Tuesday's Frosty Mug
by Kyle Lobner on May 12, 2009 8:48 AM CDT
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PrintSome things to read while trying to figure out what you'd do with two toasters.
The Brewers, along with 21 other MLB teams, were off yesterday, but this site was not. Thanks to a link from Big League Stew that ended up on the front page at Yahoo, over 57,000 readers stopped by yesterday, far and away the biggest day in BCB history. Thanks to BLS for the link, and if you're one of our new readers, welcome. Please consider taking a look at the Posting Guide and Game Thread Guidelines.
The off day also gave Ryan Braun plenty of time to go pick up an award. Braun was named NL Player of the Week after hitting .458/.567/.958 over the Brewers' last six games, with three home runs and 12 RBI. This is the first time Braun has won the award. (Also noted in FanShot)
Yovani Gallardo may not have been at his best over the weekend, but there's a lot to be optimistic about. Over at The Hardball Times, Harry Pavlidis has a Pitchf/x profile of Gallardo that's well worth a read.
Manny Parra takes the mound tonight for the Brewers. He's 1-4 in six starts, and hasn't really looked sharp all season. Looking for a reason for optimism? Fish Chunks says the Brewers are 8-2 on May 12 since moving to the National League.
A couple of minor notes:
- The Official Site takes a look at Brett Lawrie, two months into his professional career. Pretty much everyone who sees the guy seems to like him. On his blog, though, McCalvy mentions Lawrie having a weird stance. Does anyone have pictures/video of it?
- Mat Gamel's defense is still questionable, but his bat continues to propel him toward the big leagues: He's currently fourth in the PCL with a 1.105 OPS.
Gamel was one of dozens of topics covered in Tom H.'s chat over at the JS site yesterday. It was a pretty good chat, all told. Some questions that should have been ignored were bludgeoned instead, but there was also conversation regarding Jason Kendall, Alcides Escobar, Brad Nelson, Mike Jones, Mark Rogers, Chris Capuano, Jake Odorizzi, Erik Komatsu and others.
The Brewers continue to move up in power rankings:
- Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star, who had the Brewers at #25 two weeks ago, has moved them all the way up to #8.
- WhatifSports has the Brewers at #10.
The transaction wire was pretty quiet yesterday, but I did notice these moves in Baseball America's Minor League Transactions:
- Tony Armas Jr. signed a minor league deal with the Braves.
- Former Brewer minor leaguer Nic Ungs has signed with the Marlins.
Meanwhile, across the ocean, the Pirates have signed 17-year-old Dutch outfielder Daan Cornelissen. With the move, the Pirates have now signed players from each of six continents over the last 12 months. The BBTF thread is worth reading, just for the first few comments.
Former Brewer and current Astros hitting coach Sean Berry has been released from the hospital following surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his kidney. He's expected to rejoin the team in a couple of weeks.
Oh, and Nick Punto needs to be more careful about letting his hand linger.
Drink up.
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if you feel like some recreational arguing
someone on DRays Bay is posting about what to do with Scott Kazmir and one of the conversational starters was about trading him to the Brewers. I already chimed in with my 0.1 cents, sadly.
Sorry, didn't see this.
"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base."
~Dave Barry
by PriceMultiCyYoungs on May 12, 2009 9:24 AM CDT up reply actions
That Gallardo article
on The Hardball Times is awesome. Also, Gallardo is awesome.
Suppan, who has seen his ERA rise from 4.12 in his final year in St. Louis to 4.62 in 2007 and 4.96 last year, isn't an option in fantasy leagues - Rotoworld
Pavlidis on Gallardo's changeup
Gallardo’s change-up is his least thrown and least effective pitch. Still, he gives up an rv100 of only 11.7 with it—nothing to write home about or hang on the fridge, but not awful. I suspect he’d have more success if it weren’t for the strange way he uses it. The two most likely situations for Gallardo’s change-up are when he’s behind a lefty (17 percent of pitches in that situation) or when the count is even to lefties, including first pitches (~10 percent, slightly more on 0-0 counts).While Gallardo uses the change-up’s cousin, the slider, most often when he’s ahead of righties, the change-up isn’t used to put lefties away. So, by overall usage, there is a platoon preference between the slider and the change-up, but Gallardo doesn’t use them the same way. Since he tends to fall behind or not get called strikes with his change-up, it seems better used when he’s ahead in the count.
Seems to me that Pavlidis’ earlier data showed one other thing Gallardo could do to improve his changeup: raise its release point. On the continuum of release points of his four pitches, the changeup is on one end and the four-seamer the other. Making his changeup look more like his fastball out of his hand would make it that much more deceptive. Obviously that would be harder to effect than changing his usage of the pitch, but it seems worth pointing out.
"I didn't realize his velocity was that high," said Macha, noting that radar readings aren't flashed during exhibition games.
But Kendall calls a good game!
How dare this guy suggest that YoGa could be more effective if his pitches were used better. Everyone says it so it must be true. This Pavlidis guy(whoever that is) needs a little more time worshiping at the Altar of Grit.
by Getting Yosted on May 12, 2009 12:47 PM CDT up reply actions
Only 3 questions before TH gives a perfect Joe Morgan impersonation
- Q: Jon, Phoenix, Az – Was Darron Sutton popular amongst Brewer fans when he was the play by play announcer in Milwaukee? He’s now one of the television broadcasters (along with Mark Grace) for the Diamondbacks, and it seems many viewers find his style extremely irritating.
- A: Tom Haudricourt – I can’t speak for the viewers in Arizona. What they probably find more irritating is the bad start that led to the firing of manager Bob Melvin.
Nobody asked you to speak for the viewers in Arizona, he asked you to speak for the viewers in Milwaukee.
by richardhkirkando on May 12, 2009 9:39 AM CDT reply actions
Brett Lawrie
The stance looks normal to me…
It would help to see video. No idea when these pictures were taken. Just grabbed them off Google image search. I wonder if a pitch is on its way in the second one. Might also have a bit of an open stance based on the second one.
That second one does look weird
He’s open at the foot, but by the time you get to his hips he’s closed. It almost looks like he’s preparing to get a bunt down for a base hit.
by Getting Yosted on May 12, 2009 10:51 AM CDT up reply actions
Didn’t Morgan Ensberg use a stance like that for awhile? It does look weird in the picture.
by richardhkirkando on May 12, 2009 10:55 AM CDT up reply actions
Yeah, that's kind of odd
It’s hard to tell in the first photo, since you can’t see the batter’s box or the plate, but he might be doing it there too. The whole front leg is wide open, but his hips are in a relatively normal position. Is he a strong pull hitter? You’d think that positioning might give him good hip rotation to pull the ball down the line, if he can keep his balance….
You can see him bat towards the end of this video
link (h/t Brewerfan)
"I didn't realize his velocity was that high," said Macha, noting that radar readings aren't flashed during exhibition games.
Perfect example!
So Witardo does an article in the JS about Counsell’s modified stance and how it is improving his performance at the plate. Now wouldn’t you expect, just maybe, even though it is the JS, a before and after picture of CC at the plate? Hell, I am not even a journalism major, just a simple minded blogger and yet it makes sense to me that a couple of batting stance pics are in order. No, instead our boy Anthony (or his editors) have a pic of Counsell making the turn at 2B.
On the other hand KL (who does a great job BTW) makes a note of a comment about Lawrie’s stance, acknowledges he doesn’t have a photo but asks for some help and in short order the blogosphere has photos and a video of our boy Lawrie. You would think with the PAID resources at JS they could have made a similar effort.
Yep, you are right TH and AW, the blogosphere is full of mindless, useless, hate filled prattle and you beat reporters are so, so….., hmmm what is the word I am looking for………??!!!
The Bambi's Bombers won because they played the game like kids! Let's do that again!!!
That’s probably because there aren’t a lot of professionally taken stock photos of Counsell at the plate, especially from this year.
I have some pictures of Counsell before and after—taken from nearly the same section and row at MP—on my flickr account (or I will have the before up once I edit the head of the person in front of me out of the picture,) but that’s extremely not what they can run in the paper.
They still rely on photos?
They couldn’t use HD video stills?
by Getting Yosted on May 12, 2009 1:59 PM CDT up reply actions
open stance
but he steps toward the plate with the front foot as he swings
by keephopealive on May 12, 2009 2:39 PM CDT up reply actions
Then my guess would be that he uses the open stance to help see the ball better
Or at least that’s what a hitting coach once explained to me was one of the main reasons for opening up your stance.
What I said
Most of us have seen clips of him hitting before, but those do not do justice to how smooth he is. I love his bat-pump timing mechanism, if you have not seen him hit, he works from an open stance with a long, slow bat pump and then makes one tap on the shoulder before lifting his shoulders and taking a big swing.
I love his stance.
Scored three times and detonated an indisputable in four visits to the batting box.
Young Mr Parra is 1-4 thank you very much
Remember he won his last start I think the Offense scored a million runs if I recall correctly
I think it was the blow out in the land of Skyline Chili
Let me spell it for you Cub fans O N E H U N D R E D A N D O N E Y E A R S
You are right
He picked up the win in 15-3 blowout on May 6th. I remember thinking “if there is any game when you can go right after guys without walking them its when you have a 9 run lead”. But he had four more walks anyway.
Good call.
Fixed.
"The reports are that he is getting better. The definition of better is nebulous."
by Kyle Lobner on May 12, 2009 11:38 AM CDT up reply actions
Lots of visitors yesterday! I love graphs! Thank you Yahoo
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.
Doing well today, too
Scored three times and detonated an indisputable in four visits to the batting box.
its not even noon
And there is a game today, so I am guessing a lot more visits with afternoon laziness at work, game thread and post game thread.
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.
For the month of May, 10.5 days through and already doubled last years hit total- site is growing exponentially fast!
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.
That's not true.
I’d still be nowhere without the momentum Jeff started, and an interesting team to write about. I just took the momentum I was given and continued to build on it.
"The reports are that he is getting better. The definition of better is nebulous."
And the momentum of the deal with Yahoo
and the team’s success- like where this is going!
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.
Obviously the figures for this month
are skewed by the 50000 extra visits from 2 days ago. However even with out that the site would be well on course to be close 120+k which is some achievement.
Where do you find these figures? and how do they compare to:
1 other Brewer blog sites
2 other SBN sites
There's a Sitemeter link at the very bottom of the site on the right
"I didn't realize his velocity was that high," said Macha, noting that radar readings aren't flashed during exhibition games.
I dont have info on other blog sites
But BleedCubbie blue has quite a bit more fans on their page, but a similar market and a similar team might be the Royals, will post there info next
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.
these pictures are clogging up the page,
So I reccommend you check out other sites by yourself… all can be found in the lower right, physcodellic colors for the SB Nation sites…
The Royals Review averaged about 40,000 vistors from May 2008- Feb 2009 and 64,000 in March, 86,000 in April and already 40,000 in May
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.
Al's Ramblings can seen below
The longest established Brewers blog I know of, a lot of the other ones are here today, gone tomorrow
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.
good point
I am sorry I left that out and really should have included that- but it is more of a message board than a blog- and i couldn’t find a site meter for yuku
The designated hitter rule is like letting someone else take Wilt Chamberlain's free throws.
It's also worth noting
That Saturday and Sunday were both big days, as weekends go.
"The reports are that he is getting better. The definition of better is nebulous."
by Kyle Lobner on May 12, 2009 11:39 AM CDT up reply actions
I think BK's video about Braun/Brenly
Was drawing significant attention from other sources (Baseball Musings, BBTF, etc) even before Yahoo put it on the front page.
"The reports are that he is getting better. The definition of better is nebulous."
Yovani Pitchf/x
My favorite line was about his fastball,
the backspin defeats Newton’s math by almost 11 inches.
I wish Yovani would go after hitters a little more. He works pretty high pitch counts by starting a lot of batters 2-0.
by tcyoung on May 12, 2009 11:27 AM CDT reply actions 1 recs
That was my favorite line too.
Gallardo > Newton
by theBrouhaha on May 12, 2009 12:16 PM CDT up reply actions
Only one of them could beat the Cubs for us though.
by theBrouhaha on May 12, 2009 12:20 PM CDT up reply actions
Galileo can always drop the hammer on 'em
Obscure baseball records and more at my blog, Recondite Baseball.
The Brewers signed a (truly) international player yesterday, too
Cuban/Ukrainian-Canadian Ivan Rusova
"I didn't realize his velocity was that high," said Macha, noting that radar readings aren't flashed during exhibition games.
The quote speaks for itself (I think)
“I’ve said this before: The players write the lineup,” Macha said. “[Counsell’s] writing says that he wants to play.”
here
Is it in crayon?
"The reports are that he is getting better. The definition of better is nebulous."
by Kyle Lobner on May 12, 2009 2:54 PM CDT up reply actions 2 recs
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