Tuesday's Frosty Mug
by Kyle Lobner on Mar 31, 2009 9:04 AM CDT
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PrintSome things to read while leaving work early.
So, as you've probably noticed, 2009 is scheduled to be Rickie Weeks' third consecutive "breakout year." But would you take that news more seriously if it came from Peter Gammons? (h/t FanPost)
While most of the Brewer team projections this spring haven't been pretty, individual Brewers are getting positive attention all over the place today. On top of Gammons' mention of Rickie Weeks, Ken Rosenthal is picking Yovani Gallardo to win the NL Cy Young and But The Game Is On is listing Ryan Braun as an NL MVP candidate.
Speaking of Braun, it sounds like he's feeling pretty good after a couple of days back in big league camp and should be full speed for Opening Day.
The news is not as good for Craig Counsell, who has a torn meniscus in his right knee and may require surgery. He's considering trying to play through it this season, and the team is leaving it up to him. With that said, recovery from surgery would only take 2-3 weeks, so Counsell would be somewhat foolish to spend all season playing in pain to avoid missing the 6-8 appearances he'd miss recovering from surgery.
Trevor Hoffman's injury isn't very exciting for most people, but his rehab could be a pretty big deal for some, as Hoffman may make one or more rehab appearances for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. That would be one way to get the teams' new partnership started off on the right foot.
Elsewhere in the minors:
- Vinny Rottino and Hernan Iribarren will return to Nashville for the 2009 season, but it doesn't sound like there's much room for them to play. (h/t FanShot)
- Beyond The Box Score took a look at the TotalZone rankings of several shortstop prospects. Alcides Escobar has a five run lead on second place, and a 71 run lead on Mariner prospect Carlos Triunfel.
- The JS Camp Report says Angel Salome should be recovered from his back injury in time to start the season at Nashville, and Jonathan Lucroy is expected to catch nearly every day in Huntsville.
- Tom H. says Chase Wright, Nick Green, Sam Narron, Lindsay Gulin and Tim Dillard will start the season in the rotation in Nashville, with Chris Narveson pitching out of the bullpen. It remains to be seen what will happen when Chris Capuano is ready to start making starts.
Remember when the Brewers were an AL team? I'm sure Moose Haas, Chris Bosio, Bill Wegman and Teddy Higuera do, as they're all on Recondite Baseball's list of pitchers who started the most games without an official at bat.
Rankings/Projections/Predictions:
- Nick and Nick's Twins Blog predicts the Brewers will finish third in the Central.
- The Tenth Inning Stretch has the Brewers winning 75 games and finishing fourth behind, among others, the 86 win Pirates.
- Baseball Musings ranks the Brewers fourth in the Central in Wins Above Replacement.
- It Is About The Money, Stupid has Bodoglife's 2009 over-unders, which have the Brewers at 80.5 wins. Stop by later today for more over-under fun.
- The Mudpuddle has the Brewers picked to finish fourth in the Central and the Cubs winning the World Series. In other camps:
Astros: Released David Newhan.
Cubs: Released Paul Bako and Mike Stanton.
Dodgers: Signed Will Ohman to a minor league deal worth $1.55 million for 2009.
Indians: Zach Jackson has won the last spot on the team's pitching staff.
Mets: Signed Ken Takahashi to a minor league deal. Takahashi was released by the Blue Jays Monday.
Rangers: Released Jimmy Gobble. They also informed Derrick Turnbow he will not make the team. Turnbow could request his release as soon as today.
Rays: Released Morgan Ensberg.
Reds: Jacque Jones will not make the major league team and the organization may not have room for him in the minors, either.
Tigers: Acquired outfielder Josh Anderson from the Braves.
White Sox: Waived Jerry Owens, ensuring Tony Gwynn will not be the best freely available center fielder if he's placed on waivers.
There hasn't been an official announcement for the Brewers yet, but Sportservice, the company providing concessions at both Miller Park and Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, has unveiled their dollar menu for Cincinnati, and it's likely to be similar in Milwaukee.
Oh, and BoDogLife has the odds at 15/2 against Astros skipper Cecil Cooper being the first manager fired this season. That's easy money.
Drink up.
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I remember back on Espin's Dream Job...
when two of the reporters did a story on the pair of Emerging E’s in the Astros system. They were Ensberg and Adam Everett. Just goes to show you that everything that Espin’s dream job touched went to just crap.
I just sit back and root for the taser
In other news this morning
Gary Sheffield appears to have been released…
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/spring2009/news/story?id=4029706
The Tigers still have to pay most of that salary, right? Unless another team picks him up I imagine.
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.
I was talking to a Tigers fan
And if anyone picks up Sheffield it will likely be for the league minimum as a DH. So the Tigers view it as a sunk cost, and below replacement level…He has had a horrendous spring and is on the wrong side of 40, too bad he is one HR shy of 500…
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.
86 wins for the pirates? really?!?
"Cubs fans boo again – 99% of these people can’t see the plate." -Ueck
gammons
yeah, gammons has got a great track record with these things! woohoo!
wait, what’s that…you mean bobby crosby DIDN’T win the mvp in 2006 and 2007?? oops, never mind…
Or Sidney Ponson.
"The reports are that he is getting better. The definition of better is nebulous."
by Kyle Lobner on Mar 31, 2009 11:42 AM CDT up reply actions
Or Crosby Stills and Nash
"I will agree that the attitude [at BCB] is ridiculous and they have done so much to instigate animosity and then block us from responding. Real mature!"
or
Bill Cosby and his pudding pops. Wait, I think I did it wrong.
September 15: Not a bad little Monday
trade rumors not worth a fanpost
Rosenthal (again) thinks the Brewers may want to trade for either Jason Hammel or Jeff Niemann.
(I’d assume Niemann only because I think Melvin is trying to collect the set of failed Rays starters with potential…or giant redheads, take your pick. Either way, amusing.)
possibility
He refers to about 6 teams that are in the mix, and then refers to the Brewers as another possibility. I take that to mean that Kenny R. thinks it would make sense, but there have been no talks.
Look for Tom H to refer to these two posts as a blog rumor, and use a DM quote to shoot it down.
that makes sense
your interpretation of the post, that is, not actually trading/making a waiver claim for Hammel or Niemann.
Just because I’d be amused by having Niemann on the team—Baseball Prospectus 2009 called him a right-handed CC Sabathia, and that wasn’t for his pitching—it’s not a good use of resources, even though having him start and having Coffey and McClung finish it out would be…something else.
Why would Tom H pick it up? I didn’t post it in the JS blog comments, so it’s not a real rumor.
So MLB Tonight is useless
Last night Joe Magrane and Matty V are talking to Tom Seaver. Joe starts off with a question about the biggest change since Seaver’s day, and Seaver goes into a talk about pitch counts. He states that his absolute count was 135, and if he was getting up in pitches and facing the bottom of the order he wasn’t going to give the guy a 15 pitch AB. He was throwing sinkers waist high and in and letting the guy ground out to SS, because he knew that those batters couldn’t hurt him, at best they would hit a single. To me the obvious follow up would be “Wow, do you think that strategy would work now, given the power up and down the lineup in today’s game?” With a follow-up of “Do you think that the intensity that every pitch needs in today’s game, versus the ability to throttle down for 3-4 hitters every lineup in your day makes the total effort between the two eras similar?”
But no. Everyone was allowed to stew in their conventional wisdom that today’s pitchers just don’t have the desire to finish games, and are obviously inferior to yesterday’s pitchers, instead of the wild speculation that today’s hitters are more dangerous than 35 years ago and more effort is needed to retire each one.
So if you want conventional wisdom, zero of baseball’s cliches challenged and pablum spoonfed to you, tune into MLB TV. Why MLB thought they needed to start a network for this, I’m not sure. ESPN had this market segment locked up years ago.
by Getting Yosted on Mar 31, 2009 12:48 PM CDT reply actions
Bob Miscik, actually. :-)
"The reports are that he is getting better. The definition of better is nebulous."
Okay, then. ;)
It’s just I had a bad flashback reading:
Jonathan Lucroy is expected to catch nearly every day in Huntsville.
I was going to say that that must just be their way of saying he's the starting catcher
But this is the actual quote:
Ash said Jonathan Lucroy “will be on the Jason Kendall program”
What is the point of that? Why would you even say that?
jeff: but i shudder to think of the bullpen analogy to sending the runner
Step 1 in the Brewers Catcher Development Program(tm)
“Scare the living sh*t out of the guy.”
Also, cheese.
by Jeff Sackmann on Mar 31, 2009 4:26 PM CDT up reply actions
Are we sure he was referring to playing time? He might have been insinuating they expected him to shatter his ankle at some point this season. Or maybe he will not be allowed to shave until he grows the appropriate amount of facial hair.
by Getting Yosted on Mar 31, 2009 4:36 PM CDT up reply actions
Former Orioles minor league manager and Rangers minor league field coordinator Bob Miscik?
You don’t say…
Obscure baseball records and more at my blog, Recondite Baseball.
Rankings-
I am actually a very enthusiastic Brewers fan and I think that the predictions have a possibility of happening. The Reds are going to be much stronger than many think. They have a much stronger starting rotation than ours. I think that Harang will have a decent year and I think that Cueto will have a much better year.
The Cards will have 80 wins simply because they have LaRussa. The Cubs will be a disappointment to their fans, even though they will win 94 games.
I can’t think that Suppan will have better than a .500 year. Compare Bush and him….for the last 4 years you will find that their stats are very similar, except that Bush had more KOs and fewer BBs. Suppan cant strike anyone out. Suppan cant get anyone out even when he gets ahead. Suppan should be traded to San Diego….he would flourish there….give up big fly balls and win 13 games again.
I am hoping like crazy that Parra can step up and win 14 games. How will Yovani handle being the ace? Here is a shot in the dark…Dave Bush will win 14 games and throw 200 innings and have 170 Ks. Suppan and Looper can fill in the gaps and we will think that they are good pitchers again. This is the only scenario that we can win 90+ games.
My actual win expectations-82-
I actually think that Weeks will hit .275…..Macha will make him hit the ball on the ground with 2 strikes……and I am no Weeks fan
Thanks for the input!
I agree that Suppan’s game is made for a park like Petco. The way he pitches to contact works well in a park like that. Unfortunately, there isn’t a team in the majors, especially not the Padres who is willing to take on that contract.
As for Weeks, the highest he’s ever hit in the majors is .276 in just 95 games. His never hit above .240 in his other three seasons.
The new team and player pages are pretty
Click “Brewers” in the horizontal bar at the top of the page, or click any of the player names in the tags section, to see the new designs. I might actually go to them more now.
The artist formerly known as jihad.
Brent Krause's page needs some work
Obscure baseball records and more at my blog, Recondite Baseball.
And I know just the man
To take on a job as recondite as that one.
"The reports are that he is getting better. The definition of better is nebulous."
If I knew how to edit them, I would
I guess I’ll have to sneak in a FanShot that says “Brent Krause is not a pitcher” or “Brent Brewer is a shortstop” or “check your Brents” and maybe someone will notice.
Obscure baseball records and more at my blog, Recondite Baseball.
We could just dropping in obscure references to him in posts and tagging them
The artist formerly known as jihad.
I like the "top contributors" section on the side
KL is the top contributor for most every player in baseball, and several of the teams. I clicked the “Mariners” tab from LL and you are second behind Jeff Sullivan with 50. Evil BCB Al is on our list.
The artist formerly known as jihad.
I hadn't noticed that.
But the next time my ego needs some stroking, I’ll go look. :-)
"The reports are that he is getting better. The definition of better is nebulous."
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