Ball And Glove

This is probably nitpicking, but Gallardo didn't tear both ACLs -- he only tore his right ACL in the game against the Cubs. The other injury you're thinking of is probably the arthroscopic knee surgery he had on his left knee during Spring Training to clean up some torn cartilage...a relatively minor procedure (although the saying "there's no such thing as minor surgery" comes to mind). I agree that it's incredibly stupid to rush him back, though. Apparently his knee is almost full-strength, but he needs to build up his arm strength again. The problem is, with minor league seasons wrapping up soon, he might not have anywhere to go on rehab assignments. Considering the Brewers' future pretty much rests on that surgically-repaired knee (which also happens to be his plant leg), I'd be more apt to let him continue his rehab on his own throughout the rest of the season and come back full strength for the start of Spring Training. It'd be nice to have him in the bullpen, but it's not necessary to make the playoffs, and it'd be crippling to the franchise if he wound up with an arm injury because he's overcompensating for a weak leg.

If the Rangers could just get some pitching, they'd be a damn good team. Downright scary. Theres rumors that they'll be persuing Sabathia pretty hard in the offseason, although hes made it very clear that he wants to play for one of the LA teams. There's been quite a few rumors about the Rangers being one of the potential suitors for Ben Sheets, too. The proximity to Louisiana and the fact he wouldn't have to hit would be big selling points, so I could see it happening. Braun figures to be ready to play by the start of the Dodgers series, but he's still "day-by-day"...since these games aren't really all that important, the Brewers are being extra-cautious. Then again, they've always been pretty secrective on injury info -- a couple of years ago it was revealed that Geoff Jenkins played the last two months of the season with a broken pelvis, and no one was told until the end of the season.

In an attempt to level the playing field against the Padres, Ned Yost is batting Gabe Kapler third and Craig Counsell sixth tonight. Counsell's starting at third with his robust .628 OPS...his SLG actually dipped below .300 in that series finale against the Nationals before that 2-RBI double got past Willie Harris.

The Cubs/Cards game is going to be underway by the time this thing ends. It's going to take a home run to win this one, since both teams are so horrible with RISP. Kendall pinch-hit for Villanueva...the Brewers were probably better off letting the pitcher hit for himself.

They may only have 6 hits, but they've walked 13 freakin' times. What's the appropriate Dusty quote for this one? "It's called hitting, dude, not walking," right? :lol:

The Brewers really don't deserve to win this game. With Counsell, Weeks, and the pitcher's spot due up in the next inning, I don't think this is ending anytime soon.

Jason Kendall is the only guy left on the Brewers bench if you rule Braun out for the day, and Yost never uses his second catcher to pinch hit. If it gets back down to the bottom of the order, there's a chance he'll have to pinch-hit with a pitcher like Sabathia. That would be high comedy.

too bad he didn't blow his knee out, then ned would've put him back out there. Nah, he'd only do that if it was a game in April against the Cubs. :lol:

I don't think Braun's injury is serious -- Yost probably just wants to get him a full day off or two against a bad team just as a precaution. Of course, we don't know anything because the Milwaukee sports media is pretty worthless when it comes to covering the team on a day-to-day basis. As crazy as it sounds, Braun's not really a guy I like seeing up in those situations, anyway...he's too much of a free swinger, and at least Branyan isn't allergic to taking walks (it ended up not mattering, anyway, since Branyan was IBB'd).

The best part was Gagne got the first two outs of that inning without much of a problem, then completely unraveled after 12-pitch AB by Zimmerman that ended in a double. Yost was too dumb to realize that Gagne was at 25-30 pitches after that Zimmerman AB and had nothing left. Considering nobody in that bullpen has pitched for 3 days, there was really no excuse for Yost to leave Gagne out there for that many pitches.

The Nats save Ned's butt by being pretty impatient in the 9th, but I still don't like the move. They had the chance to pinch hit for him in the bottom of the 8th and they sent him up to bat with Kendall on second (he ended up driving him in on a bloop hit, so I guess it worked out...still dumb). Considering nobody in the bullpen has pitched for 2 days before tonight, and some haven't pitched since August has started, I would've liked to see someone get some work in the 9th inning. Ned gets too worked up over things like shutouts...Sabathia and Sheets are now tied for most shutouts in the NL, and they won't have anything left by the time they have to pitch against the Cubs twice in the last couple weeks (not that you guys would have much of a problem with that #-o ).

Trust me, Brewer fans are sick of hearing about the fight "energizing" the team, too. It'd be nice if ESPN could realize that the Brewers are one of the best teams in the NL and beating up on an easy schedule so far in August, but that makes for boring discussion. I wouldn't assume Brewers victory tonight. Redding is a pretty good pitcher with good stuff and Sheets has been pretty bad for about a month now. If he struggles with his command again and has to throw a ton of pitches early, it could be a short night for him and the Nats will stick around long enough to get a chance to win.

Like Derwood said, he went to Northwestern. He often talks about becoming attached to the Cubs during his college years after going to a lot of games at Wrigley with his buddies. I guess I shouldn't call him a "real" fan since he's not a natural Cub fan, but he does pull for them to win.

Brian Kenney (the anchor in question) seems to be a big Yankees fan. I seem to remember him badgering one of the Baseball Tonight analysts (Olney/Kurkjian/Gammons...don't remember which) about Jason Giambi not being named to the AL All-Star team and Evan Longoria winning the Last Vote instead. The other SportsCenter anchor even chimed in off-camera by joking "Yeah, but what's Giambi's VORP?" in a mocking manner. While it's been confirmed by several of ESPN's baseball "analysts" that the producers force them to come up with bogus viewpoints to create discussion, they also hire a lot of anchors that break rule #1 when it comes to sports journalism -- they openly root for "their" teams. Kenney and others openly tout the Yankees, other anchors actually refer to themselves on the air as Red Sox fans, John Anderson acknowledges that he's a lifelong Packer fan, and Greenberg and Wilbon openly root for the Cubs. In many ways, ESPN is turning into the WWE of sports journalism -- it's more "sports entertainment" than it is "sports journalism."

I'd be willing to say that the Cubs are the best team in baseball (not just the NL), FWIW.

Wasn't it the first batter Gagne was facing, too? Usually you don't throw at the first guy you face unless you're getting orders from someone. Plus there's Ned's history of putting sucky pitchers in to start an inning just to hit someone -- he did the same thing at the end of last season when he put in Seth McClung to bean Albert Pujols, knowing full well that McClung would get tossed. He even had Turnbow warming up anticipating it. I guess he figures if he throws a guy out there who sucks enough, he can just claim that a ball "got away from him." I think that was even McClung's defense when he was appealing his suspension, and it worked. He was the first guy I could remember basically saying "No, really, I suck that much" and getting his suspension reduced. Either way, it's just stupid to throw at a guy, and it's one of the things I hate most about Ned "Flanders" Yost. As a guy who already botches bullpen management horribly, he doesn't need the extra disadvantage of having a shorthanded bullpen for a few games, and he's putting his players in the line of fire the next time they face that team.

Does Yost like to fish? He's big into hunting during the offseason. Close enough, I'd say. Yost's biggest problem is that he tries too hard to manage like his mentor Bobby Cox, but he's never had the insane amount of talent on his team that Bobby has had. He tries to stray away from that old school "conventional" thinking every now and then, but when he does it's either a ridiculously stupid idea (like platooning pitchers) or he doesn't stick with it long enough to see if it's actually working (like with the pitcher hitting 8th). When he gets called out on it, he says his critics don't know what they're talking about because they've never managed (last year, he said something about installing a sofa in the dugout so all the armchair managers can see it's not so easy). If there's one thing that Yost and Baker definitely have in common, it's the trademark poses they do while their teams are melting down. Dusty always leaned on the fence of the dugout, munching on his toothpick and staring straight ahead with no real emotion on his face. Yost stands there with his hands in his armpits with that stupid little "I'm gonna get blasted for this one" smirk on his face. Both are beyond irritating to see while they leave their pitchers in 3 batters too long because they didn't bother to get the bullpen fired up until there were two guys in scoring position.

The Cubs completely outclassed the Brewers in this series, on and off the field. Throwing at hitters is dumb, complaining all series about close strike 3 calls is [expletive], and completely collapsing whenever the Cubs scored the first run is pathetic. I love how it took the Brewers until the 9th inning when they were down 11-2 to get a hit with RISP. In the big picture, this probably doesn't do much to the Brewers' playoff hopes right now, but it's completely demoralizing to see them get swept at home with 10,000 Cubs fans at each game. Excuse me while I go hunt down every Brewers season ticket holder that decided to cash in on this series by selling their tickets online. :banghead: At least this series is over so both fanbases can go back to sharing a common hatred for the Cards. ;)

Oh I know -- I'm not really the type of Brewer fan that's packing it in for the year just because they lost a series at home to the Cubs. The Brewers still have a favorable schedule compared to the Cubs and Cards, and it looks like the Phils and Mets will spend the rest of the year beating each other up. It's just unfortunate that the Braves decided to give up on their season the second the Cards got into town, allowing them to make up almost all of the ground they lost to the Brewers last week. It's a long year, and the Brewers aren't as bad as they've been playing this series. Besides, it's not like football season is looking too promising in Wisconsin this year, anyway. I might as well stick around to see this season to the end. :D

They should be pretty decent seats, but I'm one of those people who believes there's very few bad seats at Miller Park. 231 is down the left field line, but a section or so away from the foul pole. You should be able to see the infield action develop nicely, and you'll probably see most of the outfield action except for the left field corner. I hope you have a good time, but please take it easy on any heartbroken Brewer fans you may come across. :cry:

The Brewers still have 0 hits with RISP this series. The Cubs have done a hell of a job of pitching out of jams this series. Corey Hart's taking some horrible angles in the outfield, and he's been horrible for the entire month of July at the plate. I wouldn't be surprised to see Yost throw out a lineup tomorrow with Gabe Kapler, Russell Branyan, Craig Counsell, and Mike Rivera on getaway day. Harden should finally get his first win as a Cub, even though Bush has been great during day games this year.

Over.

nobody has done much against harden, but he hasn't won a game yet because either the cubs don't score, or the bullpen implodes. harden is great but he can't go long into games, so really the goal against him has to be work the count and keep the game close. Based on the last two games, I don't think you guys need to worry about Harden getting a lack of run support (especially against Dave Bush). Do the Brewers really seem to be the type of team that would be patient against Rich Harden and drive up his pitch count? :lol: I agree there's a chance the Brewers can get to him, but after seeing Lilly cruise against them for the most part, can you blame me for not being the most optimistic guy in the world?

Zambrano pitched a hell of a game. Not much else I can say about tonight. As far as WTMJ predicting that the first two games of the series would be Brewers wins, I'd pretty much disregard it. They're the Brewers' flagship station, and the sports talk in Milwaukee is generally filled with blowhards, anyway. I think most smart Brewer fans (and yes, there's a few of us) realized that the Sheets/Zambrano match-up wouldn't be a walk in the park. I have no doubts that the Milwaukee media will be all over Ben Sheets again, coming up with some lame criticism like "HE CAN'T WIN THE BIG GAMES!! THIS IS WHY HE'S NEVER WON MORE THAN 12 GAMES!!!1ONE!" The general lack of effort from the Brewers after that big inning did kind of piss me off, though...I won't lie. That's probably one of the biggest differences between the Brewers and the Cubs -- the Cubs would never give up on a game when they're down 6-0 at home with 4 innings of at-bats left. Tonight the Brewers were so careless in the field after that inning, it was painful. I guess I could say "the split is still a possibility!" but I don't think there's any chance the Brewers do anything against Harden in the finale. I'm going to just revert to hoping and praying for a win tomorrow to avoid a sweep, and wishing the Cardinals would go back to losing. As far as the number of Cub fans at this game, they guessed on the Brewers pregame show that it was about 40% Chicago fans tonight.

Nice game that lived up to the hype as far as excitement goes (unlike those Red Sox/Yankees games -- it seems like every one ends 9-2). Torres has been showing signs of wearing down lately, and I guess it just took a patient team like the Cubs to really expose it. I have no idea why Yost brought Sabathia back out for the 7th inning after the Brewers took the lead and CC clearly didn't have his best stuff tonight. I guess Yost thinks Sabathia has to pitch through the 7th or 8th inning every game otherwise the trade is an utter failure. I would've been fine with giving Riske the entire 7th, considering he's been pitching better lately, but the Cubs' patient approach probably would've gotten to him, too. I think so many Brewer fans are blaming the loss on Weeks' error because of just how far off line that throw was. It's one thing to not get the double play because of a great slide, it's another thing to throw the ball 10 feet offline and let that second run in, IMO. The Cubs just seemed to come into the game more loose and relaxed than the Brewers did. The Cubs looked comfortable at the plate, while the Brewers were even less patient than usual. I think looking at Soriano's AB to lead off the game and comparing it to Weeks' AB to lead off the bottom of the 1st would be a good example -- Soriano got his pitch, drove it off the wall, and got himself into scoring position right away. Weeks looked silly swinging at two change-ups out of the zone, and eventually struck out looking at a pitch down the middle. It's a tough loss for Brewer fans to swallow, since Torres was the one guy in that bullpen we thought we could count on, you know? It's like you guys watching Marmol cruise through the first part of the season, then completely implode in Tampa...just tough to watch. While the Brewers may have converted their chances at a higher percentage than the Cubs, I think the Cubs did a much better job of setting themselves up to score, and they drove up the pitch counts much more effectively than the Brewers did. Game 2 should be just as fun. I still have hopes for a split, but I'm slowly starting to tell myself that a series loss wouldn't be the end of the world. That Dempster/Parra match-up Wednesday night is going to be a good one, too.