Might as well separate this post into a few separate sections…

A) BREWERS WIN!!!

B) Gregg Zaun’s going on the DL, Jon Lucroy is going to get called up. Carlos Gomez will be back today, probably for Adam Stern. These are all acceptable moves, although I’m not anticipating seeing Lucroy get the starting nod over Kottaras yet. He’s still too young and needs some more seasoning – his bat isn’t quite there yet. I like Lucroy as 2011′s starting C.

C) Zach Braddock might get called up? Both good relief prospects are coming up at about the right time. I agree with what Al said (see below) that the Brewers are a week with a fresh pen away from being good again.

D) Miller Park Drunk/Al’s Ramblings did a back-and-forth about Doug Melvin.

I’ve always been an avid defender of Melvin myself… which is weird. I generally come from the Seattle Mariners/Baltimore Ravens ‘defense first, offense second’ philosophy of building a team. Melvin’s is obviously the other way around. I’d recite exactly why I still like Melvin as the GM, but that link did as complete a job as I ever would.

The one thing neither of them talked about is the current minor league system as it is. There aren’t any starting pitchers near a major league waiting in the wings, and prospects like Brett Lawrie, Jon Lucroy etc. are still at least a year away from making it. Many Brewers farmhands that we’ve had for cheap these past few years are now a year or two away from free agency, and we don’t have near the firepower waiting that we once had.

Which makes me question… How much of our team was built by Doug Melvin, and how much by Jack Z’s impressive scouting? Melvin doesn’t exactly have the best track record with signing free agents vital to the team’s success. In other words, Melvin’s great at signing below-average, undervalued, bargain-bin players like Zaun, Counsell, Edmonds et al, but when the pitching staff needs one more anchor or we need another solution in the bullpen Melvin tends to miss with more players than I’m comfortable with.

All this talk about firing Melvin seems silly to me, because he’s only in control of so much of what happens. If Bruce Seid ends up becoming a poor scouting director, the blame is going to fall on Melvin, much like the poor play of a team will cause the firing of a manager. It’s best to take all the ‘dependent metrics’ out of the equation when evaluating Melvin, and insofar he’s about as good as his track record: average to above-average.

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.

With Mike Cameron‘s $10 million salary coming off the books at the beginning of next year, it’s unlikely the Brewers will offer him arbitration and he’ll get a two/three year deal with a team in need of a center fielder that has more money available to spend than the Brewers. This could be different had the Brewers not wrapped up nearly 1/4 of next year’s salary in Jeff Suppan and Bill Hall… but that’s the way it is, and the Brewers aren’t likely to have a clear center fielder for 2010 by this offseason.

So what are the options? Tom Haudricourt suggested a plan I liked in a chat with the fans last week:

I am the Brewers’ GM. This is what I do before Opening Day 2010: Trade Hart and Hardy and any prospect not named Gamel or Escobar for some starting pitching. There certainly isn’t any coming through the system right now. I’d re-sign Felipe Lopez to play second, move Rickie Weeks to center, move Mat Gamel to right and install Casey McGehee as my third baseman and Alcides Escobar as my shortstop. I’d sign Kendall for one more year and let him tutor Angel Salome in a backup role. I’d take that team to battle and see what happens.

This is a good idea in principle, but forcing Weeks to learn one of the most important defensive positions in a span of one offseason is more difficult to do than it sounds and I’m not ready to trot out a 2010 lineup with two-thirds of the outfield playing a position they’ve never played competitively before. Besides, throwing Mat Gamel in right field is basically giving up on all the work that’s been put into him at 3B, and since I heard his defensive stats aren’t that terrible after extensive work with defensive whiz Don Money I’m not ready to give up on his defense quite yet (as unnatural as it may look). He’s the third-base version of Rickie Weeks.

Instead who should be playing center is a combo plate of Jason Bourgeois and Jody Gerut. Gerut has been having a real down year but has gotten better lately and with any smidgen of consistent playing time down the stretch he could really stretch himself out into a full-or-half time player again.

Bourgeois is pretty good against left-handers and Gerut is pretty good against righties. Since they’re both competent defensively, I don’t see why an .800/.825 OPS and average-to-pretty-good D in center field will harm the Brewers anyways, and they’re going to be paying Gerut something around $1.5 million anyways through arbitration, it’ll be a little $2 million steal in center. It’ll be one of those moves Doug Melvin always seems to make.

***

J.J. Hardy Update: .154/.214/.462/.676 in 13 ABs. Small sample size, but he’s been hitting balls really weakly all season long. I wouldn’t mind if he saves his best for last — between this and tampering with Hardy’s service time, Dougie Mustache could pull off a pretty sly move for a starting pitcher, since a cheap shortstop who’s still valuable despite being awful with the bat who’s under control for two more years it an incredibly valuable commodity, especially to an SS-hungry team like Boston.

He has to do it against AAA pitching though.

Numerous times I’ve pointed out on BPL that the Brewers made the right move by not making any major trades for a Cliff Lee or Roy Halladay since the Brewers were blowing smoke and mirrors during their hot stretch at the beginning of the year and they’re too flawed to justify overspending for a band-aid to heal a broken arm.

They haven’t overpaid for any starting pitching yet which tells me they realize they’re more than one egg short of a carton and instead have dealt for two relievers, Claudio Vargas and now David Weathers, in addition to buying Jesus Colome. Brewers relief pitching isn’t that great but is hardly a cause for concern. Not only are the starters much worse and pitch many more innings, but the difference between Trevor Hoffman and Todd Coffey and Chris Smith and Seth McClung is pretty significant. A large difference in quality between your high-leverage relievers and your low-leverage ones might put a dent in your bullpen’s ERA, but it doesn’t actually take much away from their overall quality, since I tend to measure bullpen performance in terms of what guys are performing in high-leverage situations.

So then why did the Brewers go out of their way to get three relievers instead of address the starting pitching they so desperately need?

David Weathers is an old veteran who’s now with his second stint in Milwaukee. He tosses an 88-mph fastball, slider, and changeup, which is pretty typical, and his career 4.24 ERA looks like an average pitcher to bolster the bullpen. This year he actually has a 3.32 ERA, which means he’s doing pretty well for himself in a homer-happy park in Cincinatti.

His peripheral stats are a different story, though. This year’s been a bit different than his normal. His strikeouts and walks have stayed the same, but he’s suddenly developed a home run problem that makes his low 3.32 ERA pretty misleading and his peripheral stats actually worse than past years, so he actually should be getting worse, not any better. He’s sporting an ugly FIP over 5, so we shouldn’t be surprised if he gets much worse as the season progresses and his stats regress to his career numbers. He’s not really an upgrade over what they have right now, and he’s a little pricey for a reliever anyways, so the move definitely doesn’t make much sense if the Brewers are planning on contending this year.

Read what Weathers had to say about it:

“I had no idea; it was a total shock,” said Weathers when reached by telephone. “I’m excited. I loved it when I was in Milwaukee and I’m excited to be coming back.

“I know the Brewers are still in the race and that’ll be fun. I haven’t pitched as much as usual this year so I feel really fresh. I feel like I can finish the season strong.

“I know a lot of the guys there and I’m ready to get out there with them.”

See why the Brewers got him? The pen has been overworked by anyone’s standards and a fresh arm is just what they need so they can get some R&R the rest of this season.

Jesus Colome was a DFA pickup after getting released by the Nationals after sporting an ugly 7.88 ERA and a WHIP of nearly 2 in 16 innings for the Nationals. 16 innings really isn’t really a big enough sample size to judge one pitcher, but he’s been a career 4.62 ERA pitcher with a poor strikeout to walk ratio and a seemingly average-to-poor reliever that Doug Melvin just loves to grab from the scrapheap. He can be counted on to eat some innings since he’s had a nice extended break this season and has only pitched a few innings.

Claudio Vargas is another ex-Brewer coming back for his second stint with the club. Considering he wasn’t doing much with the Dodgers and it only took a backup career catcher at best to get another fresh reliever on the club, it wasn’t a bad move to try and keep the rest of the bullpen rested for the stretch. Claudio used to start for the Brewers and would always frustratingly nibble on the outside corner, and lots of walks and poor pitching in general is what makes up Milwaukee’s starting rotation is something the Brewers tend to gravitate towards so he’ll be able to spot start whenever necessary.

Milwaukee hasn’t really upgraded their pen any by gathering a few middle relievers who sport frustrating ERAs, and the Crew have only fallen out of the race further, being 6 games back with 51 to play, their furthest back in quite some time. I suspect all three of these moves are related just to give the bullpen a break and provide Ken Macha with some more flexibility in the 6th and 7th innings. I don’t think it’s an attempt to bolster the bullpen for a playoff run.

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.

I can’t wait until the Brewers trade Ryan Braun.

All kidding aside, this sounds just like Doug Melvin is trying to use the media to get his point across that players don’t need to be criticizing the management. Maybe he took it personally. I have no idea. I can only guess at what’s going on.

Players as well as upper management in the MLB use the media solely for strategic purposes I’m sure, as it’d be the most logical thing to do — you can manipulate the public’s perception of you, your team, and your players through the newspaper. It’s why people who say that “reporter X is just a spokesperson for Scott Boras” are essentially right but they should extend that to “reporter X is just a spokesperson for the baseball team.” You can replace “baseball team” with “government” or “university” or any other entity and you are still accurate in terms of the crux of the U.S. media. Media manipulation is one of the ways the Brewers create a positive spin on their ballclub. Remember that Fox Sports Wisconsin is a partner with the Milwaukee Brewers and not an independent media entity.

In other words, my guess as to what Melvin’s trying to do is give Brauny a little slap on the wrist in public just as a warning to never speak out against the pitching staff again. This won’t be made into a big deal so long as Braun keeps his mouth shut from now on and only is frank enough not to want to cause a big tussle in public.

So Derek Jeter has been a better shortstop in 2009 than Jason Bartlett. Instead, teams who have large markets can just vote up their players to see them.

There’s not really anything wrong with that, but just plan on taking any posts that are really bitter about Gallardo and Hoffman with a giant grain of salt. Besides, there’s something more important and relevant to the Brewers than the All-Star game anyways.

Ryan Braun said after yesterday’s loss to the Cubs that “We’re at the point right now where it would be important for us to go out there and acquire somebody.” Obviously he was implying that the starting pitching is trash right now, it’s no fun to be losing by 100 runs after the third inning, and Doug Melvin needs to make a trade soon.

The trade market though seems to be limited to Javier Vazquez and Doug Davis because so many teams are still in it and the teams that aren’t don’t have the parts the Brewers need. All this has been said before, but the fact that so many teams are looking to buy the parts they need makes the market essentially “who will pay the most to get the spare parts they need.” I fear, along with quite a few other people, that so many buyers in a market with so little to sell will result in someone overpaying for an average pitcher like Doug Davis.

One of the things that Melvin has consistently said is that there has to be a better option available for the Brewers to pursue in order to make a move, otherwise there really is no point. I’m not yet convinced trading for one of the available pitchers is really a good option at this point compared to internal options. Here’s why:

Javier Vazquez would cost too much. He’s probably the best pitcher available on the trade market right now who isn’t an oft-injured Erik Bedard, sporting one of the best years of his career with a 3.05 ERA and 130 strikeouts in 112 innings. Naturally, he’s going to get the most return if he’s traded and deservedly so; how much Atlanta gets back for him depends on just how far one team is willing to go, and I fear that the Braves will ask for Alcides Escobar in addition to Corey Hart and if the Crew politely declines the Braves will then move on to the team who would give up that much.

That’s not to mention that Vazquez is even on the trade market at all. Atlanta’s tied with the New York Mets in the NL East, only 4 games back of Philly. They could just as easily be buyers instead of sellers at the deadline if they do well in between now and the All-Star Break.

Doug Davis isn’t that good. Davis has been super hot lately, tossing seven innings and giving up one run or less in his last three starts. However I’m not convinced that when he does come back to earth that he’s a much better option than the Brewers have internally.

So far this year Davis has a 3.15 ERA, which is really pretty good. But considering the prospects the Brewers would have to give up to get him, I’m not quite convinced he’s the best posible option.

Davis is a full run below what his FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) would indicate, implying that he’s been lucky — extremely lucky, also, since Chase Field in Arizona is a pretty intense hitters’ ballpark. One would naturally expect that number to regress back towards the norm. He’s also been lucky in regards to his other stats too — his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) this year is the lowest of his career at .278 and his left-on-base percentage (LOB%) is nearly 79%, a number way too high for a pitcher of Davis’ quality. One would expect him to get worse and not better. His three recent starts should only be regarded as a mirage and not representative of what he’s going to do for the rest of the season.

By the way, just as an aside, I’ve never understood why a pitcher throwing three straight starts really well is “improving his trade stock.” If anything I’d expect that pitcher to have a little regression and have a couple of poor starts, which would make the trade not worth it. Why do teams look at two hot starts and determine that a pitcher is going to do that well for them for the rest of the year? I don’t know if people realize how lucky the Brewers were last year when C.C. Sabathia ruled for the better part of 3 1/2 months straight.

Anyways, I’m not so sure doing something from within the organization isn’t the answer here. Manny Parra on the other hand has been doing pretty well in AAA and has been on the extreme end of misfortunes while in the big leagues this year. Just like I expect Doug Davis to regress back to what he does, I expect Parra to do better than he has been. This means getting lucky.

Parra so far has stunk to the tune of a 7.52 ERA, but his peripherals imply he’s been on the extreme end of misfortune, as his FIP is just over 5 and his LOB% has been barely over 60%. These numbers aren’t a far cry from Doug Davis, but he’s just been on the other side of the luck equilibrium.

Just as a totally made-up and hypothetical scenario, imagine Doug Davis having an ERA one run worse than his FIP. That would mean his ERA for the rest of the season is about 5.1, give or take a little bit. Now reverse tha trend for Parra. His ERA would be about 4 for the rest of 2009. Parra would be the much better option, and he wouldn’t cost the Brewers unreplacable parts in their farm system.

I know it’s a fallacy to assume that just because someone’s been unlucky with their pitching that they will become lucky and balance it out. However it is reasonable to think they won’t continue to be as unlucky and instead pitch as to what their career statistics would imply. If Parra’s fixed his walking problem, he should be back out there to the tune of a 4.5 ERA or so, which would be better than what I’d expect Doug Davis to do.

If Parra comes back at full strength and Dave Bush comes back into the rotation, the Brewers will be just fine. Gallardo, Braden Looper, and Jeff Suppan have done a fine job with the rotation in a mess as it is; soon they will be at full strength.

Now that Doug Melvin has basically confirmed that he’s going to make some kind of move as the trade deadline comes to fruition and the pitching situation has become much murkier. If Melvin is going to make a move in the pitching department, it’s definitely going to come in the next couple of weeks when the Brewers will stop having convenient off-days and there needs to be a sure 5-man rotation.

Don’t be surprised to see the Mariners and Brewers make a trade. Jack Zduriencik, former Brewers scouting director and now Mariners GM, assuredly would love to see some of the insane farm talent he built from his time with the Brewers, and it sounds more and more like he wants to sell off the current team.

I would love to see the Brewers package a deal around Alcides Escobar and a couple of other minor prospects for Erik Bedard. Bedard is having a good year and is in his contract year. The Mariners’ biggest need is at shortstop with the total ineptitude of Yuniesky Betancourt, and with the Mariners’ current attempt at a defensive revival Escobar would be a perfect fit for them. He would be major league ready for Seattle and could join their team immediately, while Bedard could be #2 in a 1-2 Yovani Gallardo-Bedard punch.

Outside of his propensity to get injured, he’s been one of the most dominant pitchers in the game with a career ERA+ of 121. It’d be almost a perfect fit.

Also, I can now spell Jack Zduriencik without having to look it up on Google.

Brewerfan.net is reporting that Doug Melvin has a trade in the works for some starting pitching. The names most speculated on in that thread include Cliff Lee, Jake Peavy, or even someone like Dan Haren or Roy Halladay. The last two are totally unrealistic but would be exponentially awesome.

The last update from the fan who says he has insider info is that the good guys over at MLB Trade Rumors talked to him and followed up with the rumors. Tom Haudricourt hasn’t reported on anything so far, so there’s really nothing there yet. I’ll believe it when I see it.

J.J. Hardy is the obvious target to be traded, although I posted yesterday that Hardy is an elite shortstop and I’d rather trade Alcides Escobar and retain Hardy for however long it takes. It should be noted that Escobar was in AAA-Nashville’s lineup yesterday.

I’d much rather they traded Corey Hart, but considering the sudden lack of OF depth I don’t see the Brewers doing that. Unless there’s a giant deal for Halladay or Haren, I won’t like the Brewers trade if Hardy goes away.

Last year, the Milwaukee Brewers sent Dave Bush down to AAA after stinking up Milwaukee with terrible pitching performances through the first few months of the season. At this point last year, Bush was 2-5 with a 5.49 ERA and it got worse in his next start, hovering his ERA near 6 before catching fire over the last few months of the entire season and helped to propel the Brewers to their first playoff birth since 1982. Many people feel Manny Parra should follow that same route, taking a couple of weeks off of major league pitching to build his confidence back up against perennial minor leaguers. Tim Dillard or Seth Mcclung would be the likely candidates to take his spot while he uses a couple of starts to regroup.

When Doug Melvin was asked about repeating that course of action, he shrugged it off as if it wasn’t an option. “First of all, you have to have a better alternative,” said Melvin. “I’m not sure we did the right thing with Dave Bush last year.” Sounds like Parra’s going to continue to be able to pitch in the bigs.

Most people have attributed Parra’s inflated ERA to his lack of control. That’s mostly accurate, as his walk rates have skyrocketed so far this year, but I’m not sure he’s going to keep up his poor performance for the rest of the year. His walk totals have led to a much higher WHIP, but he’s gotten pretty unlucky so far with balls that are put in play and he’s giving up fly balls at a rate much higher than his career stats would imply. As the old addage goes: always trust the career stats over the cherry-picked ones from half a season.

His strikeouts have dipped a little bit as well but that’s nothing concerning as the dropoff is too insignificant at this point to be a cause for concern. His .359 BABIP should fall a little bit and his abnormally low left-on-base percentage has helped inflate his ERA. Even by the way he’s throwing strikeouts and walks up right now he should be a better pitcher than what he’s been, so there’s no way he keeps up his terrible pitching pace. My guess is that he’ll regress towards his career numbers, much like what Dave Bush did last year. This would be an argument to keep him in the rotation, then, as if he continually lowers his ERA then that means he’s going to be a much better pitcher than he has been.

After taking a quick look at his stats I’m not convinced he’s nearly as bad as his 6.75 ERA would imply and he’s due to regrress back towards the norm by the end of the year. All he needs to do is remember how to control his pitches a little better again and he’ll be back to normal. Give him some more time to prove himself. No need to send him down to AAA — give him a couple more starts to help him find himself.