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Sunday's Brewers-themed Big Game Preview

What can former Brewers tell us about Sunday's final NFL game?

Alex Trautwig

By now you've likely heard that, at roughly 5:30 pm tonight, football teams from the states of Colorado and Washington will square off in a football game most of America is expected to watch (for the commercials). If you're looking for some insightful observations on what will happen in today's contest, I might be the wrong guy to ask. To be honest, I'm more interested in the second day's action in the Caribbean Series.

If you'd like me to pick a winner based on an arbitrary and largely unrelated set of criteria, though, then this post was written with you in mind. I'm picking the Seahawks, mostly because of Geoff Jenkins and Lyle Overbay.

Jenkins and Overbay, you see, are two of the 13 players born in the state of Washington who have worn a Brewers uniform over the years. Here's the full list:

Rk Player G From To Pos
1 Geoff Jenkins 1234 1998 2007 *79/HD Olympia, WA
2 Lyle Overbay 317 2004 2005 *3/H Centralia, WA
3 Bob Coluccio 284 1973 1975 *89/H7D Centralia, WA
4 Marshall Edwards 160 1981 1983 /9H87D Fort Lewis, WA
5 Chris Magruder 157 2004 2005 *H/978 Tacoma, WA
6 Travis Ishikawa 94 2012 2012 /*H39 Seattle, WA
7 Glendon Rusch 70 2002 2003 /*1H Seattle, WA
8 David Riske 69 2008 2010 /*1 Renton, WA
9 Steve Whitaker 69 1969 1969 /H79 Tacoma, WA
10 Dana Eveland 36 2005 2006 /*1 Olympia, WA
11 Rick Austin 35 1975 1976 /*1 Seattle, WA
12 Ed Kirkpatrick 29 1977 1977 /*7HD3 Spokane, WA
13 Bob Reynolds 3 1971 1971 /*1 Seattle, WA
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 2/1/2014.

Jenkins is third on the Brewers all-time list with 212 home runs, although he's only one long ball ahead of Ryan Braun (211). According to the 2010 Census (via Wikipedia), Centralia has just 16,336 residents but is the birthplace of a pair of former Brewers. See, aren't you glad you stopped by now? You learned something today.

The list of Brewers born in Colorado is a much lesser group:

Rk Player G From To Pos
1 James Mouton 162 2000 2001 /H879D Denver, CO
2 Mark Knudson 106 1986 1991 *1 Denver, CO
3 Chris Narveson 92 2009 2013 /*1 Englewood, CO
4 Jack Lind 26 1974 1975 /*654HD3 Denver, CO
5 Mark Johnson 7 2004 2004 /*2H Wheat Ridge, CO
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 2/1/2014.

Chris Narveson is probably the most valuable member of this group, and he's certainly the only one of these five to make a postseason appearance as a Brewer. That's something, at least: Neither Jenkins or Overbay have done that. And since we're using this ridiculous idea to predict a playoff game, I guess that's something to take into consideration.

Narveson has 26 career wins as a major league pitcher, mostly from 2010 (12) and 2011 (11). Geoff Jenkins hit 33 sac flies in his ten seasons as a Brewer. So there you have it: Today Seattle wins, 33-26.