Thursday, March 31, 2011

Milwaukee Brewers 2011 Season Preview

Hopefully we'll be seeing more of this in 2011 - both the walk-off bomb and the home run (get it?)!

Otherwise known as "Way more words than you ever wanted to read about the Milwaukee Brewers."  I figured a good way to wrap up my baseball preview extravaganza would be to profile my favorite team and talk about their chances this season.  Partially this is because, for the first time in my living memory, the Beermakers actually have a reasonable chance to contend for the World Series this year.  I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this - obviously, as a fan I'm thrilled, but this is a lot of pressure that I'm not used to come Opening Day!

I'm also a little late on my schedule this week.  It turns out that writing small novels each night when you're not used to it is somewhat taxing, and Wednesday night I needed to recharge the sleep batteries a little bit.

If you haven't already, check out my AL and NL season previews from earlier in the week.  For the most part, I did those without reading a whole lot of the myriad season previews by other sportswriters and bloggers, which I have done since.  This means that you could look at my previews in two lights: 1) they are pure, unbiased, uncontaminated, fresh perspectives on all of the teams, or 2) they are a bunch of baloney and WAY different that what a lot of the experts are predicting.  Probably a little bit of both - I guess we'll find out at the end of the year!


One more thing - as with all of my opinions and analysis, most of this is pretty much off the cuff and shoddily researched, though I have done SOME sifting through stats and such.  If you want a more balanced, reasoned, and researched preview of the Brew Crew, I would recommend checking out a lot of content at BrewCrewBall or one of the other myriad baseball blogs floating around.  One more administrative item before I begin - I pulled any and all images here off of Google Image Search, so don't sue me if they're yours!


With that, let's get into it!

Lineup:


The nominal Brewers lineup (after all of the sundry little injuries they picked up in Spring Training heal) looks something like this, although the exact order will probably be somewhat fluid at first.

1. Rickie Weeks                2B
2. Carlos Gomez               CF
3. Ryan Braun                   LF
4. Prince Fielder                1B
5. Casey McGehee            3B
6. Corey Hart                     RF
7. Yuniesky Betancourt     SS
8. Jonathan Lucroy            C
9. Pitcher (I'm not gonna put the position here -  I think you can figure it out!)

As I mentioned in my NL team preview, the top half of that lineup could be downright fearsome.  The Brewers were 4th in the NL in runs scored last year (of which approximately 96% were scored against the Pirates in about 6 games).  That continued into this spring, as the Brewers lineup mashed it's way through spring ball to the tune of a 0.321 batting average - 13 points higher than the next team and 50 points higher than the median.  Of course, spring stats don't mean a whole heck of lot - the Yankees had the second lower BA in spring, and if you think that's gonna carry forward into the regular season I have a few Ponzi schemes I want to talk to you about.

Let's go through and talk about each of the starters in the order above.

Rickie Weeks: At the end of last season, you probably could have heard a lot of Brewers fan heave a sigh of relief regarding Rickie and say, "Well, finally!"  Having heard about Weeks' potential for years and seeing glimpses of it between his patented frequent trips to the DL, it was nice to just see Rickie play in 160 games last year, regardless of the statistics.  However, we don't have to forget the stats, because not only did Rickie play, but he played well.  While he doesn't have your prototypical leadoff man average, he did get on base a lot (0.366 OBP) and that's what really matters.  Plus, no one is complaining about 29 HRs out of the leadoff spot.  He was consistent throughout the year if you just look at first half/second half splits, but the monthly splits show more of a bell curve.  In any event, Rickie finally had his breakout year in 2010 and was rewarded with a nice contract extension that I think was a great marriage of the needs of both the team and the player.

Looking ahead to 2011, I think we might actually see a little more out of Weeks this year.  I don't expect the batting average to climb much, but he should amass a ton more SBs with Roenicke at the helm.  Rickie has turned himself into at least an serviceable major league second basemen in the field, but with some of the other questions defensively, the Brewers are going to need him to keep making progress in that department.  I don't expect 30 HRs, but wouldn't be surprised with 23-25 along with 30 steals.  We just have to hope that he doesn't have any more freak injuries (like one of his wrists snapping and his hand falling off mid-swing) - if he's on the field for 160 games, the Brewers will be well above average at 2B.

Carlos Gomez: The other CarGo in the NL is definitely one of the biggest lightning rods with Crew fans (maybe we can convince the Rockies to make a 1-for-1 swap?).  In my opinion, he got somewhat unlucky in this sense (being traded straight up for a fan favorite - and especially ladies' favorite - like JJ Hardy will earn you some ire), but he brings a lot on himself by consistently having an inflated opinion of his abilities.  Gomez is the butt of a lot of Brewers fans' jokes, and justifiably so since he is a speed only offensive player, yet is never on base to show that (has a career 0.293 OBP in the majors).  Call me a ridiculous optimist, but I actually think Carlos has a chance to break out and prove a lot of doubters wrong this year.  Though he has been around forever, he's only 25 this year and had a blistering spring (although he still only walked once in 64 PA.  Sigh.).  The Community Projections over at BrewCrewBall have him at .259/.305/.376 this year, which would be a definite improvement, but I would actually go higher than that.  His career minor league line is .278/.341/.396, and while I don't expect to quite hit those numbers, I don't think a year of .270/.325/.390 is out of the question.  If he can hit at that clip, his speed should get him at least 40 SBs to go along with excellent defense in the field (had to get to say that at least once in this Brewers' preview!).

If CarGo Lite can hit like that, most Brewers fans will be thrilled.  Of course, I think Gomez's production PDF is essentially a binomial distribution (geektastic!) this year - either he'll be as good as I postulate above, or he'll duplicate last year's numbers and be a constant source of frustration.  I'm just not quite ready to give up on him yet.  Talk to me again in June and we'll revisit.

Ryan Braun: My wife's favorite player - I'm glad that she has such discerning insight about the subtleties of the game like power/speed combination, driving the ball the other way, and signing a fabulous long-term contract for the Crew early in his career.

Or maybe it's because of this.  In any event, he's good.  Really good.  Last year he saw his SLG and HRs go down from the incredibly high standard he set in his first 3 years, partially because of a self-admitted change in approach to hitting, but he still won the Silver Slugger and put up a 133 OPS+.  I'll take it.  Plus, I think there's reason to believe that last year was actually an off year for Brauny and what we saw represent the bottom end of his production.  He was pretty bad in May through July (his line in July of .200/.234/.381 was worse than Carlos Gomez April).  Once the calendar hit August, though, Braun tore it up with an OPS around 1.000.  I don't think he'll be THAT good over the entire season this year, but I actually expect him to surpass his 2009 numbers, and those were not too shabby (32 HRs, .937 OPS).  Defense is not his strong point - I liken it somewhat to Derek Jeter's.  He often LOOKS good playing defense (not just cuz of the tight pants, Sarah), especially when he makes diving catches, but he's not really a good defender.  The route he takes to balls sometimes set my teeth on edge.

However, if Braun can hit like I'm expecting, he'll have all the ladies (and men) in the Brewers fan base ALL hot and bothered again this year.  And I will be one of them (also, he's on my fantasy team, so yeah, I'll take a double-dip of Braun success this year, please!).

Prince Fielder: You hate to say that a guy who hit 32 HRs and had a 0.401 OBP had an off year, but that's what happened with the Big Vegan last year.  Part of that probably had to do with pitchers avoiding Prince more last year, but just from watching the occasional game that I caught, I felt that Prince was pressing in lots of situations.  And, what'd you know, the statistics back me up on this one!  Fielder hit only .237 with men on, and his SLG was an outstandingly low .343.  .343!!!  This wasn't a small sample size either - nearly half of his total PAs last year were with runners on.  With the bases empty, he hit 26 of his 32 HRs and his SLG was almost 250 points higher.  One of the biggest determinants of the Brewers success or failure this year will be whether Prince's splits from last year were a statistical aberration or a trend because pitchers figured out that Fielder will chase bad pitches when the pressure's on.  Stat geeks constantly declare that there is no such thing as "being good/bad in the clutch", but you couldn't watch the Brewers last year and NOT feel like there had to be something going on with Prince in those situations.  However, I think it was just a bad year - in 2009, his OPS was identical to 3 digits with the bases empty vs. runners on.  While I don't subscribe to the theory that there is some voodoo magic that makes Prince awesome in odd years (2007, 2009) and not so much in even years (2008, 2010), I DO think that the almighty dollar has an influence on Fielder, and he has a ton of motivation there to put up huge numbers with his contract expiring after this year - if he really wants a 20M-25M/year contract, he's gonna need a huge year to erase the taste of 2010.

And that, of course, brings up the sad fact that this will almost certainly be the last year with Prince in a Brewers uni.  The Brewers will not give him the top offer in free agency (and shouldn't - the Crew cannot operate like the Yankees or Red Sox and give out $20M/year contracts).  I remember the thrill of seeing Fielder in the summer of 2004 in Huntsville on the Brewers AA team while I was there for an internship, and it's been a great ride so far.  Hopefully, there'll be a World Series title at the end this year.  Although, if he goes to Cubs next year like a lot of rumors are suggesting, I will definitely be in a "HULK SMASH!" kind of mood.  And probably throw up in my mouth a bit.

Casey McGehee: Casey has been a great surprise out of literally nowhere for the Brewers in the last two years.  After posting a second solid season in a row (though with some regression from 2009), it appears that he might actually be reliable to produce similar numbers again this year.  I sure hope so, because if Ron Roenicke keeps the lineup as most expect and McGehee is hitting in the 5 spot after Prince, he's gonna need to hit for the Brewers to have great success (and to outweigh the fact that he's not that great with the leather).  I don't really see any reason why he should regress this year (he's only 28), but I'm somewhat worried nonetheless, though the fact that his swing really focuses on power to the opposite field is a partial comfort (LOVE guys who drive the ball the other way.  Unless they're Jeter.)

If he does struggle, there's a chance that longtime Next Big Thing Mat Gamel could be brought up as a replacement with big power upside.  Alternately, spring Wonderkid (well, he's 33 but still) Erick Almonte might be able to continue his success.  Both of those options scare me a LOT defensively though, so it'd be much better for Casey to continue to produce solidly for the present and make Gamel or Almonte force a hard decision (but in a good way) for the club.

Corey Hart: Outside of possibly Carlos Gomez, no one on the Brewers roster is as much of an enigma as Corey Hart.  After about a season and a half of disappointment, most fans (myself included) were clamoring for the Brewers' brass to trade Hart at the beginning of last year while he still had some value.  So, of course, he went out and just crushed the ball in the first half of 2010 (21 HRs, including a ridiculous, Barry-Bonds-and-his-carnival-sized-head 10 in the month of May).  He cooled off quite a bit in the second half, but still put up numbers that were not cringe-worthy.  As of this year's Opening Day, Hart is on the DL with an abdominal strain, so we all have to wait a little to find out which Corey Hart will show up this season.  And really hope that it's not the "Sunglasses at Night" guy.

There are reasons to believe that Hart won't produce quite at the level he did last year.  He had a somewhat high BABIP (.324), but not so high as to attribute all of the success to luck.  More telling, though, was that his HR/FB ratio shot up to 13.4%, which probably will not happen this year.  Also, he struck out more than ever last year, at a rate of 22.8%.  The big problem with Corey has always been, as Pedro Cerrano would say, "Fastball, I hit VERY much.  But curveball - bats are scared."  Well, not the curveball so much, but the slider has been the bane of Hart's existence, and it's been especially noticeable since August of 2008.  The man has never seen a slider he didn't think he could hit, even (or especially?) if it's 3 feet outside and in the dirt!  The man has crazy-long orangutan arms, but they're not THAT long.  The good news is this - Fangraphs says that Hart got about 52% fastballs last year and only 22% sliders, so apparently the rest of the league hasn't totally figured out what seems obvious to me.  If I had to pitch to Corey Hart (and miraculously could actually throw over 75 MPH AND throw a slider), I really don't think I would ever throw him a fastball.

I hope I'm wrong and Hart has turned the corner this year, but even if he regresses a little, he'll still be a valuable player for this team.  Especially if he rediscovers his speed on the basepaths with Run-Run Roenicke at the helm.

Yuniesky Betancourt: Remember how I said at the beginning that the top of this order was really good?  What I failed to mention is that out of the teams that have what you might consider great lineups this year, I don't think any of them have as big of a black hole in the bottom of the lineup as the Brewers.  And it starts with Yuni.  Carlos Gomez may have breathed the biggest sigh of relief on the team when the Brewers made the Greinke trade and were forced (hopefully at gunpoint, because yeesh!) to take Betancourt as well - with Yuni as the starting shortstop, it's just about guaranteed that Gomez will not be the most hated Brewer by the fans.  I'm not going to go on too long (for me, at least) about Betancourt's faults, but when it's pretty widely agreed that you were THE worst SS in MLB (both offensively AND defensively) over the past 3 years, there's little to get excited about.  With all the other smart trades and pickups that Doug Melvin made this offseason (even the Mitre/Morgan trades, which I'll get to in about 10,000 words in the Bench section), not finding someone - ANYONE - else to be the primary shortstop this season is pretty mystifying.

There is a chance he'll perform a little better this year, at least offensively.  His BABIP over the last two years was only .256 and .267, when you'd expect around .300 (see this excellent post at BrewCrewBall for WAY more details about Yuni's BABIP than you probably want).  That could mean he's been getting a bit unlucky.  However, one thing pointed out in that article at BCB but not discussed is that his BABIP on ground balls has been steadily trending downward for 5 years.  Now, this is conjecture since I didn't watch the Royals much ever last year, but to me that suggests one of two things, or a combination of the two: 1) Yuni is getting slower as he ages, and his weight supports that theory, or 2) Yuni doesn't hustle and run out all his ground balls all the time.

Needless to say, I am not thrilled at the prospect of watching Betancourt start 80% of the Crew's games at the most critical defensive position, next to catcher of course (that's for you Ben!).  Ron Roenicke might as well just pencil in Craig Counsell as a defensive replacement in the 7th or 8th on every lineup card right now.  My only consolation is that it might not be a huge downgrade from last year: Alcides Escobar was absolutely BRUTAL at the plate last year, and though clearly will be a better overall defender than Betancourt,  he struggled at times defensively as well last year. 

Jonathan Lucroy: And the last of the Brewers expected regulars (and starting on the DL like Hart, but with a broken finger) is Lucroy, the young catcher who made the big jump from starting in AA to the majors last year, and generally wasn't an abject failure.  While that's not exactly a ringing endorsement, catchers generally have the toughest time adjusting to the majors (Buster Posey notwithstanding), and Lucroy by all accounts acquitted himself well defensively.  He didn't hit much, with a SLG of only .329, but he profiles as a much better hitter based on his career minor league line of .298/.377/.460.

While there's no way he gets to those minor league numbers over the course of this season, Jonathan should be considerably better at the plate than he was last year.  If he can continue to work well with the pitching staff, block the balls in the dirt well (only 1 PB last year), and throw out runners at a decent clip (his .315 CS% would have been 3rd in the MLB last year if he had enough games to qualify), I'll be plenty happy.  There is some upside here, too, and getting a bigger contribution offensively from the catcher spot would help shore up the lineup quite a bit.

Pitcher: OK, so this is obviously not an actual player.  However, I wanted to mention here an advantage that the Brewers might have to lots of NL teams that often gets overlooked - they have some pitchers who can actually swing the stick!  Yovani Gallardo won the Silver Slugger at Pitcher - which is sometimes sort of like winning the Skinniest Fat Kid award - with 4 HRs and a gaudy .525 SLG and .863 OPS!  Chris Narveson was third among pitchers with at least 25 PAs in batting average, and Randy Wolf batted .253.  It remains to be seen how Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum will do with the bat, but Grienke is rumored to be really excited about getting to bat, Marcum went 1 for 4 with a double in his 6 PAs last year, and both are reputed to be decent hitters (for a pitcher).  If the Brewers pitchers can have a good year offensively, it could be one of the little things that goes unnoticed by many, but is really important to their success.  Gallardo at least will definitely make an impact, and may even hit in the 7 hole of the order if Roenicke wants to get creative.

Starting Rotation:


The nominal Brewers 5 man starting rotation once Greinke is back sets up like so:

1. Zack Greinke
2. Yovani Gallardo
3. Shaun Marcum
4. Randy Wolf
5. Chris Narveson


Before I get into individual profiles, I want to just take a minute and look at that list.  Considering that last year's expected starting 5 looked something like this (you could add Manny Parra as well):


1. Yovani Gallardo
2. Randy Wolf
3. Doug Davis
4. Dave Bush
5. Jeff Suppan


It's amazing how much Doug Melvin accomplished over the last year.  Everyone knew last year that pitching was the Brewers downfall, and it sure was.  Their 4.65 starters' ERA last year was second-to-last in the NL (although second by a lot - the Pirates starters' averaged a 5.28 ERA.  Yikes!).  Despite that, they still went 77-85 and weren't totally out of contention until late summer.  With the overhaul in the starting 5, it's no surprise that expectation are high this year!



Zack Greinke: If you would have told me last year at this time that I'd be writing a blog post about Zack Greinke on the Milwaukee Brewers, I would have said you were nuts (partially because I had ZERO desire to blog at that time).  It still seems a little surreal that the Brewers have Greinke on board, which perhaps explains why he had to crack a rib playing basketball in spring and starts the year on the DL.  It would have been too good to be true to watch Greinke be the Opening Day starter for the Beermakers!  He should only miss a few starts, and when he comes back, we should be in for a treat.


Greinke's 2009 Cy Young season for the Royals was one of the all-time best by a pitcher.  He posted a 2.16 ERA and ended up with 9.6 WAR.  If he were able to replicate those numbers this year and you believe WAR (wins above replacement player) translates directly to wins for the team, replacing Dave Bush (-1.1 WAR) with Greinke's 2009 season would have given the Brew Crew an 88-74 record, almost enough to put them in the playoffs.  Now, the chances Greinke repeats his 2009, or even gets all that close to it, are pretty small.  His ERA ballooned to 4.17 last year (although the peripheral numbers suggest it should have been better), and most projections for this season have him in the low to mid 3's.  That being said, Greinke has spoken often of how the losing atmosphere in KC grated on him and he should be far more engaged if the Brewers are in the NL Central race all year.  Additionally, there's the added advantage that he should get switching from the AL to the NL.  Expecting an ERA around 3.20 and about 17 or 18 wins with around 190 Ks is pretty safe, I think, and there is a reasonable chance for upside there.  Which is freakin' awesome! 

The Brewers did give up a lot of their most prized future pieces to get Greinke: Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain, Jake Odorrizi, and Jeremy Jeffress.  Obviously, time will tell whether those guys become major league contributors, and the Brewers definitely cleaned out the farm for the chance to contend in the next year or two.  However, for the type of player Greinke is and the vast shift in the perception of this team that his presence at the front of the rotation creates, I'm sure most every Brewer fan would do that deal 100 out of 100 times.


Yovani Gallardo: With Greinke on the DL, Gallardo gets his second straight Opening Day start, and he is a legitimate front of the rotation pitcher as well.  While his ERAs the last two year have hovered in the upper 3s, he's only 25 and should continue to improve.  He is a dominant strikeout pitcher, posting 200 or more Ks in both of his full years in the majors, but needs to tighten up his control a bit to take the next step.  He appeared to peter out after the All-Star break last year (5.77 ERA in the second half) after his scintillating first half (2.78 ERA).  Having 2 full years of near 200 IPs under his belt hopefully should mean that his endurance over the season this year will be better.

The other big factor that I believe should help Yovani is having Greinke and Marcum join him in the rotation.  There were so many times last year that he was asked to be the stopper for this team (Can I make a "Help me Yovi-wan Gallobi - you're my only hope!" joke here?).  He (hopefully) won't be operating under the same conditions this year.  Gallardo has the potential to be one of the top 5 or 10 pitchers in the NL and in the Cy Young discussion this year.

Shaun Marcum:  The other big acquisition this offseason for the Crew was getting Shaun Marcum out of Toronto for prospect Brett Lawrie.  As this got overshadowed by the Greinke trade, it's easy to forget about how great this deal was as well.  Lawrie will probably be a major league star, but Marcum has the chance to provide #1 or #2 starter value at the #3 slot for the Crew.  Marcum put up a career ERA of 3.85 playing in the widely-publicized beast of a division that is the AL East, including a stellar 3.64 last year.  Last year's season showed that Marcum was definitely all the way back from Tommy John surgery the year before.


Digging into the numbers a little bit, it looks like Marcum is poised to put up a career year with the shift to the National League.  His career ERA against the NL is 3.34, and he should especially be happy to get away from the Red Sox and Yankees, as they killed him to the tune of 4.38 and 6.55 (!) ERAs, respectively.  Unfortunately for Shaun, the NL Central drew the AL East for interleague play this year, so he's not QUITE done with his old friends.  Many folks have pointed out that moving to the NL Central, with Houston and Pittsburgh's cream-puff lineups, will be a big boon to Marcum.  I'm not quite as optimistic as some - you have to remember that the Reds have a great lineup as well, and St. Louis and Chicago should be OK as well, but his numbers should definitely show a marked improvement.  I would expect something a little lower than 3.50 for ERA, but he has the potential to throw up a 3.20 or so in the best case, which is really good for a #3 starter.  My only fear is that he is a pitcher without a dominant fastball and allows a lot of flyballs, and Miller Park is typically a great park for home runs from said flyballs.  However, his old home ballpark, the Rogers Centre ("re" not "er" because it's Canadian, eh?), is also a really good park for HRs, so I don't think this will end up being a big deal.


Randy Wolf:  It seems funny in retrospect that the big pitching pickup for the Brewers last year was Randy Wolf, and I was at least somewhat excited about that (which is more indicative of the absolute trash the Brewers had before him than anything).  Wolf's overall numbers last year don't look too bad (4.17 ERA), but his season was a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde story (I thought about going with a werewolf joke, but I didn't want any Twihards getting upset!).  He was downright terrible through about mid-July, with a WHIP of over 1.5.  If you watched any of those bad starts from the first half, you'd agree with me that it looked even worse than it was.  I think all Brewers fans were having Jeff Suppan nightmare flashbacks to 2008/2009 and saying, "Here we go again..."


However, around the All-Star Break, something changed and Wolf was not just better, but pretty darn good overall.  His ERA over the second half was 3.71, and that number drops to 2.79 if you throw out his disastrous start in July in Pittsburgh, when he let up 12 ER in 5.2 innings.  Did something in his approach/mechanics change in the second half, that we can expect him to continue that kind of production?  His less-than-stellar spring suggests not, but I would imagine that he will put up overall numbers somewhat similar to last year's averages, with a fair chance to be either a bit better (~3.5 ERA) or significantly worse (5.2 or so).  For a #4 starter, though, Wolf is a good fit.  He is the kind of guy who will go out and compete and pitch a lot of innings, keeping the bullpen from getting burned out like they did last year.  In fact, one of the things I love about Wolf is that horrific start in Pittsburgh - the bullpen was really taxed at that point, and Wolf asked Ken Macha to keep him in the game even though he was getting shelled in order to protect the pen.  Lots of guys would not be willing to sacrifice their own stats (which took a big hit because of that) like that.  He definitely was not a good #2 pitcher for the Crew last year, but I'm pretty satisfied with him in the #4 spot this year.


Chris Narveson: Narveson is much the same story as Wolf - if he had to be the #3 starter, the Brewers would be in trouble.  As the #5 guy?  I'll take him.  In his first full year starting, he put up a 4.99 ERA, which is not too good, but also is not bad enough to need to replace him.  Some Brewers fans who are into all of the advanced sabermetric statistics point out that if you adjust his ERA for fielding (called FIP), it would go down to 4.22.  Ordinarily, I would say this suggests he was better than the standard ERA suggests last year.  However, the Brewers fielding has definitely not improved this year, so I'm tempering my excitement about any of the Brewers FIP stats.


Still, Narveson should be up solid numbers in the mid 4s or so while pitching a lot of innings this year, and you can do a lot worse for the #5 starter on your team.


Bullpen:


The Brewers completely retooled their bullpen in midseason last year, and added a few more pieces in the offseason.  Here are the guys who right now are expected to be the key cogs out of the pen in 2011:


John Axford (closer)
Takashi Saito
LaTroy Hawkins
Kameron Loe
Zach Braddock
Manny Parra
Sergio Mitre


Additionally, there are a few more guys on the Opening Day roster because of injuries, etc. that will contribute as well:


Mitch Stetter
Brandon Kintzler
Sean Green


The two major additions are Saito and Mitre, although Hawkins only threw in 18 games last year due to injury.  Saito is a great pickup, as he has a career 2.19 ERA in the 5 years on this side of the Pacific - though at 41 he's not gonna be able to pitch every day.  He gives the Brewers a solid setup man that has been in pressure situations and proved he can handle it.  Hawkins has a career 3.47 ERA as a reliever, and if he can stay healthy and get close to those numbers, it will be a big boost.  Mitre, on the other hand, is not a great reliever.  A lot of Brewer backers took issue with the recent trade of backup outfielder Chris Dickerson to the Yankees for Mitre, as he's pretty much the definition of a league average and Dickerson had become a fan darling.  However, I think the trade was a good one, although not really an exciting one.  I would not want Sergio to be pitching 200 innings for this team, but he provides a decent arm in the bullpen who can also be a spot starter when needed.  Starting pitching depth is the water that MLB teams live on, and you can never have too much of it.  Before they acquired Mitre, the Brewers really didn't have anyone who had proven to be even a league-average SP in the majors.  As a bonus, Mitre also showed last year that he could be useful out of the bullpen.


Other than those three, this is essentially the group that ended up when the dust cleared in the middle of last year, and they were pretty darn good over the second half.  The bullpen put up a 3.49 ERA over the second half, which would have tied them with Minnesota for 8th in MLB over the entire year.  John Axford really emerged as stud once he replaced Trevor Hoffman as the closer last year.  Plus he sported the handlebar mustache, and you can NEVER have too many handlebar mustaches on your team.  I doubt that Ax repeats his 2.48 ERA from last year, but hopefully he doesn't turn out to be a one-year wonder and can provide a solid (if unspectacular) first full season at closer.  I'm more nervous about him this year than most opinions I've read, but even though I think he may struggle at times, I don't think he's gonna implode.  Kameron Loe pitched seemingly everyday in the second half of last year, but that was OK since he was stellar (2.78 ERA).  Hopefully that's a sign of things to come this year, though as a groundball pitcher playing with a decidedly below-average infield, I would expect a little regression this year.  If nothing else, though, he'll be a good man in any brawls, as I wouldn't mess with a 6'8" guy with a bunch of tats.  

The two main lefties in the pen are both guys with electric stuff who have to prove they can put that stuff in the strike zone.  Zach Braddock has a lot of people excited with his electric stuff from the left side (11.0 K/9 last year), but he's gonna have to improve his control before I'm overly confident that he'll repeat an under 3 ERA.  Manny Parra has caused a lot of frustration for Brewers fans in the last few years - he was supposed to be the other young guy (along with Gallardo) who would be the future of the Brewers starting pitching.  Well, that didn't work out so well - he has struggled mightily with his control and has really gotten hit around at times.  However, in about a year's worth of innings in relief in his career, he's been much better than as a starter (3.19 ERA as opposed to 5.44).  If he can settle in to this role and throw strikes, he can be a great reliever, I think.  There's the chance he'll implode again, but I am higher on Parra this year (as long as he stays out of the rotation!) than most.

I don't know much about the other arms in the pen - hopefully, things will work out so that I don't have to find out!


Bench:


Well, we're FINALLY at the last aspect of the Brew Crew that I'm going go through.  I don't have the energy to write about prospects or whatnot - plus I'm hearing mostly crickets at this point, so I figure most people have given up on this post about 4 years ago or so.


The Crew starts the year out with the following guys on the bench:


OF Nyjer Morgan
OF Jeremy Reed
OF/1B Mark Kotsay
IF?? Erick Almonte
IF Craig Counsell


There isn't too much to say here.  As I mentioned in my NL Preview, the Brewers do not have much depth, and if any of these guys (with the possible exception of Nyjer Morgan) get pressed into starting a significant number of games this year, it could spell trouble.  

Nyjer Morgan is definitely the most interesting bench player, but not always for good reasons.  He's a good defensive outfielder, and back in 2009 batted .307/.369/.388 with 42 steals, which is not terrible production if you want someone to get on base and run a lot.  On the other hand, last year he hit .253/.319/.314, which is just ugly.  He also unnecessarily plowed over 2 catchers when there was no play at the plate, allegedly threw a baseball at a fan, and incited a bench-clearing brawl or two.  Basically, he's kind of a punk, and I remember not being impressed when I got to watch him a lot due to coverage of the Nats down here.  As a 4th outfielder, though, you can do a lot worse, and there is the possibility that he could make a solid contribution - and if nothing else, he ensures that the Brewers will be the most hated team in the league by many other teams (cough - St. Louis).


Other than that, I hope that Corey Hart gets back soon, because the thought of Mark Kotsay or Jeremy Reed starting games in the OF is not cheery.  The Kotsay signing was relatively inexplicable, as he's no good defensively and not much better with the bat - but I hear he does have loads of that intangible "veteran leadership" that people love.  The problem is that the Brewers starters may be young, but most of them (with the exception of Gomez and Lucroy) are not really inexperienced at this point.  Oh well.


Craig Counsell is going to be counted on a lot, as he's the only really capable defender at 3 IF positions.  As mentioned earlier, I think he'll be used instead of Yuni in the field A LOT.  He had a renaissance of sorts in 2009 with the bat, but if either his OBP and SLG are above .330 this year, I'll be surprised.  Erick Almonte was the surprise of the spring, hitting .416/.438/.636 and forcing the Brewers to keep him on the roster.  At the ripe young age of 33, however, he's not an up-and-coming prospect, and the best that the Brewers can hope for is that he has moderate success as a pinch hitter this year.  If he could somehow approach his spring stats and be able to play somewhere other than 1B (where Prince almost never takes a day off), things could get interesting as Roenicke tries to figure out where to stick him.

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And I'm done.

Hello?  Anyone there?


Oh well.  I didn't quite get this post done before today's game, but nothing that I wrote has been entirely invalidated by the first game (and now I'm even MORE worried about Axford in the 9th and McGehee's defense at third.  Sigh!).  Despite the disappointment at the last half-inning today (and that was as bad a way to lose as there is), there is still nothing quite like Opening Day in baseball.  I'm sticking with my prediction that the Brewers will end up winning the NL Central with around 90 wins or so. 

No matter what though, baseball has started, and all is well with the world again.  Thanks for reading if you made it this far, and Go Crew!










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