Brewers get punked

Need I say more

CC Sabathia

So, The water man here told me he held no hard feelings for Sabathia. I do. But mostly because I don't like being lied to.

When the courting began for CC in free agency, the news was all over where he wanted to go. We heard a few things.

1. "I want to go where I will have fun"
2. "I would like to go to LA. That's where my family is"
3. "I want to hit. So the NL is the place for me"
4. "Money is not important"
5. "Milwaukee is the most fun I've had in a long time"

So #1 and #5 go together. Now we thought he was coming back. #2- The Dodgers and The Angels thought they were getting him. #3 Now just the Dodgers and The Brewers. #4- Everyone thought he was going to either the Dodgers or The Brewers. So then he went to the Yankees. Let's break it down this way.

1. No fun. He had to shave his beard, wear a not so baggy uniform, and will be looked at as a failure if he doesn't win 15 games.
2. New york is as far from LA as you can get.
3. New York is in the American League. Home to the DH. Sabathia will never hit at Yankee Stadium. He may never have an at bat all year.
4. Money WAS important. He took it and ran.
5. See #1. Also, he was really good friends with Cameron and Feilder. Neither are going to New York anytime soon. Also, If you do bad CC you will be traded. How does the Washington Nationals sound to you?

I cannot forgive a guy who gives 5 reasons why he doesn't want to go to New York and chooses the one thing NY has that no one else does. Money. Hope you enjoy it you money hungry bitch. You make me sick. What happened to you? You were one of the guys who played the game to win. Played the game because it was what you loved. Why would you take the money and piss on your fans. I hope you fail. So then maybe you get cut and have to come crawling back to us. At reduced pay, of course.

NL Central Roundup

St. Louis Cardinals (4-2)- This won't last. It can't. STL a team to watch again? Can't be.

Pittsburgh Pirates (3-2)- I'm a pirates fan, despite the fact they are in the Brewers division. Why? Because they've never been a challenger before.

Chicago Cubs (3-2)- Typical Cubs. Come back in the 9th.
Milwaukee Brewers (2-3)- Typical Brewers. Lose it in the 9th. COME BACK TREVOR!
Cincinnati Reds (1-3)- This looks about right.

Houston Astros (1-4)- I'm not going to make the old "Houston we have a problem" joke. Whoops.

Still Alive. Just busy.

April 7th Roundup

Chicago Cubs (1-1)- My favorite Cub Ryan Dempster gave up two runs in 6 innings of work but it was Cotts who let the winning run score.

Pittsburgh Pirates (1-1)- Pitt gets knocked down by a suddenly cohesive Cards.
St. Louis Cardinals (1-1)- STL gets some revenge with all 9 of there runs in the first 5 innings.

Houston Astros (1-1)-Where was this yesterday? Astros take out the Cubs in OT.
Milwaukee Brewers (0-1)- Suppan proved that you can't teach an old has been new tricks. He gives up 3 in a bases clearing triple. Jorge Julio gets jacked, Dave Bush comes in for whatever reason and the San Francisco Giants take home a win.

Cincinnati Reds (0-1)-Did not play.

Dearly departed.

A moment of silence for my hopes of a winning season. It was only on this earth for a few short months. Taken, with one bases loaded clearing triple. May god have mercy on Jeff Suppan's soul.

Opening Day-NL Central Division

Chicago Cubs (1-0)- Beat up on the Astros, Soriano nailed his 50th lead off homer.

Pittsburgh Pirates (1-0)- St. Louis' new closer Jason Motte got a warm welcome as Jack Wilson drove home 3 runs on a 2 out, 2 strike, 9th inning double.
Milwaukee Brewers (0-0)- Brewers will play San Fran, weather is a factor.
Houston Astros (0-1)- Someone had to play the cubs first.
St. Louis Carninals (0-1)- Maybe you shouldn't have gotten rid of Isringhausing.

Cincinnati Reds (0-1)- Mets proved to be just a little better in a 2-1 win.


How can you not be excited? Only the brewers have yet to play.

Opening Day!

Milwaukee Brewers Vs San Francisco Giants

I know this game is not until Thursday but I'm excited. Looks like the starters are this:
Jeff Suppan
Tim Lincecum

NL Rookie of the Year winner Tim Lincecum brings his glorious hair into the Giants home opener. Suppan brings his overpaid ass. This looks like a great start to the season. Lincecum will be tough. He's young but boy can he pitch. I'll have a better preview by Wednesday.

Brewers

It's time for the start of the regular season of baseball. That really long affair that concludes with a world series. I still think that baseball needs more teams in the playoffs. 8 teams out of 30 is really low. Even the NBA uses 16 teams out of 30. Anyway.

The brewers look good this year. They didn't make any moves in free agency to change the lineup, but they did pick up 3 pitchers and a backup infielder. Braden Looper takes the place of Sheets. In a way. Yovani Gallardo seems like our new CC Sabatia since we didn't pick up another Starting pitcher. Jorge Julio comes in to replace the departed Brian Shouse. I don't know much about Julio but I would venture a guess that we will know him very soon. We lost Erik Gagne (twice) and now we have all time saves leader Trevor Hoffman. I'm excited about Hoffman. He is a legitimate Hall of Famer.

Our rotation looks like this:

Gallardo, Looper, Parra, Suppan, Bush. Gallardo and Parra I think will both be 10 game winners. Bush could do that also, but he wore down so much last year that I don't know. Suppan is overpaid, and not really reliable. Looper is interesting. He had a piss poor year last year on a piss poor team. With our bats he could be a 15 game winner.

Our Bullpen is:

Todd Coffey, Mark DiFelice, Julio, Seth McClug, Mitch Stetter, Dave Riske and Carlos Villanueva

Coffey and DiFelice are two of my faves. I think they both will be below a 3.0 ERA. Seth McClug is wasted on relief work, he should be starting instead of Suppan. Stetter I think will be a Nashville Sound before the all star break. I don't see him as a brewer. Riske is hit or miss. Villanueva will be the fill in closer. A role he is just not good at. Hoffman, please get healthy fast!

Our lineup is just the same as last year:

Jeff Kendall, Ryan Braun, JJ Hardy, Corey Hart, Prince Feilder, Bill Hall, Ricky Weeks, Mike Cameron. With back up from Casey McGahee, Craig Counsell, Mike Rivera, and Brad Nelson.

Kendall is reliable and should be the leadoff man instead of Weeks. Braun, Hardy, Hart and Feilder are all stars. Hall is average, Cameron is gonna whiff. A lot. Weeks needs to be dealt. NOW. McGahee is an unknown, he looked good in Spring Training but I don't know. Counsell and Rivera are good change of pace kinda guys. Nelson I think could press weeks for a starting spot.

All together I think we have a 90 win club. I don't know if that is enough to make the playoffs though. I'm excited. I think I'm gonna keep track of the Brewers this year on this blog. Enjoy!

Episode One

I'm not a fanboy. I'm gonna start this off with that. I have never seen ANY Star Wars movies. Not one. I have seen enough parody of Star Wars to know certain things. I know who some people are, I know who someone becomes. Little things like that.

So I decided to finally watch all 6 Star Wars movies in order of Episode number. My buddy Seth informed me this was the best thing to do if your just getting into the whole Star Wars thing. I put in Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace. What a pile of crap. This could just be the worst movie I have ever watched.

Let me start off with the main reason most people don't like this. Jar Jar. I hated him, too. First, he's a very racist portrayal of a black guy. Very dumb talking, very racist 60s terms slipped into his everyday talk. In fact, his whole race is terrible. The head guy (i forget his name cause I was slipping in and out of a coma) does the very annoying blubbering with his mouth. Jar Jar gets hit with things, gets caught in things, ect. He is comic relief, and I use the term lightly. He was a Sunday morning cartoon comic relief. What self respecting action movie that is intended for teens and adults has a fart in it? Not one. It wasn't until later that I realized this movie is PG. PG! I got duped into watching a really bad kids movie. Not an intelligent kids movie like the Incredibles, but a power rangers type kids movie. I thought that Star Wars was a respectable action movie. Even Indiana Jones doesn't do things like this.

Next, mostly because everything that needed to be said about that jackass has been said, let me tackle the CG. It was bad. Really bad. Like film school movie bad. It seemed like they blew the whole budget on the fantastic back grounds and forgot about every thing else. Characters looked unreal, lighting was off, the ship was terrible. It was just bad. For a movie that was made to the tune of 120 million dollars, it looked like it was made using a discount 30 dollar software.

I'll go ahead and say it. For a movie called Star Wars, only one battle took place in space. That was a very annoying attack by Anakin and three actors who must have been Lucas' friends because they were terrible. Let's state the obvious. "Who's that coming out of the wing?"
"It's not one of our guys"
Uhh.

Speaking of stating the obvious, Yoda "There are always two, master and apprentice."
Sam Jackson "I wonder who was killed? Master of apprentice."
THAT LINE ISN'T NEEDED!!!!! The dialogue was terrible. So bad. Really unnatural lines, really dumb lines. This movie was made for 4 year olds. Nothing intellectual anywhere.

Speaking of racist. The viceroy and his lover, or what ever that guy was with him, spoke with really cheesy Asian accents. Why???? Did they come form Kung-Pow Planet? Why would aliens talk like Jamaicans and Asians? How hard is it to have someone talk with an alien accent? Farscape, Stargate, Fifth Element, all these made new accents. George Lucas isn't even trying. The big fight scene in the movie was between robots and a race that everyone wanted to see die. It was boring. Killing Liam Neesian was predictable, you killed the only good bad guy in the movie and we didn't even get to see it! He gets cut in half and then his very computerized body tumbles down a shaft.

The only thing that was remotely good about this movie was Sam Jackson, Liam, Natalie Portman, and dare I say it, Ewan McGregor. How did that happen. Everything else was terrible. The next movies have better be good.

MLB 09: The Show

I recently started playing MLB 09: The show. I love this game. It's a lot of fun. I went through about 5 years in franchise. Three years with the Brewers, One with the Pirates, and one with the Nationals (wanted a challenge). The Nats I took to the playoffs and lost in the first round. The Pirates I didn't finish. The Brewers my first year I took them to the NL championship game and lost. The second year I took em to the World Series and lost to the Yankees (bias game) and the last year I was out in the first round again. For whatever reason I am the Chicago Cubs of MLB 09 players. I can't win the big one. But I'll keep trying, even if it takes me 100 years.

So I decided to take a break from the GM side of things and partake in a little mode known as Road to the Show. In this mode you take one guy that you create, and either get drafted or chose your own team to play for, and you try and make the roster. Now, You start out as the worst player on the team. I found this a little odd. No matter what difficulty you set it to, you always start out sucking. My first go around with this was as a third basemen. I'm terrible at pitching in real life but I'm not to bad at hitting. This was a disaster. You only get three or four shots a game to do anything. Since you have such low attributes your not going to hit it outta the park, so you have to manufacture some runs. I'm not the best hitter in the game because even on Rookie it's hard to hit a slider. So every time you strike out you lose 10 points. Every time you make it on base you get 5 points. Every time you hit the ball but get caught out you gain 0 points. You can see where this is going. I couldn't get any points. Now points go to training sessions. But you need 40 points to even get into a session. So now, I cannot get any points to get better because I'm so terrible. Really strange that it is almost impossible to succeed at this. After spring training is over you get offered a contract (or not). My contract had me as a AA bench player. Now I'm not even starting. So now I get maybe one at bat every other game. You can see what the end result will be.

I gave up on the notion of that. I restarted and began to play as a Starting Pitcher, thus guaranteeing me at least 5-6 starts in Spring Training. My first game I walked away with 70 points. More than I did in the 30 games I tried as a starting 3B. I really like the pitching mechanic in this game. But again, you start out with only 3 pitches (of your choosing) but you gain points for strikeouts, and for little challenges the game throws your way. 10 points for "getting ahead in the count" 10 points for "getting a ground ball out". I tend to only do about 3 or 4 innings before I am pulled. Not for lack of productivity, but because it's Spring Training. I ended my spring training at 2-2, with 26 innings pitched, a 3.23 era, 26 hits, 3 home runs (two that aramis Ramirez got off of me), and 15 strikeouts. I was happy. I had the 4th best ERA on the team. Contract offer comes......30K for a bullpen job in AA. What? I did good! I did better than good! Still only a AA contract? So I excepted it, because you don't have much of a choice. Boy did I make the wrong choice. The Huntsville Stars (brewers real life AA team) is atrocious. I ended my first bullpen game with 2 innings pitched and 6 runs scored. Yeah. That's bad. But not my fault. A double play ball was dropped by the second basemen to put two guys on. A grounder to SS sails past because instead of crap hopping over to wrangle in the ball this guy suicide dives after it. Now the bases are loaded and I'm pissed. I take the count to 3-2. The next pitch is low and outside. The batter makes contact with it, ball sails to shallow right field. And my RF watches it drop. He doesn't even try to run toward it. He coulda got it. A run scoring double. The rest of the game went this way. 2 runs in the 8th and 4 runs in the 9th. My stats look like I'm the worst player in history when I just play for the worst team in history.

I'm going to keep trying, as I've never walked away from a game just because it's hard, but my shining optimism at the chance to live the life of an MLBer is a little less shiny. But the game goes on.