For once, right on time! Here are some things to read when you're done reading the paper.

So the Brewers managerial search has given me plenty to write about today. Who will be The King of Town in 2009?

• Tom H. lists seven candidates with big league experience and gives the edge to Bob Brenly.
• Drew Olson of OnMilwaukee.com thinks Brenly would be a good fit. (h/t BBTF)
• Ken Macha has already been in for an interview, and has a history with Doug Melvin.
• In-Between Hops has some insight on Macha that might remind you of another former skipper.
• Two-Fisted Slopper isn't very excited about any of the candidates.
• Al has a list of questions he'd like to hear the next manager answer. I'm interested in all of them, too.

Dale Sveum was understandably disappointed by the decision to go another direction. Buried in this story was the news that Ed Sedar, Bill Castro and Mike Maddux will be back. The inability to start from scratch with a new staff might scare some managerial candidates away. But, then again, there aren't many vacancies this offseason.

CORRECTION: The story linked above doesn't actually say Sedar, Castro and Mike Maddux will be back. This post from View From Bernie's Chalet does. Does he have info we don't? Did he just misread something? Unsure.

Now is as good a time as any for a Sabathia Smorgasbord: Doug Melvin has confirmed he plans to make an offer to retain Sabathia for 2009. In other news, the sun will rise on Tuesday at about the projected time. Meanwhile, Buster Olney (via MLB Trade Rumors) thinks the Yankees offer to Sabathia may be "30 to 40 percent" larger than any other offer. Even if they don't retain Sabathia, Dan Rosenheck of the NY Times (free subscription required) says making the trade for Sabathia was the right move, and notes the value in moving from just outside to just inside the playoffs. (h/t BBTF)

No news on the Mariners GM search. It's possible they could announce a GM as early as the middle of this week but, like the Brewers, they'll likely hold off on any announcement until after the World Series, as MLB encourages them to do. In the meantime, Chuckie Hacks asks who is more valuable, Doug Melvin or Jack Zduriencik?

Also, that's the first time I ever correctly spelled Zduriencik without having to look it up. If he leaves now I'll have learned it for nothing.

A quick glance at what's on the hot stove:

• Gaslamp Ball says Jake Peavy could be a Dodger or a Brave by next week. Isn't there some kind of rule on when he can be traded? I'm assuming, at the very least, no announcement would be made until after the World Series.
• Ken Rosenthal thinks an offer of Rickie Weeks and J.J. Hardy would draw the Padres attention.
• He probably wouldn't be a fit for the Brewers, but Jeremy Hermida is reportedly available and drawing some interest.
• Someone who might be a fit, though: Angels SS/3B Brandon Wood, considered a top prospect for a while now but blocked at both positions.

At least now I know someone else is as superstitious as I can be: Daisuke Matsuzaka was sitting on the couch in the Red Sox clubhouse when they started scoring in game 5, and not only did he spend the rest of the game there, he made Manny Delcarmen sit with him. You can't argue with what works.

But in the end, neither of them could compare with the power of Nasty Boy Brian Knobbs and his Rayhawk getting kicked out of Fenway Park. I had wondered what Brian Knobbs was doing for the last decade or so. Apparently he's rooting for the Rays and eating everything in sight.

Oh, and add porno to the list of words you can't say during a baseball broadcast. You can still advertise Viagra, though.

Drink up.

So I missed last night's game to go see the new Narnia movie. A terrible mistake. Who told Disney that Narnia was just supposed to be a darker version of Shrek?

Win Expectancy Graph
BR Box Score
BDD Recaps

Here are some photos of last night's heroes: Hardy, Hall, and Cameron

Remember yesterday, when some kid named Eli destroyed his credibility by suggesting the Brewers were getting ready to DFA Bill Hall? Today he thinks they'll trade Ben Sheets. I'm going to go ahead and pull him off my reading list so he'll stop wasting our time.

Coming off a split with the Nats, the Brewers have dropped to 20th in the most recent Bugs and Cranks poll.

Ok, so Tuesday was light on Brewer news, but it's heavy on injuries:

Pat Burrell was scratched from last night's game with stiffness in his neck.
Eric Byrnes has been placed on the DL to give him some time to recover from tweaked hamstrings.
Braves OF Matt Diaz has been placed on the DL with a strained PCL in his knee after a collision with the wall last night.
Travis Hafner missed his second straight game last night with a sore shoulder.
Yankees P Ian Kennedy left last night's start with a strained muscle in his rib cage.
Daisuke Matsuzaka complained of shoulder fatigue last night after the third inning, but was still sent out for one more inning before being pulled.
Cards P Joel Piniero has missed one start and may miss more with a sore groin.
Gary Sheffield has been placed on the DL with a strained oblique.
Frank Thomas left last night's game with a strained quad and will get an MRI today.
Matt Wise is headed back to the DL with weakness in his shoulder.

Tim Lincecum isn't hurt at the moment, but Dave Pinto at Baseball Musings is scared the Giants will run him into the ground. He threw over 120 pitches last night, and has gone 110 or more five times this season.

Oh, and I love Mitch Hedberg.

Drink up.

So, at least Corey Hart and Rickie Weeks are heating up, right?

Win Expectancy Graph
BR Box Score
BDD Recaps

There's not much out there this morning that I (or someone else) haven't already told you about. We've covered that Gagne has biceps tendinitis and won't throw again until at least Sunday.

We've also covered that Ned is still here, even though Dayn Perry thinks he should be fired, Scott Miller of CBS Sportsline lists him second (behind Willie Randolph) on his list of managers on the hot seat, and some guy named Eli lists him second on his list of managers to be fired, behind M's manager John McLaren.

So, since it's a slow news day, here's a stat to think about instead:

Johnny Estrada, April 2007: .312/.346/.455
Johnny Estrada, May 2007: .236/.244/.449

Jason Kendall, April 2008: .301/.366/.398
Jason Kendall, May 2008: .224/.314/.290

On injuries:

Moises Alou is back on the DL with a strained calf, meaning Raul Casanova is back in the big leagues.
Twins SS Adam Everett has been placed on the DL with a strained shoulder.
Nats OF Austin Kearns is out 3-4 weeks after surgery to remove bone chips in his elbow.
Phillies OF Jayson Werth left last night's game with an oblique strain.
Padres P Chris Young has been placed on the DL with a broken nose after being hit by a line drive Wednesday.

The results from the most recent Baseball Happenings blogpoll have been posted. Josh Hamilton takes home the AL MVP this week, with Cliff Lee winning the AL Cy Young and Jacoby Ellsbury winning Rookie of the Year. Full results here. Here's the ballot I cast:

MVP:
1. Josh Hamilton
2. Kevin Youkilis
3. Carlos Quentin

Cy Young:
1. Cliff Lee
2. Daisuke Matsuzaka
3. Shaun Marcum

Rookies:
1. Greg Smith
2. Jacoby Ellsbury
3. David Murphy

Maybe I'm just an NL guy, but I think the NL Rookie of the Year race is far more interesting, with Fukudome, Geovany Soto and Jair Jurrjens, who Braves beat writer Dave O'Brien thinks might be the best rookie of them all.

Astros 3B Ty Wigginton is tough. But can his toughness be matched by a Houston Chronicle writer? Click here to find out!

Oh, and here's a story about the inaugral "All-you-can-eat day" at the Metrodome.

The Mug is off tomorrow, Sunday and Monday for the holiday weekend. Drink up.

Jeff Suppan against Daisuke Matsuzaka.  I try to be optimistic, but this is just ridiculous.  We're in the weaker league, playing one of the best teams in the stronger league.  Our ace isn't pitching this series, and we just traded in one of our good relievers for someone who has never pitched in the big leagues.

So...one of out three is ok by me.  Maybe that one will be tonight.  Here's the BR Game Preview.  Among the Red Sox who have faced Suppan before, the numbers aren't pretty.

Game time is 6:05 Central.

Go Brewers!

Interleague play starts today, and the Brewers have a three-game series against the Red Sox at Fenway.  To get us ready for the set, I asked my good friend--and non-card-carrying member of Red Sox Nation--Marc Normandin to tell us a little about his team. 

You may know Marc from Baseball Prospectus, where he writes Player Profiles and Fantasy Beat columns.  He also was one of the original bloggers at SBN's stats site Beyond the Boxscore, and he contributes weekly columns to Heater Magazine.

Q: Last year, Daisuke Matsuzaka was pretty good.  So far this season, he's been great, even though he's had to work around 30 walks in 48 innings.  Are we seeing a new, improved, Dice-K, or will a start against the Brewers start regressing him to the mean?

A: This is something I covered the other day over at Baseball Prospectus. Matsuzaka has essentially cut his home run rate in half, but other than that he has lost over a full strikeout per inning and tacked on two additional walks per nine to a total that was already close to iffy. He's been lucky so far with a .209 Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) and has also posted a lofty strand rate thanks to an assist from a Red Sox defense that is converting 71% of all batted-balls into outs.

Supposedly he's been mixing in random pitches less often so he can focus on getting hitters out, but there's a few things that don't jive with that thinking. First, look at his pitch distribution at Fangraphs; there are some slight changes in usage, but nothing too significant. The second part of this is that he's stopped "nibbling" as much, but he's walking additional hitters and still using the same pitch distribution, and is in fact throwing 4.2 P/PA after 4.0 (3.98 without the rounding) last year.

Basically, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop when he's walked the bases loaded at some point after tiring himself out in the 4th inning. His FIP calls for an adjustment to a 4.12 ERA, which seems about right if the homers don't come back. If they do though, well, sigh. I'm not sure if the Brewers are the team where we will see him regress to the mean--that's a pretty awesome .316 team OBP you have going on there--but it will happen sooner than later.

Q: Talk to us about the shortstop situation.  From an outsider's perspective, it looks like Julio Lugo sucks and Jed Lowrie's ready now.  Yet Lowrie is back in Pawtucket and Alex Cora is starting until Lugo is healthy again.  Please explain.

A: Lowrie can't field the position, and Lugo's biggest problem at present is an inability to field the position. It looks as if Lugo is jealous of Youkilis' errorless streak, and he's doing his best to force Youk to collect an error scooping an errant throw. His Rate2 from the Davenport Translations is 78 (22 runs below average per 100 games played) and he's already 7 runs below average defensively by that metric. I'll admit here that I thought signing Lugo was a good idea at the time, but my mind was apparently clouded by the previous shortstops we had in tow.

The Sox haven't announced a long-term plan with Lowrie--I think he's a future third baseman with second handled by Pedroia--but he may be their younger version of Alex Cora with more pop and less defense to be deployed as a utility guy.

It's tough to figure the Sox out sometimes, they just like to play with smoke and mirrors and never tell you their true intentions. Sometimes it works out nicely, and other times they do weird things like tell Josh Beckett to stop throwing a curveball for an entire season during side sessions, or sign Mike Lowell to an extension when you have someone ready to take the position, etc. I try to ignore those times to avoid frustration.

Q: Speaking of "ready now," the same can be said of Jacoby Ellsbury. Now that the Cubs signed Jim Edmonds (tee hee), there's one less suitor for Coco Crisp.  Do you see Crisp being dealt, or is there another way the Sox can handle having four outfielders who either deserve or want to start?

A: Crisp doesn't deserve to start, no matter what his friends and relatives might tell him. I like the production of the "I'm not guaranteed playing time" Covelli much more than the one who was phoning in at-bats daily for two years. It looked like he picked up some bad habits at the plate while recovering from his finger injury in 2006, and he never worked around them until now. Of course, we're talking about an 89 at-bat sample. He could certainly slug under .400 again by year's end.

Defensively, he's excellent, but so is Ellsbury. Ellsbury's the better hitter, the better baserunner, and after some more experience out in Fenway's center, probably at least his equal defensively due to his speed and solid instincts. Crisp may deserve to start elsewhere in the league (how about the Padres? Please?) but the Sox can afford to use him in a role where he spells the other outfielders and comes in defensively late. If at some point you're forced to witness the Ellsbury/Crisp/Drew defensive alignment in the 8th-9th when the Sox have a flyball pitcher on the mound, you might hate yourself a bit. I like that much better than what the Mets have cooked up, where they are sometimes forced to do things like start Angel Pagan in their outfield. Covelli is an excellent fourth outfielder :-)

Q: Here's a fun fact: relative to league average, every offensive position on the Sox is above average.  The two "worst," though, are second base and DH.  Pedroia, ok--average is respectable.  But...David Ortiz?  People have been forecasting his possible demise for years, but is this finally the year he begins morphing into Mo Vaughn?

A: Ortiz is dealing with a knee injury that has sapped some of his power. I know an ankle injury was the beginning of the end for Maurice, but I'm hoping Ortiz hasn't lost it all at once. One of the reasons I didn't like the extension the Sox gave him was because it's possible he will one day wake up and be too big and out of shape to play daily in the major leagues, but it's too soon to say that day is now. The best season of his career was 2007, so I'm hoping he's able to rebound some when his knee heals up.

On a related note, have you seen my buddy Manny up there? .308/.386/.551 with 8 homers. He worked out this winter vigorously for the first time in ages--Manny is notorious for his hard work preparing for games, but it usually has to do with his swing more than it does lifting weights and exercising--and for once, the spring training fluff story seems to have a ring of truth to it. I'm not sure what exercises he did that allowed him to make an over-the-shoulder grab and then high-five a Sox fan, but he should keep doing them. You might ask, "But Marc, Manny's BABIP is .370, and you of all people shouldn't get excited when someone does that!" I'd agree with you if his career BABIP wasn't .343 with four seasons at a higher BABIP than this year's on his resume.

Q: Finally, I know you must get asked this all the time, and it's rough being in second place all these years.  But do you think 2008 is the season when the Red Sox can finally catch the Rays?

A: This is such blasphemy, and it's possible that if Sox fans bothered to venture out of their Nation (outside of their road trips designed to drive other team's fans insane), they would see me read this, but I could honestly care less if the Rays finish in first. Good for them. That doesn't apply to the other AL East teams (or hell, other AL teams outside of Kansas City) but the Rays deserve to win. Maybe that's just the baseball fan in me talking. I'm sure the Sox fan in me will start yelling in an hour when he realizes what I said, but it's nice to have someone else to catch up to and play important games against in the East. The Sox/Yanks rivalry is to the point where it's played out, and the "drama" just doesn't grab me, no matter how much the media tries to shove it down our throats every time they play.

And hey, the Sox finally won the division last year for the first time since 1995. What a roster that was...I'm still not entirely sure how they did it.

Thanks Marc!

(Witty open goes here). It's time for a Frosty Mug.

Win Expectancy Graph
BR Box Score
BDD Recaps
BP Postseason odds: 85.5 wins and 21.7% chance of winning the Central.

A side note from the BP Odds: 21 games into the season, the D-Backs are already being given a 67% chance of winning the NL West, which was supposed to be one of baseball's tightest divisional races.

Jim Powell's blog may be the best place to start today. He talks about Fielder, Turnbow, Gabe Gross and Geoff Jenkins.

Tom H. notes that one year ago, April 23 of 2007, Derrick Turnbow also saved a game where Prince hit two home runs. Considering Turnbow hadn't saved a game since, I thought it was an interesting coincidence.

Can great Brewer moments influence history? Bugs and Cranks seems to think so.

The Hardball Times looks at the future of Yovani Gallardo.

ESPN the Magazine ranked the Brewers fourth in all of MLB in Fan Satisfaction Rankings. Just think where they'd rank if there were more toilets outside.

Brief Alphabetical Morning (BAM) Injury Reports:

Rangers P Kason Gabbard has been DL'ed with a sore lower back.
Reds OF Norris Hopper was placed on the DL with "elbow inflammation."
Daisuke Matsuzaka missed last night's scheduled start with the flu.
Mariners P Carlos Silva left last night's game with a thigh injury. It doesn't appear to be serious.

If you missed it yesterday, or you read the site via RSS so you don't see Fanshots at all, the Reds fired GM Wayne Krivsky yesterday and replaced him with Walt Jocketty. It seems awfully early to be making big changes.

The Cubs picked up their 10,000th win last night. As Dave Pinto notes at Baseball Musings, that's about 75 wins/season since 1876.

Elsewhere in the Central, Fungoes decries the folly of having 13 pitchers on the Cardinals roster, but fails to mention that the Brewers had 14 pitchers during the same series.

Ah, the wonders of a Youtube era. Now, you too can bring your camera to the ballpark and shoot crappy, incoherent video of a Mets reliever responding to the drunken masses during warmups. If you're bored today, take a moment to look at some of the shooter's other "work" and feel better about your life.

Credibility fades fast when you do things like this: Last night, reports came out that Frank Thomas had signed with the A's. But he hasn't yet.

The circle of life continues: Gabe Gross was the odd man out in Milwaukee so he was traded to Tampa, causing Dan Johnson to be the odd man out for the second time in April.

Beyond the Box Score takes a great look at ball and strike calls and how they vary based on several demographic issues. An interesting confirmation of what we've suspected all along: veterans get calls.

True Blue LA takes a look at the world around him and reaches an interesting conclusion: Sabermetrics and stat work have become so commonplace that having a stat guy on hand no longer gives teams an advantage. He says Sabermetrics are dead, but that's like saying the internet is dead because everyone uses it.

Baseball Musings passes along a great list of hitting tips to distribute by age.

The Mariners are encouraging fans to bring their Nintendo DS to the game to chat with other fans, look at stats and order food and drinks from their seats. I have a DS, and if I could bring it to the game and do that, I'd absolutely bring it along.

We're only a couple of days in, but turnout so far has been underwhelming for this week's Fan Opinion Poll. If you haven't voted yet, please do so. Also, thanks to Dan Walsh at The Daily Drink for his help promoting it.

That's all for today. If you'd like to submit a link for inclusion in tomorrow's Mug, drop it in the comments. Drink up.