adambr2

Looks pretty good, and I'll be the first to admit I'm not at all a fan of the 6 team NL Central, 4 team AL West thing either, and I think eventually, it needs to be changed. There's a couple of geographical problems with it, though, I think. Granted, there's no way to get it perfect, but I think the Rockies would be in for long years halfway across the country from the rest of their team in the NL North. The other thing is, I don't think that we'll see expansion anytime soon. I think a 30 team league is about as big as it's going to get for now, and I think that further expansion right now would probably just water down the talent level in MLB. Personally, I'd prefer even 15 team leagues, with a system in place of year-round interleague play, maybe 20-30 games per year. I don't see the problem with adding more interleague games every year. We took away the uniqueness of the interleague World Series as soon as we went to interleague play. Doesn't really matter now if we add more games to it, it's not special anymore.

Twenty "You know's" in that 2 minute interview with Prince. 20. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

I think it's 502 plate appearances to qualify. That's key, it's plate appearances, not AB's. That way, you don't get penalized for walking. Into tonight, Braun had 227 PA's in 51 starts. At that pace, if he started all remaining 63 games, he'd have 507 plate appearances by the end of the season. So, he could afford to have 1 day off between now and the end of the season and still be on pace to qualify. So as you can, it's very plausible that he'll qualify. Assuming he stays healthy, it'll be very close. Now, what Trwi was saying, and he was exactly right: Let's say he doesn't make it, and only gets 495 PA's. We'll say hypothetically, he goes something like 155 for 450, for a .344 batting average. Since he fell 7 PA's short, add 7 AB's to his 450, giving credit for no hits in those 7 AB's. That would make him 155 for 457, for a .339 batting average. Let's say Pence or Lee is in 2nd with a .337 batting average. Braun is declared the batting champion even though he only had 495 PA's, because even if he had futile AB's up to PA #502, he would still have the league's highest BA. Hope I didn't make that any more confusing than it had to be!

First off, I'll give you pretty good odds that whoever mentioned Piazza was joking. Secondly, that was nowhere near a gimme double play in the 11th, especially when the catcher double pumped. It's still debatle as to whether he was waiting for the 1st baseman to get back or whether he was looking for a better angle, but the only reason it looked routine was that Estrada jogged the entire 90 feet. An all out sprint gets you there. And who was hating on Miller? I'd think you'll have a pretty tough time finding many posts around here hating on Miller. Estrada's hustle has been noted for the last couple months. Yesterday wasn't the first time it was noticed. But it was certainly the most key situation of any other play this season that he didn't run out.

No, there's no rumors, no speculation, nothing like that, and I hope I didn't come off making it sound like there was, don't want to start anything and give people false hope. I guess the fact that Melvin has done business with Texas might instill some degree of wishful thinking, though. It's just the #1 guy on my wishlist at the deadline, that's all. Would absolutely love to see it. I'd be willing to give up Jenkins, Mench, Gwynn, and Inman just to land him.

I agree it's almost incomprehensible that he could have been dogging it so badly in a huge situation like that just out of laziness. Still, did you see him running? He was jogging. That's as fast as he can go with his injury? Then he shouldn't be starting right now. Period. We can go get a rental for awhile. We can go give up a couple prospects to go find the most overpaid, washed up catcher in the league. Like some guy who makes $13+ million, hits about .220 with no power, and plays bad defense to boot. Haha! Just kidding about that last part. No one would be that dumb.

Yeah. He hits for power. He hits for average. He plays good defense. He's patient at the plate. And he isn't particularly expensive for a player of his caliber. ($9M this season, arbitration eligible next season, so we'd control him through at least 2008 and he probably wouldn't cost us more than $10M or so next season. Good chance we'd lose him after 2008, but he'd be a Brewer for at least a year and a half and would be huge in making us major contenders this year and next year.

And Dessens has been "hurt" for 2 months.

I posted about this in the other Estrada thread, but I don't really buy this. He's been hurting for 2 weeks, suddenly dogs it to first, costs us a game, hears it from the fans, and now we find out he's been injured for 2 weeks, which is why he can't sprint? Sounds awfully convenient to me.

sports.espn.go.com/mlb/ne...id=2947494 Sounds like he may be headed to the Giants or Braves, but oh man, I wish we could get this guy if he could go back to playing corner outfield, especially now that it sounds like the Ranger's trade demands are going down. There wouldn't be a better replacement out there for Jenkins in LF. He'd complete the lineup, period. Just a dream, but I sure wish we could get him and get him back into the outfield. He's the premiere guy out there on the block before the deadline this year, no question.

I agree, and like someone said, that's kind of how the A's run their operation. When Balfour gave up 2 leadoff walks last night, there was one guy on the team, one, that I would have trusted to somehow get us out of it unscathed. Cordero was the guy. Any bullpen scrub (well, except for Balfour, maybe), should be able to come in and protect a 3 run lead for 1 flipping inning. Heck, even a 2 run lead should be able to be protected most of the time for 1 inning by any MLB pitcher. I wish the save stat didn't even exist, it has become way too influential. And I think we need to stop thinking that Cordero is being overused. Look at the average MLB innings for a full-time closer, and you'll see Cordero isn't any higher than the average. We make it sound like we're blowing his arm out. We're not. Yes, I know sometimes he warms up and doesn't come in, but so does every other reliever.

Yes, I read the article, that's what I was commenting on. That doesn't tell me anything than the fact that Yost said after the outcry last night that he has been hurting.

And again, I am going to repeat what has already been mentioned. Would you rather have your WORST reliever pitching in a situation where your margin for error is 0, (give up a run, you lose). OR, would you rather let CoCo handle that situation, and leave your worst relievers for the times that your margin for error is greater than 0, (even a 2-1 lead gives us slight margin for error, in that giving up a run doesn't necessarily lose the game. Or maybe we break out in the 12th and lead 5-1, and it suddenly becomes a garbage time situation anyway). Maybe we don't score at all, and the margin for error is still 0 the next inning, but at least we were able to give our bats a chance for another inning to give us that edge. And no, I would not have even whatsoever held it against Yost for using Cordero anytime after the 8th, despite it being a tie game. I would have applauded him for giving our bats another chance. I couldn't care less what baseball logic says, I think it's foolish, and I gave all my reasons for that in the original post. I was calling for Cordero earlier than the 12th in the IGT.

Maybe I'm the only one, but this one reeks of a line of crap from Yost if you ask me. Let me see. Fans are calling for Estrada's head because he costed us the game last night. Estrada has dogged it on the basepaths all season. So after last night, Yost runs in and exclaims that he was hurt and he told him not to hustle. Wasn't a word about this injury before, but after last night, we hear that he's suddenly been hurt for 2 weeks, and that's why he didn't hustle, even though he hasn't hustled the entire season. So, you had the bases loaded, nobody out, game on the line, and a guy in that you knew couldn't do more than jog, with your other catcher available. If all he can do is jog, should he really have even been starting? It's not like his defensive prowess helps us out any. Sorry. Sounds to me like Yost was just sticking up for Estrada.

Because it was a tie game in extra innings, which would be considered a crucial situation, where the use of your best reliever would be practical. A practical win without using your closer might be when you coast to a 5-1 lead. You don't need your closer for these. Sure, it's possible that we might have burned him out last night where he couldn't pitch today, and ended up needing him for a 4-3 late lead, but it's unlikely, and he'd probably still be available, anyway. I agree you need to think about winning tommorow, but you need to worry about winning today first. This is a pennant race that may come down to the wire, and by my count, we haven't been in too many of those in the last 25 years. We need to be concerned with winning each and every close game that we possibly can. If we continue to worry about who may or may not be available tommorow and let it dictate all our moves, we may not have a tommorow to worry about at the end of September.

No we didn't have the bottom of the order coming up. It was Hardy, Braun, and Prince due up in the 13th. We have to still try to win the game that we're in, and Cordero would have likely given us the chance to give the meat of the order a chance to score against a very questionable pen. Cordero has been a stud for us, but if we're that worried that we're going to lose tommorow's game because Cordero pitches 1-2 innings last night, we have problems. Good teams can still win if their closer happens to be unavailble for one night. That shouldn't be a factor.

Not really. 69 innings is the fewest Cordero has thrown in a season since 2002, and he's been as high as 83. Usually he's in the mid 70's or so. He's currently on pace for 65. He hasn't been overworked.

Cordero has thrown less than 40 innings this season. He's thrown over 80 in a season in his career. I don't see how worrying about an injury should be a factor when deciding whether to use him in a "crucial" vs. "save" situation. There are plenty of games that Cordero isn't used. Blowouts, late deficits. Those are games where we don't need Cordero. A tie game on the road in extra innings is a situation that we do. Those games average out in the end, we're not going to need 90 innings out of CoCo this season.

There is an unwritten rule in baseball, usually followed, to save your closer for a lead in extras on the road. It has bugged me for a long time, and it costed us tonight. I am going to go ahead and explain why I hate it. Feel free to agree or disagree with me, I'll make my points as clear as possible: First, to address the standard rebuttal, Who would close if the Brewers got the lead? I don't know. Spurling? Villanueva? Does it matter? Is there a law that says only your closer can close? No one else can come in and pitch the last scoreless inning with a close lead? Will the sky fall if this happens? Let's say Cordero pitches the 12th, and holds them scoreless, and the Brewers get 2 in the top of the 13th against the weak Red's pen. It's 3-1. Are you really angry that Cordero isn't available? Or are you just grateful that Cordero actually got you to the point where you could take the lead? I'll definitely vote for the latter, I'd MUCH rather see Spurling or Balfour with a 3-1 lead to close out the 13th than a 1-1 game where giving up a run loses it. If it gets to that point where you have to do that, so be it. But you can't get there without keeping the score tied. Let's say the Brewers DO go up 3-1, and Balfour comes in for the 13th and blows up like he did in the 12th. Am I going to blame Ned for burning Cordero too early? Hell no I wouldn't blame him for that. If Balfour came in with a 3-1 lead and performed as he did tonight, we already would have lost it in the 12th with him, see? That's why the philosophy is flawed. I wouldn't have had a situation in the 13th to get angry ABOUT. I would have still been ticked at Balfour, but at least we would have still been up 3-2, still a chance to pull out the victory. Every inning on the road in extras with the score tied is 3 more outs that you MUST get to give your lineup another chance to win it. I think I was calling for Cordero in the 10th or 11th. I didn't think we were going to be able to hold up past those 2 innings. I believe that you start extras with your best relievers in this situation, because you MUST keep the game tied, the alternative is, you lose. Suppose Cordero keeps it scoreless in the 12th and the offense explodes and we go up 6-1 in the 13th. Suddenly, it doesn't even matter who comes out in the 13th, we're going to win. We don't KNOW if that would have happened, because we used Balfour with Cordero still available, and that was it. So we never had a chance. I know it is against standard baseball philosophy. I just strongly disagree with it, always have. I think it's stupid.

Hey, great call, Ned! Way to save Cordero for the save situation, yessir!

Good freaking grief. Get him out and put CoCo in and hope he can do something.

Balfour lives up to his name to lead off in the 12th. He should not even be out there. It should be CoCo. This is stupid.

I cannot believe that a Ned Yost team would be dogging it down the line in crucial situations. This is ridiculous, and he needs to get through to them. Balfour now? Well, it's been fun.

Hart has been AWFUL this game. Didn't seem like he was charging much down the line, either.

Oh man, that 2-0 pitch, fastball up in the strikezone, that was one for Weeks to end the HR slump on.