adambr2

He made one start in AAA this year. Be as disappointed as you want but that's no excuse to mislead people. He has a 5.4 ERA ZiPS projection. His fastball averaged 86-87 MPH today . He's has #6/#7 starter material I would guess. It's a shame we needed our joke of a backup 1B and our pitcher to come up with big hits with the bases loaded earlier in the game. No, he made two starts in AAA. He had two, not one, really, really atrocious starts in AAA. If you're going to accuse me of misleading people, at least accompany it with non-misleading information.

Can we use this thread to bring back the Official Vent Thread? We just were humiliated and shut out by the most overpaid Brewer in franchise history, a guy who has been terrible for the last 5 years, and someone who was getting throttled down on the farm by AAA hitters. It doesn't get any worse than that.

Frustrated and embarrassed by our performance today. Suppan was getting knocked around to the tune of a 12+ ERA by AAA hitting. He didn't really throw any pitches today that made you think he was any better than that. It was humiliating.

Congrats to the Brewers on being the first team to lose a major league game to Jeff Suppan since 2010. Bravo.

This is just a bad baseball team right now.

Or just swing at Ball 7 there.

Braun, can you please take a walk if they're going to give you one? We need baserunners.

Is today really that surprising? I'm not even sure that it is.

I don't want to hear a word from Narron or RR about how good Soup looked today. That had nothing to do with it. This offense is just straight up embarrassing today.

As a fan, a performance like this against a player who cannot even retire minor league hitters is completely unacceptable.

When I watch the Brewers take batting practice, they usually hit pretty well. A lot of homeruns, a lot of hard hit balls. You'd think they could do the same with Jeff Suppan throwing batting practice, but apparently not.

This is an embarrassment.

We should have brought up some Timber Rattlers to face Suppan, seeing as how minor leaguers are hitting .486 off Soup this year.

Compared to what? I hear this a lot, and I'm not saying I totally disagree or anything, and since I've never officiated at any sport at any level, anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt, but look at the officiating of professional sports in general. In the NFL, you have 22 guys to watch in a short 5-10 second period of play, not to mention watching for many subjective calls such as holding, pass interference, etc, during this period. In the NBA you're constantly watching 10 people and also having to judge subjective calls. In baseball, you're watching one piece of action at a time. most of your calls are black and white, not subjective (i.e, did the runner beat the throw? did the ball land in fair territory, or foul?) Some of these calls can be extremely close, but they're not subjective, and they could always use replay to help out with the really close ones like they do in other professional sports. Probably the most subjective calls in baseball are balls and strikes, but they're not supposed to be, there is a designed strike zone, but in practice every umpire has variables and tendencies. I'm not saying that they don't need to be good at what they do and have good eyes, (like Braun being called safe at 2nd last night on the stolen base. The average person probably misses that call). I'm just saying when you stack baseball officiating up against any other professional sports, what sport can you honestly say is easier to officiate?

Something I noticed in the game against the Padres last night from homeplate umpire Mike Winters that I've noticed on several other occasions and find a little disturbing. On that 3-2 pitch to Ishikawa, Winters called a third strike to end the game on a pitch that was well off the outside corner and not a pitch that was called a strike all night. It was clearly called that way in the interests of ending the game. What should have actually happened is Ishikawa walking to first with the tying run at the plate. By no means are umpires intended to be perfect, I understand that. But there is a big difference between incompetence (just missing a call at a base), and negligence (letting emotions/feelings/atmosphere dictate a call). I am not saying that they are all guilty of that, but I have seen it happen enough times as to where I think it's a problem. The party line is to say that umpires do a great job in MLB, and for the most part, they probably do, but will anyone deny that some of them do at times let their emotions dictate calls on the field? This can be anything from hearing a roaring home crowd in the 9th (like last night), to expanding your strike zone to get a game over with in the 9th, to squeezing a pitcher who showed you up by shaking his head on the mound at an earlier pitch. This is all inexcusable -- at no time should an umpire take the game into his own hands. But -- why shouldn't they? There is no accountability. An umpire has no incentive other than his own ethical values not to let outside influences dictate calls -- there is no consequence for blowing a call that changes the course of a game or even season. At least, not to the point where it's going to hurt him in the wallet or cost him his job.

You suck, K-Rod. You'd think $8M would buy a better setup man.

RR using "Gamel is not Prince" as an excuse to start Ishikawa occasionally is kind of annoying to me. Ramirez, Gonzalez, Hart, and Weeks are all not Prince, but they are all every day starters. If a starter has an injury or otherwise needs a rest day or mental day off, then sure, by all means, but just because Gamel is not Prince, that should not be used as justification to start Ishikawa. The amount of days off that Gamel should have during the season could be easily covered by Hart or Kottaras. Let's not overestimate the value of a bench player like Ishikawa. He is carrying a .208 OBP and is limited to one defensive position, a position that could be played by almost anyone on the roster in a pinch. He could be DFA'ed today with no real affect.

This is exactly why I didn't want Ishikawa on the roster in the first place. Just too good of an excuse for Ron to eventually give Gamel a few days off every week.

Pinch-hitting Izturis for Ishikawa in a big spot in the 8th is a pretty big managerial offense. Leaving in Ishikawa to try and tie the game, even with the L/L matchup, or going with any of Aoki, Kottaras, or Gamel were all better options. You could make a pretty good case that Gallardo, who certainly has more power and sadly, a better career OPS than Izturis, was a better option. There are certain guys that are such a liability at the plate that you need to put any illusions of a favorable R/L matchup out of your mind. Izturis is one of those guys. He has no business pinch-hitting for anybody in any situation that doesn't involve emptying the bench in a blowout game.

Is it time to start looking to the farm for bullpen help and consider putting Peralta or even Rivas in the Brewer bullpen? Especially in the case of Peralta, I'm sure that converting him to a bullpen role for now is not ideal, but this bullpen is far and away the last ranked bullpen in the NL right now, and at this rate, they're going to cost us a lot of games. It's not all their fault, they've been pretty taxed as the rotation has been very disappointing so far.

He did pretty well with Wolf on the mound earlier, actually. He's not going to do as well in that department as Lucroy but no catcher stops them all.

Huge!!

C'mon Rickie. Let's come up with a bit RBI hit here.

For being the complete butcher that everyone seems to think Kottaras is behind the plate, he sure looks solid behind there tonight.

Wolf is becoming the new Doug Davis. Just so slow and painful to watch.