Tag Archives: doug melvin

Milwaukee Brewers: Up In The Air

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By and large Brewers fans have given up on the 2012 season. It's over they say. Sell they say. Rebuild they say. It's hard not to blame the people that say this. The Brewers currently sit at 40-45, eight games out of first place and six games behind the second Wild Card. A run at this point seems impossible, but as I've said before it isn't impossible only improbable. It's not over yet. Things are still very much up in the air.

And there are at least two people who agree with me on this. One of them is Ryan Braun who said that he thinks the Brewers are "right in this thing" and the other is Doug Melvin who will wait until these next nine games over before making any tough decisions. Some people might think that this is shortsighted or that Doug (or maybe even Mark) are thinking with their heart more than their head, but personally I like it. This isn't Katie and Tom's marriage, there is still time to turn this thing around.

Three teams ahead of the Brewers in the Central. They are all in the thick of playoff contention and the Brewers next nine games are against them. The team deserves a chance to prove itself against those teams. If they don't, sell. If they do? Well.... Continue reading »

Earl Weaver vs Ron Roenicke

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This might come as a surprise to you, but I like baseball. I like watching baseball, I like playing baseball video games, I like talking about baseball and I like reading about baseball. One of my favorite baseball books of all time is Earl Weaver's Weaver on Strategy.

For those of you that haven't read it (read it) or don't know much about Earl Weaver let me tell you a little bit about him. He managed the Baltimore Orioles for seventeen seasons carrying a .583 winning percentage and only finishing with a losing record once. His Orioles team won six division championships, four American League pennants and one World Series. He was also ejected from over 90 games and is 5'6" tall. (That last thing doesn't really have anything to do with anything, I just like to point out when famous people are shorter than me.) He did all this in the pre-Wild Card era in the AL East. He was really great and I don't understand why every manager isn't forced to study his book like 1999 Vince studied Sable's issue of Playboy.

Watching Ron Roenicke manage it is clear that nobody ever forced him to study it and he's probably never even read it. (In Ron's defense it's not like his brother had the best years of his career playing under Weaver or anything. Oh wait...) This is strange because I've always had the feeling that the way Earl Weaver managed a team and the way Doug Melvin built are a team are nearly identical. Weaver's managerial philosophy was "pitching, defense and the three-run homer" and if that doesn't sound like a team Doug Melvin would like to build I don't know what does. (I say would like to build because the scars of Yuniesky Betancourt are still fresh.) Unfortunately for Doug somewhere along the way things got crossed up and he hired (another) manager who doesn't follow Weaver's 10 Laws. Instead he employs someone who breaks at least five of them on a daily basis. This is not good, but the good news is that the answers are RIGHT THERE ON AMAZON.COM and all Roenicke has to do to better himself as a manager is to read this book.

Or this blog post. Either way. Continue reading »

Milwaukee Brewers 2011 Year In Review DVD Is Awesome

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The Brewers are 4-6. Last season at this time they were 5-5. They have a -14 run differential and have given up 50 runs. OMG WHAT DOES IT MEAN?! ARE THEY DONEZO!? Let's try not to worry about it because it is ridiculously early to worry about anything and take a trip down memory lane to the 2011 season as we review the Milwaukee Brewers' "The Next Step" DVD.

The 2011 Milwaukee Brewers season was the best, everything about it was the best. I loved the pitching, the hitting and the defense (okay, maybe not the defense.) I loved the coaching (okay, maybe not the coaching either.) I loved Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, Yo, Axford, Tony Plush, Beast Mode and everything else. 2011 was a year when everything seemed to go right for the Brewers and it truly was a magical regular season. The recently released Brewers DVD "The Next Step" given to fans last Sunday at Miller Park sets out to capture the feeling of last season and does a pretty strong job of it, hitting a lot of the key moments of the season that brought us so much joy a year ago with a cast of talking heads who enjoyed it just as much as we did. Continue reading »

Miller Park Drunk’s Offseason Predictions

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One month.

That's how long it's been since the Brewers were eliminated from the NLCS and robbed of their chance of the World Series by Shaun Marcum the Cardinals. A lot has happened since then. The not-Brewers won the World Series. The Packers didn't lose a game. The Badgers lost a couple they shouldn't have, effectively ending their season. The NBA died. Mark Kotsay signed with another team making the Brewers one rapist looking guy short. Eddie Kingston won the Grand Championship and Colt CaBunny was liberated. The Walking Dead's second season began and producers forgot it was a show about zombies. Kim Kardashian got divorced. Zooey Deschanel became single. Justin Bieber came out with a Christmas album. A guy smoked (a cigarette!) in a political ad. It's been a wild ride.

As for me, it's been a pretty wild ride. Faced with breaking up with my girlfriend and never talking to her again followed by my true love breaking my heart by losing in the playoffs to the Cardinals, I guess you could say I had a little mental break. I went on a journey, not like some lame On The Road inspired journey, but a journey of the mind. A spiritual journey, because that is not at all lame, that took me to the very depths of my soul and made me rethink each and every thing I thought I believed in. I now realize many things about myself and life that I didn't realize before. I know now that the world belongs to Ryan Braun and there is nothing we can do about it. I realize that we are all just puppets in a mass system designed to get us to spend money on a baseball team that will never love us back, but this realization will never stop me from continuing to do it. I've come to figure out that life isn't fair and that God, as we picture him, probably doesn't exist because the Cardinals not only beat us, but won the f*ckin' World Series.

/breathes into paper bag

The point is I return from this journey not with any sort of resolved issues, but with a clear vision of the future. I've gained an understanding of Doug Melvin and the Brewers that has never been witnessed before on this spiritual plane and come to you today with revelations of what our future holds in 2012. Our future, as philosophers say, is so bright that you might want to put on sunglasses. Continue reading »

Brewers make trades for has been, never was

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The trade deadline has come and gone and seemingly every team in the league was making deals, looking for that one piece to take their team from contender to champion.

The Indians got Ubaldo Jimenez! The Giants got Carlos Beltran! The Red Sox got Erik Bedard! The Rangers got Mike Adams and Koji Uehera! The Braves got Michael Bourn! The Phillies got Hunter Pence!

Some very good teams got better and in the process the road to the World Series got a whole lot tougher for the Brewers. Those weren't the only moves of the weekend either. The NL Central is so close right now and the two teams chasing the Brewers made moves to bolster their teams as well. Big moves that could shake the very foundation of the National League.

The Pirates got Derek Lee and Ryan Ludwick!

The Cardinals got Edwin Jackson and Rafael Furcal!

I mean, wow. Am I right? Those guys weren't messing around! Those Pirates really added some big bats... from four years ago. Normally the Brewers would be shaking in their boots right now seeing big names like those going to their rivals at the same time Rickie Weeks went down, but not this year. They know that Doug Melvin has their back and that he would make some deadline deals of his own. No worries, they possibly thought, we're going to do some trades of our own to blow these guys out of the water because in Doug we trust. And you know what? They were right. Doug Melvin went out and got exactly what this team needed to get to the next level.

The Brewers got Felipe Lopez and Jerry Hairston Jr.!

Umm... wait, what? Continue reading »