Fatter than Joey

As far as I'm concerned, Suppan was kept around as insurance this year. Once the Brewers had 2 months to see that they had enough pitchers in the majors and in AAA that were better than Suppan and healthy, they let him go. It really wouldn't have made much sense to cut Suppan before Riske was healthy, before Capuano was ready, before having a somewhat decent sample of seeing Axford and Braddock and Loe and feeling comfortable with them on the major league roster. This is my feeling as well -- Plus Parra, Narveson and Bush were big enough question marks as well going into the season. But there was absolutely no justification whatsoever for keeping him in the rotation after spring training, other than his contract. Well, he was going to get paid one way or the other, it was sensible to let him fail before cutting him loose. Not anymore of a wake up call than Narveson shold be to the Cards brass. They had Narveson but had no idea how good he could be because they never gave him enough starts to find out. I really don't see Narveson as a good starter either... I am concerned that he won't be able to get RH batters out consistently. It's clearly their fault for ever needing Suppan in the first place. Injuries to Lohse and Penny are probably the biggest reason that the Cards needed to sign Suppan. They tried some of their AAA guys, and they didn't seem to work out. Suppan has a good history in StL., so it makes some degree of sense to sign him as opposed to some other retread. I suspect that Suppan is a stopgap for the Cards until Penny gets healthy or the make some sort of trade.

Why doesn't TCU, SMU, and Houston just team up with Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A &M and create a Texas Superconference? Haha Baylor+Rice and then you have the old SWC

Why not restart the SWAC? You mean the SWC -- The SWAC is the conference with Jackson St., Grambling, MVSU, etc.

I saw: Cecil Cooper hit 3 Hrs -- which was also the last game Thurman Munson caught Chris Saenz's start.

Gallardo and Wolf have both been better than league average in terms of innings/start, Right and that is different that pitches/start. Yo has a hard time getting through the 6th inning under 100 pitches, its very rare that he does that. Yo has thrown the 3rd most pitches in MLB this year, and the fact that is he is only better than average in innings/start should be somewhat distressing. At the end of the day, Yo needs to be a better and more efficient pitcher, but Macha may very well hurt him along the way.

Missouri makes a ton of sense. They've been really good at hoops the last few years, and it was only a few years ago they were in the national title conversation in football until late in the year. I couldn't agree more -- The Badgers for one, have reaped the St. Louis programs well these last years -- plus this would be a huge rivalry with UI which is more St. Louis-centric than Chicago-centric. Nebraska is a national brand in football. Not so much anymore, but I certainly would like to see them in the Big Ten.

It's fair to blame Macha for the aggregate pitch counts to a degree, but I'm guessing more of that falls on the pitchers who either cannot throw strikes or who don't throw strikes. Right -- It's not as if the high-pitch counts are because Macha is letting his starters pitch the 9th inning, it's because they eclipse 100 pitches in the 4th-5th inning.

TheCrew07's sig says it all. Macha needs to go, and not because of any results this season. A team like the Brewers is going to need a manager that is willing to play young players, and isn't going to play favorites. I am all for firing Macha, but I think this situation is a reason why Melvin should be fired. Lucroy for whatever reason, is not ready to catch MLB pitching. I can understand that the Brewers got put in a jam with Zaun's injury, however it became rather clear quickly, that would need another Zaun type catcher to get us through the year. Why Lucroy is rotting on the Brewers bench is beyond me. They seem to have no plan whatsoever for Lucroy right now. Agreed. Which is more on Melvin than Macha. Agreed, I have said in some past comments that as much as we hated on Yost since he has been gone we have really noticed how good we actually had it. Yost was never a good manager or the answer. I think Yost would have us in a worse spot than Macha does with this team, and terrible bullpen. The more Kottaras plays, the more he is exposed. Agreed, he is a very poor defensive catcher, and his hitting success has been driven by a really high HR rate, and BB rate. I think he would be a great back-up, and I certainly have enjoyed watching him hit, but Kottaras isn't an everyday catcher. Miguel Olivo was available in FA and I was advocating signing him instead of Zaun. Granted it's Colorado, but he's currently hitting .315/.389/.555, and he's thrown out 53% of base stealers. That was a good call on your part. We really need someone like him right now, to get Lucroy back to AAA, and shore up our defense.

I don't think Kottaras is a good defensive catcher -- He doesn't know who is covering 2b in all cases -- I think Weeks has his shortcomings for sure at 2b, however Kottaras is not a fundamentally sound catcher, and I would guess that SBs are as much of his fault for bad transfer, or poor footwork than Weeks's issues. Holliday could have gotten a large jump on the pitcher, and Kottaras could have gotten a bad pitch to throw on as well.

Small sample alert FTJ. I agree with TLB...he seems like he actually uses the "shorten up w/ 2 strikes" approach. Neither TLB or you have provided any sort of evidence to support your statement, so I don't know what you are getting at with your last post, you have not provided any sort of support for your statement small or otherwise -- which is fine, you are certainly are free and able to agree with TLB about his observation, but in reality even if TLB is correct, his data will be too small of a sample as well. Of course TLB states that his observation could be biased, he showed an AB where Gomez in his opinion showed good discipline, I showed one where he showed poor discipline. At the end of the day, I entirely agree with Logan that no matter how thin you slice it, his OBP is way too small. My guess is that Gomez shows better/worse discipline based on the types of pitches he sees rather than the count he is at.

In the 10th, Gomez struck out on a pitch high and clearly out of the zone. I would disagree about his discipline with 2 strikes being any better than his discipline with 0 or 1 strikes.

Jose Lima

What's good enough for Earl is always good enough for me. 2 problems with this -- 1.) Weaver managed primarily in an AL DH era. 2.) Contrary to the hand-waving arguments made, Weaver did in fact bunt when he needed to, and in fact Mark Belanger was one of the better bunters in the game, often among the league leaders. Weaver certainly wasn't a "small ball" manager, however, there are plenty of years where he bunted over the league average. Weaver bunted depending on his personnel and game situation. I agree that Weaver was a great manager, however it is not as if he never bunted.

Emil Sick -- Seattle beer guy, Pilots played in his stadium.

I assume he will be making a "Ted Simmons for the HOF presentation"?

Whoops, you're correct. I saw the 4 inning appearance in late April and assumed he was still starting at that point. Still, my point remains. I don't think he'll be going anywhere until he proves he can't cut it as a reliever. Plus he can start if things with Davis get any more difficult. Also, Vargas and Hoffman are worse pitchers at this point.

Probably an O/U on the wins going forward

Brewer pitchers have issued 164 walks, which is better than four teams: CLE (165), LAA (166), KC (173), NYM (184) You should probably use a rate stat here -- as all the teams have played different amount of games... We have the highest WHIP in MLB. The Diamondbacks have a worse BP than us though -- they are really bad.

While I don't necessarily need the over-the-top personality in a manager, I believe this team does. A young ballclub like this needs a little fire and ice in my opinion and Macha is not that. Watching him manage and seeing him in the dugout does little to inspire and despite what we all feel about these guys (ballplayers in general) should be self-motivators getting to play a game for a ridiculously lavish living, I don't think a majority of them are. I was driving home last night listening to 620AM and this was one of the predominant opinions of the post-game callers. As many of you know I am a big Steeler fan, and when I was a kid the Steelers were coached by a guy named Chuck Noll, who ended up winning 4 Super Bowls. Noll would make Macha look like Richard Simmons as far as motivation was concerned. If you ever listen to interviews about Noll from former players, they all will tell you that Noll never gave once gave a half-time speech, or got his team "fired up". Noll's philosophy was you win games by out-preparing teams, and by each player executing their responsibilities better than their opponents. If you were the type of player that needed to be screamed at, or needed to see the coach drop 360f-bombs, you weren't going to be a Pittsburgh Steeler for very long. I don't think Ken Macha is a good manager, however, I don't buy into the concept that a more animated manager is going to "whip this team into shape". If that is the case, I hope the Brewers make every effort to get rid of those players that need cheerleading as soon as possible. That said, I do thing there are things that a manager can do to motivate and better prepare his team, however, I don't think they are things that the fans are going to see in the dugout or in post-game pressers. I am at the point where I think the Brewers need to be nuked, and re-birthed. I am convinced that Doug Melvin needs to be fired before the ugliness happens. It's not that I feel that DM is a horrible manager of the team, however, I believe we are at the point where we need a fresh perspective on how to rebuild and reload as quickly as possible. I don't think firing Macha will do a thing for this team good or bad in 2010, but I do think ultimately he will get fired rather soon.

Here is a must read, with actual analysis, rather than the standard hand-waving we see all too often.

While that is probably true for an outing or two, I just can't fathom it over an entire month or more, especially with the results he's been getting on the field. If he was mediocre or just a little off, I could buy them overlooking something, but he's been just terrible. Agreed - I don't get the sense that Hoffman is injured -- I think he is toast.

If Hoffman voluntarily retires doesn't he forfeit his salary for the rest of the year? Yes -- He forgoes his salary and the Brewers have the rights to him for a certain amount of time. I believe when Salomon Torres retired, he left $4M on the table. However, if Hoffman is DFA'd and then retires, much like Eric Byrnes, the Brewers would be on the hook for him and his option. Hoffman has most if not all of the leverage here, I'd pretty much kiss that money goodbye. Two, if that were true, fighting an injury for a month+ is incredibly stupid and we must have idiots for managerial/medicine staff. We've been down this road with pitchers pitching when they shouldn't be --- Although, I don't think the injury is anything more than an attempt to save face. The other question I have, is if anyone has seen any stories written relative to his interaction with Rick Peterson. My hope is that they haven't been anywhere near eachother. My fear is that they have. Trevor Hoffman has forgotten more about pitching on the MLB level than Peterson will ever know. I doubt Peterson has had any sort of interaction with Hoffman that would have affected Hoffman's approach. My guess is that Peterson will make observations and suggestions, but if Hoffman listens to them, then that is on Hoffman. It wasn't so much that they re-signed Hoffman, it was when they did it. It was 2 days after the end of last season that he agreed to terms. This was my objection as well -- I suspect it was marketing driven in a large part.

If they do decide to go with a starter, Kameron Loe might be a possibility. He's not on the 40. I don't see the Brewers DFA'ing people right now, especially any pitchers. Stern could be sent down, or Edmonds could go on the DL. I think it will be Estrada.

Braun doesn't seem to be a particularly good defender in LF, so it would be surprising if he would have developed into a better defender at a harder position. I agree -- and it didn't seem like the scouts thought Braun was going to get better either. The other reason for moving Braun off of 3rd, was that he was going to be taken out of late/close games, and you don't ever want to have to take Braun's bat out of the lineup.

Here is the link.... I just thought it was odd, that they would let Hoffman only pitch 3-4 innings out of the blue.