A quick look at Brewers WAR in 2009, updated through Thursday, August 6th. Image after the jump:

(I know I just plopped guys like Casey McGehee and Craig Counsell at only one position and kept guys like Duffy and Gerut on the field and not on the bench.)

I know it’s impossible to quantify the catcher’s defensive prowess outside of stealing percentages (and even then can it get waffly), but I really think there’s a position somewhere on this baseball diamond the Brewers need to address.

Remember that WAR measures Wins Above a Replacement player, and those replacement-level players would go 44-118 each year if the entire team was made up of 0.0 WAR players. An entire team of Jason Kendall-caliber players would win about 45 games.

Angel Salome and Jonathan LuCroy are waiting in the wings but still aren’t ready. With Kendall becoming a free agent at the end of this year, would the Brewers really try and resign him? Or should they target a different catcher (Rod Barajas?) as a stopgap until Milwaukee’s 2 big catching prospects make their way up the ladder? Is Milwaukee content to sit tight with Kendall’s mystique behind the plate? Should I be?

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.

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.