Were the Brewers smart to keep Ben Sheets despite his propensity to miss games, which well may have proven crucial in this race, or were the games he actually pitched in too valuable to give up? Were the Brewers ever considering not keeping him? Should Yovanni Gallardo, arguably the future of the franchise in the rotation, have been extended beyond his prescribed innings limit? Well he hasn't gone past it yet, and if we don't make the playoffs, he won't go significantly over. I think if anyone can take on a little extra load it is Gallardo. Should we have given up Will Inman, Steve Garrison and Joe Thatcher for Scott Linebrink? Tough to answer until a couple more seasons have gone by, but I like that Melvin got good relief help. Linebrink has been about as good as expected. Did not bringing up Ryan Braun at the start of the season have any impact on this team? It was nice having solid defense at that point in the season with JJ and Prince carrying the offense. Has Ned Yost cost this team a playoff spot with his moves? I'd lay the blame mostly on the starting pitching during our second half swoon and... How many games has the bullpen cost this team? ... on the bullpen giving up some ample leads. Every bullpen is going to blow leads, but ours managed to blow some big ones. If we had held 5 of those 16 3-run leads we blew, we'd be comfortably in first by 4 games. Hard to blame Ned for the bullpen blowing big leads. I can understand not liking many of his moves this season, I've yelled thru my television at him several times, but as was said, there's no way his moves directly cost us anything more than a couple games IMO. Not pinch-hitting for Mench against Dempster didn't directly cost us the game, as Jenkins in that situation (by the numbers) would succeed less than 1 out of 10 times more than Mench. I'm not saying that it wouldn't have been the right move, but I just don't think it's a decision that we can point to and say "that cost us a win." Not to mention, managers are "allowed" to go against numbers when they feel it is the right situation ie. if Jenkins was under the weather or not swinging all that well etc... I'm not on the pro-Yost bandwagon (as if there were one), but a change in managers can have negative effects, and Yost knows our players and the players know him.