I’ve heard this like 10 times this offseason. Randy Johnson, Derek Lowe and Brian Fuentes were all players said to be uninterested in playing in Milwaukee. I just don’t get it, Wisconsin fucking rocks.
Here’s five reasons free agents should sign with Milwaukee:
They probably don’t care if you won or lost.
I hate to be all message board fan boy, but I keep reading stories like this that say Manny is in trouble since the Yankees are no longer showing interest and Boras pissed off the Dodgers. You have to wonder, could Jack Z make a run at Manny? There’s a story on USS Mariner about how the Mariners are going to be better than expected in 2009 and could top out at 86 wins if they signed at +3 win free agent to fill the DH spot. But what if they signed Manny Ramirez? Fangraphs has him at a +3 win player as an OF, but doing some loose math more like a +4 win player as a DH. We’d have to get rid of Jarrod Washburn to do it, so that’d make him something like a +5010321123 player.
I think I’d rather have Milton Bradley or Adam Dunn on a 2-3 year contract simply because they bat LH and Safeco is better for them, but if there is a big enough discount on Manny I think they’d have to take a look. He’s simply one of the best hitters in all of baseball and for close to the same price the Phillies gave Ibanez you have to consider it. This would of course cause me to be excited and then pull my hair out for the majority of the season. Since I love my bangs so much, I am going to vote no on this.
I love listening to baseball on the radio. Baseball is the only sport that I think loses absolutely none of its luster on the radio and in a lot of cases it’s better than it’s TV counterpart (hello, ESPN Sunday Night Baseball). I remember last season being on a flight last year that featured XM and being in pure heaven listening to the Cubs, Brewers and Mariners games simultaneously. What I failed to realize though was how completely spoiled I have been for most of my life with baseball announcers. Harry Caray, Steve Stone, Ron Santo and Bob Eucker have been apart of my life since I was a kid and I’ve never thought about what it must be like for other people.
Well I saw this linked on Al’s Ramblings today and besides the whole living in Ohio and liking the Reds thing, THANK GOD I’M NOT A REDS FAN. The way he attacks Adam Dunn is one thing and I don’t think I could ever see Bob Eucker doing that to a player, but his hatred of the team is disgusting.
Brennaman is way past the point of telling tough truths about players, and now he’s simply bitter. Day in and day out, he sounds like a man who truly hates his job, and truly hates the Reds. He hates that after having been able to watch the Big Red Machine in the 70s and some pretty darn respectable Reds’ teams in the 80s and into the mid 90s, he’s had to watch a mostly bad team play for the past decade. What’s worse, he’s not professional enough to put that disappointment aside and simply do his job like Skip Caray and Herb Score any number of other announcers of bad teams have done over the years.
Last season I remember a few Mariners games where the suckiness of Jose Vidro, Richie Sexson and others was completely ignored with the announcers acting as if they were in a slump or something. This was annoying, but is certainly better than the reverse where your announcer clearly hates the team. Ron Santo loves the Cubs, Bob Eucker loves the Brewers, Dave Niehaus loves the Mariners and they all do it no matter what. Not only are these people paying you a lot of money, but they are doing it for a job that you love. If you don’t love it anymore, get the hell out of there and stop ruining it for the rest of us.
