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.

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.

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.

***

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.

***

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.

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.

Posts might be scarce the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow (well, today, technically) I’m moving to a new home, and with finals week rapidly approaching, I will have to crunch the time in order to find any time to post anything. Once this summer comes and gets in full swing, I should be back to my ideal three-times-per-week posting schedule.

Normally I’ve been posting on Mondays as a weekend’s digest, but with Comcast unable to come to put internet and cable in until later on Sunday night then you can expect me not to post a Monday post and you might only see one post the next two weeks as my schedule until then is pretty packed. Now, onto the Crew

Earlier this month I said after the first two awful starts by Jeff Suppan that it wasn’t fair to throw him under the bus and to give him time to correct himself. One of the things that concerned me as well as everyone else was that noone had swung and missed at a Suppan fast(meat)ball, but that was obviously a small sample size and Suppan had simply been struggling with his control and mechanics as he adjusted to the beginning of the season.

Perhaps he’s over it. In his two starts since being thrown to the curb, he’s tossed 12 1/3 innings with 9 strikeouts and 4 walks and an ERA hovering around 3. Not bad for a guy who two starts ago was a prime candidate to get DFA’d. But the problem wasn’t absolutely with Suppan – many reactionary fans were just being impatient.

People who have watched Suppan pitch over his career seemed to have unrealistic expectations of what he is supposed to be in the organization. It’s almost like many Brewer fans expected Suppan to be as good as Derek Lowe and eat 7 innings every single start. No. That’s not who he is. He’s a career 4.65 ERA guy who averages less than 6 innings per appearance (this includes bullpen appearances) and has less than a 2:1 K/BB ratio. In other words, he already is awful, and Brewer fans seemed to be begging for an excuse to drop his hefty contract.

Suppan may not be that great of a pitcher, but he’s durable and not awful and starters like those are found in every single rotation across the majors, proving that guys like Suppan or Joe Blanton of the Phillies are definitely valuable commodities and if they’re capable of pitching 5-6 innings of one-run ball every couple of starts, I’m absolutely happy to see what we have in the rotation right now.

I could sit here and cherry pick bad starts by any pitcher and it’s not any more or less significant than the two starts Suppan had at the beginning of the year. Consider Yovani Gallardo’s start earlier this year against the Reds and a start he had

Total between two starts: 7 2/3 IP, 18 ER, and a bunch of other statistics that are much worse than Jeff Suppan’s. You could cherry pick this for any pitcher. Just because Suppan was pitching horribly for two straight starts doesn’t mean anything in the long run. If he continues to throw up an ERA of nearly 6 and uses half of his starts to run around in circles and take a dump on the field, I’m absolutely fine with throwing him to the wolves, but I’m confident that he’ll turn it around enough to keep his ERA right around his career line and put the past behind him. I’m with you, Soup.

With all that said, let’s just celebrate the recent winning streak as it happens. A 2-4 homestand that left many fans wondering about the swagger and pitching of the team has turned into a 6-4 record that seems about par with what we’d expect. This is the power of assuming a small sample size when analyzing early season statistics. We’re two games over .500!

The Brewers managed yet another 1-2 series loss this weekend in the new Pitchers’ Heaven Field, salvaging a two-run win yesterday after suffering a couple of bad 1-run losses on Friday and Saturday. The Crew’s luck remains a little bit slim to start this season, already going 1-4 in one-run games and a pythagorean record one game better than their actual record, but it of course is early in the season and with 150 games left to go I’m convinced along with everyone else that a 4-8 record isn’t indicative of the team’s early play. The win also came on the heels that Trevor Hoffman should be back by next weekend. Although that makes me optimistic considering the closing struggles of Carlos Villanueva, who really needs Hoffman when Todd Coffey can just pitch the last 8 outs of every game and preserve a tight game.

Jeff Suppan finally put forth a good effort, going 6 innings and giving up only 2 runs, hopefully causing the Brewer faithful to give him a little break and at least let him settle into the season before running to the wayside. Two starts is never enough to adequately judge a pitcher on and just because he had trouble locating his pitches to start the season doesn’t mean he’ll be able to adjust and come back down to normal levels. Now, I’m not saying he’ll be the #1 ace on the team, but it’s unfair to pin the entire blame of the pitching staff on one guy who had two poor starts. Let’s let the man earn his money for now and only throw him to the wayside if he gets demolished at the rate he had been in his first two starts. I’m really glad he was able to take two steps forward yesterday.

If you would have told me at the beginning of the season that Yovani Gallardo and Craig Counsell would lead the team in on-base percentage 12 games in, of course I would have been surprised. I would have then surmised that the majority of the Brewers have started off scuffling; with the exception of Corey Hart and Mike Cameron, every Brewer starter has been significantly below their career averages and are bound to bounce back. What’s especially pleasing to me about the offense so far is that these seem to be BABIP-driven and not necessarily due to a terrible plate approach, circa Corey Hart in September last year. Take a look at these numbers:

Ryan Braun: .222/.340/.356
Prince Fielder: .175/.327/.325
Corey Hart: .279/.385/.558
Bill Hall: .278/.333/.389
Jason Kendall: .129/.243/.161

My favorite part about this season has been the way the coaching staff has seemingly made this team able to take a walk every once in awhile. Most of these OBPs are more than .100 points higher than their averages, meaning that their patience at the plate hasn’t been sacrificed. Most of these OBPs are as high as their career averages, meaning that if their batting average starts regressing towards normal levels, then we may have an incredibly elite offense this year. Think about it. If Prince Fielder gets on base at a .400 clip with Braun and Hart surrounding him, this offense may be impossible to stop. Even Jason Kendall is putting in a good word despite being sickening when he’s standing at the dish.

Bring on the hits, I say. Be patient — the offense will come.

The Brewers pretty much did as expected this weekend, going 1-2 in a trio of (moderately) exciting games eclipsed by yet another “wonderful” start from Jeff Suppan and an incredible catch by Reed Johnson robbing a grand slam from Prince Fielder. On Friday I said that I’d be happy with a 2-4 record coming out of this weekend due to the insane pitching matchups the Brewers have had to far, and 2-4 is exactly where they are right now. 2-4 isn’t exactly optimal, but when you face 6 of the best pitchers in the game in a row it’s not unexpected to lose a few and I’m happy to see the offense has performed to the level they have so far.

Suppan has gotten off to an awful head start this year, going 0-2 with an ERA approaching 13 and 7 walks/2 strikeouts and a total inability to get 5 innings in in either of his starts. It’s bad. It’s gotten to the point where people are calling for his head and want him to be DFAd or traded to the first team for a bag of bats and balls. Sure, he’s been horrible, but…not so fast, my friends.

This weekend’s series was amplified simply because it was the Cubs coming into town on opening weekend at Miller Park. It’s been two starts. Unless something’s seriously wrong with his arm, he’s not going to continue the 7:2 BB/K ratio and ERA of 13. If there is something seriously wrong with his arm, or he’s taken a giant step off a cliff, he’ll be shelved for the year on the DL anyways and another equally-frustrating pitcher in Chase Wright or Seth McClung will take his place in the rotation.

It’s two starts yet. Let’s at least give the dude a month to right his location ship before throwing him to the sharks and telling the world that his hefty contract was a waste of money from the beginning. Is Ryan Braun a bad hitter after starting the season with a .613 OPS? “The guys look discouraged when he’s in” isn’t a valid enough excuse to justify jettisoning him two starts into the season. The pressure’s definitely on him to perform up to expectations (4.5-5.00 ERA and an innings eater), but it’s not like this next start should be do-or-die for him. He’ll regress back to normal.

With all that said, this week’s matchups are looking a little more forgiving and a 2-4 start isn’t the end of the world. First it’s the Reds for 3 at Miller Park, and then a trip to New York to go light up perennial overrated veteran Livan Hernandez. If you think Suppan is bad, wait until Livan starts turning into the pitcher he actually is and what the New York media will say about him. You might be thanking your lucky stars that we still have Big (ERA) Jeff and aren’t out signing another puff pitcher to take his place.

Before I leave, I leave you all with the most hilarious video ever:

RIP Nick Adenhart. You know something’s awful when Scott Boras is breaking down crying during an interview with the press. This is one of the few times where it’s appropriate that Boras beefs up a client. Drunk driving is the worst.

*****

Milwaukee went 1-2 on the first three games of the season on the road at the San Fransisco Giants, which isn’t too big of a deal considering it’s the first three games of the season and they had to go through San Fran’s meaty rotation, consisting of Tim Lincecum, Randy Johnson, and Matt Cain. Each pitcher is incredibly efficient, posting career FIPs of 3.02, 3.15, and 3.9, respectively. There’s nothing wrong with 1-2 on the road against two #1 starters and a solid #2/#3 guy when Jeff Suppan is the guy you tag for Opening Day. The only win came against the aptly-named Big Unit, whose Johnson was not so Randy when Yovani Gallardo blasted a three-run shot into the stands to give the Brewers all the runs they would need Wednesday night. (I apologize for that last sentence)

Cain pitched brilliantly the next day, mixing his pitches very well and locating everything perfectly on command. His FIP tends to be a bit high due to some higher walk totals over his career, however, it’s difficult to walk people when you’re (a) getting ahead 0-1, 0-2, and 1-2 in most of the hitters you face, and (b) facing the free-swinging Milwaukee Brewers. There were numerous instances where Cain’s 96-mph fastball painted the outside corner in a pitch that’s just plain impossible to hit.

The Brewers now head home, where the opposing pitching doesn’t get much easier. Perhaps the best pitcher in the majors when healthy, Rich Harden starts game 1 tomorrow night against the half-injured Braden Looper who hasn’t yet proven that he can throw at the velocity he did last year after suffering a couple minor injuries during spring training that held him only to two mediocre at best starts. Harden sports a career 3.23 ERA and Looper’s is on the wrong side of 4.5. Afterwards, it’s Carlos Zambrano’s second start against Dave Bush, which is another terrible mismatch, and Sunday’s finale pens Suppan as the starter, so it doesn’t even matter who the Cubs are trotting out (hint: he’s really good too). Could this perhaps be the toughest opposing pitching opening stretch? Lincecum-Johnson-Cain-Harden-Zambrano-Ryan Dempster. That’s an All-Star lineup right there. I’d be happy to be 2-4 once the Reds come to town.

Also note Edinson Volquez starts Game 1 in that Reds series. He struggled his last time out, but that doesn’t mean he’s not on fire when he’s on. If Milwaukee starts out slow this year, I won’t be too concerned.

Of course, they could just not start off slowly and exceed my expectations by taking 2 of 3 against the sCrUBS.

Alright, the last three weeks have been a bit of a strenuous ordeal. Finally, I’m beginning to pick up some time here and there where I can start blogging again. When I thought I’d have a ton of time to blog — spring break — my computer ended up getting stolen and I had no internet access for a week. I’m still way behind, but that’s enough excuses for now.

Only eight days until Jeff Suppan starts the first regular season game at the Giants against Tim Lincecum. Hmm. This regular season business is starting to sneak up on me, as I haven’t even purchased MLB.TV yet. I suppose that’s not necessarily a bad thing, since I won’t be missing much to look forward to when one of the best pitchers in the game takes on one of the worst.

All of the moves that new manager Ken Macha is making so far have been good ones. Starting Suppan on Opening Day may be counterintuitive, but I don’t mind the decision. Pitchers, forever harped on as slaves to the routine, won’t be messing up their pitching schedules at all just for the sake of realigning the pitching order , and it ultimately doesn’t matter who goes first anyways since every pitcher will be, in theory, starting around the same number of games throughout the season. I have a feeling Macha will be adjusting and tinkering with the rotation anyways during the season, and there’s no way it can be considered safe at all considering the Brewers’ luck with injuries so far during spring training.

Macha’s come into Milwaukee and subtly changed a couple of things with the team that will help the Brewers out in the long run. According to Tom Haudricourt, Mark DiFelice has won the final spot in the Brewers’ bullpen, edging out Jorge Julio and Wes Littleton. It’s especially intriguing to see that DiFelice will win the final spot in the bullpen, considering Julio is signed to a major league contract and probably wouldn’t go to the minor leagues and Littleton is out of minor league options and will most likely be placed on waivers. DiFelice is the only player who can still be sent outright to the minors, so he really had to outperform the other two players to win that final spot.

As I wrote about earlier, DiFeliece is an underratedly studly pitcher who strikes out a lot of people (65 strikeouts in 64 2/3 innings), walks none (8 walks in that same span), and has consistently had an FIP hovering around 3.0-3.25 throughout his minor league career. The only main question is whether or not his tendency to give up the fly ball could hurt him, but considering Miller Park is not a huge hitters park and that DiFelice doesn’t voluntarily put anyone on base, they shouldn’t hurt him as much as a normal pitcher. I project him at having a 3.5-3.75 FIP in the majors, since his junkball-type pitching style implies that pitchers can catch up to him.

His major-league career might not be as good as his minor-league track record would suggest. However, that doesn’t mean he’s a bad choice to make the club. A 3.75 FIP is still much better than the other alternatives (Julio has sported a 4.52 FIP in 450 major league innings, and Littleton has a 4.58 over 100 IP), and there’s nothing wrong with having a 3.5-4.0 ERA guy in the bullpen. For some teams, that would be closer-type material. I’d go so far as to say that DiFelice should be the 8th inning guy while Trevor Hoffman starts the season on the DL.

That means that Macha and the Brewers are in a “win-now” strategy and they think they can make the playoffs again this season. The one problem with this move is that it sacrifices depth in the organization, since there’s a very real possibility that both Julio and Littleton could be released or shipped to another team if DiFelice makes the club. Considering this season, I wouldn’t mind a “win-now” mentality since I have renewed faith that the Brewers will moderately exceed the expectations I’ve had for them this year. I still think Bill Hall is going to turn back into the form that earned him his hefty contract, and that means he’ll be exceeding projections.

Say, does anyone have a solution for porn-bot commenters? I get 20 e-mails per day alerting me of comments written by porn bots.

I leave you with this. I leave you with Estelle.

New manager Ken Macha didn’t make many baseball statheads too pleased when he decided to set the spring training rotation with Jeff Suppan to lead off the spring training schedule. Hopefully this is only a spring training move — Macha noted specifically that this is only the spring training schedule and not necessarily the one that will begin the season, but beat writer Tom Haudricourt thinks that this will be the rotation throughout the year.

Certainly pegging your worst pitcher as your #1 starter throughout the season seems totally counter-intuitive, but in all honesty, I don’t mind the move. Ultimately every starter will get the same amount of starts regardless of who is where in the order, and Macha (a known managerial stathead) is smart enough to realize this — this move is ultimately nothing more than an attempt to take some pressure off the younger guys who aren’t yet sure full-season studs yet; Yovani Gallardo was injured the majority of 2007 and is only projected for around 100 innings this year and Manny Parra flamed out at the end of last year after reaching (and surpassing) that phantom “innings increase limit” that is supposed to protect pitchers from having a higher injury risk. These guys are still a season or two away from the spotlight yet, and since they’re all going to get the same amount of starts anyways, taking some spotlight off of them can do nothing but benefit the young studs.

Right Field Bleachers wrote an incredibly interesting post about how the Brewers are making up for the void created by the departures of C.C. Sabathia and Ben Sheets by citing a much-improved bullpen and combining them with the projections of Yovani Gallardo and Braden Looper and coming up with the conclusion that the pitching staff is actually better off this year than it was last year with CC and Benny.

I like the logic train here, but I’m not yet sold. The post hasn’t taken into account the huge regression that Dave Bush is set to have — despite career-best statistics and clutch pitching down the stretch (and in the playoffs!) he still posted a 4.93 FIP and had a .245 BABIP (that was lowest in the majors among pitchers who have pitched a significant amount of innings), so it’s impossible to expect him to have another year as lucky as he had. He should regress a win — maybe two.

The link also counts on Gallardo to toss 180 innings next year, which is probably a little bit too much. Gallardo in 2007 threw nearly 200 innings, however, for the last few he was totally gassed and couldn’t pitch effectively. Compare that with him having to take 2008 off due to his injury, I don’t think he’ll have the endurance — nor will the Brewers want him to have the endurance — to pitch a huge amount of innings in 2009.

Projections outside of the ones that the Right Field Bleachers reference seem to be much more pessimistic, as CHONE and Marcel projections don’t have him topping 110 IP and seem to think he’ll reinjure himself. I’m not so sure he’ll go that low (barring an injury), but I think 180 innings might be a few too many to expect from a young stud coming off major knee surgery who the Brewers are — and should be — cautious with.

There is unrest in the forest.