Greetings from the most uneventful part of the offseason, Packer fans. If I’ve been quiet lately, it’s not just because we’re in that long dead zone between the draft and minicamp, but because I’ve been in Russia, hanging out with this lady. I was browsing the souvenir stands at an open-air market in St. Petersburg when I happened upon this wonderful item:
Manny Parra reveals himself to be the optimal sub-optimal option, but Hoffman brings the pain. Ouch.
Having lost seven straight and tumbled down to a pitiful fifth place in the NLCentral, it’s gotten to the level where stat-head Fangraphs contributors have taken notice of the Brewers’ sub-sub-optimal-ness. Dave Cameron today calls to “Break Up the Brewers” and decisively dangle Princey on the market. The comments there at Fangraphs get a little touchy on the lack of data analysis & original research in the post, and for what it’s worth there’s little Brewers-specific consensus in the thread. Commenter Kenny nicely runs down all the teams that could use a boost at the widely-understood-to-be-quite-deep 1B position and comes up somewhat empty-handed… similarly, hometown fan Steve from Bernie’s Crew went on-record last week even, proclaiming there’s “No Shame in Rebuilding“.
While clearly I am about as frustrated as can be with this team’s all-around pitching and its offensive Achilles heel, viz. a lack of clutch hitting, I’m just not in the “rebuild” camp yet. Although this latest blown save (Hoffman’s 5th in 10 chances, you won’t believe how bad the stats are, click through for the carnage) is simply as painful as it gets. continue »
The 2010 baseball season is approximately one-fifth over, and bless them, those underdog Brewers stand at a fairly-lowly 15-19, barely good enough for third place in the pretty-lowly NL Central. As of today, the Baseball Prospectus crew gives the Milwaukee’ers just a 13% chance of squeaking into the postseason. I’m afraid it’s not too early to reference the image of Despair below, universally-understood and specifically curated via Caps of Mishka sports coverage.
Despair creeps upon Milwaukee baseball
Before I weigh in on what I’ve seen watching the games online, how it matches up with the heavy truth of our under-whelming record, and the still-hot big-picture questions facing the team (Prince Fielder’s slow-ish start & borderline-terrifying free agency situation, Trevor Hoffman’s epic explosion/implosion, bullpen catastrophes galore and starting rotation under-performance, generally gloomy & goofy vibes all around I’m afraid), some comprehensive “where-we-stand” links to get us started from other websites :: continue »
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
If you would have told me three days ago that the Packers would make it through the entire draft without taking an outside linebacker or cornerback, I wouldn’t have believed you. But that’s where we are.
That’s not a terrible thing. It does seem like Ted Thompson overestimated his chances of being able to get a quality OLB in the second round and had to resort to Plan B. But the pick he made, defensive end Michael Neal, was pure Thompson: taking the best player available rather than reaching to fill a need, and when in doubt, scooping up a defensive lineman in keeping with his (well-validated) belief that a deep rotation of big men is the key to a stout run defense. continue »
Image by Getty Images North America via Daylife
How do we feel about the Packers drafting tackle Brian Bulaga of Iowa with their first-round pick? Pretty darn good, I’d say.
Maybe the right word is “relieved.” Finally, the question that’s been looming so large for so long over this organization has been answered. Kind of. The snap consensus out there seems to be that Bulaga is a cinch to start at right tackle after a year or two of seasoning but might never be left tackle material. continue »
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