2010 Milwaukee Brewers Season Review - Overall

I'm guessing that if you are here right now that you've been reading my blog for quite some time. If not, then welcome to Pookon's Ill Blog. I used to write in here a whole lot, but thanks to Twitter (which you can read about my latest exploits on the right of this page) I usually talk about ill shit in 140 characters or less. But sometimes I have some shit to say that will take up a hell of a lot more space than that. One such idea was to do a blog series titled "25 Brewers in 25 Days." Basically I profiled each player who would be on the 25 man roster on Opening Day. I threw out some thoughts, personal stories and memories about that player and also a prediction of their 2010 stat line. I originally starting writing this at the All Star Break, which is about the halfway point of the season when you have a good enough sample size to properly evaluate the season. The trading deadline is July 31st and teams must decide whether or not they are sellers or buyers, which tells you about the direction of the team in that current year and in the future. And then I closed out my post back in July with this little rant. I really meant to do this blog entry during the All Star break but I just didn't feel like it. I know that isn't a good excuse but between settling into my new place, work, family events and the heat, I was just too tired to sit down and crank this sucker out. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but it does take a fair amount of work to get these blog entries written especially when they are about the Brewers. I put a lot of time and emotion into the Brewers, and so far this year my summer has been affected by their poor play. The Brewers have been under .500 for the majority of the season and have suffered a few bad losing streaks including a 9 game one back in May that prompted me to start a Hunger Strike until they won a game. You can read all about that in the post below. But I'm not here to linger on that, I'm mostly here to take a look at my preseason predictions and see how accurate I was.

I'll start out addressing some bold predictions that I made for the team as a whole back on March 10 when I wrote the first article in the 25 Brewers in 25 Days segment. These are the 5 predictions that I made:

1. The Brewers will finish in 2nd place (behind the St. Louis Cardinals) in the NL Central with a 88-74 record and win the NL Wild Card, returning to the playoffs once again.
2. The Cubs will finish 3rd, Reds 4th, Astros 5th and Pirates 6th.
   
3. The Brewers will once again draw over 3 million fans.
4. Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Yovani Gallardo and Rickie Weeks will make the NL All-Star Team.
5. Alcides Escobar wins NL Rookie of the Year

I'll admit that I was a little high on the Brewers in Spring Training. In 2009 they finished at 80-82 despite having the worst pitching staff in all of baseball. With the additions of Randy Wolf and Doug Davis I thought they would definitely improve upon that. With the exception of JJ Hardy, the offense was returning intact as one of the top 5 in the National League. I figured that all the pitching staff had to do was be a little bit better than last year and we would improve by 5-8 games. I'll try not to get too in depth as an attempt to keep this short and sweet, but if you have been following my blog and the 2010 Brewers, you will see that I am more wrong than I am right.

1+2. The Brewers finished in 3rd place in the NL Central at 77-85. Cincinnati won the NL Central at 91-71, St. Louis was in 2nd at 86-76 while Houston made a late surge to finish a game behind the Brewers at 76-86. Chicago tried to tank their season but ended up in 5th place a game behind Houston at 75-87. They tried to match Pittsburgh's record of 57-105 (with an uncalled for 17-64 on the road) as one of 2 teams (with the other being the Seattle Mariners) with 100 losses, but even the Cubs couldn't screw up that bad. I guess that 3rd place sounds better than 5th or 6th, but after finishing with records of 90-72 in 2008 and 80-82 in 2009, 77-85 is another step backwards. Despite not (arguably) having the proper talent to succeed, this 2 year slide ended up costing Manager Ken Macha his job, something that I will address when I doing my year end review of the Management.

3. The Brewers drew over 2.7 million fans (2,776,531 to be exact). Thanks in large part to being out of the pennant race early in the season and finishing with a home record 40-41 , the Brewers drew under 3 million fans. It could have been worse had they not rebounded from a terrible start to the season where they were 5-15 in late May, which at the time was worst in the Major Leagues. Their road record was 37-44, which isn't terrible but looks worse when they were under .500 at home. I know that 2.7 million fans is nothing to scoff at, as it still placed us just out of the top 10 at #11 out of 30, outdrawing larger markets such as the New York Mets, Chicago White Sox and the Atlanta Braves. All of which finished with a better record and one of which (Atlanta) made it to the Playoffs. Even though Miller Park resembles more of a house party than a sporting venue on some weekends, we do have some of the best fans in baseball, even if the majority of the fanbase isn't very knowledgeable and thinks we should sign Prince Fielder to a long term contract. I'll get into that more later, but thanks to their fan's wallets, the Brewers can afford to have a payroll around $85.3 million, something that was unheard of back in the early 2000's when the payroll hovered around the $40 million mark.

4. Only 3 Brewers players made the All Star team - Ryan Braun, Corey Hart and Yovani Gallardo. Prince Fielder had a very disappointing 1st half and Rickie Weeks got hot too late. to be noticed. But he did end up having a monster season and finally stayed healthy. Corey Hart made it by gaining the respect and the votes of his fellow players around the league. After a terrible last half of 2008 and all of 2009 (which was well documented on this blog) Hart made a great comeback in 2010 and deserved to be there. Sadly Gallardo would land on the DL with an oblique strain the week before the All Star Game and would be ineligible to pitch in the Midsummer Classic. One could have made an argument that Casey McGehee should have made the team as well, but other 3rd basemen such as David Wright, Placido Palanco and Scott Rolen were in larger markets and garnered more exposure. And even though Braun and Hart combined to go 0-4 with 3 strikeouts, it was the 1st time since 1983 (Robin Yount and Ted Simmons) that the Brewers had 2 positional players start an All Star game. In a season filled with disappointments, we had to linger on any shred of positivity.

5. Alcides Escobar did not win NL Rookie of the Year. I've been really high on Alcides Escobar for a long time. A lot of people got all uppity when JJ Hardy was traded, but it was done mainly to permanently open up the door at shortstop for Escobar. He was still pretty young (23) on Opening Day but he finished 2009 on a strong note (.304 avg, 1 HR, 11 RBIs in 125 at bats) that made it look like he would have a breakout 2010 season. I'll get into more details when I look back on his season as part of the review on the infield, but the NL Rookie of the year award will most likely go to Atlanta's Jason Heywood or San Francisco's Buster Posey. As you will see in a little bit, I was maybe too high on Escobar. But it also didn't help that Manager Ken Macha refused to "throw him into the wolves" by batting him in the 8th spot in the lineup for the majority of the year. I don't feel like he was given a fair shot to succeed in 2010.

I've just barely scratched the surface of what I have to say about the 2010 Milwaukee Brewers. Which is why there will be a lot more Brewers talk in the upcoming weeks. Since the Packers are 1 more injury away from calling players up from area High Schools, it's pretty safe to say that the season is over. I'm super high on the Milwaukee Bucks (Fear the Deer!) but their season will be in its infancy by the time you read this. So that means there is plenty of want and need to talk about the Brewers, especially since they are in arguable their most crucial offseason in recent history. From things like getting a new manager, to the will they/won't they trade Prince Fielder talks, to how to improving a pitching staff that once again finished at the bottom of the league in all statistical categories, there will be something to talk about. Whatever happens, you know I'm counting down the days (which stands at 115 as I am writing this) until Pitchers and Catchers report to Spring Training, which for me is the unofficial start of the 2011 season. I'll see you in a few days with the 2010 season review of the Milwaukee Brewers infielders.

- pookon -

www.pookon.com
email: pookondotcom@gmail.com

I Wanna Be...the Summer 2006 edition (and January 2010 edition and October 2010 edition)

Every now and then I come back to my list of things that I want to be. It's a "bucket list" of sorts, except for that the majority of these things are impossible to achieve. Take for instance where I say I want to be one of the rings that circle the planet Saturn. That is physically impossible. The only way that I could achieve that is if I found a Genie in a lamp and wasted one of my 3 wishes on that. Not only would that be unbelievably stupid, but I also would not be able to make any more wishes once I wished for that. And even if I did that as my 3rd wish I would no longer be alive because I would just exist as ice, rocks and dust particles in outer space. But there are some things that I could do if I was in the right place at the right time (like being the last person to ever close Wolski's) or if I put a little effort into my life (like being the man of some woman's dreams.) It's a ridiculous list. I know. But so is everything else I put on here. I don't call it Pookon's Ill Blog for nothing.

Basically when I get drunk my mind goes random and I add a couple more things to this list. As you can see, this particular list started way back in August of 2006. Then I picked it up again in January of 2010 when I was browsing through some old saved material on here. And then I got drunk on a Tuesday night. I didn't intend to do that, but I was already having a rough week and I found out that yet another person I know was married and I am still single. And getting older and less attractive by the minute. Normally that kind of information doesn't throw me off the deep end, but like I said, I was already having a terrible week and I just kind of hit a breaking point. My way of working out problems and frustration is to have a couple of drinks and start writing. That may not be the best way to handle it, but at least it brings about some pretty random works of literature. So without further ado, I proudly present the latest edition of the I Wanna Be... list.

(from the archives - August 27, 2006)

Scatergories World Champion, makeup artist on the next George A. Romero's ______ of the Dead movie, a Canadian Mountie, Ludo in the Broadway production of Labyrinth, the one who is with stupid, born in the U.S.A., on the cover of the Rolling Stone, able to shop at trendy stores like the Gap, Abercrombie + Fitch and Aeropostale, able to break through child-locked devices, a glass is half-full kind of guy, a firefighter so that I could slide down that wicked pole, not mathematically eliminated, Michael Jackson's backup dancer, the Cowardly Lion, Facebooked by every student at UWM, Mr. Tumnus in the fantasy land of Narnia

(from the current archives - Saturday January 9, 2010)

riding shotgun in Uncle Greg's Maserati, the last person to ever close Wolski's, Milwaukee's Best Ice, backup harmonica player to Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan or Neil Young just in case they don't feel like doing it on one of their songs, Buddy Christ's bestest buddy, an expert at demolitions and dynamite so that companies will pay me to blow shit up, a World Series of Beer Pong Champion, a paid intern at BrodAmerica Enterprises, able to laugh at myself after I finish a bottle of Jack Daniels then go out to shovel snow and lose my keys, a contributor on VH1's Pop Up Video, the answer to the million dollar question on the Regis Philbin hosted version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, one of the official sponsors of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd

(from the even more current archives - Tuesday October 12, 2010)

a homeless man with a funny sign, 30 and flirty, cast as the Thing in the upcoming and unnecessary remake of The Fantastic Four, the spokesman for San Juan premium rum, the missing link, taken seriously for once, married with children (I'd even take being Al Bundy at this point in my life), one of the rings circling the planet Saturn, riding in the front seat because when you're riding in the back seat you're just cargo, all that I can be, in an A Capella choir that only sings current Top 40 hits like "Teenage Dream" by Katy Perry, a mad scientist like Greg Proops, sober on a Tuesday, happy about my life and not wallow in the depression that is my failures, able to do long division on paper, the saxophone player who plays a solo in every 80's song, smarter than the average mouse like Rez, the man of some woman's dreams, the backup vocals in my own song like the Choir of Timmys, the king of the world House in the remake of Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, potty trained, the leader of the Revolution, Tom Barrett so I can approve this message, able to handle my problems without alcohol, able to go to infinity and beyond, more punctual so that I can come up with another I Wanna Be... list every 4 weeks instead of every 4 years...

- pookon -

www.pookon.com
email: pookondotcom@gmail.com

Pookcast Episode lucky #13 (actually 11) - Tommy's 21st Birthday

People only turn 21 once in their lives. Unless you are able to somehow buck the aging trend or get caught in some bizarre time loop like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. I happen to have found another way to keep turning 21. Normally I wouldn't share a secret this cherry, but this one is rather obvious - just party like you are turning 21. And the easiest way to do it is hang out with kids on their 21st birthday and get as drunk if not drunker than they get. Normally this is sad and pathetic, but my 21st birthday really sucked. So I vowed to make all of the remaining 21st birthdays that I attend better than my own. On July 20 (which was a Tuesday) I drove out to Madison to take my cousin Tommy out for his 21st. I took lots of pictures on my cell phone that have sadly been lost due to faulty technology, but after a night out at the bar, Tommy and I recorded an episode of the Pookcast. Keep in mind that it is about 3am and I had been drinking since around 630pm. But for me that's just like every other day. But this day was special because Tommy was here to bull shit with me. And it turned out to be a great ending to a pretty fantastic night.

Part 1



Part 2




I apologize for taking like 3 months to get this on here, but I just never got around to it. I know that I promised to do the Pookcast on at least a monthly basis, but as you can see I don't really get around to updating the blog too much during the summer months. I know it's a poor excuse, but I really need to be in the right mood and mindset to add content here. But now that episode lucky #13 (really #11) is up, I am currently looking for subject matter and people to join me in the next episode of the Pookcast. You know how to reach me. Be a part of history and comic gold. Take care of yourselves.

- pookon -

www.pookon.com
email: pookondotcom@gmail.com