Posts Tagged ‘Brewers’

1/2 over.

Monday, July 5th, 2010

I remember a few weeks ago thinking there was over 100 games left to the season. I couldn’t believe that there was so much left. Now that it’s past the half way point it seems like it’s time to get ready for 2011.

So how’s everything going? I’d have to say worse than I expected. Although the past week was pretty good, the Pirates were playing the Cubs and Phillies, two teams in huge declines. Then the rest of this month there are a lot of games against the Astros and Brewers, so the next few weeks shouldn’t be too terrible. After a very rough start for Pedro, he’s started to turn things around the last week. Milledge has picked things up, although he still lacks power. Tabata is doing as well as can be expected for a 21 year old and both McCutchen and Jones continue to do well. What’s really killed the team this year is the starting rotation. The team is getting killed by the 5th inning a lot and then they’re wearing down the bullpen. So clearly, pitching is a problem that needs to be addressed by the start of next season.

I think that JR actually made a good point last week. The Pirates are making a lot of mistakes due to youth and inexperience. If they can avoid that, then maybe they can have a decent second half.

Meanwhile, like I predicted before the season, the Reds and Cardinals are leading the division, although both the Brewers and Cubs aren’t doing as well as I thought they would and the Astros are doing better than I thought they would.

The big problem with the Cubs is that they’re old. Looking at their starting 8, only two are under 30 right now, Geovanny Soto and Starlin Castro. Besides Castro, they are an aging team that’s only going to get worse as they get older. And even worse, they aren’t going to be able to trade most of the guys on the team as a lot of them have huge contracts that last a long time. The Cubs went all in for 2007 and 2008 and now they’re reaping the consequences of not planning long term past 2008. Also Carlos Zambrano is being a bit of a jack ass, which doesn’t help anything. However they did get lucky with Carlos Silva, but that isn’t going to last forever either.

Overall, right now, I think the Pirates have a much brighter future than the Cubs do at this point.

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The weekend.

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Big weekend. On Saturday we went to the Brewers-Mariners game in Milwaukee. We first went to the Miller Brewery and had some beer and went on the tour and stuff. Their tour wasn’t nearly as good as the Budweiser tour I took last year. They both handed out free beer. But I think the cool thing about the Budweiser tour was that they showed pretty much everything and there was just more stuff to show.

Miller had two different movies and they really didn’t show all that much. The only unique things about the Miller tour was that Miller had some really old caves they used to store the beer in because the caves were cold and they showed the warehouse where all the beer was before shipping. That place was gigantic. I mean it was huge. Really gave a great perspective on how much beer they make in a day.

We go to the stadium about 45 minutes before the start of the game and we grilled up some food and sat in some lawn chairs. I bought a grill last week and it ended up making some pretty tasty food. I was pretty happy that everything went well. After we ate, the grill cooled off pretty fast because it was a gas grill and by the time we cleaned up and got ready to go inside it had cooled off. The game itself really wasn’t all that interesting considering it had two teams I really didn’t care about. I was glad to see the Mariners win because the Brewers are in the same division as the Pirates. The seats were nice because they were in the shade the whole game and stuff.

When the game was over, we drove over to downtown and saw the lakefront. After that we drove pretty much straight back to Iowa.

On Sunday we went to a wedding. It was cousins wedding. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to go or not. I really don’t know her that well and it was about 1.5 hours away, in Cedar Falls. My sister talked me in to going so that her boyfriend wouldn’t get bored. It was a pretty good wedding. The ceremony was at a theater and the reception was at a ball room outside of town.

On the ride home we watched Field of Dreams and then we played some Trivia Pursuit at home, which I won and then finally got to bed around 1:00 in the morning.

So yeah today was back to normal which is nice.

Oh, 11 days ago I reached level 80 in Warcraft with my very first character. It’s really different now. There’s no more experience points and so I spend most of my time doing dungeons and stuff. I’ve also done a lot of fishing in the game. And I’ve kind of just screwed around. Another nice thing is that it seems like quests are handing out more gold when ya do quests at level 80 since you’re not getting experience points anymore.

Also I finally got the delicious chocolate cake recipe this morning. But it’s a total lie.

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A win at Miller (finally)…

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

The last time I saw the Pirates win at Miller Park: July 31, 2004. 2096 Days (6 losses at Miller).

The last time the Pirates won at Miller Park: May 3, 2007. 1090 Days (22 losses).

The last time the Pirates won: April 18, 2010. 9 Days (7 losses).

No reason to think things would change as I went there last night…

The Awesome last night: Andy LaRoche went 4 for 5. Jeff Clement went 3 for 5 with a HR. Doumit scored two and hit the game winning Grand Slam in the top of the 9th. Karstens went 6.2 innings and gave up two runs while striking out four and throwing 101 pitches. Braun went 1 for 5. Also he threw his bat like a petulant child after being thrown out at first…twice and threw his helmet another time.

The Not so Awesome: Garrett Jones 0 for 4, with a walk. McCutchen went 1 for 5 with two K’s. The Pirates only got two runs off Randy Wolf despite plenty of hits, 9 Pirates left on base.

Overall, the weirdest thing tonight was walking 0 for 4 Jones intentionally. I looked at the scoreboard and it summed up Jones night (Ground Out, Fly Out, Fly Out, Fly Out). Are you kidding, Ken Macha? You got Trevor Hoffman closing for the Brewers. Pitch to the guy who went 0 for 4 tonight. Instead Doumit, who’s been better than Jones last night goes up and hits a grand slam off Hoffman…

Also it was fun seeing everyone clear out after the Doumit HR. Fun times…

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What the hell?

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

John Russell cost the Pirates a game tonight. Up 2-1 in the 8th, Jesse Chavez was just shutting the Diamondbacks down tonight. He pitched an inning and a third when out came John Russell to take him out and put in Hanrahan. It didn’t make much sense because the next batter was a right hander and both Chavez and Hanrahan are. So take out a pitcher doing a good job for one who’s had a bad season. Next thing ya know it’s a 4-2 Diamondbacks lead. The Pirates get a run back in the 9th with a Garrett Jones home run.

Shame to waste a good outing by Ohlendorf and an Andy LaRoche bomb. That game just pissed me off.

Also Prince Fielder of the Brewers got hit by a pitch in the 9th inning yesterday and basically tries to enter the Dodgers clubhouse after the game with Ryan Braun and Jason Kendall. Basically, it seems Ken Macha has no control over this club. They are unprofessional, childish and arrogant. They throw a fit over every little HBP and then go after guys months later.

Can’t wait to see Braun and Fielder leave Milwaukee.

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Ryan Braun is a wimp.

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Wow, after getting hit by a pitch that barely touched him and I doubt even hurt him, he’s now threatening violence against the Pirates in tonight’s game and the rest of the season. Geez, you’d think he’d just walk off the HBP and move on with his life. But I think he’s being all pissy because Karstens picked him off at first and then struck out Princess Fielder.

Geez, it wasn’t bad enough that the fucking grand slam he hit late last year that showed up on an iPhone commercial was against the Pirates, but now he’s acting like such a little bitch over a HBP. I think it’d be funny as hell if Maholm goes out there and owns the Brewers tonight. It’ll show that the Brewers are losing it a lot more than the Pirates.

Update 8:45 PM: More stuff from Ryan Braun. Mostly him thinking that Pirates manager John Russell ordered him to throw the HBP. That’s bullshit, I think it’s all Karstens or maybe Kerrigan ordered it. It worked because it threw them off guard, Princess went up and struck out swinging like he was trying to hit it in to Canada. Then after Cameron’s homerun he was able to shut the Brewers down until the bullpen blew it in the 8th…

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Milwaukee’s no fun anymore.

Monday, April 27th, 2009

The Pirates-Brewers game is starting out like any Pirates-Brewers game in Milwaukee these days. Pirates take an early lead and the Brewers hit a home run. It’s really a good chance for the Brewers to up their numbers tonight with Jeff Karstens on the mound for the Bucs tonight. With some luck, though, Karstens can get the defense to do their job and avoid the long ball.

Oh well, I can’t imagine this will be a very fun game. Karstens vs. Brewers usually means plenty of pain.

Update 8:01 PM: Yep, lots and lots of pain. They’ve hit more homeruns off Karstens than he’s struck out. Would it be too much trouble to move Bucs back to the NL East where they belong and move the Braves to the NL Central? Doesn’t that make a lot more sense, at least geographically?

Update 10:00 PM: Whoa, the Brewers didn’t do as much batting practice as I thought they would and it ended up being 5-3 Brewers when Karstens left the game, I mean he was bad the first three innings but finally got under control and pitched the fourth and fifth well. Then in the 8th inning, they tied it up at 5-5. Once again, the bullpen has done it’s job after Karstens nearly let the Brewers put it out of reach. Just gotta survive the 8th, put a few runs up in the 9th and put them down in the 9th and get away with an improbable win…

Update 10:20 PM: Hmm. Yeah. Fuck all that I just wrote 20 minutes ago. Fuck, I hate the Brewers. I can’t wait until they lose Braun, Fielder and all their other good players to free agency. That’ll be nice. Then we have Alvarez, Tabata, McCutchen and Grossman hitting them like this.

Update 10:50 PM: Fucking Brewers. 16 in a row at Miller Park. I’m not going back there again until they win another one there. With Paul Maholm on the mound tomorrow, there’s a good chance it could end tomorrow. Of course, Maholm will probably have his one bad game this month tomorrow. I wrote in to the FSN Pittsburgh post game show if the Pirates should try to move back to the NL East…

Miller Park. Let’s just call it what it is, Pirate Killer Stadium.

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