Ennder

There is only 1 bad defender in the IF and that is Fielder so somewhat. Groundballs are going to find holes in bunches sometimes, this isn't a Brewer only thing.

I would hope Mark would fire Melvin and/or Macha if they decided to DFA Davis since it would be such a knee jerk move to make. Davis pitched a decent game today, the big inning was a bunch of groundball singles in a row and then Macha probably leaving him in too long.

Doesn't bother me that much, a bunch of groundball singles is going to happen from time to time. I'm just mad that Macha didn't pull him when IRod was up. He was at 100 pitches already and was starting to throw a lot of balls, just bad management.

Davis really shouldn't be facing Maxwell here, one of those dumb times the manager tries to get him the win rather than trying to win the actual game.

The problem with a game like this is it just isn't fun to watch the rest. Either the Brewers win a snooze fest or they tank and I don't want to watch it, heh.

This is probably not a good matchup for Escobar. Marquis is a heavy sinker ball guy and Escobar is a heavy groundball guy. Plus of course Macha knew Counsell would hit a grand slam, heh.

You are way overvaluing Carlos Lee here, he was not bringing back any good pitching prospect for 1/3 year of service. The only problem with this deal was that we gave up Cruz in it, Cordero for Lee was a win for us. Lee falls into that good but not star level player range and those guys don't bring back big prospects for partial seasons. Also I question whether we needed pitching prospects then, this big hole in our pitching depth didn't appear until 2008. In 2007 we had a rotation of Suppan, Bush, Sheets, Capuano, Vargas and Villanueva with Parra and Gallardo knocking on the doorstep as well and it looked like we had some other young pitching that might pan out. Pretty much the same thing with the Doug Davis deal, we gave up basically no real talent with no upside and we got back what ended up being no talent but at least had some upside, if that is the biggest strike against Melvin he is going to look good. People still fail to look at the fact that Estrada was hitting before his injury and Vargas was pitching well before his with a 4.30 ERA and peripherals that supported it going into August when he suffered through back problems. This deal had a chance to be a win for him, it just wasn't because guys got hurt. The Suppan deal has been his biggest mistake by far and I'm one of those that believe Mark A. had something to do with it. The Hall deal was one I didn't like but it shouldn't have been as bad as it turned out either, there was just no way to know he would completely fall apart instead of sliding back to mediocrity. Looper was probably more pitching through an injury than anything, the expectations should have been a high 4 ERA pitcher and the pay was about right, maybe a tad high but at that point we were a bit desperate, but that does agree with your fact that paying for older mediocre guys can be pretty bad. The whole Gagne thing was just weird all around. I think the biggest problem we have faced is missing on too many pitchers in the system. When you look around the league over the past 10 years it is hard to find a team that has brought up fewer successful starters than the Brewers have. Buying mediocre free agent pitching isn't a choice Melvin made because he wanted to, it is because we have completely failed to develop our own pitching which is absolutely essential for everyone but the big market teams.

Heh. Soup actually lives at around 86-88 most of the time, he just doesn't have good movement or particularly good location on his fastball so being that slow is painful.

According to gameday this guys strike zone is just silly. 3 of those 4 pitches to Morgan were strikes including one that completely caught the plate. In the first inning I noticed a few of Livan's outside pitchers were called strikes. It has been all over the place. Anyone watching the game that can comment? Looking back on things it looks like he is giving a really small strike zone for LH hitters and a wide one for RH hitters.

I hope someone tells Wolf he shouldn't be swinging at the first pitch after back to back walks, especially when the ball isnt' in the strike zone.

Well I don't think those two things are really connected in any way. Most people would like them to have not signed Suppan, they were talking about Sheets or Davis. I think those two contracts are a bit of a wash and I'm not much of a Davis fan. Regardless of where the money went the Suppan deal is hurting the team, don't think anyone will argue with that.

Right now I think Escobar is about the 7th best hitter on the team so I'm fine with him in the bottom of the order somewhere. So far this season he has been our 8th best hitter. He certainly has the talent to work his way into the top 5 but he just isn't there yet for me. I think Macha is putting out a pretty decent batting order right now with Edmonds/Hart batting 2nd. I'm not a huge fan of Hart doing it vs RHP but we don't have an easy option to replace him so I'm ok with it.

Yes you do, but you pay him less because of it. If Weeks goes out and plays 162 games this season it doesn't do anything to lower his injury risk at all. He is still going to have bad wrists that could cause him problems at any time, it is going to take a good 2 full season to even start thinking of him as not being a risk anymore and even then they could blow at any time. The only thing playing 162 games does is raise his asking price. I think you either extend him now or you let him walk, waiting until the end of the year and then extending him is the only bad way to handle the situation. You pay full price but keep just as much risk that way.

I'd say it is much more likely that the multiple injuries he has had have gotten in the way of him reaching the potential that he was hyped. As for the comments about him being mentally weak, those really have no basis and are something people latched onto last year for some reason. They have no real proof backing it up and they aren't going to change their minds so it isn't really worth arguing over but I can never help myself I guess. If Parra has one problem it seems to be an inability to pitch with a runner on 1B. He was actually better last year with RISP than with bases empty, doesn't sound like a mentally weak guy to me. He was pretty terrible every time there was a runner on 1B in a SB situation though. He is a guy who just has problems throwing strikes, most likely because of the injuries.

Arguments can be made that it wasn't that bad either. Especially if you look at the pre-injury numbers of Estrada and Vargas. There haven't been many good trades though(other than Pods for Lee obviously), just a bunch of mediocre ones.

ER is just a horrible way to measure how good or bad a game was, if you have to use an ERA type stat to judge him at least use a component stat(and not FIP or tERA which are horrible for small samples). After 1 game his xFIP is 3.95 and his career ERA-xFIP is 0.03 so it is generally a decent judge of things for him. He has given up a few extra HR as he got older so maybe fudge that to like 4.25 and you have how he has performed so far. He struck out 4 and only walked 1 which is very good. The big wort on his game was giving up more FB than GB, he can't survive if he keeps doing that. I have no problems at all with the game he pitched considering it was his first of the season and the wind conditions were so bad. It is 1 start though so it is basically meaningless either way. Unfortunately it takes at least 6 or 7 games to learn anything at all about a pitcher which is probably the minimum leash he'll get from Macha. The fact he gets the pirates 2 times in a row probably doesn't help either since it will make him look better than he is and well be stuck with him longer.

Well that is good. Hopefully he is returning to form because we are going to need him this year. To expand on this a little since you didn't see it, Hart misplayed two balls that went for "doubles" even though they should have been outs.

If you are going to try to judge a pitcher on one game pitched going by ERA is about the absolute worst way you could go about it. Suppan pitched ok, not great but ok. If he gives that kind of effort every game we'll be ok and his ERA will be in that 4.75-5.25 range that most expect.

He was removed as closer because he got hurt in spring training and pitched poorly in April until he got healthy. From May 1st until the trade he had a 2.87 ERA and .634 OPS against so I highly doubt they were down on him at all.

Brewers are over .500 over the past 5 seasons which is pretty remarkable considering the state of the organization when he took over. One of the worst teams in baseball with one of the worst minor league systems in baseball and one of the smaller markets in baseball. I'm not saying Melvin should get a free pass or that he can for sure take us to the next level but any evaluation of him has to be a positive one at this point. I think if anything he has been a bit underrated by our fan base. I think questioning his future is very valid but complaining about his past doesn't make much sense.

7 years ago I wouldn't have expected the franchise to be in as good a state as it is in now. Guess it is a matter of expectations and reality. It is not easy rebuilding the worst organization in baseball and that is what he has done. I'm not sure he is the guy to take it to the next level though, so a change to someone you think would be better suited for that would be fine. Bottom line is we have failed to develop pitching and that has killed the growth of the organization the past couple of years. We have developed like 2 viable starting pitchers in a 10 year or so period, that is a very bad track record. Not sure I can blame Melvin for it.

Yeah I think I would probably go to 50% fewer games if it were downtown.

It has certainly been a frustrating start to the season but if we can pull off a win tomorrow we are right where I expected us to be. I expect this team to be a little under .500 against good teams and a good bit over .500 against bad teams. We have faced 2.5(cubs are right on the border) good teams so far.

You are giving Yost way too much credit here.

You got me there! Macha has done some things I really disagree with but from a bullpen management standpoint he hasn't bothered me until this game. This was every bit as mismanaged as a Yost game and he was king of mismanaging a bullpen.