Tuesday, June 9, 2009

No, not the NASCAR driver. The other one.

This is awesome. Jeff Gordon, apparent graduate of the “John Madden School of The Team That Scores More Points Will Win The Game” gives us this absolute gem. It’s truly outrageous. (Hat tip to Chuckie Hacks who already did an admirable job with this.)

The Brewers could have buried the Cardinals and Cubs this season. They have had every opportunity to seize control of the National League Central race.

The Brewers have won 58% of their games so far. Last year the World Series Champion Phillies won 57% of their games. All the Brewers would have had to do to bury the Cardinals, who they lead by 2.5 games, and the Cubs who they lead by 3.5 games is…

But they didn’t. So as tough as this season has been on old friends Tony La Russa and Lou Piniella, it could be much, much worse.

let’s see, what would it mean to bury a team by June 8th? How about a 10 game lead? I mean, you need a pretty big lead to bury someone this early. Think about all of Houston’s big comebacks in the past. Think about the Rockies during their World Series Run or the Phillies and Mets the last two years. You need a pretty big lead. To be 10 games better than the Cardinals at this point would have the Brewers at 41-16, or a 72% winning percentage. The best team in baseball so far, the Los Angeles Dodgers, have won 66% of their games, meaning that to have buried the Cardinals and Cubs would simply have required the Brewers to play substantially better than the best team in all of baseball.

The chokers!

The Brewers blew a late lead at Atlanta Sunday and lost 8-7, missing an opportunity to sweep the punchless Braves.

They only won 2/3 (66%) of the games in that series? What kind of yellow, rubbery, Van de Veldean style team are we dealing with here?

Milwaukee opened the season by losing eight of their first 11 games. In late May, they lost five of six games during a brief stretch.

Yes, the Brewers started slow. Some of that was luck, and some of it was a murderer’s row of great pitching as they faced Lincecum, Cain, Randy Johnson, Volquez, Cueto, Harang, and the Cubs best pitchers, and last but not least, Johan Santana who if memory serves, outdueled Yovanni 1-0. Most hot and cold streaks can be explained by the opposition, and random chance. I’m happy that the Brewers recovered so well. In late May they had their annual meltdown at the Metrodome. It happens.

More recently they lost three times in a four-game series at Florida. Had they avoided such downturns – the bane of every manager’s existence — the Brewers would own this division right now.

Yes, and if any baseball team wins every series it plays, it will run away with the division. It doesn’t happen. Even the worst team in baseball will win a series against the best team in baseball with some regularity. The team he is describing does not exist, plain and simple.

Instead, they are still searching for more consistency.

It’s spelled “cosistency.”

Like most contenders, the Brewers are a player or two short of completion.

The Brewers have some warts, sure, but just like you won’t win every game, you’re not going to put an All-Star team out there. I mean, the New York Yankees frequently start Melky Cabrera, and the Boston Red Sox start David Ortiz. Everyone has their own Jason Kendall.

But Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Michael Hunt advised the Brewers to stay out of the Tom Glavine Sweepstakes. He wrote:

“The final game Sunday in the Milwaukee-Atlanta series was a backdrop for the overriding Brewers issue for armchair general managers everywhere. After the beating Manny Parra took in his previous start at Florida, the reactionary response might have been to get him out of the rotation and take a look at the suddenly available Glavine.


“In a game desperate for pitching, someone might roll the dice on Glavine. But it shouldn’t be the Brewers. It’s hard to see where they would have a need for a 43-year-old soft-tosser who is essentially done. The Braves did the right thing, even if they went about it absolutely the wrong way.”

As we Brewer fans know, Michael Hunt is actually the Brewers secret GM and this means that there is no way the Brewers will look at Glavine or any other pitcher because Hunt runs the team and he told us so.

THE CARDS COULD THIS GUY

He sure knows how to motivate.


There seems to be a word missing from the sentences above, but aside from that I’m not sure who he’s referring to. Hunt? I suppose, but I don’t think that comment works seriously or sarcastically. It’s just odd. When I first read it I thought for sure that it was going to hyperlink to a picture of a dog wearing a Cardinals jersey or Tony Robbins or Homer Simpson wearing his Tom Landry hat. Instead it just sat there looking lonely.

MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE

Someone likes Peter King, methinks.

Questions to ponder while wondering if poor Ryan Ludwick is seeing his career flash before his eyes:

If by "like" you mean "plagiarizes", which I do. Perhaps he can join Mr. Gordon at the nearest Caribou for an Eg Nogg Cappuccino.

* Wouldn’t Pedro Martinez or Glavine change the look of the Cards rotation?

Yes. It would look older and more injury prone. It would also change the look of their bullpen by making them more tired, as in his last stint as a starter he averaged a mere 5.5 innings per start while posting a 1.569 WHIP.

* Wouldn’t he add a welcome Hall of Fame presence to the lagging clubhouse?

I would love to see Pedro Martinez’s Hall of Fame presence added to the Cardinal clubhouse as long as he brings his WHIP with him. Seriously though, it might help because there certainly aren’t any other Cardinals in the club house that could provide a Hall of Fame presence. Nope, I can’t think of a single one...

* And wouldn’t his arrival force the other Cards to quit blaming their trouble on Bill DeWitt’s spending habits?

I’ve always thought the Cardinal’s biggest problem was not throwing millions of dollars at washed up, injury prone former All-Stars.

* What’s more painful to watch, the Cards trying to score runs or Dwight Howard trying to operate against the swarming Lakers defense?

OK, there’s more, but this is now getting boring, and most of the rest of his rhetorical questions are like that lame Dwight Howard question. The next one is basically “so how much of a douche does Courtney Lee feel like right now” and “What’s with this Twitter thing? I’m Old!” Man, it must be rough in St. Louis. First they get stuck with the rice beer and now this guy.

1 comment:

Silverwolf said...

Excellent, loving the article breakdowns...