Entries from June 2009 ↓

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.

Lost in all this talk about the destruction of Milwaukee’s starting rotation has been the recent slide offensively. Outside of the Cleveland series, the Brewers have scored 4 runs or less 14 times this month. For reference, they did this 12 times in April and 16 times in May (note that this month still has 6 more games to go including today’s and the Brewers played more games in May than in June). Their hot hitters are starting to cool off and guys like J.J. Hardy are starting to fall off a cliff.

There’s still nothing to worry about quite yet. Even if the Brewers slump until the All-Star Break, their schedule works out really nicely. From the end of the AS Break to the beginning of September, the Brew Crew plays a total of one team that is currently over .500 — the Cincinatti Reds. Other than the six games played against the Reds, they play a whole mess of games against the Padres, Nationals, and Pirates. If they’re 4 or 5 games out at the All-Star break, which would be absolute worst-case scenario, I won’t be too concerned.

The Cubs still scare me though. They’re going to get ultra hot sometime this year and I really hope it’s not next weekend’s series.

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.

–Take a look at this video. You stay classy, Philadelphia.

You know, for all the joking flak that Philly gets for violence in the stands and being the faux City of Brotherly Love, there are quite a few little incidents that back up the stereotype.

It’s fun for me to hate Philadelphia because I’m still mad about them beating Milwaukee in the Wild Card last year and this play continues to leave a bitter taste in my mouth, but the truth is Philly’s no worse or better than any other major league park with a passionate fan base and you’d be hard-pressed to find a Brewers-Cubs game with the same feel of a game played in St. Louis.

–Coming from Jayson Stark’s latest column is this little tidbit:

Clubs that have spoken to the Brewers report they’ve been adamant in saying they won’t talk about Mat Gamel or shortstop prospect Alcides Escobar, even for front-line pitching. And after that, said an official of one club they spoke with, “there’s a pretty sizable falloff” to their next wave of potentially available prospects (Lorenzo Cain, Taylor Green, Caleb Gindl). That’s one reason Hardy’s name has started to show up on the rumor circuit. But with so little starting pitching worth pursuing, Milwaukee is another club that might not find the kind of pitching it’s hunting for.

With both Jake Peavy and Erik Bedard going on the DL it’s clear the pitching market has thinned to the point where Brad Penny is the best available pitcher that can be realistically traded for. So if the pitching market is so thin, why is J.J. Hardy continually being thrown around in rumors? As I said before, I would be much more open to trading Alcides Escobar over J.J. Hardy because despite a seasonlong slump so far he’s still one of the elite shortstops in the game and Escobar’s survived entirely on hype by scouts so far.

To put it differently, I’d go so far as to say that Escobar is vastly overrated and I honestly wouldn’t mind trading him to get that 5th starter that Milwaukee seems to be salivating over. I would trade Escobar for Red Sox prospect Clay Buchholz, an All-Star pitcher in the making who’s wating away AAA players right now to the tune of 65 strikeouts and 17 walks in 73 innings and is still the ripe old age of 25. He’d instantly be our #2 or #3 starter.

If Bedard remains on the DL, and there is no pitching available on the market, I see no reason not to make a trade assuming Manny Parra can right his ship in AAA. Brad Penny isn’t much of an upgrade at all over any of our other options and if we ended up losing a legitimate prospect like Taylor Green for Penny or someone similar I wouldn’t quite care for the move.

– Jeremy Jeffress has improved since being demoted to Single-A Brevard County but still hasn’t improved his stock enough to me to consider him a legitimate prospect yet. Take a look at his numbers between AA-Huntsville and A-Brevard County:

AA-Hunstvile: 27 1/3IP, 34K, 33BB, 7.57 ERA
A-Brevard County: 28IP, 34K, 18BB, 1.93 ERA

Pretty much the only difference he’s made so far is that he’s been able to cut down on the walks, but to be honest with you I don’t think Jeffress is going to make it to major leagues — and if he does, it won’t be as a starter. I could easily see him being the next Jorge Julio and bounce around teams while continually failing for them with his high walk and strikeout rates. Milwaukee’s pitching depth is thinner than most people think.

So, The Hardball Times has a neat stat looking at how “cluch” each hitter has been so far this year. “Clutch,” in this case, is produce from Bill James’ formula. I’ll let THT explain:

“Clutch” is the name we’ve given to the portion of Bill James’s Runs Created formula that includes the impact of a batter’s batting average with runners in scoring position and the number of home runs with runners on. The specific formula is Hits with RISP minus overall BA times at bats with RISP, plus HR with runners on minus (all HR/AB) times at bats with runners on. This stat is not a definitive description of “clutch hitting,” just one way of looking at it.

Anyways, here’s what we have so far:

I would have thought J.J. Hardy and Mat Gamel were going to be worse and Mike Cameron would have done much better. Even though this is a fairly crude way of measuring clutch (hitting with RISP is weighted the same in a 9-0 game in the 3rd inning as it is in a tie game in the 9th), it’s still early enough in the season where these stats could nearly flip by the end of the year and I wouldn’t be really that surprised.

Another thing you may have noticed is the pitches/plate appearance stat in that image. P/PA is a useful way of looking at a hitter’s patience, and a hitter’s patience is a useful way to evaluate a player. More pitches seen generally mean more walks, and OBP is obviously a good thing. Here are P/PA stats for every Brewers player up through last night:

Considering the frequency that Hardy looks at the first pitch (which is pretty much every single time), I’m surprised to see that he’s in the middle of the pack in terms of P/PA. This also shows so far why I’m still really high on Mat Gamel.

One of the biggest reasons for the Brewers success this year is due to the Brewers ability to take a walk and get on base. While their batting average and slugging percentages have remained basically the same throughout the year, they’ve had a huge spike in OBP which can only be attributed to an increase in walks. The more pitches you see, the more walks you get. Simple as that.

On the pitching side, THT also has a database on the team’s xFIP this year. Check it out:

Just judging from this, I think Doug Melvin is going to make a trade for another starter. Seth McClung isn’t fit to be the 5th starter. Now that Erik Bedard is on the DL, expect another Dave Bush (in the form of Jarrod Washburn or Brad Penny) to join the rotation near the end of this month.

McClung has been one of the luckiest pitchers so far considering his secondary statistics compared to his ERA. If any pitcher is going to do that, though, it’s Chucky — he’s a very lights on/lights off type of pitcher. Outings where he can locate both his fastball and his curveball usually result in scoreless innings where he can hardly be touched. When his pitches aren’t located, he walks people and gets hit like a punching bag. Ken Macha should know when he’s not pitching at 100% and yank him accordingly. Better bullpen arms should be able to clean up his mess at a rate better than he’d be able to.

This post was really disjointed. That’s OK though — the charts here are what’s interesting about it.

…isn’t going much better than his Major League starts.

6 innings, 4 hits, 2 runs (1ER), 4 K’s and 4 walks. 114 pitches.

That doesn’t sound like anything dominating. He still has a few more starts, so at least only giving up two runs is encouraging.

Joe Buck got lit up the other day on his television show, and since then everybody’s been blasting his cred. The worst blog on the planet really happy he was embarrased on HBO.

Honestly, I don’t see all the hubbub about Buck. He’s a good, solid announcer; he knows the game of football very well; he tells me what’s going on in the game and everything else that could be relevant without getting in the way with smarmy opinions and goofy gimmicks (Gus Johnson). He’s got a good sense of humor and provides good anecdotes to game the game interesting and flowing nicely.

Most fans just don’t like Buck because they’re grumpy that he doesn’t follow sports as much as the blogosphere and got handed the broadcasting role for being the kid of a famous person. People need to stop being so cranky. If he wasn’t any good, FOX would have kicked him off broadcasting by now and he’d be going to school just like the rest of us. He can just afford not to.

On the other side, Artie Lange just isn’t funny. If he made fun of Buck and was funny I’d applaud him. But he sucks.

Now that Doug Melvin has basically confirmed that he’s going to make some kind of move as the trade deadline comes to fruition and the pitching situation has become much murkier. If Melvin is going to make a move in the pitching department, it’s definitely going to come in the next couple of weeks when the Brewers will stop having convenient off-days and there needs to be a sure 5-man rotation.

Don’t be surprised to see the Mariners and Brewers make a trade. Jack Zduriencik, former Brewers scouting director and now Mariners GM, assuredly would love to see some of the insane farm talent he built from his time with the Brewers, and it sounds more and more like he wants to sell off the current team.

I would love to see the Brewers package a deal around Alcides Escobar and a couple of other minor prospects for Erik Bedard. Bedard is having a good year and is in his contract year. The Mariners’ biggest need is at shortstop with the total ineptitude of Yuniesky Betancourt, and with the Mariners’ current attempt at a defensive revival Escobar would be a perfect fit for them. He would be major league ready for Seattle and could join their team immediately, while Bedard could be #2 in a 1-2 Yovani Gallardo-Bedard punch.

Outside of his propensity to get injured, he’s been one of the most dominant pitchers in the game with a career ERA+ of 121. It’d be almost a perfect fit.

Also, I can now spell Jack Zduriencik without having to look it up on Google.

First I said Bill Hall will revert back to 2006 Bill Hall and put up a drastic improvement. Well, that’s gone to hell, since the great majority of his secondary stats have gotten worse and he’s become a replacement-level player (even against lefties, it seems now). I’ll be changing the title on the main page here in the next few minutes since I’m jumping off the bandwagon.

Then I said the Brewers should be patient with Manny Parra. He responded to my post by giving up 6 runs in 1 2/3 innings and getting sent down to the minor leagues before the game even finished. Parra was getting extremely unlucky and he should be back and in full force after a short trip to the minors, but in the clubhouse he said he didn’t feel comfortable throwing any of his pitches for strikes and it seemed whenever he did just that someone blooped it for a double.

I went to Saturday’s game (and had amazing seats to boot) and noticed during the second inning Parra was unable to throw his secondary pitches for strikes and looked totally lost on the mound for awhile there. It was a testament to his stuff itself that he was only able to escape with the inane amount of bloops and texas leaguers he suffered. It’s kind of metaphorical for his season so far. It was about then I decided he could use a two or three week refresher course in the minor leagues where there isn’t nearly as much pressure as the bigs.

But, moral of the story: Not only am I unfit to be the general manager of a franchise, but I’m terrible at talent evaluation as well.