fondybrewfan

I get the feeling that McGehee is feeling the footsteps. If Green plays well this last month; the odds just get that much greater that McGehee is going to be playing somewhere else next year. I highly doubt he would be in the teams 1B plans. I also think Melvin would jump at the chance to start Green instead of having to give McGehee a big raise in arbitration after having a bad year.

Not to overly defend RR here but: If you are a manager who is expected to go to the postseason would you rather have a veteran bias or trust an untested rookie. I know we as fans always like the prospects; but in reality I think most if not all managers would much rather go with veterans.

Well yes, except the Brewers on a talent basis aren't 10 wins better than the Cardinals right now. There is almost no difference between the Cardinals and Brewers except luck and perhaps Axford.The Brewers are 10 games up. Someone said without Marcum we'd not be headed for the playoffs. I replaced Marcum's innings with a 5.25 ERA, and that's 40 more runs allowed. I'm not going to try to figure out who replaces who, what, where, why, when and how. There's no way you can measure the Brewers expected W/L based on that, seeing as we're already pretty far ahead of the pythagorean. I'm simply replacing Marcum's innings with 170 replacement innings, regardless if it's 130 from Dave Bush and 40 from a replacement level reliever, doesn't matter. ALL ELSE being equal, if you replace Marcum with crap, the Brewers would still be 6 games up. Of course the problem would be that it would be impossible to say "All else remaing equal" because not having Marcum would have other unknown ramifications on the team (Bullpen usage, salary used elsewhere, etc). I feel comfortable that without Marcum that we would still be in the race; I just have no idea how close the race would be. The offseason could have progressed so much differently it really doesn't pay to speculate where the Brewers would be if they had never completed that trade. In hindsight if they could have found a different starter similar to Marcum that didn't require giving up Lawrie that would have been the best of both worlds; not sure that was possible though. Plugging in Lawrie at 3rd instead of McGehee would be amazing.

The games aren't meaningless though; that #2 seed is incredibly important in my mind. Weeks would be great to have off of the bench for a while; but I have a feeling that #2 seed will come down to the last couple days and we need Ricke healthy for that home stretch. I say activate him for PH duty this weekend with the goal of playing in the field next weekend.

Yeah even if Rickie is 80% he is still a better option out there. As long as being 80% doesn't pose a re injury risk I think he needs to play. With how the Brewers have been playing without him there really shouldn't be a rush to get him out there though. As long as they can get him out at 2nd for at least 10 days before the playoffs start I think he should be able to return to his previous performance in time for the playoffs

Well I guess I am just not convinced that Gamel would be one of our better options off the bench. He obviously has more talent than everyone on the bench; but no one really has any way of knowing if he could succeed in a pinch hitting role or not. Gamel without a doubt would be a better everyday player than any guy on our bench; but pinch hitting is just a whole different ball game IMO. Besides I think you are probably setting Gamel up to fail again if you give him 10 or less AB's the rest of the year against good to great relievers late in games. His confidence was probably already shot after his poor showing earlier in the year; just let the guy go into the offseason riding high.

I don't get why everyone's is making such a big fit about Gamel not coming up. Fielder is going to start every game the rest of the year most likely and Gamel would probably have atleast 2 maybe 3 guys ahead of him on the left handed pinch hitter pecking order. Whats the point of bringing him up to get 5 at bats in 20 games? He wouldn't be a defensive replacement and wouldn't be a pinch runner either. I am completely fine giving Gamel the rest of the year off while giving him the chance to win the 1B job in Spring Training next year.

They were thinking more along the lines of Fiers, Gindl, and Peralta as guys who they would have to bring up along with Gamel. I don't know that Almonte or Boggs would have ever been considered. Gamel maybe would provide the most power of any guys capable of pinch hitting; but it would be a major question mark if he would actually be able to succeed at it. RR sure as heck wouln't pinch hit Gamel with the game on the line thats for sure.

Braun is running away with MVP right now IMO. If he wins the batting title, OPS title, and gets to 30/30 he is a lock.

There is a Jsonline blog posting which explains the Gamel snub. In short they don't want to bring him up just to bring him up. He won't get any starts at 1B and Green, Counsell, and Kotsay are all available for left handed pinch hitting duty now. Melvin felt that rewarding Gamel for a good season wasn't realistic because they would have had to brought up a bunch more guys who were having good seasons to sit around and do nothing. Seems like a logical reason to me. No doubt in my mind that Gamel would be up if he had better results in MLB though.

Well the Crew is making things interesting again. Everyone just needs to relax and take a deep breath. The Crew hasn't lost 3 games in a row in almost 2 months. Sometimes good teams go through rough stretches; it happens.

Well this game is just off to a flying start isn't it?

For Cripes Sake

It really is amazing how long of a leash Yuni has. Today seems like a perfect day to get Counsell in at SS and Green in at 3B. I would bet if we had won atleast one of the first two that RR would have emptied the bench today. But since he really wants the W; he is keeping all the regulars out there.

What an awful return for the NYM. I guess all of our concerns weren't justified in the least.

They need to hype McGehee's 2nd half performance; he is probably one of the most obvious off season trade candidates. Well at least he is if the organization believes in Green. One thing Green has going for him is the left handed bat; if Fielder leaves next year the only lefty we will have is Morgan and Green would be the only lefty with any power at all. It's kind of a Catch 22. Do you let McGehee play the entire month of September and hope he gets hot and therefore improves his trade value or do you start to give Green more at bats and decrease McGehee's potential value? I think the best case scenario is McGehee has a hot September/October and Melvin can trade him for a legitimate SS and Green can have the 3rd base job out of spring training.

I would hope all the players would be putting a couple bunts down in every batting practice. You would think Yuni's approach would have been corrected at that point. I guess Yuni could be a good practice bunter but then just freaked out in the game situation; who knows. Between his sorry bunt attempt on Tuesday and his missed Squeeze a couple weeks ago I think RR just needs to end the Yuni bunt experiment right now. The only guys who should ever bunt are Morgan and the pitchers; Hairston and Lucroy could bunt in only obvious bunting situations. No one else should do it period.

I didn't realize Green had such an awkward stance. Fouled off some tough pitches and even hit a pretty tough pitch. I was wondering with that stance how easy it would be to get the outside pitch; but I guess if he is hitting .300 + in MILB that he is capable of hitting the outside corner stuff. Is his power strictly to RF or is he capable of going deep to left?

It was certainly logical that no one was covering first there. It was a routine double and Prince was positioned to take the cut off throw. That was just horrible base running by the Cardinals; they got extremely lucky. Wolf has been very good for the Crew but I never have a good feeling when he pitches because he can throw stinker games up with the best of them.

Yay, Yuni stays in the lineup again.

In general I have been happy with RR (Just how I am as a fan; its hard not to like a manager when the team is playing so well). My only complaint really is him being so bunt happy (Including the Squeeze play). He plays for one run way to often. Granted there are times when that is OK (I was fine with bunting in the 9th last night) but he goes to the well way to often. I don't know if he is calling all these Morgan bunts; but like has been mentioned previously; he has got to tell Morgan to lay off the bunt if Nyjer is doing that on his own. And when he does call for a bunt; someone has to be up there that can actually do it. I do think that RR has grown quite a bit from the beginning of the year but still has some learning to do. Have the LAA always bunted a lot? Just wondering where he got his obsession from.

I had just heard the no buses thing from an usher inside the game. I don't know if the buses parking lot was being used or not. Maybe the usher was just fibbing me. It was a heck of a lot harder getting into preferred parking last night than it was getting out.

I heard that no buses were allowed in yesterday so there were lots and lots of extra car traffic. I believe they actually overflowed the preferred parking lot and people were parking on that street.

I had no problem at all about the bunt in the 9th inning; obviously the execution was poor. I would say virtually every manager in MLB would have done that; especially when you are getting to the bottom of your order that doesn't have as much doubles power. Yuni has sucked for 2 weeks now; I have no confidence that he would have done anything good if he had swung away. Yeah the previous 2 guys walked; but does anyone really think Yuni would have been patient up there? RR probably could have gone to Counsell though if he really wanted to bunt. If I had a criticism of RR last night; that would be it. I am not so sure that RR is telling Morgan to bunt all the time in the beginning of games. I think that might be at least partially Morgan doing his own thing. Morgan does it every stinking game; I guess I just don't think RR is giving him the automatic bunt sign when Hart gets on 1st. Bottom line if the players would have executed last night (Two awful errors, Fielder striking out on a ball above his head with a guy on 3rd) the Brewers win the game.

Um what alternatives have they explored???? Games that Morgan has started in CF, Lopez/Counsell/Wilson at 2B, and Betancourt at SS with Hairston on the bench: http://www.baseball-refer...s/MIL/MIL201108010.shtml href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIL/MIL201108010.shtml" rel=nofollow target=_blank>August 1 http://www.baseball-refer...s/MIL/MIL201108030.shtml href="http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIL/MIL201108030.shtml" rel=nofollow target=_blank>August 3 http://www.baseball-refer...s/HOU/HOU201108060.shtml href="http:///" rel=nofollow target=_blank>August 6 http://www.baseball-refer...s/HOU/HOU201108070.shtml href="http:///" rel=nofollow target=_blank>August 7 http://www.baseball-refer...s/SLN/SLN201108090.shtml href="http:///" rel=nofollow target=_blank>August 9 http://www.baseball-refer...s/SLN/SLN201108110.shtml href="http:///" rel=nofollow target=_blank>August 11 http://www.baseball-refer...s/MIL/MIL201108140.shtml href="http:///" rel=nofollow target=_blank>August 14 http://www.baseball-refer...s/NYN/NYN201108190.shtml href="http:///" rel=nofollow target=_blank>August 19 http://www.baseball-refer...s/PIT/PIT201108222.shtml href="http:///" rel=nofollow target=_blank>August 22 game 2 Games that Betancourt has not started at SS since Hairston was acquired = 0 I was referring more to MILB and trade options but anyways If I am remembering this correctly Yuni was still somewhat hot at the beginning of August so it wouldn't have made a lot of sense in terms of "riding the hot hand" to start Hairston at SS. And in the last 2 weeks since Yuni has started sucking, Hairston has already been playing virtually everyday between 2B and CF. He needs days off just like any 35 year old does. Besides its not like Hairston has been setting the world on fire since he got here and making RR find him a spot in the lineup. He has been serviceable and despite Yuni sucking for a while now his OPS for the month isn't all that much better than Yuni's. Maybe Hairston could have started a couple of the games you mentioned; I just don't think it is much of indictment on RR that he decided not to do so. EDIT: Looks like bad Yuni started around 8/15 or so; so Hairston could have been used maybe tgwice at SS since he has gotten here