pebadger

It's nice to see Prince not just give away that AB. And, yes, I'm serious. Nice to see some sort of competitveness in this game.

I don't think of myself as old but when they listed Posey's DOB on the big board at Miller Park on Monday, and it was a full year after I graduated from HS, it did get me thinking. I don't know how good he will be but he's killing the Crew this series at least.

We also have a 1% chance of making the playoffs.They better not come back and win this then because there is no way they'll hit two 99-1 shots in the same season.

Gamecast has the Giants win percentage at 99%, so they're telling me the Brewers still have a chance.

Let Counsell pitch an inning.

I very rarely have problems with my satellite getting knocked out by the weather but we're getting a pretty big soaker right now and I just lost the signal. Didn't even phase me.

I hope hawing gets a foul ball tonight. There has to be some reward in this for years of faithful support and then hoping against hope for tonight.

Poor fundamentals has been an organizational defect for a long time. Certainly longer than Macha has been around. Not that I think Macha deserves to stay, but it seems to me that Macha has just been the ineffective pilot of a shiny but mechanically defective vessel. That said, you don't have to be the best team in baseball to make the playoffs. You only have to beat the pretty underwhelming NL Central. I don't know if that is a greater reason to hope for a brighter future or to rue the fact that this team has failed to accomplish more in this stretch.

I think what the JJH was getting at (and I don't know what the current numbers are) is that the Brewers tend to win in blowouts and lose everything else, at least with a far greater freqency than most other teams do. That really isn't any way to run a railroad unless you plan on blowing people out all the time. Maybe they're just unlucky and there is little validity to the idea that winning close games over some acceptably-sufficient sample size is about competing at a higher level than your opponent.

Every team changes every season. Sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. The sample size of 162 is really about the best sample size you're going to get. And, in terms of making the playoffs, it's the only sample size that matters. I won't argue against luck, because luck is a vastly underrated factor in just about every facet of life. That said, I am reminded of the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when Butch, Sundance and Etta step off the train at their very primitve, very dirty destination in Bolivia. Butch says that all of Bolivia can't be that bad, and Sundance counters that it could be that they are right then standing in the garden spot of the entire country. It just seems that every time luck is brought up on this site that it is to say that things aren't really that bad, when in fact maybe they are. Maybe the Brewers are actually fortunate to have the wins they do. In the end it doesn't matter in that Brewers are where they are and there needs to be some clear-headed assessment of how they want to handle their internal player personnel issues going forward. It would help if this franchise had a consistent, long-standing approach/philosophy when it comes to talent assessment, development, and retention but they don't. At least not in the way some of the better organizations do. The Brewers were sort of fortunate in that they had a good group of young players all come up and perform well in a given window, but that sort of hit-and-miss approach is way too luck-based to work over any extended period of time. For the Brewers it has been one hit per quarter century. I'm not all that happy with Doug Melvin, but he's much better than what has come before. Ownership needs to decide if Doug is the guy to put into place a larger organizational philosophy that can serve as a blueprint after he is gone, or if he is just a guy who will try to assemble teams on an ad-hoc basis over some collection of identified shorter-term windows of opportunity.

This team has been bad for a full year of baseball. Even in their recent good seasons this has not been team that has shown sustained excellence. They made the playoffs largely due to CC and yet another Mets collapse. In 2007 they raced out to a big lead and then proceeded to give it all away. 2006 was a disaster, Everybody was just happy to make it back to .500 in 2005. This is a franchise that, even in these new quasi-glory days by Milwaukee standards, has been clawing and scratching just to edge themselves into the picture of respectability when viewed from a broader perspective. This doesn't mean that the Brewers aren't a bad baseball team right now. They are. But it does help to temper some of the disappointment that I feel anyway. The legacy of a quarter century of being a rudderless saiboat in a competition that is largely dominated by nuclear-powered aircraft carriers can't be erased overnight.

Not only could it be all kinds of things, it probably is all kinds of things. Injury, mental approach attributable to what is happening baseball-wise, mental approach attributable to non-baseball factors in his life, mechanical variances in his swing, eyesight, opposing pitching strategy, opposing pitching execution, luck.

Well at least they hit the ball and scored a baserunner. Maybe they can do that twice tomorrow.

The difference between today's and yesterday's game is that Sanchez was wild and gave the Brewers a run. Otherwise, they're pretty much the same.

Sadly, watching to see if Hart can stretch his hit streak to 21 is about all the entertainment value that remains in this one. And maybe the rest of the first half.

Well, if the defense turns an easy double play that wouldn't have been possible without the IBB (because nobody can hold on runners), Macha looks smarter than he might otherwise. Let's face it. This is just a bad baseball team right now. Maybe they are capable of playing better but they haven't for a long, long time. That is what makes them bad.

It's now a full 27 innings since the Brewers got a runner on base and then scored that runner with a batted ball. Working on 28 here.

It's amazing how unlucky this team is.

This team plays in the worst division in baseball. Making the playoffs even with a not very good team can happen in this division in any given year, though it may be that you also need a really good team in some years. It's all in how everything falls out. If you keep Fielder, Hart, et al, and catch a few breaks, this division is there for the taking. The question then is whether it is worth risking the loss of those players with no talent in return to take that shot at winning the division. As weak as this division is, I think the gambler would say yes. Say you lose those guys and get not a lot in return. How much behind the rest of the Central are you? Probably not all that far. I don't know that I totally buy all this argument, but it's certainly not all that far-fetched, either.

I think you are correct, logan. And one of the broadcasters passed that on to us fans. Thanks.

I think somebody mentioned this before in a thread, but I don't like the whole notion of pigeon-holing a team as a buyer or seller. The team should simply be trying to get better. The only transaction that is truly a "sale" is a straight salary dump. This organization needs to develop a plan and then make transactions in which they actually use assets they have now to acquire assets that will help them meet their goals. You may say that this is semantics, and to an extent that is true, but they are semantics that evidence a certain mindset. "Sellers" are pessimists and prone to giving away the store out of frustration. "Buyers" are often overly-optimistic and their focus on short-term goals sometimes blinds them to the big picture, causing them to overpay for the things they want now. It's all about value, and value is very often about timing. I don't care if Prince gets traded now, or over the winter or next year, or never, so long as the price is right. I honestly don't care if they make a move at all this season, so long as they don't just make a move to make a move, or make a bad one. It's hard for fans to evaluate this stuff in the here and now since we aren't privy to the internal goings on.

Everybody is pointing out the error that squelched the double play chance today, and rightly so, but one of the recorded hits in that inning prior to the error was a ball that a decent shortstop has to make a play on as well. As of right now, Escobar is nowhere near what Hardy brought to the team. They may post similar numbers in terms of avg and obp, but Hardy has more pop in his bat. And JJ's defense was simply an entire tier above what Escobar is bringing. I forget if it was BA or Daron Sutton who used the phrase "He turns outs into outs" with JJ. Nobody will be using that with Escobar any time soon.

Well, some day at the ball park. The game was absolutely not worth the 3 hour ride down (and back again). But being there with family, having a successful tailgate without rain, tremendous seats in Section 218 (a Father's Day surprise from the wife), and, topping it off, getting a baseball for my daughter (one of Burrell's many fouls in his 12-pitch AB in the second) made it all worthwhile. I could say a whole lot about the team that has already been said, and probably worse, but as my father-in-law said at dinner after the game, "I'm not happy with the Brewers but this was still a great day."

Nice, Craig. Villa attempting to limit the damage. Not unlike guarding the petty cash draw after the vault has been cleared out at the bank.

Well, I can always look forward to a long drive tomorrow for a rained-out tailgate followed by a heaping helping of whatever ace pitcher they decide to throw out there.