Truly desperate times by Tom H.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

And, make no mistake about it, these are desperate times at home for the Brewers.

Manager Ken Macha loosened the pitch-count leash on his starting pitcher Saturday merely to get him into the sixth inning and lessen the burden on an overtaxed bullpen. It didn’t work, with either starter or relief corps, which is how things are going for the Brewers at Miller Park this season.

Letting yet another close game get away in the latter innings, the Brewers’ home woes continued with a 10-6 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies as a second consecutive sellout crowd watched in dismay.

…

Before watching his woeful pitching staff take another beating – the Brewers have surrendered 47 runs during this 0-5 home stand – Macha admitted that continuing to lose games at Miller Park was bad for business, bad for morale, bad for him, etc.

“Our organization is driven by attendance,” said Macha, well aware that the team has no chance for a third consecutive season attendance of 3 million if this madness continues.

Is it just me, or are people really reaching with this team?

It’s the middle of May… the Brewers are 6 games under .500. All it’s going to take is two weeks of hot baseball and the Brewers are right back in it.

And two weeks of hot baseball is just itching to come out. Take a look at the ‘worst’ (keyword: unluckiest) pitching staffs in baseball, sorted by both BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) and HR/FB% (Home Runs/Fly Ball rates). These stats average out to about .300 and around 10.5%, respectively:

5 ‘worst’ pitching staffs, by BABIP:
Brewers – .336
Pirates – .327
Astros – .325
Angels – .322
Diamondbacks – .322

5 ‘worst’ pitching staffs, by HR/FB%:
Diamondbacks – 14.0%
Brewers – 13.2%
Angels – 12.3%
Pirates – 11.7%
Phillies – 11.6%

These will get better. Doug Davis has a .415 BABIP against him, despite having consistent peripherals compared to the rest of this year.

The Crew has had an unlucky month-and-a-half pitchingwise so far. Leave it up to the media to overreact to it. I’d be willing to bet they’ll be over .500 by the end of June.

Since school began taking over, I haven’t had the time to write about the Brewers… that doesn’t mean I haven’t been following them. Although posting will continue to be sporadic until I actually finish, I’m going to write as much as possible.

As everyone knows by now Doug Melvin traded J.J. Hardy for Carlos Gomez in a trade made to free up some money and solve the CF logjam. I defend the move, personally… even though I really like Mike Cameron it’s pretty clear keeping him is more of a sentimental move than a proper business move, and since baseball is a business, saving the money trumps keeping friends. The ~$7MM the Brewers save by bringing in Gomez will be spent on pitching, and the ~2 wins or so they lose should be more than made up for if they bring in a pitcher or two worth as much as they have left in their pockets. Let’s take a look at what next year’s payroll is going to look like realistically…

Conveniently Al’s Ramblings already took a look at the 2010 payroll. Here’s what he had to say:

Without buyouts and Hall, they are at $37M with guaranteed deals. Add in estimated payroll from guys not eligible for arby, you have Yo, Parra, Escobar, Stetter, DiFelice, McGehee, and I’ll add in Narveson…that’s seven guys at about $450K per, so that’s $3.15M, so a total of $40.15M for a dozen players.

Realistically, one catcher will be very cheap, be it a backup or a youngster. So will one utility IF. That’s 14 players for $41.05M. Weeks, about $3.75M in arby. Hart, about $4M in arby. Gomez, about $1.3M in arby (as a super 2). That’s 17 players for $50.1M. Coffey will likely get about $1.5M in arby…$51.6M for 18 players. You can probably pencil in Counsell or another backup IF for about $1.5M…19 for $53.1M. There’s two reserve OF spots still open, Gerut would probably get $2.5M in arby, but we do not know if he’ll remain. I’ll budget $3.5M for the pair of bench OF’s…21 for $56.6M. That leaves the catcher’s spot, a bullpen spot, and 2 SP’s remaining. Also, one of the commitments for next year is Dave Riske, who will probably not contribute ’til midseason, if at all. If the two bullpen openings are filled with guys like Carlos V, McClung, or the like, they’ll probably cost about $3-4M. We’ll use $3.5M for estimates, and that’s $60.1M. I keep thinking a veteran catcher of some sort will be brought in, at a cost of $2-3M. Again, splitting the difference, we’ll use $2.5M, the total is $62.6M.

How much is payroll? Well, Doug always says Mark never gives him a budget of $X. Last year’s Opening Day payroll was about $80M, and I’ve seen numbers used in the $85-90M range for last year…with additions such as Lopez, and including DL replacements. Assuming no increase, that would probably mean they “could” spend from $17-25M on these two SP’s that Doug is supposedly looking for.

Of course these are all estimates and ‘what-if’s regarding holes being filled, so obviously this $17-25MM number should be taken with a grain of salt. But let’s take a look at a couple of hypotheticals…

Trade for Edwin Jackson

Jackson is a young, cost-controlled pitcher still in arbitration. Despite all the trade talks and the talk of Detroit needing to grab some salary relief, it’s really unlikely he’d be “salary relief” since Detroit is a $120M+ payroll and Edwin still has two years of arbitration left. Likely the Brewers would have to take on one of their bad contracts or give up good prospects to pry him away… my guess is probably at least Mat Gamel.

Normally this wouldn’t be a bad thing but Edwin isn’t that great of a pitcher in the first place and giving up a highly touted prospect or taking on a bad contract in addition to him would be silly. It’d likely mean taking on Curtis Granderson’s ~$26MM remaining salary as well, and he’s looking more and more like a platoon player only. Now that the Brewers have Gomez, Granderson would be a significant downgrade. Besides, the Mariners are going for him too, which might cause an unnecessary bidding war.

Verdict: No thanks. We already have Suppan and Hall to worry about.

Sign a free agent, like Doug Davis or Jarrod Washburn.

Both Washburn and Davis are so-so pitchers who have been underrated by being in lower market areas (or in Washburn’s case, getting old). They’re not going to impress Brian Cashman or Theo Epstein, but they’re perfect for a mid-market team looking for a slightly above-average pitcher for a cheap price.

Davis himself might be a little overpriced, as people have noticed they might get in a bidding war with Seattle over him, and anything over a two-year deal is probably giving up too much for him. Seattle’s looking for pitching just as much as the Brewers are… and with their recent ‘defense-first’ mentality (trading for Franklin Gutierrez, resigning Jack Wilson), they can afford to sign an average pitcher, much like what Doug’s planning to do. Jack Z came from Milwaukee.

Washburn on the other hand had his value skyrocket in the middle of the year and then had it plummet after he was traded. He no longer was the beneficiary of a great D and pitcher’s park in Detroit, and he started regressing. Now his ceiling is a two-year deal worth about $10MM… just the kind of deal Doug should make. He’s getting old, which is turning some people off, but he’s a soft-tossing lefty, which means he should age well, and a fly ball pitcher with Gomes patrolling center is a recipe for success.

Verdict: Bring in JW.

Friends, family, and everyone else,

We gather here today to mourn the loss of our friend, the 2009 season.

It was a good season, a fun season — it had its ups and downs, like any fun season. We stuck with it through the thick and thin, and wanted so hard for them to succeed… but we didn’t expect it to end this early. Its life was too short.

***

Of course the season isn’t actually over yet, since the Brewers are only 4.5 games out of first place in a terribly weak division. But with the way things are going right now they won’t be contending for long, and unless the battered pitching staff can pull something out of its ass they’ll be giving up 8-10 runs on a nightly basis. Expect another post later today on the pitching staff, unless some kind of trade breaks through…

Hopefully Doug Melvin is pulling something out here. Washburn, Morrow, and Clement for Hardy + another prospect? Who knows — he’s probably going to the Yankees. They’ve shown interest. We’ll see.

I don’t think there’s much hope left this season. The future doesn’t sound too great right now either.

Losing by 8 at home to the lowly Nationals is obviously the low point of the season. Tom H. has a new article up touching on the problems of the currently overworked bullpen, which one starting pitcher isn’t going to solve. I’ve long since advocated not giving up too much for a starting pitcher, and that’s only reinforced now that the pitchers are consistently awful. Rambling Al agrees that it’s no longer time to be buyers, and even toys with the idea of selling.

Selling would be interesting for the Brewers right now, but I’m not sure I’d sell any of those three guys. When Cameron signs somewhere else the Brewers will probably get a compensation draft pick at the end of the year. Hoffman’s too valuable and fun for the team to get rid of, and we need Braden Looper just to get through the rest of the season. J.J. Hardy would net an interesting return, but I’d wait until the end of the season since Alcides Escobar’s bat isn’t major-league ready quite yet and needs the rest of the year for some seasoning in AAA.

Obviously everyone’s disappointed in the awful Brew Crew play, but is it really that unexpected? Coming into the season all projections were at about a .500 team, and they’re pretty much around there right now. I don’t think anybody expected the pitching staff to be this bad, but they’ll have another hot streak sometime down the road and creep up back into playoff contention, I’m sure. They just happen to be mired in a super long slump right now.

Until then, keep hopin’.

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.

The Brewers made the playoffs for the first time in 26 years mostly off of the pitching staff’s second-half excellency. It’s been well-documented how incredible CC Sabathia was, so we don’t hear that again. With the loss of Sabathia and (assumingly) Sheets to free agency, the rotation is going through a major change (and downgrade). Let’s take a look at the projected pitching staff and figure out just what we can expect from them in 2009.

Starting pitching

Last year’s starting pitching was obviously anchored by two of the best starters in the game. They are now gone. Doug Melvin has done nothing to try and replace those guys, but instead is relying on his young pitching staff to recreate their performance. Let’s break down the projected rotation starter by starter.

Yovani Gallardo
Gallardo was injured for most of the year, as everyone knows, so his contributions to the club were minimal in 2008. Luckily his problems were entirely related to a freak play where he hyperextended his ACL and not a continual arm problem due to poor mechanics or overuse. He threw only 24 innings the entire year, including a 4-inning stint to start off the 2008 postseason for Milwaukee.

He throws a low-90s fastball with an excrutiating curveball and good slider. A young, cost-controlled, three-plus-pitch pitcher with little to no injury history due to mechanical problems? Sign me up.

Projections for Gallardo vary wildly to the point where one could project any combination of innings pitched/ERA and it’d be a reasonable projection based on one of the three main ways numbers are determined (Bill James, CHONE, and Marcel projections). For example, Bill James expects Yo to throw nearly 200 innings of wonderful ball, with more Ks than innings pitched and a 3.15 FIP ERA. Marcel, on the other hand, doesn’t think he’ll appropriately rebound from his injury last year, and will throw 79 good innings with a 3.65 FIP ERA. 79 innings means he’s either injured, demoted, or both; judging by the numbers he’s going to put up, I don’t see him getting sent down to AAA for seasoning any more.

While most people think of “projections” as what experts and computers “think” a player is going to do, that’s not actually true. Projections are merely a mean of “what-if” seasons played. For example, if you imagine a million hypothetical Brewer seasons next year, it’s possible that Gallardo throws 220 innings with a 2.65 FIP ERA and 11 K/9. It’s also possible that Gallardo has continual arm problems through the year and struggles mightily with only 60 innings and a 5.5 ERA. It’s a projection based on average seasons, so these things are inaccurate. With that said, we can reasonably expect Yovani Gallardo to be Milwaukee’s #1 starter in 2009.

Manny Parra
Parra emerged last year as a legitimate #3 starter behind Ben Sheets and CC Sabathia, posting pretty good numbers, except for his high walk totals. Last year, Parra was doing pretty well until his final few appearances of the year, which may have been related to fatigue, as he had a substantial innings-pitched jump from 2007 to 2008. Usually anything over 25 additional innings pitched in a year is cause for concern, because not only is the pitcher deflated, it also leads to poor mechanics which makes for a high injury risk.

Last year, Parra threw 166 innings, which is far more than he has at any point in his career, which is a bit concerning to me because he came off rotator cuff surgery in 2005. What’s most concerning about Parra is that he’s had only one other season of 100+ IP since joining the minors, so his workload is a little concerning, especially since rotator cuffs have a tendency to reoccur. Projections for Parra don’t get any higher than 150 innings, so it’s imperative that Milwaukee has depth at starting pitching as it’s not unlikely that Parra will go down sometime throughout the year with a major injury or a reirritation of his rotator cuff.

I also don’t like the mechanics he displays in this picture don’t make me too happy, either. There’s too much stressed being placed on his shoulder when he whips it around. That tells me that I might see more headlines of “Shoulder soreness lands Parra on DL” than I’d like to see.

Jeff Suppan
Jeff Suppan is Milwaukee’s version of the overrated, overpaid pitcher who gained instant credibility due to a good run pitching in 2005′s playoffs for the St. Louis Cardinals. Hidden behind that small stretch of good pitching, however, is an “innings-eater,” which, in other words, means a below-average pitcher with a rubber arm who is only out there because he’s dependable. It’s kind of like sending Brett Favre out to play with the Jets — he might be good, he will probably be bad, but you know he’s going to go out there and play. Whether or not you’re satisfied with 22TD and 22INT in a season is up to you to decide.

Considering the state of 2009′s rotation, I don’t mind seeing Suppan in there at all. Losing CC Sabathia and Ben Sheets and keeping Suppan in the rotation is obviously a blow, but it’s not as if the Brewers have the immediate resources to compete in 2009 anyway, so having a below average starter who will post around a 4.7 ERA while tossing 200 innings in a transitional period isn’t the biggest cause for my concern. Unless, of course, we can pawn him and his contract off to a sucker team who thinks that he’s above average. But I don’t think that’s likely, because everyone who’s well as anyone knows that Suppan is what he is– a rubber arm who can give you 175-200 innings a year, which is still a valuable commodity to have.

Dave Bush
Comparing 2008 with his other major league years, Dave Bush had a career year in 2008. He posted a 4.18 ERA in 185 innings last year, including a great stretch run that helped propel Milwaukee to the postseason. Dig a little bit deeper, though, and it’s clear that his season was very lucky and fluky.

Despite Bush’s lowest ERA of his career since his short stint coming up from AAA with Toronto in 2004, his FIP was the highest it’s ever been. His low ERA was largely driven by an incredibly low .245 BABIP last year, which over the course of two seasons should be impossible since his LD% has been fairly consistent at just below 20%. His BABIP should be on the other side of .300, and an extra 70 points (or more, if he’s unlucky) on opposing batters would make an incredible adjustment to Bush’s actual pitching performances.

Even more, Bush’s ground balls were down and fly balls were up in ’08. More fly balls will generally mean more home runs, and since Bush pitches to contact and doesn’t strike many out, he will need to rely on the ball staying in the park more often, so the more ground balls, the merrier.

Hopefully Bush will continue on his hot stroke of luck, but I doubt it. Instead, he should work on either striking out more batters or working on his home run ratios. Having Mike Cameron in the outfield will unquestionably help him with his BABIP, thank goodness. His lucky year last year is netting him a nice payday.

Seth McClung/5th starter

Milwaukee hasn’t officially designated a 2009 rotation yet, and the 5th spot has been mysteriously vacant so far all year. Nobody in the minors is ready to make an appearance in the big leagues, but Tom Hardicout made a subtle hint that Seth McClung might be next year’s 5th starter simply because he left McClung out of his bullpen preview.

McClung would probably make the most sense to fill the vacant 5th starter spot out of everyone remaining, as he was a starter with the Devil Rays before coming to Milwaukee and has experience starting baseball games. Carlos Villanueva also has experience starting, but by now Milwaukee has found a place for him in the bullpen simply based on his small sample size of doing well in the 7th inning.

McClung was given a chance when he was incredibly young with the Devil Rays and posted abysmal results. Hitters were able to tee off on him when they were able to tell differences in his mechanics while pitching. An excellent analysis of McClung was already posted on Brew Crew Ball analyzing his performance and why it changed from the 6.00 ERA guy originally found on the old teams of Tampa Bay.

Since coming to Milwaukee and he’s shored up his delivery, he’s turned into quite the acceptable pitcher. His FIP ERA was at about 4.5 over a not-insignificant 105 innings, which is pretty good. He strikes out his fair share of batters, but walks far too many to be a truly legitimate #3 starter. One of the problems that will plague Chucky throughout the rest of his career as a starter will be his tendency to walk and strike out many a batter, thus making his pitch count not efficient enough to throw more than 6 or 7 innings. If you don’t mind pretty consistent 5IP games, McClung is your guy to fill the back end of that rotation.

Overall, the starting rotation is going to enter 2009 with a lot of question marks and not a lot of depth. Yovani Gallardo is coming off a major injury after logging a very few amount of innings last year– remember, in 2007, Gallardo had to be shut down near the end of the year because he had eclipsed the proverbial innings limit for a young pitcher. Milwaukee still has to worry about the strength of their young stud after posting only 24 innings the year before. He isn’t quite ready to become the team’s ace yet.

Also, McClung isn’t going to be able to log very many innings due to his high pitch counts, and Suppan/Bush just aren’t very good. With no depth in the organization outside of bullpen necessity Carlos Villanueva or Tommy John Surgery rehab guy Chris Capuano, Milwaukee will be searching for some depth in case of injury or poor performance from the scrap heaps of Triple A or the literal scrap heaps of pitchers who didn’t get signed.

One more thing to worry about for the season: with all of the high pitch counts (McClung, Parra) and poor, wild card pitchers (Bush, Suppan), tat most likely means that the bullpen will be overtaxed at different periods of time as the pitching staff hits a rough spot during the season– if normal 5-6IP starters have a bad outing, that means they’ll be limited to 4-5 innings through rough stretches, and it’s not going to be nice if a bullpen like the Brewers has to throw 4-5 innings by themselves over a period of a couple of weeks. Poor starting pitching ultimately harms the bullpen just as much as the team.

The bullpen
2009′s bullpen is going to be very similar to last year’s as both are a consortium of spare parts and dejected major leaguers looking for a new home. Take a look at the comparisons: each bullpen has a large free agent signing with the intention of taking over the closer’s role (08: Eric Gagne 09: Trevor Hoffman), each has former pitchers ridiculed for their performances even though it was probably their manager’s fault for placing those pitchers into high-leverage situations in the first place as they don’t have the talent to be a big guy in the bullpen (08: Gulliermo Mota 09: Jorge Julio), and a general consortium of average to below-average pitchers thrown together from scrap heaps in hope that they will perform acceptably.

Thus, there are not many returning bullpen members, with the losses of Eric Gagne, Brian Shouse, Gulliermo Mota, and Salomon Torres. To replace those guys, we’ve gotten Trevor Hoffman, R.J. Swindle, and Jorge Julio to shore up the bullpen along with Todd Coffey as an addition from the end of last year.

Hoffman is Hoffman (and MUCH better than Gagne, thank God), and R.J. Swindle is more than enough of a replacement for aging, expensive Brian Shouse; seriously, when Ryan Howard is up with the bases loaded and 2 out in a one-run ballgame in the 7th, you’re going to be glad Ken Macha went with Swindle instead of Carlos Villanueva. He murders lefties. Jorge Julio is an average pitcher who has succumbed to teams thinking he has more talent than he actually has and therefore will be a serviceable reliever as long as he’s relagated to low-leverage situations or games where it’s not all that close. David Riske is coming back from an injury-plagued year last year where he just couldn’t quite get to full form seemingly all year, but early on in the season performed acceptably as a reliever.

Riske is definitely overpaid for a middle relief guy (3 years, $13m plus a 2011 option and incentives) who you can develop through the minors or pick up for cheaper on a free agent market, but he’s still good to have on the team. I could easily see Riske becoming the 8th inning guy for Ken Macha, keeping Hoffman in the closer’s role and Villanueva in the 7th inning spot. That bullpen isn’t half bad, and when your better relievers are set for the high leverage situations while guys like Julio or Coffey aren’t, the bullpen should be slightly improved in 2009. Whether or not they crumble from overuse due to short starting pitching stints remains to be seen. I don’t want to see Riske getting injured in 2009– I’d want to run him out of town then.

The overall pitching line of Milwaukee doesn’t sound too bad, however, the depth and reliability of the rotation leaves quite a bit to be desired. The difference between the rotation when it’s healthy and when it’s not is contention for a playoff berth, so the health of the rotation is crucial in determining the result of the 2009 Brewers. It’s not going to be surprising, though, if someone gets injured and Milwaukee starts giving up 10+ runs more than it should.

It’s about time Suppan earned his huge contract as well. It’s time to earn their paychecks one more year.