You bring up a point that I've been considering for weeks now, "suspicious of his influence on a pitching staff". As much as the loss of Derek Johnson has been discussed as the cause of the underwhelming performance of the majority of the pitching staff, I have wondered if Grandal could be part of the problem with the staff? There has been an underlying theory following Grandal for a while that pitchers don’t like throwing to him. As far back as five years ago in San Diego there were three starting pitchers that wouldn’t (or at least didn’t) throw to him in Tyson Ross, Andrew Cashner and Ian Kennedy. However, after he went to the Dodgers, Zack Greinke said the following about Grandal: Then last year the Dodgers obviously benched him in the playoffs, but that was seemingly due to the defensive issues and not a mismanagement of the pitching staff. I haven’t really heard much out of the Brewers pitchers this year one way or another. I still side with the idea that the Brewers pitchers struggles aren’t directly attributed to Grandal in anyway, but I’m open to being proven wrong. It would certainly be fascinating to get a candid answer to that question from those within the pitching staff (something we won’t likely ever get). Every pitcher outside of Davies and Woodruff has regressed hardcore from last year. I'm sure a lot of those guys had some career years but something is up for just about every single pitcher to fall flat on their face. Losing DJ hurt a little I bet but there's not way he can be the sole reason for it. And I'm not putting all the blame on Grandal either. It's probably a combination of the two. Didn't Kershaw have his own non-Grandal personal catcher? And not always the same guy each year? That seems suspicious. And I never know what to make of anything Greinke says. He very well could have said all that with total sarcasm behind it and just never showed it. I would bet he probably just does his own thing anyway and doesn't care about what the catcher wants.