What Else Do You Wanna Know!?

Kevin Borseth, the Michigan Women's basketball coach, was a bit "frustrated" after his team blew an 18-point lead and lost to Wisconsin by 2. Classic.

Just call me Nostradamus

From our "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut" file

"I look for the D to clamp down on Nietzel and keep him from going off. Look for the game to be close until the last 10 minutes where Wisconsin will pull away."

That is what I predicted yesterday in my Badger post. At the 9:53 left mark in the second half Wisconsin was up by 4 37 to 33 they then proceeded to run away and hide from the Spartans.

And Drew Nietzel well Michael Flowers treated Nietzel like a snitch in a prison riot. MSU's senior golden boy was held to 1 three point basket for the game going 1-10 and did not attempt a free throw. I am sorry that was a form of basketball bondage last night.

Oh and lets not forget the Badgers setting a team record with only ONE count them ONE turn over for the entire game. That is just an amazing stat. They are playing some very good basketball right now lets hope they can keep this up till the end of March.

What a big win for Bucky as R10 pointed this is the best TEAM we have seen come through Madison in a long time. Now the National Media talking heads are starting to say 2 seed out loud.

If they can TCB two more times they will at worst share the Big Ten title(I have no clue how a 2 or 3 way tie would effect the seedings in the Big Ten Tourney ie who would get the 1 seed etc.)

On paper they have the easiest path of the three teams with only PSU at home and Northwestern on the road to finish the season. That NW games scares me for some reason it seems like Bo's teams have had "issues" down there.

My other big worry is getting through these last two games and the tourney with no injuries. My dream would be win the Big Ten regular season title and go out of the tourney in one game so they can rest for the Big Dance. Of the three titles they can win the Big Ten Tourney Title means the least to me. I would not turn it down but last thing I want is a bruising battle with Purdue or IU in the championship game.

Who would have thought after that debacle at Duke that the Badgers would be where they are now?

Great Day to be a Badger

On Wisconsin
Chris

Badgers Control Michigan State

Future College Basketball Hall of Fame Coach Tom Izzo’s Michigan State Spartans put up 22 first half points against the fresh legs and energized play of the Wisconsin Badgers. After the intermission, the Spartans return to the court and put up 20 second half points for a total of 42 from the nation’s 15th ranked team. The Badgers put 57 on the board in announcing they are very serious about locking up the Big Ten Title.

The victory gives Wisconsin a half game lead over Purdue and Indiana forcing those teams to keep winning to keep pace. The tape of this game may become the textbook on how to play complete TEAM basketball.

UW Badgers: Brian Butch led all scorers with 16 points shooting 5-for-10 from the field, including 4-of-6 from behind the arc. Trevon Hughes chipped in 13 points and four assists while Michael Flowers had nine points. … The Badgers set a new single-game program record by only committing one turnover.

Senior Brian Butch wants a Championship and the way this team has come together they may well get one, or two or three.

Packers Trade Williams

The Packers have just traded Cory Williams to the Cleveland Browns for a 2nd round pick.

I think it's a good deal. They weren't going to sign Williams to a longer term deal anyways, and we get a high pick out of it.

What do you guys think?

Time To Run To Webb's

The Brewers won 7-1 over the Athletics today. Braun hit a bomb and Hall had a nice diving catch in the hole. Since they scored 5 runs you can go to George Webb's and get 6 hamburgers for $5.

Spring Training

Damn I love baseball. It makes me so damn happy to listen to the games again.

Especially when you have Prince Doubling, Braun Homering and Bill Hall, Gabe Gross and Mike Cameron all hitting off a pretty good pitcher. Yes I know it is spring training, but I love baseball and the smile is ear to ear...

Favre Retiring?

Well, according to Packers.com, he is. Or at least, that was the case for a few minutes today.

For four minutes, the Green Bay Packers' web site listed a "Favre to Retire" page saying the Packers quarterback of 17 years was calling it a career.

The Sporting News states it was up for that short time, then it was gone.

A Packers spokesman tells Newsradio 620 WTMJ the posting should give fans no reason to believe it's actually going to happen.

Last Major Hurdle of the Big Ten Season tonight.

Well This will be the last time Wisconsin plays a ranked team for the rest of the regular season. This is a huge game as Wisconsin is in the middle of a 3 way battle for the Big Ten Regular season title. Right now it is Wisconsin vs. the Indiana teams.

Purdue Wisconsin and IU are all sitting at 13-2 in conference with 3 games to go, there is a very good chance the Big Ten title will be shared this season.

All three teams have one real challenge game left IU has to play MSU, Purdue has a game with OSU left and Wisconsin has MSU tonight.

Normally I would say this is a W no questions asked because the game is at the Pit of Despair. But this season and two losses at the Kohl Center teachers us to not take anything for granted.

MSU is not really flying high as they come into Madison they are 2 and 2 in their last 4 they lost to IU and Purdue and beat Penn State and Iowa. So they have been having problems with ranked teams lately.

It would be nice to see Wisconsin start rebounding again Butch and Krabby have to be a force inside tonight. I look for the D to clamp down on Nietzel and keep him from going off. Look for the game to be close until the last 10 minutes where Wisconsin will pull away.

Tip off is at 8pm CT and the game is on ESPN2 so all of you poor souls without the BTN will be able to see the game.

Lets hope they put on a good show on national tv and impress the selection committee come on number 2 seed

On Wisconsin
Chris

Brewers to play first preseason game today

The Brewers will take on the Oakland A's today at 2:05pm CT. The game audio will be broadcast on MLB Game Day Audio so if you have a MLB Audio or TV account you can listen to the game.

So the road to the Division title starts today in a small way.

With a foot of snow on my deck I am ready for live Brewers baseball even if it is a Spring Training game.

Hurray Beer
Chris

I Bring Fantasy Baseball To The Masses

Well I now have a WSB league set up for you guys. I was able to renew the same league that we had last year with some minor tweaking. Some of you should have received an email about it if you were in last years league, that is if it worked properly. If anyone wants to join click here. If you don't want to join then click here. If anyone has suggestions you can still throw them out.

Btw if you actually clicked on that second link I'm sure you're hoping like I am that our team doesn't do something as stupid as that.

Update: The password is "baseball".

Anyone being sucked in by the Does recent stretch of good play?

The Does, sorry The Suck Ass Does have won three of four games since the NBA All-Star Break. All three wins have come against good top flight teams, they have beaten Denver Detroit and Cleveland but they did have one terrible crushing loss at the hands of the Pistons.

So I know there are a few Does fans out there are you starting to have any little tiny shred of hope, or is this like the one good week they put together in the first half of the season? Will they be right back to getting crushed by 20,30 or even 40 points a night?

Just wondering if anyone still even cared.

Chris

Were you at County Stadium for Major League?

I'm watching Major League on TIVO before heading to bed tonight, and I'm curious-did any of you out there go to County Stadium for the filming of the movie? If so, tell us what it was like in the comments.

How Bout Them...Labor Agreements?

Just saw this across the ESPN crawl line, but Jerry Jones doesn't think there will be enough votes to keep the current labor agreement. If this does happen there would no longer be a salary cap and according to Gene Upshaw, "once there is an uncapped year, a salary cap would never return."

I have no idea how this would impact revenue sharing but this would certainly not be good for the Packers.

The good news is with Ted Thompson as G.M. we won't have to worry about signing high price guys.

So, what do you guys think?

The Ongoing Hoosier Drama

Interim Indiana basketball coach Dan Dakich gets his first home win as the Hoosiers down Ohio State 72-69 to keep pace with Wisconsin for the Big Ten Championship. Dakich is in his audition period having succeeded the ousted Kelvin Sampson, however, Indiana will do a national search for the best candidate for their suddenly vacant head basketball coach position. One name popping up comes from an honorable Wisconsin coaching lineage.

Tony Bennett: One trend I’ve noticed since Sampson’s resignation on Friday is the amount of media attention being given to Tony Bennett of Washington State. Pat Forde of ESPN.com called Bennett the best candidate almost immediately after Sampson stepped down. … He’s proven he can recruit. As an assistant at Wisconsin, he helped bring in Alando Tucker, Kirk Penny, Devin Harris and Brian Butch. He’s also just 38 years of age which means he could be a long term solution, unlike Kelvin Sampson.

As a former Bobby Knight assistant, Dakich has a commanding lead towards landing the permanent position, but it should be pointed out he is also a fervent Chicago Cubs fan. If he does land the Indiana job, that gives me a double reason to boo the bum.

WSB Fantasy League

It's that time of year again, time for me to totally suck at fantasy baseball. Anyways I'm gonna set up a league again this year. I would like a head-to-head league and Chris would like a rotisserie league so I'm gonna ask all of you. What type of league do you want? What categories do you want? Do you want a regular sort of league or something funky like a homer-only league. Let me know your preferences and I will set something up. I'm thinking of a preliminary draft date of 3/19, the Wednesday between the play-in game and the 1st round of the tourney.

Bradley Center Name Change

Living in Boston I sometimes have to go to great lengths to stay current on Wisco news. One of those steps is listening to the local talking heads podcasts. I'm listening to Charlie Sykes Friday show and he is going on and on about how terrible it is that the Bradley Center board is examining the possibility of a sponsored name change. To me, I couldn't care less. The Center was donated to the city. In every case I can think of, a gift (unless otherwise noted) is a gift. The recipient is free to do with it as they please. If the Bradley Center is hurting for funds, they damn well better explore every possible avenue for funding asking the city to steal more hard earned citizens dollars.

What say you? Would you be personally offended at the Time Warner Bradley Center?

EDIT: To clear up some confusion, Sykes was bitching because he said it was disrespectful to the donor family. As of now, no representative of the family has commented (this was as of yesterday). Also, as of yesterday, it was unclear if any naming stipulations had been put in writing.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Matt manages top 5 at Fontana

Matt Kenseth managed to drive the #17 to a top 5 finish as they finished the rain delayed Auto Club 500. Nice way to bounce back from the Daytona fiasco. We should be talking back to back top 10 finishes if he does not get wrecked last week.

Matt Jumped 19 places in the standings and is just out side the top 12 in the Chase for the cup. Only pretty boy Gordon moved up more places than Matt Jeff jumped 24 spots.

Nice to see that the Roush/Fenway team has gotten its COT act together

ESPN coverage of the race which was won by RF driver Carl Edwards.

Go Matt Go

Chris

Should The Brewers Sign Barry Bonds?

For:

1. We already signed a bunch of abusers in the offseason. What's one more?

2. You would have a HUGE offensive upgrade from Gwynn/Gross/Cameron to Bonds if you move Hart to center.

3. He will be relatively cheap, as no one wants him.

4. His stick is still awesome.

5. You could probably get him for one year, and no risk.

6. You could use another lefty in the lineup.


Against:

1. He's a jerk.

2. And a cheater.

3. He can't really play defense anymore, although he's not a disaster.

4. He might block Hart, since our manager is a moron.

5. He is injury prone.

Tell me this, if you had to sign either Barry Bonds or Eric Gagne to a 1-year, $10 million contract, who would you choose?

Hmmmm.....

Well I was right it is better to lose in the middle of the week

The new rankings are out and Tennessee is the new number one team in the land as it should be.

ESK and I had been trying to guess where Wisconsin would end up and we were both too optimistic

I had said as low as 8th as high as number 6. ESK said 8th place

Well Wisconsin is number 9 in the coaches poll and number 10 in the AP so they moved up one spot in each poll.

It's funny how Duke is treated different than other teams they lose back to back games against unranked teams and then manage a win this weekend to stay in the top ten. Hey Kansas has managed to stay in the top 10 also.

Polls are funny creatures. One thing you can say for Wisconsin all 4 losses were against top 25 teams.

But "Certainly Duke is Duke, they're on TV more than Leave it to Beaver reruns."Providence coach Pete Gillen 2007 and they get treated differently because of it.

Wisconsin just has to keep winning and they will go into the tourney as a top 10 team.

On Wisconsin
Chris

Statistical Anomaly

Since it is spring training time (games start on Thursday) and many of the bartenders/customers like their stats so much, I thought that I would share one hell of an anomaly with you all...

Stan Musial collected 3,630 MLB hits. Of which exactly half were hit at home and half on the road.

Big League Owner

Recently, there have been discussions as to the Brewers signing their core (Fielder, Braun, Hart, Hardy, Weeks) to long term deals. I like the fact that Mark A seems to be proactive in this discussion rather than saying we're a small market team so we'll just have to move on.

There's an article Here that talks about the possibility of signing Braun to a long term deal, similar to Tulo of the Rockies.

It's interesting because Braun probably won't be arbitration eligible until 2010 since he began the season last year in the minors.

I love Mark's quote on Fielder too, "I'm rooting for Prince to hit 60 home runs this year," Attanasio said, "and we'll figure out how to pay him."

It makes me wonder how high Mark can let the payroll go and could we play with the big boys (N.Y. and Boston)? We may never make the big free agent splash and trade for a guy like Johan, but in the model of Ted Thompson, if we can keep our own guys I think that's great.

It's a far cry away from the Selig days.

Jason Kendall's "Grit"

A blogger at Flotsam Media came up with teh most awesomely fantastic stat since VORP. It's called "GRIT".

After Tim McCarver’s month-long David Eckstein sploogefest that was October 2006, a serious investigation into 'grit' was long overdue. Despite the penchant of sportswriters and broadcasters to throw the term around willy-nilly, I was hard-pressed to locate a firm definition of grit in the baseball sense. Using lots of laptop science stuff, I think I’ve improved the definition, which isn’t really saying much, since there wasn’t one to begin with.

First, some definitions to help us focus in on what exactly this 'grit' stuff is.

Gritty
1. Containing, covered with, or resembling grit.
2. Showing resolution and fortitude; plucky: Biggio’s gritty 12-pitch at-bat ultimately resulted in a routine 6-3 groundout.

In keeping with those definitions I’m proposing a new composite statistic: General Requirements of Intangible Talent (GRIT). GRIT incorporates four basic components: dirt, determination, talent, and opportunity.

You should go read the rest yourself, because it's frickin' awesome. He's not kidding, by the way, as he uses actual math. Here's one more snippet to give you an idea:

The Dirt Formula

HBP: A hit batter produce minimal gains (one base) with relatively high costs in terms of potential bodily injury. The official colors of gritty players may well be black and blue. And red. And maybe some brown with a little purple and some yellow around the edges, depending on the severity of the bruising.

IBB: Next to home runs, intentional walks are probably the most anti-gritty statistic. Intentional walks are indicative that a player has so much talent that the pitcher would rather give him first base than risk an extra-base hit. Gritty players have to earn every base through hard-knocks, moxie, and a heaping helping of some good ol’ fashioned hustle.

CS/SB stuff (SBINEFF): This is a statistic I call Stolen Base Inefficiency (SBINEFF). This looks for players who like to attempt lots of steals but are largely unsuccessful. Stealing bases produces minimal gains (one base) but comes with greater potential costs by raising the likelihood of being thrown out. Base-stealers (successful or not) also have dirty uniforms from sliding.

DID YOU KNOW: Harold Reynolds holds the single-season record for SBINEFF with a stunning 13.385? Harold’s 1988 season saw him tally 35 steals while being caught 29 times. He broke the record set by Will Clark (13.304) during the previous season when Mr. Eyeblack went 5 for 22 on steal attempts. WOW!

Anyway, he gives everyone a "GRIT" score. Note that being gritty means that you are gritty, and that you are probably bad at baseball. Over the last 25 years, Jason Kendall has 3 of the to 12 scores. He ranks as the 3rd grittiest player of all time with a 214.62 career GRIT, or about 19.51 per year. He trails only Ron Hunt and Craig Biggio.

Flotsam also calculated the list of least gritty seasons/players. They feature guys like Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, and Ernie Banks. You know, good players.

In closing, Jason Kendall sucks balls, and will be a giant black hole for the Brewers all year. Or until he is replaced.

Warriors On National Television Tonight

I really only get see Marquette play when they're on national TV, and if memory serves, these games have not been kind to Marquette this year. They're on the road against a tough Villanova team tonight at 6:00 on ESPN. Villanova has been hot lately, recently putting an end to UCONN's 10 game winning streak.

Marquette has been smoking as well, winning their last 4 games by an average of 20 points, although mostly over doormats.

There's another reason that you should check out Marquette. If you're anything like me (i.e., Badger-centric) you're probably unfamiliar with alot of Big East teams. I'm almost always a Big East ignoramus. This hurts me in my bracket selections come tournament time, and it probably hurts you too. The Big East is huge, and talented. They will get a bunch of teams into the dance, and if you don't know enough to pick Lousiville to make the Final Four, you have only yourself to blame.

Yost to "LaRussa" the Lineup?

There is considerable internet buzz buzzing around the internets about a recent urinal blog post:

one of the most interesting of possible orders would have Ryan Braun batting second, a pitcher batting eighth and catcher Jason Kendall batting ninth. This idea isn't set yet, and it may not ever be used. It is just one of a flurry of ideas whizzing around inside the skipper's head. St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa has done this some during the last few seasons.

Yost's reasoning is that he wants Braun to have more plate apperances, but still be able to have guys on in front of him. So with Kendall's ability to see pitches and get on base, it would essentially translate to Braun still batting third while racking up about 40 more plate appearances, as stats show. In this lineup, Prince Fielder would bat third in the order, but it would be like having him in the clean-up slot.

According to the baseballmusings.com lineup analysis tool, 9th is the best spot for Kendall. A little more surprising however, is how the rest of the lineup shakes out:

Weeks|Fielder|Cameron|Braun|Hart|Hall|Hardy|Pitcher|Kendall

If Yost really wants to be known as a "outside the box" guy...use that lineup. It is worth noting, that in 7 of the top 10 lineups generated by that tool, Prince hits second, and in every lineup where the Crew scores more than 5.2 runs per game, Weeks is leading off.

Back on track

A quick gymnastics report, my son got back on track this weekend winning the All-Around at the Scamps invitational down in Kenosha.

He won the Level 4 age 6 competition with

First in P-Bars

First in Pommel

Second in High Bar

Third in Floor

Fourth on Rings

Vault not so good did not medal

The amazing part was he took third in floor with a fall, he missed his hand stand for the first time I can remember but still was able to pull an 8.8 a fall is a .5 deduction so he hits that handstand he is on his way to a 9.3

On Pommel horse he was also allowed to try a secondary apparatus called the mushroom so far he is the only level 4 I have seen try it.

A couple of his teammates are really making strides also you are starting to see multiple boys from his team on the award stand. 2 meets left until the state meet and the end of the season.

Once again like the Badgers season I cannot believe how fast this first gymnastic season has flown by.

Look for Wisconsin to move up in both polls

With their win over OSU in Columbus yesterday the Badgers ensured they will move closer to the top 5 when todays poll comes out.

Do I think Wisconsin is one of the top 5 teams in the nation, honestly no but that is the way the polls work. And Wisconsin has been playing some damn good basketball this season. They are 3 games away from at worst sharing the Big Ten Regular season title.

I don't really believe anyone saw them doing that after the losses to Duke and Care Bears. But this team has given a clinic on how to play "team" basketball this season and I think they could be very dangerous in the Big Dance.

I heard a great interview on ESPN540am the other day with a talking head from ESPN. He said its not your seeding in the tourney that is important but can you draw a "path" to the elite 8 that is what is important. Right now the Badgers have to a lock for a 3 seed with a real chance to sneak back into a 2 seed. That should hopefully help them find their path.

So here is where we are at, they play MSU this Thursday at the Kohl Center aka the Pit of Despair this should be the last major hurdle for the Badgers as they finish with PSU at home and then end the season at that that joke of a gym Northwestern plays in.

Of the three games the Northwestern games worries me the most, something about Bo Ryan teams playing at Northwestern makes me nervous. It still amazing how fast this basketball season has flown by.

Congratulations to Brian Butch for getting his 1000 point as a Badger yesterday, he did not have a great game due to early foul trouble, but any day Butch leaves Columbus with his health it is a good day.

So three games to a Conference title

On Wisconsin
Chris

Let me explain something to you "Some Other Guy"

This is not your blog you get no say on what I/We say or post here. If you do not like that then do not fucking read the blog. After 3 years of blogging I am just tired of assholes like you you snipe but leave no email address. If you think you can do better please feel free to start your own blog blogger is free and pretty easy to use.

Guess what I am just not going to waste my time with the likes of you so keep finding new computers to leave your smart ass remarks I will keep banning each IP, sooner or later you will get tired and move on. No matter what you write in a comment it will be deleted. You could say I am the greatest guy in the world would not matter it is getting deleted.

So instead of acting like you actually matter here just move on go play troll somewhere else. You are not wanted here.

I do this for fun and assholes like you make it hard to enjoy this hobby sometimes.

I have decided to not let a asshole like you ruin what is normally a very good time. I really enjoy doing this blog I have for almost the entire 2.5 years we have been doing this.

So I am going to do what I like to do here, write posts with the worst grammar possible because that is what I do. I understand I am not the best writer in the world I do not need assholes like you "Some other guy" to tell me that.

Anyone who does not like how I write can first kiss my ass and second go read the paper their grammar is pretty damn good from what I can tell.

Oh I am also taking this moment to end the Friday Girl thing it has gotten very old and very boring and I really do not feel like doing it anymore.

Time to get back to being a sports blog no more music posts no more posts about things I think are neat or fun.

Just sports that should be fun.

Oh and "Some Other guy" if you insist on leaving comments I will just enable moderation on the comments and no one will ever see them. I would hate to do that but I will if I have to.

So please just go away.

Chris

Wisconsin v Ohio State

Wisconsin was a legitimate Final Four team last year, until Brian Butch took a hard fall and dislocated his elbow in the next to last Big Ten game at Ohio State. The Buckeyes and their one year “rent a player” Greg Oden then proceeded to NCAA Championship game while the Badgers, weakened by the loss of Butch, drifted out in the second round of the tourney.

Today the Badgers go back to Columbus for a nationally televised game on CBS needing another road win to stay in the hunt for the Big Ten title. Fortunately, Bo Ryan has selected and coached really good road warriors. Yeah, warriors.

Tom Oates: The toughest thing to do in college men's basketball is to win on the road, and no team in the Big Ten Conference has won more impressively on the road this season than the University of Wisconsin. … With a 6-1 Big Ten road record entering Sunday's must-win game at Ohio State, UW has tied a 94-year-old school record for most conference road wins in a season.

Butch needs eight points to reach 1,000 points for his Wisconsin career. I’m thinking he will be real motivated to get them this afternoon.

I'm Waiting

Virtually that is.

Tis the Season

Since the sports season is down, Jimmy Buffet has been on the posts, and we have all offended Chris (Chris never meant to offend, my apologies), I have a question for you blues guys out there....

I am young and love all the blues guys, Clapton, Guy, King, Trucks, Randolph, name it I love it...but why did Jeff Beck fool around with Rod Stewert in the 90s and now again with Kelly Clarkson in the 00s?

He is to electric guitar what Bill James is to baseball statistics yet he still tends to "slum"

Can ayone help me? Why does Jeff Beck occationally sellout?

Kelvin Sampson is OUT!!!

Kelvin Sampson and Indiana have reached a $750,000 settlement for the coach and school to split. Assistant coach Dan Dakich will be named the interim coach. A presser will be held later on tonight.

Can you hear me now? Good!!!

I Got Opening Day Cubs/Brewers Bleacher Tickets

Should I sell or should I go?

Fuck the Gophers

I hate nothing worse than Gopher hockey. I think that is well established. The feeling runs constant throughout my family. A cousin in my very large family went to goofer u and has since been excommunicated and currently resides in South Korea. He is no longer welcome at family events.

This weekend the Badger men go into an incredibly important series against the disgusting maroon and mustard, who are having their worst season in a decade and are probably on the brink of firing their lunatic head coach who has run off top player after top player. Wisconsin needs at least three points out of this weekend in my estimation (a win and a tie) to stay in the top 12 in the Pairwise rankings. (College hockey is Paul's wet dream, as there is pretty much no room for the selection committe to fuck around, they take the conference champions and then the top PWR (like RPI) ranked teams).

In preparation, I give you the greatest moment in goofer hockey history. The Tyler Hirsch post game psychotic break:

Nice Call, Bill Simmons.

Check out Bill Simmons' column of trades that should happen.

Specifically, check out 3A, 3B, and 4A. If you take Milwaukee out of the equation, this trade basically just happened. Simmons called the following players:

Drew Gooden
Shannon Brown
Ira Newble
Ben Wallace
Adrian Griffin
Wally Szczerbiak
Delonte West
Donyell Marshall
Cedric Simmons

Too bad the Bucks couldn't get in on the action. Anyway, Simmons doesn't get very much right, and he's not even exactly "right" here, but calling that many players correctly in a big 3-team trade is impressive. Then again, maybe we should just be giving props to the ESPN trade caculator.

Hey, Goober, Where's The Meat?

I don't care what anyone says, this is not a good thing:

Try this: Prince Fielder is a vegetarian.

That 6-foot, 260-pound build is powered by wheatgrass, soy and tofu nowadays. No meat. Not even fish.

It wasn't always this way. Fielder used to enjoy a stacked burger or a juicy steak as much as any carnivore, but a few weeks ago he received a book from his wife, Chanel, that changed his outlook on what he puts in his massive frame. The book described how certain animals are treated and slaughtered for food.

The youngest player to hit 50 home runs in a season was grossed out, so much so that he made his last meaty meal a salmon filet before quitting the animal game on Feb. 3. He has even dabbled in a vegan lifestyle but admits that might be pushing things a little.

"After reading that, (meat) just didn't sound good to me anymore," Fielder said. "It grossed me out a little bit. It's not a diet thing or anything like that. I don't miss it at all."

Look, I have nothing but love for the vegetarians of the world. I even think it's admirable. But I do not want my power-hitting first baseman to stop eating meat. I suppose with supplements, etc., that he should not have any problems, but it makes me nervous, nonetheless.

Fuck it

I will let all you English Majors post for awhile.

Ryan Howard Wins Arbitration

Ryan Howard won his $10 million arbitration case. This is bad news to the Brewers because another left handed first baseman is up for Arbitration next year. And Boras will surely use this in his case.

Cubs Tickets On Sale Tomorrow

If you're interested in catching any games at Wrigley this year, single-game tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10:00 AM, here.

The Cubs' home schedul is bizarre this year. By my count, the Brewers make 3 trips down here for 3, 3-game series. Two of these are in April, and one is in September, all in the middle of the week. Also, the Cubs play only one weekend series in the month of June, which must be driving the local bar-owners crazy. If you're looking for an investment opportunity, that one weekend series happens to be against the White Sox, and if you can get tickets tomorrow, especially bleachers, you're basically printing money.

If any blog-members do decide to treck down for any games, let me know and I'll buy you a beer, provided I'm not at work. It's a good time. They're not as big of jerks down here as they are when they visit Miller Park.

Brewers Want Back in the AL??

According to the Kansas City Star, this is a rumor that "seems to pop up every few years." I follow the baseball a touch, and this is a new one on me.

the Royals want to switch to the National League and the Brewers want to return to the American League.

Hmm. Conspiracy theorists, start your engines! The Brewers knew it all along. Bud gave them inside information! The proof, the silver bullet? Well, they have 3 DH's in their future, Fielder, Braun, and LaPorta. (Oh, they were also informed by Selig that multiple DH's are the wave of the '10's.).

The Royals, for their part, dismissed the rumor.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Yankees Hate That Computer Machine

Derek Jeter is the worst defensive short stop in baseball. That general idea has been pretty much assumed by stat heads since Jeter started stealing Gold Gloves. He has Prince Fielder type range. So recently, UPenn putout a study "proving" it. The reaction from New York has been awesome:

How's this for junk science - even with three Gold Gloves, Yankees captain Derek Jeter has been labeled the worst fielding shortstop in baseball.
But the numbers prove it, researchers at the University of
Pennsylvania said yesterday at a meeting of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, in (of course) Boston.

The NY Post then goes on to interview random fans on the street...about complex statistical reports. Wow. How long til someone mentions "clutch?"

But New Yorkers scoffed at the notion.
"I don't know what they're smoking down at Penn," said Yankees fan Mike
Birch, 32. "That's preposterous. I completely disagree. Jeter's a clutch player."
"It's ridiculous," said fan Jay Ricker, 22. "Jeter is all-around awesome. He's better than A-Rod
any day. Character has a lot to do with it. He's out there for his
teammates, not just himself. He does it for the good of the team.
That's the kind of guy you want on the field."

Character now has something to do with range? Are you kidding me?

My favorite quotes come from Derek Jeter, who clearly has never heard of regression analysis:

"Maybe it was a computer glitch," the three-time Gold Glove winner
said of the report. But Jeter just didn't laugh this one off. He
defended himself, saying, "Every [shortstop] doesn't stay in the same
spot, everyone doesn't have the same pitching. Everyone doesn't have
the same hitters running, it's impossible to do that." Jeter, 33, pointed out you can get the exact same ground ball
off the exact same pitcher and there could be an average runner or
there could be Ichiro running. "How can you compute that?" he asked. You can't.

I'm Derek Jeter, regression analysis sounds like some disgusting German sex act.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Russell Branyon is back

Just so you all know, the Brewers signed Rob Deer wannabe Russell Branyon to a minor league deal.

My name is Jib, and I have a problem

I read this the other day and, for reasons that only make sense to me, I was extremely surprised.

When it came time for some early workouts before players reported to camp, Hall had to borrow a glove from shortstop J.J. Hardy, who keeps them in bunches. Hall had his own sleek black Nike glove when he reported yesterday and took grounders with the rest of the infield.

But I noticed something different during that session: Second baseman Rickie Weeks had gone form his navy blue and black Wilson glove to a light tan Rawlings. The pocket and size of the glove were different than Weeks has always used. Come to find out, his new gloves had not come in yet and, again, J.J. was the guy with the answer.

Why was I surprised by this? Well, because I'm apparently a gloveaholic, a.k.a. a glove whore. I am but a mere beer league softball player, yet I have a broken in outfield/infield glove, a broken in infield glove, a partially broken in back up outfield glove, a brand new first baseman's mitt, a broken in back up first baseman's mitt that needs to be restrung, and an emergency back up infield/outfield glove. I always thought that a major league ball player would at least have a broken in main glove for their position, a back up for their position, and a broken in glove that they could use if forced into a new position. I guess I was wrong

Packers cut Bubba Franks and make Williams their Franchise Player

the WSJ is reporting that the Bubba Franks era in Green Bay is over.

My guess is with Williams this is a prelude to signing him to a long term deal.

Why lock him up with the F-tag if you do not intend to keep him around a while.

Oh and another off season waiting for Brett to tell us his plans. Somethings never change.

The Bubba thing does not surprise me when they signed Lee to that long term deal you could see the writing on the wall.

Go Pack Go
Chris

TCB Baby just TCB.

Sorry I have not been around all day I was helping a friend hang sheet rock in his garage all day, lets just say getting old and fat sucks I can barely lift my arms to the key board. ;)

Well the theme for tonights Badger Basketball game is to "Just Take Care of Business Baby"

IU has opened a door for Wisconsin to have a shot at the Big Ten Title. Now the Badgers have to keep holding up their end.

Winning against down teams like Illinois is part of taking care of business.

Wisconsin has two really tough games coming up after this with OSU and MSU so it would be nice to have a laugher tonight. Maybe let some starters get some rest.

A man can hope right?

Tip off is at 8pm CT tonight and is a BTN game and because of the Suck Ass Does being on the Flagship the Badger game is on WSSP so no one is going to be able to see or hear this game lol. ;)

5 games left till the Big Ten plus One Tourney man it is starting to get exciting isn't it

Lets win, lets not get hurt and lets move on.

On Wisconsin
Chris

We are the Superior Product

Chris and i have gone round on this. Chris thinks NASCAR is the best. I'll grant it is the superior product. But i don't think it is the superior form of the sport. That i believe belongs to open wheel. However, now that NASCAR is using the common COT formula i believe NASCAR is approaching open wheel, especially IRL.

The difference is in the parity. The NFL learned that parity is the ultimate generator of popularity. With all teams being equivalent by rule each team hd a genuine opportunity to rise from stink in one year to contend in the very next year. A team would no longer lose a decade's worth of fan base as they struggled to build or rebuild. Yeah human management could still screw things up. But the salary cap and the schedule help to keep things even.

In auto racing it has been true that the richest teams win. That's essentially why Tony George split from CART, he wanted a more level playing ground. I would argue F1 has the same problem, lots of cars will compete but few have a chance to actually win. For reasons that escape me however F1 is vastly more popular than CART/Champ.

Hopefully with the reunification of american open wheel we'll ( isn't that clever writing? ) see a return to parity and a return to excellence.

Tangentially, parity is why i believe the NFL product is superior to baseball. I'll grant that baseball is the superior sport. But as a product the NFL is Godzilla. Baseball is the Japanese army. Impressive in its own right, but not enough.

the NBA would be the monorail.

Do you love your sport?

How do you know?

When i was aged in single digits i loved auto racing. USAC was everything and AJ Foyt was my hero. I'd plant myself in front of the television and watch everything i could.

Nowadays i like auto racing but it's not appointment viewing for me. THat's how i know i love a sport. If it's appointment viewing and i rearrange all other schedules to accomodate then i love it. See NFL. That's really about it.

Fantasy sport might be another good measure, and i do Fantasy Football.

Hunter Pence Smashes Into Glass Door

Does this remind anyone of anything?

Houston Astros right fielder Hunter Pence crashed through a sliding glass door in the bathroom of his spring training home, leaving him with multiple cuts that will sideline him for a week.

All I could think of when I read that was Pence pulling a similar move to what he made in the game against the Brewers last September when he lept face first into the outfield wall at full speed because he didn't know it was there. I laughed then and I laugh now. I'm glad he's okay, but what a buffoon.

ERA+, Etc.

Chris asked me to move certain portions of a comment up into a post, but the single best thing you can do to get a feel for what's important and what's not is to read the FireJoeMorgan Glossary. It's written in accesible fashion, it's funny, and it's informative. Here's OPS+:

OPS+
Anytime you see a “+” sign in front of a stat, it means that the stat has been adjusted for the specific season(s) to which that stat applies. OPS+, for example, is simply OPS measured against the league average OPS for that year/years, and adjusted for park factors (see below). 100 is defined as average. So, an OPS+ of 115 means that the player in question was 15% better than the average player who played in his league during the time he played. It’s a quick and dirty way of comparing hitters on a level playing field, because it accounts, obviously, for the general offensive trends that mark baseball history. In 1968, Carl Yastrzemski hit 23 HR and had a .922 OPS, which is very good. But his OPS+ was 171, which is excellent, because offense league-wide in 1968 was hard to come by. For contrast, Mark McGwire hit 65 HR in 1999, but his OPS+ was “only” 178, because the whole world was juicing balls into the stratosphere that year, so compared to his peers McGwire was roughly the same amount as awesome as Yaz was when he hit only 23 in ’68.

Derrek Lee was also the 2005 OPS+ champ at 177. Pronk was your AL champ at 170. To give a little more cross generational perspective, your career OPS+ leaders are: (1) Babe Ruth (207); (2) Theodore Ballgame (190); (3) Barrold Bonds (184). Those guys were all really good at baseball.

Here's Park Factor:

Park-Adjusted or Park Factors
Baseball is a funny sport where human men play on fields that aren't all exactly the same. That's why it may not always be useful to compare raw statistics accrued in vastly different spaces. Say you have 16 HR and I have 1000 HR. I am a better hitter, right? Well, maybe not. Because you play for the Mariners in spacious SafeCo Field, and I play for the InterGlobal Moon Pirates, and we play in the MoonCo Moonadium, where there is no gravity, and so every ball hit into the air is a home run. You are probably a better hitter than me. Park-adjusted stats will help us figure that out.

It is important to look at things like Park Factors if you are a GM, because if you don’t you will trade for the entire Colorado Rockies offense and then they will come to your stadium and stink it up because their numbers were artificially inflated at Coors Field, and you’ll be like, “What the hell?!” and they’ll be like, “I don’t know, dude – we were awesome at Coors!” and you’ll be like “Ugh! I forgot to include Park Factors in my analysis!!!!!!!” And who wants that?

There are different ways to calculate Park Factors. According to ESPN, Coors Field was furthest on the Hitters’ Park end of the spectrum, while PETCO Park anchored the Pitchers’ Park side. Sounds about right to us. (Park Factors also vary from year to year more than you might think.)

But if you're wondering whether a stat is any good or not, it's useful to keep a few thigns in mind:

1. Counting stats can be deceiving.

Counting stats are stats that you accumulate over time, like HRs. The reason that they can be deceiving is that if Geoff Jenkins hits 20 HRs in 800 PAs and Ryan Braun hits 20 HRs in 100 PAs, and you don't know about the plate appearances, you might think that Geoff Jenkins was as good as Ryan Braun. Base-stealers often benefit from raw counting stats. If you steal 70 bases the media will love you, but unless you were thrown out fewer than 25 times, you probably hurt your team.

Last NFL season the media had a big hardon for Willie Parker for a while when he was leading the league in rushing yards, however no one ever mentioned that he was also leading the league in carries, and that he didn't have a good yards-per-carry average. And that he was not actually very productive on a per carry basis. And that his work load probably led to his broken leg.

Counting stats aren't all bad, but you have to be careful about how they are used.

2. The more information that stats capture about an individual, the better the stat will reflect the work of that individual.

Allow me again to quote from the FJM glossary, this time on the pitching stat "wins":

Wins
1. The only stat that matters. The only way to pick a Cy Young winner. The thing Billy Beane can't get in the playoffs, no matter how many fancy computers he hires to play baseball for him.
2. A simply awful pitching statistic that should be swallowed up by the earth itself, personified, given ears, and forced to listen to a tape loop of Bermanisms for all of eternity. The reason being – and again, you know this, intuitively, even if you have never quite expressed it to yourself – if Carl Pavano gives up nineteen runs in five innings but the Yankees score 20 runs, and they hold on to win, and Pavano gets the win, is Pavano a good pitcher? No he is not. (This scenario is assuming he ever comes back and actually pitches, btw.) If Francisco Liriano throws 9 innings of no-hit ball, but gives up a run on four consecutive errors by Terry Tiffey and gets a loss, is Francisco Liriano a bad pitcher? No he is not. Wins stink to high heaven as a way to value pitchers because they are in very large part dependent on the actions of the other guys on the team.

Of course, according to Joe Morgan, "Wins and losses are how you measure pitchers" (Baseball For Dummies, p. 289).

Dontrelle Willis led all pitchers with 22 Wins last year. Good for him. And, obviously, there were about 140 pitchers who tied for last with zero wins.

I'll often rail against the idea of "quarterbacks winning games/Super Bowls" here for the same reason. Pitchers and QBs control only a small portion of the game. While they may control a larger portion of the game than any other individual player, the team's success is as tied into the offensive players as a whoel as it is to the defensive players as a whole.

Rather than plagiarizing Ken and company anymore, go read the section on BABIP.

3. Look for the greatest good.

In baseball, the greatest good is not making outs on offense, and creating outs on defense. The better you are at not making outs, the more runs you will score. This is why OBP is the most important offensive stat in baseball (at least before you start combing stats into things like VORP and WARP). In football, picking up first downs is very similar to not making outs. Slugging percentage (read: getting the most out of your opportunities) is next, but it's not even close to OBP (by a factor of 3 or 4, depending on who you ask.)

4. That stat should not exist based solely on novelty.

You know these stats. He's 0-4 in games which start after 3:00 on a Sunday. Who cares?

5. Looking forward is not the same as looking backward.

Last year most major media outlets expected the Chicago White Sox to compete for the AL Central. They were just coming off a world series a few years back, and the teams appeared to be abotu the same, perhaps better with the Jim Thome in the lineup.

Had all of the White Sox played the same as they did two years ago, this probably would have been true, but time has a way of destroying joints and backs, and time has a way of bringing players back down to earth after career years.

Most stats are good at telling you what happened, but lousy at telling you what will happen. Even in week 14 of the NFL season, Sean Salisbury was still predicting breakout games for Shaun Alexander. But Shaun Alexander past stats were not as important as his age. RBs over the age of 30 almost always decline, especially backs that take a lot of punishment like Alexander. The other important stat for Shaun was his 370+ carries in 2005. Most backs never recover from such a work load.

To be forward looking requires you to consider age, body type, and other indicators. For hitters, walk rate or slugging can take a sudden dip. For RBs a dropoff in catches is a sure sign of decline in the next two years. For pitchers, watch the walk count.

BP's nerdy PECOTA computer said that the White Sox would finish with 72 wins last year, which they did. This year, it hates the Mariners. Teh Mariners made a bunch of good offseason moves like trading for Eric Bedard. Unfortunately the Mariners offense is old as shit, and will probably suck huge hairy donkey balls. They also overshot their Pythagorean Projection (once more over to FJM) last year by a ton, which means they will probably regress to the mean this year. The Mariners are set up to fail. Poor Eric Bedard will probably get hammered for not "winning" even though he won't pitch any differently.

6. Does your stat require some affirmative act?

Let's say that you decided to judge NBA players based on how many fouls they commit. Sounds reasonable. After all, fouls are bad. They give the other team free points and they take your guys out of the game. Fouls suck. Sucky foulers, let's build a team with guys who never commit fouls. That'll learn 'em.

What you will quickly learn is that certain players commit fouls because they play good defense, and it's impossible to play good defense without hacking once in a while.

This is why fielding % sucks as a stat. An error in baseball requires that you first make a play on the ball. If you just lazily let a ball go into left field, you haven't committed an error, even though the result is the same as if you had gotten the ball and air-mailed it into the dugout.

Error's punish guys with range. Defense is hard to measure in general, but errors and fielding % are not a good start.

I have to do some actual work now, but read the FJM glossary, and if you're comfortable there, get a BP membership. It really does make baseball more fun.

I'm also not going to check the spelling.

If Wisconsin has any prayer......

At winning the Regular Season Big Ten Title they need a win tonight.

Not by the Badgers who do not play till tomorrow night down where the land is flat aka Illinois.

No tonight we need to join ESK's girl as members of Hoosier nation as IU takes on Purdue in a battle for Indiana bragging rights.

The game is at 5pm Ct on ESPN so everyone can watch it(well not me I will be at the YMCA watching my kids take swim lesson damn parenthood)

Wisconsin needs a Purdue loss tonight in a bad way.

Lets go IU ;)

Chris

The Circle is complete CART to merge back into IRL

"Officials from the Indy Racing League and Champ Car World Series struck a preliminary agreement Tuesday to fold elements of the Champ Car World Series into the IRL IndyCar Series."

Thoughts Eric?

Chris

PS3 helps win a war.

The HD-DVD war that is.

A lot of analysts are sighting the PS3 as a major reason Blu-Ray triumphed over HD-DVD.


I said in my earlier post I thought not including the HD-DVD players as part of the Xbox360 was a major error by the HD-DVD camp on both a tactical and strategic level. Apparently I am not the only one who thinks that way.

The article said that only 1 million HD-DVD players had been bought and that includes the external ad on ones for the Xbox360 While Blu-Ray had sold over 10 million units a major portion of that was the PS3 which has the Blu-Ray player built into it.

The article is a good read on how Sony really tried to learn from the Betamax fiasco.

Then there are some like Seagate CEO Bill Watkins who are saying that Blu-Ray won the Battle but will lose the war to techs like Internet Protocol TV. IPTV or other digital downloadable formats.

Technology is moving so fast that the information/technology superhighway is littered with failed formats and the next "in" idea it is hard to imagine where we will be in 20 years.

"Progress no matter what the cost."

Chris

Staying Healthy

Jay Jaffe writes in the Brewers Team Health Report:

No sooner was I set to tie a bow around this THR and send it to our editors than the news broke that Gallardo would undergo arthroscopic surgery to repair a torn lateral meniscus in his left knee, something which will knock him out of action for a month. While this is a minor surgical procedure, the real danger is if his return compromises his mechanics, along the lines of Kerry Wood in 2006. Assuming Gallardo's not rushed back and doesn't encounter any mechanical hiccups, the injury may actually help by moderating his workload. Prior to the knee problem, Gallardo already turned up red; between Nashville and Milwaukee, he threw 188 combined innings last year, the highest total among 21-year-olds in organized baseball this side of Felix Hernandez. Intuitively, the Rule of 30 would suggest he's got headroom to maintain or slightly increase his workload without excessive risk, but the hitch is that the Rule of 30 is based on major league innings, not a combination of major and minor league innings. Even using the Davenport Translations or a similar adjustment, those minor league frames just don't bear the same predictable relationship to risk as the major league ones, all of which means that the risks increase for Gallardo beyond 140 big-league innings--a cap that suddenly doesn't look too far out of line when you factor in some extended training and minor-league rehab.

The Brew Crew Ball boys also get an answer to a question about Weeks.

Jon Heyman: Moron?

Help me figure this out, I have to be missing something. Jon Heyman goes through and ranks the best GM's in MLB. Nowhere in the list is Doug Melvin. OK. I can potentially see that. He lists ten guys who have all taken their teams to the playoffs, Melvin has not. However, in an honorable mention type section, there are some puzzling names. Andrew Friedman (Royals), Jon Daniels (Rangers...and King of terrible trades), Dayton Moore (Royals), Neal Huntington (Pirates) AND John Mozeliak (the man who is taking the Cardinals from contenders to bottom feeders).

These names are in categories that perhaps don't fit Melvin (up and comers, too soon to judge) but my gripe is with one guy in particular: Omar Minaya. Minaya's one really good move (John Maine) is listed, along with a move that is by no means proven, Oliver Perez. The rest of the things he has done can be lumped into one category "overspending."

The idea that Minaya is somehow a better GM than Melvin (not to mention Ken Williams, but he did win a Championship) is completely beyond my scope. Please, someone, fill me in here??

Powered by ScribeFire.

Opening Day Tickets

Good news everyone, some bars are getting opening day tickets. Bad news everyone, the tickets are going very fast. Today was the day that things finally got going on the opening day ticket front. Emails went out today to people who won or lost (I lost) the lottery to buy tickets straight from the team. I'm guessing that after that they allotted a certain number to the bars.

I got lucky, my friend's wife called me and told me that Steny's had packages available, so I went down and got a set of two. They only had 100 tickets (they had 150 last year) and I was 44 and 45. My friend then went and got four and then I went back and got two more, they had a max of four, and I was 77 and 78. So by now they are all gone I'm sure, news of the tickets spread quickly.

But fear not, I looked at the Leff's Lucky Town website and they are going to have packages available later on this week. If anyone went with a bar last year I would advise you to call them as soon as possible to see if they got tickets.

Good luck.

You want to know what sucks ass

Buying what you thought was a Chocolate Chip Cookie at the Deli and getting home and finding out it is a fucking Raisin Cookie

Blah now I need a Guinness to wash the damn raisin taste out of my mouth.


Chris

She has huge tracts of land

Because Uncle Chris likes you all so much I am going to share with the group

My friend Bill the Perverted Mets fan has a post on Lindsay Lohan posing as Marylin Monroe a couple of very nice topless shots

My My My how the little girl from the remake of the Parent trap has blossomed ;)

I wonder when she will do her first porn movie or when here "secret" sex tape will find its way onto the net ;)

Enjoy the link to his place is safe but after that you are for sure in NSFW land.

Photo 8 is my fav.

and Yes praise be unto the FSM for this(follow the link it will make sense)

Chris

All Starters Present and Accounted for

Accoring to ESPN radio 1510, all of the Brewers starting position players are present at camp regardless of the fact they were not required to report until Friday.

Well done.

Wisconsin back in Top 10

The New Coaches Poll is out Wisconsin did even better than I hoped jumping back to number 10.

This weeks polls

Another Wisconsin related note former UWM Coach Bruce Pearl has taken his Tennessee Volunteers to number 2 in the nation. Looks like Bruce made the right choice moving on to Tennessee. They play number one Memphis on the 23 of February in Memphis


Lets hope Bucky can hold on to the top 10 from here on out.

On Wisconsin
Chris

I challenge WISN's Dan Needles to 2 by 4's at dawn

I got an email of mine read on the air on ESPN AM540 today and the result was Dan Needles telling me I could bite him lol.

I usually agree with Dan on most things but his lack of how the sponsor system works in NASCAR is just criminal for a person who is the head of the sports dept for a major TV station in Milwaukee.

The fight is over the the fact NASCAR drivers always make sure they plug all of their major spongers when they are in victory lane. He was saying that was so Redneck I think it is the drivers knowing where their bread is buttered.

Racing is different look at the teams that have to quit because they cannot get a major sponsor

In most sports even the worst team can survive with out "sponsors" Racing is not like that. If you cannot get someone on your car hood you are screwed.

Any time Needles lol ;P

Chris

PECOTA Standings

BP's projected records are now available here.

They have the Brewers winning the wild card at 87-75, finishing behind the Cubs at 89-73. However, with such a small margin it's really anybody's division. They have the Crew pegged for 829 runs while giving up 765, with a team line of .263/.339/.450.

The northsiders have a slight edge with a projected 845/759, and a line of .274/.343/.452.

Perhaps the most interesting projection is the St. Louis Cardinals who are now just 1 game better than your perpetually basement-dwelling Pittsburgh Pirates.

Wisconsin should be knocking on the top 10 again

Another good weeks for Wisconsin they win at the buzzer at IU and TCB at home against the Minnesota.

#8 Georgetown lost #9 Mich State lost #12 Indiana lost to Wisconsin but beat Mich State so I do not look for them to fall all that far.

But I see Bucky landing at 11 in both polls. Which once again are total fluff but it does not hurt when you are recruiting to say you are a top 10 team.

My goal for the Badgers is a 3 seed I think a 2 seed might be just out of their reach.

But if they can go 4-1 for the rest of the season I think they will be a lock for a 3 seed.

In case you are wondering I still could care less what MU's seed will be ;P

I also do not think Duke will fall all that far even though they lost because as we all know "Duke is Duke they are on TV more than Leave it to Beaver" lol

March Madness will be here sooner than we think.

On Wisconsin
Chris

I know what I hate and I did not hate this: NASCAR addition

I as sit here listening to Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones, I am trying to figure out how I feel about yesterdays Daytona 500.

So Ay Oh Lets Go,

I watched pretty much the whole damn race from start to finish and for the most part I stayed on the main Fox broadcast only venturing into HotPass once or twice.

First let me say thing the 2 plus hours of pre race was way over the top it was Super Bowl bad. That is just too much pre race coverage that does not have anything to do with the race.

Once the race started I enjoyed Fox's coverage I like the 1000's of camera angles they have and they did a great job of catching Matt Kenseth screaming at his crew after his wreck.

Speaking of Matt's wreck wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall today when the Rousch-Fenway team has their day after the race meeting.

Matt has crappy luck at Daytona he was top 10 most of the day and gets taken out be a team mate just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well at least it was not Tony Steward taking him out this year.

I am very happy that Tony did not win and came so close only to fail again. Try as I might I cannot forgive him for what he did to Matt last season at the 500.

As far as the racing went I thought it was ok for the first 3/4 of the race then it got really interesting for the last 1/4 of the race. It was down right chippy and out of hand for the last 20 laps. It was amazing all the wrecks at the end.

I gained a lot of respect for Kurt Bush for actually making Racing a team sport and pushing Newman to the victory. If Newman has a son he should name him Kurt ;)

I was happy to see the Hencar people were wrong the Hendrick team was not the Juggernaut a lot of people feared. While Jr. was in the hunt all day you just felt he did not have enough to win.

So far so good I will have to DVR next weeks race since my son has a meet so I will not be able to watch it live.

So first race of the all COT era and I will say this

"I know what I hate and I did not hate this."

So what did you all think of the race?

They are fast cookie cutters I will give them that.

Chris

The War is over Blu-Ray Won

AKA Hmmm I might finally have a reason to buy a PS3.

The AP is reporting that Toshiba is going to pull the plug on the HD-DVD format signaling that the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray war is over and unlike the VHS-Beta war Sony one this one.

I am so glad I did not drop the $200.00 for a HD-DVD add on for my Xbox360 I came close but this time my procrastinating saved my ass from having a really expensive paper weight. Actually I am also glad I held off putting a HD-DVD drive on my puter.

I do not plan on rushing out and buying a Blu-ray right away yes the picture is amazing but I do not watch a lot of DVDs as it is. My kids do but they do not care about the picture yet. I tend to wait and catch things off the movie channels on the dish so I will probably wait till my current DVD player dies.

So anyone get caught on the wrong side of fence on this war?

I will be honest I am suprised Blu-Ray won I thought with Microsoft being behind HD-DVD that they would have a leg up. Big mistake by Microsoft was making the HD-DVD player a add on instead of having come standard with the 360. They do that and HD might have won. I believe their are a lot more Xbox 360's in peoples homes than PS3's

I am glad they have finally settled on a format though who knows if Serenity is in Blu-Ray I might have to get one sooner than I thought lol.

Technology is cool progress at any cost is my motto ;)

So congrats to Sony for finally winning one of these fights

Chris

Gallardo to Have Knee Surgery

Yovani Gallardo is going to have arthroscopic surgery on his knee and miss 4 weeks, he will probably then start the season on the DL. I hope I don't have to burn my gray Gallardo jersey I just got from my buddy for being in his wedding.

Better late than never Wisconsin beats IU

Brain Butch's three pointer sinks IU.
Matt Lepey with the call.

Hat Tip to the guys at Camp Lambeau for finding this.

On Wisconsin
Chris

Go Matt Go

Getting you ready for todays Great American Race with Wisconsin's very own Cup Series Champion Matt Kenseth

Here is the link to Matt Official site.

Root for Matt or you suck ;) lol

Chris

Badgers TCB vs. the Groundhogs

Scary game yesterday until the last 6 minutes when the Badger were able to find some breathing room and hold off a very scrappy Minnesota team for another home win.

I jumped in to the game late I did not see the first half. So I was amazed to see Jason Bohannon playing the local MSM had made it seem like he was on deaths door. While I am not Bohannon's biggest fan I respect the way he plays it seems he is doing what he did last year turning it on and finding his groove towards the middle of the season. That one 3 he hit was from ABA range.

I hope Trevon Hughes ankle is something minor.

Now back to back road games at Illinois and OSU it never gets easy does it? Actually the next 3 games will be tough ones with a MSU coming to the Kohl Center after the road trip games.

A typical Big Ten season kind of like a knife fight in a phone booth(wow in 20 years no one will know what a phone booth was thanks to cell phones)

I was looking at the schedule this morning and I cannot believe how fast this season has flown by one day you are playing Savannah State and boom in an instant you have 5 regular season games left. Time flies when your team does not suck.

The Boys are now "off" till Wednesday so everyone will have 4 days till heal up and hopefully Bohannon and Hughes will heal up.


21-4 it has been a good year Badger.

On Wisconsin
Chris

Lets start the baseball season off right Fire Ned Yost Now

Photo/Jeffrey Phelps


Before he can do any more damage;)

Hurray Beer
Chris

NASCAR Hotpass is free this weekend.

If you are a DirecTV subscriber just a reminder that for the Daytona 500 you can try Hot Pass out for free. I believe they will have the HD feed this year, that was one of my biggest bitches about HP last season was you had to give up watching in HD to use it.

I might try it out today but I doubt I will ever get it until they get to the point I can pick the car I want to follow every race.(read the 17)

So enjoy the race today I am trying to be watch and be open minded that is if I am not to busy building an Ark due to the local flooding that is going on where I live lol.

Chris

Boogiety Boogiety Boogiety Lets go Cookie Cutter Racing Boys

Well boys are you ready to go racing the Daytona 500 is tomorrow as the NASCAR "Sprint" Series starts its 2008 campaign.

So are we supposed to call them "sprint" cars? Oops that name is taken but no matter

I cannot wait for the Green Flag to drop tomorrow as I strain looking at my 65" HDTV and try to tell if the car in the lead is a Chevrolet Impala or maybe a Ford Fusion wait it might be Dodge Avenger damn it might even be a Toyota Camry.

Hell I cannot tell since there is not one fraking thing different between a Toyota and a Ford or a Chevy and a Dodge.

Welcome to full time Cookie Cutter Racing Boys.

I understand that NASCAR cars stopped being stock cars a long time ago but at least they looked different you could tell a T-bird from a Lumina at a glance back in the day.

Now NASCAR reminds me of Tyco slot cars the only thing different between the cars is what color they are painted and what stickers are on it.

I will watch the race tomorrow and try to be open minded but I will also check the schedule and see when the next F-1 race is going to happen.

I am curious to see how the 17 teams adjust to the COT they seemed to be chasing it all last season when the COT was used(I could be wrong I wandered away from NASCAR about half way through last season)

So roll out that cookie dough boys and lets go racing

are you ready for the era of NASCARism where everyone will conform and be equal and the same.

Sigh, "where have you go Cale Yarbourgh and the Hardee's #28"


Chris

As the next Stormaggdon barrels down on us have faith

The Brewers pitchers and catchers report today

Screw Robins or Groundhogs this is the real first sign of Spring. ;)

(I was going to make a joke about how me going on a killing spree was averted but in light of the N-Ill shooting even I thought it would be in bad taste what a sick sad world we live in)

But enough of that this is supposed to be a happy post,

Baseball Glorious Baseball is back, Hope really does spring eternal.

I feel warmer already now excuse me while I go make sure I gas for the snow blower. ;)

Hurray Beer
Chris

Groundhog day part 2

Wisconsin looks to complete the season sweep of another Big Ten(plus one) rival this afternoon. They take the Golden Groundhogs of Minnesota today at the Pit of Despair(unless you are Purdue) 1pm CT. Unfortunately it is a BTN game, but there is a silver lining since the suck as Does are off for the NBA All star weekend you can listen to the game on the flag ship station AM620 in SE Wisconsin.

This is a much improved Minnesota team, they are no longer the door mat of the conference having given that mantel back to teams like Northwestern and Michigan. But baring a major slip up by the Badgers they should become another notch on the Badgers gun. Wisconsin handled the Groundhogs fairly easily when the two teams met in Minnesota even with Bohannon on the shelf I look for them to do it again today.


I would like to once again take a moment to remind everyone to enjoy this, we have started to become accustom to the Badgers being up at the top end of the Big Ten standings and going into the NCAA Big Dance with a chance to make some noise. But never forget where we come from to get here. Remember the dark days when Yoder not Bo was on our sidelines and teams like IU and Mich State used us to wipe their feet. When you look back on that dark period of Wisconsin Basketball it makes the last 10 plus years of success that much more enjoyable.

Bucky still has a shot at winning the regular season Big Ten Title, but it is a long shot. They need to first run the table in their last 6 games. Then they need to get some help to catch Purdue. Wisconsin needs to have Purdue lose twice and there is a chance they might but it is a slim one. They play away games at IU and OSU those are the best chances for the losses we need to have Bucky win the regular season title. They also get Minnesota and Northwestern twice so once again IU and OSU are our last real hope.

I am still torn on the Big Ten Tourney, part of me wants to win it and go into the Big Dance with some momentum but part of me would like to go one and done so they can take some time off and rest. Sort of a catch 22 there.

But I am getting ahead of myself lets take care of the Groundhogs today and then worry about going down to Illinois before we look ahead to the Big Dance.

to paraphrase Badger Bob "It is a great day for basketball" ;)

On Wisconsin
Chris

Hardy agrees to one year deal

Tom H. over at the MJS Blog is reporting that the Brewers and Short Stop J.J. Hardy have reached a one year deal and avoid arbitration.

I believe that only leaves Braun, Weeks, Hart and Fielder needing to agree on deals for this season.

All 4 are "property" of the Brewers so baring any move to lock one of them up long term(we all know Boris aka the Prince of Darkness will not do that with Prince) I expect most to one year deals my guess is most will get pretty hefty raises. Like last season when they Brewers game Cappy a bigger bump then his time in services said he was due. They tend to reward younger players as a way of saying they like what they are doing on the field. When do the position players report and do these 4 have to have a deal before they can participate?

I understand this is a one way negotiation the Brewers basically get to tell them what they are going to make at this point in their careers. But I look Melvin to keep everyone happy

All in all a relatively smooth off season no one seems like they are pissed off going into camp. Which is good Chris loves happy campers lol

Hurray Beer
Chris

Maybe they should have built a bigger Fing Parking lot

Adam over at the Brewers MLB.com site has a story on how parking for games like Opening day is going to be very expensive and with more and more sell outs it will be harder and harder to arrive late at a game and find a place to park.

One of my biggest bitches when they built Miller Park was they wasted all that potential parking space on a bribe to the local community aka Helfaer Field.

It has always amazed me they built a stadium and did not build enough parking for when they sell the damn thing out. Did we really need a little league park right next to the stadium couldn't they have built Helfaer Field off the Miller Park grounds?

Parking has been a problem since the first season of Miller Park but since they sucked and there were not that many big crowds it was never addressed.

The first season the County actually ran shuttle buses from a parking lot at State Fair park. I do not see why they could not state that practice again for weekend and Marquee games.

Now that the team is playing decent baseball this problem will not be going away any time soon(I hope) I think it will start to get tough even on weekend nights.

Anyone else have any ideas how they could rectify the parking problems at Miller Park?

How much would it cost to add a parking structure out in the far lot at 2 or 3 level job that would only be used for the over flow on sold out games. No frills just a simple parking ramp.

Hell the stadium tax is going to around for a while can't they use some of that money for improvements to the parking lot?

Chris

This Friday Sweet Dreams are made of Ayaka Komatsu

I am looking to Asia once again this week for our Friday lady.

So this Friday Sweet Dreams are made of Japanese actress Ayaka Komatsu










I believe she is skinny enough for ESK ;P

Happy Friday Boys
Chris

Breaking: Bonds tested positive for steroids in November 2000 (corrected date, again)

Revisions/extensions part 2 (8:45 am 2/15/2008) - The US Attorney’s office screwed up in its initial filing; it was in November 2000, not November 2001. Reuters notes that they will be making an amended filing today in the linked story.

I'm still searching for a web story to link to, but Fox News just announced that federal prosecutors say that Barry Bonds tested positive for steroids in October November 2001, less than a month after he broke the single-season home run record. It was on the air a few minutes ago, and it's a "breaking news" banner on their site now.

I'm shocked, VERY FUCKING SHOCKED, that he took steroids the year he broke that record.

Revisions/extensions (6:46 pm 2/14/2008) - More from Reuters:

The allegation came in a legal filing in his steroid perjury case that referred to Bonds' long-time trainer, Greg Anderson.

"At trial, the government's evidence will show that Bonds received steroids from Anderson in the period before the November 2001 positive drug test, and that evidence raises the inference that Anderson gave Bonds the steroids that caused him to test positive in November 2001," U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello wrote.

Till Death due us part

That's apparently the motto the Milwaukee Bucks have employed.

Losing, obviously, does not usually foster a strong locker room and this is no different here.

Larry K recently held a team meeting following the previous evening where he criticized his players through the press. There are two different stories around this team meeting, but neither is positive in its outcome.

The "source" and I use that term lightly here that I tend to believe more can be found here

The other "source" of what happened can be found in this link You'll have to scroll about 2/3 down the page to find it.

Whether or not if these sources are credible or not entirely accurate the big picture is things are not going well behind the scenes. Players don't seem to like each other and it doesn't sound like anyone likes the coach.

I know there are many of you out there who do not like the NBA or could care less about the Bucks (I'm a fair-weather fan here myself) I really do wish this team could bring back the excitement it had from 2000-01.

You may not continue your non-bucks sports related days.

A nice piece on Tony Gwynn Jr. and how his hit destroyed the town he loves

Tom Friend over at ESPN the Mag has a great story on the relationship between Tony Gwynn Jr and Trevor Hoffman and how surreal it was that he basically destroyed the Padres run to the playoffs.

A good read worth 5 minutes of your time.


Interesting side note is the blurb that TGJr had been mentioned in the Linebrink trade but Melvin turned them down. Odd since they don't seem all that set on giving him a regular spot in the outfield.

enjoy
Chris

Any Excuse to play the Smiths

In honor of Congress wasting our time and tax dollars with more Baseball HGH hearings

I give you my favorite Smiths song

"Big Mouth Strikes Again"



Not all the Music from the 80's sucked

Why am I posting this because I can;)

Chris

Wisconsin in the final turn of the Big Ten Season

Last nights dramatic win over IU marked the end of the third quarter of the Big Ten Season for the Badgers. I did not see the game even though I get BTN my notebook is having driver/monitor issue, I am actually writing this on my backup/kids notebook and maybe for a week or so. So I will leave you to read the papers to see what happen.

Lets look ahead Wisconsin has gotten through a very tough stretch of their schedule. And other than the losses to a Purdue team that we all see is much better than their ranking, with victories over Wisconsin and Michigan State in the last week, Wisconsin had a very good run.

So 6 games left till the Big Ten Regular season is over. They have 3 road games and 3 home games so that balances out. The nice thing is they get their biggest game of the 6 MSU at the Kohl center. You have to like the heart the kids showed going to IU and gutting out a win right after a tough loss to Purdue.

The goal for the rest of the season is to ensure the best seeding they can possible get. With Purdue having 2 games in pocket against them barring a collapse Wisconsin cannot catch Purdue for the Regular season title. Now there is still the Big Ten tournament and who knows maybe the third time will be the charm for Wisconsin against the Boilermakers.

Looking at the last 6 games I see no reason Wisconsin could not go 5-1 or even 6-0 to close out the regular season. They get PSU Minnesota, Illinois and Northwestern in this run so there should 4 wins right there split with OSU and MSU and bang you are 5-1.

My one hope is they can just stay healthy and have some gas left in the tank going into the NCAA tourney.

Down the home stretch the Badgers come it should be a fun couple of weeks.

On Wisconsin.

(yes I know this post sucks, I am still trying to get my mind off Island time lol)

Chris

Brian Butch Banks Bomb, Beats Buzzer

For those of you without the Big Ten Network, you missed a beauty. Jason Bohannon had 18 points on 6 threes, and Brain Butch won the game on a banked three with just seconds remaining. It was a tournament atmosphere and both teams left it all on the floor.

Kelvin Sampson is probably drowning his sorrows in 3-way telephone calls.

Bad News for Hoosier Fans

The NCAA drops a bomb on the Indiana basketball program. Coach Kelvin Sampson loves the telephone and (allegedly) really, really hates those pesky NCAA rules. Ya think the Hoosiers are going to be a teeny tiny bit distracted for tonight’s game against the Badgers?

Inside the Hall: I’m all for due process folks, but it seems we’re beyond that point now. Don’t be shocked if swift action comes out of Bloomington (and rightfully so) sooner rather than later.

Among the student-athletes mentioned in the report: Devin Ebanks, Derek Elston, Yancey Gates (Cincinnati), Evan Turner (Ohio State), Demetri McCamey (Illinois), Markieff Morris (Kansas), Marcus Morris (Kansas), Kenny Frease (Xavier), Dejuan Blair (Pittsburgh), Bud Mackey, Phillip Jurick (Tennessee), Robbie Hummel (Purdue), Scott Martin (Purdue) and William Buford (Ohio State).

I suspect the pre-game pep talk may go something like this: I am a serial liar and cheat but it’s all because I want to win --- so please, please, please go win my last game as Coach of Indiana.

Lets see if anyone can name the song

To get this one you will have to be a hardcore old school Jimmy Buffet fan.

Any hardcore Parrotheads out there?

Chris

If you were my friend you would kill me ;)

I am back in Wisconsin and I for the life of me cannot figure out why I live in this cold ass state.

View Yesterday



View Today



Please just fucking kill me

Really, I mean it if you see me crossing the street today run my fat ass over please.

Chris