My wife bought a box of Sudifed yesterday and was irate that she had to let them record her driver's license number and wait ten minutes to be put into some databse to do so. Because 0.01% of the population makes hallucinogens out of an otherwise useful product, the other 99.99% of us have to be hassled when we buy it. Yet when we catch one of these 0.01%, we slap them on the wrist and give them 3 months probation. Government has run completely amok.

Team RQS

About a week ago I introduced Real Quality Starts - those in which a starting pitcher allows fewer hits plus walks than innings pitched. Here are the rankings of all Major League teams in RQS in 2009:

Team	RQS	League
Chi White Sox	43	AL
San Francisco	42	NL
Tampa Bay	42	AL
Seattle	40	AL
Atlanta	38	NL
Boston	38	AL
LA Angels	38	AL
Florida	36	NL
NY Yankees	36	AL
LA Dodgers	35	NL
Colorado	34	NL
Texas	34	AL
NY Mets	32	NL
Philadelphia	32	NL
San Diego	32	NL
Detroit	31	AL
Arizona	30	NL
St. Louis	30	NL
Chi Cubs	29	NL
Kansas City	29	AL
Houston	28	NL
Cincinnati	27	NL
Minnesota	27	AL
Washington	26	NL
Oakland	25	AL
Pittsburgh	25	NL
Cleveland	23	AL
Baltimore	22	AL
Milwaukee	21	NL
Toronto	21	AL

A pretty sad situation for the Brewers.

Big Blue Machine

I just finished Joe Posnanski's outstanding book "The Machine" which tells the story of the 1975 Cincinnati Reds. If you are old enough to have been around back then, it's a wonderful reminiscence, and if not it's an excellent look at how baseball used to be.

Sparky Anderson managed the Reds in '75. When he was hired as the Reds' manager in 1970, he was only 35 years old despite his hair being stark white. I guess that's why he never seemed to age.

Anyway, Anderson's philosophy of managing a ballclub was that you had your superstars and your 'turds' (that's what he called them.) On the Reds, Pete Rose, Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan were the superstars and everyone else were turds. The superstars were the team. They got all of the glory. Everything revolved around them. The turds were the pieces needed to create an environment in which the superstars could shine. They were the stage and the props. The superstars were the actors.

I've always agreed with this philosophy of building a team. I think the most important aspect of a team is how good your best player is. The next most important aspect is how good your next best player is. And it follows in order from there. That's a point that gets lost in a lot of discussions about how teams need to tinker to fill holes, or who the utility infielder should be. That stuff doesn't much matter. The superstars matter.

The Brewers right now have two superstars - Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun. By almost any measure, they are two of the top ten hitters in baseball. The notion that we should trade one of them away to fill other holes on the team seem preposterous to me.

Fielder is probably the better of the two but not by much. If you trade Fielder you only take a small hit on the quality of your best player. But you take a huge hit on the quality of your second best player - and your third, and your fourth. And for what? To make your 8th, 9th or 10th best players better? That makes no sense to me at all. Teams should try to accumulate players like Fielder and Braun, not trade them away.

Granted the Brewers only control Fielder for two more years and at some point the economic realities of the game set in. However they've got two full years to worry about that. Fielder and Braun are at their peaks right now. They are the players who can win you a championship. If your philosophy is to trade one of them away for some other team's turds - well, you know what you'll wind up with a pile of.

Sports Illustrated has predicted their 65-team NCAA Men's Basketball bracket. There are no Wisconsin teams among them. If that happens, it will be the first time since 1998.

Jarrod Washedup

Jarrod Washburn says the Brewers are on his radar screen. It's a sad state of affairs when signing someone like a 35-year old, gimpy knee'd Washburn makes your rotation better. Washburn has never in his career had a full-season ERA higher than Manny Parra's, Dave Bush's, or Jeff Suppan's ERA last year.

Isn't this starting to remind you of Brett Favre?

This is a glimpse into government run health care. They will way more often tell us what procedures we don't need than which ones we do.

Mighty Casey

Casey McGehee finished fifth in the NL Rookie of the Year voting today. He was obviously a long shot to win. He did get one first place vote - I assume from the Milwaukee writer. All in all, I think he finished about where he should have.

Something bothers me though about Casey McGehee. Here is a guy who spent 7 years in the Cubs' minor league system, clawing his way up, a half a level at a time, with nothing more than a 25 at-bat joe to show for it. The Cubs finally say 'enough'. The Brewers pluck him off the scrap heap and POW - he's one of the top rookies in the league. How does that happen? How does a 26-year old career minor leaguer whose original team has given up on, all of the sudden, out of nowhere, when he finally gets to the Major Leagues, put up power numbers that are double anything he's ever done before at any level in professional baseball in a career that covers over 3,800 plate appearances?

I'm not saying what you're thinking. I'm not even insinuating that. I'm just asking the question. How does that happen?

And I'm asking another question. Has Casey McGehee done enough to warrant handing him the third base job in 2010 and turning our best third base prospect into trade bait? I don't think so. I'm not comfortable with that.

Here's the same chart for Mat Gamel:

All I'm saying is that looks a little more normal to me. I'd expect Gamel to be much more likely to maintain or even improve his offensive production than I would McGehee. Unless of course whatever happened in 2009 keeps happening in 2010. Whatever that is.

Would you feel safer if jailed terrorists were held in Cuba, or about 200 miles from Milwaukee?

I have just witnessed the most amazing NBA game I've seen in at least 10 years. I tuned the Bucks game in at the end of the first quarter and still saw all 55 of Brandon Jennings points - 29 in the third quarter.

What Jennings did tonight is not something that average players do - even on a fluke - and certainly not something that 20 year old rookies do. He is a special player and this was a special night.

Real Quality Starts

Not that baseball needs another new statistic...

A Quality Start (QS) is credited to a starting pitcher who pitches at least 6 innings and allows 3 or fewer earned runs. There were 2,344 quality starts in the Major Leagues in 2009. A full 49% of all games started were credited as quality starts.

It would seem that for an event to be called "quality", it ought to happen quite a bit less than half of the time. This would be like calling a quality at bat anytime you got a hit, a walk, or hit the ball hard. There is some truth to that, but what is real quality?

I came up with a new, as easy to compute statistic which I call a Real Quality Start (RQS). To get an RQS, a pitcher must allow fewer base runners than innings pitched. Simple. In a mathematical formula it's equally simple:

(H + BB) < IP
There were 946 Real Quality Starts in the majors last season - only 20% of all games started. Comparing the two stats side-by-side, you can see that RQS is a much more stringent test of true quality:

	QS	RQS
Number	2344	946
% all starts	49%	20%
W (by SP)	1293	631
L (by SP)	389	86
W/L Pct.	0.769	0.880
ERA	2.04	1.40

The Major League leaders in RQS last season were:

Pitcher	Team	RQS
Tim Lincecum	SF	15
Dan Haren	Ari	14
Javier Vazquez	Atl	13
Chris Carpenter	StL	12
CC Sabathia	NYY	12
Jon Lester	Bos	12
Randy Wolf (FA)	LAD	11
Josh Johnson	Fla	11
Jered Weaver	LAA	11
Ricky Nolasco	Fla	11
Ted Lilly	ChC	10
Josh Beckett	Bos	10
Bronson Arroyo	Cin	10
Edwin Jackson	Det	10
Zack Greinke	KC	10
Felix Hernandez	Sea	10
Wandy Rodriguez	Hou	10
Carl Pavano (FA)	Cle	9
Roy Halladay	Tor	9
Barry Zito	SF	9
Mark Buehrle	ChW	9
Kevin Correia	SD	9
Gavin Floyd	ChW	9
Justin Verlander	Det	9
Scott Feldman	Tex	9
Clayton Kershaw	LAD	9
Jarrod Washburn (FA)	Sea	8
Johan Santana	NYM	8
Joel Pineiro	StL	8
Rich Harden (FA)	ChC	8
Scott Kazmir	TB	8
Scott Baker	Min	8
Jason Hammel	Col	8
John Danks	ChW	8
Matt Garza	TB	8
J.A. Happ	Phi	8
John Lannan	Was	8
Jair Jurrjens	Atl	8
Kevin Millwood	Tex	7
Jason Marquis (FA)	Col	7
John Lackey (FA)	LAA	7
Cliff Lee	Cle	7
Jorge De La Rosa	Col	7
Matt Cain	SF	7
Cole Hamels	Phi	7
Joe Saunders	LAA	7
Chad Billingsley	LAD	7
James Shields	TB	7
Jeff Niemann	TB	7
Luke Hochevar	KC	7
Ross Ohlendorf	Pit	7
Clayton Richard	ChW	7
Trevor Cahill	Oak	7

Noticeably absent from this list are any Milwaukee Brewers - and noticeably present are a number of free agent who the Brewers are rumored to have some interest in. Look how far down the list John Lackey is - and how many other free agents are above him. The more of this stuff I see, the more I think Lackey is going to be a Suppan-esque albatross for whoever signs him.

I was a little surprised that the Brewers declined Bradon Looper's option. Looper actually tied for second on the team with 4 RQS:

Gallardo	6
Looper	4
Bush	4
Parra	2
Suppan	2
Burns	1
Narveson	1

What that chart really shows though is just how pitiful the Brewers' pitching was in 2009.

The King of 'Pop'

(click picture for more)

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but why would a contraption like this have a seat belt? It seems to me that the worst thing that could happen is you'd tip over. If you did, I'd think the last thing you'd want to to be strapped to it.

I know they've only played 6 games, but many of the national sports outlets picked the Bucks to be the worst team in the NBA. Their 4-2 start - without Michael Redd - has really come out of nowhere. I watched a good portion of the game last night - this after a couple of weeks ago thinking that I wouldn't watch a single game all year.

Fools Gold

No Gold Glove Awards again for the Brewers. Did you expect any? Do you remember the last one? It was Robin Yount in 1982. 151 different players have won a total of 479 Gold Glove Awards since then. Bret Boone has been retired for three years. He hasn't played a full season for five years. Before that, he won 3 Gold Glove Awards. The last year a Brewers won a Gold Glove Award, Bret Boone's dad did too. Greg Maddux holds the career record with 18 Gold Glove Awards. Maddux played his entire career - beginning to end - since the last time a Brewer won a Gold Glove Award. Phil Niekro won a Gold Glove Award the last time a Brewer did. Phil Niekro. Think about that.