Another Season Lost
One week before the All-Star break, my Milwaukee Brewers were a surprising team. On July 7, coming off of a three-game sweep of the Chicago Cubs, the Brew Crew was just a few games out of the wild card, and six games above .500 (.537 winning percentage).
How two months can change things.
Late July and August were abysmal for the Brewers, who now sit at sixteen games below .500 (.441 winning percentage) -- a net loss of 23 games, and nearly 100 points in winning percentage. This despite having won four of their last five.
I never seriously hoped that the Brewers would contend for the playoffs, but I did expect them to finish the year at around .500, and would have been thrilled with that. Alas, it wasn't meant to be.
Lost in the shuffle is the fact that the Brewers actually seem to have a lot of pieces in place, and just can't seem to put it together. Manager Ned Yost is top-notch. He will not allow his players to quit, even though the season is clearly lost for them, and they play hard for him every day. Early in the year, they had several large come-from-behind wins, proving that playing hard can pay off. With the exception of the horrible August, pitchers such as Doug Davis and Victor Santos have been surprising -- a credit to pitching coach Mike Maddux. And the Richie Sexson trade, which I pissed and moaned about for a month as a "white flag" trade, actually improved the team dramatically in both depth and overall production. Lyle Overbay doesn't have Sexson's pop, but he's been remarkably productive: 77 RBI, and a more-than-respectable .878 OPS (Sexson's OPS was .914 when he went on the DL May 23); and Overbay was just one of four players to come over in the trade. As with every year, Geoff Jenkins is putting together another solid year languishing in obscurity in Milwaukee -- as it is, he is currently best known for looking an awful lot like Brett Favre. And the farm system has been recognized as being one of the best in the majors.
So what's the problem? Well, there are several. First, for all the talent development, the Brewers still have problems with the pitching staff. (I lick my chops thinking about what Maddux would be able to do with more talented pitchers.) Their #2 and #3 starters would probably be #4 and #5 on a decent staff, and the middle relief has not been good. But the problem, I think, goes beyond even that. It has to do with the Oakland A's model (trying to grow players cheaply rather than buy them at great expense) that many teams, including Milwaukee, have been trying to follow. The thing is, unless you have a really, really good GM, and a really, really good scouting staff, the model doesn't work very well, because even among the most promising prospects, most of them don't amount to much at the pro level. Even more importantly, however, when you do turn up a quality player by that method, you have to be able to keep him and to augment him; and this is something that the Brewers haven't shown much commitment to doing. Rather than augmenting the current roster by trying to fill holes, they routinely simply swap players out, keeping the team at a consistent "almost competitive" level.
I don't pretend to have Peter Gammons or Rob Neyer-like knowledge of the game of baseball, but to me, at least, it seems pretty clear that the Brewers' problems start at the top, in the front office. Until the front office puts together a coherent plan for the future, and sticks with it for more than a season or two, I'll continue to get more of the same: shitty baseball.
How two months can change things.
Late July and August were abysmal for the Brewers, who now sit at sixteen games below .500 (.441 winning percentage) -- a net loss of 23 games, and nearly 100 points in winning percentage. This despite having won four of their last five.
I never seriously hoped that the Brewers would contend for the playoffs, but I did expect them to finish the year at around .500, and would have been thrilled with that. Alas, it wasn't meant to be.
Lost in the shuffle is the fact that the Brewers actually seem to have a lot of pieces in place, and just can't seem to put it together. Manager Ned Yost is top-notch. He will not allow his players to quit, even though the season is clearly lost for them, and they play hard for him every day. Early in the year, they had several large come-from-behind wins, proving that playing hard can pay off. With the exception of the horrible August, pitchers such as Doug Davis and Victor Santos have been surprising -- a credit to pitching coach Mike Maddux. And the Richie Sexson trade, which I pissed and moaned about for a month as a "white flag" trade, actually improved the team dramatically in both depth and overall production. Lyle Overbay doesn't have Sexson's pop, but he's been remarkably productive: 77 RBI, and a more-than-respectable .878 OPS (Sexson's OPS was .914 when he went on the DL May 23); and Overbay was just one of four players to come over in the trade. As with every year, Geoff Jenkins is putting together another solid year languishing in obscurity in Milwaukee -- as it is, he is currently best known for looking an awful lot like Brett Favre. And the farm system has been recognized as being one of the best in the majors.
So what's the problem? Well, there are several. First, for all the talent development, the Brewers still have problems with the pitching staff. (I lick my chops thinking about what Maddux would be able to do with more talented pitchers.) Their #2 and #3 starters would probably be #4 and #5 on a decent staff, and the middle relief has not been good. But the problem, I think, goes beyond even that. It has to do with the Oakland A's model (trying to grow players cheaply rather than buy them at great expense) that many teams, including Milwaukee, have been trying to follow. The thing is, unless you have a really, really good GM, and a really, really good scouting staff, the model doesn't work very well, because even among the most promising prospects, most of them don't amount to much at the pro level. Even more importantly, however, when you do turn up a quality player by that method, you have to be able to keep him and to augment him; and this is something that the Brewers haven't shown much commitment to doing. Rather than augmenting the current roster by trying to fill holes, they routinely simply swap players out, keeping the team at a consistent "almost competitive" level.
I don't pretend to have Peter Gammons or Rob Neyer-like knowledge of the game of baseball, but to me, at least, it seems pretty clear that the Brewers' problems start at the top, in the front office. Until the front office puts together a coherent plan for the future, and sticks with it for more than a season or two, I'll continue to get more of the same: shitty baseball.
posted by TGirsch at 1:25 PM
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