BrewCrewRising

I was thinking the same thing. But I really do appreciate the positive vibes. The press will be saying "You know, this guy is always injured" and "This is exactly the type of thing that the Brewers can't have happen with the Cubs hot on their tails." So it's tiime to reverse that ju-ju. Get well and give 'em hell Sheeter.

Apparently they hate the entire infield. I can see why though. I mean I would hate anybody my team didn't pay gobs and gobs of money for, thereby invalidating my requirement to go to a game where I'm not paying attention anyway so as to donate money to the Cubs.

What gets me the most about the bandwagon poser fans is that they are probably the ones doing most of the booing. Adam McCalvey was asked about this in his latest mailbag article, and I was appaled that Milwaukee could be mentioned in the same breath with Philadelphia and Chicago. That's what upsets me the most. No matter what happens to our players in the future, if/when they leave Milwaukee, I want them to think, "Man, those were great years in Milwaukee." But I'm naive and corny. Sue me.

Unless they gave up Marshall, I don't think this is the worst thing for the Cubs. Kendall is bad this year, but he was bad last year before the All-Star break and batted .323 afterwards, and finished with a .295 BA and .367 OBP. The caveat there is the his SLG% was horrible, but still, he got on base quite a bit. If he continues to suck, awesome. But if he pulls a last year, there's no reason for us to dance yet. If he can get on base a lot again this year, there's plenty of Cubs who can bat him in.

Well, I don't think the Cubs would have the same Miller Park advantage they usually have since playoff games tickets would first be offered to season ticket holders and even fans with the 9 and 20 game packs. Also, I think the idea of a playoff game would energize the Brewers fans more. That said, there would still be a lot of Cubs fans that entered the lottery and got tickets. Conversely, though the Cubs fans would be in the Majority at a Wrigley playoff game, the fact that Milwaukee fans would only have to drive an extra 90 miles to see the Crew in a playoff game against a hate division rival might mean that more Brewers fans try to get tickets for that game than they usually do for the regular season games. That said, the fact that there is about a 5 to 1 advantage in Metro Chicagoans over Metro Milwaukeeans (though I'm sure the actual number of Cubs fans would be smaller in proportion to Chicago than Brewers fans in proportion to MIlwaukee), there would be a nauseating number of Cubs fans (i.e. more than 0) in either of those scenarios.

Nate Silver at Baseball Prospectus gives his own view of how the Cubs/Brewers battle for the division will shake out. I'm not a huge fan of the compare pitcher a to pitcher b, and compare outfielder a to outfielder b, but he does mention that while the Brewers may experience some regression, so can the Cubs expect to.

If you look hard enough, this site has everything except chili recipes.

I don't hate him, but he can be frustrating. However, the frustration is more about my own irrational fan feelings of wanting more out of players. He is what he is. But along to B. above, his defense strikes me as shaky. I'm not looking at any stats, but sometimes he looks so clumsy and slow out there. That would be easier to swallow if he was an .850 OPS guy with minimal LHP/RHP splits. But like every player, he's welcome to prove me wrong anytime. Unless you hit puppies for batting practice, I'm not really going to hate anybody.

Why do people walk in a slow, continuous 'S' when they are on their cell phones? It's like they're getting instructions on how to annoy the person in back of them trying to get past them.

I wonder how usual this is. I'm sure GM's talk to other GM's on and off, but I'm just wondering how often, especially leading up to the trade deadline. Is this 5-6 team phone list on his dockett normal, or is it more and implies he is definitely working on a trade. In an article in today's Journal-Sentinel Melvin mentions that he talked to Krivsky yesterday. Is this increased trade "chatter" that means the trade defcon level is changing, or is it just July due dilligence? Just curious.

In one sense I don't fear a Cuban ownership, although I'm highly skeptical it would ever happen. The Cubs have always played with HUGE monkey on their back and create pressure for management and players alike. It's a fairly unforgiving atmosphere. I see Cuban adding to that and creating an even worse atmosphere. If he is like Steinbrenner, I'd welcome that if he creates a this year's Yankees atmosphere. Hendry seems like a terrible, terrible GM this year. But he didn't always seem that way. He's actually made some good trades. But I think the pressure to show you can do it, makes you make mistakes (Jacque Jones, Soriano in 3 years, etc.). I think they'd generally be a better team since mistakes would be addressed more quickly, but I wouldn't consider them a shoe-in or anything. Just my $.02.

Tickets are no longer available.

When I went to Shea in May, I ran across a born and bred New Yorker who had converted to a Brewer fan after having been a Yankee fan. How many of you are there? Or were you in section 141 on May 12th? I'll be at Sunday's game, and if you can make Sunday's game too, you're more than welcome to crash my tailgate. It will be small, but I'll spot you brats and beer. If nobody offers to let you join your tailgate, my brother is going to Saturday's game, and I'll make him host you. (I'm the WORST brother ever.) Edit: OK, I have to retract the offer on behalf of my brother who is taking a girl on an early stage date. If you leave late enough on Sunday, you are welcome to my very, very modest tailgating fesitivities.

You know what else is weird? They play 20% of their weekday games on Wednesdays.

There's an article in baseball prospectus about J.J. and his rise to the majors. It starts with the comment/question: "Hardy has more than doubled his career home run total with 18 shots so far this season, surprising many fans and analysts, but should it?" What's interesting is that it seems like whereever J.J. goes, he struggles a bit at first, and then finds a way to adjust and often proves naysayers wrong. His defense and grace have long since garnered the praise of scouts and publications like Baseball America, and many of his stats have made fans out of Baseball Prospectus and other assorted statheads. Anyway, sorry to not just put this in the running article tracker, but I wanted to make sure people who might not visit the article tracker all that frequently noticed it and got a chance to read it while baseball prospectus is having their free preview week (until July 15th). After Sunday it's paid subscribers only.

When I lived in Japan (this was about 9 years ago) they would air quite a few Dodger games because Hideo Nomo played for them then. They also aired Yankee games because of Hideki Irabu. I don't know how much things have changed, but I have to imagine that they air quite a few Mariner games still since Ichiro, unlike Nomo and Irabu, is a consistently good player.

I posted a new topic on this this morning and I didn't see this one, so my apologies to the moderators for the redundant thread. Much of what I was wondering about has been answered here, although I have two questions I am curious about. 1) I was watching a baseball video newsclip on Yahoo! and one of the commentators made the remark that Diamondacks have a bad record on the road because they're young. Al made a similar comment about the Brewers in a previous post on this thread. My question is: Why do people say that young teams have trouble on the road? Are there stats for this? The Devil Rays are young and their road record isn't that much different than their home record. The Marlins are quite young and actually do better on the road. So why does youth make a difference for road trips? 2) Do people think our home record will sustain itself as this kind of high, and will our road record continue to blow? Our first half road record includes games against the Mets, Phillies, Padres and Dodgers. Except for the Dodgers, we play those teams at home in the second half. Will this dent our home record? We have 38 games at home and 36 on the road from here on out. If we were to play those at the same pace as we did in the first half, we'd have about 90-91 wins or so. But did we just have an easy home schedule in the first half coupled with true road troubles, or did we have an easy home schedule alongside a more difficult road schedule? If the former, then we'll have a rocky second half. If the latter, we can hope that our 90-91 wins is more than the Cubs can muster.

The way they present the possible trade in that article makes me think it would never happen. They are talking about a C-Level prospect from the Twins to the Crew AND have the Crew eat most of Mench's salary. DM may or may not realize he picked up a dud with Mench but he's not going to unload him for free.

I was watching a video through Yahoo! sports (where Tim Brown thought the Cubs would run away with the division, but Larry Stenson said it was the Crew's division to keep) and they made a comment about Arizona being shaky on the road because "they're a young team." Being the dumb, unassuming guy I am, I automatically thought to myself, "hmmm...well, that explains why the Crew is so bad on the road." So, I decided to look at the schedule for the rest of the year, and I counted 38 more home games and 36 more away games (which includes a double header in Saint Louis). So, some quick, presumptuous arithmetic showed that at the current home record they stand to win 26 more games at home, and 14-15 of those road games, and end up with 89-90 wins. Of course I wanted to think, wow, we play some crappy teams on the road, so we might even be able to pick up a few more there. Of course I quickly reminded myself of the most recent road trip. Another thing that struck me is that our road record for the first half includes road trips against some very tough teams (New York, Phillie, San Diego, LA), and in the second half our two toughest road opponents look to be AZ and ATL. Anyway, I'm putting out a few questions here for whoever has that information: 1) Are there any other instances/evidence that "young teams do poorly on the road" and can that really partially explain the Crew's record on the road? 2) For any stat heads out there, do we stand to have continued success at home since we'll now face NY, Phi, SD at home? Just wondering what people think, and how they come to their conclusions. I know we've had prediction threads, but I don't recall any road vs. home threads off hand (sorry if there was one and I missed it.) Thanks.

The 7/22 tickets have been sold. Still have two for 7/20 in the Terrace Box in section 421 (near home plate). $16 a piece or make me an offer in my inbox.

What are Salty's supposed character issues? Did he punch somebody for calling him psycho or something like that? I like Bush, but at the same time, I think he peaks as a "#3 guy" and kind of hovers around being a "#4". I think he'll always have good numbers, but he's never going to be that consistently dominating guy who just sometimes gets punched. It seems like when he gets beat, it's because teams have his number. So, while I like him well enough, he's not untradeable. If Salty is the catcher they claim him to be, that's a great haul, and takes care of catching for the Crew for the time being - a position that has vexed the Crew in the past. But if we trade him now, you open up that can of works with keeping CV's and YG's innings down this year. That's about the only place I'm truly uncomfortable in regards to this rumor.

What is chiefly annoying about Kane's article is that it didn't have to be annoying. He could have just written an article about how cool it was that the Crew has a very talented corps of players and that given the number of African-Americans in the game today, it's very heartening to have such a large representation of talented African-Americans on a team whose home has a sizeable African-American population. There is a hint of this, but it doesn't seem to really be the theme of his piece. Instead his article is launched from context of how he "told them so." Does he realize that Billy, Prince, Rickie, and TGJ had all been drafted by the Crew before he wrote that? Does he think his article somehow made these guys major league caliber talented? As others have pointed out, the Crew had already had an African-American president, two African-American managers, and a fair number of African-American players. When an article/story is about how great the author is and not about chosen subject matter, it's usually a pretty crappy piece of writing (I'm sure we could all think of a few sports writers who also fit that bill.)

Anybody interested in starting a petition to get the Cubs on the Young and the Restless?

I do nothing. I say nothing. (Almost) I have a friend who is a Cubs/Bears fan. A few years ago when the Bears still sucked and the Pack was still respectable, I would simply say nothing after the Pack beat them. It would drive him crazy. He wanted me to say something so that he could strike back, and when I didn't he would just finally say, "Will you just say it!" This year with the Crew he's a lot more reasonable and he'll say little things and I'll just say, "We'll see. I think the Brewers have a good team. I think they're still in first." That puts him over the edge because he knows I care, but I just pretend I don't.

I don't mind a few of those days in row.....as long as they make it 6 in a row. Go Buccos and go into the All Star Break hard!