Ok, so Manny Parra is out of options. What will the team do with him? Scenario A: Parra makes the club out of spring training as a reliever/7th starter. There are realistically 2 available spots in the pen(3 if Marcum is held back). So this would seem to preclude someone like Zach Braddock, say, from making the team. I am of the view that Parra's skills are wasted as a situational lefty and he has in fact a pretty neutral platoon split in his career. Ideally, Parra should be starting somewhere but he isn't a clear upgrade for anyone in our rotation and is also coming off major surgery.

Which leads me to Scenario B: Trade him to a team for which he has a realistic shot at the rotation. This wouldn't net much for the team (think Tony Graffanino for JDLR) but would allow the Brewers to keep a real situational lefty instead of holding a roster spot for Manny and shortening him into an unsuitable relief role. Scenario C is exposing him to waivers and having him inevitably claimed. It may be best to get any value we can out of him now. Thoughts?

with ryan howard coming up tonight for philly and myers going on the dl, i almost didn't pay attention to the part in the si phillies article where they mention that Chris Coste is headed to AA from AAA. The feel-good story of last year, it's just sad to see him fall so far so fast. It's a tough game. Condolences, Senor Coste. May you always outhit Chad Moeller, wherever you are.

Long time lurker(and long-suffering Brew fanatic), finally got an account. It's funny, just the other day, I was complaining to my girlfriend(who I'm sure couldn't care less) about the lack of Brewers coverage in the national press, especially how we can't even get game wraps on ESPN or SI's front page. They both made me eat my words within hours(with frontpage writeups). I guess even they can't ignore a team 5 games ahead of the rest of their (admittedly sorry) division. The problem I have with these stories is they always seem to come back to Pythagorean Winning Percentage as the reason the Brewers will eventually fade. Well, maybe if we can keep blowing teams out like tonight, all of the nonbelievers at BP, ESPN, SI, et al will finally shut up about it. With tonight's 10-0 win, we're now at 17-12 on that stat, although with this win and the 12-2 win over the Cardinals, we're doing our best to make that stat meaningless. I mean, think about it: if we had blown out every team we'd beaten, and lost a bunch of 3-2 and 2-1 games, we'd be well behind our Pythagorean, and definitely not in first. I understand the intent of the stat, basically to try and remove some of the luck factor in evaluating a game based pretty heavily on luck, I just find it foolish to base any discussion of the first month of the season on it. The sample size is just too small. Thoughts?