Here's hoping the first weekend of 2010 is going well for everyone. Unfortunately it probably didn't go very well for anyone who had to look at this sportscard of a certain new Brewer's wife.
Writers are still working their way through 2009 and the last decade:
- Adam McCalvy's month-by-month recap on the official site has all the links to the important brewers.com articles of the year.
- Last year at this time the Brewers hot stove talk was about Trevor Hoffman.
- Seth McClung responds to Tom Haudricourt's 2009 lowlights blog, stating that the lowlights should have gone back to 2008-10-30. Independent research (mine) shows that this was the date Ken Macha was hired.
- Joe Posnanski looks back at the decade of depressing Royals performance. Look on this and think that despite the difficulties of the Brewers from 2000-09, things could be far worse for the team and the fans.
With that said, don't forget to remember to vote for the last few spots in the BCB All-Decade Team. Vote for manager before 1600 (that's 4PM; I'm too used to 24-hour time) on 2010-01-03 and then go vote for the sixth bullpen slot.
New year, new outlook: Matt Snyder of FanHouse has New Year's resolutions for all 30 MLB clubs. According to him, Manny Parra needs to step up for 2010. McCalvy agrees with him in his 10 questions for 2010.
Dan Turkenkopf at Beyond the Box Score introduces a new metric for evaluating relief pitchers and their success rates. Trevor Hoffman did very well according to this in 2009. Jesus Colome, not surprisingly, did not.
Small minors offerings:
- Bernie's Crew has some information about Brewers minor league free agent signings Chris Waters and Anderson Machado.
- John Sickels of Minor League Ball is looking for input on the Brewers organization for his upcoming book.
This being a holiday weekend, there haven't been any transactions of note around baseball. There's plenty of talk about this winter's previous transactions, however. MLB Trade Rumors points out in a discussion of multi-year free agency signings that the Brewers are one of only five teams to guarantee more than $20 million to a player this winter. In unsigned FA commentary, Jeff Passan lists 10 free agents to watch because their signings could indicate a lot about the FA market in the 2009-10 offseason. Lesser-known FA reliever Kiko Calero isn't signed yet either and Satchel Price at Beyond the Box Score is wondering why.
This weekend in Brewer birthdays:
- Current Brewer (despite our complaints) Jeff Suppan is 35 today.
- Well-traveled 2003 Brewer Royce Clayton turns 40. He retired in 2007.
- Another 2003 Brewer of far less service time, Mike Crudale, is 33. He was last seen playing in Italy in 2009.
- 1972 spot starter Archie Reynolds is 64.
It's been a quiet weekend here, so that's all unless you want to read about Japanese old-timers' games that I hope Doug Melvin isn't scouting. The Crew already has a 42-year-old who throws 83mph.