like dog vomit after it eats grass. Then take the other half of the vomit mix and cover a duck inside and out. Next take the dog vomit mixture and shove it inside the duck. Cover in banana leaves and grill it for four hours. When done, take the juices of the vomit mixture and reduce it to a slightly thicker vomit consistency and spoon it over the duck. All in all it was quite delicious and easy to make. I would highly recommend trying it but try to get someone else to prepare it. P.S. When cooked it didn't smell like vomit. Here's the recipe for the brave or olfactory impaired. https://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/bebek-betutu

That wouldn't have helped us nearly as much as what we got for them. I understood why people said we needed starting pitching in the off season and even early in the season. I don't understand why people think that now.

That's a pretty good way of looking at this. When we signed Chacin it wasn't flashy but he lifted the floor and expanded the depth. Turns out that depth is what held the staff together this season. With this move we don't have to rely on a couple key players staying healthy and productive as much.

Add me to the list of those who agree with you.

Well played.

That depends on how you define a lot of controllable talent. The problem with a weakened farm system, outside of the inability to trade for better major league talent, is the functional major league roster is limited to what is already there. The Brewers can option good players up and down as needed and have used that to great effect. The Cubs have a lot of talent on the 25 man roster but have limited options beyond that to help in tough stretches.

Just to add some insight into why Stearns isn't all that concerned about Shaw playing 2nd. I think this goes back to the versatility they look for in players. Maybe he hasn't played second per say but he has shown the ability to play outside of the traditional third base position.

There's a natural aversion to losing guys/changing things for fans who follow teams too closely. Case in point, I don't recall ever seeing a single person on here praise Kodi Medeiros as a prospect, and suddenly lots of people were aghast at losing him for Soria. Come on The vast majority of the criticism isn't over trading away Phillips/Lopez. Both were expendable. What most don't like about the move is trading for a thirdbaseman instead of a middle infielder, forcing Shaw to play secondbase. Had we traded those two guys for say Asdrúbal Cabrera or Dozier instead of Moustakas, the criticism wouldn't be the same. From what I've read Asdrubal Cabrera is a butcher on defense. Just because someone is listed as a second baseman doesn't mean they are better playing it than someone who plays third well be hasn't played second. We needed offense at second. A guy who hits well and fields well is going to cost more than someone who looks to be a fourth outfielder and a average at best relief pitcher. This move will help a lot if Shaw can hold his own at second and doesn't mortgage the future in the process. The worst outcome is the added offense is a push with the decreased defense and all it cost was a couple spare parts.

If you wanted to improve your run differential do you think adding Hamels or adding Moustakas would help more?

The way teams employ defensive shifts these days players actually end up playing more positions than they used to anyway. How hard can it be to move to second vs playing third in the shift?

A bad one year contract is what 10-20 million? A bad multi year contract is easily double that. Unless the team can afford to eat the contract, it costs a roster spot for several years to boot.

Absolutely pessimistic. Not calling the season over, but Soria alone doesn't get more wins than they would have minus Soria, in my opinion. Called the same predictions last season around July 26th. I just feel like this is a .475 club living on borrowed time. I hate feeling that way, but :shrugs: You have a right to any feeling you want but no team goes a 1 1/2 years above .500 ball with .475 talent. There is pessimism then there is hyperbole. I think you may have crossed into the latter. Soria alone won't win us more games but no player alone does that. What he does is allow Counsell to use his bullpen early and often every day instead of two out of three days. That should account for at least that one win you think he can't get us.

I think we can afford to overpay if it's the right type of overpay. If we overpay in quantity I'm ok with it. We have a pretty big 40 man roster crunch coming and I'd rather trade some of the soon to be overstock now than lose somebody to the rule 5 draft or because we had to DFA someone for the roster space. If we need to give up a higher quality player as the overpay them I'm not really on board. Maybe trade a few 40 man guys for Happ and a lottery ticket not needing a 40 man spot could work as well.

I love guys like Suter but this is worse news for Suter than it is for the Brewers. The reason depth is important is when someone like Suter goes down there is someone like Suter to replace him. This should also be a warning sign about the perils of trading depth for a single established player. Trading several guys like Suter for one better player means you have to rely on one player too much. Stick to the plan of acquiring depth and let the chips fall where they may.

The rotation is set in the sense that they have 5 guys in it. Here's my problem. Burnes out of the pen is probably going to limit him to 110-120 innings this year. So are they going to let him go 200 innings next year or are they going to have to watch his innings again? I don't think there's much of an argument that he's one of the top 5 starters on the roster currently, so if that's the case, he should be in the rotation. There's also the entertainment factor to me. There's no entertainment in watching Anderson try to keep his pitch count under 100 in 5 innings or watch Miley walk as many as he strikes out. Burnes brings legitimate excitement about what he could possibly do now and what he could become in the future. I don't think we have to worry about any starter going 200 innings the way Counsell manages the starters. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with it. Just noting the way Counsell manages the starters means Burnes lack of innings this year probably doesn't matter at all because he was never going to hit his innings limit anyway.

Good article. I do agree that they've gone away from the things that were working well. I don't fully agree that it was just dumb luck that they applied those strategies in the first place though. There's some regression involved, which does make their slump coincide with making different decisions but isn't fully a result of making different decisions. Seems the guy is pushing his favorite explanation/agenda over several other important factors. I mostly agree about Knebel. He's never had the command to be anointed the closer, even last year when he was an all-star. This is just inevitable regression. They should be using him on a match-up basis more. That said, there are many save opportunities where it would have been him even if they didn't care about the "closer" role, simply because the match-ups were favorable and other guys had been used already. He's been quite a bit worse than even the Knebel Regressionists expected, but you don't know that until it's too late so you can't blame them for using him in a lot of high leverage situations. Again, that's just hindsight; the real story is that he's been a disappointment and that Hader and Jeffress have come back to earth a little lately. Most of the pen has regressed lately, and that's not Knebel's fault. Jennings, Williams, Barnes, etc weren't gonna be terrific all year. I'd say now is about the right time to start weaning him off that closer role, but I respect Counsell for generally giving guys the right amount of leash. I think fans in general call for changes too impatiently, but Counsell is actually less stubborn than most managers when it comes to changing personnel in response to changes in production. You can't just make changes every time a guy slumps a little. In a way, talking so much about the closer situation instead of recognizing all the issues causing the slump just reinforces how much the closer role is magnified beyond it's true importance, which is what most of us are trying to dispel. You hit pretty much everything very well but I think the highlighted part is spot on. He ignored some of the relievers were probably not as good as they appeared even while talking about the starters not be as good as they appeared which is the definition of confirmation bias. It kind of took away from the greater point he was making. Sad because I don't think he needed to do that to make his point.

I asked my bother who's an appliance guy about this a few years back when I was looking for a new dryer. So it's second hand information and the technology no doubt got better but he said it takes a long time to dry. As in hours if you have a full dryer or heavy blankets. You also will need to have a drain nearby or empty a water tray after every load. But they do work if there is no other choice.

He should refuse to go through sensitivity training if he honestly doesn't have those beliefs anymore, or never had them. And I've been as hard on him as anyone, but how can you be trained to be sensitive if you already are? Even if he doesn't hold those beliefs anymore he has a responsibility to the organization to show it. Saying I don't need it because I'm not that way would send up a red flag if I was his employer.

God I'm glad twitter wasn't around when I was that age. The difference between me as a teenager and even a 20 year old was night and day. I told a lot of off color jokes that would embarrass me if they got out today. Never malicious, just trying to be funny and failing spectacularly. I hope his parents were monitoring his tweets, grounded him for it and explained why it was wrong. That is what happens to kids who say stupid things. What shouldn't happen is their future employers punishing them over it. Having them make sure the employee knows that won't be tolerated now is fine. I'm ok with MLB making him take some sensitivity training because it doesn't hurt to make sure he's formulated new beliefs as his experiences grew. I can't help but think working alongside such a diverse group of people as professional baseball has made him wise up either way. That said, some people do not change. He has no room for error here on out.

As yesterday's game shows, there is no guarantee the next guy is going to be better.

The team has played more games than anyone else and just got done with 21 games in 20 days. They managed to win as many games as the Cubs did after that tough stretch. Now they get some rest, mental as much as physical, and get to watch as all the other teams have to play more games in the dogs days of August.

While I agree with the sentiment let's not forget that the only reliever that didn't give up a run last night was Hader. Who BTW didn't come in with the lead so he doesn't only come in when we are winning. In fact last night Jeffress only made it 2/3 of an inning and got bailed out by Knebel. Jeffress hasn't been as good lately as he was for most of the season. Of all the pen guys he's the one I worry about regression the most. Setting aside all that I agree this team doesn't seem to need defined roles.

Not picking on you personally but this is the type of criticism that always baffles me. How are any of those things on Matheny? The player yes. The GM who brought him in yes. Hell the baserunning coach can even share the blame. The manager is about the last person in the team to blame for that. Reread my post. I don't blame Mike at all. Not HIS fault he was kept for near seven years with his horrid in-game managing. And of course the players are also to blame for a myriad of on field gaffs too numerous to list. I did read your post. It was overly hyperbolic as witnesses by the worst manager since Ken Boyer comment and the example you chose to use as another nail in the coffin had nothing to do with Matheny. I get 90% of the fans of every team hates pretty much every in game decision the manager makes but come on. Cardinal fans are supposed to be more baseball savvy than that.