The stache

Probably a lot of what goes through Melvin's mind given Attanasio seems to have taken a pretty prominent role in some of our bigger free agent signings and he signed Doug to a contract extension. Between the two playoff berths and likely as important to Mark, the vastly improved attendance since Melvin took over which equals more revenues, i just don't see Attanasio making a change at GM anytime soon unless the team both loses a lot of games over say the next 2-3 years and attendance takes a dive with the losses. And in the mean time, the prime years of Ryan Braun's career waste away. I'm afraid he's going to end up another Robin Yount. A Hall of Fame caliber player who will never win a ring. At least Robin made it to the Series.

I have Miller and Matt Harvey on my fantasy team

First round picks by year 2012 Cardinals 19th, Brewers 28th 2011 Cardinals 22nd, Brewers 12th 2010 Cardinals 25th, Brewers 14th 2009 Cardinals 19th, Brewers 26th 2008 Cardinals 13th, Brewers 16th 2007 Cardinals 18th, Brewers 7th 2006 Cardinals 30th, Brewers 16th 2005 Cardinals 30th, Brewers 5th 2004 Cardinals 19th, Brewers 5th 2003 Cardinals 28th, Brewers 2nd Average draft position: Cardinals 22.3 Brewers 13.1 Look at our first round picks recently: 2011:Taylor Jungmann, 12th pick of the 2011 MLB Draft, and Jed Bradley, 15th pick of the 2011 MLB draft. Passed on Jose Fernandez (#7 rated prospect in baseball), Matt Barnes (#37th), Robert Stephenson(#48), Taylor Guerrieri (#41), Henry Owens (#89) 2010:Dylan Covey, 14th pick of the 2010 MLB draft. We didn't even sign him. Passed on Jessee Biddle (#57), Taijuan Walker (#5), Zach Lee (#74), Noah Syndergaard (#28) 2009:Eric Arnett, 26th pick of the 2009 MLB draft. 4th year in our system, hasn't even made it to AA. Knee surgery start of 2013 season. 2008:Brett Lawrie, 16th pick, and Jake Odorizzi, 32nd pick of the 2008 MLB draft. Both are gone. Evan Frederickson, the 35th pick in that draft, is out of baseball. 2007:Matt LaPorta, 7th pick of the 2007 MLB draft. Gone. 2006:Jeremy Jeffress, 16th pick of the 2006 MLB draft. Gone. Between 2006 and 2010, we had six first round picks, and another at #35. Of those seven players, we did not sign one, one is out of baseball, one had season ending knee surgery before his 5th professional baseball season (still in high A), and the others now belong to other teams. How is it that for five years of first round picks, we have one of those players left, and he can't make it to AA ball??? Forget where we are drafting. Who we are drafting has been terrible. We haven't hit on a single draft pick since 2005, when we took Ryan Braun with the 5th overall pick (hard to screw that one up). The two pitchers we took in the first round of the 2011 draft are not in the top 100, and have had a minimum amount of success.

And the Cardinals have? In the last nine years, they've been to the World Series three times, winning two of them. And in two other seasons, they made it to the league Championship series. Six of the last nine years, they've been to the playoffs. They're not drafting in the top 5, yet their pitching prospects absolutely blow ours out of the water. Shelby Miller is better than any pitching prospect the Brewers have had in the last decade, including Gallardo. So how are they able to do it? Is it luck? Or maybe they just know pitching talent when they see it, and know how to develop it.

For the season, Lucroy was batting .308 with runners in scoring position. 8 for 26 with 14 RBI. A .971 OPS. Rickie Weeks with RISP? He's batting .094. 3 for 32 with a .528 OPS. Want to know why Lucroy is getting more slack? There's your answer.

Lucroy, Weeks, and the absence of Hart. The fact that we probably have the worst bench in MLB doesn't help. It doesn't get much attention, but our bench is horrendous. There's nothing to get excited about in a pinch-hitting situation, because we have no one. I mean, Gallardo is probably our best bet for a big fly off the bench if we needed one late. Well, Luc has had a cold start to the season overall, but in high leverage situations, Luc has been one of our best run producers: http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/259/2013jlucroyleverage.png

Woo hoo, back to back walks. Come on Brauny!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good patience, Jean. Make him pitch to ya, or just get on for Brauny.

Come on Jean, bop another one!

Well, it's still early, so I'm not going to give up hope yet. But our pitching staff is last in the NL with a 4.50 ERA, and we need somebody to step up and eat up some innings/pitch well.

Aoki batting .295 Segura batting .336 Braun batting .321 Ramirez batting .379 Gomez batting .376 Why are we not scoring runs????

Holy God, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder have combined for 73 RBI. Wow. I really, really miss Prince.

My fantasy rotation right now is Matt Harvey, Madison Bumgarner, Matt Cain, Shelby Miller, Matt Moore, Derek Holland and Hyun-Jin Ryu. I'd take any one of those guys on Milwaukee, and every one would likely be our #1 starter.

Shelby Miller is shutting out the Rockies through 4 1/3 IP with 7 strikeouts. God, I would give my left nut for a pitching prospect like that. Twenty-two years old, and he's got a 1.76 ERA, a 0.98, a better than 4:1 K to BB ratio, and 9.9 K's per 9 IP.

Come on Yuni, his a bomb.

I wish out pitching staff was worth a buffalo nickel.

Gallardo with 100 pitches in 4 innings, of which 47 were balls. Yikes.

5 minutes ago, I said "my fantasy team's not hitting many home runs this week". Jean Segura and Ryan Braun said "oh yeah?"

Disgusting. Our final hitter of the night will be a guy with a .210 OBP.

Sigh. Week little popup in the infield. This team can't buy a clutch hit right now.

Come on, Logan, you're really due.

GoGo is really on fire, wow.

Well, Figaro with some heat, but getting the ball knocked into the outfield.

Luc is really struggling right now. Anybody else see a distinct difference in the Ranger bullpen versus ours? Scheppers throwing lasers, and the guys we've been sending out there don't seem to have much of anything velocity wise.

Ok, I see your point, Adam. I just didn't want to run out of a potentially big inning. Segura's the best in the Majors right now at getting infield hits. Even if Braun doesn't knock it out, he's been seeing the ball really well. That kind of speed on the bases, a double from Brauny scores two. I guess the long and short of it is, there's always more than one way to look at something.