And That

Fiers pitched quite a bit in college last year, too.

Rangers sign Prior. No such luck for the Brewers. I'm sure Erik Bedard will be available, though.

Another day, another "huh?" Cain facing "tough lefty" I may have missed something, but why would Macha bench Cain against a left-handed pitcher? Would he want Dickerson or Gomez to face Hamels? Am I imagining that Cain is a right-handed batter? Your logic gets the best of me again, Witrado.

Considering that he'll spend most of next year in the minors, he could be up to 190 IP his second full year in the big leagues, as a 24 year old. I don't see that as too much of a hindrance in his development.

It could be that they don't want to start his service clock when he has to be pretty close to the number of innings they'll allow him to throw this year. That said, it would be nice to see him gas it up with Jeffress.

In the same sports section, I'm always very excited to read Bob McGinn's articles, and it's not because of his lack of objectivity. You might have a point about the title of the blog post not being Haudricourt's doing, though as it's just a blog post, my guess is TH is responsible for that. I doubt those blogs go through much of an editorial process.

McCalvy's title "Gamel finds first base challenging" is much less slanted than TH's "Gamel not excited about 1B" - at least somebody writes it right.

Guess who has two thumbs and just bought a six-pack of Molson Ice? This guy. It was on sale. But I bought it because I remembered this thread.

Yes, fees are definitely something you need to look out for. Vanguard (whose main selling point is low expenses) released a study a little while ago that largely proved that low expenses, not past performance, were the main indicator of future success. Since index funds generally have the lowest expenses of any mutual fund category, theoretically they should have the best returns over time. Theoretically. I'm not a professional investor by any stretch, but in our family's portfolio, I make it a point to keep fees well below average, even though we only use indexing as part of our strategy. We never have or will ever buy a fund with a load. Loads are killer, especially if you believe in dollar-cost averaging your investments. And while we own a few transaction fee funds, the vast majority of our holdings are NTF (no transaction fee) funds. I really like index funds as opposed to index ETFs because you can usually get a perfectly good indexer as an NTF fund, especially through 401(k) plans, and again, not paying money every time you put a little bit more money into the fund can make a huge difference over time. The reason I recommend studying up so much on investing before you actually take the plunge is that you should be able to do most of your investing yourself. It takes a little time to learn, but you can save a lot of money in the long run by not paying someone to make your decisions for you. This isn't for everyone, of course, but I think a lot of people would do just as well with their own Ameritrade/E-trade/whichever personal brokerage account than they would do paying someone to take care of things for them.

FWIW, Komatsu has a .076 ISO at home and a .169 ISO on the road. I'd still like to see his overall power pick up next season.

Books are all over the place. Motley Fool's book will tell you one thing, Charles Schwab's book will tell you another, Jim Cramer's still another, ad nauseum. Know that when you read almost any investment advice book (or website), the author is trying to sell you on their point of view and plan of action. If you read only one book and follow that guidance, you're only going to approach the market from a limited point of view. I would recommend reading many books - as in, at least 2 or 3 - on the subject before putting a serious amount of money in to the market. I personally think the book (of those that I've read) that hews most closely to sanity and common sense for someone who doesn't want to make investing their second job is Charles Schwab's "New Guide to Financial Independence." It's slightly dated, but still very relevant. I generally get less of a feeling that he's trying to sell me something than a lot of other books. But read those other books, too. I would also recommend checking out Morningstar.com. Off endaround's statement, if you're going the simple index fund route, and there's nothing wrong with that, I would make sure to have a modicum of diversification by buying a US stock index fund (such as SWTSX), a foreign stock index fund (such as FSIIX) and a bond index fund (such as VBMFX). The allocation to each is obviously how much trust you have/risk you can stomach in each of those investment vehicles. Or you can leave the allocation to the pros and go with a moderate allocation fund, though you may still likely not get much foreign equity in there. The Vangaurd Wellington fund (VWELX) would be my choice for moderate allocation, but there are a lot of options. DODBX and FPACX are good ones, too. Edit: I should also say... I think very few financial TV shows are useful for investing insight. They're almost all based on the 24 hour news cycle and watching them may well only lead to making rash decisions based on some seemingly new pertinent information.

If Gamel starts with the regulars (including Cain) on a day Gallardo pitches, the Brewers could have an all home-grown lineup. That's pretty cool.

They haven't been active recently, though off the top of my head, I remember Michael Franke, Simon Guhring, Paul Bell and Gbenga Olayemi. There have been a few Australians in there too. I guess if you want an answer why they stopped trying to sign guys from those regions is because 99.9% of Brewers fans have never heard of any of those guys. Either they couldn't spend the necessary money on scouting/signing or the talent just wasn't there.

My guess is he gets that somewhere around Sept 18th.Of which year?

Gamel needs one more AB to graduate from the Power 50. I'm just looking forward to that.

The Brewers have signed a number of guys out of Europe/Africa, but none of them have panned out. The Brewers' rationale (not that I necessarily buy it) for not scouting Japan is that, even if they tried, they couldn't compete on either the financial level or the cultural level to bring Japanese players to Milwaukee. Japanese players tend to seem to like to play on the West Coast.

I'm shocked and appalled that few people seem to be interested in the AZL Micro Brewers' run at the League Championship. They're up 7-5 heading into the bottom of the 5th as the Crayola Reds are running out of chances to come back against the Brewers' vaunted offense. Jason Rogers has knocked in 4 on the strength of a double and a home run in 3 trips to the plate. Fdfg favorite son Travis Stortz has settled things down after Dan Britt was knocked around to start the game.

McCalvy tweets that the rumored moves are now official. Welcome to Milwaukee, Mr. Jeffress.

I'm sorry, I don't remember thinking that. I think it's safe to erase the "possibly" before the "meaningless."

Dillard dropped his arm slot way down to the point where he was a side-armer. I assume he's still doing that, though I don't recall reading a report either way on it.

I agree about Dillard. His K/9, to me, is acceptable enough due to his highish GB rate of 56%. I'd give him a shot over Butler.

Rico Brogna gets a +1 for word usage.

Weeks says no extension talk until the season is over.

Capuano to the rotation, Parra to the bullpen according to a McCalvy tweet. Cappy will start Saturday at home against Pittsburgh.

Rogers is at 110 IP on the year now, almost a 50% increase from last year.