Point Beer Is Best

My favorite when I was in HS (1980s) was "Elevator, elevator, we got the shaft!" Not sure if that made it to the late 90s ; ) One of ours was "Nuts and bolts! Nuts and bolts! We...Got...Screwed!"

I guess I don't have a problem with them wanting to say, "If you can't say it in the classroom, you can't say it during a game." Clearly some of the things our student section chanted during basketball games in the late 90's would have crossed that line (those chants were directed at the officials). On the flip side, trash-talking is part of any competitive situation, particularly sports. Obviously you want to avoid personal attacks and things that are vile and vulgar, but do we think our kids will cry when the opposing fans chant "Warm up the bus!" in the waning minutes of a blowout? And then the girl who told the WIAA to eat doo-doo in a tweet gets suspended when they alert school officials. Is there even a precedent for that? Seems to be the social-media equivalent of walking past the WIAA building and giving them the finger. That gets you suspended from school and athletic activities when it doesn't happen on school grounds now?

Yeah, they make reference to this a couple of times. Finn says he was "stolen away from my family as a child, like we all were" or something to that effect. Kylo Ren also says to General Hux, after questioning the competency of the Stormtroopers, "Perhaps we should send in a Clone army." which Hux quickly rebukes. That makes me now think that Snoke does indeed have a Clone army somewhere at his disposal.

While most of it was recycled, they definately had a new John Williams score for the First Order/Kylo Ren.

Yes, this is much more malicious than initially reported. His defense is basically, "Hey, I went poking around because we think they stole our stuff/database design." But he was accessing this information on the most critical of days, and after being shut out he accesses Luhnow's email address (likely correctly guessing that he was using the same damn password for that as well) to gain access again. That's a pretty serious pattern of events. The judge summarized it basically saying, "So you broke into their house to see if they stole your stuff?" Which is the same sort of incident that landed OJ Simpson in prison in Nevada. Only difference here is that it happened in an online environment, and the guy broke in several times, likely took information back with him, and then broke in again after they changed to the locks. Does anyone think this guy was a rogue and kept this information to himself? Or do you think this information was disseminated across the organization to gain a competitive advantage? If he rolls on his employer, or it can otherwise be proved that information was shared within the organization, the hammer should come down much heavier on them for not self-reporting this and dismissing Correa immediately.

Hmmm. The amateur scouting database has to be called Genuine Draft, right?

I believe after the Cushing incident (combined with other similar situations), the NFL attempted to rectify that by declaring any player who had been suspended for PED's would be disqualified from post-season accolades such as the Pro Bowl. I think that extends to awards such as MVP and ROY, but I'm not sure. I think many of those voters wanted to change their votes, but the fact that such a situation was unprecedented swayed them to keep the vote the same. John Kuhn being named to the Pro Bowl as a replacement for the now-suspended Marcel Reece is an example of this new program.

The last 5 coaches to have been fired from the AFC North were all the head coach of the Cleveland Browns. They have hit the reset button more than any team in recent memory. I thought they might actually try something smart this offseason (I don't know why I would ever give them the benefit of the doubt), but then the first thing they did after cleaning house was to move the general counsel (head lawyer) to run the football department AND have final say over the 53 man roster. Good luck attracting those up and coming GM prospects when they won't even have control over who's on the roster.

It definitely seems like the "perfect" matchup would be a team that would prefer to keep Davis primarily as a DH, and then play LF when the team faces a lefty. Maximizes his upside (gets his bat into the lineup) and mitigates his weakness (defense). Who most fits the bill there? Rangers? Angels?

No kidding. Football games today consist of 10 seconds of actual play, the refs standing around talking for 2 minutes, a challenge, a review, the refs standing and discussing things with coaches, then a huddle, then the players get set for the next play only to call a timeout because they play clock is about to hit 0 then after another minute or two another 10 second play. Lather, rinse, repeat. Glass houses. There's not too much difference between the two. Per a 2013 WSJ study, baseball games feature 18 minutes of actual action with the ball in play (which would include each pitch, not just a batted ball in play). In a similar WSJ study from 2010, NFL games feature 11 minutes. Which means for both sports, you are spending the vast majority of the game (3 hours or more) watching people standing around or in a commercial break. Either way, I don't think there's a correlation between game pace/action and the enjoyment of the sport. Otherwise we'd all be huge basketball & soccer fans. I think people have other issues with blame pacing, without understanding that both are pretty similar in terms of when something meaningful happens on the field.

I really, really hope this isn't a case of Islamophobia due to their name, but respected journalists know that Al Jazeera is a very credible news organization. This reporter's work, however, seems to be pretty suspect since they're not going by the "two sources" rule before going to print. They're just taking a pharmacy intern's statements and running with it. Some of the details he threw out there make me think that there may be some truth here. Sure, it's one thing to toss big names like Manning, Clay Matthews, etc. But naming Mike Neal (who nobody outside of GB is familiar with), who went to college in-state at Purdue (the clinic is in Indianapolis), and has been suspended before for PED's, makes me think there could be something there.

A football fan would probably say your last sentence applies much more to baseball than their sport of choice. The pace is much slower in baseball, but that's the inherent nature of the sport. If the batter doesn't put the ball in play, you're just watching two dudes play catch. I'd say the excitement/nervousness level felt while watching the two sports don't even compare. Football packs in way more excitement in three hours than baseball in my opinion. The parity in football, along with a more compact number of games and more playoff teams, means that it's much more likely a less talented team may make the playoffs so nobody really writes their team off before opening day. For the most part, you can't say that about baseball. We fully expect the Brewers to be brutal for the next 2-3 seasons by design.

Yeah, it feels like Rey is either a Skywalker (my thinking is via Leia/Solo give her instant rapport with Han), with an outside chance at being a Kenobi relative. What about Supreme Leader Snoke? He appears to know the ways of the Dark Side, and wants to complete the training of Kylo Ren. So the assumption is that he/it is a Sith Lore. His appearance closely, but not precisely, resembles a Munn so it's a possibility that he's an incarnation of Darth Plagueis. But since he/it's a hologram, it could be anyone. One thought that blew my mind was the possibility that Snoke could be either Luke or Leia pulling a long con playing both sides like Palpatine did before them.

See my explanation of the theory about Luke wiping minds so they would forget "Rey." Also, although the force-sensitivity certainly can pass down from parents (specifically the Skywalker lineage), that's never been laid out as the only way. How else would Luke have been training a whole new generation of Jedi before the Ren Slaughter? Also, there's the whole Jedis are forbidden to marry and have children thing. Also, I read a pretty good article regarding how Anakin was really meant to bring balance to the Force: by being the first moderate Jedi, who embraced love. Both the Jedi and Sith seem to think "balance" is the complete extermination of the other, so isn't it natural that in order to bring balance to too sides, you have to walk the line between the two extremes? Perhaps Luke realizes this, which could result in the possibility that Rey is his daughter if he did allow himself to love.

The goal is to win a World Championship, and the path for the Brewers to get there is for them to attain as many young, cost-controlled high-upside players as they can. In order to do this with their limited resources, they have to a) trade off the assets they have now that will yield a better return in the future than the current assets; and b) exploit their main avenue of talent acquisition - the amateur draft. Signing placeholders to add a few more wins is counterproductive to the overall strategy. I'd rather they stick the extra money in scouting & international talent acquisition than signing guys like Pedro Alvares and Venerable.

I think the original trilogy established that people can use the force without little or no training. Luke had just started training with Obi Wan and he was blocking shots with the blast shield down. Leia could feel that Luke got off the Death Star before it exploded. Also, one of Rey's visions when she touches the light saber appears to be of Kylo and the Knights of Ren killing Luke's students. If that vision was a repressed memory, Rey likely would have had some force training before she was left on Jakku. I had more issue with how Finn was apparently the only Stormtrooper in the galaxy that could shoot straight and how he held his own for a while against Kylo. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Rey is a survivor of the Ren Slaughter and was a young pupil of Luke. Her immediate rapport with Han Solo has me thinking that she is the younger sister of Ben Solo, but she escaped the slaughter (or was spared by a brother who was not yet willing to kill his own sister). Knowing that Ben Solo could read minds and extract information this way, Luke wipes the memory of "Rey" from her own mind, and the minds of those around her including her parents. She's then left on Jakku with a protector (the "old ally" from the beginning of the film - and her prices at the pawn shop for her scavenged parts are suddenly worth less after he dies) in a Luke/Obi-Wan type scenario. She's able to wield the lightsaber and use other Force skills because those dormant skills have been re-activated. You could almost say.. the Force has been Awakened...

He's another lefty at the plate, who apparently can play CF pretty well. Agree that he's another possible candidate for our starting CF this year, perhaps in a platoon situation.

One of them is cheap for several years and can be moved on from at anytime without consequence, and may also be a significant trade chip. The other is Pedro Alvarez.

That's the part that is confusing me. Pursuing Alvarez (if we really are) seems like a classic Doug Melvin move, and counterintuitive to what we've seen from Stearns. We have three players (Braun, Lucroy, Garza) signed to actual contracts for more than one year. If Alvarez is going to a) require a multi-year deal; b) not come cheap; c) need a platoon partner; and d) provide terrible defense during a time when we want to build up the confidence of a young pitching staff, what is the purpose of signing him? I'd honestly rather sign a no-hit defense-first player to man 1B than a guy with the skillset of Alvarez. If his price comes down and will sign a 1 year deal (with maybe an option), I'd potentially be fine with that move if the logic is that you're giving up minimal assets (cash) in exchange for a potential deadline trade chip to acquire a few more lottery tickets under team control.

I see what you did there.

This part is always hazy (we went through the same thing with Wang), but I feel like the player has to be waived first, which gives any other MLB team the chance to assume the Rule 5 responsibilities of keeping him on their 25 man roster. The Brewers could only work out a trade with the original team if he passed through waivers and technically already reverts back to that team. Then he'd be free to be traded back to the selecting team (or any other for that matter) if they can agree to terms, and the selecting team could option the player to the minors. At least that's how I understand it.

Another report says the Red Sox were targeting Chapman and discovered this incident while doing a background check, and shifted focus to Kimbrel instead. Which raises a few questions, some more important than others. When the Red Sox found out about this, did they alert the MLB offices? Were the Reds even aware of this incident since no charges were filed? It's interesting that the media was tipped off when the Dodgers made this discovery (I'm assuming they discovered it during their background check/due diligence before consumating the deal), yet no one in the media knew about it when the Red Sox were digging into his history. Manfred needs to get out in front of this and have full transparency into at least when they knew about the incident, so they don't end up with a Ray Rice/Roger Goodell nightmare scenario where they pretend to not know about certain things going on. But these things will take some time since it's new territory for them. Have we heard any ruling on Jose Reyes after his DV incident?

That's the way you'd have to do it without expanding rosters. The "starters" would have to adjust to the new schedule. You'd probably have to carry more than the one customer long-man in the pen in case the regularly scheduled starter is too fatigued. Pitchers, moreso than any other position in probably any sport, are creatures of habit who have a mindset of knowing what their role is on a team. This would definitely be a shift mentally as well as physically.

When the Brewers told him that they were going to remove him from the rotation in September to take a look at younger players, he reacted predictably (with anger). The team responded by sending him home for the rest of the season and told him to stay there. I don't think that conversation will change, since Garza knows the best way to earn another contract next offseason is to pitch well in the starting rotation. I don't think he's going to play nice with a plan that involves a demotion to the pen.

To satisfy the union (and make this feasible) you'd have to expand rosters or look at the taxi squad idea. More players making MLB money = more union dues. One way to satisfy the pitchers is to completely do away with the "Pitching Wins/Losses" statistic. It's basically a useless stat as it is. If that stat is eliminated, you're not longer judged on it.