BrewCrewRising

This is hilarious!! And a great idea!

I remember that feeling, and how things turned out the last time I felt that way. Me too Hawing, me too.

I can't fault Theo for signing Crawford. If Prince sucks next year does that mean it was a mistake to sign him? He also did not trade a lot of good talent. In any case though there have been some good points made above: Theo inherited great farm talent and a lot of talent was provided for him (not sure what is role was in drafts, etc.) Theo being the GM of the Cubs doesn't lock them in a WS title, but the Cubs won three division championships with the less than competent Jim Hendry at the helm. They have a lot of resources to use and Theo at the helm is scarier than Hendry at the helm.

My distaste for the Cubs is mostly because I have Cubs fans in my grill all the time because I live in Chicago. If I imagine myself living on a netural site then I realize that I hate the Cardinals and are just annoyed by the Cubs from time to time. Reaslistically my chief negative baseball emotion is frustration with the Crew.

The home grown guys being keys to Theo's success is a fair point.But part of the skill in being the GM is knowing who to hold on to, or at least what to spend the prospect on, and Theo has done that well. It's not like he threw in Nelson Cruz as an afterthought in a Carlos Lee trade only to see the guy slugging for a WS contender.

In yahoo news and also reported on Fox Chicago. http://sports.yahoo.com/m...F?slug=ap-redsox-epstein That is gong to make things harder for us.

Let's go Crew!

From Bruce Bochy's blog: "Little League Team Europe, congratulations on your futile home run, and your celebration was just cute as the dickens! If any of you little miscreants ever find your way to the Major Leagues, you might want to skip spring training. The memory of a Giant is inversely proportional to the thickness of his skin. Yours, B. Bochy" And from Chris Carpenter's Blog: "Little League Team Europe, you demonstrated poor sportsmanship and disrespected the GAME OF BASEBALL with your home run celebration. Your little heads are still developing, but when they are bigger and older, and if you make your way into the Major Leagues, I will DRILL some respect into your heads. (NOTE: DRILL here is a double entendre. I can't tell you what it means. You'd know what it meant if you were a secret member of the Baseball Ettiquette Keepers Club. Carp. P.S. I realize I mispelled 'etiquette' but it's not proper for you to point it out. I can 'DRILL' all day. Keep it up." This is scary. Also, I found out that the Cardinals have a secret police squad set up that goes around the world adminstering baseball justice. Sort of a star chamber to keep players in line. The Cardinals really take this stuff seriously. EDIT: By the way, you won't find these blogs on the actual internet. They're "unwritten blogs". They're meant to complement the unwritten rules.

mlbtraderumors.com has some people saying that Rickets could go after Cashman, Epstein, Billy Beane or Andrew Friedman. The source on Epstein being interested is Peter Gammons speculating that Epstein would want to lift another curse. It scares me to think of the Cubs with somebody compentent at the helm. If they were smart with drafting and young talent AND coupled that with being able to abosrb a few big contracts, that would suck. Even with Hendry at the helm they got the playoffs 3 times.

The only way that I trade Prince at the deadline is if somehow the Brewers are more than 8 games out at that time. I don't see that happening. The only way? C'mon. Obviously if you could get 3 current All Stars you would do it. There are always scenarios where somebody overpays. But as great as Prince's bat is, it can't make up for bad defense around the the infield, and lack of production throughout the lineup. So there has to be a scenario where you could get something that would make up for his plus make a talent profit. Obviously when the Red Sox traded Nomar in 2004 Red Sox fans did not like it and getting Orlando Cabrerra and Doug Mientkiewicz obviously seemed inadequate to most fans because fans were emotionally attached to Nomar. But the Red Sox won it all that year. I too am emotinally invested in Prince, but I am wondering if anybody has an realistic scenarios where trading him could be beneficial to the team as a whole. It obviously won't happen, but it's interesting to consider.

Let me start by saying I'm entertaining a thought and not making a serious suggestion. So let us entertain the thought of who you would trade Prince for at the deadline. He's obviously mashing right now but to what extent will he remain at this level? He'll still be pretty awesome, but the way he's playing right now could make some team overpay for him. So, what if you could trade Prince, get a haul of prospects and use some of them to get Jose Reyes, and a decent hitting/good defense 1B, and a CF? Or else just use Gamel at 1st and converse some of the prospects for the future. With Reyes you'd still have a Type A FA to get prospects back for at the end of the season. I'm gong on the assumption that Prince would cost more than Reyes, but I am probably overestimating how much more he would cost. What would you trade Prince for? Emotionally I'm enjoying watching him too much right now, but the team still has holes, and I imagine that DM will just slightly upgrade some of them. But would it be worth it if you could spread the talent from 1B out to SS and CF?

McGehee's chakras are jammed. And he's been breathing out of his left eyelid.

This just makes it more of a 4 team race than a 3 team race and may actually reduce the number of wins needed to capture the division. The Brewers, Reds and Cards are still all stronger in the middle of the lineup than the Cubs and still should rate an edge. The Cubs got better, so the odds of the Brewers winning the division just went down. We can argue by how much but it went down.How much would you expect it to though? How would it shake out? Suppose the Cubs can win 6 more games because of Garza, and because of that their probability of winning the division increases by 7% (I'm just making numbers up, obviously. I have no idea what they really would be.) That 7% would have to come out of other teams' win-the-division probability, and I have to guess that it comes out of Houston and Pittsburgh more than St. Louis, Milwaukee and Cincinnati. (I'm assuming a model where you simulate every game, and I'm assuming that Houston and Pittsburgh lose more than the other teams do to the Cubs, and that they their total number of wins is reduced more than the other teams.) I'm also guessing that Milwaukee, Cincy, and St. Louis lose their percentage of the win-the-division probability equally, or at least close to. So can we really expect to lose more than a couple of % points in the probability of the Crew winning the division? I honestly don't know. You seem to know these models very well and that's why I ask. Thanks.

Voted. Good luck. As a side note, some of what is in your story terrifies me. I just welcomed twin boys into the world last summer and I have a fear that they'll become Bears/Cubs fans (we live in Chicago) despite my best efforts. Good to hear though that you all transcend teams loyalties and just enjoy baseball together.

Chris, Once I was at a game at Miller Park and you gave up a homer. I said, "Ah c'mon on Cappy! What were you thinking with that pitch?" You never answered me, and now that you are parting ways I have decided that I will let that one go. But in all seriousness, you were the Brewer I always wanted most to succeed because it never seemed like you weren't investing every breath and effort into making yourself better and trying to win for Milwaukee. You will be missed and we will root for you wherever you go*. I am proud to share a first name with you, though I don't shorten mine. Sincerely, Christopher * - Wherever does not include Chicago or St. Louis, or any team that is facing the Crew in the playoffs, or any team facing the Crew in a "must win" game for the Crew. Wish for success is good for the rest of your career provided you do not sign with aforesaid clubs, or change positions. If you decide to become a power hitter and fail miserably, you only have yourself to blame. You've worked too hard at pitching and your pick-off move is a joy to watch. Wish for success is worth 1/100th of cent in cash value, but good for loads of baseball player specific superstitious luck - provided luck is not used against Crew, directly or indirectly.