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.

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.

Yesterday with the Brewers down 1-0 in the bottom of the 9th, Ken Macha decided to pinch-hit Casey McGehee over Mat Gamel against right-handed closer Frankie Rodriguez. It was an obvious way of saying “I’m riding the hot hand” and McGehee ended up grounding weakly to short. Yesterday I thought that Gamel should be getting more ABs to ride out his recent slump.

I mean, I could speculate all I want about whether or not Gamel would have gotten a hit, but whether he did or not I don’t think it was the right move. Pinch hitting a righty against a righty when you have your stud lefty prospect in the box isn’t the best way to give him some confidence.

Good post over at Dan & Steve about Yovani Gallardo’s excessive pitch counts and his being the victim of Ken Macha’s abusive management. After his excessive 126-pitch outing on May 25, he’s proceeded to also have starts of 110 pitches, 105 pitches, 116 pitches, 107 pitches, and 118 pitches in consecutive starts. Considering the rest of the starting rotation’s inability to pitch decently, and the state of the bullpen when Gallardo usually starts, it’s understandable that Ken Macha would try to extend Gallardo a little bit extra to squeeze those extra couple batters out of him while he still can. Even with a 4-run lead in the 8th inning, apparently it’s necessary to let the pen rest a little more to preserve the win. But at what cost to Yovani? Could his arm blow out from overuse?

I’ve taken a look at Baseball Prospectus’ Pitcher Abuse Points (PAP) across the majors to see just how much Yovani’s getting overworked. It appears he’s getting worked like a horse, but he’s not the only one. Take a look:

Boy, I’d really love to have Jim Leyland as manager — he’s doing a good job blowing out Justin Verlander’s arm, and new phenom Edwin Jackson is headed towards that route too.

Obviously having Gallardo as #11 on that list is a little concerning as to his health and arm strength down the road, so we’ll see exactly what happens. But the organization has done a good job at limiting Gallardo’s innings count throughout his career so far and he’s had no history of shoulder or arm problems that would force Milwaukee to use him more conservatively than most.

Along with that, I’m not so sure Macha will continue pushing Yovani to the limit once the starting rotation settles down and the pitching become decent, if not stable. A temporary increase in workload at this time in the season isn’t going to ruin a pitcher; the increased workload over the rest of the season will, since Yovani still isn’t used to this kind of workload. Remember in 2007 he was mostly shut down due to an increased workload (after 178IP) and he spent most of 2008 on the shelf after a torn ACL. So he’s probably not going to be able to work any more than 200 innings this year. Right now, he’s on pace to surpass 100 innings his next start; it could be 110 innings by the All Star Break.

In other words, the Brewers should plan to use him conservatively for the rest of the season unless they really want to blow out his arm.

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.

Over the offseason I spoke briefly about Jorge Julio shortly after he signed with the Brewers for a one-year, $750k deal. I said that I approved of the deal, as the price was right and the Brewers were probably going to be smart enough to use him in non-leverage situations since he’s made an entire career out of blowing late-inning games in being generally really frustrating. Last night, Ken Macha made the mistake of putting him on the mound in the 6th inning of a 4-2 ballgame. Of course, after a single, HBP, walk, error, a should-have-been error, and another HBP later, Julio cost the Brewers the lead and ultimately the ballgame; Todd Coffey came into a bases-loaded, no out jam and only gave up two more runs to give Julio 4 earned runs (and 5 total) in no innings to bring his Brewers ERA to 7.79 on the year.

Due to tonight’s performance Julio now has more walks than strikeouts this year and seems more out-of-control than he normally is. Including his hit batsmen, he’s now allowed 19 men to reach base and has accompanied that with only 13 strikeouts. His strikeouts are down, his walks are up, and he’s had two months now to figure something out. Perhaps Macha’s erratic use of Julio prevented him from getting into a groove. Maybe he’s just pitched poorly to start out the year. Either way, he’s done terribly and has been a black hole in the Brewer bullpen. Here’s what some notable Twitter accounts had to say about Julio:

Fake Ken Macha:
“The truth is that I found out Jorge Julio is on Tony La Russa’s fantasy team”
“I figured if Suppan was doing alright, maybe the laws of goodness and badness had reversed themselves. Turned out I was wrong.”
“LOOK AT ME! IM TAKING OUT ALL THE GOOD PLAYERS AND PUTTING IN JORGE JULIO!! I’MMMM CAAARAAAAAYZAYYYYYYY”

Tom Haudricourt
“Jorge Julio faces six hitters and record no outs. Marlins fans might call that returning to the scene of the crime.”

WI Sports Page
“Why in god’s name did Macha put Julio into a 2 run game?”
“Big surprise, the 1st 2 batters Julio faced have now scored and the bases are still loaded.”
“Macha gave this game away by putting in Julio. I am so pissed. And julio hits a batter for another run.. 5-4 Marlins”
“I swear Macha called Yost before the game and asked who he would use in a tight ballgame. There is no other explanation for Julio going in”

P.S.: Since we’re on the subject of Twitter, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter. I’m cool and I don’t spam…much. I’m cool.

Anyways, it’s obvious that at this state, Julio has no business being on a major league roster. The problem with Julio is that he isn’t good, so Macha’s relegated him to mopup duty. Unfortunately, he’s not even good at that, since due to his high walk and strikeout totals he can only manage to throw two innings before he hits 40 pitches. He has little use on a Brewer roster that has a good enough bullpen to be able to hold the role of a one-inning guy, and with R.J. Swindle continuing to tear it up in the minor leagues, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that Julio might not deserve a roster spot anymore.

Swindle’s had a high ERA in the bigs himself so far this year but it’s pretty deceptive and a small sample size to boot. Hitters are batting over .500 on balls put into play, and he hasn’t even pitched three innings. In AAA, he’s dominated this year with a 2.54 FIP, a strikeout per inning, and only 7 walks in 22 2/3 and zero home runs. He could serve as a second useful LOOGY but even then his splits against righties aren’t too bad. A homegrown R.J. Swindle and Mark Difelice bullpen in the 8th would be unstoppable if they each got to face their respective hitters on their own sides of the plate. Wouldn’t calling up the better pitcher and jettisoning the poor one be the best move here?

In other news, Mike Cameron left the game with “left knee irritation.” Let’s hope he’s not out long, that would definitely be brutal…

The Brewers signed Frank Catalanotto to a minor league deal on Tuesday, causing Tom H. to think that one of the Brewer bench outfielders like Brad Nelson or Chris Duffy will be replaced due to their ineptitude hitting so far. GM Doug Melvin and manager Ken Macha don’t seem to agree, basically saying the equivalent of, “well, he’s not guaranteed to make the major league club at all — he has to prove to us he can hit before he replaces somebody.”

Catalanotto, by the way, is a 35-year-old defensively washed up corner OF with continually declining statistics (probably due to age) who hasn’t played in the majors so far in 2009. His last time facing live pitching was back in 2008 where he put up a .741 OPS in 248 at-bats with 2 home runs, 20 walks, and 29 strikeouts. He’s an intense defensive liability (why he would be limited to pinch-hitting duties if he made the major leagues) and got his average OPS playing in a hitters’ ballpark. He passes the three checkmarks of a player who I don’t want: old, getting worse, and no defense. It’s like signing Sidney Ponson to pitch in the starting rotation. With all that in mind, he did have a bad-ass mustache.

I don’t think the Brewers are in actual need of this guy. Catalanotto can’t replace Chris Duffy because Duffy is more or less a defensive replacement and acceptable player to give Mike Cameron a day off. Brad Nelson in his career in the minors OPsed .801, which seems about on par for what Catalonotto is set to do when you take into account the major league dropoff. Nelson is also signed for much cheaper since this is his first year making the big league roster; he’s 27 years old and has plenty more time to improve on his hitting skills.

The best justification I can think of for this would be to get Nelson more at-bats in AAA to let him work through his current season-long funk so far. The problem is, Nelson’s amassed only 20 at-bats so far this season and I still think the problem with him is that he’s mired in a funk where he is stressing out too much about getting that first big-league hit. The only way to solve this is getting him some more at-bats. He’s due to get hot and I don’t agree with signing Catalonotto only to put more pressue on Big Brad. 20 at-bats is nothing.

To put this differently, Nelson has nowhere to go but up. Catalanotto would be an offensive downgrade, especially considering he hasn’t seen live pitching since last year. Doug Melvin is right when he says that Mustache Frank should be held down in case there’s an injury to an upcoming fielder — the outfield is pretty thin even when everyone is healthy. I’ll be sad to see Brad go down if Catalonotto does replace him.

No posts coming from me until next week. Until then, enjoy donking your own remixes.

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.

We’re getting pretty close to the day where pitchers and catchers report for duty and people start anticipating the first day of spring instead of dreading the upcoming remaining month or so of cabin fever people in the upper midwest tend to experience.

We’re also getting pretty close to the day where Corey Hart could get ripped apart by the organization that employs him in an effort to save a million dollars. Hart is asking for $3.8 million while the Brewers offered $2.7 million; the hearing date is either the 17th or 18th — no more than a week away.

Hart is a career .277/.323/.485 hitter who finished 2008 below those numbers (mere .300 OBP) due to an absolutely miserable September (.173/.192/.245) that nearly “helped” Milwaukee choke away their playoff birth. Hart’s stats last year may not imply that he’s worth the $3.8 million he’s asking for, but when looking a little deeper, I wouldn’t mind the investment either way as long as certain circumstances happen.

Hart has never been a patient hitter with his tiny walk rate (4.2% in ’08, only 27 walks in 612 ABs), but he’s always been able to make up for that with a little extra meat in his swing. For the second straight season in 2008, he hit 20 homers, and with that big frame, has potential to amass more power as he gets older and works his way into the big leagues for good.

But his 2008 was a big regression in more than just his initial stats. His ISO shot down over 50 points into 2008 and his OBA went way down to .327, which is essentially league average for MLB — far below average for a supposed power-hitting corner outfielder. He was just barely above replacement level — with a 0.28 WPA, he wouldn’t deserve to be paid as much as even Milwaukee’s offered him. One main thing, to me, was the root of all Hart’s problems in the majors last year:

Outside swing pct.:
2006: 22.3%
2007: 25.7%
2008: 31.7%

Outside swing pct. measures the percentage of balls outside the zone that Hart swung at. 2006 can be considered a bit of a small sample size, but Hart’s consistently swinging at more pitches he shouldn’t be and that makes anyone a terrible hitter. Pitchers adapted to him by throwing him less fastballs that he could jump on and threw him a steady diet of sliders that dove low and outside and he bit every single time. Instead of taking some time off and calming himself down, he decided to add fuel to the fire right about at the point where Milwaukee began panicking last year about their playoff slide.

I’m not going to sit there and walk, though. I’ll eventually find it, and hopefully we’ll still be in it.”

So if Hart is such a poor hitter, why am I advocating him to be part of the team next year? Simple: because a great majority of his flaws can be corrected. Manager Ken Macha hinted when he was hired that he tends to delve a bit into statistical analysis and should be able to see the value in taking a walk and being patient. Pitchers throw Hart first-pitch strikes — whether he swings at them or not — more than almost any other hitter in the majors. If Hart can adjust his swing, tempo, and patience, he has the potential to take all of that early pressure off of him and he can become more relaxed of a hitter.

This just depends on whether or not hitting coach Dale Sveum will teach Hart to walk and not hack and whether or not Hart buys into the system. If Hart can take first pitches and be more selective at what he swings at, he can make a huge improvement in his swing and power and become an elite talent in the major leagues.

$3.8 million for a one-win player isn’t a bad bet either, and we can at least assume that Hart will attone for his miserable September and have a bounceback year anyway. Projections have him at about a .275/.330/.480 player, which makes me think he has nowhere to go but up. If Hart can harness his ability to take a pitch or two, he has a legitimate chance at becoming an elite hitter on the Brewers instead of an overrated corner outfielder. With the patience comes the higher on base percentage as well as the respect from pitchers who will start throwing more fastballs to Hart that he can send to the gaps. It all depends on the coaching he receives in spring training — he needs to drop the hacker mentality.

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