Our very own dark horse Rookie of the Year candidate Casey McGehee has not-so-quietly had a spectacular year for Milwaukee, putting up a line of .304/.370/.515 in his rookie year with 15 homers in only 335 PA. If he didn’t split playing time with other guys and didn’t sit out with an injury on the year, we’d be talking 20-25 home runs… and all with no splits whatsoever.

I’d say he should be the starting third-baseman for the Brewers next year along with Mat Gamel, but then I took another look at his minor league stats before this year. His minor league OPS is career .100 points lower than it’s been in the major leagues, and he’s benefited from a high BABIP this year, both sure signs that Casey’s going to drop off a little bit.

He should regress down to career norms and then some, and you might even be able to sell high on him if the Brewers are really convinced that Gamel is the future at third. However, it doesn’t really make sense for the Brewers to do that since Gamel’s really bad at defense and there’s an open position in the outfield. And besides, even if McGehee does have a hard regression year, he’s still valuable to have on the team. A .725-ish OPS with positive defense at third is definitely valuable when you consider he’s still a pre-arbitration player and will make league minimum.

In other words, if I were running the team, I’d be a little wary of how he’s going to do starting the year at 3B, since he’s 27 and hasn’t yet put up an OPS above .750 in the minors ever, but since he’s a low-risk player with virtually no hit on the budget he shouldn’t even be considered a candidate to sell high or get sent back down to the minors. We should all be proponents of rewarding players for doing well for your team regardless of how much of a mirage it is — what kind of message do you send to the other players if Casey gets sent back down to AAA after putting up a .900 OPS during his rookie season?

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.

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.

During the top of the 9th inning in yesterday’s ballgame, I told the friend I was watching the game with, “watch out for this Jason Kendall double play — the rally will vanish.” Pinch-hitter Casey McGehee led off the 9th inning with a walk and the tying run was on first with nobody out. Kendall promptly hit into a double play, causing little bit of controversy in Brewerland for not using an awful hitter such as Kendall to bunt McGehee into scoring position. This happened in another game earlier this season when Jody Gerut didn’t drop down the bunt in the 9th to move the runner over and promptly grounded into a killer double play.

With the Brewers down by one bunting with Kendall seems like the smartest play in that scenario. Unfortunately, statistically it’s not supposed to work. On average, teams score more runs with a runner at first and nobody out than a runner at second and one out unless a hitter hits well below the Mendoza line on a regular basis. Since the right strategy right there would have been to play for multiple runs and not just one, having Kendall bat for a hit was definitely the right play. If this was the bottom of the 9th and the game was tied, well, then I’d have a different strategy. But most of the time Kendall won’t ground into a double play, and yesterday just happened to be one of those times where he did.

Little things like that are part of the reason I really respect Ken Macha so far as the manager. He (for the most part) makes good pinch-hitting decisions and short of leaving Manny Parra hung out to dry he’s done a fantastic job with the bullpen. With former manager Ned Yost at the helm it seemed like I took each loss personally because each loss he seemed like he mismanaged the bullpen. With Macha, every time I get the Spidey-sense that a reliever is going to hit the wall or a pitcher, he comes out and makes the most appropriate change. He’s not the loyal-to-a-fault person that Yost was, and it’s nice to have a manager that shares the skepticism of a casual baseball fan. The clubhouse seems much more comfortable.

Another thing that’s impressed me about Macha so far is the way the Brewers have responded from bad stretches. Yost would sit back, trust his players, and tell everyone to calm down while chaos ensued behind him. Macha hasn’t been afraid to use a different lineup here, drop a guy who’s not performing there, and keep people away from extended slumps for a long period of time. After a horrid 4-9 start, the team bounced back nicely and played on fire for a month. After an ugly three-game sweep to the hands of the Twins (2 of the games I paid money to see), they responded with a 4-2 homestand. After losing 3 of 4 to the Marlins, they win 2 of 3 in Atlanta, coming a couple runs from a series sweep. It’s the little things that count, and this year it feels like a three-game losing streak isn’t a harbinger of doom and gloom for two weeks. It’s a bump in the road.

This weekend I’ll be heading down to Milwaukee to catch my first Miller Park game of the year. I’m getting awesome free tickets for Saturday’s game. Should be a blast — it’s nationally televised too. And an afternoon game.

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.

Using the Baseball Musings Lineup Simulation tool, here’s a quick look at what the offense will do in 2009.

Note that these numbers are all CHONE projections, with one objection: I’m predicting Bill Hall will do much better than his projections, considering he’s due for a BABIP correction year and I have a good feeling his LASIK surgery will be able to make him see the ball better, and post a Denard Span-like transformation. I’ve shown why Hall’s problems are inherently linked with his ability to see the ball already right here. I’ve beefed up his numbers a little bit to adjust for what I think will happen…

5.2 runs per game is obviously unrealistic considering how odd the top lineups are. So, let’s adjust for the reduced performance that lineup will have. 5.05 runs per game sounds like an appropriate approximation.

Of course, there’s more. This isn’t the lineup that’s going to be playing every single day. Whenever J.J. Hardy needs a day off, he’ll be replaced by the soft-hitting Craig Counsell. Sometimes, Chris Duffy or Tony Gwynn Jr. (whichever one) is going to start in center. Brad Nelson might take some at-bats away from Ryan Braun. So, if we adjust playing time further, we amount to about 5 total runs per game with our lineup.

5 runs per game is nothing to scoff at. That’s 810 runs throughout the duration of the entire season. For reference, they scored 750 runs all of last season. Depending on how well the patchwork starting rotation holds up, we may very well have an underrated team here. 800 runs isn’t a small cup of coffee, and that could easily carry a team to a .500 record. If Braden Looper and