I'm not exactly an authority on grit, but it was about time someone named an All-Grit Team.  All-Star Week seemed appropriate. 

• C Jason Kendall
• 1B Platoon: Doug Mientkiwicz / Kevin Millar
• 2B Mark Grudzielanek
• 3B Ryan Freel
• SS David Eckstein
• LF Scott Podsednik
• CF Aaron Rowand
• RF Eric Byrnes

If a DH were needed, the all-grit team would do one of two things:

• Bat the pitcher, because truly gritty players are throwbacks to when pitchers could hit for themselves
• Go with Willie Bloomquist.

The bench is a little unbalanced--in addition to the eight starters, 1B platoon, and Bloomquist, that leaves four or five spots.  Again, these guys are throwbacks, so a 10-man pitching staff would have to do the job.  That leaves two roster spots for Craig Counsell (team captain) and Nick Punto and three more for backup catchers.  Doesn't really matter which ones, though I think Paul Bako has to be on the team. 

It doesn't matter that there aren't any backup outfielders, because any truly gritty player can play anywhere in the diamond.  In that sense, there are twelve backup outfielders.  Similarly, it doesn't really matter which outfielders are assigned to which position, since any of the three could play center, but they, of course, will play wherever they're needed.

I haven't figured out what to do about the pitching staff, since pitchers aren't generally considered gritty in the same way that position players are.  It seems that gritty pitchers are generally guys who have hung on past their prime (like Jamie Moyer) or lefty relievers (like Brian Shouse) or both.

You may note that I didn't include a batting lineup--the list above is just the fielding alignment.  That's going to be a serious problem for manager Gabe Kapler--left to their own devices, everyone on this team would bat second.

It may be the All-Star break, but the news hasn't taken a break.

Win Expectancy Graph
BR Box Score

Apparently hitting a walk-off sac fly only merits a little Gatorade bath.

It appears Ben Sheets will be the first Brewer pitcher ever to start the All-Star Game. It's an honor, certainly, but it also means I'll be holding my breath for the first 2-3 innings. Sheets also won Dayn Perry's first half NL Cy Young, which is much less prestigious but comes without the risk of injury in a meaningless game.

Home Run Derby participants can choose anyone they want to throw pitches they're going to launch into the stratosphere. Ryan Braun, given those roughly 6.4 billion options, has chosen his agent, Nez Balelo. Huh?

Beyond the Box Score is the most recent blog to debunk the "Derby Curse" theory. But if you're looking for a reason to curse during the Derby, feel free to try out the Home Run Derby drinking game.

With six starters and five spots, there's still talk that the Brewers may use a platooned fifth starter, with Dave Bush starting at home and Seth McClung starting on the road. I can't wrap my brain around that logic...statistics would suggest it would work...but how could it?

Maybe next season, one of them can close. Salomon Torres won't say if he's planning on retiring after this season.

The Sabathia trade has been met with pretty widespread approval. In fact, even Matt LaPorta thinks it was the right move.

These brawls are always entertaining when someone else's minor leaguers are in them: here's video (and crappy news coverage) of Saturday night's brawl in Huntsville's game. (h/t Brewerfan.net) I'm guessing suspensions will be coming out shortly for this mess.

On injuries:

Kelvim Escobar will have surgery to repair a torn right labrum and will miss the rest of 2008 and likely some of 2009.
Pedro Martinez left his start Saturday with a sore groin.
Dodgers P Takashi Saito will undergo an MRI to determine the severity and cause of tightness in his elbow.
Kerry Wood will miss the All-Star game due to a blister on his pitching hand.

Reports are coming out that Nats GM Jim Bowden and special assistant Jose Rijo are under investigation for skimming signing bonus money from Dominican players. Obviously, everyone involved is innocent until proven guilty. With that said, if there turns out to be truth behind the allegations, this is a slimy thing to do at best. Many, if not most Dominican players grow up in tremendous poverty, and anyone caught taking money off the top of their first opportunity to do better should never work in baseball again.

Here's a better way to produce some extra cash: Some Korean teams may consider reducing their night games to save on energy costs. The electricity needed to power one night game could power one house for more than six months.

Sabathia's home run was cool, but he's still got a long way to go to reach this milestone: With a home run Friday, Rick Ankiel has now hit more home runs (33) than he's given up (32).

So how bad is Mariners DH Jose Vidro? Apparently it depends on who you ask. Tangotiger asked the question twice, once to non-Mariner fans and once to Mariner fans, and reached an interesting conclusion.

Oh, and the guy who checks IDs at Wrigley Field is sleeping on the job.

Drink up.

Last night, Craig Counsell started at third against a right-handed pitcher, and according to Yost, we can expect more of the same.

"I'm going to have to do it a little more until some of these numbers come up for Billy," Yost said. "His left-handed numbers are as good as you can dream of ... but his right-handed numbers are about as low as they go."

It should be no surprise that Hall is struggling against righties; he's always had a pronounced platoon split.  Taking his career numbers, he's 276/358/498 against lefties and 254/303/451 versus righties.  That makes a lot of sense to me -- the biggest difference is in OBP, reflecting the truly awful pitch selection against RHP, when he can't see the ball as well.

Given the roster right now, a platoon for Billy means more playing time for Counsell.  The problem is, Counsell's not a very good hitter against pitchers with either hand.  He does have better career numbers vRHP--a ~700 OPS instead of a ~650 OPS.  Compare that to Billy's career ~750 OPS vRHP, or even his 713 OPS vRHP in his disappointing 2007 season.

Ultimately, difference like this don't really matter, except that I often eat dinner during games, and I'd prefer not to see Counsell at the plate when I'm trying to digest.

The x-factor here, of course, is Russell Branyan.  Branyan is a lefty, and his career numbers against RHP are 231/332/479 -- an OPS more than 100 points higher than Counsell's.  We lose some with the glove, to be sure, but I suspect that 100 points of OPS is worth it.  Plus, we gain a fearsome late-inning option against RHP on days he doesn't start--that's something we don't currently have, unless you're trying to digest, anyway.

Branyan's minor league numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, since he is the kind of guy who seems to drop off quite a bit between AAA and the majors.  But if we take a look at his splits (as of this writing, they are updated through Tuesday), we see something that screams promotion.  Not only is he OPSing over 1.100, his line against righties is a belief-defying 398/500/776.

Plug those numbers into my nifty new Minor League Equivalency calculator, and find that his equivalent line in Milwaukee would be 341/425/627.  Hell, if he were putting up his current numbers in Double-A, he'd still have an equivalent line 329/413/609.

In general, I love platoons--they are a great way to get solid production out of less-than-solid players, as we did with Menchkins last year.  But a platoon requires more than just a lefty and a righty; put another way, a platoon requires more than Craig Counsell. 

We can make the roster space: Dillon has averaged less than an at-bat per day for the last two weeks, and there's nothing Gwynn can do that Kapler can't (except for pinch-running, and Ned doesn't use him that way).

Ned is being perfectly reasonable in taking playing time away from Bill Hall.  But it's far from clear whether giving that playing time to Craig Counsell is the best decision.

Two things ought to be making Brewers fans happy about this weekend's series:

1. The fifth starter brigades won't appear.  It's Sheets, Suppan, and Gallardo.
2. Hart is moved up to the five spot.

The bad news: Kapler is still out, and Counsell is leading off and starting over Weeks.  Unless Sheets goes 8+ innings, I think we can also count on a Mitch Stetter appearance tonight.  Knowing Ned, he'll come in to face Dunn.

The Hart link above takes you to Tom H's Anthony Witrado's blog entry with the lineups, and if you want to spend the three hours before game time poring over conceivable matchup, here's the baseball-reference game preview.  If you're like me and you always forget that Cinci is in the Eastern time zone, remember that the game starts at 6:10 CT.

Project-a-tron likes our chances with Sheets against Arroyo, even with a gaping hole of ~600 OPS at the top of the lineup:

• Brewers 5.1
• Reds 4.3
• Brewers WinExp: 53%

Let's go Crew!