All of a sudden I’ve been brought back to the days of Ruben Quevedo and Jamey Wright tossing up a consistent array of doubles and gopher balls to the opposition when posting ERAs of 5.76 and 5.35 in 44 total starts and a combined 11-24 win-loss record. In 2002, the Brewers went 56-106.

Glendon Rusch — yeah, that Glendon Rusch — was one of Milwaukee’s most consistent pitchers with a 4.70 ERA and 210 innings pitched in 2002. Never mind that he’s an awful pitcher, and has always been an awful pitcher; he was the team’s #2 guy that year.

The parallels between Rusch and Jeff Suppan are alarmingly close — except Suppan doesn’t eat as many innings as Rusch. Suppan has also been our second-most consistent starter recently, as Manny Parra stunk down to AAA, Dave Bush has been terrible due to a microtear in his arm, and Braden Looper has just been awful lately. This is a far cry from early April when pretty much everybody wanted him off the roster. Now he’s a semi-valuable part of the rotation taking into account the shambles it’s in right now.

Another comparison to the lovable 2002 losers was the ace of the staff: they had Ben Sheets, we have Yovani Gallardo. I’m pretty sure 2002 was not the ideal setup for the Brewers. I’m pretty sure 2009 isn’t currently the ideal setup for the Brewers.

***

Manny Parra made his second start last night in Albequerque to face Manny Ramirez and the Isotopes. Parra took the loss, but his start looked encouraging on the surface as the reason for Nashville’s loss last night was due to the offense scoring 0 runs; Manny threw 7 innings of one-run ball and dropped to 0-1 so far in Nashville. Here’s what Right Field Bleachers had to say:

Like I said, a nice start. His walk total went down a little compared to his four in six innings last week. His strike to ball ratio remained solid. Basically…good to see. I don’t think one can read into the early performances too much, but I had my doubts he’d start solid in Nashville. I remain very interested to see if he can continue this for another four or five starts. If he does, especially with the entire starting rotation (minus Yo) struggling, you can bet Manny Parra will be back in Milwaukee.

So far he’s been encouraging more than anything considering his lack of confidence on the way down, but there’s no way he’s back to major-league ready yet. Out of his small sample size in AAA he’s owned only a nearly 1:1 K/BB ratio and has been the benefactor of a .200 BABIP.

It would be unreasonable to expect Parra to go down to AAA and simply dominate hitters right away since his confidence level has gone way down. However two starts down in AAA that look pretty good on the surface don’t exactly mean he’ll be starting this Saturday against San Fransisco again.

Even though his secondary stats imply he’s still the same Parra we saw earlier this season, these starts still are encouraging in the sense that having two good starts down in AAA could help him build his confidence and deflate those walk totals that suddenly jumped this year. A more confident Parra could mean hee’ll be ready to go in 3 or 4 more starts.

***

Coming out of AAA to pitch tomorrow’s series finale against the AL (thank god) is Mike Burns, a career minor leaguer who’s floated around with different teams before signing a minor-league contract with the Brewers at the beginning of this year.

The biggest names brought up at the beginning of the year to help provide pitching depth in case one of the starters went down with an injury (coughcoughBushcough) included guys like Seth McClung, Chase Wright, and Tim Dillard — not many of us expected a journeyman to post an ERA under 3 in Nashville.

Burns is definitely the best option to pitch right now to replace Bush’s spot. Burns keeps the ball in the ballpark (about 1 HR every 10 innings in AAA) adequately, doesn’t walk people (1.47 walks/9), but doesn’t srike anybody out and leaves the burden of his resonsibility on his defense.

Of course, the Brewers lead the league in defensive efficiency so far this season, so the defense shouldn’t have a big problem helping Burns out. His Major League Equivalent ERA using his AAA stats this year would be about 4.5; if his defense helps him out nicely he should become the new Glendon Rusch that lasts 4 or 5 starts.

Mark DiFelice is a 32-year-old career minor league pitcher who seemingly can’t find a home, having minor league stints with the Rockies, Orioles, Nationals, Cubs, and now Brewers. So far, he’s been a journeyman minor leaguer who just found his first big-league experience last year in a short 19-inning stint, only getting his opportunity when David Riske got injured.

In his 19 innings with Milwaukee last season, he only put up a 2.84 ERA and a 151 ERA+, which should give him another shot at a cup of coffee, but even the amateur baseball fan knows that 19 innings is a small sample size for any period of pitching time, so the rationale is that DiFelice is an AAA pitcher.

Problem is, he’s not your everyday AAA scrub. He’s a really good pitcher. Last year in AAA, he put up gaudy numbers, which he’s done throughout his minor league career. Last year, in Nashville, he went 5-1 with a 3.22 ERA and 0.90 WHIP, while striking out more than a batter an inning and walking only 1.2. He had a K:BB ratio of 8.13 in AAA last year!

DiFelice is a junkball pitcher, throwing an 87mph fastball as well as a slider (cutter), circle change, and curve. He threw his fastball less than 15 percent of the time in the majors last year. Some have thought hitters will eventually catch up to his lack of an “out” pitch and he wouldn’t be a good option at the major league level, but he’s proven himself at least capable of being a good big-league reliever and if he can at least keep up a really good K:BB ratio he should still be an expendable reliever at least for a year or two.

Let’s say his CHONE or Marcel projections hold to be true. CHONE projects DiFelice to have a 3.41 FIP, while Marcel projections think his walk rates are going to go way up and decrease his FIP to essentially league-average (4.5). I tend to think, at least at the beginning of his big-league career, he’ll be closer to the CHONE projections and be a good pitcher who nobody really knew about. Instead, the Brewers most likely are going to keep Eduardo Morlan who had an FIP of 3.4 in AA last year for Tampa Bay simply because he will have to be offered back to Tampa if he’s not kept on the roster. Morlan is good, and projects to be a future stud in the big leagues, but if the Brewers want to win now they’ll place DiFelice higher up on the food chain than Morlan.

That leaves the bullpen situation looking like this:

Trevor Hoffman
Seth McClung
Carlos Villanueva
R.J. Swindle/Mitch Stetter
Jorge Julio
David Riske
Mark DiFelice

I actually really like that pen. Especially if they keep Tim Dillard and Todd Coffey in AAA. Dillard just isn’t that good, and Coffey could stand to work on his pitches for a little while while being the backup for the pitcher who’s ultimately going to get hurt sometime during the season.

But DiFelice is ready for the bigs. I think he’ll be a great pitching candidate, even if he doesn’t rely on the fastball.