As regular readers know, KL would occasionally mention the large number of blogs he reads every day to provide the Frosty Mug. A while back, he sent me the list so I could import it into Google Reader, and let me tell you, it is a LOT of blogs. Since this time yesterday, there were about 450 new posts to read skim mostly ignore.
No game last night, of course, and not really much going on in Brewers news. Weeks is on the DL, Iribarren is called up. Brewers scouts were at an Orioles game (which could have something to do with our series against the Orioles next weekend), Doug says he's not interested in Brian Roberts, but then again, this is all via Tom H, who the front office may or may not be toying with.
Adam McCalvy has a new mailbag up. The JS guys do too, but the JS site is down right now, so I'm not going to link to it. Another JS article that is currently unavailable: Mike Cameron doesn't like being on the bench.
In-Between Hops thinks Carlos Villanueva should get a look as closer. Personally, I'm happy sticking with Torres for a while, and as long as Torres holds up, Villa can be a two-inning guy when needed.
Right Field Bleachers interviewed supplemental pick Evan Frederickson. Later today, battlekow will post his interview with Frederickson. Also, if you haven't been here in a couple of days, scroll down for another Evan interview--this one with Evan Bronson, a lower-round pick.
More obscure draft/minor leaguer news: The Brewers signed Brandon Drespling, an outfielder from Westminster College in Pennsylvania. (Yes, that's WAY off the beaten scouting path.) Follow the link for his stats and splits. I hope his first hitting coach mentions that it's ok not to swing now and then.
The big baseball news yesterday was Ken Griffey Jr.'s home run #600. Roch Kubatko leads his article with an even more incredible occurrence:
Paul Bako had the first multi-homer game of his career.
Joe Posnanski takes the milestone seriously and, as usual, turns in a great piece.
Pitcher fatigue is in the air. In addition to Josh's great diary outlining how Brewers starters tire (or not), check out his article at The Hardball Times. It includes Sheets, and has the interesting note that a change in fastball movement might be a better indicator of fatigue than a decrease in velocity.
Pizza Cutter also looks at pitcher fatigue, through more traditional means. A finding that might bring a Brewers starter or two to mind:
Does fatigue affect DIPS? For a long time, it’s been assumed that balls in play went for hits at a rate that had more to do with the defense than the pitcher. That’s been based mostly on season-to-season intercorrelations. But, what about within a game? The answer is… yes, there is an effect. At lower pitch counts, a ball in play is less likely to be a hit, again, controlling for batter/pitcher rates. Additionally, there’s an effect for number of times through the lineup (already controlling for the fact that there will be a pitch count effect.) So, we would expect that starters who are efficient with their pitch count to have a lower BABIP overall.
That'll do it for today. Check back this afternoon for the Frederickson interview, and drop in tonight for the 7:05 start in Houston.