Entries Tagged 'baseball' ↓

Still really busy here trying to configure the new blog website and name. Once I get everything fully integrated over into the new domain, czwief.com/blog will no longer be functional. But that hasn’t happened yet — I’ll announce it when it does.

You can check over on my progress on brewerparadiselost.com, since I have that up and running. Links, categories, the new header, and all that other jazz haven’t been implemented yet. I’ll cross-post any posts I make from now until I’m finished blogging over there.

As for last night’s game, it was a really good and much needed win. The Brewers have seemingly fallen behind in their last few series and it’s really good to get a leg up on a 4-gamer against a team that can occasionally go nuts against the Brewers. Putting in Trevor Hoffman in the 9th was a bit unnecessary, but any time you can get a poor Seth McClung relief appearance out of the way without any harm done to Milwaukee’s record.

I gotta tell you, it’s always a pleasure to tune into MLB.TV and listen to one-half of the Reds’ broadcast team. George Grande and Chris Welsh are wonderful to listen to. Grande has a baseball kind of voice and narrates the game well with it, and Welsh provides detailed information about pitching commentary that I’ve never heard of in my years of listening to Bill Schroeder. I mean, I didn’t know until tonight that Jason Kendall always forces pitchers he catches (no matter what team he’s on) to throw inside commonly — even when they’re uncomfortable doing it. Would Schroeder really drop that good of a nugget?

They spent a good detail of time going over pitches and pitch selection. Welsh did an awesome job of explaining a pitch and how it breaks while Homer Bailey served up pitches that didn’t. There was one particular pitch where the camera got a perfect angle inside of Bailey’s glove before he threw the pitch, and was able to tell how his fingers manipulate the seams to get a screwball-like action on his pitch. That’s the kind of in-game context I want from a color commentator, not just “he has loads of RBIs.”

There are few announcers in baseball who can provide that kind of intricate context during a game. Welsh is one of them. Ron Darling is another.

And, of course, some announcers get a free pass and can say whatever he wants and it will still be an awesome baseball experience. His name is Vin Scully.

Just some things to think about as we reach the midway point of the season…

*** Milwaukee’s spent the majority of the first half playing slightly above their record. However their recent 3-8 June Swoon has them at the All-Star Break with a negative pythagorean record. BP’s playoff odds say the Brewers only have a 20% chance to make the playoffs despite being 2 1/2 games out of first place.

BP’s playoff odds basically combine the team’s current record and projects their pythagorean record for the rest of the season. Since the Brewers have scored approximately as many runs as they’ve given up, they should be expected to have a .500 record over the rest of the year, according to BP. An 83-win team won’t make the postseason; they’ll either need some luck or better play in order to capture a playoff birth.

*** With that said, this team isn’t as bad as their June has been, and they should pick it up. Most of Manny Parra’s struggles may be behind him, as a fresh look at AAA have seemingly given him more confidence in his pitches — he should return back to the form we expected him soon. Dave Bush is coming back from an injury and pitched really well in a rehab assignment, so there’s no reason to believe he won’t be back to his form.

Remember that when the rotation is back to full strength it will be the same rotation that helped the Brewers get 18 wins in May and a 3.85 ERA. Everybody talks about trading valuable parts of the farm system away to get another starter at the deadline, but if the rotation comes back with full strength than I see no reason to trade away parts for a Jarrod Washburn when the pitchers the Brewers have at the moment are just as good as he would be. If there was a C.C. Sabathia type of pitcher available who wouldn’t cost everything but the kitchen sink to get (i.e. Roy Halladay), then I’d advocate getting someone, but until then, no dice. The pitching staff is just fine where they are; they’ll stop struggling sooner or later. Preferably sooner.

*** A could of weeks ago I wrote about management’s use of Casey McGehee over Mat Gamel in many key situations where it would have been better to put the lefty slugger in over the current hot bat. Well it appears McGehee’s finally cooled off: he’s 2 for his last 14 over this current homestand and has sat in favor of Gamel recently, probably because of the problems he has with his knee.

McGehee might be entering a prolonged slump here. I only say this because he’s a career .283/.340/.429 hitter in the minors and it’s really, really unlikely a 27-year-old would suddenly find his swing. If scouts for the Cubs would have seen this kind of power or discipline at the plate with any kind of consistency, they wouldn’t have placed him on waivers just a few months ago.

Since his knee is still struggling and it’s likely he’s starting to slump at the plate, now is the time to ride Gamel until Casey’s back to 100 percent.

*** The upcoming schedule for the Brewers is incredibly easy and the Cardinals lead just might evaporate pretty rapidly through August. After spending the last couple weeks before the All-Star break playing the toughest and best teams in the NL, they spend the next month and a half taking a break against them. Here’s a quick list of who they play until the end of August:

4 @ Cincinnati
3 @ Pittsburgh
3 vs. Atlanta
4 vs. Washington
3 @ San Diego
3 @ Los Angeles
3 @ Houston
3 vs. San Diego
3 vs. Houston
3 @ Pittsburgh
4 @ Washington
3 vs. Cincinatti
3 vs. Pittsburgh

The only good team the Brewers play until the end of August is LA, and every other series is absolutely winnable. That’s 12 of the next 13 series against .500 or lower teams. With the starting pitching coming back to full strength, I’m not so sure the Brewers need to trade for a pitcher, nevertheless anyone. I’m thinking 14 games against the Padres and Nationals coming up soon might solve some of the sicknesses that have been plaguing Milwaukee since the beginning of the year.

Another thing to consider is that the Brewers essentially started off the season with a 4-9 mark calling for the head of a couple of players. They were patient and waited it out — and were rewarded in May. Let’s wait a little while before panicking for Roy Halladay.

*** Prince Fielder owns.

A lot of people aren’t swooning over Prince as much as I thought they would after bumping up his OPS by over .200 points from last year. His on-base percentage is a whopping .423 — he’s learned to take walks. He’s on pace for about 40 homers. Pitchers are too afraid to throw him strikes now that he just takes the free pass to first — this Dale Sveum hitting philosophy is way better than Jim Skaalen’s.

One more thing I thought about Skaalen: Last year with the Brewers, virtually every single hitter put up mediocre numbers compared to their career norms. After he was subsequently fired, he’s now the coach of the Oakland Athletics. The A’s are currently awfully underachieving due to the offense putting up incredibly mediocre numbers. Is there a coincidence here?

*** Prince Fielder owns.

Manny Parra made his first start today after a four-start stint in AAA where he did pretty darn well compared to his big league disaster. His peripherals aren’t quite there yet (19K, 13BB, 24 2/3 innings pitched), but he did a good job of keeping the ball in the park and on the ground. He’s appeared to regain at least some confidence and with the rotation in flux as it is it’s time to bring him back.

He decided to perform admirably, to the tune of 7 shutout innings. He hardly had any jams and used the sun to his advantage (Todd Coffey, however, did not). He threw a ton of strikes after complaining about not having the confidence to throw any of his pitches for strikes and got ahead of hitters better than I’ve seen him do all season long.

With him coming back and hopefully being a solid rotation piece, should the Brewers still trade for another starting pitcher to last them through the rest of the season?

I wrote on Monday about the current state of the pitching market and why it makes sense for the Brewers to just stand pat where they are, with regards to Doug Davis. Now, all of a sudden, J.P. Ricciardi says Roy Halladay is available for trade and all of a sudden everbody’s nuts for Halladay! FOX Sports’ own Boras-mouthpiece Ken Rosenthal said in his article that Halladay is ‘all but gone’ in Toronto. Whoo, how exciting! Maybe the Brewers will finally add that pitching piece they so desperately need.

But wait! There’s more. Here’s what Toronto’s GM Ricciardi had to say about Halladay just yesterday:

It would take a lot for us to part with him. We’ve gotten a lot of calls from teams but none of them are telling us at this point what they’re willing to give up. If you’re coming at us with a ‘B” list of young players, don’t bother. This is one of the five best players in baseball. It’s going to take a significant package of players for us to even listen. So as the teams call we’ll go through the ones we feel are the serious ones and then we’ll start scouting their farm systems to see if there’s anything we can do.”

“My gut feeling is no we won’t [make a deal] because there aren’t too many teams out there who are willing to give us the significant package of prospects we would need to make this go. Teams protect their prospects.

In other words Ricciardi said that a player even as good as Halladay is available but it’s going to take a mountain of candy to sweeten the deal enough for them. This suspiciously sounds like the media is trying to create a story out of nothing.

Of course now that Halladay’s been brought up, the media has successfully made something out of nothing. The internet is abuzz with Halladay rumors. The problem with all this new trade talking is that the media has successfully created a story when there might not be one. No more complaining about how much attention Brett Favre’s gotten!

Here is a pretty interesting article about Halladay’s current trade value with what he should get on the market. Here’s some of the more important points:

First off, let’s look at Halladay’s win values over the years. Since 2002, he’s been worth about 46 wins in 1,585 innings, or right around an average of six wins per year. He’s on pace for about a seven win season this year, and he shows no signs of slowing down. Going forward, ZIPS projects a 3.21 FIP and 106 innings in his remaining 15 starts this year, which would be worth another 3.5 wins. Halladay is a +6 to +7 win pitcher, easily the best in baseball.

The market value for wins took a tumble on the low end last year, but at the high end, teams were still willing to pay around $5 million per win for premium free agents. Based on that, we’d say that Halladay’s fair market value is something like $30 to $35 million per season. However, those $5 million per win contracts were all long term deals, which carry extra risk to the organization and therefore pull down the annual average value that teams are willing to pay. With only a 15 month commitment, the long term risk with Halladay is substantially lower, and teams should (and will) pay a premium for that risk avoidance.

…

But, you can’t forget about the fact that he’s very likely to be a Type A free agent at the end of 2010, and the acquiring team would be able to recoup two quality draft choices if they didn’t re-sign him as a free agent. Thanks to some good work by Victor Wang, we can see that the value of Halladay’s Type A status is around $8 million or so.

$52 million for Halladay’s performance + $8 million for the draft picks = $60 million in total value. He will be paid $22 million over that time frame, so 60-22 = $38 million.

To acquire the Jays ace, teams should be expected to surrender something like $40 million in value.

What does $40 million in value look like? Something like three terrific prospects who are not that far from the majors. No one’s giving up players from the Matt Wieters/David Price mold, but it’s going to take several players from that second prospect tier, the top 25-50 type guys.

So in order to obtain Halladay the Brewers would be looking at shipping away J.J. Hardy or Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain, and Bret Lawrie, at the very least. Does that sound worth it to you?

I’m not the biggest fan of disarming the entire farm system to set the franchise back multiple years just to gain an extra win or two for 2009. The really nice thing about last year’s C.C. Sabathia trade was that it didn’t handicap the franchise for the upcoming years; Matt LaPorta was blocked and the other prospects involved weren’t exactly the major-league-ready types. If the Brewers were to give up $40 million for Roy Halladay…that would destroy the franchise. $40 million is almost half of the Brewers’ current salary.

It would be different if Halladay was sour grapes about his time in Toronto and the Blue Jays were looking to get what they could for him. However it sounds like Halladay is happy in Toronto and Ricciardi is just as happy keeping him there. In other words, he’s not going to take pennis on the dollar for Halladay. $40 million in talent seems about right.

It just doesn’t make sense to trade away the farm system — or anyone, for that matter — with the rotation the Brewers have at the beginning of the year. Parra’s only slightly broken (and hopefully is back for good) and when Bush comes back the rotation will be back to where it was at the beginning of the year and in May when the Brewers were the best team in the major leagues. Overpaying for Halladay or Javier Vazquez isn’t going to be the answer. It’s just not going to be worth it.

I can’t wait until the Brewers trade Ryan Braun.

All kidding aside, this sounds just like Doug Melvin is trying to use the media to get his point across that players don’t need to be criticizing the management. Maybe he took it personally. I have no idea. I can only guess at what’s going on.

Players as well as upper management in the MLB use the media solely for strategic purposes I’m sure, as it’d be the most logical thing to do — you can manipulate the public’s perception of you, your team, and your players through the newspaper. It’s why people who say that “reporter X is just a spokesperson for Scott Boras” are essentially right but they should extend that to “reporter X is just a spokesperson for the baseball team.” You can replace “baseball team” with “government” or “university” or any other entity and you are still accurate in terms of the crux of the U.S. media. Media manipulation is one of the ways the Brewers create a positive spin on their ballclub. Remember that Fox Sports Wisconsin is a partner with the Milwaukee Brewers and not an independent media entity.

In other words, my guess as to what Melvin’s trying to do is give Brauny a little slap on the wrist in public just as a warning to never speak out against the pitching staff again. This won’t be made into a big deal so long as Braun keeps his mouth shut from now on and only is frank enough not to want to cause a big tussle in public.

So Derek Jeter has been a better shortstop in 2009 than Jason Bartlett. Instead, teams who have large markets can just vote up their players to see them.

There’s not really anything wrong with that, but just plan on taking any posts that are really bitter about Gallardo and Hoffman with a giant grain of salt. Besides, there’s something more important and relevant to the Brewers than the All-Star game anyways.

Ryan Braun said after yesterday’s loss to the Cubs that “We’re at the point right now where it would be important for us to go out there and acquire somebody.” Obviously he was implying that the starting pitching is trash right now, it’s no fun to be losing by 100 runs after the third inning, and Doug Melvin needs to make a trade soon.

The trade market though seems to be limited to Javier Vazquez and Doug Davis because so many teams are still in it and the teams that aren’t don’t have the parts the Brewers need. All this has been said before, but the fact that so many teams are looking to buy the parts they need makes the market essentially “who will pay the most to get the spare parts they need.” I fear, along with quite a few other people, that so many buyers in a market with so little to sell will result in someone overpaying for an average pitcher like Doug Davis.

One of the things that Melvin has consistently said is that there has to be a better option available for the Brewers to pursue in order to make a move, otherwise there really is no point. I’m not yet convinced trading for one of the available pitchers is really a good option at this point compared to internal options. Here’s why:

Javier Vazquez would cost too much. He’s probably the best pitcher available on the trade market right now who isn’t an oft-injured Erik Bedard, sporting one of the best years of his career with a 3.05 ERA and 130 strikeouts in 112 innings. Naturally, he’s going to get the most return if he’s traded and deservedly so; how much Atlanta gets back for him depends on just how far one team is willing to go, and I fear that the Braves will ask for Alcides Escobar in addition to Corey Hart and if the Crew politely declines the Braves will then move on to the team who would give up that much.

That’s not to mention that Vazquez is even on the trade market at all. Atlanta’s tied with the New York Mets in the NL East, only 4 games back of Philly. They could just as easily be buyers instead of sellers at the deadline if they do well in between now and the All-Star Break.

Doug Davis isn’t that good. Davis has been super hot lately, tossing seven innings and giving up one run or less in his last three starts. However I’m not convinced that when he does come back to earth that he’s a much better option than the Brewers have internally.

So far this year Davis has a 3.15 ERA, which is really pretty good. But considering the prospects the Brewers would have to give up to get him, I’m not quite convinced he’s the best posible option.

Davis is a full run below what his FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) would indicate, implying that he’s been lucky — extremely lucky, also, since Chase Field in Arizona is a pretty intense hitters’ ballpark. One would naturally expect that number to regress back towards the norm. He’s also been lucky in regards to his other stats too — his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) this year is the lowest of his career at .278 and his left-on-base percentage (LOB%) is nearly 79%, a number way too high for a pitcher of Davis’ quality. One would expect him to get worse and not better. His three recent starts should only be regarded as a mirage and not representative of what he’s going to do for the rest of the season.

By the way, just as an aside, I’ve never understood why a pitcher throwing three straight starts really well is “improving his trade stock.” If anything I’d expect that pitcher to have a little regression and have a couple of poor starts, which would make the trade not worth it. Why do teams look at two hot starts and determine that a pitcher is going to do that well for them for the rest of the year? I don’t know if people realize how lucky the Brewers were last year when C.C. Sabathia ruled for the better part of 3 1/2 months straight.

Anyways, I’m not so sure doing something from within the organization isn’t the answer here. Manny Parra on the other hand has been doing pretty well in AAA and has been on the extreme end of misfortunes while in the big leagues this year. Just like I expect Doug Davis to regress back to what he does, I expect Parra to do better than he has been. This means getting lucky.

Parra so far has stunk to the tune of a 7.52 ERA, but his peripherals imply he’s been on the extreme end of misfortune, as his FIP is just over 5 and his LOB% has been barely over 60%. These numbers aren’t a far cry from Doug Davis, but he’s just been on the other side of the luck equilibrium.

Just as a totally made-up and hypothetical scenario, imagine Doug Davis having an ERA one run worse than his FIP. That would mean his ERA for the rest of the season is about 5.1, give or take a little bit. Now reverse tha trend for Parra. His ERA would be about 4 for the rest of 2009. Parra would be the much better option, and he wouldn’t cost the Brewers unreplacable parts in their farm system.

I know it’s a fallacy to assume that just because someone’s been unlucky with their pitching that they will become lucky and balance it out. However it is reasonable to think they won’t continue to be as unlucky and instead pitch as to what their career statistics would imply. If Parra’s fixed his walking problem, he should be back out there to the tune of a 4.5 ERA or so, which would be better than what I’d expect Doug Davis to do.

If Parra comes back at full strength and Dave Bush comes back into the rotation, the Brewers will be just fine. Gallardo, Braden Looper, and Jeff Suppan have done a fine job with the rotation in a mess as it is; soon they will be at full strength.

Yesterday with the Brewers down 1-0 in the bottom of the 9th, Ken Macha decided to pinch-hit Casey McGehee over Mat Gamel against right-handed closer Frankie Rodriguez. It was an obvious way of saying “I’m riding the hot hand” and McGehee ended up grounding weakly to short. Yesterday I thought that Gamel should be getting more ABs to ride out his recent slump.

I mean, I could speculate all I want about whether or not Gamel would have gotten a hit, but whether he did or not I don’t think it was the right move. Pinch hitting a righty against a righty when you have your stud lefty prospect in the box isn’t the best way to give him some confidence.

A pretty good post from Adam McCalvy last night regarding the recent pine-ride for hot prospect Mat Gamel and whether or hot he’ll get sent back down to the minor leagues after this upcoming series. In case you didn’t read the article:

Casey McGehee has forced himself into the Brewers’ everyday lineup, in turn forcing club officials to reconsider whether third-base prospect Mat Gamel might be better served by a return to Triple-A Nashville.

“We’ll talk about that internally,” Brewers general manager Doug Melvin said. “That’s not something we would discuss publicly, but you’re always having discussions. It’s probably something you look at from a series-by-series standpoint.”

Gamel, promoted from Nashville on May 14 ahead of Interleague Play, was on the bench for the fifth time in six games on Tuesday, mostly because the Brewers were facing left-handed Mets ace Johan Santana in the second of a three-game series. But Gamel, who bats left-handed, has seen his playing time decrease of late against righties because of the emergence of McGehee, who entered play Tuesday with a .370 average, five home runs and 20 RBIs over his past 20 games.

McGehee, not Gamel, started at third base on Monday against Mets right-hander Fernando Nieve.

To me Gamel has largely disappointed at the plate so far, hitting .236/.340/.382 in slightly over 100 plate appearances with poor defense, making him barely above replacement-level in such a small sample size. It makes sense to see Gamel struggling after being so hot in AAA before he came up, and 100 PAs is a small sample size anyway, so it’s not a big deal that Gamel hasn’t produced to what I expected him to. A trip to AAA for a little while longer would be a good way to get Gamel consistent at-bats and coaching from defensive stud Don Money.

That doesn’t mean that a) he won’t turn it around yet this year and b) the Brewers have a better option at third right now. The way the lineup would be slated if the Brewers sent Gamel back down would put Casey McGehee at 2nd and Craig Counsell at third. The offensive dropoff at third would be tremendous, and I’m not so sure I would trust those two as starters right now considering how much has been made of Casey’s knee and how fragile Counsell’s legs are.

Not to mention that McGehee is riding an ultra-hot streak to the tune of a .950 OPS right now and once he starts cooling off Gamel should grab the extra time (and maybe get hot again) while McGehee takes on the backup role. I’m surprised in itself that Casey’s hit so well for so long, but there’s something about a .325/.388/.544 line that doesn’t match up with his career .283/.340/.417 line in the minor leagues.

So when Casey cools off and Gamel’s down in the minors, do we really want up to three black holes in the lineup (McGehee, Jason Kendall and Bill Hall)? I guess what I’m saying here is that I’m assuming a .200 point OPS increase from the minors to the majors is more than likely going to merit a crash back down to earth.

In order to avoid that and putting Hall in the lineup anywhere at all I’d highly recomment keeping Mat Gamel up in the majors. We’ll see if that actually happens though — it sounded like McCalvy in his story tried to create a story out of thin air here.

Good post over at Dan & Steve about Yovani Gallardo’s excessive pitch counts and his being the victim of Ken Macha’s abusive management. After his excessive 126-pitch outing on May 25, he’s proceeded to also have starts of 110 pitches, 105 pitches, 116 pitches, 107 pitches, and 118 pitches in consecutive starts. Considering the rest of the starting rotation’s inability to pitch decently, and the state of the bullpen when Gallardo usually starts, it’s understandable that Ken Macha would try to extend Gallardo a little bit extra to squeeze those extra couple batters out of him while he still can. Even with a 4-run lead in the 8th inning, apparently it’s necessary to let the pen rest a little more to preserve the win. But at what cost to Yovani? Could his arm blow out from overuse?

I’ve taken a look at Baseball Prospectus’ Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP) across the majors to see just how much Yovani’s getting overworked. It appears he’s getting worked like a horse, but he’s not the only one. Take a look:

Boy, I’d really love to have Jim Leyland as manager — he’s doing a good job blowing out Justin Verlander’s arm, and new phenom Edwin Jackson is headed towards that route too.

Obviously having Gallardo as #11 on that list is a little concerning as to his health and arm strength down the road, so we’ll see exactly what happens. But the organization has done a good job at limiting Gallardo’s innings count throughout his career so far and he’s had no history of shoulder or arm problems that would force Milwaukee to use him more conservatively than most.

Along with that, I’m not so sure Macha will continue pushing Yovani to the limit once the starting rotation settles down and the pitching become decent, if not stable. A temporary increase in workload at this time in the season isn’t going to ruin a pitcher; the increased workload over the rest of the season will, since Yovani still isn’t used to this kind of workload. Remember in 2007 he was mostly shut down due to an increased workload (after 178IP) and he spent most of 2008 on the shelf after a torn ACL. So he’s probably not going to be able to work any more than 200 innings this year. Right now, he’s on pace to surpass 100 innings his next start; it could be 110 innings by the All Star Break.

In other words, the Brewers should plan to use him conservatively for the rest of the season unless they really want to blow out his arm.

Here’s a little tidbit I saw in the Journal-Sentinel:

Assistant general manager Gord Ash said it’s becoming evident that the Brewers won’t be getting a contribution from left-hander Chris Capuano this season. Capuano remains in Arizona, undergoing a throwing program after his second “Tommy John” reconstructive elbow surgery in May 2008.

“He threw a bullpen the other day,” said Ash. “It’s been a long, slow grind. He gets full marks for grinding it out.

“(As for pitching for the Brewers), probably not until next year, which probably isn’t a bad thing.”

It’s been really disappointing to see Chris Capuano continue to be pushed back. Not just because he’s a good guy, and a class act, but because his last twentysome-odd appearances with the Brewers always left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I’d really like to see him com back from a second Tommy John surgery and pitch the Brewers to a win.

With two Tommy John surgeries and continued small report in the news of “no, he’s experienced another minor setback,” I’m not too confident he’ll be back with the full force that he had when he made the All-Star team in 2006. A ligament can only be restructured so many times before it finally breaks down.

This also continues to compromise Milwaukee’s pitching depth.

All of a sudden I’ve been brought back to the days of Ruben Quevedo and Jamey Wright tossing up a consistent array of doubles and gopher balls to the opposition when posting ERAs of 5.76 and 5.35 in 44 total starts and a combined 11-24 win-loss record. In 2002, the Brewers went 56-106.

Glendon Rusch — yeah, that Glendon Rusch — was one of Milwaukee’s most consistent pitchers with a 4.70 ERA and 210 innings pitched in 2002. Never mind that he’s an awful pitcher, and has always been an awful pitcher; he was the team’s #2 guy that year.

The parallels between Rusch and Jeff Suppan are alarmingly close — except Suppan doesn’t eat as many innings as Rusch. Suppan has also been our second-most consistent starter recently, as Manny Parra stunk down to AAA, Dave Bush has been terrible due to a microtear in his arm, and Braden Looper has just been awful lately. This is a far cry from early April when pretty much everybody wanted him off the roster. Now he’s a semi-valuable part of the rotation taking into account the shambles it’s in right now.

Another comparison to the lovable 2002 losers was the ace of the staff: they had Ben Sheets, we have Yovani Gallardo. I’m pretty sure 2002 was not the ideal setup for the Brewers. I’m pretty sure 2009 isn’t currently the ideal setup for the Brewers.

***

Manny Parra made his second start last night in Albequerque to face Manny Ramirez and the Isotopes. Parra took the loss, but his start looked encouraging on the surface as the reason for Nashville’s loss last night was due to the offense scoring 0 runs; Manny threw 7 innings of one-run ball and dropped to 0-1 so far in Nashville. Here’s what Right Field Bleachers had to say:

Like I said, a nice start. His walk total went down a little compared to his four in six innings last week. His strike to ball ratio remained solid. Basically…good to see. I don’t think one can read into the early performances too much, but I had my doubts he’d start solid in Nashville. I remain very interested to see if he can continue this for another four or five starts. If he does, especially with the entire starting rotation (minus Yo) struggling, you can bet Manny Parra will be back in Milwaukee.

So far he’s been encouraging more than anything considering his lack of confidence on the way down, but there’s no way he’s back to major-league ready yet. Out of his small sample size in AAA he’s owned only a nearly 1:1 K/BB ratio and has been the benefactor of a .200 BABIP.

It would be unreasonable to expect Parra to go down to AAA and simply dominate hitters right away since his confidence level has gone way down. However two starts down in AAA that look pretty good on the surface don’t exactly mean he’ll be starting this Saturday against San Fransisco again.

Even though his secondary stats imply he’s still the same Parra we saw earlier this season, these starts still are encouraging in the sense that having two good starts down in AAA could help him build his confidence and deflate those walk totals that suddenly jumped this year. A more confident Parra could mean hee’ll be ready to go in 3 or 4 more starts.

***

Coming out of AAA to pitch tomorrow’s series finale against the AL (thank god) is Mike Burns, a career minor leaguer who’s floated around with different teams before signing a minor-league contract with the Brewers at the beginning of this year.

The biggest names brought up at the beginning of the year to help provide pitching depth in case one of the starters went down with an injury (coughcoughBushcough) included guys like Seth McClung, Chase Wright, and Tim Dillard — not many of us expected a journeyman to post an ERA under 3 in Nashville.

Burns is definitely the best option to pitch right now to replace Bush’s spot. Burns keeps the ball in the ballpark (about 1 HR every 10 innings in AAA) adequately, doesn’t walk people (1.47 walks/9), but doesn’t srike anybody out and leaves the burden of his resonsibility on his defense.

Of course, the Brewers lead the league in defensive efficiency so far this season, so the defense shouldn’t have a big problem helping Burns out. His Major League Equivalent ERA using his AAA stats this year would be about 4.5; if his defense helps him out nicely he should become the new Glendon Rusch that lasts 4 or 5 starts.