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I thought it was ok to touch on a couple of the highlights from the shiny new sunday Journal-Sentinel I get every week now. Lots more if you're a subscriber. (Not trying to convince anyone, just pointing that out so I can hit the elements of the fair use doctrine. The quotes below probably represent about 5% of the entire content of the interview. Kyle or one of the mods can delete if they think I've crossed the line.)

"You're not going to be able to replace what [Prince] did offensively.... With the personnel we have, it allows you to run more. But if we're running into a lot of bad outs, you need to do something about it."

Not exactly the St. Crispin's Day speech is it?

"I don't want to say I need to see a lot from (Mat Gamel)... Some guys are really quick starters and some guys aren't. If I go just by spring training I'd say that I need to see that he's driving the ball and getting good at bats... He needs to feel that we're not going to just give him a week and say "Hey, you didn't hit. We're going to change." (Actual Ken Macha quote.) He's going to get a good shot to win the job and get a good shot in the season to stick with him for a while to see what we have."

On defense:

"Our infield defense will be better with the personnel we have." (Translation: Yuni's gone, so we won't shift like we're playing badminton against a one armed opponent anymore.) We played some poor games defensively in the last series we played against St. Louis. But it looked a lot worse than it was because (the Cardinals) didn't make one mistake." Wrong. Just wrong.

For those of you who have complained in the past about some of Doug Melvin's moves and those who have wondered how much he takes into account new metrics for analytics, it appears he's at least aware of the concept.

Melvin will be speaking at the SABR Analytics Conference in Mesa AZ which runs March 15-17th.

So, I guess we're just waiting forever. h/t MLBTR

If you've got some views left (or know how to get more, wink wink) this interview that Dave Heller posted with former Braves catcher/Brewers manager Del Crandall is really fantastic. Great insights about Hank Aaron, Robin Yount, and what it was like to play in Milwaukee in the 50s (sounds a little bit like what it's like to play here now, but I am biased as being part of the fan base he praises).

If you're looking for something to do while waiting for the Mug, John Sickels of Minor League Ball is hosting an AQA thread starting at 9.

I'm not saying that Narron is out of Hamilton's life yet, but he was recently signed on to be the Brewers hitting coach, and Hamilton has reportedly been seen drinking in a bar. It's been well documented that Hamilton is battling an addiction to drugs and alcohol. It's an addiction where the alcohol leads to drugs, and it's not his first relapse.

Best of luck to Josh as he continues working to get better.

And from a purely baseball side of things, it could be interesting to see if this affects his contract extension negotiations with Texas

What do you think?

BSOHL!!!!!!!

But is he really in the BSOHL? Judge for yourself... by his voice.

Not sure how much truth there is to this...

Links to a release from Mark A.