pebadger

If it were an NBA playoffs commercial I'd be worried.

Prediction: Despite clinching only second division title in franchise history, bf.net continues to read like a University of Minnesota sports message board. Fact: Unless St Louis wins their series in Philadelphia, the Brewers can get swept on the coming road trip and still control their own path to the division title. My guess is that neither of those things happens and people expend their energy hoping the Brewers avoid the Phillies instead of just taking them on and beating them.

If the magic number is still six or higher on Tuesday morning, this board will be among the most entertaining reads on the internet.

The way this gets to be a big deal is if people make it a big deal. K-Rod didn't just wake up and feel this way. He's felt this way for a while, as he makes clear in his comments. Despite that, he's still done a fine job in the role he has. K-Rod knows full well that things will likely work out best for him if he doesn't rock the boat. None of this mattered until the guy from CBS made it matter. I don't know what we as fans really expect from these guys sometimes. We don't want them to speak their minds, but we don't want them to be phonies. K-Rod answered the questions asked honestly. The writer is the one who injected loaded words like "betrayal" into the story. I'm guessing people have known from the day he got here that he wants to close. So long as that desire doesn't disrupt things, how is that any different than any other guy wanting a bigger role but subordinating that desire to the needs of the team and playing his role the best he can? I'm guessing that characterization applies to more than one guy on most big league rosters.

A player passes the minimum talent culling process in A-ball. A player learns how to play the game at a higher level in AA. He learns how to be a professional in AAA. If your organization has a strong minor league system, he learns at all these steps along the way what is most important to the culture of that organization. The smart ones use that knowledge to make the trip to the majors easier. My take-away is that Gamel is having trouble figuring out what it means to really be a major league professional. Unless you're just outstanding and force your way into a lineup, it's about more than just being productive on the field (and even then you can't be a turd in the punchbowl). Gamel isn't the first guy that has struggled with this aspect of making the transition to the majors. People in all sorts of professions have intermediate goals they must meet to get where they want to go. Sometimes the really special people get to avoid punching those tickets. Problems arise when people who think they are special don't see eye-to-eye with the guy who is making them jump through the hoops anyway. When the player realizes he doesn't get to make that decision and then either a) jumps through the hoops or b) makes himself so good that jumping through the hoops becomes irrelevant, he will give himself a chance at the next level. If he doesn't he won't, and he won't get a whole lot of sympathy from all those who came before him who had to make the same tough transition. This isn't to excuse the Brewers if they are treating Gamel unfairly. Honestly though, it's a pretty tough argument to make convincingly. There is a long-running pattern of evidence here that Gamel is more responsible for his status than is the organization. I'm sure it's been frustrating for him at times, but such is life on the way to the big leagues. There isn't a single non-superstar in the Brewers clubhouse that hasn't had to clear all those same hurdles. If you want to be treated like a superstar, be a superstar. Otherwise suck it up and earn your way onto the roster by doing what is asked of you. Focus on how people are trying to help you as opposed to how you perceive them as trying to hurt you. On the outside looking in all this stuff may seem stupid, but it is what it is, and it matters. Taylor Green may have had more of an opening to get up with the club, but it also seems pretty apparent that he has done what he needs to do to satisfy management and his teammates that he is ready for the responsibility of being part of, and contributing to, a major league roster. It's not just about the success TG has had in his limited opportunities with the club, though that certainly helps. It's his approach to those opportunities that matters. What I'm taking away from the comments about Gamel is that there is some concern in the organization about how he has approached the opportunities he has been given, concern about how he has reacted to the evaluation of his performance in those opportunities and concern about his attitude toward earning more opportunities. I don't know that all the comments needed to be made. On the other hand, it may well be that the Brewers are at the end of their rope with Gamel. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the coming Spring Training is, one way or the other, probably the end of the line for Gamel in the Brewers minor league system. Either he figures it out and makes a place for himself on the big club or he'll be somewhere else. I don't think any of what was said comes as a surprise to any other organization that is really paying attention. After this season Gamel's trade value is pretty much set. All that remains to be seen is whether Gamel wants to be a big league player for the Brewers or if he wants to prove to another organization the same things he hasn't yet proved to the Brewers.

Fitting. 8 for 8. Edit: Nice, rawbecht. Had the same thing queued up.

Most teams do have a losing record against teams with a winning record. Most teams also don't make the playoffs. In terms of the NL's six winning teams facing of with one another, the Phils have the best current record at 22-18. They are currently 3-1-1 in their season series against those teams. Only STL has a winning record against the Phils of the NL contenders (at 3-2). That may well change by the end of the coming weekend. The Brewers and D-Backs are the two of these 6 squads that have losing records against the other winning teams. The Crew is 21-26 and hasn't won a single series against the best NL competition (they also got smoked by the AL East). Arizona is 18-22 but with the season series win against the Brewers. So even the Phils aren't greatly above .500 against the top NL teams (with 7 games remaining against the Braves and Cards), but they have also unsurprisingly been the best against other good teams. On the other hand, of all the performances by contenders against the other best teams in the NL, the Brewers' has been the worst. To me those raw numbers don't necessarily mean a whole lot, but they do prompt one to wonder and maybe give the results of each of those series a closer look in a search for common threads.

http://www.scrollinondubs.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/9voltBattery.jpg

It's fun to read these threads after being at the ballpark. Let's just say that in being there I had a distinctly different perspective on certain things than people here. Not that either is right or wrong, just different. For example, I didn't see Yo as making a baserunning mistake in not scoring. Was in 226 today and the whole think unfolded right in front of me. My thought as it was unfolding was that if Yo had tried to score he would have been dead at the plate, or at the very least involved in what may have been a collision. Yes, the Brewers had a tough time getting timely hits, but Worley was tough. And they did square up a few balls that were just caught. I thought today was just a pretty good ball game with pretty good pitching throughout. Yo's day was his season in a nutshell. Great win for the Crew after the disappointment of Saturday night.

Heading down to the big city for both games this weekend. To replicate my usual Saturday night Brewers WMLW viewing experience, I plan on wrapping my head in a layer of gauze tonight. Anybody know if they make gold gauze?

Some perspective: Cincinatti is closer to St Louis in the standings than St Louis is to Milwaukee. Milwaukee is playing Philly now. St Louis plays them next week. In Philadelphia. Same four game series. Even if the Brewers get swept by the Phils and the Cards sweep Atlanta, simply going 7-7 the rest of the way forces the Cards to finish 13-3 to TIE for the lead. In other words, unless the Cards WIN the series in Philly, they would have to go unbeaten against everyone else to beat the Brewers if the Brewers play .500 against the Rockies, Reds, Cubs Pirates and Marlins. Having the Crew win just 1 this weekend and go .500 the rest of the way means that the Cards can only lose 2 games the rest of the season and still force a tie. In other words, the Cards would be required to at least split in Philly to have any chance whatsoever. Frankly, if the Brewers don't win the division they will never have been the most deserving it in the first place.

Keeps the pressure on the Crew. If the Cards win 3 of 4 from the Phils in Philly and the Brewers are losing to bad teams I'll start to worry.

And Kimbrel blows the save. Extras in STL.

Braves lead 3-1 heading to bottom 9 in STL.

Well, another great night of Friday night football. Didn't expect them to beat Halladay. The Phils are steamrolling everyone right now. Not sure I see the shame in this.

Thanks for mentioning this first. Now I won't feel responsible for jinx-by-thought. The good thing about the sweep suits debacle is that it's sort of a touchstone for a lot of otherwise great memories for me of events that happened exactly when that whole thing played out.

The day they impose the DH on everyone should also be the day they decide to allow aluminum bats. I mean, why not just go all the way and turn parks into freakin' pinball machines? Given the economic disparities already at work, I tend to think that homogenizing the leagues will even further widen the gap between haves and have nots in terms of player acquisition and retention. I'm all for well thought-out changes. I just don't see a lot of that in play with a lot of these proposals that are leaking out.

Shocking.

Just to make the lists a bit more equivalent, is there a list of guys drafted but unsigned by the Crew who turned out that we can add to the rant? The perfect answer here is "they didn't have any of those, either" (and I really don't recall any), but I'm curious as to the real answer.

I wanted Green to come up and and get significant playing time a long time ago. Check the Free Taylor Green thread. That ship has sailed. And I never said it would "destroy" team chemistry to play him, or even that chemistry was the end-all and be-all of this team. What I did say, in a long-winded way, is that chemistry matters. If you're going to say that it's a big deal that a player might be worth 2 games in a season, it's hard to argue that the fudge factors in there like chemistry might not also be worth that same amount of games. And I've also posted plenty of criticsm of RR in the various in-game threads and elsewhere. With that in mind, my argument is that as a leader you don't just say: "You know what? We're going to just completely disregard everything we've done in terms of managing personnel with this team at this point in the season and go in a completely different direction. W'ere going to just flat out tell guys they aren't good enough. We're going to revamp the rotation that has worked so far. You know, just to shake things up." Rather, you find a way to do things more slowly, in some sort of rational way that gets people on board with change. The players will be receptive to change that they believe in. You don't impose change on them that they don't beleive in. That is what undermines chemistry, or confidence or beleif or whatever other names you want to give to the intangible psychological stuff that matters over the course of a season. Management builds that belief by giving guys chances within the team structure they have built. They give guys chances they have earned. They use the results of those chances as the basis for their decisionmaking going forward. I find it hard to believe that others find it hard to beleive that a player wants to a) have confidence in his teammates and b) that in a conflict between a known quantity and an unknown quantity, teammates will prefer to rely on teammates that they know. I'm not an RR apologist. He's done plenty I don't agree with. But he's simply not in a spot where he can just disregard the human side of managing real people as well as worrying about some sort of idealized, "objective" assessment of what the numbers say might be a marginally more effective lineup. He has 140+ games of experience with this particular group, plus spring training, finding out who is who and what works and doesn't work. Sure, he'd probably love to have some different options that are clearly better in some spots. I don't see that he has those options, or, at the very least, that these changes that many see as "no brainers" are anywhere close to being so. A big part of that analysis for him absolutely has to include his primary duty of managing *people* in addition to making in-game decisions.

Nice false dichotomy and misrepresentation. Here's an idea: Maybe Carpenter and Hamels are really good. Maybe last night's game turned from a game that could have gone either way with one swing of the bat to a game that was out of reach due to two misplays by the best defensive outfielder on the roster and one bang-bang call at 1st base that went against the Crew. Maybe no matter who the Brewers put in the lineup or in what order they hit them or what saviors people thing they have in the minors they still aren't as good as the Phillies in some sort of objective (and relatively meaningless) sense. Maybe they're going to need to catch lightning in a bottle to beat the Phils in any post-season series. Maybe the Phils will actually find themselves in a bit of a slump eventually. Maybe it is a good idea to create doubt and uncertainty by jettisonning much of what they've done to post what will likely be the best regular season record in franchise history. Or maybe you can take time to continue to integrate the new pieces with the old and slowly build everyone's confidence in changes that are being made (or at least considered). Last I checked there are no elimination games on the schedule until October. Green is getting his time. Gomez is getting re-integrated into the rotation. For whatever reason, spanning multiple managers, Gamel hasn't been seen as an fulfilling any immediate need. The Brewers are already quite close to surpassing the number of wins projected for them for the entire season in early September. Maybe, just maybe, they ARE maximizing the talent that is there.

After a lot of study I've determined that if the Brewers win 3 of 5 against the Phils in the NLDS they still go to the NLCS. And they probably won't have to beat Hamels with Narveson to do it.

This made me laugh. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

Yes, unfortunate. But still, Narveson in the 6th. Seen this one already.

It would be great to have a home field advantage in the NLDS, but I'm more concerned about them just playing well. If they play the Phillies in the NLDS then they have to beat the Phillies in the NLDS. The conventional wisdom is that a 7 game series is to the advantage of the better team anyway, so why not take your best shot in a 5-game series and get it over with. In a way this is almost like worrying "how far" your team goes in the NCAA basketball tournament. There really isn't much difference in losing your second game or losing your third game; we just put a tidy name on making it to the Sweet 16, even if you get there in large part because a team from the Sun Belt (or wherever) did most of the heavy lifting for you. The goal is to win a championship, not crow (or complain) about the road you take to get there. My expectation is that the Brewers play well, but not get overly excited about using this series as some sort of predictive measuring stick. These four games in September don't mean a whole lot with respect to the games they may play against the same opponent in October. My hope is that the Brewer come away from this homestand with at least 3 well-played wins. That virtually puts away the division title. To put a negative spin on it, winning 3 before going back on the road means that the Brewers can flat out lose every series from now until the season's end (so long as they don't get swept) and the Cards would still have to go 15-4 just to force a 1-game playoff. Other than that I hope that TG continues to get some meaningful innings and ABs. I want the pen to have to face some pressure innings again. I want to see the team not looking overwhelmed or overanxious or looking like they are trying to prove something. The Phils almost certainly won't be any of those things. Just play good baseball and let the chips fall where they may. If they lose, make it be because Philly was the better team this weekend and not because the Brewers kicked the ball around and lost their cool and/or their confidence.