Tommy hunter currently is benefiting from unsustainable hit luck, HR/FB% and strand rate. While his minor league numbers haven’t been otherworldly he does have a bit of a pedigree as a first rounder in the 2007 draft and may very well be serviceable going forward, if not necessarily this year.

Chi Chi’s is out of business?!?!  Say it ain’t so, Craig.  Where will I get my fried ice cream now???

Totally disagree with you on the Jawas, J.W.  If the Jawas lose the Skywalkers’ business, they may as well fold up shop, so they have to satisfy them.  They’re ideal customers: they’ll buy protocol droids even when they don’t need them, and their condenser-maintainence needs (up on the south ridges, don’t you know) are such that they’ll likely need a steady supply of droids in the future.

You piss of the Skywalkers, and you’re basically telling them to go buy their droids at Toshii Station (they’re sold in a stand right behind the power converters).  And then where are the Jawas?  Driving their no-customer-having-asses around the desert in that big old trapezoid of theirs.

Conclusion: replacing an R2 unit—especially one that they didn’t even have to pay for themselves—is simply good business in today’s Tatoonine economy.

Too hot to sleep last night, so I’m lying in bed thinking about the Yankees (that’s what you think about when you get old and can’t sleep) and get to wondering whether this infield is the best offensive infield of all time.  Cano has the lowest OPS at .849; I did some quick research and found only one other team where all four players were close to that, and it’s the 1950 Red Sox with Dropo, Doerr, Stephens and Pesky.  This infield, with 2 HOF players and 2 very good players, if it continues to perform at this level, might have to be considered the best ever. I’ll leave it to the statheads to figure out if it’s true; hopefully for all of you, I’ll sleep better tonight.

Note ont he Indians game: Because Garko was traded, Hafner couldn’t play (mandatory day off) and Sizemore was sick, the Indians played the entire game with literally no one available on the bench.

Strike up another win for Shapiro’s 9 man bullpen.

OK, I can see how it would be important to keep a crucial customer happy, but I still think they coulda thrown a caveat emptor out there and shrugged their little robed shoulders and gotten away with it. The Skywalkers need them too, after all. They can’t go paying outrageous Toshii prices, and they really can’t be going all the way to town whenever they need a droid or some parts or whatnot; Owen makes it quite clear that they are pressed for time and man-power.

Enough! Back to baseball. You’d think that Rollins, Howard, and Utley would have put up some pretty impressive numbers last year, no? But then you look at this year’s Yankee infield and the numbers are ourageous. OPS+ for Cano is 121, Jeter 127, A-Rod 140 and Teixeira 142. Rollins, in his MVP year, had an OPS+ of 103. Utley had 135 and Howard had 124, and then of course there’s Pedro Feliz, he of the 81 OPS+. The 2008 Red Sox had a right side of the infield that compares with the 2009 Yankee right side: Youkilis 143 OPS+, Pedroia 122 (so based on that Cano = 2009 MVP?). The 2009 version of the Boston right side is slightly inferior due to Pedroia’s drop to a 107 OPS+, though Youk is staying strong at 142. So, um, yeah, in conclusion, the 2009 Yankee infield is very strong offensively.

Sorry, but a good Star Wars discussion is much more attractive to me this morning than a Brewers discussion…

Technically, the red droid is an R5 unit. It essentially does the same thing as an R2, but it’s designed for other types of ships or something. Also, and this really has little to do with anything, the R5 unit (R5-D4, if I recall correctly) supposedly blew his motivator on purpose so as not to break up the always entertaining C-3P0/R2-D2 marriage. I agree with Craig that the Jawas are almost obligated to replace the “broken” unit that Owen complains about, since he’s probably an important part of their weekly rounds. However, it also might just be a simple matter of payment - I don’t recall if they actually showed Owen paying for the droids. So maybe they needed to replace it in order to receive full payment?

Finally, upon rewatching that first movie, doesn’t it seem completely out of character for 3P0 to just walk away from R2 after they crash land on Tatooine? I mean, it was only the first 20 minutes of the first movie, so his personality traits and whatnot weren’t really known by all. But by the end of the first trilogy (and then the next trilogy), his character becomes perfectly clear - and ditching his longtime friend in the middle of the desert just because he’s being stubborn about a radar reading he has does not sound like the C-3P0 we all know and love one bit…

I’m just saying…

I remember not being able to find R2-D2 in stores when I was a kid, so I had to settle for the R5, which I think actually was an R5-D5, not that this distiction will alter the future of the universe or anything.  After all, that was long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Lar—look, I’m a lawyer, and because of that I’m far more preoccupied by all of the OSHA violations of the Death Star (you don’t think maybe they need a rail or two around that big shaft?  And shouldn’t there be a point beyond which that bridge doesn’t retract? And don’t even get me started about the garbage chute and the radiation exposure for the guys near the main gun; they’re shielding their eyes with their arms for cryin’ out loud!  At least get them better goggles!)

Anyway, I think Meloday is a therapist, so perhaps she may be better suited to addressing the R2-3PO relationship.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go file a brief in the wrongful death suit I’m bringing on behalf of all of the private contractors who were killed on the unfinished Death Star in RoTJ . . .

The people who died on the Deathstar knew what they were getting into.  It’s not like they were working at McDonald’s.  Just days earlier, they blew up a freakin’ planet!  They knew what they were there for, knew what they were signing up for…that’s blood money, Craig.  Blood.  Money.