splitterpfj

A weak fielder is the last thing this team needs to add right now. Power we've got, give me a plus defender who can get on base please.

Some more great biographies/autobiographies... "I Had a Hammer" - Henry Aaron "Luckiest Man" (Lou Gehrig) - Jonathan Eig "Cobb" (Ty Cobb) - Al Stump (This is the one the movie was based on) "Ted Williams - The Biography of an American Hero" - Leigh Montville "Joe DiMaggio - The Hero's Life" - Richard Ben Cramer One other good biography, that is related, but is not a baseball book - "Rothstein" (The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius who Fixed the 1919 World Series") - David Pietrusza If I recommended one baseball book, it would have to be "Ball Four"...whichever version you can get. Thank you, Jim Bouton

Ueck's book is "Catcher in the Wry." The article currently on the homepage gives an overview of "The Pitch that Killed", I like that one quite a bit.

I thought this one was pretty obvious, when you get that animated, in a dispute with an umpire, you're going to sit. I do think the umpire mishandled the situation, but Prince was way over the top.

Brian, were you really "slinky?"

MSF is right, basically, if Braun gets up to bat 4.3 times per game the rest of the way, he's in. As FTJ is alluding, that's not the same as At Bats. This is about Plate Appearances, BBs count, so do HBPs, sac flies, etc.

As of right now, Braun would need 360 plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, he has 305. It's going to come right down to the wire, and someone can tell Hanley Ramirez to knock it off now too.

Thank you, Steve Martin.

I think I'd pump up as high as I could about the four BBs. Let the third base coach say something to him later.

Jaybird, that's a comparison of Simmons vs catchers currently in the Hall of Fame....that's why you don't see Piazza on there.

Let's see if this helps anyone decide. I compared Simmons to a control group of post WW 2 Hall of Fame catchers on a per season basis to see how he stacks up. I used 162 games played as one season. The control group consists of Bench, Berra, Campanella, Carter and Fisk. The average seasons played for the control group was affected by Campanella's short MLB career. S=seasons played S Runs Hits 2B 3B HR RBI SB AVE OPS 15.1 71 163 32 3 16 92 1 .285 .785 Simmons S Runs Hits 2B 3B HR RBI SB AVE OPS 12.7 81 154 26 2 26 97 4 .271 .815 Group As you can see, Ted beat the group in hits, doubles, triples and average per season, but fell short in homers, rbi, steals and OPS. In my opinion, a catcher that played the equivalent of 15 full seasons, averaging 92 rbi per season, with a career average that far above the standard for his position deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. I realize the others had more power, and I realize I haven't accounted for defense at a crucial position, but to me the hits and rbi over that period of time say enough. Fingers, Molitor, Sutton, Yount, Brock, Gibson, Musial and Schoendienst are all on the committee, as are Bench, Carter and Berra..........I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Ted get in.

Note to Brewers....opportunity could not possibly knock louder than this....feel free to beat somebody.

I think the winner will be above .500, but there's no reason to expect any of these teams to reach 90 wins right now. 85 will probably do it.

I had this team pegged for 85 wins, ask me when it's over. Whatever happens, this has sure been a strange way to get wherever they're going.

Excellent point.

Guys- The dogs thread was locked because it had completely lost its topic and was headed into uncomfortable topics. If you read back through those posts, you won't find a reason for that thread to exist on a baseball site, it was long gone from baseball discussion. The whole "Jewboys" issue needs to be put to rest. This site was never intended to be a political or a religious forum. This is a baseball site, that's all it is, that's all anyone should ever expect it to be. We were trying to avoid conflict when we initially asked for the removal of that avatar, we suspected that some would take offense, we acted to prevent that from happening. It turns out, we were right, some of our members were indeed offended by the term used in that avatar. Let's be clear here, and let's stop being ridiculous...no one was offended by the term Jew, people did not like the term "Jewboys", which is a well-known racial slur. There is no debate on that issue, the term has existed for generations. There are no mods here who are looking for reasons to lock threads. The rules of this site are very simple and basic - be courteous, be respectful, stay away from politics and religion, and have something to say. There's not a lot more to it than that. If you don't like something a mod does, that's fine, we're all people here, disagreement is bound to happen at times. What's wrong with sending a PM to the mod asking why a decision was made? If you look at the name of the site, and think about what the staff here is saying and doing, you will realize we're all on the same team here. It's not "Us Against Them", we're all Brewer fans, who come here to talk baseball. Relax folks, it's just a game.

Patirck, can you see an obvious positional need for AZ? I'd love to get Gonzalez too, and I know every GM alive always wants pitching, but do they have an open position besides the mound?

This inning has a chance to be completely unpleasant.

I'll reserve judgement on this until I see how the Cubs do. If they lose a bunch of low scoring games, like the one they had last night, the loss of Soriano will obviously be a factor.

I'm bugging me. The Brewers have been ripping my heart out far too often of late, but I'm still going to watch again tonight. What's wrong with me?

Maybe they'll end up with the Marlins, so you can catch the Crew for one series a year. Good luck out there!

With yesterday's mess chewing up the bullpen, I'll bet they're hoping for something like Vargas, 6 IP, Spurling 7th, Shouse 8th, Linebrink 9th. There's not a lot of room for error, if Vargas is gone early, I don't even know who they'd bring in.

My son did this in a game last summer, even with the healing powers of a 15-year-old, he couldn't really break loose and run for two weeks, and wasn't totally healed for a month.

I think booing is part of the game, but I also think people need to know when enough is enough. Wes has been gone from here long enough, let it go, he's just the next guy in someone else's lineup now. Brady Clark didn't deserve to be booed here, and while I think the Carlos Lee situation is somewhat understandable, I think it goes too far, and I hope it doesn't continue beyond this season.

I'll bet that's fifteen days.