Ok, I think my hiatus is done. I've gone on vacation, I've moved, and last night I got home from 5 days in Denver. And somehow, I managed to schedule my return for the biggest Brewer news day of the season.

Win Expectancy Graph
BR Box Score

First, if you haven't seen them yet, the specifics of the trade: In exchange for a 3 month rental of C.C. Sabathia and the increased potential of a long playoff run, the Brewers are giving up Matt LaPorta, Zach Jackson and West Virginia reliever Rob Bryson. They will likely also add Brevard Co. 3B Taylor Green.

Of course, some people have written about this:

Baseball Intellect has a nice overview of the trade, complete with a review of Sabathia's stuff, if you're not familiar with him.
In-Between Hops likes the move.
Phil Rogers says it's time to take the Brewers seriously again...so he ranks them behind All-Star arguments in his most recent power poll.
Thomas Wayne of Dugout Central pulls out the smallest possible sample size and says the Sabathia move won't help the Brewers, based on his 7+ ERA in four career postseason starts.

I think the most interesting Sabathia conversation has yet to start, though: Who does he replace in the rotation? Assuming Sheets and Suppan are safe, and Dave Bush is similarly safe based on his recent performances and Ned Yost's man-crush on him, then we're down to Seth McClung and Manny Parra. In the Fanposts, Badgermaniac suggests platooning them. What do you think?

A semi-related note: The Biz of Baseball has made a list of six GMs on the hot seat. If this move doesn't work out and Doug Melvin traded a large chunk of the future for a 3 month rental on a team that misses the playoffs, he'll likely be on lists like that next season.

Also, while I doubt he'll slide directly into Sabathia's spot in the rotation, the Indians signed Jeff Weaver yesterday.

Are the Brewers done dealing? Buster Olney, via The Brew Town Beat, says the answer may be no. They're reportedly still talking to the Padres about Randy Wolf and Greg Maddux.

Somehow overshadowed in all of this: The Brewers finished a 3-game sweep of the Pirates yesterday, and J.J. Hardy is hitting .468/.507/1.000 in his last 15 games with 9 doubles, 8 HR and 19 RBI.

All told, the last 24 hours have certainly been more interesting than sitting on the roof.

On injuries:

Braves reliever Manny Acosta injured his hamstring running out a sac bunt and has been DL'ed.
Braves P Jeff Bennett is on the DL after injuring himself throwing to first.
Lance Berkman missed yesterday's game with what sounds like a pretty nasty eye condition.
A's SS Bobby Crosby is on the DL with a strained hamstring.
D-Backs RP Juan Cruz is on the DL with a strained oblique.
Johnny Damon is on the DL for the first time in his career after injuring his shoulder colliding with the wall Friday.
Nats OF Elijah Dukes will be out 4-6 weeks after having arthroscopic surgery to repair damage to his patella.
Phillies reliever Tom Gordon is on the DL with elbow inflammation.
Orlando Hernandez pitched four rehab innings yesterday. It's unclear whether he threw the banana.
Reds OF Norris Hopper will miss the rest of the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery.
Braves IF Omar Infante is on the DL with a strained hamstring
Roy Oswalt's next start is being pushed back to give him time to recover from pain in his hip.
Troy Tulowitzki is on the DL after breaking a maple bat against the wall and slicing open his hand.

A quick maple bat story: Saturday night I attended my first game at Coors Field (worth seeing if you're in Denver, but don't go out of your way to get there). I was nearly reduced to tears by the inane conversation of two young women behind me, who showed incredible perseverance by hanging in there through 3 full hours and two rain showers despite the fact that they had almost no idea a game was going on. Some examples from their conversation, when they weren't too busy talking about drinks, hookups and drugs: The Rockies were up 8-0 at the time. The following quote came after a home run was inadvertently knocked back onto the field by a fan trying to make the catch: But, in the middle of all of that mess, they also said this: My point: Even the ditziest blonde in Denver recognizes the problems with maple bats. Major League Baseball, however, still says the matter needs more research.

Stories like this put our pitching conversations into perspective: Mark Mulder is starting for the Cardinals again.

The Phillies have taken an opportunity to drive up the price of closers, and rewarded Brad Lidge's half-season of effective bullpen work with a 3-year, $37.5 million extension.

Oh, and by the way, I hate the X-Games with the fire of a thousand suns, but I love Darkmane.

Drink up.

Not a ton on the interwebs for you this morning, but hey, if you get bored, you can get think about the series win on the road.  Over and over again.

• BR Box Score
• FanGraphs Win Probability Chart

Bye bye, Jeff Weaver.

Two-Fisted Slopper thinks the moment to strike is now, and uses some reasonable assumptions to predict that the Brewers will be three games back at the All-Star Break.  I'd be happy with that, especially if it means the Cubs panic and sign Jeff Weaver.

Jim Powell has posted another interview--this time it's with Jim Callis of Baseball America, and you'll be shocked to learn that the topic is not Jeff Weaver, it's first-round pick Brett Lawrie.

With Micah Hoffpair and Eric Patterson called up and Matt Murton cloaked with invisibility, the Cubs have picked up Ben Broussard as Triple-A depth.  I guess he's better than Weaver...and I'm just talking about pitching!

Suggesting that we had better Triple-A depth in the 2007 Nashville rotation than in this year's, R.A. Dickey is taking the place of Miguel Batista in the Mariners rotation.

After a strong start, Livan Hernandez gave up seven runs in three innings last night to the Indians.  That's five or more runs in five consecutive outings.  Unfortunately, we're going to face better pitchers than that this weekend.  They've got Francisco Liriano in Triple-A, but if they're worried about using him (or they use him, and it opens up a spot in the minor league rotation), maybe that'll be Jeff Weaver's new home.

That'll do it for today.

Here's a tradition I'd like to see more of.

Win Expectancy Graph
BR Box Score
BDD Recaps

You can either stop holding your breath, or prepare to hold it for 15 more days: the Brewers' deadline to make a decision on Jeff Weaver has been extended to June 15.

Apparently David Riske has no new structural damage, but is taking longer than expected to recover. That's bad news all around. Of course, Salomon Torres is pretty excited about getting to close games.

So last night the Brewers got 3 hits and won. That's a stark contrast from August 24, 2002, when they got 20 hits and lost, tying the tenth highest hit total in a nine inning loss of all time. Recondite Baseball has the full list at that link. Or, you could stay here and watch me struggle with bad segues and awkward linking.

In the fanposts yesterday, Greg8370 mentioned a report that the Brewers might be looking to move their AA team to the Eastern League, and had been mentioned as a candidate to play home games in Norwich, CT. After a brief search this morning, I found the column mentioning it. Sounds like the Defenders are having some real problems with the Giants organization, mainly tied to the fact that the Giants don't like the ballpark dimensions, and also don't like playing 30-degree home games. I think I'd stick with Huntsville. I emailed the reporter, though, to see where he got the rumor from.

UPDATE: I've been in touch with Joe Perez, the writer from the Norwich Bulletin. You can see our conversation here .

So yesterday afternoon I had a moment to kill, and I got an email from the Brewers. They really wanted me to vote (25 times) to get some Brewers in the starting lineup of the All-Star Game. They've also posted a story about how close Braun is to only being 4 spots back of the leaders. So I sat down with the stats, picked out the best candidate at each position...and didn't vote for a single Brewer. Here's the ballot I clicked and reclicked and submitted 25 times:

AL:
C: Joe Mauer
1B: Kevin Youkilis
2B: Ian Kinsler
3B: Joe Crede
SS: Michael Young
OF: Milton Bradley
OF: Josh Hamilton
OF: Magglio Ordonez
DH: David Ortiz

NL:
C: Brian McCann
1B: Lance Berkman
2B: Dan Uggla
3B: Chipper Jones
SS: Hanley Ramirez
OF: Nate McLouth
OF: Pat Burrell
OF: Adam Dunn

On injuries:

Pirates P Zach Duke will get an extra day before his next start to allow a blister to heal.
Carlos Guillen is battling some hemorrhoids his manager seems a little too eager to talk about.
Marlins P Scott Olsen still isn't getting velocity back after an exceptionally long outing against the Brewers weeks ago.
Troy Percival collapsed falling off the mound last night and has a tight hamstring. Grant Balfour may be called up in his place.
A's OF Ryan Sweeney had to be taken to the hospital for X-rays after fouling a ball off his foot.
Frank Thomas may be headed to the DL after an MRI on his strained right quad revealed major inflammation.
Blue Jays C Gregg Zaun has been placed on the DL with inflammation in his elbow.

Does the price include my computer and rent for mom's basement? The Juiced Sports Blog ranks the 100 most valuable sports blogs.

It didn't crack the top 100, but I think this post is pretty valuable: The Padres recently acquired Cha Seung Baek, and Paul DePodesta discusses the move.

Oh, and a hydrochloric acid spill is a pretty good reason to suspend a game.

Drink up.

Good morning, Brewer fans. Most of the NL had an off day yesterday, so the Brewers wake up again in second place by themselves, but in a good position to do something about it: They open up a series with the first place Cardinals tonight. It's time for a Frosty Mug.

With the off day, there's no Win Expectancy Graph or ESPN Video highlights to show you, but here are Baseball Digest Daily's recaps from yesterday.

Also, I have a new addition to the daily reads, Baseball Prospectus postseason odds. Today, they project the Brewers to win 82.1 games and give them a 17% shot of winning the NL Central.

Now, today's big news: Tom H. is reporting the Brewers may have signed Jeff Weaver. Tom thinks they'll likely send him to extended spring training and then AAA, but notes that Weaver is a Boras client, so it seems unlikely he cut a deal without some promise for a big league opportunity. It's probably still too early to speculate.

Ben Sheets won this week's Baseball Happenings Blogpoll for NL Cy Young. Albert Pujols won the vote for MVP, and Kosuke Fukudome won Rookie of the Year. Click the previous link for full voting results, and click here to see the BCB ballot.

The Junkball Blues is doing a nice job tracking an interesting stat, and so far it's paying dividends: The Brewers see an average of 3.91 pitches per plate appearance in their 8 wins, and only 3.61 in their 4 losses.

Bucs Dugout is starting some kind of tournament to crown the worst GM in baseball. Our very own Doug Melvin is one of the 14 GM's who won't make the field.

Brad Bortone at Bugs and Cranks is comparing Prince's new eating habits to the sudden change in Sid Fernandez's eating habits in 1985, which took 8-10 mph off his fastball. I disagree with the point, but it's an interesting one.

The Southpaw, a Jays blog, has the Brewers #5, the best in the NL Central, in their latest power rankings.

There's only three injury reports today, so I'll just put them in one paragraph: Reds SS Alex Gonzalez is not seeing improvement in the compression fracture in his knee and still won't be able to run for at least 2-4 more weeks. Pedro Martinez's rehab is going slower than expected and will keep him out well into May, maybe into June. Mariners OF Mike Morse has been moved onto the DL with a dislocated shoulder, opening the door for the big league return of R.A. Dickey.

Fish Chunks takes a look at some of the surprising numbers surrounding the 2008 Marlins, who lead the NL in home runs but are being outscored by seven NL teams. They have several more stats about homer-centric baseball that should sound familiar to fans of the 2007 Brewers.

This one doesn't appear to be paid, but No Bias Baseball is looking to add writers.

24 hours in, we've already got 96 votes in this week's Fan Opinion Poll. If you haven't cast your ballot yet, take a moment to do so. Thanks to everyone who's helped promote it, including Al's Ramblings.

Over the weekend I missed a comment asking how to submit links for inclusion in the Mug. The easiest way to grab my attention is to post links in the comments of the previous day's Mug, which I usually check right before I start writing. I'll start making a more conscious effort to re-post the best links I find that way.

That's all for today. Drink up.