Well, this weekend was a nice step back into tradition. First, on Friday, the Brewers came home with an 8 game winning streak. They'd just finished what Jim Powell was calling the greatest Brewer road trip of all time. So they put on the retro uniforms and lost.

Friday's Win Expectancy Graph
Friday's BR Box Score

The Brewers are 4-5 in retro uniform home games this season, and 28-14 in all other home games. The Brew Town Beat has joined me in calling for the end of Retro Fridays. We don't need to use 1982 to generate excitement anymore, the team on the field right now is pretty good.

Then, on Saturday, a come from behind victory and high fives all around:

Saturday's Win Expectancy Graph
Saturday's BR Box Score

Finally, on Sunday, we took a trip through more recent history, and had a good old fashioned Yosting.

Sunday's Win Expectancy Graph
Sunday's BR Box Score

This should come as a surprise to no one: Ned Yost says Suppan was one pitch away from getting out of the 5th, which is why Ned left him in to surrender 7 runs. Al says most of Suppan's problems can be traced to bad luck. That doesn't change the fact that he walked the leadoff man, gave up hits to 5 of the next 6 batters he faced, and came within about 20 feet of giving up back-to-back-to-back home runs to Carlos Lee, Geoff Blum and Hunter Pence. And he was allowed to do all of this in a pennant race game while an extra starter, Seth McClung, was sitting in the bullpen.

In-Between Hops wants Suppan pulled from the rotation. I still think he can be effective if managed properly. Yesterday was the textbook definition of improper management.

All of this plus the tight races in the AL and NL East have combined to create the closest pennant races in decades. Baseball Musings looks at just how close they are.

Phil Rogers ranked the Brewers 5th in his most recent power rankings. This week, there's only real teams in front of them.

Tom H. ranked the top remaining Brewer prospects by position. I'm curious to hear what people with a better grasp of the minors think of that list. I immediately noticed that Hernan Iribarren is nowhere to be found.

Skyking162 gives Prince Fielder a 3.5 and Ryan Braun a 3.0 in his rating system for hitters. I think Braun belongs on the same level as Fielder, but aside from that I can live with it.

On injuries:

Rick Ankiel was scratched yesterday with an abdominal strain.
White Sox 3B Joe Crede was DL'ed Friday with back stiffness.
Phillies 3B Pedro Feliz missed the weekend series with a stiff lower back but should play Tuesday.
Twins OF Carlos Gomez had to be taken off the field on a cart Friday night after colliding with the wall while making a catch.
Scott Linebrink has been placed on the DL with shoulder inflammation.
Brian McCann left yesterday's game with a mild concussion after a collision at home plate.
Kevin Millwood has been placed on the DL with a right groin strain.
Tigers RP Joel Zumaya left yesterday's game with tightness in his tricep.

Obviously the Sheets-Sabathia 1-2 punch is pretty good, but could a Sheets-Oswalt combination be similar? Astros beat writer Brian McTaggart thinks the Astros should make a run at Ben Sheets this winter.

If that doesn't work out, Gary Glover will likely also be on the market, as the Rays may be getting ready to DFA him.

Major League Baseball has kicked the issue around long enough. Bats are breaking at an alarming rate, and they're calling in...The US Forest Service? What?

Oh, and if you have to postpone a game because of a stabbing a block from the ballpark, maybe you're playing baseball in the wrong neighborhood.

Drink up.

I know you'll all be very disappointed, but today's Trash Day was uneventful, so I don't have an anecdote to lead off the Mug.

Win Expectancy Graph
BR Box Score

So, if you've been watching the games, you probably realize that Rickie Weeks is hitting .273/.467/.636 in the three games since the Durham trade. This one, however, snuck up on me: Bill Hall is hitting .405/.444/.833 with 4 home runs in his last 12 games. Adam Charles of Bugs & Cranks has a theory to explain it: Magic Skoal.

It's going to take more than chewing tobacco to get him back to the big leagues, but the Brewers signed Jay Gibbons to a minor league deal yesterday, ending his 27-game career with the Long Island Ducks.

After I complained in yesterday's Mug about the Whisnant rankings and suggested their ranking system could use a little work, I got an email from Paul Kuo of Whatifsports.com, who wanted to make sure I had seen their most recent power rankings. On the strength of the Sabathia trade the Brewers skyrocketed up the charts to fourth this week, so obviously the WIS rankings are better.

Also, CBSSports.com ranks the Brewers sixth, and second best in the NL.

TheJay is working to quantify Vulture Wins, and discovered that both Salomon Torres and Brian Shouse are among the league leaders. Reall,y, if you just start checking Recondite Baseball every day, you'll be one step ahead of everyone else when the Mug comes out.

On injuries:

White Sox 3B Joe Crede was scratched from last night's lineup with back stiffness.
Cards OF Chris Duncan has been placed on the DL with a bulging disc in his neck.
Reds SP Josh Fogg needed 30 stitches to repair damage done to his upper lip after being hit by a ball in batting practice.

Certainly, yesterday's most puzzling transaction was the Astros' decision to trade for Randy Wolf. The Astros are 12 games back of the Cubs and BP Postseason Odds gives them a .08% chance at making the playoffs, roughly 1 in 1220. R.J. Anderson of Beyond the Box Score is one of thousands who didn't like the move, but Astros beat writer Brian McTaggart defended it.

In other transactions, the Diamondbacks traded a prospect to the Nationals for Jon Rauch, meaning two of the tallest players in MLB history (along with Randy Johnson) are now on the same roster.

Here's a puzzling decision: Skyking162 has ranked the top 25 position players of right now. Well, really he's ranked the top 23 and given 18 more honorable mentions to get to 41. Here are some names on the list so far:

Evan Longoria, who has yet to finish his first big league season.
Brian Roberts
B.J. Upton
Mark Ellis
Rick Ankiel
Scott Rolen
David DeJesus
Aaron Rowand
Adrian Beltre

Yet somehow, Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder are nowhere to be found. With the possible exception of Longoria, there's not a single guy on that list who deserves to be ahead of Braun and Fielder. And Mark Ellis? That's a joke.

Francisco Rodriguez is threatening to become the first closer ever to reach 60 saves in a season. 6-4-2 has the math on what it will take for him to get there.

These seem to tie together nicely: In-Between Hops has a list of the greatest living players in the history of 29 franchises. Joe Posnanski takes a look at players who posted more than three "great" seasons in their careers.

If you're looking for a lesson on somewhat advanced statistics, this debate between Tangotiger and Geoff Baker is pretty instructive on the strengths, weaknesses and correct uses of ERA+.

Oh, and here's a hurricane prediction that's as accurate as any you'll see today.

Drink up.

I've got a lot of tabs open right now, which means there are a lot of links to get to.  Let's get at it.

• FanGraphs Win Probability graph
• BR Box Score
• BDD Daily Recaps
• BP Postseason Odds: 84 wins, 26% shot at the playoffs.

The big news this morning is that it's official, Turnbow is DFA'd and Dillon is back.  It's disappointing that D-Bow hasn't been able to turn it around, but I do think it's well past time we cut our losses here.  One interesting thought that has been popping up a little bit lately is that Melvin is too slow to cut the cord on his reclamation projects--Podsednik is a similar case that comes to mind.  Branch Rickey was famous for saying it's better to trade a player a year too early than a year too late, and while you get bit occasionally for making that mistake, it's better than being saddled with someone as ineffective as D-Bow is right now.

A few writers at The Hardball Times ganged up to write a massive profile of Ben Sheets, including pitch f/x data, mechanics analysis, and injury commentary.

The Junkball Blues looks at how the Crew has done against closers.  It's interesting work, but he draws the wrong conclusions.  In 13 closer appearances, we've been shut out 7 times and have scored 6 times.  That's astonishingly good, to my eyes.  Would you happy if your team's closer gave up a run or more every other appearance?  That's essentially what we're turning opposition closers into.

Some injury news:

• Troy Tulowitzki will be out for a month, maybe two.
• Phil Hughes has a broken rib , and will probably be out for at least two months.
• Jimmy Rollins won't be back as scheduled, and there's no clear timetable for when he will be.

I'm not going to wade very far into the muck of the Bissinger/Costas/Leitch controversy, but I will point you to this great piece by Joe Posnanski, who straddles the blogger/reporter divide quite gracefully.  And I'll say one more thing.  Bissinger may have been honing his craft for 40 years, but his LaRussa book, Three Nights In August, was truly dreadful.  Possibly the worst baseball book I have ever read.  There is nothing more insulting than a quasi-analytical hagiography about an overrated, self-aggrandizing figure like TLR.

A couple of ex-Brewers notes.  Richie Sexson hit his 300th career home run, and Greg Aquino cleared waivers (big surprise--his ERA is roughly the same as Turnbow's) and is headed to Norfolk.  I don't remember seeing this in an earlier Mug, but Brady Clark is also in AAA--he talked about retiring, but has opted to spend some quality time with Claudio Vargas in New Orleans.

I think the Nationals Enquirer had too much to drink.  Careful kids: drinking and photoshopping don't mix.

Derrick Goold has a nice article about Rick Ankiel and Pat Jordan's writing about him.  When we played the Cards recently, I was thinking about the stories in baseball today that we'd still be talking about 40 or 50 years from now, and Ankiel is definitely one of them.

It's amazing how rarely I agree with Richard Justice.  A couple of days ago, he decided to rip on the Astros FO for choosing Max Sapp, a high school catcher, in the first round of the 2006 draft.  Amazingly, he uses the phrase, "they blew it" to describe the results of a draft pick made two years ago.  True, Sapp is struggling in A ball, but dude, he's two years out of high school.  He's younger than a lot of the guys who will be drafted this year.  And anyway, first-round picks fizzle sometimes.  We're doing just fine without the services of Jeremy Jeffress, who we chose well before the Astros picked Sapp.

Finally, a happy story.  John Wilson is a 53-year-old senior at Penn State Altoona, and a key part of their baseball program.  He's friends with Dusty Baker, too, though I guess I can forgive him for that.

Drink up, but don't drink it too fast.  This cup runneth over!

The Brewers begin a three-game set (the first of five this season) against the Cardinals tonight.  I don't think anybody expected that we'd be in second place behind St. Louis, but that team has a lot going on that the pundits didn't anticipate. 

I enlisted the help of Larry Borowsky (lboros) to get us up to speed.  Larry runs Viva El Birdos, one of the best team-specific blogs out there.

We're two weeks into the season, and much to my surprise, the Cardinals are sitting atop the division. What's been the key to St. Louis's success so far?

Starting pitching, mostly. The rotation has a 3.42 ERA, and their peripherals are pretty solid -- 55-19 k/bb ratio (nearly 3 to 1), 3.82 FIP, .303 BABIP. Of course, as I noted at VEB on Monday, the Cardinal rotation pitched just as well in the early going last year, and it was merely a blip; they fell apart in May. The same thing might happen this year --- but the 2008 peripherals look a lot better, so maybe the crash won’t be as steep. It’s very hard to predict anything, because there are so many guys coming back from injuries that the Cardinal rotation is almost destined to be a hash all year long. Joel Pineiro returned to duty Sunday and looked awful; Mark Mulder is due back in a couple of weeks, and he’ll probably be worse than whoever he bumps aside.

The other major thing the Cardinals have done well in the early going is show some decent secondary offensive skills. They’re second in the league in walks, second in OBP, and they have some extra-base pop (first in doubles and triples, middle-of-pack in homers) ---- again, it’s too early to draw any conclusions from these figures, but the short-term returns are pleasantly surprising to Cardinal fans.

You've got an outfield full of names--Ludwick, Ankiel, Barton, Schumaker, Duncan--that many fans haven't even heard of. What kind of production are you expecting from the group, and without a true center fielder in the bunch, how well do you expect them to fare with the glove?

Ankiel has been a revelation with the glove in center. He consistently gets good jumps and has made a couple of highlight-reel catches; he’s a big upgrade over last year’s slow-motion version of Jim Edmonds. He’s been good enough that some have whispered Colby Rasmus might slide over to right field whenever he is called up.

As far as production, these no-names might surprise us. Through 13 games (a ridiculously small sample, but it’s all we’ve got) the Cardinal outfielders have an aggregate OPS of .986 --- best in the National League. I wouldn’t expect them to rank 1st all year, but I think they can finish in the top half --- high enough that they won’t put a drag on the lineup, as they did for much of last year. Duncan, Ankiel, and Ludwick are all probably capable of .800+ OPS over a full season, and Schumaker is a much-improved hitter who can probably hit at about a league-average level. Barton, a Rule 5 pick who spent most of last year in A ball, is super-fast and fun to watch; he hasn’t looked overmatched so far. At some point they’ll add Rasmus to the mix; I think they’ll be able to get sufficient production out of this group.

After 37 starts in the last two years, Anthony Reyes is now a member of the bullpen. What's going on with this guy? Is he going to have to be wearing a different uniform to be successful?

Hah. There is no more passionately debated subject at VEB than Anthony Reyes. It’s been going on for two years and shows no signs of slowing down. There’s a large contingent of fans (including me) that thinks La Russa and Duncan screwed the kid up by trying to cram their pitch-to-contact philosophy down his throat. But there’s another large contingent that thinks Reyes was overhyped as a prospect and was never as good as advertised. Here is one fact that’s beyond dispute: The Cardinals changed Reyes’ mechanics in 2006 in an attempt to get him to pitch to the lower half of the strike zone and induce more groundballs. During those two years, Reyes lost a few mph and considerable movement off his 4-seam fastball, which had been his primary weapon. Did the change in mechanics cause the loss of life on the 4-seamer? It seems obvious to me -- but some people think I’m just making excuses for the kid, or that I can’t admit I was wrong about him.

Reyes is even a hotly debated subject within the Cards’ decision-making corps. He didn’t make the starting rotation despite a very good spring, and La Russa and Duncan didn’t want him on the team at all, but the front office intervened and pretty much ordered them to keep Reyes on the club as a relief pitcher. The team’s hope is that Reyes can re-establish enough trade value to be dealt on acceptable terms --- that’s the exit strategy. He’s pitched well in relief so far ---- back to throwing the 4-seamer in the mid-90s and missing bats. There’s almost no chance he’ll start for the Cardinals as long as Tony and Dave are calling the shots on the field.

What are your early impressions of the Glaus-for-Rolen deal?

I always liked the deal from a payroll standpoint, and Rolen’s spring-training injury (admittedly a freakish one) reinforced my feelings on that score. I’m really glad we don’t have to worry about Rolen as a declining, injury-prone ex-star in his mid-30s making $15 million a year all the way through 2010. Glaus ain’t no Rolen in the field, and he still hasn’t homered and isn’t hitting for average, but he’s drawing some walks and showing a smidgen of extra-base power (5 doubles); he’ll come around. I’ve seen no evidence so far that last year’s foot injury is still haunting him. He earned lotsa points among the Cardinal fan base last weekend by plowing into J.R. Towles on a 2-out, 9th-inning play at the plate --- the ball bounced free and Glaus scored the tying run.

Many prospect-watchers don't have nice things to say about the Cardinals system, especially beyond Colby Rasmus. Aside from Rasmus, who I'd imagine we'll see long before September, is there anyone else on the farm who might make an impact in 2008?

The system’s reputation is improving ---- Baseball America ranked the St. Louis farm system 13th out of 30, and Kevin Goldstein had it 15th. Rasmus has a lot to do with that, of course. Two other guys to keep an eye on are AAA relief pitchers --- Chris Perez, a first-round supp pick in 2006 who struck out 13 guys per 9 in AA/AAA last year and was the closer on Team USA last fall; and Jason Motte, a recently converted catcher who throws 97 and struck out 12 per 9 last year (at double A). Another Memphis pitcher who will get a look at some point --- maybe this year, you never know --- is Mitchell Boggs, a starting pitcher who turned some heads in the AZ Fall League last year. And the farm system already has produced a potentially important member of this year’s bullpen, Kyle McClellan --- La Russa’s using him in late-game situations against meat-of-order hitters, and so far the kid has survived. He clearly has big-league stuff, but it’s a long season --- we’ll have to see how well he holds up.

As for everyday players, aside from Rasmus there isn’t anybody at Triple A who I would expect to make an impact this year. Joe Mather his 30 homers last year in the high minors and almost made the club out of spring training; he could see some time in St. Louis this summer, but if so he’ll be strictly a bench player.

Thanks Larry!