And That

If you were alive then, sure.

It's about quarter after four in the afternoon and the sun in my office window is still relatively bright. I'm a big winter person, but sun in the afternoon is always nice after a few months of sunset in the 4-5 pm range.

Excel spreadsheet bam! http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/a7f1564393dc9e25b219deb9b3981bc52fad1b3.jpg The $4 mil unpaid figure may be a little high, but the current payroll definitely in the 75-78 mil range.

However, his injury negated much of the possibility for his stats to gravitate more towards the mean. And who knows, he might have been injured all year.

I'm a big texter (though never while driving). I find that it is easier to communicate little random thoughts or ideas via texting than by calling. Can have a number of conversations at once, and don't have to concentrate on listening so you can do other things, too.

Jim- If you're reading this... Thank you. The past 13 years would not have been the same without your voice, insight, and passion for the game. You'll be missed here. Good luck back home. -Toby

Actually, your original point was: Which is the sum of your initial post. If you want to be clear, it helps to explain things along with a random blurt, instead of just randomly blurting "THAT DUDE'S A BABY!" and whatnot. My final post on the subject is - baseball players have contracts to play baseball. It's great when they do go above and beyond their contract to help in their community, or sign autographs for money I suppose. However unless they have it in their contract with the club that they perform these non-baseball services, they aren't obligated to do anything other than play baseball. I think some sports fans have a very strong sense of entitlement in terms of getting autographs, trying to be buddy buddy with players, getting pictures taken, etc. What a player chooses to do with his time away from the field should be no one's business but his own. If a player doesn't like signing autographs, great. If a player decides that he isn't going to attend a function he isn't obligated to attend because of what ever reason, great. That's his right. It doesn't make him a baby, it just makes him a functioning adult. What bothers me is when people try to assign their own reasoning (which may or may not be true) as for what a player does, or does not, do and then attempt to pass it off as a legitimate gripe. So and so player missed an autograph session because of his contract, so and so player doesn't want to play here any more because people boo him, so and so player dislikes Canadians and will never play for Doug Melvin and Gord Ash again. Conjecture is alright as long as the person doing the conjecturing is making is very clear he doesn't actually know what is going on with any certainty. When you start getting in to "Player did X because of Y" without a qualification of no certain knowledge, you start muddying the discussion. This is a great place to talk baseball - I'd rather it not get in to guessing the details of player's personal lives to try to figure out if there is any relations to their actions with the club, however tangential.

Ok, let's follow the logic train: So what you are saying is that since he won't do more than what is required of him' date=' he is a baby. Therefore, he is a baby for doing only what is required of him. Therefore, he is a baby for doing what is required of him. QED. I'm preferential to GorillaGrams myself, but I won't hold my breath.

Even if what you say is true (and it is just a guess on your part), Prince Fielder is a baby because he does what is required of him?

We dont see the "Can Bill Hall Pitch" thread getting pumped up. The difference of course being that if this thread were titled "Can Ben Sheets Pitch" you would seem to be insinuating that the answer to that question might be a "no" or "like Suppan" - which is an almost indefensible position. The whole innings pitched argument thing is mind-boggling. By your definition, you could take any two pitchers, and if they pitched the same number of innings, they'd be doing the same job as the other one. I mean, Kenny Rogers pitched the same number of innings as Jake Peavy. Is the guy who gave up 110 earned runs doing the same job as they guy who gave up 55? Each one of us has a different look at players, like it or not this is how it works. Most looks are rooted, however shallowly, in feasible logic.

Well, up to and including this post, the only mention of said topic was yours. A couple folks have said that they wouldn't pay for autographs, which I don't believe means they think autographs are stupid, just that they won't pay someone to write their name on something. For free? Sure. This is not in the trading post because nothing is being traded.

Which just made me think... how about we go with a Gamel/Escobar platoon at third base once they get past Super 2 status in the middle of June? Against lefties, you get great defense and no hitting and against righties you get mediocre defense and good hitting. It'll be the league's first interdisiplinary platoon. Good times.

Because he's not attending On Deck? How about the other people who aren't attending?

While I agree that a Peavy for Escobar/Gamel/+ trade would probably make us a better team in 2009, I think it is quite the overstatement to say that this is move is so necessary that it will help us more than any other move could in the next 3-4 years. 3-4 years is a long time - it is impossible to say making one trade now will be the move to give us a better shot in 2012.

Information from Cot's: January 5-15, 2009 Salary arbitration filing. CBA, Article VI (F) (5). January 20, 2009 Exchange of salary arbitration figures between MLB Labor Relations Committee and MLB Players Association. February 1-21, 2009 Salary arbitration hearings, Phoenix. CBA, Article VI (F) (5).

I'm glad no one got hurt, though this is pretty ironic timing after it was announced just a day or two ago that for the first time since the invention of the commuter jet, major U.S. airlines have gone two full years without a fatality on board, covering more than a billion fliers. There's obviously nothing funny about this incident (I was just thinking how this story has set back even farther my timetable for ever flying again), but the thought of this being related to terrorism sounds a bit absurd. Perhaps Al-Qaeda is training pigeons? I guess that would be a figurative and literal flipping of the bird to America.

The Brewers' payroll now stands right around $75 mil if you assume the remaining four arby's players will receive around $13 mil altogether.

Link to JS Blog. Haudricourt doesn't have the salary number yet, but mentions it should be somewhere around the money Hardy got - I think it will be a little less. Edit: Indeed a little less, $4 mil exactly. Link to new blog.

The Mets are evidently in the mix now for Sheets. They have, of course, already signed a Type A with an Elias ranking higher than Sheeter in the form of Francisco Rodriguez so we'd only get their second round pick. If it came down to only the Mets and Rangers, I'd take the Rangers so we'd get a higher pick in the second round and not have to face him once or twice for the next year or two.

I don't think we'll get the top 5, or maybe even the top 10... while we have a very deep and wide farm system, we don't have the marquee guys on top. This is not a slight to Gamel, Escobar, Jeffress or Lawrie, but they all have a big enough wart (in order, defense, offense, pot, no pro AB) that you can't put them in the same class (IMO) as the previous highly ranked Brewer systems led by Fielder, Hardy, Weeks, etc. I do think the Brewers system is vastly underrated by many people and that we'll get a number of good pitchers and everyday players out of the group. Guys like Taylor Green, Jon Lucroy, and Efrain Nieves get a somewhat woeful lack of respect in general and the team has absurd depth at catcher, third, short, center field and the pen. And the young starting prospects are going to make a name for themselves this coming year. So while I don't think we're a top 5, we might be a top 10, and I think BA will have us somewhere between 8-14 or so.

Well, it means that he has a contract for 2009, and has plenty of time before spring training to think about an extension. As players seem to tend to want to think about contract extensions before spring training starts (for whatever reason that may be), and as the contract seems to be favorable in the Brewers' interest (as in, J.J. is willing to play for a fair amount), it seems to me that there would be many more scenarios in which an extension wouldn't happen. I realize it's like looking at tea leaves, but this is certainly a better sign than an acrimonious contract/arbitration dispute.

That's a little more than one million less than I thought he'd get - seems like a good value for the Brewers. That it got done this early before the arbitration hearings gives me hope that they are working on a long term deal off of this one. That he's getting paid about $2.2 mil less than Bill Hall is kind of absurd to think about.

TH's blog answers your question. I voted for seven: Rickey Henderson Jim Rice Andre Dawson Bert Blyleven Lee Smith Jack Morris Tim Raines

This link not brought to you by Bert Blyleven. I'm glad Rice got in - I think he deserved to get in, if only barely. Blyleven gets screwed again with 63%. Dawson got 67%, Raines only got 23% and someone voted for Jesse Orosco.

I'd be willing to put money on Omar Aguilar being a significant part of the Brewers' bullpen in the second half of the season. IMO, we have some of the best AAA bullpens in recent Brewer times - any one of Aguilar, Pena, Bateman, Dillard, Chris Smith, Wright, or Welch could be legit options in the big league bullpen this year.