pitchleague

On Friday, my wife and I are driving from our home in NW Arizona to go see the eclipse in person. We’ve had this planned for several years and I’m super excited. The weather is kind of putting a damper on our plans. We are either going to Temple, TX or Clarksville, AR. I have a college friend in Rogers, AR that we originally made plans for but a couple of months ago we built in Texas as our contingency, especially with the odds of clearer skies being historically higher in Texas this time of year. Anyway, my questions are this: anybody have any insider information about either area? If we go to Arkansas, how’s the drive from Rogers to Clarksville? What about the Temple area? We have reservations all over the place (thank you, free cancellations!) but we figure by the time we get to eastern New Mexico and go to sleep on Friday night, we’ll have to make a decision of whether to keep heading east or start making our way southward. We have a reservation at a winery in Temple to see the eclipse but no such luck of anything in Clarksville so the wife is leaning toward Texas for the wine. If we go to Clarksville, we plan on driving from Rogers to Clarksville at dawn to hopefully get into town by 10:00 am at the latest. Now, if the weather/clouds interfere, I guess we can go to the eclipse through Utah in 2045 but I’m gonna be 24 years older then so who knows what my health will be like. I suppose we could go overseas to see one… My wife already said she’s not looking forward to the road trip back home with a (likely) grumpy me if the clouds and rain spoil all these years of planning. Haha! Sorry my post is all over the map.

So Chourio goes from batting leadoff to batting 9th. Huh, that’s odd

This may have been asked previously: how many of you go researching and looking up rare answers versus just going by memory and trying your best? I’ve only done a few of these (too busy most of the time to do them) but when I have I just go on memory. I find it more rewarding to see how good my score can be just on memory. just curious.

I don’t know about anyone else, but doing this would, inevitably, crash my Roku to the desktop. It would maybe last twenty minutes or so before doing so. boy I hope they fixed that this year

I missed it. What happened? Or, how?

I remember the whole Pete Rose saga started out pretty much the same way as this Ohtani incident: it all seemed pretty much a “not a big deal” and everybody was behind Rose and his camp. And then, after some actual investigation, the truth came out. It was weeks (maybe a month or two?) from “nah, there’s no way Rose bet on baseball” to “whoa, he even bet on his own team? Holy cow, what was he thinking?” I am in no way saying that history is going to repeat itself. But I certainly will not be too surprised if it does. And it would be a shame. Again. But, let’s all hope everything is on the up and up.

The first half of today’s games have been the antithesis of March Madness. I found them to be pretty boring games—more or less over long before the final buzzer. Here’s hoping we get some better games

My take on the "Chourio not making the catch" thing is this: (please note that I have no actual knowledge of whether or not this is true. It is merely conjecture.) I kind of feel he has been playing carefully out in the outfield so as not to risk an injury in a meaningless spring training game. Perhaps, he's even been "coached" a bit (maybe by a teammate or member of the coaching staff?) to not risk a serious injury in spring training. I can understand how the kid probably feels. He has immense pressure on his just-turned twenty-year old body to be the team's present and long-term future superstar. If he dives in a meaningless spring training game and separates his shoulder, for instance, wowzers that would be slightly devastating in the short term and could be something that bothers him his entire career. Once Opening Day hits, I would expect that, assuming he makes the Opening Day roster, that he will flip the switch and play balls-to-the-wall in most situations. An injury similar to what I described above would still be devastating but I would be quite forgiving because it happened in the regular season when the games actually matter. Injuries happen--it's a fact of life. If a player, who is now financially set for life, feels that he should not risk the huge investment by the Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club in a meaningless spring training game, I don't blame him one bit. Of course, if he was battling for a roster spot and was just some ordinary minor league player with a decent (or worse) prospect rating, yeah, then I could see it as a slight problem that he's not out on the field making plays and trying to improve his chances of making the big club. But he's not. He's the #2 prospect in all of baseball. And that merits, in my mind, a bit of caution to make sure he can actually play in meaningful baseball games. Okay, there's my thoughts. Again, it's just an opinion. You may disagree or feel otherwise, and that is totally fine.

Bummer. I was pretty much ready for an announcement such as this ever since spring training started, though. Bring on Hoby Milner: stud closer!🙃

I was at the game yesterday and he really impressed me. At one point, I turned to my wife and said, "This guy will be with the big club at some point this year. He's throwing seeds!"

The centerfield camera is crooked! 😆

I probably won’t get to that until summer when I can watch them all. Haven’t watched Band of Brothers or The Pacific in a few years, either. Maybe I should have a watch marathon. I’ve been pretty excited for Masters of the Air since I first heard about it.

You mean I can finally upgrade from NCAA ‘99?? (I’m a pc guy .). My Badgers dynasty (20 national titles in 24 seasons—on the highest difficulty [which is incredibly easy]) might be over? Eh, I won’t get excited yet. Probably not coming to PC. And it will probably be Madden with some cosmetic changes.

My wife and I have started Schitt’s Creek after I was able to catch her up on The Office (she watched when it first was on but gave up and it took me a decade to persuade her to give it another chance. Her watching Parks and Recreation and loving it helped immensely. But I digress…) anyway, it’s started off slow but the laughs have begun to grow from simple smirks and chuckles to laughs out loud. And we’re only on season 1 episode 10 or so. Looking forward to more!!

Pretty sure I have some shares in Nvidia but no clue, off the top of my head, how many. I doubt I’m retiring on Monday with what I’ve got or I’d have heard from my financial guy by now.

I’m pretty sure that there’s a better than average chance that I drive down the three hours to take in a game or two. Bonus is that I am “scheduled” to appear in Phoenix for federal jury duty in March (I’m on call for the whole month—ugh!) so that might help me get to a couple more games, as well.

Certainly not the way I thought my Thursday night would turn out. I'm saddened as Burnes has been a stalwart with this club for a number of years. Yes, his numbers have declined since the Cy Young season but that's no shocker--his numbers were kinda out of this world and reeked over regression on the horizon. But, still, he's been a Brewer and really, dang good one. I will certainly miss him a lot. And, who knows what he even provides Baltimore? A 4.00 ERA this year? Worse? Arm trouble? Or maybe the veteran leadership the Baltimore craves right now with a young club and he'll bring some Andy Pettitte-like guidance to that club, even with only some so-so numbers. It will be fun to watch how it plays out in Baltimore. For us, I think the writing is on the wall with Adames. He's probably dealt at the trading deadline at the latest and, possibly, still before the season starts (a trade during spring training would be interesting!) I don't know much about Ortiz but it looks like we dealt for him to be an heir apparent for a least a few years--I really hope he doesn't scream as another shortstop top prospect that is a flop after a year or two. I do like DL Hall. His stuff seems pretty good. It will be interesting to see what the pitching lab can do with him. That name, though LOL. I'm willing to pass judgment in September, not February 1st. Go Brewers! (8 weeks to the day until Opening Day!!!!)

Kansas City Chiefs again……that bugs me

It will be very interesting seeing how Pat Murphy will put a roster together after spring training. With Counsell gone, will that mean we won't have a scrappy, toolsey player(s) that is put on the roster ahead of clearly better players? I've liked Wilken since they drafted him, so I hope they are sorta fast-tracking him and, hopefully, in the starting lineup by April 2025.

I saw that the Twins will not have local blackouts this season. I hope that starts a trend!

I can’t give enough thumbs up for this!! I watch it yearly. Sometimes with various commentaries or whatnot turned on just for a different take. The one time I watched it on “sport mode” on my tv was kinda epic. (Your mileage may vary)

And today marked the end of the least surprising MLB Awards season in a long time. . . .

I’ll admit that I took it kinda hard last night and some tears were shed. I’m beginning to realize that my chances of seeing a Brewers title or even another WS appearance are starting to run out. It did not help that, on Tuesday, a good friend of mine from the Milwaukee area, said that “word around town is that Uecker is done after this year.” Not sure about how much truth there is to this rumor, but it just hurt really hard just thinking about it, so every time Ueck was talking, it all came flooding in that this could be the last game I hear him. Thankfully, his post game comments made it seem like he’d be back in the spring. But that may have just been a smoke screen, too. And the guy turns 90 (!) in January (?) so I’ve been preparing for it for a while anyway.

A hundred-some days til Spring Training!!!!

Whereas I appreciate the response, this doesn’t help my situation here in Arizona, I don’t believe. Thank you for responding, though. (Seriously. No sarcasm implied.)