Tag Archives: baseball

The Fates of Forty Men 2009: Part 2, Starting Pitching

No one will debate that this was the Brewers’ achilles’ heel in 2009.  The Brewers starters had the worst collective ERA in the National League.  Of their 5-man rotation on opening day, 4 finished with an ERA over 5.00.  2 had an ERA over 6.00.  To put it simply, if they return over 40% of this rotation next year, it will NOT be a good 2010.  Having “innings-eaters” on your team is one thing, but if they’re not giving you a legit chance to win, what the hell’s the point?

* – denotes a player that is a lock to make the 25-man roster for opening day in 2010

** – denotes a player that is a good bet to be on the 25-man

Yovanni Gallardo* – Yo did not start the first game of the season, but was the de facto ace throughout 2009.  After an injury-shortened 2008, Gallardo came back to start 30 games, win 13, strike out over 200 batters, and pitch 185 innings.  He had his bouts of wildness as well, though, and the coaching staff shut him down for the year with a week to go in the season after he eclipsed 3,000 pitches for the year.  He also led the staff with 94 walks.  Gallardo will absolutely be back, hopefully with an extended contract, but also hopefully with some more help at the top of the rotation.  He’s one of only a couple home-grown talents the Brewers can tout on their pitching staff, and one of the best pitchers in baseball.  A top-flight pitching coach (which the Brewers claim to be after) could be beneficial for him.

Jeff Suppan** – A year ago, I grudgingly conceded that the Brewers would have no choice but to bring him back.  Suppan’s albatross of a contract will continue to strangle them for one last season.  After cutting Bill Hall loose and eating about 7 million dollars of that terrible contract, I don’t see them being able to afford another, by cutting Suppan.  However, if I were the GM, I would ask any team if they were willing to go halfsies on Soup’s 12 mil for 2010.  Once again, his 2009 was peppered with flashes of brilliance sprinkled across a wide tapestry of awful outings: there was the Easter Sunday game on national TV against Chicago, where he walked in 2 runs in one inning.  There was the 2-game stretch in late July where he gave up 15 earned runs in 8 2/3 innings against the dregs of the NL in Pittsburgh and Washington.  There was also the July 3 game vs Chicago, when he surrendered just 1 run in 7 innings but the Brewers couldn’t muster a win.  Over the course of a season, though, a 5.29 ERA and 1.69 WHIP speak for themselves.  Suppan looked erratic and overmatched more often than not all season long (even when he was rehabbing in Nashville, he was getting shelled).  I would cry a river of joyful tears if they could find a way to unload him, but it’s not going to happen.

Braden Looper** – As unlucky and awful as Suppan looked all year, Looper somehow bumbled himself to a winning record, and likely secured a spot on the 2010 roster (provided he wants to come back; his option for next season is mutual, so the team has to want him, and he has to want the team).  The guy would be crazy not to return.  He dished up 39 homeruns and racked up a 5.22 ERA but only lost 7 times, thanks to an unbelievable amount of run support.  He also stayed healthy all year, taking the ball 34 times over the course of the season.  No Brewers’ pitcher threw 200 innings this year, but Looper was closest, at 194 2/3.  With starting pitching in SUCH high demand throughout major league baseball, the Brewers would wise to bring him back.  BUT– they have to be willing to show him the door in camp if they manage to get some decent young bodies in here that actually know how to pitch.

Dave Bush* – He started out a little slow in spring, looked fantastic as the Crew cruised to 30-20 by the end of May, and then took a nosedive after getting nailed in the elbow by a line drive in Florida the first week of June.  After that, the David Bush of late ’08 and early ’09 disappeared.  Does he just need a full off-season to completely rehab that injury?  Can he be a steady cog in the middle of a contending rotation?  Will the Brewers use his last year of salary arbitration to find out?  Count on it.

Manny Parra** – Last year this time, I had become a Parra-believer.  I thought the Manny that 7-0 through the middle of 2008 was the “real” Parra, and his troubles down the stretch were bad luck.  Today, I am much less certain.  After a mid-season demotion to AAA, he was usually better, but still had his moments where he couldn’t find the strikezone.  He would cruise through some innings, setting full lineups down in order, then fall apart the next time through.  Worse, watching him in the dugout and listening to post-game interviews, the guy sounds like a total headcase.  How many times can you be told to trust your ability, but just not be able to do it?  Once again, starting pitching is a hot commodity, and Parra is still relatively young (just turned 27).  A team with some average to slightly-better-than-average alternatives could afford to wait for Parra to come around.  The Brewers might not be that team (they sure weren’t with Jorge De La Rosa).  I expect him back, but if a trade partner wanted Manny thrown in to a deal for a more mature, seasoned, older and proven starting pitcher, I would not hesitate to fork him over.

Mike Burns – He was a minor-league fill-in during the dark days of mid-summer when our rotation not only looked awful, but had been decimated by injuries.  Again, here’s a guy that showed some flashes, but in the end showed why he couldn’t cut it in the major leagues.  Don’t expect him back.

Josh Butler – Picked up from Tampa in exchange for Gabe Gross at the beginning of the 2008 season, Butler started ’09 in Class A, moved up to AAA, then later made his major league debut after the rosters expanded in September.  Clearly, the organization thinks a lot of the kid, but I wouldn’t expect him to crack the rotation in 2010.  Maybe 2011 if he does a good job at Nashville next year.

Tim Dillard – Unless the Brewers make more than a trade or two over the winter, Dillard is likely to be one of those guys they throw in there during spring training, just to see if he can stick in a major league rotation.  He spent less time on the big league roster in 2009 than he did in ’08, and he didn’t exactly light the world on fire in 140+ innings for Nashville (4.51 ERA).  Never say never, but I would be shocked if he were there on opening day.

Chris Narveson – Threw in 21 games in 2009 and managed to pull his ERA under 4.00 with a couple nice spot starts down the stretch, after pitching from the bullpen earlier in the year.  With the rotation in dire straits during the month of September, Narveson was the hot flavor of the week to save the rotation in 2009.  Like Dillard, he is likely to get a look (and deservedly, a longer one) in spring training.  Barring trades and injuries, though, they have to come up with a better option.  Narveson could prove to be a valuable guy to have on call in Nashville when the injury bug crops up for Milwaukee in 2010.

Coming Tuesday – a look at relief pitching…

The Fates of Forty Men 2009 – Part 1: Summing Up

I wanted to offer up my commentary and thoughts on the Brewers roster as we close out the 2009 season and prepare to hot stove it to spring training.  Last year, I took about a day to think through what would happen with each man on the Brewers’ 40-man roster in the off-season.  It was a really long post.  This year, I’m going to split it up, and I’m starting today, just hours after the Crew completed their sweep of St. Louis to head into the off-season at 80-82, and out of the playoffs.

Way back on February 10, I posted a short bit about Baseball Prospectus’s 2009 predictions and thought it would be interesting to come back to them at the end of the year, to see how everything shaped up.  Overall, they weren’t very close.  They did not project one division winner in all of MLB, and in at least 4 cases (Arizona, Cleveland, Oakland, NY Mets), they weren’t even remotely close.  Granted, these projections were based on a sum of individual player stat projections, but still– it demonstrates that if using math to project how a season will go is tough, guessing at it can only be tougher.

The Prospectus wasn’t too far off on the Brewers’ record, though.  Only missed by three games.  And it’s been well-documented that the Crew contended with a lot of injuries in addition to their generally spotty pitching.  The pros saw it that way, but as a fan, I didn’t want to.  I still think that if Rickie Weeks, Dave Bush, and Jeff Suppan hadn’t each missed a significant amount of time, we might’ve been a little closer when we got to the end of the season.  I think we would’ve had a winning year, anyway.

With the off-season on the horizon, there are a number of big questions facing the team that have been well-documented:

  • What are they going to do about the starting rotation?
  • What can they get for JJ Hardy?
  • Is it time to trade Prince?
  • Which free agents should be offered arbitration?
  • Are coaching changes really going to make a difference?

Over the next week or so, you’ll find out what I think about all the players currently on our 40-man, and what I think about these and other questions.  It’s going to be a slightly longer off-season, but I think we’ve got a foundation that’s solid, and with the right moves, the Brewers could be playing in the post-season again in 2010.

Great Time For a Day Off

The EAA Airventure is going on in Oshkosh this week.  If you are planning to attend the event, Osh Vegas is definitely the place to be.  If you are planning on doing ANYTHING else in Oshkosh this week, you planned poorly.  Hence, I am glad to have a couple days off from commuting.

My friend Ben, who I knew back in Bozeman, and who hosted Wordy and I in Boston a few years back (and whose photo can be seen here), is on his way across the country to Bozeman once again– this time he’ll be teaching at MSU come fall.  Anyway, he’s staying with me for a day-plus while en route so we can take in a baseball game and a brewery tour.  It’ll be cool to get cousins Aaron and Matt, and Nick Petters in town for the game, too.  Hopefully, the Brewers know what the hell they’re doing, trotting Carlos Villaneuva out there for his first start in about a year and a half.

No matter what, we’re looking forward to a relaxing day in Milwaukee.

Creeping Up On a Deadline

Anyone who’s talking Brewers right now is talking about who, when, and if to make a trade to bolster the team’s starting rotation for the stretch run of this season.  The non-waiver trade deadline is July 31, so that’s what all the hub-bub is about.

The Brewers have been mentioned pretty prominently in the rumors surrounding Toronto’s Roy Halladay, far and away the best pitcher that is ‘available’ at this time.  The Brewers (a) have the excellent minor league prospects that Toronto would like in exchange, (b) they’re less than a handful of games behind St. Louis in the division, and most importantly, (c) they showed last season that they were willing to deal when they worked out a trade for CC Sabathia.

I was talking with a friend about situation yesterday, and wanted to share some of my thoughts.

Honestly, I really hope that the Crew just stands pat with what they’ve got and hope for the best.  The division is too close, and (until just yesterday afternoon) no one else is making moves to suggest they’re going to pull ahead, either.  I LOVED the Lopez deal to solidify the top of the order.  Manny Parra has looked a lot better, and if we get Dave Bush backin the rotation, that could be enough to pull ahead (provided guys get back to the form they showed earlier in the season).

In my mind, it’s not worth it to trade either of their blue-chip prospects (Mat Gamel, Alcides Escobar) for a guy that will be here for a year-and-a-half at most, when his acquisition would in no way guarantee a trip to the Series.  Better chance of making the playoffs this year?  Sure.  At this point, though, it’s hard to look across the Brewers pitching staff and say, “well, we’re just one premium pitcher away from taking this division.”  They’re really not.  And considering the strength St. Louis just added to the middle of their lineup, the Crew should be LESS inclined to make a move, not more.  Halladay might’ve helped us over the hump in a weak division, but if the Cards can more consistently score runs, they become a legit contender.

I feel like the Brewers are better served to ride this out, stay patient, and continue to build for the coming seasons.  The front office needs to do a REALLY good job scouting and developing pitching.  They used 4 of their top 6 picks in the 2008 draft on pitchers, and another 2 of the top 3 (including #1) in 2009.  This has been our achilles heel stretching as far back in recent memory as J.M. Gold, then on to Ben Hendrickson, Mike Jones, Mark Rogers, and most recently Jeremy Jeffress (and there were plenty of other less prominent flame-outs along the way). They need to sign the rock-solid players (Braun = done, Prince, Gallardo) to long-term deals and do a good job of separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff (Escobar will probably supplant Hardy at shortstop next year, might be a good idea to get Gamel some time in right because Hart hasn’t shown the consistency at the plate, etc.).

It’s tough to continue to have a patient attitude, because for so long, the organization built up to this time– when the everyday guys we have now would be in the prime of their careers, and we’d be making strong runs in the post-season.  Well, we didn’t end up with enough young pitching to do that.  The thing to do now is NOT to sell off the farm and grasp at straws to get there.  Stay the course.  We’re now at least a perennially competitive team, and we just have to keep doing a good job with player development; eventually we’ll get lucky enough that the pieces come together.

I would rather have a team that wins 80-90 games every year and always has at least a so-so shot at making a post-season push than one that goes for broke, misses the mark, and ends up back in the cellar in three years.  Now’s the time for Milwaukee’s front office to be really smart, sign your best players for the long haul, and keep those farm hands coming.

The Opener

It’s a wonderful day for a home opener for a variety of reasons.  Being on Good Friday made the menu a little more complex than ususal (we bought fish to put on the grill), but the weather’s supposed to be OK, and of course it’s just good to get back to the park.

Here’s hoping the Crew’s late travel back from San Francisco combined with their suspect pitching doesn’t doom them today in the presence of all these Cubs people.  Let’s get the bats rockin, folks!

If I don’t talk to you, have an enjoyable and blessed holiday weekend…

The Spring Homestretch

The Journal-Sentinel featured a post on the Brewers blog yesterday speculating on how the roster would shake out for opening day on April 7 in San Francisco.  As I page through some older posts, working on my little updating project that I mentioned yesterday, I’ve become more curious than usual about the accuracy of my various predictions.  I wonder how Haudricourt’s list stacks up against the one that I made back in October, right after the Crew was eliminated by Philly…

A quick overview:

  • Agreement on “locks” – 13
  • My “good bets” that TH says are locks – 6 ((One should note that in October, I had people like Prince and Billy Hall noted as only “good bets,” mostly because the possibility existed they could be traded…))
  • My “good bets” that still have a shot – 2 ((Lamb, Gwynn))
  • My “locks” that will not be on the team – 1 ((Who saw Solomon Torres’s retirement coming???))
  • My “good bets” that will not be on the team – 5 ((Mota, Capuano, Shouse, Escobar, Kapler))

I think I’ll revisit it again when they annouce the 25-man…

The Most Optimistic Brewers Preview You'll Read This Year

Tomorrow is the Brewers’ first spring training game down in Maryvale.  The team looks a bit different than last year, but overall, a lot of familiar faces are back.  Still, the concensus from the national and regional prognosticators is that the Crew will be lucky–very, VERY lucky–to experience the sort of success and playoff run that they had last season.

But I’m not a sports writer or a broadcaster; I’m a baseball fan, so for people like me, spring is all about optimism, and seeing the silver lining around each CC Sabathia-shaped cloud.  With that in mind, here are the Top Five (Perhaps Overly Optimistic) Reasons the Brewers Will Have a Great Season:

  1. Our young pitchers will each start at least 30 games and win 15 apiece. Yovanni Gallardo is going to come back healthy from his knee troubles in 2008, and it will be shown that he racked up enough bad luck last year to last for a while.  Manny Parra will really come into his own in his second full season in the majors, no longer hampered by the nagging inconsistency that was troublesome at times in 2008.  The young 1-2 combo in Milwaukee will draw comparisons to Ken Macha’s Oakland A’s teams that featured Tim Hudson and Barry Zito early in their careers.  Speaking of which,
  2. A change in managerial demeanor will be reflected throughout the clubhouse. I was never a Ned Yost basher– he guided the team that was a laughable riff-raff at the open of 2003 and helped transform them into serious contenders in 2008.  But you can’t deny that by the end, he was wound a bit too tight and the feeling seemed to be reflected in some of the players.  Ken Macha will be more relaxed, and having two more members of his coaching staff with managerial experience will help, too.
  3. Trevor Hoffman will be a steady, if not spectacular, closer from day one, and the trickle-down will lead to clearly defined roles in the bullpen. The Brewers were scrambling to get all their pitchers into a groove in 2008 after Eric Gagne blew his first save on opening day, Carlos Villanueva’s struggles in the rotation led to McClung bouncing back and forth, and a variety of injuries meant guys had to shift around.  This year, Hoffman will be the one and only closer, Villanueva will be where he belongs (in relief), and the rest of the group will be healthy enough to stay comfortable.
  4. Our big guns (Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder) will continue their meteoric rise. Another year under their belts, both comfortable with multi-year contracts, Prince having taken care of himself a bit better in the off-season, our 3- and 4-hitters will each hit at or near .300, blast 30-40 homeruns, and knock in over 100.
  5. The “other guys” will see a reverse of fortunes, too. Bill Hall’s improved eyesight won’t quite return him to 2006 form, but he will hit for a respectable average from both sides and earn his every-day job back.  Corey Hart will shake his post-all-star mental block and rediscover consistency.  Jason Kendall will get some occasional rest from playing every day, and that will reflect itself in an improved offensive game.  Rickie Weeks will benefit from the tutelage of bench coach Willie Randolph in the field, and hitting coach Dale Sveum at the plate as he becomes one of the top lead-off men in the National League.

So even though we don’t have CC or Ben Sheets, the world is not going to end.  We’ve got an exciting and talented group of players ready for another season.  It’s going to be a good 2009…

It's Just About Time

While Jim is sad about the lack of exciting sports-goings-on at this time of year, I am delighted to look ahead to baseball season.  Tom Haudricourt, from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, posted a blog with a link to Baseball Prospectus’s 2009 predictions earlier today…

They mathematically project a team’s record by tallying up individual player projections for the year.  They have the Brewers finishing with a winning record, but missing the playoffs.  It’ll be interesting to come back here in 7 months and see what actually happened!

PLEASE Say It Ain't So!

The Journal-Sentinel is reporting this morning that the Atlanta Braves will consider long-tenured Brewers play-by-play man Jim Powell to fill their radio broadcasting vacancy.  The Braves’ Skip Caray (as well-known and beloved as our own Bob Uecker down south) passed away last summer, and Pete Van Wieren abruptly announced his retirement.

I know I’m not alone in saying that I’ve grown to love Jim Powell on the Brewers Radio Network as much as Bob.  I can rememeber when Jim first came to Milwaukee for the 1996 season.  It was an adjustment for Uecker and the listeners after a long run with Pat Hughes in the broadcast booth.  Over time, the rapport between the broadcasters grew, and now it would be tough to count the memorable moments Jim and Bob have shared on the air (for me, many of them are marked by Jim’s uncontrollable laughter at another of Bob’s deadpan, self-depricating jokes).

Personally, I’ve also grown quite fond of Jim’s play-by-play style.  He never misses a beat in the action, but he also manages to instruct and enlighten the listeners in the finer points of the game on a nightly basis.  I’ve learned more about managerial straegy, the baseball rulebook, and various players’ approaches at the plate or on the field (and truly enjoyed it!) just by listening to Jim than I could have by reading a mittful of books on baseball.  Not only is Jim a sharp baseball guy, but his partner’s comedic timing and bone-dry delivery has rubbed off during the past 13 years.  They both make the broadcast enjoyable even when the game is a blowout, or when the team is not very good.

In offering Jim a chance to work in Atlanta for the Braves, geography has to be their ace in the hole; Jim is from Georgia, and has spoken on air time to time about his youth spent listening to Braves games on the radio.  You can’t fault a guy for jumping on what would probably be a dream job.

However, if the Brewers have any chance of retaining him, I really hope they make a push to do so.  Once again, I’m not alone in thinking that it would be great to have a familiar voice to tune in to after Bob retires (not that there’s been any indication he will any time soon, but he is turning 74 this month).  If one of the issues at hand is money (and why wouldn’t it be), the payroll situation for the Brewers’ broadcast team is probably a stumbling block.  Powell is paid by WTMJ radio, and Uecker is employed by the Milwaukee Brewers.

Granted, I don’t have any “inside knowledge,” but it takes only a slightly-more-than-casual listener to recognize that 620 doesn’t appear to have a ton of cash to thrown around on talent.  They’ve let people go pretty regularly over the last few years, they went to syndication in their 8-midnight timeslot, and Journal Communications (the parent company) also canned the entire on-air staff at WKTI and switched formats shortly before the end of 2008.  Personally, I would like to see some effort made by a consortium of WTMJ and the Brewers to try to hang on to Jim.  The effort may prove futile, but it would be nice to know that they at least asked what it would take to keep him.

Boy, there are a LOT of changes coming down the pike for the 2009 Brewers…

Back To It, I Suppose

So I was out of town for the rest of the week after election day, and then we had a birthday-riffic weekend to recognize Michelle’s 29th (good times were had by all, as far as I know).

I guess I just got a late jump on my post-election news hangover.  What are we going to follow every second of every day for the next few months?  Is there still a war in Iraq or anything?  There’s got to be something I can read about and analyze from 30 different angles, right?

Between the election season and the summer’s baseball season, I was constantly plugged into something, and the amount of information to consume on either topic was close to endless.  Maybe instead of combing the ‘tubes trying to fill my RSS reader back up, I should pull a Violator for a little while and enjoy the silence.

Have a good Monday…