Of course, by virtue of having the domain name, we had a higher-than-usual number of hits yesterday, too (I think it was 2800ish). Someone should figure out a way to make money off this Internet thing. I should note that yesterday Badger Blogger had a post on the evils of Obama speaking out against SUVs and wasting energy by keeping your house too warm….it’s not likely that greater exposure to their writing helped them any. That’s a pretty targeted demographic they’re looking for.

I agree that Haudricourt took the worst damage in this scrum. He never really found a comfort zone in relating a scoop from a little-known blog, and then when it turned out to be nothing he tried to dump it all back into a general “blogs are evil” post. It was the hypocrisy in Tom’s handling of the whole thing that set me off.

nicely written. It was a pleasure to read.

I guess I’m not as pessimistic regarding that mlb.com article as you are. I don’t think they’ll sign Fielder to an extension, but I’ve thought that for a while, (i.e., since I remembered Boras is his agent), so the “I’ll be here six years” statement from Prince isn’t that much of a shock (though even he left the door open a crack on a possible extension). But I think they’ve still got a shot at Hart. At this point though, I suspect Hart was too curious to see what he’d get in arbitration to sign a deal, since a big award might push the numbers of a long term deal upwards. I doubt that, if they ever got that far, the numbers they threw out there for Hart were all that close to the offer they made Braun.

The other thing to keep in mind is that unlike Braun, Fielder and Hart are married with kids. Early 20’s or not, having a family changes the way you think. At first blush, you might think it would make them eager to sign an extension more quickly to get cash to support their kids, but the $400-600k their making this year are obviously more than enough to offer their kids things most of us can’t right now. Maximizing their long term earning potential, however, can help set their kids (and maybe their kids) for life. If the league minimum were $40k per year, the family situations might push them into signing an extension earlier, but as things are, with neither Hart nor Fielder suffering from any significant injury history, I can see where they want to wait and see. It might be easier as a single guy to say “that’s enough money for me” than it is when you’ve got kids to think about.

Optimism aside for a moment, Braun could turn out to be unique out of this group in that he apparently went to the Brewers and told them he wanted to be a Brewer for a long time. While extensions might be possible for some of the others, I don’t know if we can hold out hope for the others to think about it that way again. The good news, from my perspective anyway, is that out of all the young players to sign, Braun is the one I would have picked, with a pre-injury Gallardo a close second.

Haudricourt is the guy who acts most like a reporter. Who else ever asks Ned a hard question? McCalvy?

I don’t look at the chats, but I listen to his 540 stuff which thankfully is available on line and I look at his blog pretty regularly.

About the only criticism I can think of is that his phraseology wasn’t very good in the badger blogger saga.

Tom should have verified the story through all of his sources with the club I mean he has access that no blogger could dream about.

The poster at Badger Blogger said right in the story it was an unconfirmed this never goes national if Tom checks it out before he links to it.

Badger Blogger is a very good political blog that has been around since blogging started they have a very good track record in the past of breaking political stories in the Milwaukee area they have been instrumental in shining light on the political mess that was the McGee family in Milwaukee. I know the owner of that blog personally and I know they would not do this as a traffic stunt. I really believe they thought they had good information.

Yes the poster there got this wrong but TH is the reason the whole world saw that post as I stated on the MJS Blog I think TH hedged his bets by running the story so fast with out fact checking it if it was right he is hip by using a blogger as a source and if it was wrong he gets to bash on bloggers because lord knows TH never makes mistakes remember how we wrote story after story about how Estrada was a club house cancer oh wait that did not happen.

Yes Badger Blogger got this wrong but TH is just as much at fault here.

Though I guess Ned Yost supporters would have wished he did what most reporters would have - left that unsubstantiated rumor alone. If you Google “Ned Yost fired Badger Blogger,” you get more than 1000 entries, be it from Deadspin and AOL to Walk off Walk and Ballbug. Our Texas Rangers sister site, Lone Star Ball, has a front page post about it, and seeing who might be available under a new managerial regime.

In other Ned Yost news, I think I saw somewhere that Ned Yost IV retired, and that in between his time as a Brewers player and his time as a Brewers manager, Ned Yost was a taxidermist. Tom, please confirm before posting.

I’m a little taken aback by how aggressive the comments are. Maybe the powers the be should reconsider who they’re insulting when they lump all blogs together.

http://blogs.jsonline.com/brewers/archive/2008/05/20/yost-unhappy-with-blog-reports.aspx

I enjoyed it very much.

I’m firmly in the camp of Haudricourt being incredibly irresponsible. I think he wanted to prevent being “scooped” and went way too far. If I were the JS, I’d strip him of his Brewers beat duties, it’s seriously that big of a breach.