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RU Rah Rah

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Everything posted by RU Rah Rah

  1. RU Rah Rah
    OK, after taking a little time to process today's debacle, here's my thinking: It's probably not fair to second guess every move that Ned makes, or fails to make. Sure, in retrospect, not pinch-hitting for Billy or Jenks in the eighth today seems like a bad move, but I can understand (to a point) the logic of leaving in highly-paid veterans in clutch situations. The decision to leave Turnbow in during the eighth after his two walks was less explicable, but, again, he's getting paid a lot of money to deliver in that spot. So when you look at Ned's moves individually, you probably can find a way to defend them. But it's when you step back and look at the totality of his moves that you realize how inept he is. The guy just seems to have a knack for not making the right move in a decisive situation. (I'm sort of surprised that someone hasn't created a thread for a master list of his questionable decisions.) But this one isn't completely on Ned. Bill Hall has to score that runner from third with one out in the eighth inning. Period. My feeling is that a reasonable outcome to expect would have been a 5-5 tie after nine (Hall drives the runner in, the Pirates turn around and score one run after a quick hook on Turnbow), with the final outcome determined in extras.
  2. RU Rah Rah
    He took his demotion like a man and came back pretty strong (witness Sunday's game in Cincy). His bat could really make a difference down the stretch. Now if only he could figure out the whole defense thing . . . .
  3. RU Rah Rah
    I don't know whether I should laugh, feel embarrassed for him, or question whether he's just making it up to save Leyva and/or Gross from criticism. But I've got a feeling that we might be hearing from Jay Leno on this at some point....
  4. RU Rah Rah
    I think it will be Packers on TV, with the sound turned down, and Brewers on the radio.
  5. RU Rah Rah
    Yeah, I agree that this isn't a career-ender. (What is in MLB these days, anyway? You basically have to pull a Jason Grimsley.) But it does cast a pall of suspicion over him, whether it's justified or not. So, just to clarify: before MLB formally banned it, it was legal to possess HGH without a doctor's authorization/prescription?
  6. RU Rah Rah
    I don't necessarily disagree with you. But I think that it would be extraordinarily difficult -- in a political sense -- to fire a manager who had led his franchise to its first playoff berth in a quarter-century, even if the team hadn't quite met W/L expectations. Do I agree with that? Not really. I would be perfectly happy to see Ned get fired even if the team won the Central, because I think it's in the best interests of the franchise to bring in someone more capable next year. But I think that scenario is far-fetched (unfortunately).
  7. RU Rah Rah
    This is a good point. I want Ned to get canned, but I want the Brewers to win more, and those two things are kind of mutually exclusive. So I'm willing to resign myself to Ned if the team can get, say, 85 wins (or whatever suffices) to win the Central. You can't really argue with the team going to the postseason for the first time in 25 years (even though the margin might have been larger, etc.). For me, the real dilemma is going to be if the team is barely over .500 but manages not to win the Central. Then I think you can make the argument that Ned should be fired because his incompetence might have cost the the Brewers a handful of games -- enough to have actually put the team in the playoffs. But the counter-argument would be that he can't get fired after basically meeting expectations and guiding the team to its first winning record in over a decade. (I don't buy this, but I think it might carry enough weight with the person who really matters -- the team's owner.) Sub-.500 is a no-brainer: he gets fired.
  8. RU Rah Rah
    I'm not one to nit-pick every little thing Ned has ever done, but I agree with you here. It's a manager's job to think ahead a little bit, and I don't think Ned did, in this instance. I just don't think he realized that they would walk Jenkins in order to face Estrada in a DP situation. It wound up working out ok with the sac fly, but it had "rally-killer" written all over it.
  9. RU Rah Rah
    Good LOOGY action.
  10. RU Rah Rah
    And has anyone ever benefited from complaining about the fans? It always seems to work out badly.
  11. RU Rah Rah
    I noticed the "Why are the fans so mean?" undertone in the long JS article on Mark A. today, and, obviously, Ned has really whined about it, ad nauseam, during the team's skid over the past two months. It bugs me because I just don't think the fans have been overly unfair. The team has basically stunk for the past two months, and it has come close to frittering away its first playoff berth in a quarter-century. Given those circumstances, I think the grumbling has been pretty moderate, especially when you compare it to the carping that regularly happens in other cities. (I mean, what do you think would happen if this was Philadelphia? Ned would have been tarred and feathered -- or worse -- by now.)
  12. RU Rah Rah
    What kills me about not using CoCo today is that Ned did use him on August 16 against St. Louis -- a game that the Brewers lost 8-0. (For some reason known only to Ned, he brought CoCo in to get the final two outs in that debacle.) I was at that game, I remember thinking, "OK, this is just burning an inning that he won't be able to use sometime later in the season." Are the folks at Elias checking to the all-time single-season record for blown leads of 3 or more runs?
  13. RU Rah Rah
    If you look at his page at Baseball-reference.com, among those listed as "similar batters through age 23" are Craig Biggio and Barry Larkin. Of course, there are some duds in there, too (Ted Lepcio?).
  14. RU Rah Rah
    To quote Nick Lowe's "All Men Are Liars": Do you remember Rick Astley? He had a big fat hit that was ghastly.
  15. RU Rah Rah
    Per AP and Yahoo! http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070831/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bbo_orioles_cubs_trade Not exactly a spring chicken anymore, but he's been decent lately.
  16. RU Rah Rah
    Lately I've been frustrated with Billy Hall. For August, he has an OPS of .600 (.185/.230/.370). But, actually, Estrada hasn't exactly been lighting it up, either. His OPS for the month is even worse -- .598.
  17. RU Rah Rah
    I agree about plate discipline. You can even notice it when you're listening to games on the radio. The first pitch of a half-inning often is missed because the broadcast is late coming out of a commercial, and it seems that all too often Jim or Ueck will start by saying, "While we were in commercial, so-and-so swung at the first pitch and grounded to short, so there's already one out." The most obvious culprits are Mench and Estrada, but I don't think Billy is going to win any awards for plate discipline, either.
  18. RU Rah Rah
    I think it's definitely more a matter of tinkering than rebuilding. The biggest decision might involve Jenkins. I've said elsewhere that I'd rather give Gross a shot (at $500,000 or whatever) than pay Jenkins $7-9 million. You take that savings and cram it into the bullpen somehow.
  19. RU Rah Rah
    I also resist the must-win tag, which we seem to have used about a dozen times already this season, but I tend to agree about the Weds. game v. the Cubs. If they lose, fall further behind the Cubs and the Cards, and dip further below .500, I have a hard time imagining them rebounding. So the team needs Ben Sheets to pull a Willis Reed and pitch the game of his freaking life, basically.
  20. RU Rah Rah
    I grew up a diehard Orioles fan, back in the 70's and early 80's, but I've basically been heartsick over the franchise during the Peter Angelos era. So I'm also shopping for a new second-favorite team -- probably in the AL, so as to avoid competition.
  21. RU Rah Rah
    That was my concern about the seventh inning. I can see the argument being made for leaving Bush in the game, given his pitch count and relative effectiveness, but it makes less sense when you think about: 1.) him having to bat and 2.) the team having traded away three prospects for Linebrink, who apparently was acquired for precisely this situation. So you don't PH for Bush -- fair enough. But then you do PH for Gross and thereby put the team in a position where Corey has to be out there in RF? I know that this is serious Monday-morning quarterbacking, but Ned makes it pretty easy.
  22. RU Rah Rah
    The team is 10 games under .500 since Sheets last pitched. Once again, I think the season would be turning out differently if he were healthy.
  23. RU Rah Rah
    I haven't followed every inning of the past two games, so I might be missing something here, but why did Billy pinch hit for Gross? (And hasn't that happened two games in a row -- the PH'ing for Gross, I mean?) I'm just trying to think about how that game-winning hit might have turned out if we had an able-armed RF out there.
  24. RU Rah Rah
    It's probably not even in the Top 20 in baseball alone. Here's a good article on collapses: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=4498 Still, it's been a debacle. No question about that.
  25. RU Rah Rah
    I was thinking that, too. 50-something posts is a low for recent memory. (We're usually in the 200+ range.) Of course, I didn't follow the game all that closely after the first inning myself. Why did Corey pinch-hit for Gross?
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