I’ve been out of the Brewers loop for the last little while, what with my wedding on Saturday and all that, but I’d just like to commend Doug Melvin for getting Seattle to pay even a little bit of Bill Hall’s 2010 salary. Any little bit helps.

Well the Crew shook things up Wednesday, sending J.J. Hardy to Nashville, firing pitching coach Bill Castro, and DFA’d Bill Hall. They’ve been teetering on the end of desperation for awhile now and getting rid of the pitching coach and worst player on the team were two moves that pretty much had to be made, although shipping Hardy down definitely was the biggest surprise of the bunch.

I’ve written about Bill Castro before, so I personally like the move. Castro didn’t do the best job of training the pitchers and it showed in their peripheral stats. They brought in AAA-Nashville’s pitching coach

Hardy has been in a seemingly season-long slump, hitting only .229/.300/.367, a far cry from his career line of .262/.323/.431 line. His hitting definitely has slumped, and it seems like he’s hitting a ton of fly balls to the warning track and just hasn’t been able to put it together yet this season.

On the surface, this seems like a move to get Hardy back on track and to get Alcides Escobar his first extended look at big league pitching in a move for 2010. The most probable course of action I initially thought was going to happen was that Hardy will work on some things in AAA for a couple weeks, then hopefully come back and rake in the majors again to raise his trade stock for the offseason. It seems like a logical gamble, especially since Escobar could use some at-bats against major league pitching, but it’s risky nevertheless — to send someone down to the minors is not the best way to get the best return for Hardy if or when he gets traded.

I’d argue though that to send J.J. back down to AAA and leave him there for the rest of the year is the best thing to do to raise his trade stock for this offseason.

Hardy was on the 40-man roster at the beginning of the 2005 season. If he spends the rest of his time in AAA this year, he’ll have less than 5 years of major league service time at the end of next year, so then he’ll be under team control for 2011 as well. Considering that teams by now should have a good idea that Hardy’s going to have a bounceback season, he’ll still be viewed as a valuable piece. Keeping him in AAA to get him two more years of cheap service time for another team is much more valuable to a team than raising his stock a little bit for just one year of a cheap shortstop.

That’s a sly move by Doug Melvin if that’s what he’s planning to do. Some team will give up as least one major-league caliber starting pitcher for JJ next year, as his defensive numbers htis year are as good as ever and he’s continually improving on that front. A team like the Red Sox will still give up a pretty penny for two years of a cost-controlled quality shortstop and could even buy out those two years of arbitration and free agency with a long term deal if he’s dealt over there.

The difference between two years of a cost-controlled shortstop and just one is monumental. I imagine for a year of J.J. a team would be willing to give up a marginally good pitcher like Jason Marquis; for two years, we’re talking about a potential stud prospect or actual quality pitcher, which could amount to a good 3 wins next year.

Anyways I hope that’s what the Brewers do.

It’s been a tough weekend to be a Brewers fan. To keep things simple, I’ll just list off what made it so hard.

1. Losing a 7-1 lead to one of the worst teams in baseball.

2. Losing Corey Hart for a month just as he’s starting to come around.

3. Having Bill Hall return so quickly without getting many at-bats at Nashville. So much for a chance to turn it around.

4. I hate disagreeing with Doug Melvin, especially on something I normally love, which is his ability to find the free talent out there and turn it into something useful, but I can’t help but think that Corey Patterson may be stretching it a bit. Claudio Vargas, on the other hand, was exactly what he needed to do, get an arm for a player we’d never use again anyway, most likely.

5. Ending the weekend under .500 isn’t a great way to show that things are turning around.

That’s all I have, for the moment. Hopefully I’ll be posting about some positives next time around.

Oops.

2007: .254/.315./.425
2008: .225/.293/.396
2009 (so far): .202/.264/.338

Big oops.

That’s a move akin to the Jeffrey Hammonds pickup. Heck, they shared the same OPS in the first year of their big deals (.740). They divert from there, though. Hall is worse over the last two years than Hammonds was in the last two years of his three year deal.

Even worse, injuries and inflated expectations from Coors Field killed the Hammonds buzz, but you can’t say the same for Hall, at least on the injury front. Hammonds also started the contract at age 30, while Hall was at his prime age of 27.

Hall on his diminished role

It doesn’t seem like it’s getting better any time soon, either. Hall talks about a loss of confidence from others, and how he feels his situation is unfair. I can only guess that it’s tough to be in Bill Hall’s shoes right now, but I can’t get past that “unfair” comment without wondering why he’s even bringing it up. Of course things are unfair. On the other hand, you can’t expect much fairness when you’re not producing to the point where you’ve lost your job two straight seasons.

Maybe it’s time for the Brewers to have lunch on Bill Hall’s salary figure. I can’t see any benefit of keeping him around much longer.

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.

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.

The St. Louis Cardinals have lost to the Milwaukee Brewers four out of four times so far this season, and going back to season the Brew Crew have beaten them up to the tune of a 9-1 record in their last ten meetings. Milwaukee’s kind of treated them recently as if they were the Pirates, and the Brewers’ second 1-0 victory over the Cardinals this season likely won’t put a good taste in the Cardinals’ mouths.

The one-run ballgame was highlighted by Bill Hall’s 10th inning single into the gap with Casey McGehee on third and two outs. Immediately after the game-winner, Hall and the rest of the Brewers decided to run into the dugout (watch the video) and celebrate there. This being a far cry from the Untuckem philosophy that has earned the ire of people in St. Louis. Take a look at what Ryan Franklin, the Cardinals’ closer, said awhile ago:

“Well, they’ve got a little flair about them that some people don’t care for,” said closer Ryan Franklin. “But that’s just the way they are. So yeah, I think it would be more fun to beat them than it would be the Padres or something, just because of what they do after they beat you.”

Today after an emotional victory the Brewers immediately decided to run into the clubhouse instead of untuck the shirts and high-five each other walking into the dugout. They also didn’t do the awful, shove-it-in-your-face celebration by mobbing the guy who hit the game winner at first base after the winning run scored. Instead, they ran directly to the clubhouse so as to not “offend” St. Louis.

The Cardinals’ TV announcer has referenced the way Milwaukee celebrates their wins as unclassy or unsportsmanlike as well. Of course it’s not actually unsportsmanlike, since they do it with every team and it’s a tribute to Mike Cameron’s dad and doesn’t do anything to show up the other team at all. There’s a false pretense in baseball that says any form of celebration in baseball is unheard of and unsportsmanlike — staring at a home run, for example, is objectionable and baseball old-timers think you must run the bases at full speed. Pumping your fist Joba Chaimberlain-style after a big strikeout is just as awful of a thing to do.

Be it America’s pasttime or not, it’s still professional sports and these players get paid millions of dollars to perform at a high intensity and doing things like gazing at your success or pumping your fist at a swing-and-miss is something I’d expect out of my team whether it was in a pennant race or not. Hell, Alfonso Soriano and the rest of the Cubs outfield untucked their shirt when they beat the Brewers at Miller Park earlier this year just to mock Milwaukee and there’s no way I would ever have any problem with that. It means he’s competitive. It means he wants to triumph just to troll them. Competition is good for the game, dormant 1920s polite attitudes are not anymore.

Now, whether or not the Brewers held off on untucking ‘em to not offend the Cardinals or not is unclear, but they shouldn’t care either way.

For me, personally, yesterday’s Memorial Day victory provided a much needed pick-me-up after an awful weekend in Minnesota. I live in Minneapolis, so naturally I used my internship at Fox Sports North to gain a free pair of four tickets to Friday’s game and buy cheap seats for Saturday’s. On the walk back to the bus from the Metrodome I took the liberty of crawling through a hole in a fence to get to a private wooded area to relieve myself since the nearest bathroom was still 30 minutes away. The next day, I woke up with a blotch of red on both of my elbows. The next day, it spread everywhere else.

After having to watch an embarrassing Brewer sweep I ended up covering 1/3 of my body in poison ivy and am going to have to spend the next week or two being a hermit and spreading myself with hydrocortisone lotions every hour to stop myself from itching my limbs. Thank goodness I have something to look forward to — another walkoff tomorrow would be perfect.

Everyone knows by now that Rickie Weeks is out for the season with a torn tendon sheath in his right wrist. This is the same injury that sidelined him for awhile and subsequently irritated him until last year, and so far this season he looked to be completely healthy and fulfilling the potential he was always labeled with through his time in Milwaukee: he hit .272/.340/.517 with 8 home runs and greatly improved defensive numbers (5.4 UZR through 35 games) — his WAR so far through mid-May was only half a win lower than it was through the entire 2008 campaign.

Unfortunately he’s gone for the rest of the season, as his surgery will take 4-6 months to fully heal. To replace him, the Brewers immediately are turning second base into a platoon with Casey McGehee hitting against lefties and Craig Counsell taking care of right-handers. Since Counsell was originally slated to be Bill Hall’s platoon partner, studly prospect Mat Gamel will take care of right handed pitching at third base. There are a couple of other options the Brewers could pursue, like bringing up light-hitting Hernan Iribarren to take over second base or even signing free agent Ray Durham to try and revive his corpse. But if the double-platoon sticks, how much production will the Brewers lose with Weeks out for the rest of the season?

Weeks so far this season was hitting tremendously but I suspect he has just been seeing the ball particularly well for a stretch and was due to regress a little bit. His 19.1% HR/FB rate combined with sharp LD% and FB% increases and a low GB% implies small sample size and a return to normalcy. Combine that with a (probably) unsustainable 28.3 UZR/150, and it’s pretty clear Rickie was playing a little over his head. His updated ZiPS projections imply he would hit closer to .257/.351/.456/.808 and even if we assume the improved defense that coaches have been touting than I figure that Weeks’ defense should decline to somewhere in between his career numbers at second (essentially dead average) and where he is now (off-the-charts good). Since we’re 1/4 of the way through the season, I estimate that Weeks would be about a 5.0 WAR player for the rest of the season assuming he remained healthy. So, we lose that. But what do we gain back with the Counsell/McGehee platoon?

Counsell meanwhile is a light-stick, good-fielding utility man. He’s pretty clearly not going to keep up his current pace of batting over .300, but he has a decent career OBP (.345) which is pretty close to Weeks’ and while his offense may take a hit, Counsell has extreme value defensively, posting a career 12.9 UZR/150 at second base. Counsell is also in a platoon, meaning that he’ll only face right-handed pitching. Careerwise, he’s better against right-handed pitching, going .258/.348/.353. For the rest of the season, this approximates to about a 1.5 WAR. McGehee, on the other hand, does much better against LHP, hitting for a .796 OPS in AAA last year with 5 homers in 129 ABs, compared to a .767 OPS against right-handers. Considering the dropoff in his statistics now that he’s reached the major league level, he should put up about a WAR of 1 or so. McGehee is particularly difficult to estimate because he’s had a career 16 chances at outs at second base, so basing predictions of performance based on that small of a sample size is dangerous. I’m assuming totally average defense out of McGehee against lefties.

So far, this means that the Brewers are going to lose about 2.5 wins just from replacing Weeks with the less-able-but-still-qualified McGehee/Counsell duo.

However there’s more to the story than just replacing Rickie over at second. Remember that the move also means that the Gamel Camel to replace Counsell at third. Last night, Gamel decided to turn on a Kyle Lohse fastball and crank it to right field to drive in his first three runs and turn a close game into a punch in the gut. Gamel’s an offensive stud ready to be shown off, as evidenced by his nearly 1.100 OPS in AAA-Nashville at only 23 years old. Those numbers upon examination are excruciatingly high, but if Gamel can put up a .900 OPS in the majors he’ll be significantly outperforming Counsell’s bargain at third despite being an average statistical defender at third. Sure, he’ll give away a few horrible throws and have some fielding gaffes, but his bat is a definite improvement over Counsell. I’d estimate on the low end that Gamel’s bat adds a significant amount of WAR to the table. Since he’s predominately starting against righties, he should provide an extra 0.5-1.0 WAR for the rest of the season, assuming he remains called up at this point. To put it differently, Weeks’ loss costs the Brewers about 1.5-2 wins, and at the end of the season, that could mean all the difference when it comes to playoffs or not. We’ll see.

Of course, this is all wildly speculative and an inexact science. Estimating a two-win dropoff due to to Weeks’ departure is sure to be wrong on my part and couldn’t possibly be actually calculated until the rest of the season plays out and the hypothetical assumptions that Weeks could continue his tear at nearly the rate he was going at so far.

Enjoy the hot streak. Remember that the inevitable August and September swoon is upon us yet.

Ryan Braun decided to own once again in the bottom of the eighth on Friday night against a FSWisconsin-doctored 100 mph Aaron Heilman fastball on a 1-0 count by serving it into the UW-Milwaukee sign in right center and give the Brew a 3-2 lead that they wouldn’t give up.

The next day, the Cubs bullpen powerhouse cranked out 6 walks in 1 2/3 IP as the Brewers took another win in a game that lasted over four hours. It was such a good game for awhile until the Cubs bullpen started going haywire and dragging the final two innings much longer than they needed to be. Yesterday’s game didn’t really matter because taking two from the Cubs right after a 3-1 road trip is happy days for me. On Saturday night, watching this made me grin as well. All in all a really good stretch by the Crew and heading into next week with a half-game lead on the Cubs means the Brewers are sitting pretty.

However, this post is about something else… something I wanted to check in on. Bill Hall’s season. I wrote about back in February making the point that he’s really going to have a bounceback season this year due to his statistics regressing upward to the norm and his LASIK eye surgery seemingly adding to his ability to see the ball, which had been a major problem in the past.

This year Bill Halls’ hit .279/.347/.465 with 3 home runs in 86 AB. For a third baseman, that’s not too bad, and with positive defensive numbers at third base so far, that places him significantly above projections this year and actually a really valuable player. How much of this solid play is a regression in BABIP numbers and how much is due to that being a better ballplayer who can see the ball with relative ease now?

An average BABIP in the majors is usually around .300, maybe a little more. Hall’s this year is .350, and in 2008 his was below average at .287. He couldn’t hit the ball well, but he certainly wasn’t very lucky and had his BABIP been slightly higher we wouldn’t be as concerned about this year’s performance. But this year, he’s hitting well, and his BABIP implies he’s been pretty lucky so far, so we should expect his stats to go down somewhere in between 2008′s numbers and his numbers so far.

But personally I think his stats will be skewed a little more towards the side of .250 he’s on now. He’s become a marginally better hitter with better other statistics to imply that he might be a for-real acceptable third base option in case Mat Gamel doesn’t pan out there. In between his year and last, he’s done a much better job of taking pitches and being disciplined at the plate, as evidence by the moderate increase in some of his pitch selection stats so far:

Bill Hall 2008: O-Swing%: 26.8. Swing%: 46.3. F-Strike%: 62.3.
Bill Hall 2009: O-Swing%: 23.1. Swing%: 44.7. F-Strike%: 69.5.

Hall’s swinging at less pitches outside of the zone and less pitches in general, despite the F-Strike% going way up. Considering that he’s able to take more pitches and is putting up the stats consistent with last year’s implies he’s going to get a few more chances to hit with the count in his favor instead of having to work with the count. That means he’ll get more pitches to see on 1-0, 2-0, and 2-1 and those counts have been proven both statistically and by most color announcers to be the ones where hitters salivate over. I think he’ll keep his progress up.

If he does, that just puts the Brewers just that much closer to that coveted wild card spot. Or even division if the Cubs keep getting hurt.

There’s only so long I can put off evaluating the performance of the Brewers so far under the excuse of it being an absurdly small sample size and thus totally useless to look at throughout the season. 3 weeks still isn’t nearly enough of a sample size to make me ever legitimately wonder if a player is having a breakout year or has fallen off a cliff — that’s why I’m waiting to say anything about my impression of the team’s direction and value until at least two months or so into the season.

With that said, the 8-10 start this season isn’t anything to be worried about. Any record this early in the season is too early to think anything of — just take a look at the Pittsburgh Pirates this year as an example. PECOTA projections think it will be business as usual for the Pirates in 2009, making them a 97-loss team for yet another year. However, so far this year they’re 11-7 with the best pythagorean record in the major leagues. The team is clearly playing over their heads right now and I’ll trust an advanced computer projection system over an 18-game span where not even every pitcher has had a chance to make four starts yet. Keep in mind the Brewers as of May 18th last year were four games below .500 and they ended up making the postseason. Even my recent post on the team’s OBP doesn’t actually contain any merit because of this.

That’s one of the reasons I said we should stick with Jeff Suppan when he was awful his first two starts.

However, here’s what I’ve seen so far:

-J.J. Hardy has been really unlucky so far. Through his first 16 games, Hardy hit a paltry .177/.235/.339 with 15 strikeouts and 5 walks, making him a virtual black hole in the middle of the lineup. Hardy is typically a hot-and-cold hitter, but I’d argue he’s doing alright with himself. He’s suffered from a paltry .182 BABIP and his LD%, while it is lower than it was in 2008, it’s not enough to be significant (14.6 to 15.5) and his GB% is lower than normal and he’s raised both his FB% and HR/FB rate, he should be doing approximately the same as he did last year. Unfortunately those balls that he’s hitting hard are finding gloves. That will change at some time throughout the season.

-Corey Hart has changed his approach, and it’s going to make him much better. In 2008, Hart had 27 walks over the entire season. So far, in 2009, he already has 9. That puts him on pace to walk 82-83 times this season. Now, I don’t expect that number to stay that high, but considering his recent approach of taking a pitch or two and the added ability to lay off an outside slider I think new hitting coach Dale Sveum is helping him recognize pitches and become a good, patient hitter. A good Corey Hart is a good way to start a repeat playoff season.

-Mark DiFelice is my favorite pitcher. He only cemented his position when he came into the game in the 10th inning on Saturday night with the bases loaded compliments of Carlos Villanueva and got a flyout off the bat of Miguel Tejada and held a one-run lead the next inning to earn a huge win. Not to mention his sparkling 2.84 ERA from the bullpen has been one of the few bright spots so far. A little look into his statistics prove that he’s a legit player, too: 11/3 K:BB ratio and a 0.96 WHIP in 2009. Coming from the bullpen, however, he does hold a full 100% left-on-base percentage, so his ERA might be due for a little blip up, he’s definitely got the pitching skills to become a major part of the bullpen this year. If only the Brewers still had time to stretch him out and turn him into a starter…

-My Bill Hall Fan Club status is still a little tentative. Without the Bill Hall-patented “epic blinks” Hall seems to be seeing the ball much better than last year, raising his OPS by .100 points and turning into a .341 wOBA player at third and his small-sample sized defense has made him much improved over last year’s Bill Hall. However, this increase in average likely is related to his far increased BABIP, when in fact .333 is on the other side of .300 as last year’s numbers. He’s doing a marginally better job at seeing pitches while keeping his other peripheral stats virtually the same. The judgment is still out there to see if he’s actually improved his hitting ability or his increased average is simply a product of luck. Stay tuned.