Cool Hand Lucroy

Team looks pretty out of it. Can't blame 'em. Opt out, freak injury, pandemic postponements, heart attack....I mean, what are you gonna do?

Listening to the Sox announcers. Steve Stone has always been one of my favorite analysts. And Benetti is great when he's not trying to be funny or clever.

I am getting to the point where I'll just watch baseball. I don't really care if the Crew win or not. Mediocrity keeps you in it. And, if there was ever a season to be truly bad, it night be this one. Just eat that one Suter....

Sox remind me of the Hardy, Weeks, Fielder Brewers (early years). They're going to kick the ball around, but they sure are fun. Somehow, I hope we can inject some position player excitement into the farm. Maybe the international investments pay off. Also, baseball is weird. I wouldn't trade anything for 2018, but I think 2016 was an underrated, fun Brewer team. It's strange thinking about the difference between rooting for a bad team that feels exciting and one that feels just kind of bad.

That 1st inning Yelich K is just a killer. As is Ryon Healy getting late-inning ABs.

That really was an all-time bad throw. He had an eternity to set himself.

So...this team doesn't seem to be very good? Obviously, it's eight games, and our MVP is hitting like late-Craig Counsell. But it also feels like we should be about 1-7.

Giolito is good, bit this offense is zero fun when Yelich isn't Barry Bonds.

Yup. Both things can be true. I can enjoy having baseball and also recognize that it's totally meaningless and hard to care about losses. I'll get excited about wins, I think, though, so maybe that's the best way for this to be. It'll be fun to watch, and, when MLB buries its head and plays amid disaster, the Brewers will either be a playoff team or have a good draft pick. Somebody said that before (Eye Black, maybe?), but it's feeling more and more true every day. I also get the baseball really did have it the hardest in a lot of ways. The NBA and NHL (and MLS, for that matter) are basically doing tournament play for a limited amount of time (2 months or so). They both played meaningful regular seasons before the shutdown. Players got paid. Baseball had none of that. It's hard to move to a bubble with 25-man teams plus coaches plus support staff for 3 months. But, yeah. Excuses aside. NBA and NHL feel way, way more competitively meaningful right now.

In my head, I imagined the Brewers winning in a walk-off tonight. So, there's that...

The pitching matchups are really interesting to me for this series. Tonight is the game you'd expect to be high-scoring. Tomorrow (Giolito vs. Woodruff) looks like a nice pitcher's duel, at least if last outing's Giolito (and Woodruff, for that matter) show up. Then it's Kuechel vs. Houser before a Brew Crew TBD on Thursday. Who knows if we even get that far, but I don't see a clear edge in any of those matchups, save for Kuechel on Wednesday.

The part I don't understand is even if they limped through a season, I have no idea how the 16-team playoff field would work if you continued to have teams with cases. Delaying playoff series' for a week or more at a time, and then possibly having teams play without a third of their playoff roster seems impractical. Especially true because there was all that talk of "anxiety" about needing to finish up as early as possible in order to avoid bad weather and a potential late fall/winter resurgence. Two things are pulling me in opposite directions in terms of where I see this going: 1) It seems totally clear that continuing to play is very unlikely to work. The margin for error is so small, and even if there are a couple of simulations where MLB gets through the rest of this with minimal cases, the vast, vast majority would seem to point toward more infections, more postponements, more outbreaks. 2) OTOH, I think MLB is a lot like the college where I work. They see the $, they have no priors or public promises about what will cause the season to stop, and they're basically tunnel-visioning their way into a day-by-day, damage-control approach that they see as essential for protecting the bottom line. So, maybe the virus forces their hand with another team-wide outbreak. Maybe the opt-outs get too big to swallow. Maybe there's just no way to make the season at all legit. Maybe then it all crumbles. But I would not be surprised at all if we are in "too big to fail" territory at this point (and that goes double for the NFL) and we get a whole lot of discordant highlight videos and sports talk analysis and PR statements trying to cover the glaringly obvious problem of playing baseball in the middle of a pandemic.

It seems clear that once a player or staff member tests positive (esp. on a road trip), it is goodbye for at least a week. How can you continue to play and send individuals out into hotels and cities is a bit beyond my grasp. I want baseball as much as anyone, but the season is 10 days old, and a big chunk of the schedule is postponed. MLB has made a mess of this all around. Some players have been irresponsible, but the league set up a bad system. I know so many people who casually said "Well, baseball should be fun for 2 weeks," and any organization dumb enough to look at this plan and think it workable deserves criticism and financial loss.

Yeah, that lineup is....wild. We'll probably win 8-2 because the Sox batting order just looks stacked. Not that it matters a bit, really, though it feels to me like MLB is just going to bury its head and play through no matter what. So, basically, every outcome save for a Brewers World Series is illegitimate

I will take that 3-3 road trip, especially when it includes the PNC house of horrors and the weirdest traveling circumstances I have ever seen. Yeli will get back on track, and I think this offense will like MP (which, I guess, is not MP anymore). Edit: Just realized I can still call it Miller Park for 5 months.

Williams looks...pretty filthy. I am sure there will be inconsistencies, but man. That might be a real nice arm.

Let's also remember that these are Yelich's first 30 competitive ABs in about 10.5 months. He barely hit in normal ST even.

Everyone still figuring out the ball, I think, especially with no crowd and remote broadcasters. I have been fooled a lot off the bat this year.

Somewhere, Brad Nelson is saying: I told you this was hard! Come to think of it, maybe CC is saying that too...

Okay, Eddie, maybe it's time to stop testing that guy? I mean, I get it with two outs, but man...

Alright, I'll say it: with all the swing-and-miss we've seen over the last few years, Sogard's ABs have been a breath of fresh air.

On the board first! I do love watching Gamel!

I really hope Jeff and Lane become the full-time radio team after Ueck retires. They get tge balance between description and analysis just right, and they seem to actually enjoy talking with one another. I am just consistently amazed by this org's ability to find really good broadcasters. Makes the season a lot more fun.

Thank goodness for tomorrow, I guess.

This was a great call, even in a different order and w/o Cain. Nice work.