Tag Archives: Baseball

Blame it on the bullpen

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I will not admit that this Brewers season is over because we're probably going to see a NL Wild Card that wins 85 games and that number does not seem impossible and I will not give up on the Brewers season because, seriously, what else am I going to do for the next three months? With that being said I will say that this season has still been incredibly disappointing, no fun and not at all what we thought it would be. But what did we really think it would be?

Vegas set the Brewers pre-season over/under win total at 84.5. They weren't ever going to be a team that ran away with the division. Did last season's 96-66 record distort our expectations? Probably, but we should always remember that team had +6 wins over it's Pythagorean record (or expected record) and was a league best 30-18 in one run games. Those are two things that are really hard to repeat. For the Brewers to make a return trip to the playoffs this year they once again need a lot of things to go right and thus far this season almost nothing has. This isn't a lack of "drive" or a team that doesn't "mentally have it", this is baseball. You play more games than any other sport and less teams make the playoffs than any other sport. A lot has to go right for any team to succeed.

Thus far they haven't succeeded and a lot of reasons have been thrown around as to why. Here are a few of the most popular:

  • Rickie Weeks. :(
  • Injuries, man. Injuries.
  • Not clutch.
  • Offense is worse than last season.
  • Randy Wolf.
  • The bullpen.

And while there have been a myriad of problems with this season there really is only one thing that has kept the Brewers from being "in it" and that thing is the bullpen. No, seriously, it's not Rickie Weeks. It's the bullpen. It's not injuries. It's the bullpen. That's it. Seriously. Continue reading »

Pants Party 2 is one month away!

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We are now one month away from Miller Park Drunk's Pants Party 2 and somehow there are still tickets available. I don't know why. It's a great deal and you get to drink with some of the coolest people around (and Tyler.) We're drinking, we're eating, we're playing games and we're giving a ton of stuff away in a raffle. It's going to be a good time. So why aren't we sold out?

Well, I have a theory. You see about a year ago I broke up with my girlfriend and somehow thought writing terrible blog posts would get her back. (It didn't. Thank god.) What I didn't think of at the time was that I sounded like a total pussy and a year later nobody would want to come to my Pants Party because they think I have no balls. Seriously, look at this:

Not trying to get too "inside baseball" here, but the truth is that when you stop being yourself you stop being someone that people like to spend time with. Being "the" Miller Park Drunk all the time was a stupid goal and I've changed in a way where that isn't what I want to do anymore, but that doesn't mean that I want to stop having great times at Brewers games.

(Excuse me I have to stab myself in the eye with a lead based pencil a few times. Be right back.) Continue reading »

The New King of Milwaukee: Jonathan Lucroy

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POP QUIZ HOTSHOT: Who leads the 2012 Milwaukee Brewers in OPS?

ANSWER: Ryan Braun, duh. Who else would it be?

The answer to that question is not surprising. Ryan Braun is the man. He's one of the best hitters in the league and one of the best hitters the Milwaukee Brewers franchise has ever seen. So, yeah, duh. No big surprise there.

What has surprised us though is who the Brewers second most valuable player has been because that guy is someone that we didn't see coming. That guy has always been a valuable member of the franchise, but it's never been anything quite like this. That guy has become the most popular player on the team and the new king of Milwaukee. That guy is Jonathan Lucroy.

I know, I can't believe it either. (I wanted it to be you Rickie. Sorry if the pressure got to you.)

In a season where everything seems to go wrong for the Milwaukee Brewers, everything has seemed to go right for Jonathan Lucroy. His outs come at times when the Brewers don't need him and his hits seem to come exactly when they do. Every ball he hits hard finds its way between the outfielders and every time he steps up with runners on they end up scoring. He's gritty and clutch and "a gamer" and all those other things people like to write about. (And, omg, he is so dreamy.) Jonathan Lucroy is absolutely killing it right now. I can't explain why it's happening. Baseball is a crazy game and these things just happen sometime so we should all just enjoy this while it lasts because who knows when it will end. Okay?

This isn't the part where we talk about advanced stats and do that whole thing. This is the part where we enjoy it. Continue reading »

Welcome to Miller Park Drunk Fashion Week

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One of the funniest things about the "Brewers blog scene" is the way everyone becomes completely obsessed with the little things that don't matter (John Axford's mustache, Ryan Braun's hair, Nyjer Morgan in general) and the way it really pisses some people off. I understand both points, although I admit I don't really understand them at times, but I do feel like I get them. Ryan Braun's hair is a thing that needs to be talked about (because seriously, what the heck?), but does it need to be talked about by the guys who I go to for my sabermetric analysis? Sometimes you just want the numbers, you know? Save the Nyjer talk for the bar.

This is why I have always tried to avoid labeling this site or being too numbers-y. When we write about mustaches we don't want it to make anyone mad. That's just not who I am or what I want my site to be. The goal of this site has always been to be a site that Brewers fans find entertaining. We write about the Brewers a lot, but we're not trying to be. We're trying to be a site for Brewers fans. We want to make you laugh, make you think (we're cool) and just be a fun site to read. Maybe sometimes we don't update for a month, but that's because we don't want to be un-entertaining. We like to cover what you're thinking about and when we're not doing that we just want to entertain.

My point is this: some sites talk about Nyjer Morgan/Ryan Braun's hair/John Axford's mustache/Corey Hart's tattoos and it doesn't fit, but at this site we don't have that problem. We can talk about those things and it fits because that's just what we do and have always done. So before the season gets started we wanted to take a week to celebrate that kind of talk before the actual playing of the baseball takes over our lives. We want to make fun of the way Ryan Braun dresses, talk about how you dress and take a closer look at some of the Brewers' wives. It's what we do. I think you'll like it. Have we ever let you down before?

Now let's meet the boys and girl who will be guiding you through this week of dresses, handbags, two button suits and Ryan Braun. Continue reading »

The Brewers lost: Baseball is stupid

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An argument I've made many times before on this blog is that a single week of games doesn't matter as much as the entire season does. When the Brewers had their "horrible" weekend where they lost 3 out of 4 to the Phillies many Brewers fans were panicking and assuming that this team was not good enough to compete in the playoffs. Remember that? Here is what I wrote then:

Remember when the Brewers won 22 out of 25? Did you think that was going to be forever? Teams have winning streaks and they have losing streaks, it's a part of baseball. Sometimes it's because the pitching stinks, sometimes it's because the hitting sucks and sometimes it's just because they get outplayed and maybe run into some bad luck. That's what this was, that third thing. Get over it. We're going to the playoffs.

And they did and it was fun for a little while.

The Brewers won 96 games during the regular season which makes them the 2nd best team in the National League and tied for third best team in all of baseball. They were the best team in the National League Central and there will be a sign going up that says "2011 NL Central Champions" which is something that nobody else can do next year. Those are a huge, huge accomplishments and they are reason alone to celebrate. That says more about this Milwaukee Brewers team than any single week of the season possibly could and that includes this past week.

The Brewers won 6 more games than the Cardinals during the regular season. They were the better team all season long and the record books will always show that. Then the Cardinals got into the playoffs because the Braves fell apart and they beat us in the NLCS. It sucked, but the playoffs do nothing to show us who is actually better. It just shows who won more games during that week and that is why baseball is stupid. Continue reading »