Jim French Stepstool

You said that the move to PH for him was a brutal confidence killer. I disagree. Now you're saying you disagree with the decision, which is fine. Frankly, I wouldn't have hit for him either. But your being upset with the decision has zero to do with it somehow destroying his confidence. Again, if that sort of thing sends him into some sort of mental tailspin, it would've done that a long time ago.

This was kind of like a slowpitch softball game, where it makes little difference who's pitching. Just who's going to have more timely line drives off the tee. Someone mentioned Hudson. If he's never thrown here before I don't think you want him out there in a tie game, taking a batter or three to figure out if your stuff reacts the same way it reacts everywhere else. At the end of the day their most effective pitcher was Zastryzny, only because he was just out there for three hitters. You simply can't walk people in Coors, yet Wilson walks a pair one inning & IIRC that was his only scoreless frame. Just a weird place. The back-to-back int'l walks in the 10th was interesting because unless you get a DP it guaranteed you'd have to face Blackmon. Early returns on Haase & Mitchell are thumbs up, although Mitchell walked on what could've easily been strike three, then strikes out on a pitch that wasn't close. He's talented but I still want to see how all-over-the-map he's going to be. I suspect Keuchel has worked in Coors before. But what is 'secondary stuff' for others is his primary bread-and-butter. Even if he happened to pitch well his last time out, I just don't know how that'll play in this ballpark. We shall see.

If he'd be bothered by stuff like that his confidence would've been killed a long time ago. He ain't that type. At the end of the day, they pushed some correct offensive buttons today.

Thought they added an extra OFer so they could play four in the cow pasture at Coors. Ortiz can do well in the leadoff spot I'm sure, but part of me hopes Turang gets to the point where he leads off, period, vs both hands. Let's hope Gomber isn't working on alternating months of effectiveness. He was great in May & pretty lousy in June.

What adds to the conundrum is what was mentioned above--that you only have two in the mix that hit RH, and one of those is a switch-hitter who is better from the left side. If (fairly big if) Mitchell enjoys health & can keep the K totals manageable, then they probably settle into a situation where you see Perkins vs LH starters & more infrequently vs RHs. They have no fulltime DH so that will absorb some of the PT. They probably love the idea of being able to DH Yelich a little more frequently. As trade talks heat up, I suspect an OFs name will come up, and I expect them to listen even though as Brewcrew82 mentioned, there would be risk involved. But if it were to involve a pitcher they like with a year or two of control they'd have to at least listen. Owen Miller was a good soldier. Too bad about the DFA.

Since they're winning, I think you just leave him there & wait for Bad Willy--which we are all too familiar with--to leave town, which inevitably happens. Then hope he stays away a long time. I'll tell you one thing. He must be one interesting cat. Watching him after the game doing his celebratory Gatorade thing--just the genuine smile, the pure fun the guy's having. For most people that's probably forced when you're 0-for-twenty something. You can tell that with him it isn't. I get why he's so loved in the clubhouse. I just wish the dry spells weren't so dang-blasted ugly.

He has the knack for turning things around in a snap. His first 6-7 ABs of this series I thought were horrible. Now all of a sudden today he's seeing the ball & not helping the pitcher out. And it's not like Adames hitting behind him is doing him any favors these days.

Remington Steele needed to run out there & yell at him.

Lotsa fat deliveries from Hendricks in the 4th. He obviously needed to WAKE UP!!!!!!!😁

It is. But if we can go chunks of the season with three 1B...............

He played the last couple games, but DHed. I'm no expert on the rules regarding rehab assignments but I smell some sort of manipulation coming.

W/two strikes it would've been more acceptable. I can get on board with that.

I wasn't thrilled with the 1st & 3rd play w/Contreras at the plate. I wouldn't have done it, but you're facing a team that hasn't exactly been airtight & if anyone asks about it you'll hear the "it's what we do" line. So IMO not a "Murphy is a moron" type thing. I was much more upset about the inning where we tied it at 2-2. They're kicking it around, you feel like it might be implosion time. Ball gets by the catcher to put runners on 2nd & 3rd with one out--and Yelich can't touch the ball. I might've considered Hudson staying in for the 8th if for no other reason than Mr Everything-Goes-My-Way-vs-the-Brewers (Happ) was due up 2nd & I like turning him around. But again, we made the exact same move Wednesday & it worked out fine. Maybe moving forward we're looking to go away from him throwing 2 innings, then being down for 2-3 days. I guess we'll see. It boiled down to them ambushing Myers early & it paid off.

Aahhh. Thanks.

Did he mention at all what the eight weeks will turn into? Keeping my fingers crossed about how Yelich looks at the plate today vs a pretty good LH. I thought he had three really bad ABs yesterday. If the middle of the order has more struggles I suspect there will be some call for Chourio to move up in the order. I hope Adames & Hoskins get things going & they leave Chourio where he is. Sometimes there's a mental dynamic at work where if a youngster moves up he feels he needs to do more. His plate discipline has gotten much better & I hope they leave well enough alone---for now.

Unless he returns immediately after the 15 days he'll have three weeks off due to the ASG, which sounds pretty good to me as long as they have to do this. I guess the move to Zastryzny means they don't think DL Hall is quite there yet.

It's been a source for a long time at some programs, St Mary's specifically, but not nearly as much at UW. That could be bolstered by recent additions to the staff. Kirk Penney & Lance Randall both have quite a bit of international experience. The NIL eligibility is a little trickier depending on the type of visa a kid is visiting under.

Recruiting updates: After recent evaluations during summer play UW has offered, besides the aforementioned Ahneman, a couple of in-state kids. Donovan Davis (class of 27) is an extremely talented 6-7 wing from Freedom High School. UW is his first offer but there will certainly be more. Vaughn Karvala from Oregon, WI is a 6-5 wing who is a year ahead of Davis & averaged 24 PPG as a sophomore. He's received a couple other offers & will add more as he's receiving a lot of interest in recent months. It's anyones' guess as to whether these kids will remain in their current high schools. Ahneman is from Fargo ND but his family has moved to the twin cities area & he will be playing at Cretin-Durham Hall, the alma mater of Paul Molitor among others. UW is still recruiting Davion Hannah of Milwaukee, but he's spending the upcoming year at Link Academy in Branson MO. Another offer, LaTrevion Fenderson of Racine is also reportedly going to a prep school but hasn't announced which one. My favorite is Kai Rogers. The former Tosa West center is attending--if you can call it that--something called OT Elite, which isn't really a school at all but rather a basketball league that offers an academic program (I'm not trying to be cute; that's how they describe themselves). Apparently they offer players age 16-20 $100,000 plus signing bonus, but you can forego that & take it in the form of a scholarship & retain college eligibility. I'm sure the academic program is very rigorous.

This. I would actually say definitely, rather than probably. And Fear The Chorizo is right regarding a possible deal. I mentioned awhile back that I think the one chance they'd add a substantial arm to the rotation is if one of a group of 3-4 people would be added as a headliner to the deal. Frelick is one of those. Mitchell would actually be another but it's hard to imagine somebody attaching enough value to him to make that work due to the health issues. It's those same issues that probably make them want to keep Frelick. Save for a trade, when Mitchell comes up I think Black goes down.

For whatever reason, when we have a watch or warning the entire screen goes blank and we get the text of the type, location, etc of the warning along with audio of the warning. After a minute or two the programming returns. This happens even when the warning is for a county/counties in north-central Illinois (we live in Oconomowoc). Definitely miss the crawl across the bottom of the screen.

I think you're most likely correct. I DO think they're open to the idea of trading Black, but if we're talking about one of the top 2-3 starters out there he isn't a headliner.

Whoa. I enjoy making fun of some of the stuff that comes out of their mouths. But I wouldn't come close to calling the move a crap sandwich. This organization has done a terrific job of reclamation and has often times gotten some great mileage out of it. It's what they do, and what they HAVE to do. If this one doesn't work, they'll move away from it. I just don't need to hear 73 times that he was a former Cy Young winner. Bill, Sophia, Jeff et al------I understand the logic behind the move. You don't need to bend over backwards to sell it to me.

After watching the telecast today, including some of the pregame, I decided that someone definitely needed to devise a drinking game where everyone has to do a shot every time Sophia says "former Cy Young Award winner". If Keuchel isn't here long enough for that to take hold, just transfer the rules to every time Bill Schroeder says "Not even close". If the game involves downing one every time anyone on the broadcast team mentions All Star voting, just give up & join AA pre-emptively.

Other than the immense swing-and-miss problem he's had at the MLB level, that's the elephant in the room For Mitchell. Breaks something taking batting practice. Tweaks a hammy swinging-and-missing. At this point, you just can't feel you have a surplus of OFs as long as he's in your plans. Paul Molitor had trouble staying healthy, then enjoyed relative good health later in his career. Hopefully the same thing happens with Garrett.

I suspect that's a large part of the reason why he WAS bunting. Probably lets him go if there was a RHP throwing (although he quite likely gets walked in that case).