adambr2

Do I think that CTE was a contributing factor to what Adams did? Yes. Do I think we should try to understand CTE better? Of course. The part I keep coming back to, is that Phillip Adams was still a man with free will. He was capable of making decisions. One of the decisions he made that week was to murder 4 people and then escape justice by taking his own life. It sounds like the doctor he killed had cut off his medication. For what reasons, we don't know. But it appears it made him so violently angry that he took this course of action. To do this was a horrific action, but I think I could find myself trying to sympathize more with Adams' plight if this was simply between him and the doctor. But to slaughter his grandchildren is a particularly heinous, evil and unthinkable act. I feel great sympathy for victims of mental illness, and I know what havoc it can wreak in their lives. I feel great sympathy for Junior Seau, and for Robin Williams, and Ray Easterling. But unless it can be medically shown that Phillip Adams had no control over his actions, my sympathy in this case is reserved for the individuals he murdered in cold blood. The consequences of CTE are far-reaching, and we should do everything we can to understand it, and prevent if. But the list of individuals who suffered from CTE and did not choose to harm others is long.

It just helps give perspective on a player's offensive performance. It doesn't matter once the offense is assembled where the runs come from, but different positions obviously have different offensive expectations. A 100 OPS + from Daniel Vogelbach would merely be serviceable, a 100 OPS+ from Luis Urias looks a lot different.

I've learned from threads like this that we tend to find value in everything we ever get in a trade as long as the individual has a pulse and has played baseball before. Crawford is a nothing burger. However, that doesn't mean we didn't get enough -- that's all we were going to get because we were going to non-tender Knebel anyway. Which at this point, looks like a bad decision.

I'd agree with this. I like Counsell, but I liked him a lot better when he was innovative with his pen and to me he's just kind of inexplicably gone back 15 years with the pen usage from how he used to use them. Maybe it's a lack of options compared to '18, but if that's the case you're going to need to lean on your starters a little more than you have been. We can't play the game to get to our pen like we used to because we just don't have the right personnel for that anymore. I don't think we really did enough in the offseason to strengthen the middle to back end of our pen, and with CCs management style I think that kind of hampers him. I still believe in Williams and having him and Hader at the top is as good as it gets, but they can't pitch every day and once you start getting deeper in the pen they just don't have any really good options. I think we have 3 or 4 guys in the pen that a good bullpen really can only have 1 or 2 of at the back to eat up innings.

I'm sure he'll have some level of CTE, but I also don't just flatly buy the CTE excuses(which I am not suggesting you were making). I don't believe good people who just suffer concussions over the course of their careers end up killing children in a massacre. At least I sure as hell hope not. I ended up missing my Soph year in Coll due to a concussion and then had to stop after getting one early as a Jr and have had at least 8 or 9 good ones in all. They tried to kinda suggest that Aaron Hernandez was a thug because of CTE. I'll buy headaches and other side affects, but not these manic fits that send you into these psychotic shooting sprees. The man shot little children. So I guess something was wrong with his brain, I just won't chalk it up to playing FB. I'm going to expand on this a bit, and probably be a little harsher than you were, but it's not directed to anyone here. It's just that, whenever something like this happens, there seems to be a certain degree of rationalization that goes with it. It reminds me of when a ruthless killer is in court and his lawyer explains how he was abused as a child. Well, ok, maybe Ed Gein's father did abuse him, and maybe Chris Benoit did have CTE. But that doesn't mean they weren't monsters. There are plenty of victims of abuse and former football players with CTE that do not in fact murder people. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to understand and solve those underlying problems, but don't use it to rationalize a horrific act. The last thing the family or the victims need to hear after something like this is that the perpetrator was a good person and they just don't understand. You may not understand, but they were not a good person. Once they commit an act like this, it doesn't matter who they were before that. They are a monster. If the family of the perpetrator can learn something about the person later that helps bring them peace, great. But stop treating the culprit as a victim. I have an 8 year old daughter and 5 year old son. Phillip Adams killed two babies. He can rot, regardless of any underlying contributors.

Topa and Knebel... Knebel isn't a member of this bullpen. Topa even when healthy has less than 8 career innings. He's a total unknown. If we were expecting our pen to be a strength based on guys like Justin Topa, then that kind of was my whole point.

Yardley giving up 3 hits in an inning is doing his job? Man, that's a low bar.

I still don't understand why people thought that an area of our team of which half consists of names like Eric Yardley, JP Feyereisen, and Brad Boxberger was going to be a strength.

Another great outing by Burnes wasted by an anemic offense and bad bullpen.

The exciting thing about watching Woodruff's game yesterday is knowing he's not even our best starter.

Letting Wainwright off the hook today. We should have 2-3 runs instead of just 1 on a gift.

Unbelievable. Kudos to the Mets announcers for calling their own team out rather than defending that crap. MLB needs to make whether or not the hitter attempted to get out of the way a reviewable call and actually call it. That's never called. What is wrong with that homeplate ump? He was literally going to call it a strike. How can he say Conforto tried to get out of the way?

Nailed it!

It's a little different though. The Cubs winning a title was 100+ years in the making, none of their fans had ever even seen it in their lifetime. It was an enormous monkey off their backs. The Brewers are kind of in that same spot where whatever it takes to just win one would almost make whatever happens after worth it. Don't get me wrong, I thought they made some really bad moves that shortened their window and that they absolutely should have been a perennial contender for at least 3-5 years.

The last thing I would expect him to do is throw his manager under the bus regardless of how he felt.

Hader is on pace for 54 wins this year.

Woodruff or Cain for MVP of this game for sure.

Whew. That would have been awful.

They just don't have a lot of good options.

This bullpen is sinfully overrated. You have Hader and then Williams who is due for some regression this year and then Suter is ok. Other than that it's nothing but journeymen and question marks.

Anybody but Contreras.

Yet Peralta who isn't even stretched out all the way is allowed to throw over 90 yesterday? No. It was a nonsensical move.

Another 4 years or so and we can trade Urias for a couple AAAA arms.

I'm not mad at Williams at all. I'm mad at Counsell for removing Woodruff before it was needed. Yes, our offense sucks. Which is why we need to make the right in-game decisions that don't turn 1-0 wins into 2-1 losses.

I have no idea when Craig Counsell went from a manager who was reasonably wise to matchups to a guy who needs to define his 8th and 9th inning guys. Pigeonholing a guy to a inning number is just stupid. It's 2021.