So I am skimming around ESPN, and I see an article about how the University of TExas is going to retire the numbers of a few guys that were OK in their sports (Kevin Durant, Vince Young).  This is all fine and well, but if they are going to retire numbers then I think it is obvious that they should retire the number of the greatest athlete in Longhorn History, the one and only Brooks Kieschnick.  Well I open the article, and thankfully he is also getting his due.  So when you go out this weekend make sure have an extra beer for everyone's favorite former Milwaukee Brewer. I mean who can forget all the joy he brought the fans, like doing this, this and this in the same year.

I was looking at hte Brewers Offensive Stas from the season, and then I noticed a new blog entry by Tom Haudricort, where essentially, he got it right....we cant hit the baseball right now.  All of the press has been about Fielder and Braun, but Rickie, JJ and Billy have had a fair number of bad cuts as well.  There really aren't a lot of exceptions(Hart, Kendall, Kapler)...anyone else have thoughts on this? Maybe someone who knows more about mechanics than me.....

The blog entry can be found here (though I am sure most of you were already aware of this)

This could be trouble for the brewers....the Cubs got Brian Roberts.

I am sure that no one is really that surprised that he is gone, but it is now official, no more Mench. See the link here:

http://blogs.jsonline.com/brewers/archive/2007/12/10/mench-is-gone.aspx

This combined with the loss of Jenkins means that while me now have a French-Canadian in the fold, we have neither side of our platoon, officially.  So is it Grynn time?

[editor's note, by Jeff] Technical note: he's been DFA'd, which means that the Brewers have a few days to try and trade him. If a team trades for him, they'll still have to decide whether to go to arbitration -- as is likely to happen with Estrada, a team could trade for him and then non-tender him, which would mean trading for him was pointless.

Also like Estrada, Mench is likely to get a (very) modest raise in arby, so a team that traded for him would have to be willing to pay $3.5MM or so. Given that he may not be worth that, it's more likely to me that no one will trade for him, he'll be released, and then he'll become a free agent, at which time interested teams don't have to worry about arbitration; they can make any sort of deal they want with him.

It's official, in one of the closest ROY races ever, Braun beat Tulowitzki 128-126. I for one never thought there should have ever been a doubt, as he put together not only one of the best rookie years recently, but in the history of baseball.  Now all we need is the Prince to snag the MVP! You can read more about it here:

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071112&content_id=2298624&vkey=news_mlb&fext=. jsp&c_id=mlb

[bumped, because it's wicked cool. --- roguejim]

So as I just posted on the PITCH f/x diary, the algorithm to me seems to have a flaw, but that if we just know every pitcher's true top velocity of their fastball, then we can predict the other pitches just by their speed.  Over the course of the season, if you call the speed of the fastball X then the other pitches would be:

Cutter = 0.95 X
Splitter = 0.92 X
Slider = 0.92 X
Changeup = 0.90 X
Curveball = 0.82 X

This means that we can predictably order pitches with the exception of a splitter and a slider.

This is based on data that a friend of mine uncovered over 100's of games of analysis, so while I am sure their are flaws....the sample size is pretty good.  On a side note, I showed him the type of discussions that occur hear and he was pleasantly surprised by the knowledge of the poster's here.

As of a few moments ago, we are in first place once again!!! Yeah Dodgers!!! There are still a few more weeks to go, but I am very optimistic that we can still take care of business.  I figured that this diary could be a great place for people to discuss what they believe will happen from here on out.  

Personally, after watching the bats perk up and the pitching be respectable, I expect the brewers to win the division by two games over the cubs, just as I predicted at the beginning of the year.  I am unafraid of the cardinals, but I was wondering what everyone else's thoughts were.

I am not really the statistician of this site, so I decided that I would keep my analysis simple, after looking at the list the theJay posted on the game thread, I wondered what teams do the highest percentage of their scoring in the firrst inning to see if this would explain how inexcusably the brewers seem to get on pitchers early and then never again.  So here is my simple analysis:

team    1st    total    percentage   
CHC    85    543    15.65377532
PIT    74    504    14.68253968
FLA    84    579    14.50777202
MIL    81    568    14.26056338
SF    72    506    14.22924901
SD    73    515    14.17475728
ATL    81    591    13.70558376
PHI    87    643    13.53032659
ARI    65    507    12.82051282
NYM    70    555    12.61261261
CIN    68    553    12.2965642
COL    73    601    12.14642263
HOU    61    543    11.23388582
LAD    55    521    10.55662188
WAS    43    465    9.247311828
STL    40    517    7.736943907

Any comments? Other ways to analyze?

 Just thought I would give my personal opinions and thoughts on the game, the first I've seen at Miller Park this year:

Ryan Braun is awesome, I was really impressed with his at-bats and the bombs were hit to different parts of the park, the second won went out even though he kinda missed it.

JJ Hardy does not look good, with two strikes he looked even worse, I like him a lot but not good from what I saw.

Capuano is not sharp he was making mistakes all over the place, walking bad hitters and giving up the long ball, and villanueva, who is one of my favorites was no better.

and since she was there too, a direct quote from my mom:

That  guy who batted after jenkins...what's his name?...Oh Rickie Weeks, I thought it was Kevin...I thought he did real well. (I cant say I disagreed except for a double play ball he botched the throw on.)