State sports briefs: Capuano has pitched well to be majors Macha says

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MILWAUKEE - Milwaukee Brewers’ manager Ken Macha says starter Chris Capuano has pitched well enough to be in somebody’s rotation next year. The left-hander has had solid performances in four of his six starts, after coming off his second Tommy John elbow reconstructive surgery.

Capuano was an All-Star for the Brewers in 2006. He’s a free-agent after this season – and he insists he’s not looking beyond the final two-and-a-half weeks of this campaign. When Capuano rejoined the Brewers, Macha said they talked about his goals – and he said he wanted to pitch well enough be to a starter next year somewhere in the big leagues. Capuano has two straight quality starts after giving up three runs in six-and-a-third innings on Tuesday night at Houston. In his four best starts, he has an ERA of two-point-three-one. His longest outing was against Saint Louis a week ago, when he went seven innings and gave up one run. The Brewers are off today after winning one-of-three at Houston. They’ll open a weekend series in San Francisco tomorrow night.

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The Brewers will keep their Triple-“A” farm club in Nashville for at least the next two seasons. Brewers’ general manager Doug Melvin and Nashville Sounds’ co-owner Frank Ward announced the extension of their player development agreement yesterday. The Brewers moved their Triple-“A” team from Indianapolis to Nashville in 2005. Since then, the Sounds have had five winning teams, three playoff appearances, and a Pacific Coast League title in ’05. Melvin says Ward and his co-owners have provided the team with a number of good things – and he hopes a new stadium is in their plans. Previous owners were going to build a new ballpark a few years ago, but those plans failed to materialize. The Sounds play in an older park called Greer Stadium.

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It’s an off-week for the 30 finalists in the PGA’s Fed-Ex Cup playoffs. The winners of the first three Fed-Ex tournaments occupy the top-three spots in the point standings. And Steve Stricker of Madison is the highest-rated non-champion in fourth place. Because he’s in the Top-Five, Stricker can still determine his own destiny when the final Fed-Ex event, the Tour Championship, begins a week from today in Atlanta. And if Stricker wins the finale, no one else can catch him in points – and that means Stricker would win the Fed-Ex title and the $10-million that go with it. He finished sixth at Atlanta a year ago.

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A junior at Green Bay Notre Dame High School has decided to play his college hockey at Wisconsin. Defenseman Tim Davison has verbally committed to the Badgers. He received a host of college offers after helping the U.S. Under-17 squad win the gold medal at the Five Nations’ Tournament last month in Switzerland. But Davison said his choices came down to Wisconsin and Ohio State, where his former high school teammate Max McCormick had committed to play. Davison expects to start his college career in 2012-or-13, after playing in the U.S. junior league.

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The Western Collegiate Hockey Association has unveiled a new logo and a campaign slogan for the upcoming season. The Wisconsin men’s-and-women’s hockey teams both play in the WCHA, and its headquarters are in Madison. A Colorado firm created the new logo. It shows a larger “W” to emphasize the Western part of the league’s name. A new shade of silver outlines the traditional black logo. It will be used for both men’s-and-women’s hockey. But the slogan – “Just Got Tougher” – is only for the men. That’s because the men’s league is adding two new teams this year – Bemidji State and Nebraska-Omaha.

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Wisconsin has three players on the national small college Team-of-the-Week from D3Football.com. They are Darin Blaser of UW-Platteville, Andy Neumann of Eau Claire, and Tony Faller of Lakeland College in Sheboygan. Blaser, a junior receiver, caught 16 passes for 195 yards and the game-winning touchdown in a four-point Platteville win over Dubuque. Neumann, a junior linebacker, had eight tackles and a forced fumble in Eau Claire’s upset overtime win over Saint John’s of Minnesota. Faller, a junior safety, broke up four passes and had two tackles for losses in Lakeland’s one-point overtime loss to Carthage.

Tags: wisconsin sports, sports