All of a sudden I’ve been brought back to the days of Ruben Quevedo and Jamey Wright tossing up a consistent array of doubles and gopher balls to the opposition when posting ERAs of 5.76 and 5.35 in 44 total starts and a combined 11-24 win-loss record. In 2002, the Brewers went 56-106.

Glendon Rusch — yeah, that Glendon Rusch — was one of Milwaukee’s most consistent pitchers with a 4.70 ERA and 210 innings pitched in 2002. Never mind that he’s an awful pitcher, and has always been an awful pitcher; he was the team’s #2 guy that year.

The parallels between Rusch and Jeff Suppan are alarmingly close — except Suppan doesn’t eat as many innings as Rusch. Suppan has also been our second-most consistent starter recently, as Manny Parra stunk down to AAA, Dave Bush has been terrible due to a microtear in his arm, and Braden Looper has just been awful lately. This is a far cry from early April when pretty much everybody wanted him off the roster. Now he’s a semi-valuable part of the rotation taking into account the shambles it’s in right now.

Another comparison to the lovable 2002 losers was the ace of the staff: they had Ben Sheets, we have Yovani Gallardo. I’m pretty sure 2002 was not the ideal setup for the Brewers. I’m pretty sure 2009 isn’t currently the ideal setup for the Brewers.

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Manny Parra made his second start last night in Albequerque to face Manny Ramirez and the Isotopes. Parra took the loss, but his start looked encouraging on the surface as the reason for Nashville’s loss last night was due to the offense scoring 0 runs; Manny threw 7 innings of one-run ball and dropped to 0-1 so far in Nashville. Here’s what Right Field Bleachers had to say:

Like I said, a nice start. His walk total went down a little compared to his four in six innings last week. His strike to ball ratio remained solid. Basically…good to see. I don’t think one can read into the early performances too much, but I had my doubts he’d start solid in Nashville. I remain very interested to see if he can continue this for another four or five starts. If he does, especially with the entire starting rotation (minus Yo) struggling, you can bet Manny Parra will be back in Milwaukee.

So far he’s been encouraging more than anything considering his lack of confidence on the way down, but there’s no way he’s back to major-league ready yet. Out of his small sample size in AAA he’s owned only a nearly 1:1 K/BB ratio and has been the benefactor of a .200 BABIP.

It would be unreasonable to expect Parra to go down to AAA and simply dominate hitters right away since his confidence level has gone way down. However two starts down in AAA that look pretty good on the surface don’t exactly mean he’ll be starting this Saturday against San Fransisco again.

Even though his secondary stats imply he’s still the same Parra we saw earlier this season, these starts still are encouraging in the sense that having two good starts down in AAA could help him build his confidence and deflate those walk totals that suddenly jumped this year. A more confident Parra could mean hee’ll be ready to go in 3 or 4 more starts.

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Coming out of AAA to pitch tomorrow’s series finale against the AL (thank god) is Mike Burns, a career minor leaguer who’s floated around with different teams before signing a minor-league contract with the Brewers at the beginning of this year.

The biggest names brought up at the beginning of the year to help provide pitching depth in case one of the starters went down with an injury (coughcoughBushcough) included guys like Seth McClung, Chase Wright, and Tim Dillard — not many of us expected a journeyman to post an ERA under 3 in Nashville.

Burns is definitely the best option to pitch right now to replace Bush’s spot. Burns keeps the ball in the ballpark (about 1 HR every 10 innings in AAA) adequately, doesn’t walk people (1.47 walks/9), but doesn’t srike anybody out and leaves the burden of his resonsibility on his defense.

Of course, the Brewers lead the league in defensive efficiency so far this season, so the defense shouldn’t have a big problem helping Burns out. His Major League Equivalent ERA using his AAA stats this year would be about 4.5; if his defense helps him out nicely he should become the new Glendon Rusch that lasts 4 or 5 starts.

As you may notice, the title is no longer the date — I present to you, the pinnocle of innovation!

The most exciting thing to happen recently was the response to the pitching depth problem the brewers have. Chase Wright is a lefty pitcher who’s done well in the minor leagues, going 13-5 with a 3.85 ERA in between AA and AAA in 2007 and even better numbers in injury-limited innings in 2008. However, when you dig a little bit deeper into his stats, he really doesn’t have much of a chance in the big leagues.

Wright’s deeper pitching statistics that reveal his true pitching ability isn’t as good as it looks. He’s only struck out 557 batters in 795 innings while wilking 385; that’s not even a 1.5 K:BB ratio! Career 1.41 WHIP as well. The guy does not have enough talent to make a Gallardo-sized splash anywhere in the big leagues. Wright is actually famous in his limited time in the majors for giving up four dingers in a row against your hated rival. I don’t see him getting many places, but there is one stat he has that’s really good.

He’s only given up 32 HR in those 795 innings, so that means he has a really good ground ball ratio and that makes sense because his main pitches are a two-seamer and a changeup. Low home run rates and a high ground ball percent can do a good job for atoning for otherwise low-quality numbers; not only do more ground balls and less fly balls mean that hits that do get through the defense are singles instead of doubles and triples, but it keeps the ball in the park. This good HR rate is a good argument, though I don’t know exactly how far it can go to defend for the horrendous WHIP he’s displayed so far in the minors.

However good or bad he may be in the majors, he’s still a useful pickup for pitching depth. It’s already been extensively covered everywhere that we’re hanging our crutch on a guy who is coming back from his second Tommy John surgery, one coming back from a torn ACL, hasn’t pitched more than 120 innings since 2002, and a guy who has had an occasional arm problem or two during his minor league career that tend to foreshaow major pitching injuries and Tommy John surgeries. One of them will inevitably get injured or flame out, just as the warning signs should flag, and he can averagely fill out the spot left by their absence. As long as he can keep the ball in Miller Park. Don’t you think it’s weird that he gave up four home runs in a row when he was in the majors?!

Elsewhere, Ben Sheets is getting surgery and he expects the Brewers to pay for it. Needing surgery for a torn tendon for an injury-riddled pitcher is seemingly obvious, but wanting the Brewers to pay for his surgery even though he will be passed onto another team (which seems pretty obvious at this point) is taking it a bit too far, especially considering the fact that noone in this economy even wanted to sign him for two years in the first place. Think of a couple short months ago when Sheeter rejected a one-year, $12 million offer from the Brewers, and now he’s probably going to get a minor league contract because his surgery is going to have him sit out until August. Yikes. Poor Sheets.

Think of what the havoc would be if Sheets signed with the Brewers and news just came in that he’s out until August. What holes would the team be in then? Man, I’m glad Doug Melvin is a thrifty spender.