HarveysWBs

He cannot be stopped!

What a legend!

Dang it

But Houser has been…really good? Not the guy I’d skip right now, that’s for sure.

Forget Soto, we don’t shop in that store. If we’re playing the “what if the crazy Padres woke up and decided to sell (even though they’re not even close to out of it)” game, then put me down for wanting all of Ha-Seong Kim on this roster. CC loves him some utility infielders, so we might as well give him one of the best around for him to play with. Would the Padres sell him? No, probably not—but I don’t think they want to sell period. But if we’re saying they do, Kim’s my target.

Hahaha, that’s sick, kid. Well, well, well. Doing it against Cinci is nice, doing it in Philly is something else. Now July’s final boss awaits. What a huge week and a half this is going to be. I’m psyched.

Buy the ticket and hold on

That was indeed the rub

I’m kinda shocked Sheets only had 15 double-digit strikeout games. Seems like he did it every time I went to see him live.

Atta boy, Burnes. Our boy is back to earning a fat stack from somebody awfully soon. Sadly, it probably won’t be us…

Although Strider has had some uncharacteristically poor outings of late, I agree, I still want no part of him.

Yeah, I mentioned this last year in the minor league forum, but I’m even more optimistic about him when he struggles and then gets over it. To me, that is far more helpful to his future prospects than one unending minor league triumph for 2.5 years. The majors won’t be like that for him, and everyone needs to learn how to bust slumps and not get psychologically destroyed first.

Man, Braun was good. Sometimes I need to be reminded just how good.

Well, this feels like a good night to go mow.

Ordinarily I would grumble at mid-July scoreboard watching like an old man yelling at a cloud, but seeing as it has conceivable ramifications to our approach at the trade deadline in a couple weeks, I’ll allow it.

Goldy...

We’ve got ourselves a good, old-fashioned ump show tonight!

Steelers didn’t want JSN, either. This is kinda wild, but he’s probably overhyped in a weak receiver class. I don’t hate what we did, but I wish we would have had this pick in a different year, or that we had found a way to trade down. Oh well, if Van Ness is a Preston Smith, then it’s all good.

That is just about the worst inning of pitching I think I’ve ever seen.

So after Jaxon Smith-Njigba ran in the low 4.5 range at his pro day, I am fully prepared for him to get snagged a couple spots ahead of us in the draft and then our first two picks will be an interior d lineman and a offensive tackle project, neither of whom will start right away. In a couple years, they’ll be solid contributors in the “good but not great” category, but there will be a handful of vague reports that Gute loved JSN and Darnell Washington but just missed on both, so we’ll be doomed to all argue about these draft results for at least the next decade. This is the Packers, so there is no other way.

I would also much rather load the draft picks up for 2024, and let’s just do a pick-swap this year. In the (unlikely, IMO) event that Love proves horrifically inept or (slightly more likely) suffers a severe injury, I’d want the draft capital to possibly go get a QB. It would be nice to at least have the option.

Well, this was my first time watching this McAfee show, and I think if it isn’t my last, I will have made some poor choices (the conversation is inane, and that’s why I spend more time here for sports talk than YouTube or ESPN). It feels like most of the bandaid is off now, and that in and of itself is a kind of relief. I have loved the winning and some of the most unbelievable throws I have ever seen and am likely to ever see from anyone in a Packer uniform. I’m sorry to see it end but cognizant of the realities of football as a business and am hoping Rodgers and the Packers can get something valuable out of this. I find a lot of how this conversation has gone to be fascinating, but often in a prurient way (as anything even tangentially related to celebrity is), so I’m trying to leave aside the “he said, he said” stuff—perhaps not entirely successfully. Two things still elicit a comment from me: one, that Rodgers keeps insisting that there aren’t bad guys here, and two, that since he’s the only one talking, we should take his version as the whole truth by default (no one here is really suggesting this, but Rodgers broadcasting his version in this way knowing the Packers won’t respond in kind is certainly suggestive of this attitude on his part). Firstly, I agree that there aren’t any “bad guys” in this, but I’m also of a mind that there may not be any good ones, either—but more to the point, that seeing the situation in terms of such a stark moral dichotomy is probably unhelpful. My fear is that, to put it more accurately, there may not be any competent guys here. For all Rodgers’ brilliance, his increasing demands in terms of compensation and personnel were not, in the last year at least, in any way outweighed by his on-field performance, and that doesn’t even take into consideration the off-field things that go along with the whole Aaron Rodgers experience (which I can fairly easily overlook as a fan, but as an organization, I can understand why they would be tiresome). While it is a mark of greatness that the greatest don’t often know when it is time to go, it has become abundantly clear to most inside and outside the organization that Rodgers at 40, at the price tag of $60 million, and a roster loaded with aging friends that all range from decent to non-contributing players is not exactly a viable formula for even short-term success. Good luck to the Jets on that front. But there are two sides to this thing, and the brass doesn’t look completely competent in all this, either. Let me say that I’m not of the opinion that a house-clearing is necessary right now, but the next couple years are going to be a massive measuring stick for every level of the team. I’m not angry about this, since nearly every decision made has been fairly defensible at the time (apart from Mark Murphy’s seeming inability to avoid going into public settings to take sideways digs at his franchise quarterback). Case in point: whatever Love turns into now, it was quite logical to take a quarterback that year. As the NFL routinely shows, quarterbacks are like fire starters in the wilderness: if you have one, you have none, and if you have two, you have one. But nevertheless, Gute chose Love as his quarterback, just like MLF chose Barry to be his D coordinator (and without Rodgers in the fold, being a hold on Barry is a much weirder call), and all of it is Murphy’s team. I’m all for trusting the process, but the point of the process is to get the right results. That’s harder without a Hall of Famer under center, so we’re about to see what everybody is made of. Secondly, and much more succinctly, I’m not etching anything from that interview in stone. I’m not calling anyone a liar, but we all have solid evidence, presented to our very eyes and ears, that Rodgers enjoys parsing his own words very carefully. It is entirely likely to me that every thing he said on that show was factually accurate in the bleedingly precise sense that he meant it, and that he can always make a sophistical case to that effect if facts ever came out to the contrary. “I’m immunized” is the only proof I need of this. In the end, though, I’m only really interested in two results here. First, that the truth gets told and remembered in all things, not least of which Rodgers being recognized as, at minimum, a Mt. Rushmore player in Packers history. And secondly, that Rodgers and the Packers both get out of this situation better than they entered it. Thankfully, I see no reason why we can’t get both those results, so here’s hoping.

Hopefully by throwing a game-sealing pick to Jaire Alexander in a Minnesota-hosted NFC championship game, yes.

Re: leverage, the only thing that I could see changing this situation is if the Jets pivot. The only QB available that is better than Rodgers is Lamar Jackson. He’d cost more draft capital, though, and it seems that breaking the bank to get him would make one a pariah. Maybe Woody Johnson is old enough to risk that. Or maybe they opt for Stafford. He’s not in Rodgers tier, but he can win a title under the right circumstances. That wouldn’t be enough for New York media and fans, perhaps, but might be livable as an on-field decision. Until one of the above two scenarios gets in motion, I don’t mind another turn or two of the screws.

The funniest part re:Waller is that the Packers did in fact beat that deal with their offer last year. But the Raiders rejected the offer, Waller sat out the last third of the season with an injury (and probably wouldn’t have gotten the Packers to the promised land even if he was healthy, if you ask me—and I like Waller), and now the Raiders only get a third rounder. Things worked out ok from where I sit. That being said, I wouldn’t hate Waller for a third rounder. But at his age and price point, might as well use a day two pick on Washington from Georgia. I’m cool with building for tomorrow. For the first time in a while, the future seems like an adventure, and not just another February 2nd in Punxsutawney.