Two Fisted Slobber

When CC was leading off the eight inning I told my wife Mark would write him a check for $200 million right then and there if he hit a home run.

6/3/07 - 6/2/08 vs. RHP Hall .211/.267/.387 Hardy .240/.285/.352 vs. LHP Hall .313/.390/.507 Hardy .321/.414/.470

Number of times an 82+ win team has brought in their closer in with a tied game on the road in 2007: cle 0 bos 2 LAA 1 nyy 3 ari 1 nym 0 sdp 0 det 0 col 3 sea 0 While I would have preferred Cordero over Wise, it may have been foolish to expect ANY major league manager to actually do so.

Glavine may be the last guy to hit 300 wins for a long time Well, the prince of darkness along plenty of other writers have published stories over the last 24 hours suggesting that Glavine may be the last guy to hit 300 wins EVER. Seems to me they've been saying that about quite a few pitchers over the years. A quick Google search reveals that they've been trying to knight the last 300 game winner as early as 1963, when Early Wynn hit the milestone.

Not to single you out, but minor league championships are NOT what the 30 MLB franchises are all about. You either use your farm system to depth to play for the parent club, or you use it to trade for help for the major league club. I could care less whether these potential championships in the bush leagues are won or not. All we should care, is that these A, AA & AAA clubs are feeding us the proper talent. Wow, Geno. I know he didn't use the magic blue font, but I don't see how the sarcasm could be any more obvious. It was definitely one of the best posts of the day.

How's Jose Capellan doing? Why he's led the Tigers to the best record in baseball with a dazzling 3.00 ERA out of the bullpen (nevermind his 6.00 RA).

I'm having a real hard time getting excited about acquiring a reliever who's given up at least one run in 8 of his last 17 games to the tune of a 7.16 ERA and a .925 OPS allowed. I'll just be over in the corner muttering, "In Doug we trust. In Doug we trust. In Doug we trust..."

I'll also grant that despite early career struggles, Weathers and Kolb both turned out to be decent pitchers, but that doesn't mean it's the rule. Of course it's not the rule. Just pointing out that, with very little effort, I was able to find two former Brewers with similar numbers at the start of their career who later became major league closers. Balfour is 29, has been injured, and wasn't very good when he WAS in the majors. The same could be said about Weathers at age 29 and Kolb at age 28.

He's got 70 ML innings in his career and he's got a 5.128 ERA. I think that's enough of a sample size to say he can't get it done in the bigs. David Weathers' first 3 seasons: 63.2 IP, 5.23 ERA Dan Kolb's first 4 season: 79 IP, 5.01 ERA I'd say there's still some hope for Grant to turn it around.

The guys with "1" along with their names (Gwynn, for example), have an option next year. It looks like Gross was updated to "0" today. At any rate, it's the players with zeros that we should be concerned about. OK, so my initial mistake appears to be assuming that all players listed with one option left are in the same boat. Correct me if I'm wrong here: Rottino, Jackson and Gwynn all have one option left, but they've already used one this year, so they'll have one option for 2008. Bush, Hart and Hall all have one option left, but they haven't used one this year. If they were sent down to the minors yet this year, they would have no options left for 2008. How long do options last? Until the player is a free agent? Since J.J. Hardy has three options left, does that mean that the Brewers could send him down to Nashville from 2008-2010 and bring him back up for the 2011 season?

I believe Manny is out of options unless one of those obscure extra option rules would kick in. Am I reading the Brewerfan.net 40-man Roster page correctly in that the Brewers need to find room on the 2008 opening day roster for Gwynn, ZachJack, Parra, Sarfate, Nix, Rottino, Gross, Aquino, and Balfour or risk losing them? Yikes! Well, it's been nice knowing ya... [dropped link back into Slobber's quote --1992casey http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif ]

With only 58 starts since 2005, Sheets is tied for 87th in MLB. He's tied with Roger Clemens (among others) and behind 3 pitchers who have not taken the mound this year. We'll be facing #2 on that list on Wednesday.

Despite being no-hit Tuesday, the Brewers have the 4th best OPS in the National League in June.

Or the Kevin Barker game? Can't say that I do. Care to refresh my memory?

Woogie Would asking for Plate Apperances be too much?

Someone fix the standings. The Brewers are currently tied for first place with a 1/2 game lead on the Cards.

For the free audio webcast, go to the MLB Multimedia Guide and click on the Webcast link. Wrong, that's going to give the same login problems as usual. To access the free webcast, click the link in the blurb on the Brewers home page, or the link below (opens directly in WMP like yesterday): Wrong. I use that every single day and never have to login.

For the free audio webcast, go to the MLB Multimedia Guide and click on the Webcast link.

He's got two hits in a Spring Training game. Let's not get carried away. Can I get carried away NOW?

of Fielder, Weeks and Hardy, i'd think between free agency or performance that only one of them would be there. Hardy won't be a free agent until after the 2010 season. Weeks and Fielder will be Brewers' property through 2011.

I'll take that bet. Hardy is just too solid of a defender. Fielder Weeks and Braun will be average defenders at best, and you want inconsistant Hall in the middle of that? To not have someone who is rock solid in the middle of those guys would be a ticket to chronic 2nd place. Oh, there'd be lot's of Sport Center highlights with Hall there. But there's a reason guys like Eckstein always seem to show up on championship teams and good baseball men like Doug Melvin and Walt Jocketty seek them out. This is a discussion of the 2010 lineup, not 2007. I certainly don't WANT Hall to be the starting shortstop in 2010, that would mean the Hardy experiment had gone horribly wrong. Nonetheless, if Doug offered to swap Hall for Eckstein, Walt would pull the trigger on that deal in a heartbeat.

Using BA's rules for the 2010 Lineup (only players current in the Brewers organization eligible, no one allowed to leave via trade/free agency), I doubt there really was much competition for spots. A position-by-position review (with BA's selections in bold): C: 34 year-old Estrada vs. Salome. Considering Salome hasn't gotten out of A-ball yet and couldn't crack BA's top 10 list, I'd put my money on Estrada. 1B: Fielder vs. nobody. Hard to believe that we've gone from having Prince, Corey and Brad waiting in the wings behind Sexson to absolutely no first base prospects in the organization. 2B: Weeks vs. Iribarren. Not exactly a fair fight. 3B: Braun vs. um... Vinny? Actually, Gamel manning the hot corner with Ryan moving to the outfield isn't that far-fetched. SS: Hardy vs. Escobar/Perez/Brewer. This will be Hardy's big contract year heading into free agency. Hopefully he'll be established by then and not getting his umpteenth chance to hold down the position. I hate to say it, but the smart money might be on Hall here. OF: You gotta figure Hall and Hart are locks here, with Cain, Gillespie and Fermaint fighting over the last spot. SP1: Sheets. SP2-5: I'm assuming BA must've put this together before Suppan signed. I certainly hope he's not getting $12.5M to pitch long relief in 2010. The current candidates: Capuano, Suppan, Bush, Yo, Inman, CV, CV#2. I'd be thrilled if either Gallardo or Inman has established themselves as a quality starter by 2010. If they both have we'd better have some Miller Park playoff memories to go with it. If forced to choose, I guess I would go with Suppan / Bush / Capuano / Yo behind Sheets with no idea regards to order. CL: Coredo (at age 35), Turnbow, Capellan, Rogers, Jeffress. Let's face it, this is the Brewers we're talking about. The likely closer in 2010 won't be any of these guys. Why not go with the guy who throws three digits and hasn't hurt his arm (yet)? Wouldn't be all that surprised if the guy having the best 2010 from that list is Turnbow (with another team, naturally).

From The Kansan: Change in immigration law will benefit foreign minor league ball players ---------------------- Edit: Changed link destination from "Kansan" to "Slam! Sports"; same story, no registration. --1992casey

Slobber, I wasn't actually referring to your stats (sorry, I didn't make that clear). It was more a blanket statement regarding people judging players on long careers, when what really matters is recent history. No offense taken. Someone asked for career stats, I provided. You pointed out the problem with using career stats. I thought I'd throw the number from the last three years out there. Personally, I'm not sure if I want Doug throwing gobs of money at Suppan (except for the fact that we wouldn't have to face him anymore).

In fairness, looking at career stats is not always a real effective way to judge the caliber of a pitcher. Here's the last three years: Suppan G GS W L IP H R ER HR BB K ERA 2004-2006 95 95 44 26 572.3 605 291 251 70 197 327 3.95 vs Brewers 12 12 6 1 77.3 63 23 21 8 26 43 2.44 all others 83 83 38 25 495.0 540 268 230 62 171 284 4.18