PeaveyFury

I've flown quite a bit and never even heard of Airtran. I'll keep it in mind. They're also a huge sponsor of the Brewers' TV broadcasts so far this year.

If the throw had been a foot more to the left, he had a play on him.

I'm a little concerned about the angry look from Macha after the wild pitch there- I think Escobar would have been out by a decent amount.

All the more reason he should have moved to acquire someone of #2 quality or better. As I said before, the major problem with the rotation is that they went into last season assuming/counting on Parra to fill that role, as he had shown promise in 2008. apparently it's just convenient to ignore the Justin Thompson deal being a miserable failure just prior to him getting canned in Texas I didn't mention the Thompson deal because the de la Rosa deal happened after it- considering the pitching moves he made early in his Milwaukee tenure, how did the Thompson deal keep him from acquiring pitchers like de la Rosa and Capellan? Or are you claiming that the combination of the two was enough to put him off of those types of moves forever? Nothing "convenient" about it, just not following the logic or seeing how that's easier to prove than following the shift of what the team's developmental state went to. Furthermore he's hasn't even traded for a MLB pitcher since the team became competitive so where is this shift in philosophy towards low ceiling players? Where was the discussion restricted to only pitchers acquired by trade? People have been discussing Davis, Suppan, etc as part of this discussion. I'm discussing the whole picture, not limiting it to trades. You've always defended Melvin, that's fine, you're certainly welcome to do whatever you want to do, but you've hardly been objective about his philosophy either. Because I don't really disagree with the philosophy conceptually. Plugging veteran pitching into a rotation to supplement Gallardo and the young offense makes sense on paper. Obviously, the results aren't there and Suppan wasn't the right piece of the puzzle, but it's not hard to see the rationale or logic behind the overall idea. You've made it quite clear that you disagree with taking that approach, which is fine obviously, but you have to at least be willing to acknowledge that the way that you would prefer them to do this is not the one and only valid way to approach it. Ultimately the proof will be in the results... when the team is only able to muster a single playoff appearance with Braun and Fielder together in the lineup I remember having a lengthy debate with you at the trade deadline last year about the Brewers "window" being centered around Fielder's departure where you claimed that the Brewers' window was much longer than that... am I to read from your statement here that your opinion has changed?

We didn't even match up in 2008 with Sabathia as a rental. Only because Sheets got hurt. I'd have put a short rotation of Sabathia/Sheets/Parra/Bush against anyone that offseason which was back before Parra and Bush imploded for whatever reasons. In fact he got lucky that Parra and Rogers have come back to be starting pitchers at all. Since neither of them have proven to be EFFECTIVE starters, I'm not sure how lucky he really got here. he just doesn't trade for upside pitching after getting burned by JDLR and Justin Thompson, he pursues pitchers and players with high floors because they carry less risk. I'm just not convinced that there's any shred of evidence to support this idea instead of the idea that they simply wanted veteran pitching to fill out the rotation as they became contenders. The shift in their type of acquisitions is directly in line with the shift in the team's competitiveness, which is probably a more logical conclusion than a fear of acquiring a type of player just because De la Rosa was a bust.

Teams dont win championships on the arms of Doug Davis and Suppan. No, not typically, but they usually fill in rotations with guys like that. Unless you're the Yankees, you're going to find almost every team with a 4.5 ERA guy in the 4-5 spot in the rotation. You're talking about getting guys like Davis and expecting them to be one of the top pitchers on the staff, which clearly wasn't the expectation heading into this season. He was brought in to supplement what we already have, and that IS what contending teams typically do.

It's not like Melvin hasn't acquired young high upside pitching in the past. Exactly. While there is some understandable concern that they haven't traded for De la Rosa-types in recent years, the shift away from acquiring that sort of talent has correlated directly with the state of the team. Taking chances on guys like Capellan, de la Rosa, Jackson, etc made a bunch of sense for the 2002-2006 Brewers with where the team was at that point, but since then the Brewers have clearly felt that they haven't had the luxury of throwing guys like de la Rosa out there to see if they stick and have instead shifted to supplementing their rotation with proven veterans. I think it's fair to wonder if the Brewers figured that Gallardo, Parra, and to a lesser extent Villanueva (who showed promise as a starter early on in his Major League career) would be the young pitching they'd rely on and turned their acquisitions to veterans to offset the uncertainty that the younger guys had/have while developing. Obviously, Parra's struggles have hurt the team in a major way.... I truly feel that if Parra had worked out as we expected last year, that our pitching issues the last two seasons could have been almost completely avoided. Whether putting the team's faith in our internal youth was a mistake is debatable, but I think the motives behind the moves the team has made in the last couple of years with the pitching staff aren't hard to rationalize.

He seemed to be spotting his fastball better and was able to get the change over like normal. Hopefully its like 2008 where he started rough but got things straightened out.

Nice start for Trevor....

I guess because I was so vehemently against resigning Hoffman, signing Hawkins, signing Wolf/Davis, and trading for Gomez this first month of the season has been my worst fears coming true. I'm not rooting against those guys, I desperately want them to succeed now that they are here, but there was a reason I didn't want to spend money on aging pitching. Wolf has been pretty decent, hopefully Davis can build off his last start, I have to believe Hoffman will turn it around, I think Hawkins is going to be up and down all season... Plus Gomez has a .786 OPS so far, which is far better than any of us would have put him at this point. Obviously that can change, but his power thus far has been a nice surprise.

TH agrees with you Peavey. Well, that's certainly the kiss of death on my theory. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif Seriously, I'm not looking for excuses or anything- he's been terrible. I'm just trying to figure out why he's being terrible without trying to use the main thing that has gotten him 594 saves. It's like sending Ben Sheets to the mound and having him never throw his curve.

But he's been pitching from behind a lot this year, so I think that kinda explains it. Yeah, I certainly see your point. But going back to the Cards series and all, even when he was in deep counts and ahead of hitters, he's throwing like 95% fastballs in each outing. He's not trying to get ahead with it- it's always a fastball down the heart of the plate, followed by a second fastball down the heart of the plate. It's just strange as hell- its almost as if he's either afraid to throw it or doesn't want to rely on it, which is getting him absolutely crushed right now. And I agree that if whatever is going on here isn't fixed soon, he's pretty much done.

Its still in April and this is like the 3rd or 4th kick to the gut kind of game already. Yeah. These are getting really old, and it's still April.

Everyone saying he's just washed up or that he's finally catching up to his age are ignoring the fact that HE'S NOT THROWING HIS BEST PITCH! Why? If he's behind, it's tough for him to throw it. Ahead 0-1 to Cedeno, for the record.

A dead arm keeps a pitcher from throwing change-ups?

Something has to explain his absolute refusal to throw his best pitch.

What the hell?

I'm dumbfounded that he's throwing almost all fastballs. It's just insane- almost no changeups again tonight.

The fastball heavy-ness of Hoffman's outings has been crazy. Absolute insanity.

Ron Cedeno? Really?

and maybe 5 average or below position players. How does that break down, out of curiosity?

Nice night for Wolf so far, but I'm expecting disaster in the 8th. Not a good idea to let him hit there.

Wolf keeping them in the game- offense needs to wake up!

I agree that LePay would be a wonderful option considering that his schedule would be open until late August, while Laravee has to start doing Packer stuff in mid/late July. As mentioned, the Learfield affiliation would probably complicate things, but I hope the Brewers at least explore other options, as being stuck with Nelson or someone like Bill Michaels for a long period of time would be far from ideal. Get well Bob!

Yeah, it was bad enough before I heard that as well, RyDogg. Knowing its actually 5 years tacked on and they'll be paying him 25 million when he's going on 37 seems like a disaster waiting to happen.