I Smell a DL Trip for Yo

Today marked the fourth straight below average (at best) start for Yovani Gallardo. His ERA has gone from 1.20 to 5.70. I've looked into some of the advanced stats to see if he might be incredibly unlucky, but based upon my very average understanding of these stats, it appears that he has just sort of sucked for the last month. And you know what that means? That's right! Everyone's favorite game: the phantom injury!!! This happens, especially to pitchers, every year. Guy comes out, struggles in a few starts, gets shelled and obviously has lost his confidence, and rather than embarrass him by benching him or sending him to AAA (which I absolutely NOT suggesting they do with Yo), the player is suddenly injured and needs a 15 day DL trip. Jeff Suppan was famous for this. He went on like a dozen random DL trips in his time in Milwaukee (although his might be related to the voodoo doll I had).

Anyway, I bet Yo is on the DL within the next two days.

PS. Ardolis Chapman is fucking ridiculous. Dusty Baker is either an idiot for not using him in a bigger role (closer or starter). Or Dusty Baker has learned from the long, long line of careers he has ruined, and his trying to keep his innings down. Either way, Chapman seemed to have figured things out in the past two days. When you can throw 178 mph, and follow it up with a 90mph slider for a strike, hitters are fucked. That's analysis.

Congratulations St. Louis!

I am of course, congratulating them for their 2006 World Series Championship which obviously happened last week, and to the NL MVP Jeff Suppan who is starting tonight's game. There is no doubt, that since it is 2006, Suppan will continue his success and lead the Cards to back-to-back (more?) World Series titles. It is too bad the Brewers could not put together a package to get Suppan to sign with them, because it is obviously still 2006.


What?


It ISN'T 2006? Suppan DID sign with the Brewers and post a 29-36 record with a sterling 5.08 ERA and a 1.60 WHIP all while earning $40 million dollars?!?!?!? Where have I been? More importantly, where the fuck has Tony La Russa been? (Other than the tavern). And is Dave Duncan in ultimate fuck you mode that he thinks he can turn Soup around? Is his next trick to bring back Turnbow and Gagne to close? For an organization that is allegedly the best in baseball, this is un-fucking-believable.


Prediction: Mariners 7, Cardinals 5. Soup 3 1/3, 6ER, 1K, 4BB, which would be a huge improvement. Also, fuck the Cardinals.

Brew Crew Hangover: Fix 'Em Edition

Now that Milwaukee has a 0.6% chance of making the playoffs (so you're saying there's a chance!) I think now would be an opportune time to start doing some shit for the future. I would say at this point, it is safe to say that the roster as currently constructed is not going to get us a world series title, and may not even get us to .500, which used to be the mark of success for the Crew. Here is what I think I would do.

1) Put Fielder on the market. He is the biggest, and maybe only realistic trade chip we have. We know we won't be able to afford him in two years, and he probably has the most value right now because anyone that trades for him gets him for a year and a half. But don't give him away. We don't need to be desperate because we've got time. If nobody wants to give us anything good, we can wait another year if need be. I think at this point, most non-idiotic fans understand that he isn't going to be around much longer. The problem is that right now, I don't see another first baseman anywhere in the Brewers system that can step in and give us any kind of production.

2) Cut Soup. He is wasting a roster spot. I think the message has been recieved that he will never start again. We've used I think 9 other starters other than him. He's been that bad. I would much rather give the roster spot to a young pitcher that deserves it.

3) Consider the Hoffman situation. This one is pretty tough. He's been awful. And I don't think he's going to turn it around. But how do you cut a hall of famer? I'm sort of hoping we can convince him to retire.

4) Start your best players. This sounds dumb, but this isn't something that is a guarantee for the Brewers. For instance, I have more confidence in both Kottaras and Lucroy than I do in Zaun. Lucroy is obviously the future. So when Zaun comes back, don't hand him the job because he's old and well paid. This is only the most glaring situation, but trading Fielder (and Hart?) would open up a few spots for some younger guys to try thier luck. And let Axford close unless you think Braddock is better, but don't give it to Hoffman.

5) Stop spraypainting Rick Peterson's uniform on him. I honestly preferred when he wore a coat in 85 degree weather. He is just offputting. Mrs. Juice says "He looks like a perv." Agreed.

One last thought: How did we get here? Five years ago, I would be thrilled not to be in last place, and now I'm bitching about not being the playoff hunt.

I Sympathize With Big Ben

Hello everyone. I'm back from my two week suspension for violation of the Internets' Personal Conduct Policy. Hopefully I'll be around a bit more from now on. That assumes I can keep my head on straight, and stay out of college bars in Millegeville, GA. I want to thank my teammates: Bear, Sports Bottle, Twinkie and Loaf Cobra for picking up the slack and leading the team to victories in my absence. I hope the Steelers have similar success when Ben is gone.

PACKER DRAFT REACT

Going in, I wanted a tackle, a corner, an outside LB and a safety. And possibly a RB. Anything else is fine to fill in our picks. I was mildly thrilled with Bryan Bulaga. He fills an immediate need, can hopefully start when Chad Clifton or Tauscher gets hurt, and since neither is a guarantee to be around next year, gives us a starter to plug in for the next 10 years or so. Bulaga was alleged to be going in the top 10, so I felt pretty good about getting him where we did.

What happened afterwards was a little different. Not that I've heard of every player in this draft or anything, but when you have a bunch of guys available that you know are pretty good, and fit positions of need, I can't stand when we take a guy I've never heard of. Round 2 was an absolutely classic Ted Thompson move by taking Mike Neal. I suppose it never hurts to have another D-lineman, but this was not a big need compared to the things listed above, and this appeared to be a huge reach. Round 3 actually looked like a pretty good pick. Everywhere I saw had Morgan Burnett as a 2nd round pick, and we certainly needed a safety. Round 5 it was back to classic Thompson, taking a TE even though we have 3 pretty decent ones on the roster, and a likely future Pro Bowler in Finley. I think if you are going to take someone at a position where you have a bunch of guys already, you should probably take a dude that is GUARANTEED to be good. The last Round 5 pick, I guess we took a guard. Fine with that I guess. Colledge is a douche, and is now officially expendable. Not exciting at all. I dunno. In Ted I trust, I'm sure it will work out.

In other news, why didn't we trade for Leon Washington? Seattle gave up nothing to get him. He is exactly what we needed. He is fast, can catch, can return kicks.

Finally, moving the draft to Thursday was genius. I legitimately forgot that the NBA playoffs were even happening. NFL is king.

BREWERS

What a roller coaster. I was looking for something tall to jump off of last Saturday after we lost to the Nats. Then we nearly blew last Sunday after a 10 run first. Then we DESTROYED the Pirates, and we were for sure going to win the World Series. Then Soup pitched. The best quote I read this morning reads as follows: "...The more important question is how long the organization will continue to trot Suppan to the mound every five days. He no longer has the stuff to be an effective big league starter, and it is becoming borderline irresponsible for Ken Macha and Doug Melvin to stick by the veteran simply because of his salary." Amen.

THE FUTURE AND STUFF

Tomorrow, my wife and I (who LOVE kids :)) are babysitting for my 3 year old twin nieces. I'm sure nothing terrible will happen.

Since Roger Goodell screwed me out of getting hammered with my second family today by moving the draft to Thursday, I have to look forward to Shit In My Eye as the next out of body drinking experience. I am going to guess that I will get drunk.

You are on notice that the OJSFA Owner's Meeting will take place at the Days Inn on Washington St. in Green Bay next Saturday. BYOB. Watch your emails.

I received my San Diego Padres/Washington National tickets in the mail today. Going on a mini-vacation at the end of May, and am going to check out Petco. And probably drink a margarita or ten. I hope to (Sports Bottle's) god, Strasburg gets called up and starts for the Nats.

DVR ALERT!!!!!!

Games 3 and 4 of the Bucks/Hawks sweep. Not that anyone other than my brother will watch anyway.

Day = Ruined

C'mon. There is ZERO justification for this. Brewers, don't even pretend that you have a good reason. He was terrible last year. You opened up "competition" in the spring, he was terrible again. He lost the "competition". And yet he is still going to be trotted out there every five days. For a team that doesn't seem to mind spending some money to stay competitive, they obviously don't mind spending it to lose either.

I realize this was let out this morning. I just didn't have time to read it until now. I'm angry. I have three games scheduled so far this season. I bet he pitches two of them. FUCK.

Soup Watch: 3/31

Well, this seems awfully convenient, doesn't it? Somehow, every time we have a guy making an obscene amount of money to suck, he turns up with a mysterious injury at the exact time that management is forced to do something. Derrick Turnbow, Eric Gagne, Bill Hall, Jeff Suppan (twice). All of those players were so bad that our hand was forced into doing something with them. All made far too much money for a small market team to justify getting rid of them. So what happens? Some kind of injury crops up out of the blue. You are really going to sit here and tell me that he had a fucking injury as painful as a neck injury and managed to pitch like 6 spring training games??? I'm going to go ahead and call shenanigans on this.

At the end of the day, he isn't pitching for us right this second, so this satisfies me. What doesn't satisfy me is that I have to continue being stressed out about the possibility of them deciding he will be the fifth starter in mid-April (since we don't need one until then).

The best case scenario is that Parra, Narveson and Bush are lights out for a few weeks leaving the Crew no choice but to run Suppan over with a car to say he is now out for the year, or cut him.

The worst case scenario is Parra, Narveson or Bush getting hurt or lit up, giving Melvin an excuse to pitch Suppan again.

To me, anything short of TWO of the three getting put on the DL in the first two weeks of the year, would not justify keeping Soup.

NO SOUP FOR YOU: In Game Update

End of 1st Inning: Dodgers 2, Brewers 1
Milwaukee
Suppan
IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA
1.0 3 2 2 1 0 0 9.69

Obviously, we need to hang onto him.....

$12.5 Million Dollar Pitching Machine

I am starting to get frustrated about what I believe is going to happen to the 25 man roster for your 2010 Brewers. While I could be wrong, it looks like the Crew is preparing to send Carlos Villenueva to AAA to start the season, rather than sending Jeff Suppan home. I don't get it. Haven't they seen enough in the past four years to know what you have with Suppan? Haven't they seen enough in the past few weeks? I'm not making the argument that Villa is great. He is decidedly average. But Soup is decidedly terrible. They are wasting a roster spot over money, when the fact remains that they are going to pay him whether he gives up 50 HRs or not. So why guarantee yourself a few losses? What do you have to lose if you are the Brewers? He was part of one of the worst pitching staffs in Major League Baseball last year. This is bordering on insanity. The stats on Soup are just staggering. I'm too lazy to post them here, but last year he was like WORST IN THE LEAGUE in WHIP and ERA among full time starters.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they are trying to trade him and that is why it is taking so long. I dunno. But I doubt they are going to cut him at this point, and that is a shame. The Brewers are good enough to compete for the playoffs with a semi-competent pitching staff, but they are not good enough to lose three or four games while giving a guy the chance to pitch his way out of something, that he has been trying to pitch his way out of for two plus seasons.

IN OTHER NEWS

Twinkie forced someone to steal us great tickets to one of the Brewer-Twin games in Minnesota in May. I've never paid more than like $30 for a baseball ticket, and we are paying $62 (regular price) for these. I look forward to a rain out.

-Sports Bottle and our female companions are going to drink ourselves blind in Brew City on Saturday night after I attend the wedding of one of his ex-girlfriends. I wish I could just skip the wedding. Whatever. Me after 60+ hours of work for 8 straight weeks, on like no sleep, plus drinking to get drunk = forgetting things.

Pity Bill Castro?

Bill Castro was one of the casualties of Doug Melvin's murderin' spree yesterday. He was canned after 18 years on the team. I'm not saying Bill Castro is a good pitching coach. I'm not saying that a pitching coach does or doesn't affect the results that a pitching staff puts up. I'm just saying that he had Jeff Suppan, Braden Looper, Mike Burns, Carlos Villanueva and Seth McClung starting games for him this year. And he was the one that took the bullet instead of any one of these pieces of shit. Oh, and hopefully they weren't comparing this year's results with last year's. Because last year we had Ben Sheets and CC mutherfucking Sabathia. Being a pitching coach (like any coach) and having any success, depends alot on what you have to work with. And the cupboard was pretty bare at starter this year, due to injuries and general shittyness. Firing Bill Castro is like firing a writer for not finishing a book on time, when you took away his laptop and replaced it with a calligraphy pen. Or letting a WR go when he didn't produce like last year, because he lost a fucking leg in the offseason.

But life's a bitch, and I'll get over it.