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.

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.

UPDATED BELOW!!!!!!

With all the hubbub surrounding Roy Halladay I thought I’d chime in (again) on trading for him.

As of right now the Crew is 2.5 games out of first place in the Central and 2.5 pitchers out of a halfway decent starting rotation. Getting Halladay would be pretty much exactly the same as C.C. Sabathia in the “pitching godsend” department. I would hope that Halladay would propel the Brewers to a second-straight playoff berth,

But are you ready for years of mediocrity afterward? Take a look at Brewers 2010 contracts if Halladay’s traded:

Halladay: $15.75m
Jeff Suppan: $12.5m
Prince Fielder: $9m
Bill Hall: $8.4m
David Riske: $4.5m
Total: $50.15m

Assuming the Brewers’ payroll sticks around $85-90 million, you have 60% of your payroll stuck in five players. None of this even takes into account the arbitration salaries of Corey Hart, J.J. Hardy, Dave Bush, etc. Of course this assumes Alcides Escobar is traded to the Blue Jays, as Hardy wouldn’t since Toronto wants the younger, cheaper talent.

With the money we wouldn’t save, we’d definitely wouldn’t be able to resign Mike Cameron or Jason Kendall when they hit free agency at the end of the year, meaning there would be a replacement-level CF and Mike Rivera behind the plate to begin 2010. In addition, next year’s rotation would be Halladay, Suppan, Parra (IF he’s not traded to the Jays), Bush, and Gallardo with no available depth in AAA and no prospects to speak of or depth in AAA in case someone gets injured. That rotation looks good on paper, but the only pitcher without an injury history is Halladay. I wouldn’t trust it to last an entire season.

The current core of young talent the Brewers probably won’t keep (Hart, Hardy, maybe even Weeks) begins to phase out at the beginning of 2011, so the Brewers could be entering a rebuilding mode if their current prospects take the Jeremy Jeffress route and don’t pan out the way they planned them to. They’ll be Blue Jays if the Brewers get Halladay, meaning that a prolonged slump in 2011 is inevitable. Are you prepared to sacrifice the well-being of the ballclub 2-3 years down the road if the Brewers try to add 1-2 wins to this year’s team? Is 1-2 wins going to be enough to win a mediocre division in 2009?

I couldn’t tell you that, but throwing away millions of dollars in worthwhile talent to satisfy this year’s needs aren’t worth it in the long run. It’s too much of a long shot at this point to justify trading for Halladay; if the Brewers didn’t have as many holes as they do now the trade would definitely make sense.

One thing that’s never been mentioned was how awful last year’s offseason went for Milwaukee. Remember how C.C. Sabathia and Ben Sheets were going to net the Brewers 4 first round draft picks in last year’s draft. After both Mark Teixiera and Sabathia both signed with the Yankees, an odd MLB rule only netted the Brew a supplemental first rounder. When nobody signed Sheets because of his injury, the Brewers didn’t get any compensation. Going 1/4 is never going to help bolster a weakening farm system.

Trading for Halladay would turn the 2011 Brewers into the 2001 Brewers, basically.

UPDATE: Reports are just confirming that Matt Holliday was just traded to St. Louis for a package of prospects including Brett Wallace. This trade makes the Cardinals without question a legitimate contender and sacrifices their future; Wallace is an up-and-coming phenom. More reason to hang on to prospects now, because in 2011, this division is going to be even more decidedly mediochre. Neither the Cubs nor the Astros have farm systems either, so in a couple years it may be a three-horse race between the Reds, Brewers, and Pirates.

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.

–Take a look at this video. You stay classy, Philadelphia.

You know, for all the joking flak that Philly gets for violence in the stands and being the faux City of Brotherly Love, there are quite a few little incidents that back up the stereotype.

It’s fun for me to hate Philadelphia because I’m still mad about them beating Milwaukee in the Wild Card last year and this play continues to leave a bitter taste in my mouth, but the truth is Philly’s no worse or better than any other major league park with a passionate fan base and you’d be hard-pressed to find a Brewers-Cubs game with the same feel of a game played in St. Louis.

–Coming from Jayson Stark’s latest column is this little tidbit:

Clubs that have spoken to the Brewers report they’ve been adamant in saying they won’t talk about Mat Gamel or shortstop prospect Alcides Escobar, even for front-line pitching. And after that, said an official of one club they spoke with, “there’s a pretty sizable falloff” to their next wave of potentially available prospects (Lorenzo Cain, Taylor Green, Caleb Gindl). That’s one reason Hardy’s name has started to show up on the rumor circuit. But with so little starting pitching worth pursuing, Milwaukee is another club that might not find the kind of pitching it’s hunting for.

With both Jake Peavy and Erik Bedard going on the DL it’s clear the pitching market has thinned to the point where Brad Penny is the best available pitcher that can be realistically traded for. So if the pitching market is so thin, why is J.J. Hardy continually being thrown around in rumors? As I said before, I would be much more open to trading Alcides Escobar over J.J. Hardy because despite a seasonlong slump so far he’s still one of the elite shortstops in the game and Escobar’s survived entirely on hype by scouts so far.

To put it differently, I’d go so far as to say that Escobar is vastly overrated and I honestly wouldn’t mind trading him to get that 5th starter that Milwaukee seems to be salivating over. I would trade Escobar for Red Sox prospect Clay Buchholz, an All-Star pitcher in the making who’s wating away AAA players right now to the tune of 65 strikeouts and 17 walks in 73 innings and is still the ripe old age of 25. He’d instantly be our #2 or #3 starter.

If Bedard remains on the DL, and there is no pitching available on the market, I see no reason not to make a trade assuming Manny Parra can right his ship in AAA. Brad Penny isn’t much of an upgrade at all over any of our other options and if we ended up losing a legitimate prospect like Taylor Green for Penny or someone similar I wouldn’t quite care for the move.

– Jeremy Jeffress has improved since being demoted to Single-A Brevard County but still hasn’t improved his stock enough to me to consider him a legitimate prospect yet. Take a look at his numbers between AA-Huntsville and A-Brevard County:

AA-Hunstvile: 27 1/3IP, 34K, 33BB, 7.57 ERA
A-Brevard County: 28IP, 34K, 18BB, 1.93 ERA

Pretty much the only difference he’s made so far is that he’s been able to cut down on the walks, but to be honest with you I don’t think Jeffress is going to make it to major leagues — and if he does, it won’t be as a starter. I could easily see him being the next Jorge Julio and bounce around teams while continually failing for them with his high walk and strikeout rates. Milwaukee’s pitching depth is thinner than most people think.

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.

Jesse Motiff just penned a column on why the Brewers’ future shouldn’t contain J.J. Hardy. Motiff lists a myriad of reasons mostly centered around Alcides Escobar coming in as a valuable replacement should Hardy be traded.

The problem with that train of logic is that Hardy is one of the best players in MLB, and Escobar is not quite the highly touted prospect everyone seems to think he is. Let’s take a look at what Motiff says:

“Critics of Escobar will say that he doesn’t have the power to be a top shortstop at the major league level. I disagree with that completely. Power is an attribute that is a lot more than just the number of home runs a player hits.

While Escobar likely won’t be a home run hitter at any point of his career, he does get a ton of extra base hits. In 60 games in 2009, Escobar has 16 doubles, three triples, and three home runs. That’s a slugging percentage of .436, a very respectable number by anyone’s standards.”

What he fails to mention is that his .436 slugging comes from AAA and he has the benefit of a .358 BABIP, which should come back down. With a 3:1 K/BB ratio and 3 homers in 243 ABs it’s pretty obvious that he’s not a major leaguer yet. His MLE (Major League Equivalence, which basically takes into account the difference in talent from AAA to MLB) makes him a .271/.300/.364/.664 hitter. In other words: his bat’s nowhere near ready and it probably won’t be for some time. To compare, Hardy’s OPS this season is .642, and it’s pretty obvious by now he’s a much better hitter than he’s been so far.

Hardy’s also the third-best fielding shortstop so far this season and his bat is sure to improve since we haven’t seen his patented hot streak yet. Remember, Hardy OPSed .821 last year. Escobar would OPS in the .640s. Is Escobar’s defense really going to be that much better?

For the record, here’s the other thing Motiff says that’s a tad ridiculous:

The more likely scenario will see Doug Melvin trading Hardy this winter for either a middle of the rotation pitcher or a quality arm in the bullpen. This will give the Brewers added depth should Manny Parra not figure out how to pitch at a big league level or another arm in a bullpen that will again see some turnover.

Hardy is much, much more valuable than a “middle of the rotation pitcher.” The Brewers have three of them in Dave Bush, Braden Looper, and Manny Parra, although Parra’s been pretty AAA as of this point in the season.

Do you expect to see Hardy as the Brewers shortstop next season? In 2011? 2014?

Some thoughts after a totally acceptable 1-2 home series against the Cardinals…

The Brewers have been linked to trading for Jake Peavy to compliment the starting rotation and become this year’s C.C. Sabathia. Actually these articles don’t explicitly mention the Brewers having any interest in Peavy, but simply that people assume the Brewers are frontrunners for the pitcher since he prefers the NL Central out of all other divisions, the Brewers could use another elite pitcher, and the earlier trade the Padres made with the White Sox fell through due to Peavy’s no-trade clause. There’s been no word from anyone in the Brewer front office confirming or denying interest in trading for Peavy although it has been hinted at that Mark Attanasio has the payroll flexibility to add a few extra dollars mid-season to try and push Milwaukee to the playoffs for a second straight year.

Peavy is a soon-to-be 28 year old pitcher with outstanding stuff and fantastic statistics, boasting over his career more than a strikeout an inning and only 430 walks in over 1300 innings pitched. The only season where he had an FIP higher than 3.6 was his 2003 campaign — his first full year in the bigs. So far this year he’s continued his dominating ways as He would be a fantastic addition and result in an addition of approximately 2 wins if Suppan was the odd man out — two wins can mean a whole bunch in whether or not a team makes the playoffs, look at last year — but it would end up handicapping the entire team for years to come.

Peavy’s current contract is not like Sabathia’s was in which we can let him go to free agency at the end of the year. Peavy has a backloaded contract that would pay him on average $16 million/year for the next three years with an absurd $22 million club option in 2013. The Brewers would be on the hook for $15 million in Peavy next year as well as $12.5 million locked into Jeff Suppan. With players like Corey Hard, J.J. Hardy, and Rickie Weeks eligible for arbitration next year, one can assume their salaries are going up and with the only significant salary drop next year being Mike Cameron, spending $27.5 million on a terrible pitcher and a good one when there are better options available will wrap the boa around the franchise’s wallet.

Next year isn’t the only time he would set the franchise back. A $16 million salary in 11 and $17 million in 12 would only further cause too big of a dent in years to come when players’ arbitration cases get them more money and other non-arbitration players are able to increase their salaries. Not to mention free agents that will get more money in an ever-expanding market. Unless we could in turn trade Peavy to someone with the extra money to spend, it’s too big of a hit to our wallets. His contract is too fat.

It’s not even guaranteed Peavy would be pitching then, considering his awful pitching mechanics putting awful stress on his elbow. He’s a giant injury risk and for the costly price he’s paid right now the investment is nowhere near worth it.

I really hope management is able to resist temptation here, it’s really not worth it.

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.

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.