On Monday, the Brewers released a multitude of minor leaguers, including Steve Braun, a 25-year-old second baseman out of the University of Maryland. In three minor league stints all below AA, Braun only managed an OPS above .500 in a 41 PA stint in Low-A. In his other two stints, Braun hit .175/.214/.263 and .140/.252/.178.

So, Braun is just another terrible minor league free agent whose career flamed out in the low minors. Except for one thing: Steve is the brother of Brewers star and Jersey Shore moonlighter Ryan Braun. Sure, Steve may not have shown any semblance of MLB or even MiLB talent, but hey, he’s related to Ryan, so why not. In fact, I’m willing to bet that his addition to the Brewers system was at the behest of Ryan, the Brewers Deputy GM. The only reasoning given by Doug Melvin was that “Helena was short of infielders.”

That Helena club with Braun is effectively the cast of the movie Werewolf, a 1996 movie about (you guessed it) werewolves starring Joe Estevez, brother of Martin Sheen and uncle to Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez (prompting the riffers of MST3K to call him “One of the lesser Estevezes”). I was introduced to this classic flick via the always fantastic Mystery Science Theater 3000. In this case, Braun plays the part of Estevez. Estevez’s character in the movie doesn’t really do much, kind of like Braun and his .477 OPS. The rest of the movie is filled with actors that barely know how to speak English, much less act, kind of like rookie-level minor leaguers and professional baseball.

It was a short lived career for Steve Braun, but hey, it’s not all bad. Most people don’t even get the taste of professional baseball that he got, and maybe Ryan will give him some of the cash he’s making off of his awesome t-shirt line. Most importantly, Steve Braun now becomes a trump card in everybody’s favorite game, “Who would you want in your werewolf movie?”, where you cast your own werewolf movies with brothers of actual stars.

Personally, my werewolf movie would have a baseball slant (naturally), casting Steve Braun along with Billy Ripken, Randy Wolf’s umpiring brother Jim Wolf, Robin Yount’s brother Larry, and, of course, Fred Molina.

Before I post the video, some observations …

At this point, what can I do but roll tape?

This is either (a) a special appearance by the Nationals’ Racing Presidents at the Washington Ballet, or (b) an excerpt from a film that Spike Jonze is making in the future.

You decide, America!

H/T: Let Teddy Win

As I noted in these pages yesterday while discussing D.J. Dayn Perry’s book on Reggie Jackson, former Phillie and Outspoken Black Man Dick Allen posted career numbers either on-par with, or slightly better than, recent Hall of Fame inductees Andre Dawson and Jim Rice — and, yet, never received even as much as 19% of the BBWA’s votes for said honor.

Since my last dispatch to these pages, at least five or six minutes of my life have been dedicated to the better understanding of Dick Allen and his contributions to society.

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Happy Clifton Phifer Lee Day. I believe they’re still partying in Philadelphia.

First things first: You need to take a minute and two seconds out of your day to visit www.cliftonphiferlee.com. In the immediate aftermath of Cliff Lee deciding to take his talents back to South Street (or is it Broad Street? Philadelphians?), the mesmerizing website delivered the type of hard-hitting analysis I was looking for.

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Hired guns.

Mike Newman at ScoutingtheSally provides an excellent service for the prospecticators among us. He visits parks, takes video, and analyzes players that come through the Sally league – ostensibly for those of us in deep dynasty fantasy leagues looking for an edge on our competitors. His independent work functions well as a fantasy manager’s personal scouting department.

Well, now Newman is offering the chance for some fantasy leaguers to gain the jump on others by paying for a premium service. Subscribers of this service will get voicemails or emails minutes after Newman sees a player live and days before he posts an edited piece on his website. An excellent idea, this offering seems to mark a significant moment for fantasy sports. Jason Grey’s hiring at ESPN.com and subsequent articles for ESPN Insider may have been the harbinger, but now a fantasy manager can ‘hire’ his or her own scout by paying for a week-long advantage on the competition. Fantasy is becoming reality.

But there’s something else at play here. Like Mark Zuckerman and Joe Sheehan before him, Mike Newman is attempting to monetize the hard work he does and has heretofore disseminated for free. The correct price is probably yet to be fixed, but the question of whether or not these writers’ work has inherent value should be settled. Zuckerman’s combination of dedication to his team and unique analysis, or Sheehan’s blend of wit and statistical fortitude, or Newman’s tireless scouting work – these things are worth something.

We have far too few data points to speculate on the sustainability of the model at this point. Zuckerman has recently taken to supplementing his reader-supported website, NatsInsider, with the more old-school method of freelancing for CSNwashington, and this writer knows enough from looking at his own wallet not to ask fellow writers to bare their pocketbooks for the public.

But the intellectual underpinnings, the reasoning behind this model, must make sense to most readers, even if they aren’t willing to pony up. There’s real work being done here, and so it’s most likely worth real money.

SF Weekly reminds us that freshly minted Oakland A Hideki Matsui is a man who loves his porn. This from an old Time Asia piece on the occasion of Matsui’s joining the Yankees:

Indeed, his only eccentricity, if it can be called that, is his extensive private library of adult videos. His refreshing ability to laugh self-deprecatingly about his porno collection, reporters say, is one reason why fans and even nonfans have taken to him so much. Says former reporter Isao Hirooka: “Hideki just wants to be like ordinary people.”

Just how extensive is ordinary person Matsui’s private library? Sketchy reports suggest he could use a librarian.

Hideki, I christen thee “Dirtyzilla.”

(Curtsy: BBTF)

While baseball is my favorite human endeavor, I’m also a college football fan on the side. For those reasons (and as part of my ongoing recovery from yet another Nebraska loss that challenges the dimensions of the absurd and because — as Kid Rock hastens to remind me on those rare occasions when I cross paths with popular music — I was born free), I decided to see what things would look like if baseball operated under the widely maligned BCS system.

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Recently, in these pages, I made a case for a way of discussing books in a manner conducive to NotGraphs. You can read those exact words, if you want. Alternatively, you can just believe me when I say that the basic idea is to share lightly annotated passages and ideas from interesting baseball-related books.

Text
Reggie Jackson: The Life and Thunderous Career of Baseball’s Mr. October by Dayn Perry

On This Book and Its Familiar Author
It would undoubtedly represent a conflict of interest — and might, indeed, ring hollow — were I to submit a gushing review of my colleague Dayn Perry’s mostly new book about Reggie Jackson. On the other hand, it would also be an exercise in absurdity to expressly not mention how I’ve been reading and taking notes on that same book.

So, please, reader, accept these notes with the spirit in which they’re given — i.e. that of well-meaning impartiality.

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The New England Sports Network (NESN) — i.e. the primary broadcaster of Boston Red Sox games — has just posted to its site a video of NESN on-field reporter Heidi Watney touring the Willis (née Sears) Tower during a late-season trip to Chicago.

It may or may not be necessary for me to point out that Ms. Watney is what one might call “classically beautiful” — a fact not lost upon, for example, most of the internet.

Beyond serving merely as an opportunity to gaze upon Ms. Watney’s shining visage, however, the video also affords the viewer some of the Skydeck experience without having to pay the $16 admission fee.

Furthermore, it teaches us that most useful of lessons — namely, that smooth jazz is the appropriate soundtrack to most anything.