Don’t forget to follow @brewerparadise on twitter, where I post more than just blogs! Those posts are only allowed to be 140 characters, so you don’t have to read all the garble we post here!

BPL is no longer a one-man show! Say hello to JoeKnows, BPL’s newest writer. He’ll also be jotting down a few posts per week in addition to mine, and he’s a better writer than I am, so I’m excited to see what he comes up with. Joe previously wrote for a personal blog and I’m excited to see what he’s got for us.

He should post a little intro pretty shortly, so welcome him to BPL! Feel free to e-mail him at joeknows@brewerparadiselost.com with any comments, questions, or anything else.

BPL is almost done moving over to this domain, so we should be pumping stuff out at max capacity starting now. I’ll let JoeKnows start the show though…

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.

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.

In the wake of a recent inability to post more than twice per week but still feeling like there’s more to say, I’m going to change the way I blog. Instead of copying Aaron Gleeman’s format of blogging — two posts of baseball analysis per week — I’m going to mix in initial thoughts on Brewers news with a few other cool links and posts to show you. This might take away at my more in-depth analysis a little bit, but since I’m not any good at analyzing pitch f/x data yet and my analysis wasn’t very good in the first place, I doubt it’ll cause a huge fuss.

As always, I post more stuff than what I’m going to post here on my Twitter account, so make sure and check me out there.

Sorry for no activity– daily life, prepping for school, running a bunch of errands, and generally being hectic contribute to my lack of posting. While there’s been no real posting lately, I can say that I’ve virtually finished my 2009 pitching preview and will post it first thing Monday morning. A few newsworthy things:

Apparently the Brewers were thinking about chasing Dunn. Even though the internet is in love with Adam Dunn, I like this move. Two reasons for this– it’d be taking on way too much in salary considering the arbitration cases of the five Brewers who are eligible (more on this later), and even though replacing Corey Hart with the Dunnotron would greatly improve the team, watching a lineup of Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, Adam Dunn, Bill Hall, Mike Cameron, and Rickie Weeks would undoubtedly set the record for most strikeouts in a single season. We’re one step away from putting Jose Hernandez back at shortstop. It’d make me cringe.

One of the things the article mentioned was that the Brewers were considering sending Cameron to the Yankees instead of replacing Hart with Dunn tit-for-tat. The plan would’ve involved shipping Cameron off, moving Hart to center, and putting Dunn in right field. I’m not sure the increase in salary (Dunn SHOULD command $15 mil/year or so, considering his ability) would justify the incredible dropoff there would be in shipping an excellent defender in Cameron off and replacing him with an average one in Hart. Remember, one of the things that makes Mike Cameron a very valuable commodity is his sublime defense. Trotting out a daily outfield of Braun, Hart, and Dunn would sure let batters tee off towards the gaps and ultimately make our pitching staff worse.

In other stuff, J.J. Hardy signed for super cheap and Dave Bush signed for cheap enough. Considering Hardy is one of the best shortstops in the game, grabbing him at the price of a tiny bit more than Nick Punto is awesome. One of the knocks i’ve always had on Hardy is his range, but his positive UZR numbers so far in the major leagues are significantly awesome to the point where it’s almost set in stone about a major leaguer. If there’s any way that I need to eat my words, it’s one where a great player turns out to be better than he actually is. J.J. “Makes Me” Hardy.