Our very own dark horse Rookie of the Year candidate Casey McGehee has not-so-quietly had a spectacular year for Milwaukee, putting up a line of .304/.370/.515 in his rookie year with 15 homers in only 335 PA. If he didn’t split playing time with other guys and didn’t sit out with an injury on the year, we’d be talking 20-25 home runs… and all with no splits whatsoever.

I’d say he should be the starting third-baseman for the Brewers next year along with Mat Gamel, but then I took another look at his minor league stats before this year. His minor league OPS is career .100 points lower than it’s been in the major leagues, and he’s benefited from a high BABIP this year, both sure signs that Casey’s going to drop off a little bit.

He should regress down to career norms and then some, and you might even be able to sell high on him if the Brewers are really convinced that Gamel is the future at third. However, it doesn’t really make sense for the Brewers to do that since Gamel’s really bad at defense and there’s an open position in the outfield. And besides, even if McGehee does have a hard regression year, he’s still valuable to have on the team. A .725-ish OPS with positive defense at third is definitely valuable when you consider he’s still a pre-arbitration player and will make league minimum.

In other words, if I were running the team, I’d be a little wary of how he’s going to do starting the year at 3B, since he’s 27 and hasn’t yet put up an OPS above .750 in the minors ever, but since he’s a low-risk player with virtually no hit on the budget he shouldn’t even be considered a candidate to sell high or get sent back down to the minors. We should all be proponents of rewarding players for doing well for your team regardless of how much of a mirage it is — what kind of message do you send to the other players if Casey gets sent back down to AAA after putting up a .900 OPS during his rookie season?

Just some things to think about as we reach the midway point of the season…

*** Milwaukee’s spent the majority of the first half playing slightly above their record. However their recent 3-8 June Swoon has them at the All-Star Break with a negative pythagorean record. BP’s playoff odds say the Brewers only have a 20% chance to make the playoffs despite being 2 1/2 games out of first place.

BP’s playoff odds basically combine the team’s current record and projects their pythagorean record for the rest of the season. Since the Brewers have scored approximately as many runs as they’ve given up, they should be expected to have a .500 record over the rest of the year, according to BP. An 83-win team won’t make the postseason; they’ll either need some luck or better play in order to capture a playoff birth.

*** With that said, this team isn’t as bad as their June has been, and they should pick it up. Most of Manny Parra’s struggles may be behind him, as a fresh look at AAA have seemingly given him more confidence in his pitches — he should return back to the form we expected him soon. Dave Bush is coming back from an injury and pitched really well in a rehab assignment, so there’s no reason to believe he won’t be back to his form.

Remember that when the rotation is back to full strength it will be the same rotation that helped the Brewers get 18 wins in May and a 3.85 ERA. Everybody talks about trading valuable parts of the farm system away to get another starter at the deadline, but if the rotation comes back with full strength than I see no reason to trade away parts for a Jarrod Washburn when the pitchers the Brewers have at the moment are just as good as he would be. If there was a C.C. Sabathia type of pitcher available who wouldn’t cost everything but the kitchen sink to get (i.e. Roy Halladay), then I’d advocate getting someone, but until then, no dice. The pitching staff is just fine where they are; they’ll stop struggling sooner or later. Preferably sooner.

*** A could of weeks ago I wrote about management’s use of Casey McGehee over Mat Gamel in many key situations where it would have been better to put the lefty slugger in over the current hot bat. Well it appears McGehee’s finally cooled off: he’s 2 for his last 14 over this current homestand and has sat in favor of Gamel recently, probably because of the problems he has with his knee.

McGehee might be entering a prolonged slump here. I only say this because he’s a career .283/.340/.429 hitter in the minors and it’s really, really unlikely a 27-year-old would suddenly find his swing. If scouts for the Cubs would have seen this kind of power or discipline at the plate with any kind of consistency, they wouldn’t have placed him on waivers just a few months ago.

Since his knee is still struggling and it’s likely he’s starting to slump at the plate, now is the time to ride Gamel until Casey’s back to 100 percent.

*** The upcoming schedule for the Brewers is incredibly easy and the Cardinals lead just might evaporate pretty rapidly through August. After spending the last couple weeks before the All-Star break playing the toughest and best teams in the NL, they spend the next month and a half taking a break against them. Here’s a quick list of who they play until the end of August:

4 @ Cincinnati
3 @ Pittsburgh
3 vs. Atlanta
4 vs. Washington
3 @ San Diego
3 @ Los Angeles
3 @ Houston
3 vs. San Diego
3 vs. Houston
3 @ Pittsburgh
4 @ Washington
3 vs. Cincinatti
3 vs. Pittsburgh

The only good team the Brewers play until the end of August is LA, and every other series is absolutely winnable. That’s 12 of the next 13 series against .500 or lower teams. With the starting pitching coming back to full strength, I’m not so sure the Brewers need to trade for a pitcher, nevertheless anyone. I’m thinking 14 games against the Padres and Nationals coming up soon might solve some of the sicknesses that have been plaguing Milwaukee since the beginning of the year.

Another thing to consider is that the Brewers essentially started off the season with a 4-9 mark calling for the head of a couple of players. They were patient and waited it out — and were rewarded in May. Let’s wait a little while before panicking for Roy Halladay.

*** Prince Fielder owns.

A lot of people aren’t swooning over Prince as much as I thought they would after bumping up his OPS by over .200 points from last year. His on-base percentage is a whopping .423 — he’s learned to take walks. He’s on pace for about 40 homers. Pitchers are too afraid to throw him strikes now that he just takes the free pass to first — this Dale Sveum hitting philosophy is way better than Jim Skaalen’s.

One more thing I thought about Skaalen: Last year with the Brewers, virtually every single hitter put up mediocre numbers compared to their career norms. After he was subsequently fired, he’s now the coach of the Oakland Athletics. The A’s are currently awfully underachieving due to the offense putting up incredibly mediocre numbers. Is there a coincidence here?

*** Prince Fielder owns.

A pretty good post from Adam McCalvy last night regarding the recent pine-ride for hot prospect Mat Gamel and whether or hot he’ll get sent back down to the minor leagues after this upcoming series. In case you didn’t read the article:

Casey McGehee has forced himself into the Brewers’ everyday lineup, in turn forcing club officials to reconsider whether third-base prospect Mat Gamel might be better served by a return to Triple-A Nashville.

“We’ll talk about that internally,” Brewers general manager Doug Melvin said. “That’s not something we would discuss publicly, but you’re always having discussions. It’s probably something you look at from a series-by-series standpoint.”

Gamel, promoted from Nashville on May 14 ahead of Interleague Play, was on the bench for the fifth time in six games on Tuesday, mostly because the Brewers were facing left-handed Mets ace Johan Santana in the second of a three-game series. But Gamel, who bats left-handed, has seen his playing time decrease of late against righties because of the emergence of McGehee, who entered play Tuesday with a .370 average, five home runs and 20 RBIs over his past 20 games.

McGehee, not Gamel, started at third base on Monday against Mets right-hander Fernando Nieve.

To me Gamel has largely disappointed at the plate so far, hitting .236/.340/.382 in slightly over 100 plate appearances with poor defense, making him barely above replacement-level in such a small sample size. It makes sense to see Gamel struggling after being so hot in AAA before he came up, and 100 PAs is a small sample size anyway, so it’s not a big deal that Gamel hasn’t produced to what I expected him to. A trip to AAA for a little while longer would be a good way to get Gamel consistent at-bats and coaching from defensive stud Don Money.

That doesn’t mean that a) he won’t turn it around yet this year and b) the Brewers have a better option at third right now. The way the lineup would be slated if the Brewers sent Gamel back down would put Casey McGehee at 2nd and Craig Counsell at third. The offensive dropoff at third would be tremendous, and I’m not so sure I would trust those two as starters right now considering how much has been made of Casey’s knee and how fragile Counsell’s legs are.

Not to mention that McGehee is riding an ultra-hot streak to the tune of a .950 OPS right now and once he starts cooling off Gamel should grab the extra time (and maybe get hot again) while McGehee takes on the backup role. I’m surprised in itself that Casey’s hit so well for so long, but there’s something about a .325/.388/.544 line that doesn’t match up with his career .283/.340/.417 line in the minor leagues.

So when Casey cools off and Gamel’s down in the minors, do we really want up to three black holes in the lineup (McGehee, Jason Kendall and Bill Hall)? I guess what I’m saying here is that I’m assuming a .200 point OPS increase from the minors to the majors is more than likely going to merit a crash back down to earth.

In order to avoid that and putting Hall in the lineup anywhere at all I’d highly recomment keeping Mat Gamel up in the majors. We’ll see if that actually happens though — it sounded like McCalvy in his story tried to create a story out of thin air here.

Everyone knows by now that Rickie Weeks is out for the season with a torn tendon sheath in his right wrist. This is the same injury that sidelined him for awhile and subsequently irritated him until last year, and so far this season he looked to be completely healthy and fulfilling the potential he was always labeled with through his time in Milwaukee: he hit .272/.340/.517 with 8 home runs and greatly improved defensive numbers (5.4 UZR through 35 games) — his WAR so far through mid-May was only half a win lower than it was through the entire 2008 campaign.

Unfortunately he’s gone for the rest of the season, as his surgery will take 4-6 months to fully heal. To replace him, the Brewers immediately are turning second base into a platoon with Casey McGehee hitting against lefties and Craig Counsell taking care of right-handers. Since Counsell was originally slated to be Bill Hall’s platoon partner, studly prospect Mat Gamel will take care of right handed pitching at third base. There are a couple of other options the Brewers could pursue, like bringing up light-hitting Hernan Iribarren to take over second base or even signing free agent Ray Durham to try and revive his corpse. But if the double-platoon sticks, how much production will the Brewers lose with Weeks out for the rest of the season?

Weeks so far this season was hitting tremendously but I suspect he has just been seeing the ball particularly well for a stretch and was due to regress a little bit. His 19.1% HR/FB rate combined with sharp LD% and FB% increases and a low GB% implies small sample size and a return to normalcy. Combine that with a (probably) unsustainable 28.3 UZR/150, and it’s pretty clear Rickie was playing a little over his head. His updated ZiPS projections imply he would hit closer to .257/.351/.456/.808 and even if we assume the improved defense that coaches have been touting than I figure that Weeks’ defense should decline to somewhere in between his career numbers at second (essentially dead average) and where he is now (off-the-charts good). Since we’re 1/4 of the way through the season, I estimate that Weeks would be about a 5.0 WAR player for the rest of the season assuming he remained healthy. So, we lose that. But what do we gain back with the Counsell/McGehee platoon?

Counsell meanwhile is a light-stick, good-fielding utility man. He’s pretty clearly not going to keep up his current pace of batting over .300, but he has a decent career OBP (.345) which is pretty close to Weeks’ and while his offense may take a hit, Counsell has extreme value defensively, posting a career 12.9 UZR/150 at second base. Counsell is also in a platoon, meaning that he’ll only face right-handed pitching. Careerwise, he’s better against right-handed pitching, going .258/.348/.353. For the rest of the season, this approximates to about a 1.5 WAR. McGehee, on the other hand, does much better against LHP, hitting for a .796 OPS in AAA last year with 5 homers in 129 ABs, compared to a .767 OPS against right-handers. Considering the dropoff in his statistics now that he’s reached the major league level, he should put up about a WAR of 1 or so. McGehee is particularly difficult to estimate because he’s had a career 16 chances at outs at second base, so basing predictions of performance based on that small of a sample size is dangerous. I’m assuming totally average defense out of McGehee against lefties.

So far, this means that the Brewers are going to lose about 2.5 wins just from replacing Weeks with the less-able-but-still-qualified McGehee/Counsell duo.

However there’s more to the story than just replacing Rickie over at second. Remember that the move also means that the Gamel Camel to replace Counsell at third. Last night, Gamel decided to turn on a Kyle Lohse fastball and crank it to right field to drive in his first three runs and turn a close game into a punch in the gut. Gamel’s an offensive stud ready to be shown off, as evidenced by his nearly 1.100 OPS in AAA-Nashville at only 23 years old. Those numbers upon examination are excruciatingly high, but if Gamel can put up a .900 OPS in the majors he’ll be significantly outperforming Counsell’s bargain at third despite being an average statistical defender at third. Sure, he’ll give away a few horrible throws and have some fielding gaffes, but his bat is a definite improvement over Counsell. I’d estimate on the low end that Gamel’s bat adds a significant amount of WAR to the table. Since he’s predominately starting against righties, he should provide an extra 0.5-1.0 WAR for the rest of the season, assuming he remains called up at this point. To put it differently, Weeks’ loss costs the Brewers about 1.5-2 wins, and at the end of the season, that could mean all the difference when it comes to playoffs or not. We’ll see.

Of course, this is all wildly speculative and an inexact science. Estimating a two-win dropoff due to to Weeks’ departure is sure to be wrong on my part and couldn’t possibly be actually calculated until the rest of the season plays out and the hypothetical assumptions that Weeks could continue his tear at nearly the rate he was going at so far.

Enjoy the hot streak. Remember that the inevitable August and September swoon is upon us yet.

Ryan Braun decided to own once again in the bottom of the eighth on Friday night against a FSWisconsin-doctored 100 mph Aaron Heilman fastball on a 1-0 count by serving it into the UW-Milwaukee sign in right center and give the Brew a 3-2 lead that they wouldn’t give up.

The next day, the Cubs bullpen powerhouse cranked out 6 walks in 1 2/3 IP as the Brewers took another win in a game that lasted over four hours. It was such a good game for awhile until the Cubs bullpen started going haywire and dragging the final two innings much longer than they needed to be. Yesterday’s game didn’t really matter because taking two from the Cubs right after a 3-1 road trip is happy days for me. On Saturday night, watching this made me grin as well. All in all a really good stretch by the Crew and heading into next week with a half-game lead on the Cubs means the Brewers are sitting pretty.

However, this post is about something else… something I wanted to check in on. Bill Hall’s season. I wrote about back in February making the point that he’s really going to have a bounceback season this year due to his statistics regressing upward to the norm and his LASIK eye surgery seemingly adding to his ability to see the ball, which had been a major problem in the past.

This year Bill Halls’ hit .279/.347/.465 with 3 home runs in 86 AB. For a third baseman, that’s not too bad, and with positive defensive numbers at third base so far, that places him significantly above projections this year and actually a really valuable player. How much of this solid play is a regression in BABIP numbers and how much is due to that being a better ballplayer who can see the ball with relative ease now?

An average BABIP in the majors is usually around .300, maybe a little more. Hall’s this year is .350, and in 2008 his was below average at .287. He couldn’t hit the ball well, but he certainly wasn’t very lucky and had his BABIP been slightly higher we wouldn’t be as concerned about this year’s performance. But this year, he’s hitting well, and his BABIP implies he’s been pretty lucky so far, so we should expect his stats to go down somewhere in between 2008′s numbers and his numbers so far.

But personally I think his stats will be skewed a little more towards the side of .250 he’s on now. He’s become a marginally better hitter with better other statistics to imply that he might be a for-real acceptable third base option in case Mat Gamel doesn’t pan out there. In between his year and last, he’s done a much better job of taking pitches and being disciplined at the plate, as evidence by the moderate increase in some of his pitch selection stats so far:

Bill Hall 2008: O-Swing%: 26.8. Swing%: 46.3. F-Strike%: 62.3.
Bill Hall 2009: O-Swing%: 23.1. Swing%: 44.7. F-Strike%: 69.5.

Hall’s swinging at less pitches outside of the zone and less pitches in general, despite the F-Strike% going way up. Considering that he’s able to take more pitches and is putting up the stats consistent with last year’s implies he’s going to get a few more chances to hit with the count in his favor instead of having to work with the count. That means he’ll get more pitches to see on 1-0, 2-0, and 2-1 and those counts have been proven both statistically and by most color announcers to be the ones where hitters salivate over. I think he’ll keep his progress up.

If he does, that just puts the Brewers just that much closer to that coveted wild card spot. Or even division if the Cubs keep getting hurt.

Hey if anybody knows how to fix this blog setup to move this column further left so that the graph doesn’t bleed into the links, leave a comment or e-mail me at cody@czwief.com. Thanks!

It is now officially the offseason — trades and signings, with the exception of Mark Teixiera, are pretty much dead until Spring Training in a couple of months. This is part 1 of a 3-part series examining projections for Milwaukee’s 2009 season. Part 1 will be position players, part 2 will be pitching, and part 3 will be a final projection.

Last season’s offense was really frustrating at times, and especially in the final months. Let’s break down projections and possibilities position by position.

First base

With the small possibility that Milwaukee trades Prince Fielder, it’s safe to say he’s the 2009 first baseman. He experienced a bit of a dropoff in production last year. Most of this can be attributed to his rise in GB%. Take a look:

Marcel projections have him doing similar things in ’09, with a little bit of a bounceback year. Projections have him at .282/.377/.530/.907, and that hasn’t even taken into account his rumored reports of finally eating meat again. I think he’ll bounce back a little bit and have a pretty productive season.

Using the pretty darn good stats created by Justin Inaz, we can estimate Prince having this kind of year (these numbers similar to VORP values):
Offense: 45
Position adjustment: -12
Defense: -12

Of course, this assumes that Prince is as bad defensively in 09 as he was in 08. That’s a 21 rating, which is similar to a 2.1 VORP. None too impressive, but that’s fine by me. More on why I wouldn’t mind trading Prince later (hint: he’s overrated).

Everywhere else after the jump

Second base

Many people have questioned the ability of Rickie Weeks at second base, citing his low batting average as equivalent to terrible play. Sometimes the disgust of fans is thrown at the wrong person, as Weeks is actually a pretty valuable player — the adjusted VORP numbers I’m referencing noted that Weeks was actually more valuable a player than Fielder was in many less ABs (since he had to give some up to Durham late in the season).

Weeks hit /.234/.342/.398/.740 from the leadoff spot, which obviously isn’t nearly as impressive as Fielder, but when you consider adjusting Weeks’ production to the production of second basemen across the league, well, it’s not actually all that bad. His defense is surprisingly average considering his terrible defense that was widely noted 2 years ago. One of the main things that concerns me, though, is his decline in everything good and increase in everything bad in terms of hitting stats. Observe:

the decline in LD% and the increase in GB% is…not good. Many Brewers players had regressions from 2007 last year and I feel like a universal regression had more to do with the hitting coach Jim Skaalen than anything. Maybe Macha’s new staff will tell people like Braun or Hart to take a walk.

The Brewers *should* stick with Weeks next year. If they do, they’ll get a 2-3 wins over replacement player at second, if Marcel projections are correct and Weeks has a rebounding year next year. Marcel has him at .249/.357/.414/.772, which out of your second baseman is not bad at all.

Shortstop

Many reports have linked teams like the Twins with a desire to get J.J. Hardy, as they needed a shortstop and Hardy is a good, cost-controlled shortstop. Just because teams want him doesn’t necessarily mean that teams like the Brewers are willing to give up a cost-controlled shortstop for multiple more years with 25HR power and a flashy glove in one of the most important fielding positions in baseball.

While Hardy should still be the opening day shortstop, there have been murmurs to get light-hitting, excellent-defense prospect Alcides Escobar in at the shortstop position due to the range of Hardy being slightly limited, and moving Hardy to third where he won’t need as much range but can still show off his cannon arm. Something’s going to have to be done soon, but until we can dump Bill Hall’s worthless contract, moving Hardy to third is only going to make him less valuable and replace the shortstop position with someone who won’t have as much value there as now. I’d go through the projections of the current shortstop/third base situation, but projecting what would happen if Escobar would get thrown in is impossible unless you actually do it.

Third base

Mike Lamb resigned with the Brewers for one year, which is okay because the Twins stupidly decided to pay him like $3mm/year to play like garbage for them. Likely Lamb is going to start the season in a platoon with Bill Hall, who can hit lefties pretty darn well but just hasn’t been able to touch a right-hander since his flukish breakout year in 2006.

While on the subject of Hall, he got LASIK eye surgery recently. That’s cool. LASIK made Jason Kendall’s OPS+ go up by 12 points the offseason as well as made Denard Span into an elite hitter who does an exceptional job at taking pitches outside of the zone and only swinging at those in it. He said so far his vision has gotten quite a bit better and he’s not going to have the problems that he’s had with his contacts all year. You saw how much Billy was opening his eyes really wide and violently blinking too, right?

Anyways, it looks like the Brewers will start out in a platoon, but the recent signing of Casey McGeehee from the Cubs tells me that they’re going to have an open spring training where the best person emerges as 2009′s starter. This sounds suspiciously like the beginning of a terrible start at third base, however, if Hall’s new LASIK surgery can help him beef up his stats at the plate and Lamb/McGeehee can do an acceptable job as backups or starting against right-handed pitchers, then this 3B platoon seems like a good idea.

But what do you think? Is the better option to move Hardy over to 3rd and let the AA-er Escobar plug in at short? Or would you prefer a Hall/Lamb/McGeeHee hot corner with Escobar getting some seasoning in the minors? Personally, I’d go for the latter, just to get his bat some more discipline: in the minors, he strikes out on way too many at-bats for me to consider him a legitimate major leaguer. But we’ll see what happens.

Catcher

Jason Kendall is a terrible hitter, as everyone knows by now, but I heard through the grapevine that Ned Yost found a mechanical flaw in Kendall’s defense that caused him to lead the major leagues in CS% which pretty much was a total reversal of his 2007 season. This caused him to be one of the more elite defensive catchers in the game and significantly made up for his offensive shortcomings. Kendall’s probably going to be overworked in 2009 too, playing in over 150 games for the Brewers last season. Yikes. So, this season we can expect terrible offensive numbers, a good CS%, and a manly lumberjack beard and no batting gloves.

This will probably be the last year of Kendall, too, before the good catching prospects in the Brewers organization begin to emerge as players. Salome still needs to work on his D before he becomes anything close to the major leagues. Rivera’s a good backup, although I wouldn’t mind at all to see him hit in the majors…

The outfield

The Brewers and Yankees are at a dead-end, so it’s safe to say that our starting outfield will be Braun-Cameron-Hart. We can expect a similar offensive and defensive performance out of Braun, and Cameron is still going to be what he is: a low-average, high-power center fielder with really good range in center that defensively will save a few runs.

Corey Hart was definitely interesting (and by interesting I mean terrible) over the last two plus months of the season, hitting into every killer double play as well as a season of .268/.300/.459/.759 out of a corner outfielder with little defensive additions (especially because RF isn’t necessarily a defensively important position). Thank goodness he’s better than that — Marcel projects him next year as having a good bounceback season, somewhere around .280/.329/.483/.812, which is more what I’d come to expect from Corey Hart. That doesn’t mean he’s anywhere near the All-Star that he was in NY and the Brewers should still consider upgrading at the RF position, as an .812 OPS from your defensively average RF isn’t too great.

But where does Mat Gamel fit in?

For those that don’t know, Mat Gamel is an absolute stud prospect who hit .329/.395/.537/.933 in the Southern League for the Huntsville Stars. He’s a third baseman, which would by midseason clear up the Bill Hall/Mike Lamb/Casey McGeehee slugfest that is sure to decrease the value of the Brewers, however, reports from the minors note that Gamel is like Ryan Braun was at third, except even more atrocious.

So what are the Brewers to do?

1) Keep Mat Gamel at third, call him up at midseason to replace Bill Hall.

This move could be a good move depending on where Milwaukee is halfway through the season. If they’re not contending, this would be pointless — and only partially because it would waste a half year of Mat Gamel service time. Bill Hall, as you may recall, is also making $4.8 million this upcoming year — to have him ride pine in a lost season is the very definition of wasted money. Hopefully Hall’s LASIK surgery is equivalent to a bounceback season. I wouldn’t be on board for keeping Gamel at third when the season is lost.

And even if the Brewers were contending in June, unless Hall/Lamb/McGeehee are an absolute black hole, why break up what is successfull? Don’t tell me you’d want to see defensive juggernaut Mat Gamel throwing a ball 10 feet above Prince Fielder’s head in the bottom of the 8th with 2 on, 2 out, and a one-run lead. Yikes.

2) Turn Gamel into a corner outfielder, place him in the field.

Gamel could easily become Braun 2.0. Hart was a terribly right fielder last year, as any replacement level player could almost outplay him, What Gamel loses defensively from replacing Hart with him is more than made up for by his high-OBP, high-power offensive production from a position that usually is one of the more premier offensive positions where defense isn’t necessary.

Here’s a scenario that I would like the most that I could see occuring: Corey Hart spends the first couple of months of the season bouncing back from his black hole performance the last two months of the season with some improved plate discipline (swings at only 85% of outside sliders) and a little bit of power as well. His stock rises, and since he’s at the stage where he’s young, can still develop, and his stock rises, he’d be a good trade fit to another team just because the Brewers could get a pretty hefty return for a young, cost-controlled outfielder who many think is still developing. This would pave the way for Gamel, who would most likely be better. I say this because I personally think Hart is quite a bit overrated and is currently reaching his ceiling.

The more realistic scenario where Gamel moves to the OF is that he spends the entirety of spring training and the 2009 season in AAA learning how to become a fielder and then move Hart to center and put Gamel in RF once Cameron’s contract is up in 2010. In center, Hart’s offensive production would be more valuable considering how premium it is defensively and would make up for his shortcomings when he moved there. A Braun-Hart-Gamel outfield would be a disaster for our pitching staff, but an even bigger disaster for other pitching staffs. When an .812 OPS is your worst offensive outfielder, you really can’t lose. Unless, of course, your field is all Brad Hawpes.

Considering the Brewers’ attempt to gain a multi-year cost-controlled center fielder in Melky Cabrera, this seems to be unlikely.

3) Turn Gamel into a first baseman, trade Prince Fielder.

This is another popular place to put Gamel because his defense seems to be so limited that even a move to right field would spell disaster. There have been murmurs of the Brewers talking with teams like the Giants, who have a void at first base, of trading Fielder, because when he hits arbitration, he may not exactly be worth what his salary is going to jump to and it’s pretty clear that his size doesn’t correlate with defensive range.

The Giants are also led by the genius Brian Sabean, who has made brilliant executive decisions like signing Barry Zito to his ridiculous contract. Despite his free agent shortcomings, his staff also has a pretty good eye for developing talent, with insane pitching prospects emerging in Lincecum, Cain, and Jonathan Sanchez, and other players about to emerge into the majors like Pablo Sandoval. They seem interested in Fielder, and we seem interested in trading him.

Although I’d probably like the return (and positional improvement by replacing Fielder with Gamel) that Fielder would get, it’s best not to cross that bridge until we get to it.

Backups

So, of our 13 slots dedicated to positional players, 8 of them are taken up in the starters. Rivera is the backup catcher, it appears, so that makes 9. Hall’s platoon partner in Mike Lamb or Casey McGeehee makes 10. Tony Gwynn Jr. as a backup outfielder would make 11 — we’d most likely see a backup SS/2B in Hernan Iribarren and the recent signing of Trot Nixon as another backup outfielder would make sense in my opinion, although a pinch hitting option in Brad Nelson wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Coming up next is my 2009 pitching preview. There’s been a lot of chaos in the Brewers’ pitching system during the offseason, and it’d be nice to see where they stand right now.