rluzinski

I know I'm way late but I paused the game. I just wanted to point out how ASININE it is not to pinch hit for your starter in the bottom of 6th inning with the bases loaded. What are you going to get, another inning from a starter who's probably already gone through the lineup two or three times? It's obvious what you should do. Most managers do the same asinine crap, so this is not supposed to be another Yost bash. It's pathetic how terrible the average manager really is in the majors.

Ypou know why people focus on the managers to a great degree? Because the stupid broadcasts spend 2/3rds of every inning talking about how great and important managers are. Um, HELLO. Someone has to call for the intentional walks and sacrifice squeezes.

Remember when we were worried about Kendall's arm? I sure was. Not worried anymore. Come on Parra. I want to be playing for the sweep with Sheets pitching tomorrow!

"he has no batting eye" Come on. That's not even close to being fair. I don't think he does either. He takes a lot of pitches but they are equally balls and strikes. Check out fangraphs.com.

The long and short of the theory is that you use your second best reliever in the 9th, and your best releiver when you need him most. And your third best reliever might start the 8th. Your 4th best might start the 7th. There's plenty of room for Gagne in another role, if it comes to that. He doesn't have to close.

Why should we believe that Yost is the only guy ho has input with regard to whether Gagne is closing or not? I doubt if he even has the biggest input.

Parra goes 5 scoreless, gives up 2 in the 6th, Yost chats with him, he gives up 3 more and exits I'm sure people predicted 6th inning blowups for Bush and Villy the last 2 days as well.

There's some pretty good year to year FB/Change up PitchFX data analysis over at BCB. Thanks for the links. I need to get into a habit of checking that site more often. I never realized that John Kaulk ffrom Hardballtimes.com was the same guy as dixieflatline from brewcrewball.com. Does he ever post over here?

It would be pretty simple to use gameday to see if he threw more fastballs his last appearance(and the 2 inning appearance?), compared to his the other 2008 outings. Their pitch classifications aren't the greatest but it's easy to pick out the fastballs from velocity alone. It did seem like he threw a lot of fastballs last night.

Pessimist? Optimist? Is it OK just to try and answer sports related questions objectively? For this poll, unless you thought the Brewers were a truly horrible team, it wasn't realistic to have expected them to never get over .500 again during ANY point of the remainder of the season. Remember, that's a very different question than asking if a team will FINISH over .500. A "true" .500 team (as in actual talent, not current record) that starts the season 16-17 would be hard pressed not to briefly stumble over .500 over the remaining 129 games, wouldn't they? Let's take a quick look. Not sure what the "right" way to calculate this is (in contrast, calculating the odds to finish the season with a certain record is pretty straight forward), so I just simulated it, giving the Brewers exactly the same chance of winning each of their remaining 129 games. I kept lowering the team's "true talent" until it was more likely not to ever go over .500 at any point: http://i27.tinypic.com/20pv5l3.jpg If I'm doing this correctly (as always, I appreciate people keeping me honest) if you thought the Brewers were basically a .500 team going forward, while they would have only a 43% chance of finishing over .500, they would have a 85.5% chance of being over .500 at some point over their remaining 129 games. They would have to be a true 67 win team before it would be more likely that they never get over .500. Either fans were weighing the 6 game losing streak too heavily when trying to estimate the true talent of the team or they didn't realize how easy it is for even a bad team to stumble over .500 at some point is. Probably a little of both.

OOOOOOOoooooo no. With tonight's loss to the Pirates, the bestest team ever now only has a 2 game lead on the dead-in-the-water Brewers. Must just be a minor hickup. I mean, they have LaRussa!!!

I'm starting to think that this has nothing to do with Yost/Gallardo/momentum after all. We stink on the road. We win at home. Nothing more to it. Or maybe there isn't some artificially simple explanation? Naaaa. I blame late episodes of Cheers!

Well, that didn't take very long. 18.4% proven wrong. Let's hope 50% more (which includes me) is proven wrong before the season is up. Long season, people.

Get Shouse out there for Pierre! EDIT: I was TOTALLY kidding. Never doubted that lovable Canuck.

Gagne throwing 93-94 according to pitch f/x

Another non-error/bad defensive play by Weeks. I don't want to hear anymore how the Brewers are statistically a good defensive team!

Well, Mota is warming up as well, so maybe gagne will have a short leash?

I don't like it only because he pitched 2 innings for like the first time in his career (yes, I'm exaggerating) yesterday. It just seems odd. That said, at least it's a 2 run lead, so he doesn't have to be perfect.

Gagne gets demoted, pitches 2 mediocre innings yesterday.... time to get back on the horse! Man, sometimes I think there are no real plans around these parts.

Brewer the game: Penny: 4.69 ERA Villy: 6.46 ERA Through 5 innings: Penny: 5.19 ERA Villy: 6.14 ERA Still time to catch him, Villy! Only 64 pitches through 5 innings, so he could go for 2-3 more innings, easy.

Braun!!!! Man, that guy is hitting balls hard right now. EDIT: So, Pierre can't hit and has a laughable arm. Sign that guy to a multi-year deal and put him in Left Field! How the hell did the brewers show any interest in that guy?

Schroeder just said that was a tough pitch for Weeks to take with 2 strikes. Everyone, drink 5.

Villy's walk rate is actually down so far this year. He's just given up a milliion bombs and hasn't had an above average LOB% like last year. His core numbers last year really weren't anything to get excited about to begin with.

Hey look, the Brewers are trying to make things happen! Yes! EDIT: That Hall HR should would have looked nice with Hart still at 2B.

Fielder has had about 1,000 groundouts to the 1B or 2B (playing in the hole) the last couple of weeks. Come on, big guy!