Some things to read while looking for the perfect Scrabble word.

There's not exactly a litany of fresh stuff out there, but there is some more stuff about the managerial search: Tom H. says Willie Randolph interviewed yesterday and Buck Showalter is not a candidate. In-Between Hops has some tidbits and facts about Bob Brenly. Chuckie Hacks is still rooting for Ken Macha. There's an off-day during the World Series Friday, so it's possible the Brewers could request permission to announce a winner then.

In Seattle, some were predicting the Mariners would announce their new GM yesterday, but it didn't happen. There's also a rumor floating around that the Mariners will wait until after the World Series and interview retiring Phillies GM Pat Gillick. John Hickey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer squashed that one. U.S.S. Mariner likes all the options and just hopes the new GM will be allowed to clean house. Again, since an announcement wasn't made yesterday, Friday is the first day it could happen.

Mike Cameron leads the field of potential free agent center fielders. Brewed Sports is calling Cameron the free agent signing of the year. Certainly he was a better investment than one of those squirting flowers.

Remember the walk-off grand slam Ryan Braun hit against the Pirates this season? Want to re-live it over and over? Here's the iPhone commercial featuring it.

The World Series starts tonight, as you might have heard. I won't burn too much space here analyzing it, as I'm sure you've heard about it already. I will, though, point you to the only World Series preview I read, over at WhatIfSports.

Also worth noting: During the draft in Moneyball, Billy Beane is excited, to put it mildly, to see Scott Kazmir and Cole Hamels go off the board so he can draft Nick Swisher. Swisher is having a nice MLB career, to be sure, but Kazmir and Hamels will start game 1 of the World Series tonight.

Of course, on the bad decision scale Billy Beane is still light years behind Jim Bowden, who was diagnosed with skin cancer in June but waited to undergo treatment until this week, since he didn't want to miss a week of his job as GM of the National League's worst team. Here's hoping he doesn't end up regretting that one.

Here's a guy who will get a minor league deal somewhere and make it worth someone's time: the Rockies have released 2B Jayson Nix.

The youth movement continues in Cincinnati, as the Reds have extended offers for 2009 to David Weathers (38) and Jerry Hairston (32).

It's a study in contrast: Joe Posnanski shows how being willing to work harder than anyone else can pay off, and Home Run Derby shows that no matter how determined you are, if you can't run down stairs or climb a wall, you likely won't have much success as a streaker at Fenway Park.

Oh, and today is a Woot-off. I guess I know what I'm doing today (cleaning out my garage to make a home for more cheap electronics).

Drink up.

Will Dale Sveum make the difference in the Brewer playoff run? Too early to tell. Was he heavily photographed in his debut? Yes, absolutely, without question. Dale Sveum might be the most photogenic manager the Brewers have ever had.

Win Probability Graph
BR Box Score

Dale Sveum said the Brewers showed more life in his debut as manager last night than they'd shown in previous games. The Brew Town Beat says the Brewers were Sveumed last night. I will say this: I thought the Brewers had an opportunity to win last night. I didn't feel that way when they fell behind in games over the previous week or two.

The Official Site says the team is hoping for a lift from the return of Robin Yount as bench coach. Hopefully that lift is just slow developing. At least the coaching staff's sense of humor is improving:

Five Yost stories today, five bullet points.

• Adam McCalvy over at The Official Site has a longer story on the Ned Yost press conference from yesterday.
• Tangotiger takes a look at Ned's usage of Brian Shouse.
• David O'Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution thinks Ned will end up on Bobby Cox's staff next season, if he's not managing somewhere else.
• Rowland's Office is screaming in torment at the possibility of Ned eventually replacing Bobby Cox.
• Jeff Moore of Dugout Central credits the Brewers for sticking to their plan.

So, now that we're past the transitional phase, what still needs fixing? Sveum has moved Manny Parra out of the rotation, to keep his arm from falling off. He's sent David Riske off to get his arm fixed. But he still has a sputtering offense. FanGraphs takes a look at the heart of the Brewers order in September. The Brewers have scored five or less runs in 13 straight games, the fourth longest streak in franchise history and the longest since 1972. Amazingly, the Brewers had similar streaks of 12, 15 and 17 games in the same season in 1972. That team won 65 games under three managers.

Dayn Perry now lists the Mets as the favorites to win the Wild Card. If the Brewers miss the playoffs, we'll have one final question to answer: is this "a" historic collapse or "an" historic collapse?

On injuries:

Padres C Josh Bard has been shut down for 2008 after suffering a triceps injury.
Erik Bedard is done for 2008 and will undergo exploratory surgery on his shoulder to see if they can find and correct any problems.
Phillies SP Joe Blanton apparently pitched through a bout with shoulder tendinitis. That's not something I'd advise.
Rockies SP Jeff Francis will be shut down for the remainder of 2008 to allow his sore shoulder to recover.
Scott Kazmir pitched through an illness Monday that left him weak and out of sorts.
Dodgers RP Hong-Chih Kuo won't throw at all for a few days to recover from triceps tendinitis.
Fernando Tatis, who was having a surprising comeback season with the Mets, left last night's game in the fifth inning with a separated shoulder and is done for the season.

Ok, it's probably safe to assume the Cubs will make the playoffs now. So what should their rotation look like? Normally, articles about playoff rotations posted weeks in advance bore the crap out of me, but this one raises some interesting points.

Oh, and apparently Fans Bring the Sperm Day at Kleenex Stadium Miyagi in Japan was a rousing success.

Drink up.

Finally, we're back to regular season baseball...if this break had gone on much longer, I might have started building things out of cardboard.

I've gotten so used to scrolling past JS articles without reading them that I almost missed this Anthony Witrado piece on the trials and tribulations of Prince Fielder, which isn't half bad.

If I asked you to guess which Brewer swings at the most pitches that aren't strikes, would Ryan Braun have been one of your first five guesses? Me either. But Beyond the Box Score has him swinging at 35.28% of balls, which is in the top 10 in all of baseball.

UPDATE: Turns out the stat actually means 35.28% of the pitches he swings at are outside the strike zone. Thanks to Battlekow for correcting my work but ignoring our Scrabble game.

I'm guilty of complaining about it myself, but do the Brewers really struggle to hit bad pitching? Turns out the answer is no.

Would an interview with a sideline reporter normally be interesting enough to make the Mug? No. But Trenni...well, Trenni's a lot smarter than your average sideline reporter.

On injuries:

Aaron Harang's "forearm strain" diagnosis could be a sign of worse things to come.
Orlando Hernandez was pulled from his rehab start with a sore foot after just one inning of throwing the banana.
Scott Kazmir isn't injured, but his next start is being pushed back a couple of days after his unexpected All-Star Game outing.
Tim Lincecum's flulike symptoms turned out to be dehydration, and he should be fine.
Pedro Martinez has been scratched from his start Sunday and received a cortisone shot on his sore groin. Ouch.
Edgar Renteria left last night's game with a sore left hamstring (again).

It's possible the pitching market may dry up well before the trading deadline. Yesterday, the Phillies traded three prospects to the A's for Joe Blanton. Phillies Nation thinks it was the wrong move. In the meantime, does this mean the best pitcher still available is Erik Bedard?

Maybe it's actually Francisco Liriano. He's 7-0 with a 2.73 ERA in his last nine starts in AAA, and he's filed a grievance with the Twins, since his extended stay in AAA will keep him from being arbitration eligible this winter. Ron Gardenhire is not at all happy about the union trying to dictate his roster management.

This would be an even bigger dictation: Major League Baseball is considering taking a break for the Olympics, if baseball returns as an Olympic sport in 2016.

For once, the Yankees were frugal: They've signed Richie Sexson, but only for a pro-rated share of the $390,000 league minimum salary.

The All-Star Game pulled in a bit more than $390,000 in ad revenue. Marketwatch takes a look at the relationship between television and baseball, and how the All-Star Game coverage has changed over the years.

Royals beat writer Sam Mellinger has hardly slept for days and just got done sitting in a really uncomfortable seat at Yankee Stadium for several days, but wanted to take a moment to tell us all about the stresses of being a writer. I've emailed him and offered to trade jobs, if he's interested.

Oh, and if you're not sure what you're eating today, try out the Wheel of Lunch.

Drink up.

Remember last week, when I missed trash day on Wednesday? Because I missed last week's trash day, this week the trash is overflowing...and as a result, the garbage truck drove right by it. It's like a trash saga.

All-Star Game Win Probability
BR doesn't appear to have a box score.

Aside from, of course, the ridiculously covered All-Star game, the biggest Brewer news is probably the new infield the team will be playing on when they return home from the break. It can't hurt.

Bodog Sports has the Brewers at 7:2 odds to win the NL (second best, behind the Cubs) and 12:1 to win the World Series, tied for fifth with the White Sox.

Riding the Pine gives the Brewers a B- for their first half. They should've done more extra credit to see if they could sneak up to a B.

No injuries today (thankfully), so let's go straight to the other news: Even though the game went 15 innings and both teams ran out of players, Tim Lincecum couldn't pitch last night and had to check into the hospital due to flulike symptoms. That's a tough break. Does anyone remember a few years ago when Greg Vaughn was the only position player who didn't play in the game because he got food poisoning at the All-Star Gala?

In the other dugout, AL manager Terry Francona said he thought Scott Kazmir, who wasn't supposed to pitch at all, still had an inning or two left, but if the game continued past that he was ready to turn to J.D. Drew.

Which is more valuable: 3 solid bullpen arms or one dominant closer? Skyking162 is on the case.

Yesterday was TheJay's birthday. He spent it writing a post about team LOB percentages for Recondite Baseball. Could someone please help him learn how to appropriately spend a birthday?

Roy Halladay is upset with the Jays annual return to mediocrity. He's taken less money to stay, eaten a ton of innings and pitched Cy Young caliber baseball for years on middle of the road teams so I understand why he's upset, but pitching in Toronto does have one added perk: topless women in the outfield.

That doesn't happen at Yankee Stadium, I'd guess, although there is a NASA Gigapan you can check out if you want to make sure.

Alyssa Milano is done dating baseball players. Thankfully, if players are forced to date someone with less baseball savvy, the Mets are offering a seminar to teach women about baseball.

Got Facebook? Good. Go become a fan of Brew Crew Ball. You can add your photos, videos and other stuff and it won't get washed away like the Fanshots and Fanposts do.

Drink up.