98navigator

Lou must have really wanted to break up those lefties. Yeah, and my guess is Felix will be sent down.

FYI, Guzman is starting Sunday

The injuries are in the past, even though hes already left a start early in the first month of the season? Injury not injuries. The back injury is what ruined his seasons in '05 and '06. Pulling him from the game with a groin strain in 40 degree weather was a precaution. He returned the next start and pitched as well as he's pitched all year. Remember the "finding his curveball" part? His curve started dropping in that last start. With his curveball dropping like it used to, expect the Ks to go up, as that's his "out" pitch, and hits and ERA to go down. Wrong! Sheets has had shoulder and back issues. The fact remains that he's been DL'd 2 of the last 3 seasons. Cubs fans understand that a team can be derailed by an injury prone starting pitcher. 2006: 2005: 2004:

True, we don't need to jump to conclusions. But almost a quarter of weed and a pipe in a rented vehicle doesn't exactly scream innocence. I think the fact that it was a rental vehicle increases the likeliness that he'd smoked recently (not that it matters because he was well over the legal limit already).

Astros win 7-5

fixed :)

Thank you! Pirates win! Cubs 5 games behind the Brewers. Only 4 back in the loss column (and the Brewers have played two more games)

Pirates win 4-2!

Biggio RBI double 7-5 Hou

To be fair, it wasn't quite like that. The Pirates pinch-hit with Nate McLouth. The Brewers brought Shouse in to face McLouth, but the Pirates then took him down and pinch-hit Eldred-so the Brewers walked him. If the Pirates had left McLouth in, Shouse would have pitched to him. Ah, I must have missed that part watching the Reds/Astros.

Astros take the lead 6-5 bottom 8!

What is the NL going to do....? :P Overall, they will rejoice but I was hoping that the Astros would play well tonight. ;) I have no problem with the Astros losing every game right now. The farther they fall out of the race, the less likely it becomes that Clemens joins them. I agree with the tenor of your point but tonight I was hoping for a different result (maybe it happens after all). I'm itching for a steady progression to the top of the standings.

Hmmm, the Brewers brought in a pitcher and promptly ask him to IBB the first batter he faces instead of allowing the pitcher they removed to do the honors...

What is the NL going to do....? :P Overall, they will rejoice but I was hoping that the Astros would play well tonight. ;)

Now the Reds lead 5-4 with one out in the 8th. HOU is bad.

The Astros are trying to blow their game!

in May, too. Brewers Reds Cubs/Pirates Cards/Astros Must be bizarro world here. Just call me bizarre because I'd be watching these games even if the Cubs were in first place. :lol: My interest is a bit more intense this season however... Maybe that's because the Cubs actually have an offense and a rotation this year? Yeah, my expectations for them definitely have something to do with it.

in May, too. Brewers Reds Cubs/Pirates Cards/Astros Must be bizarro world here. Just call me bizarre because I'd be watching these games even if the Cubs were in first place. :lol: My interest is a bit more intense this season however...

Jose Bautista cranks a 2 run homer off of Dave Bush to give the Pirates a 3-2 lead. Jason Bay scores WOW, now Paulino hits a homer. Pirates lead MIL 4-2 in the 7th.

No idea but this current Nats team doesn't have the offensive weapons that the 2006 team boasted.

This pitcher has been tough and so has Shawn Hill (who will also pitch in this series). Hopefully, the Cubs treat them rudely like they did Ian Snell. It would also help if Zambrano shut them out because their offense has been woeful.

My understanding is that a .300 BABIP is above league average in BABIP (which I believe is somewhere between .280-.290) and all of those guys I mentioned have managed to hit above the .300 level to varying degrees. I know I singled out some players to make a point, but here are the BABIPs of the Brewers over the first month with more than 50 ABs (ABs in parentheses): Hardy (111): .301 Fielder (106): .303 Weeks (101): .250 Hall (95): .308 Estrada (82): .348 Jenkins (78): .393 Mench (72): .328 Graffanino (58): .265 Hart (58): .319 Counsell (55): .267 As a team: .301 Look, this team isn't due to come crashing down into the gutter from an offensive standpoint, but a number of their players have been above average when it comes to BABIP and it's reflected in the team's numbers as a whole. These numbers inevitably regress to a mean unless the team manages to get a horseshoe crammed up its rear (which is a possibility with this team). They're due for a few slumps and adjustments, which will make the coming months really interesting. Moreover, your depth/top end talent argument has me scratching my head. Are you saying that their bench is able to replace or match production if someone goes down, but that they do not have the top end talent in the starting lineup that a team such as the Cubs has? Or are you making another argument? The offensive regression will make it difficult to impossible to "hit their way out of" committing errors and allowing unearned runs to score.

Exactly. That chart of course includes a bunch of throwing errors by Hall his first week in CF that he's fixed. It also doesn't really mean much since the defensive problems are already indicated in runs allowed. Run differentials mean almost nothing right now, you simply need more data to make them meaningful. If the Brewers have scored less than they have given up at the all star break we can tell, over one month its just useless info. Right now they stand at 15 projected wins and 18 actual wins, thats really not that far off base given how strong the end of the bullpen has been and how week the bottom end has been. If that isn't enough a -1 FLD puts them 9th in the NL in fielding which is average. The -8 for pitchers means the Brewers pitchers have been allowing a lot of balls to be put in play, with such a small sample size thats most likely just due to luck more than anything since the team K's plenty enough. You are ignoring the fact that their defense has been questionable for a while. This isn't an aberration that has been fixed in the first few weeks of the season. Also, if the team is giving up unearned runs it lessens the effectiveness of the pitching staff in the long run. The errors will lead to runs (they already have). The Brewers just signed Suppan. In his three previous seasons with the Cardinals, he was predominantly a groundball/groundout pitcher (1.5 GO/AO). In his time with the Brewers, Suppan has become an air-out pitcher (0.95 GO/AO) even though he hasn't changed his pitching style. The only explanation is that the defense behind him has decreased significantly. In fact, every starting pitcher in their rotation has yielded at least one unearned run and 8 of the 13 pitchers they have used this season have yielded an unearned run(s).

Sheets is still struggling with his mechanics right now. He has been leaving his curveball up in the zone and has not had his usual pinpoint control. He said he figured it out midway through the start against St. Louis and finally felt like the old Sheets. Whatever that means. Expect his K rate to go up when the weather starts becoming warmer and more humid. Sheets loves throwing his curveball in high humidity. Hopefully he figured it out a little bit in his last start, but he has not been super sharp as of yet. As far as using the Cardinals series as a gauge of the Brewers, that was not my point. I was just saying how a few games that are blowouts really effects the overall run differential of a team. The Brewers hadn't really blown anybody out before the Cards series, but had been blown out 3 times. It just evened things out to where the numbers should be. The Brewers are a good team and a totally different team from past years. People need to realize it is more than just luck that they are winning games. Once St. Louis can put the whole Hancock thing behind them a little bit, you will realize that they are not that good of a team. It's convenient to use a teammates death for poor play, but it would inspire me personally to try to win even harder in his honor. You can play that card only so long. It's tragic yes, but don't use it as an excuse to say that the Brewers aren't a good team for sweeping the Cards just because they were in mourning. The Cubs had beaten them twice before the death of Hancock. The Cards are simply not playing good baseball right now. I would say that the Cubs are the most serious threat to the Brewers this year, especially if Lilly and Marquis continue to pitch as well as they have and Soriano starts to play like he is capable. It should be an interesting finish. The Astros and Cardinals lineups don't scare me and the Pirates are where the Brewers were a year or two ago. I hope teams keep thinking that "well it's the Brewers so they can't possibly be a good team and keep this up" because they will simply be overlooking a very capable team with no glaring weaknesses. No glaring weaknesses? None. He has a point, the Brewers are a capable team. I'm not going to get into a battle of weaknesses, and obviously I am biased, but I think at the end of the day, the Cubs are a better team, on paper, than the Brewers. If this doesn't flesh itself out over the season like many of us are hoping it will, than in the end there is no other conclusion that the Brewers were the better team this year. But they do have weaknesses that seem pretty obvious, and while they've played better than the Cubs thus far, they haven't played that much better to conclude that they're the 'team to beat' in the central, mostly because I don't believe that there is a team to beat in the central. It's up for grabs. The biggest and most glaring weakness of the Brewers in recent history, including this season, has been their team defense. They have yielded the most unearned runs (UER) in the League (18) and, until facing a devastated Cardinal's team, they had allowed more runs than they scored. Eventually, this trend is going to be reflected in the standings; specifically in losses. They have been lucky thus far but it's hard to believe that they will continue to be successful given this pattern. THT Team Fielding Stats Plus/Minus Fielding UER TE FE SB CS% Pit Fld Tot Grnd Air ARI 12 6 14 11 35% -14 12 -2 8 4 ATL 11 5 11 17 35% -8 -3 -11 -1 -1 CHN 4 6 6 11 31% 10 14 24 4 10 CIN 14 5 14 12 29% -5 -4 -10 -4 0 COL 13 6 5 10 38% -1 -12 -14 -1 -11 FLA 14 7 9 17 15% -4 -33 -37 -24 -9 HOU 10 4 14 11 31% 0 -3 -2 -4 1 LAN 10 11 9 16 36% -2 -3 -5 -1 -2 MIL 18 7 12 7 22% -8 -1 -8 -2 1 WAS 14 13 12 19 14% 11 -1 11 1 -1 NYN 14 5 7 12 33% 5 13 18 15 -2 PHI 7 8 6 18 25% -11 0 -11 6 -6 PIT 4 4 9 16 38% 2 -10 -8 -1 -9 STL 14 9 11 10 38% 3 2 5 3 0 SD 6 7 9 31 9% 6 9 15 7 3 SF 7 6 8 9 36% -8 25 16 13 11 League 172 109 156 227 28% -25 6 -19 19 -13

His improvement is better than I thought.