Cool Hand Lucroy

Florida earned it. Not a lot of shot-making, but they were the tougher team and won by forcing Houston way out repeatedly. Kind of surprised Kelvin didn't have something to shift to when things went stagnant in the last quarter. Their most effective offense was literally baseline out of bounds. Credit to Florida. They out-Houstoned Houston.

Digesting this. Here are my thoughts. Primarily, we're starting from a position of deep need, so that means we're in the weaker negotiating position. The result is about what you would expect. We gave up a lot for a former top prospect with some really strong potential and a lot of team control. As others have pointed out, that's expensive. As individual pieces, I'm not that upset about the give here. We're pretty deep in the outfield, and Rodriquez is years away. The comp pick is the comp pick. Valuable if you hit big, but it's hard to hit big. PTBNL, cash, whatever. All three at once is a little hard to swallow, though. If Priester hits and becomes a rotation piece for 3 years, that's a big win, almost regardless of what happens with Rodriguez or the comp pick. What I like is this: If we're out of it around the deadline, we can build back a lot of the capital we traded away. If we're in it, you've got the kind of arm you might want to add, plus the return of Woody et al. I am sure the org budgets something for deadline deals, so maybe we're just taking that capital and spending it now. Would I have done that? I don't know. I have no idea how far away our IL pitching army is. This makes me think we need the depth now, or that Cortes' injury is quite concerning.

Kind of feel like this maybe tells us a lot about how the Brewers feel about their triple A arms too...

Just reflecting on that wild Duke-Houston finish. That 6-point possession the Cougs posted (with the help of a contact technical) to cut a 14-point lead to 8 felt like the turning point for me. Kind of a phantom foul on Flagg, but Duke's owed more than a few tough whistles. Loved the way Houston guarded the final possession. Don't let Flagg beat you with a PASS. That's his elite skill. They played that perfectly and made him take a tough fadeaway. If I'm Duke, the biggest thing I'd regret is up one with about 30 seconds left. They get the ball to Proctor (the exact guy Houston wants to foul) in the front court, with Flagg and Kon trailing in the backcourt. Nowhere to go, Proctor gets fouled, misses the front end. Don't care who you are, you have to get the ball to Flagg or Kon there. Credit to Houston for defensive alignment. But was surprised Duke didn't go to the football OOB set up. As for tonight, I will be rooting for Houston, of course, but I think Florida is better and will win. Clayton is unreal. If I'm Houston it is sell out to stop that dude driving to the rim, hand is his face on every three. If he hits tough shots or Martin, Condon, or Haugh or whoever drop 30, you live with it. Maybe break out the old Rock Majerus box and 1?

Bad take.

Worth something to get through this one with just two pitchers.

Back in it! Nice to keep it interesting anyway.

Yelich and Contreras are really hurting this offense. Honestly, it is hard not to be thrilled at being 4-5, assuming this one goes bad. Winning three one-run games is a boost.

Credit to Murphy. Made the right defensive switch.

Be a really nice time for Wild Bill to get loose.

Both of these teams have been scuffling offensively this first week. Lot of ugly numbers up and down the board.

Wow. Great pitch. And clears Elly for the ninth, so the error was actually good, right?

Oof. Tough play, but with ELDC coming up, that is costly costly costly. Put him on?

Between Vinny and Sal, it should be a helluva year for the Italian sausage.

Tempting to throw Nestor back out there, but I like letting him go after 6 scoreless. Confidence booster.

Fermin paid back the Turang groundout in the 11th. Nice to get that bit of luck. Special props to Koenig and Urine for scoreless ghost runner frames after both throwing a lot yesterday. Probably be without them and Megill tomorrow, so will need Cortes to show lots of improvement (or a massive offensive day, or both).

Series win. Good bounce back from this team. Like to see the offense really get going against the Reds!

Creighton benefits a ton from being the big show in a big market. Omaha's MSA is basically the size of Buffalo, which supports not one but two professional franchises. Add in a pretty widespread Midwestern alumni network, and that's a ton of support. Plus, like you said, lot of money in Omaha. I wish GB had things more together. Or Milwaukee. Both programs that never really figured it out after major coaching exits. Butler leaving seemed to basically tank the entire Horizon. I'm real sad about the decline of that league. Was never quite at the level of the Valley, but still produced a lot of good teams and players.

Kind of nice to have a no-name, first-time starter driving another team's fans crazy for a change.

Who is this Chad Patrick and where has he been all my life? Also, it would be nice to see the guys who are supposed to hit, you know...hit.

The O/U for the game tomorrow is...8.5. Seems awfully low, but that probably means it'll be a pitcher's duel. Or KC will win 8-0.

Saint Thomas is first-year tourney eligible after a favorable NCAA decision. Could be a draw. UWGB is....a mess? Putting it charitably? I don't think the Gottlieb hire has accomplished anything other than creating a moderate media draw. Maybe that was the sole point. Anyway, I'm with you. Good luck to Freitag, but I'm not sure even Saint Thomas would be interested. That's a really solid basketball program right now, in a decent league. The Horizon league seems like a better destination if he wants to make an impact. You all are way more in tune with UW and the portal than I am. Is there a reason the focus is on Wisconsin guys? Is it because they want to market those players, or because they think local ties might make up for not being able to outspend others? Losing Freeman hurts, but Creighton is kind of perfect for him. Kalkbrenner gone, No football program to compete for NIL resources. I really think the Big East is well-positioned basketball-wise . Been a little down the last two years (and still managed to produce the national champions both years and one of the best tournament streaks in history), but those schools have a lot of basketball cred to draw on and a really good TV situation. You could argue better than the B1G given all the Peacock inventory. I believe most of the full round-robin BEast games are on FS1 and FOX, with some CBSSN ones thrown in.

For sure, if he were healthy. A couple of injuries (especially the ankle in 2011) really seemed to impact Rickie's career. I'll always wonder what if on that one--he was just going gangbusters that year until then.

I don't really know what to make of these four games. Probably nothing. I think the hard part is, a lot of us felt some serious "uh-ohs" looking at the Opening Day roster and seeing how it had been impacted by injuries and how many question marks there were in the lineup. As Brewers fans, we're probably conditioned to expect the other the shoe to drop more than most franchises, and the easiest thing in the world is to see your worst fears realized completely in a small sample and then extrapolate that out to forever. We're obviously going to play better. But this roster construction really does seem troubling. They let Adames go and signed no one, basically counting on Yelich to be MVP Yelich and Hoskins to have a bounce-back year, not to mention Chourio taking a step forward after the league starts to adjust to him a bit more. Mark Canha is not the answer, but I was puzzled by trading him for cash. His bat's useful! Especially against lefties (which we can't hit). Then there's letting Rea go and signing your one pitching FA late in camp, when you know you're going to be very careful with Woodruff. Maybe it's easy to criticize all that in hindsight, but I do think there are some avoidable errors in there that have compounded the bad injury luck. Here's my takeaway: I don't see a reason to panic. Panic after four games is silly. But there are some warning signs here that you'd be silly not to notice, especially when nobody is hitting and even our good bullpen pitchers are really struggling. We can't throw strikes. We can't stop giving up hard contact. Other than the opener (where Freddy pitched like a pretty good, B, maybe B- outing), every defensive half-inning has been an adventure. It's not just that the pitching is thin. It's that nobody has been able to look like an above-average big-league pitcher outside of your staff "ace," who's really more like a number 2 or number 3 starter (not a Freddy criticism, that's just who he realistically is). When you pair that with an offense that scored nine runs in a game they were only briefly in (largely thanks to some very bad Yankees defense) and six runs in the other three games (aided greatly by Devin walking dudes), ouch. You get a very lopsided 0-4 and a lot of folks asking some legitimate questions about what realistic expectations are for this roster. On the other hand, maybe we just faced a world-beating offense and a million left-handed pitchers and are better than the rest of the NL Central. Ask me again in two weeks.

Kind of two similar games so far, though MSU is doing a better job of keeping it close in this first half than Tennessee did. Houston-Tennessee was definitely a "tougher team wins" kind of game, and that was Houston. This year's version can really shoot it, which makes up for some of their historic deficiencies offensively. Same attitude, same defense, better shot-making. Looking like it'll be all four one seeds and an SEC v. the world title game. Maybe MSU pulls a comeback and spoils the party, but I don't see it. I think I'll be team Houston, but mostly I'll just keep being anti-Florida (even though how can you not be impressed by Walter Clayton, Jr.?).