adambr2

You know, Gamel is one I really didn't hear a lot about of until this year. Now many have him on the same level as LaPorta, because not only does he hit for a ton of power, he hits for average, too. So..... 1. What kind of a player does Gamel project to be on the big league level? Is it too ambitious to think .300, 30 HR, 100 RBI, something like Carlos Lee type numbers? 2. What position do you think he projects to? Is he going to make at 3B and be our 3rd baseman of the future? Or is that going to be too much of an offensive liability to the point where we should consider grooming him at 1B or a corner outfield spot? 3. Do you think he is more valuable to us, or as a trading chip?

I totally agree about LaPorta. I don't understand people wanting TGJ starting every day in CF. He hasn't even managed to get on base at as good of a clip as Weeks even when Weeks is sucking, and he wasn't especially great at getting on base in the minors. Gwynn has absolutely no offensive value if he gets on base 32% of the time and rarely hits the ball out of the infield. Defensively, obviously he's exactly what we want in CF, but there's really nothing he brings to the table offensively. I know many people love his style of baseball, but he just doesn't do it as well as people think.

Not unless he improves a lot in several areas (namely OBP) before next year. As of right now, I'd say he projects as a career 4th OF.

So they take the distance where it strikes + the height of the ball where it strikes?

Are you sure? That hardly seems like an accurate way to do it. A ball that smacks the scoreboard 50 feet above the ground at Miller Park obviously isn't going to go farther than 410 feet, but I don't see how you can call it a 410 foot HR.

You know, I've thought about this before and I've never really said anything about it, but many estimated distances on HR's seem far too conservative. First off, let's look at how HR distances are estimated. My understanding is that the estimate is on the distance that the ball would have traveled in the air before striking ground level if it had completed its journey without any obstruction. If this is not accurate, please correct me. Case in point, Branyan's HR to the 3rd deck in RF yesterday. It was estimated at 465 feet. So we have to first look at the distance from home plate at the point where the ball cleared the fence, probably roughly 370 feet. So at that point, that ball needs to travel only 95 feet further past that point on the fence to hit the estimate. That's just barely over the distance from homeplate to 1st. Remember, this is estimating where the ball would have hit level ground. When that ball hits the stands up in the dew deck, it's not done traveling, it's going to continue a pretty good distance, especially at that height. I'll have to pay more attention the next time I go, but the start of the dew deck alone has to be a good distance beyond the fence. At that point, the ball still has a long ways to go before hitting level ground. Would it be unfair to say at the point where the ball strikes the dew deck, it could have easily traveled another 90-100 feet just from that point before hitting level ground? Again, 90 feet is only the distance between two bases. So we're looking at at least the 90 feet that the ball would have continued plus whatever the distance is from the fence to the dew deck. I cannot see how a ball hit at that place in the stadium could be estimated at less than 500 feet. Just think, a ball hit to dead center that barely clears the fence would already be high enough in the air to still have to travel another 10-15 feet before striking that imaginary level ground. That's 410-415 feet for a HR that barely clears the fence. I just thought this was something interesting to think about. What's that FSN show that does all kinds of experiments regarding sports? I wish they'd do something on this.

I really hope Davey was kidding. Our former first base coach thought reaching on an error was beneficial to your OBP? That's really embarrassing.

Does this team really let up and pat themselves on the back after winning a series? That's a scary proposition for the team if that's the case. In a perfect world, you'd always be happy to take 2 out of 3. In the real baseball world, sometimes you get swept, so it's necessary for you to do the same at times if you want to contend. There can be no letup. Every game is worth the same in the 162 game season. A series really means squat, it's just a set of games played at the same place. It is completely unacceptable for management to allow the guys -- no, not kids, to think that their work is done if they win the first 2 games of a 3 game series.

No surprise yesterday to hear about how outstanding the Braves pitching was. We haven't struggled at the plate this year, we've just faced an incredible slew of Cy Young type pitchers. It was fun listening to Ned recently make the excuse that we're not really a finished product, otherwise we'd be doing better. I don't get it -- there are plenty of YOUNGER teams doing more and yet we get the excuse train once again with Yost. How much time do we need to give them to expect a winning baseball team? Not until after their initial 6 year commitment with the team? Yost has done an incredible job of keeping that bar nice and low. The most genius thing he has done is make it look like he's doing a good job if the team can crack .500 and an incredible job if he can manage this team to a winning season. I'm amazed whenever I hear, "Ned's not going to make excuses." That's all he DOES is make excuses.

5 runs in a 3 games series. It's a miracle that we were able to win 2 of 3. It's now exactly 1/3rd of the way into the season. At what point do we admit that the offense isn't just off to a start and admit that Jim Skaalen has absolutely no clue on how to help these "kids" hit, prepare them to face a starting pitcher, or correct their plate approaches when they're struggling?

Do most here generally feel that Torres should stay in the closers role? I don't think there's anyone else in the bullpen right now that I feel more comfortable giving a 1 run lead to. He has relatively painlessly gotten the job done, while even Gagne's successes have been generally aggravating. I don't see how you can take the job away from him NOW, at least not until he starts to falter. Torres seems like the safe choice right now, no one would blame Yost for sticking with him while he's still effective. If he goes back to Gagne; though, and Gagne falters, that's going to be the root of some controversy for sure.

Yost looked beaten in the post-game interview today. I can't imagine he's sleeping well these days. He really looks like he knows he's just hanging on by a thread.

What is that, the 373rd double play we've grounded into this road trip?

Didn't we keep Rivera over Munson because of his defense?

At this point, Prince will get a nice big chuckle out of arbitrators if he goes to arbitration looking for Ryan Howard type money next offseason.

Well, good job Torres, plenty of drama AGAIN, but it sure as hell wasn't Torres' fault.

There comes a point where there's nothing left you can do except laugh out loud.

Yost's condescending post-game remarks and excuses after road games will no doubt be missed.

Just for fun.... did everyone know the Milwaukee Brewers were originally born in the American League long before the Seattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee? Although plans were already in the works the first season to move the franchise, they played their first season at Lloyd Street Grounds in Milwaukee and were known as the Milwaukee Brewers. They moved to St. Louis the following year, then finally to Baltimore over 50 years later. So your modern day Baltimore Orioles were born as the Milwaukee Brewers 107 years ago. The team itself? Oh, they were pretty bad -- 48-89 in their only year. The stud of the lineup appeared to be first baseman John Anderson, who boasted a .330 average and .476 slugging percentage, along with 35 stolen bases. Ace Ned Garvin set the bar for bad run support long before Sheets was born, posting a 3.46 ERA and by far leading the team in strikeouts, but still finishing with a 7-20 record as a starter. The 1901 Brewers were managed by Hugh Duffy, who was one of the greatest players of the pre-modern era and is now in the Hall of Fame.

You are probably right. It has nothing to do with managing really crappy teams. Well, he doesn't have a really crappy team now, and he didn't last year, either. And he's got a payroll around the league average, far exceeding what we ever thought possible 5 years ago. At some point, he's out of excuses.

Has management actually said those things? Or have they come from the taped glasses and pocket protector-wearing nerds on baseball message boards? I guess I'm not really sure what you're asking. If you're asking if management has actually used the "What if??" arguments to justify not bringing up Branyan, then yeah. Melvin mentioned in reference to the Boston series that if it were a 9 game stretch against AL teams, they probably would have brought Branyan up, but since it was only 3 games, they didn't want to do that in case they had to send him back down and he didn't clear waivers. As far as the specific reason that we signed Branyan, no, I doubt management came out and said before the season that he would be a platoon consideration if Hall struggled against righties -- they wouldn't say something like that. But considering he plays 3rd and hits righties, I can't imagine what any other reason would be. To fill out our AAA roster? The fact that they're worried about bringing him up in case he doesn't clear waivers on his way back down I would think pretty well implies that they have some interest in him potentially contributing.

So we took Hart out of the game in the 6th inning because we didn't want Shouse to get 1 AB or have to sub him out of the game? Sounds like Yost logic to me. Not good logic, mind you, but Yost logic.

I hope that is Gwynn's last AB in a Brewer uniform for awhile.

Is there any good reason why Tony Gwynn Jr. is not down in AAA?

Cue Yost making excuses for Hardy and talking about how sure-handed he normally is rather than showing any dismay at our defense costing us a game yet again.