As many/most of you have probably heard by now, on Wednesday the Journal Sentinel plans to implement a new digital subscription plan. This new policy will limit your ability to read JS content online unless you're willing to pay $2.35 per week (or pay $2.30/week and take a copy of the Sunday paper).

I've always made an effort to limit the subscriber-only content linked in the Frosty Mug, because I feel like a large portion of you don't pay for content online and likely have no interest in doing so. Personally, I don't subscribe to ESPN Insider, Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus or any other online publications I'd have to pay for*. There's so much freely available content out there that I've never felt the need to spend money on more.

The JS, however, is a key part of the work we do here on a day-to-day basis. Since Milwaukee is a small market and the Brewers are largely un or undercovered by many of the state's news outlets, our only consistently linkable sources of everyday Brewer coverage during the offseason are the JS reporters (primarily Tom Haudricourt and Todd Rosiak) and Adam McCalvy of MLB.com. McCalvy does great work and we're lucky to have him, but his coverage by itself isn't really enough to power the daily news element of the Frosty Mug.

I'd like your help deciding how we proceed here. Vote in the poll below, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

* - I do subscribe to the B-Ref Play Index but that's more of a resource than a publication.

I wanted to take a moment today, on this final day of 2011, to thank all of you for making this a great year for Brew Crew Ball. Entering the day today, roughly 1.36 million of you have visited the site this year. That's easily the biggest year in site history. The site also logged 110,000 or more visits in eight different months this year: Every month of the regular season, October and December.

As we put the finishing touches on a year today, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge 2011's most popular posts, ranked by page views.

10) On Ryan Braun Testing Positive For Performance Enhancing Drugs

Unfortunately, we start this list with 2011's worst news. The news about Ryan Braun's possible suspension broke on a Saturday night, and Noah was all over it the next morning with this post discussing what we did and didn't know at that point.

9) Your Newest Brewer, Francisco Rodriguez

We're only two posts in and this is already becoming a recurring theme: News broke out of nowhere, and Noah was there to compile what we knew and provide our first reaction.

8) Ryan Braun And The Five Stages Of Grief: Anger

In the wake of the Braun news, we did a five part series attempting to process the emotions and move on. As you might expect, anger was certainly the most popular of the five stages.

7) Comparing The Top Of The NL Central, Player By Player

Long before the NL Central race began, Noah had a line-by-line look at how the division's likely contenders compared to each other.

6) A Quick Thought On The Brewers' Decision To Acquire Nyjer Morgan

This was probably my biggest swing and miss of the year. It's hard to believe it now, but a significant number of us were solidly against the decision to bring Tony Plush to Milwaukee. I was one of them, and I ranted here.

5) If Teams Were Comprised Only Of Players They Drafted

Noah is really dominating the first half of this list: Here's his exhaustive look at what the major league landscape might look like if all players remained with their original organization.

4) Top Ten NLCS Quotes From Russian Play-By-Play Announcers

This was easily 2011's best FanPost, and it was pure brilliance. Argichi stopped by to show us what we were missing by watching baseball on this side of the world, instead of in Armenia. This was the origin of "Hello, I'm a bear."

3) Did Albert Pujols Just Have The Most Overrated Performance Of All Time?

The morning after Albert Pujols' three home runs in a blowout World Series win, I felt a need to pen a counterargument against the people calling it the greatest Fall Classic performance of all time.

2) Ryan Braun Reportedly Tests Positive For PED

Unfortunately, one of the biggest traffic drivers anywhere on the internet is shocking breaking news. As we all learned about this for the first time we congregated here.

1) Tony Plush Does Milwaukee: April 7 Edition

Because Nyjer Morgan didn't join the team until the end of spring training, most of us didn't get a chance to learn much about his personality (personalities?) and antics until we witnessed it firsthand. Rubie Q heard and transcribed one of Morgan's first radio appearances and gave us a glimpse at what we'd be talking about for the rest of the year.

Thanks to the contributors who penned those posts, and thanks to all of you for reading them!

When I started writing a daily link post here back in early 2008, I have no idea how long I was expecting to do it. A few weeks? Months? A year? At any rate, I've been doing this a long time now, longer than I've done anything else in my life.

A few weeks ago on a slow news day I sat down with the site archives and a notepad and arrived at this result: Counting through today, there have been 979 Frosty Mugs (or some variation thereof) on this site. Barring an unforeseen off day, I'll write Frosty Mug #1000 on the morning of Tuesday, January 3.

It's been a long time since we've had a BCB event, but this seems like as good a reason as any to throw another one. So we're tentatively* planning on holding The Night Of 1000 Mugs at Rounding Third in Milwaukee that night. C'mon out for a drink and see if we can have so much fun that I'm late producing the 1001st Mug the next day.

For those of you that have been skimming until now, here's the basics:

WHAT: The Night Of 1000 Mugs, celebrating the 1000th Frosty Mug at BCB.
WHEN: Tuesday, January 3. 7 pm - whenever.
WHERE: Rounding Third, 6317 W Bluemound in Milwaukee.

I've created a Facebook event for the festivities. RSVP's are not absolutely required, but it would be nice if I knew roughly how many people are coming. See you there?

* - I still need to confirm this with Rounding Third. If, for some reason, they don't want us to come drink there that night we'll choose another venue.

Hey folks,

I wanted to take a moment on a somewhat quiet day today to see if anyone is interested in being a part of a project we're considering putting together, the Brew Crew Ball Book Club.

I'm sure you're familiar with the concept of book clubs, but here's the basic premise in case you're not:

1. The group comes together and selects a book to read as a community. I've got some suggestions below, but feel free to add your own in the comments.
2. Periodically (once weekly?), those of us who have chosen to participate come together to discuss the parts of the book we've read so far.

The SB Nation iPhone app v1.1  is now available in the App Store!  SB Nation listened to your feedback and suggestions and heard you loud and clear. 

Now, in addition to helping you stay on top of all the latest news and commentary for Brew Crew Ball and all 300+ SB Nation blogs, version 1.1 includes:

So I don't know if you guys have heard about this, but the World Series starts tonight. If you're looking for a preview or the schedule, Jeff Sullivan of Baseball Nation has you covered.

While we're waiting for tonight's game, though, I wanted to mention a contest TiqIQ (our ticket partner) is holding and give you a chance to win two tickets to any 2012 MLB game. Here's how it works:

As mentioned above, the contest winner will receive two tickets to the 2012 MLB game of their choice. Also worth noting: By participating in the contest you're giving me a shot to win a prize out of this as well.

Official rules can be found after the jump. You have until the first pitch of Game 1 tonight to make your selections. Thanks and good luck!

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