adambr2

He shouldn't have made the team to begin with, but I can appreciate at least they went ahead and fixed it quickly rather than stick this out half the season. Him being DFA'ed doesn't have anything go do with sticking him in AA or AAA...yet. Maybe he gets claimed which would be best case scenario, maybe they flat out release him. DFA just gives them some time to figure it out. If he ends up taking an assignment at Colorado Springs out of the pen I really don't have an issue with that as he is a sunk cost at this point and half of the arms at AA and AAA are just organizational filler types anyway.

Positives: The bats have been as advertised or better. There's nothing more that can really be said about Thames, and Braun shows no signs of slowing. The catching tandem has produced far better offensive and defensive results than could have been anticipated. Though Broxton, Arcia, Villar and Santana all suffered slow starts, they've somewhat showed signs of coming around, particularly Arcia and Santana. After a very shaky start defensively, Villar seems like he will handle 2nd fine. Other than Santana there's no one that stands out sorely defensively that won't be able to field their position at least adequately. Shaw looks like a good find at 3rd, and Perez is the ideal supersub. Anderson has been the lone bright spot in the rotation Negatives: Its still the pitching. While Davies has typically suffered slow starts and has performed better in more recent starts, Nelson and Peralta continue to look like back of the rotation starters at best. Garza hasn't looked bad, but has only had 2 starts. The bullpen relies heavily on Barnes and Knebel, as every other pitcher in the pen appears capable of imploding on any given night. The back end of the bench, in Franklin and Aguilar, don't offer much in terms of offense. Overall: Though April was plagued with plenty of frustrations and blown leads, I think we probably have to take the net result of it of a .500 club and look at that as a positive sign that maybe we're further along in the rebuild than we thought, particularly after playing 26 games in 28 days without our #1 pitcher. . Is it sustainable? I really don't know. They've got guys certainly due for regression, but others that are certainly capable of a higher level than what they've shown, and Guerra's return soon should help. It will be interesting to see where we're at in a month and more telling of the caliber of club that we have than we know right now.

Brewers have led in 24 out of 26 games (92.3%) this year. I don't know what that means, maybe nothing, but it's got to be the highest percentage in baseball.

Great game for Santana and credit where it is due to Garza for the kind of game our pitching staff needed.

Well, we did not have a losing April. Not exactly the kind of series we wanted to have but after how the last couple games went, at least we escaped with one.

I love having a closer who walks batters.

Boom! Now some insurance would be nice with Feliz being our closer and all.

Gameday said Braun left with a shoulder injury? That's not good.

Well, Knebel is about the best guy they have in the pen. If you can't go to him to put out a fire you can pretty much not trust anyone in that pen ever.

Santana is on pace for 31 HR, and it feels like he's struggled the whole month. He's got pop.

Gameday has this ump calling strikes well off the outside corner today.

There we go!

Saw 'In play, no out' and figured we had broken up the no-hitter. Nope, just the perfect game.

9 up 9 down with 6 Ks first time through our order. Well this is going well.

Please at least salvage a game...getting swept at home by a mediocre team would not be a good way to end the month, and a .500 April would at least give us something to feel good about .

Change what, though? This has been a failure of the franchise for years -- developing pitching. This farm has exactly one ace (Sheets) and one solid #2 (Gallardo) to show for decades of development. I don't know where the problem is or why but it's obviously the root of our problems. We can't just play 'rent an ace' every few years and unload the farm to a different team that actually can develop pitching. It's not a good or sustainable business model. I have high hopes for Hader and Woodruff, but if they just end up like what we have with Nelson and Peralta, we're still going nowhere. I've been critical over the years of wasting our resources buying middle of the rotation guys in free agency, but hell, we can't even develop good middle of the rotation guys.

Absolutely. I mean I don't agree with the way Cravy handled things, but I get it more lately. Milone had no business getting a majors deal, and no business making the team. Honestly, they could DFA basically every single pitcher on this current staff for minor league replacements besides Davies, Anderson, Knebel and Barnes, and none would be missed much. That is a sad statement about our current pitching staff.

How bad did Shaw's injury look?

Ah, totally forgot Tommy Milone was on this team. Wish I hadn't been reminded.

Aguilar can be DFA whenever for all I care. His spring is looking more and more like a total fluke. Kind of useless to carry a 1B only player on your bench if he can't hit.

The simple and correct 5 word answer whenever anyone asks you why the Brewers can't compete for a Wild Card this year: 'Our pitching is very bad.'

I'm done with Nelson. Hard to find a MLB starter who has been worse in the last year. He's terrible.

Is it just me, or does Jaime Garcia own us every time? Still, we had our chances in the 1st and 2nd.

I thought players could only be tested 3 times a year unless they'd previously failed a test. There's no limit anymore. Still, I'd be all over this if I was the MLBPA. It's clearly not random which I believe is in violation of their joint agreement.

Getting a little ridiculous. They're not even trying to pretend anymore that there isn't anything fishy about this process. No one gets 'randomly' tested 4 times in a month. Come on.