The Wisconsin Sports Rant

We have reached the end of July, and by losing last night, I believe the Cubs may have given the Brewers a karmic break. Now, the worst that could happen by the conclusion of July would be a tie for the division lead. This would still be utterly disappointing considering where they were a month ago, and wouldn’t be the least bit surprising. I do see the irony in the fact that had you told any of us that the Brewers would even be in a tie for first place this late in the season, we would have been very excited. However, it’s all about perspective, and seeing how they got to this point kind of changes the way I feel about where they are now. No matter. The Brewers now have to play a 2 month season. The pitching absolutely MUST be stabilized if they have any chance of rescuing themselves from the sea of losing in which they are currently drowning.

On to the Packers. I love the way they closed the 2006 season. I love that Favre is back. I love that their defense is improving. I hate to think what their running game will look like. Can anyone say “Vince Workman”? Not only do they not have a real running back, their main guy, Vernand Morency, is now down for two weeks! We all know how important it is to be ready for training camp, and frankly, I am a bit scared. I see a lot of cover-2’s, nickels, and dimes in Favre’s future. Don’t look for that his interception count to go down any.

Finally, we turn to Badgers football. Today, at the Big Ten Media Day, the Badgers were picked to finish second to good ol’ Michigan. That is quite flattering…for Michigan. I think the Badgers have an excellent chance to place first, especially when we crush the Wolverines at Camp Randall. Yes, they have to play at Ohio State and Penn State. I am not saying they will finish undefeated. But things are going to work out well for the Badgers this year. Should they lose at Ohio State it will be the Wolverines knocking off Ohio State in the Big Game that lifts the Badgers to the conference title. It would be nice if they pave their own way to a BCS bowl (which I still think they will), but at least they won’t get caught in any political bullshit like they did in 2006.

The number of games by which the Brewers now lead the NL Central is actually less than the number of games they lost today. Everything looked fine and dandy going into the 9th inning of the first game of the doubleheader; but then Francisco “Derrick Turnblow 2007″ Cordero came in and got his ass kicked yet again. I strongly feel that the Brewers should no longer allow ANY of their players to attend an All Star weekend until they make the playoffs. Every single one of their FOUR All Stars has done absolutely NOTHING since they returned. Fielder looks like John Jaha without the home runs (wow…now there is a useless player), Ben “Higuera” Sheets and his tissue paper ass have taken their customary place on the DL, JJ Hardy, while not awful, has done nothing resembling his first two months of the season, and Francisco, as mentioned above, has made the Texas Rangers look SMART for dumping him. No one would have even considered that a possibility three weeks ago. This team is an absolute mess. They deserve what they get because they have simply forgotten how to win.

Brewers fans, heed my message: In the end, this season will end up like the 25 before it. The Brewers simply are not playoff material.

Now on to much more important sports items. So who do you think will be the Packers’ third string center this year?

It’s hard to complain when you win a game in the fashion the Brewers did Friday night. An absolute obliteration of the Cardinals sure helped put a pause in the downward spiral that has been engulfing the team. Still, you can’t help but wonder why they can’t spread these runs out. It seems every time the Brewers have approached an all-out free fall, they cook up a win by scoring more runs than any team should need to win a single game. With a double header tomorrow, the Brewers also required a quality start from Claudio Vargas, which he delivered. Now they, unlike the Cardinals, will have a well rested bullpen for a full day of baseball. That should be a nice advantage.

Meanwhile, in a nice twist of irony, the Cubs suffered the exact same fate the Brewers had the day before. David Weathers again did his best to blow a win for the Reds, giving up 2 runs in the top of the 9th allowing the Cubs to tie it. Fortunately for the Brewers, Ryan Freel made a spectacular play to save the third run of the inning, and then Edwin Encarnacion delivered the walk-off base hit.

It has been a mostly frustrating road trip so far for the Brewers. If they want to remain a playoff contender, they will need to improve their play on the road drastically. Taking both games tomorrow would be a nice step towards that end. Of course the biggest reason they need to go on a winning streak?

The logo looks better right-side up.

It may be a bit premature to label Jeff Suppan a total failure at this point, but there is no way he can be classified as one of Doug Melvin’s shrewd moves. This man is making $42 million, which even for the new Attanasio-backed Brewers is a lot of money. We are simply not getting a good return on our investment. I said it before, and I will say it again. The guaranteed contract is the worst thing about MLB’s free agency. There is no way to hold a guy like Suppan accountable once he takes the money. He goes out there and throws meatballs over the plate. The bottom line is he is not getting the job done. I cannot say anything bad about Doug Melvin. Almost every one of his moves thus far has been a resounding success. But even the best sometimes make mistakes, and signing Suppan may prove to be a big one.

Speaking of shrewd moves, today the Brewers traded three minor leaguers to the San Diego Padres for Scott Linebrink, one of the better set-up guys out there. Now if you read this blog, you know that I have very mixed feelings when it comes to Derrick Turnblow. The guy is as likely to mow down the opposition with fastballs as he is to walk the bases loaded and then give up a grand slam. So getting a guy who is a bit more dependable is fine. However, at this point we are down our ace starter (Sheets), and basically another if you go by Suppan’s numbers since June which show that he is the opposite of a stopper. I don’t know how many more outings like this the Brewers can take before they send him to the pen. I know that is a drastic move for a guy making that much money, but the team comes first. Right now, a Suppan start equals a Brewers loss.

Note: Dare I say it? The lead is now down to 2. Count ‘em One…Two… There are six more days for the Brewers to prove me correct (unfortunately) and lose the NL Central lead before August. What do you think that post might read like?

I did not get to see the game Tuesday night, but judging by the box score, the win was a solid one. Yovanni continues to impress with 6 2/3 solid innings, and despite recording one more walk than strikeout, allowed only a single earned run. Ryan Braun has attained a level fairly labeled “ridiculously good” at this point, adding another 2 hits. He may not only be contending for the NL Rookie of the Year award by the end of the season, but the NL batting title as well! In fact, if my math is correct (I used to be good at math), he attained the necessary number of AB’s today to qualify for that stat. Prince also looked good, getting a pair of hits and a key insurance RBI.

Meanwhile, it was a good thing that Carlos Villanueva returned to form, because Turnblow sure didn’t do his job tonight. Still, no harm no foul, I suppose, as the Brewers escaped with a much needed victory. As I write this, the Cubs survived a late attempt to tie the game by the Cardinals, and have maintained their pace at 3 games behind. So, at the 100 game mark, the Brewers are still, despite all the negatives I write about, 12 games over .500 and in first place in the division. Not bad considering their history. I still can’t condone losses like last night, but getting back in the habit of winning series is ultimately what they need to focus on.

Note: In reading a box score, sometimes you get the full picture, sometimes you don’t. What you also get that you don’t necessarily notice while watching the game live are some of the names of the opposing players. I see that the Reds have a pitcher M Gosling… All I could think about was that the ‘M’ stands for Mighty, like our sometime poster, sometime commentor Mighty Gosling. Not that I would confuse their ability to actually pitch a baseball…

So here we are, after four games against the dregs of the NL, and the Brewers have one lousy win to show for it. Tonight’s loss is just as egregious as the one I posted about last week. The Brewers wasted the best pitching effort out of Chris Capuano since April. Two men on, two out in the 9th. two men on one out in the 10th, and the bases loaded with nobody out in the 11th, and not a single damn run produced. I can take the 9th and 10th, when they had faced an equally stellar pitching performance by Aaron Harangl but the way they went scoreless in the 11th was truly awful.  After their three star infielders did what they had to do (Hardy reached on a bad error by the Reds shortstop Pedro Lopez, Braun singled again, and Fielder singled), Johnny Estrada in finishing out his amazing 0-5 night, grounded into a 3-2-3 double play. What was especially troubling about the play was that he didn’t even run hard out of the box, thereby making his already slow ass even easier to throw out. If I am Ned Yost, I bench him for a week. It’s not like we would be missing anything useful anyway. Damien Miller has been an adequate replacement for Estrada.  To top it all off, the Brewers are carrying an unusually robust number of pitchers (13) and they still manage to give the ball to this Balfour guy. His ERA is now a lofty 20.25, which is almost as difficult to achieve as a sub-2.00 mark. If the Brewers are to survive the regular season, they absolutely must beat teams like the Reds, especially when they get a pitching performance from their starting pitcher as they did tonight. Losses like this are simply unacceptable. Enough said.

Uniforms weren’t the only thing to look like old school Brewers Friday night. The pitching looked like its old crappy self too. Everyone from the highly overpaid Jeff Suppan to the normally reliable Carlos Villanueva, to the “I struck out Barry Bonds so I don’t need to concentrate anymore” Derrick Turnblow contributed to the disaster of the arms. Not unlike the “bad” loss from Wednesday night, the Brewers continue to believe that only two outs are required to end an inning. I won’t bore you with the details about Suppan’s outing; suffice it to say that his pitch count neared 100 in the fifth inning. Very efficient, Jeff. At least we got our money’s worth on sheer volume tonight. After retiring the first two in the 7th, Villanueva walked the bases loaded, gave up a run on a wild pitch, of all things, and then of course, allowed the other two free passes he issued to score on a cheap-o single. That was the killer right there. However, not being able to stay out of the potpourri of pitching poop was Mister Turnblow himself. He thought he was the shit after striking out Bonds with two men on and only one out. Trouble is, he let Ryan Klesko nail one off the wall and then gave up another single to Rich Aurilia, each hit producing a run. Not a good night for the staff, huh?

Of course, the Cubs won again to draw within a bad weekend series of taking the division lead. It is making me sick to my stomach to think that this season is headed exactly in the direction I spewed about in my rant after the no-hitter.  But again…these are your Milwaukee Brewers.

I always was a bit perplexed at the term “bad” loss…as if there is a “good” one. But after tonight’s game, I think I am inching closer to understanding. See…the Brewers lost 5-2, and of the 5 runs scored by the Diamondbacks, four of them should not have actually been tallied. In the 4th inning, with 2 men already out, Kevin Mench slipped and fell trying to field a routine pop out. Instead of the inning being done, another cheap-o bloop single allowed Arizona to push a second run across. Then, in the 8th inning, Ned Yost made a rare managerial mistake. With the game tied, he opted to bring in a guy, Grant Balfour, who hadn’t pitched an inning of major league ball in 3 years. Things began well enough, with Balfour retiring the first two men he faced. But, as is often the case with newcomers, Balfour unraveled before recording the third out. He hit the next batter, walked the successive guy, and then served up one of the longest home runs hit in Miller Park this year. Bing bang boom…Brewers down 5-2. Game over.

And why game over when they had 6 outs left to get 3 runs? Well..because the furious rally in the bottom of the 8th ended with no runs scored after extremely poor decisions to swing at bad pitches by Tony Graffanino and Damien Miller. Then in the 9th, Ricky “I can’t hit to save my life” Weeks led the whimper of attempts to make a comeback and that was all she wrote.

Meanwhile, the Cubs slaughtered the Cardinals 12-1 (remember when the Brewers used to be able to score like that?) and thus, Milwaukee’s NL Central lead fell back to a dangerously thin 3.5 games. So again, since the 24-10 start, the Brewers are still playing sub .500 ball, and have allowed the competition to catch up. It is nice that they have the best record in the NL (or did before tonight’s games), but the simple fact is they have to play better. Giving away a game like they did tonight is the kind of thing that will come back to bite them in the ass. They cannot afford any more “bad” losses. And let’s face it…cutting down on the “good” ones would be nice too.

Can Ben “Higuera” Sheets get through one damn season without visiting the DL? Apparently the answer is no. On track to be our only pitcher with 20 wins, it looks like he will have to be extraordinary when he returns to get there, and there is no guarantee his absence will be limited to 15 days. At least Yovanni is available to fill in. As I mentioned before, he may actually be our best starter right now. Suppan looked good in his last start, but of course didn’t get the win. Capuano is the new Dave Bush. I only hope that if they go after another starter for the stretch run, that they don’t trade any of the young infielders they have. Not that Weeks’ value is that high right now anyway…

So i had the joy of witnessing what the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel labeled as the 2nd best Brewer game of the season’s first half.  But as sweet as that 13-4 drubbing of the Cubs was , I was soured by the betrayal I witnessed across the street, behind the right field bleachers.  There, in the former spot of the Torco sign, stood a billboard sponsored by Miller Brewing which read, “We Prefer Pennant Chases to Sausage Races.”  I couldn’t belive it.  Before my very eyes, Miller Brewing, which has called Milwaukee home for over 150 years, had a paid advertisement demeaning the team whose house bears its name.  I was enraged.  So enraged that I fired off this email to Miller Brewing.

I’m concerned over the choice in advertising Miller chose to make recently in Chicago, IL.  During a game at Wrigley Field in Chicago between the Chicago Cubs and the Milwaukee Brewers, whose home field is named for Miller beer, Miller ran an advertisement on a billboard that the whole stadium could see which read, “We prefer penant chases to sausage races.”  This was obviously a shot at the tradition at Miller Park where life-sized sausages race around the track in between innings. I could not understand why Miller would take a shot at the team from its hometown and the team whose home is named after Miller, especially at a game at which many Milwaukee Brewers fans were in attendance.  I found this to be terrible marketing and i’m very disappointed in Miller for its poor advertising choice.

The game was on Saturday, June 30th.  Today, July 11th, I received this response:

Thank you for your recent email to Miller Brewing Company.Miller Brewing Company fully supports the Milwaukee Brewers. The sign that was posted at Wrigley Field for the Cubs Brewers series was not meant to offend the Milwaukee Brewers or the sausage races at Miller Park.  The intent of the sign was just to create friendly debate among Brewers and Cubs fans about two teams who are both at the top of their division for the first time in many years.  Miller Brewing Company agrees with all Brewers supporters that we would like to see our home team - not the Cubs — in the pennant race. Thanks again for contacting the Miller Brewing Company. Sincerely,Miller Brewing Company Consumer Affairs Department
Ref: Case#N20030769
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I’m sorry Miller, but anything short of a full apology and promise to refrain from such blasphemy in the future is unacceptable.  Your words are but an empty can of Sharps to me.