Round ’em Up: Friday

Today is the home opener at Miller Park.  Carlos Villanueva will be trotting out to the rubber in a little over an hour, and I’m psyched for the game today.  Good thing it is the home opener.  This will be the only time I will be excited to see the San Francisco Giants play.  I sure hope we beat them today.  They are not very good…to say the least.

• I understand that sometimes journalists have to write articles that they would rather not write.  But still, the Milwaukee JS has a dandy of an article today.  Apparently, if more people want to go to games and there are only a limited number of seats in the stadium, some people that want to go will not be able to go!  I may need a graph or some type of visual representation of this to fully understand.  And, if I already hadn’t been blown away enough already, more people want to go see a winning team!  Now you’re just grasping for straws…
• Jim Powell from the Sports Bubbler talks about the Brewers starting off the season in the right way, with a road series win against the rival Cubs.  That is still nice to hear a day later.
• Brew Crew Ball has a plethora of good stuff on the site today.  Jeff Sackmann traded questions with a Giants’ blogger.  It is some pretty interesting stuff.  It makes me feel bad for the Giants.  Well, sort of.
• For all of you that hate Ned Yost…this is not the article for you.  After three games into the regular season, Yost looks pretty intelligent so far.  At least, that is what Sackmann writes.  Here is why he thinks that Yost has done a very nice job to start the season.  I do like the end of the post that says that he reserves the right to get seething mad at Ned tomorrow if he does something stupid today.
• I was the first person that questioned why the Brewers could not find a trading partner for Claudio Vargas.  I figured it would be better to get something rather than nothing for the starter.  It looks like Doug Melvin told the truth when he said that they could not find a trading partner.  Vargas is still without a job.  There are teams that have interest in him, particularly the New York Mets, but all the teams want him to start in Triple-A.  I’d want him to start in Triple-A too.
• Bobby Cox, manager of the Atlanta Braves, tried a very interesting move.  His right-handed reliever, Resop, pitched against a batter, then moved to right field while a lefty, Ring, came in to pitch against a left-handed batter.  After the lefty struck out, Resop came back to the mound to pitch to the next batter.

  While this is a dangerous situation because you have a pitcher playing the outfield for an at-bat, it makes for a very interesting situation.  You can save your bullpen and sacrifice a little defense for one play.  I had never thought of that strategy before.  Let your pitchers take a little outfield practice once in a while, and it could become feasible.

• A hawk that lives in Fenway Park attacked a little girl yesterday.  It dove at her scalp and drew blood with its talons.  Scary stuff for that 13-year old.  This is a funny article though.  Why?  Not because I find it funny that a girl got attacked by a hawk.  It is funny that her name is Alexa Rodriguez.  Yes, almost the exact same as Yankees star, Alex Rodriguez.  If that is not weird enough for you, she is 13-years old, and A-Rod wears the number 13.  That hawk must simply hate everything to do with the Yankees!!!