Are the Brewers a Good Team?

[PeaveyFury]

At this point, I'd assemble a package of prospects headed by Gamel and see what is to be had.

 

I agree. I'm sure Melvin will be working the phones to see what can be had.

[brettac1]

The problem is that you just don't see trades being made at this point of the season. The Brewers pretty much need to improve from within from now until July 31-ish to remain near contention to even be able to make that trade. I don't have any doubt that the Cardinals will fall off pretty soon and the Brewers will be in second place, but after that, I'm not so sure that the Cubs won't run away and hide.

 

I just hope he doesn't trade for a middle reliever again.

[Roscoe Chill]

Russ, when it's all said and done, I just think Gallardo being gone for 5 months is worth more than 3 games. I'm not going to get in to how many...let's just say more than three.

 

And also, let's say that the mythical number is 87...perhaps the Brewers could have exceeded that number by 3. Now, let's say the mythical number without Gallardo is 84...perhaps they'll fall short of that new number by 3. If that makes any sense.

[rluzinski]

Russ, when it's all said and done, I just think Gallardo being gone for 5 months is worth more than 3 games. I'm not going to get in to how many...let's just say more than three.

 

I think it's most fans have a general tendency to overestimate the number of wins a great player has on a baseball team. I always do as well, until I look at the numbers. Remember, an average team wins 81 games and a playoff team wins around 90. The fact that a playoff team wins only 9 extra games more from those 25 players, suggests that any one player can't be worth THAT much over average.

 

Bush is probably expected to give up around an extra run every 9 innings than Gallardo. That's about 20 runs and 2 wins over 180 innings. I added another win to my estimate to try and account for other effects (Bush not being available in the pen for one). That's the 3 wins. If you said it should be 4, I certainly wouldn't call you wrong.

 

And also, let's say that the mythical number is 87...perhaps the Brewers could have exceeded that number by 3. Now, let's say the mythical number without Gallardo is 84...perhaps they'll fall short of that new number by 3. If that makes any sense.

 

I'm just talking about their record based off of skill. A perfectly average team can still easily win 85 or 77 games, depending on how the ball bounces over 162 games. The team with the best record often isn't as good as their record suggests. the same is often true for the team with the worst. Lot's of luck involved.

[Big Reed]

My problem with being overly optimistic about the brewers being a play-off contender is that they always wait too long to correct a deficiency. They try to make do with what they have rather than acquiring a quick temporary fix. they always take the long road solution rather than the short cut. All of their acquisitions have the future considered rather than the present. And unfortunately, in a pennant race, you need to be able to make quick unpopular fixes rather than long term solutions. the problem with long term solutions is that pennant contenders have windows of opportunities which are rather small - especially for small market teams. if you are a small maret team and you are in the window, you need to make qiuck fixes rather than do what's best for the team for the next 5 years when the window will be closed.

 

Every smart brewer fan knew last year when the brewers started slumping that the Brewers needed to add a veteran reliever. The problem was not that the brewers traded young prospects and acquired linebrink. the problem was that the brewers waited too long before taking any action. if the brewers had acquired Linebrink a month earlier when it was evident there was a problem, they probably would have been able to keep their lead, won 3-5 more games and won the division. but rather, they waited until the Cubs were within reach before making the trade. by then it was too late.

 

Now this year, Gallardo is out for the season. And once again, the brewers have doen nothing to replace him other than trying to fill in with what's already on the team. Bush proved last month he's not an adequate starter. But rather than going out and obtaining a starter equal to Gallardo's ability, the brewers are trying to plug the dam with the available gum on hand. if the brewers don't bite the bullet now and find a quality starting pitcher NOW as in THIS WEEK, they can kiss their dream of being in the play-offs good bye and say hello to another 82-84 win season.

 

Play-off bound teams have to be willing and also able to make unpopular quick fixes for injuries to key players. You can't just bring in unproven or mediocre players to replace your best player and then hope you'll make the play-offs.

 

if Fielder was injured for the rest of the year, what would the brewers do? Would they bring laporta up and start him at first? Would they trade for helton or delgado as a short term fix? or would they take no action for two months and hope we will continue to be in the race before deciding what long term action to take?

 

a team that always focuses on the long term will never win a pennant.

[Brewtacular]

Now this year, Gallardo is out for the season. And once again, the brewers have doen nothing to replace him other than trying to fill in with what's already on the team.

It has been 4 days.

 

[rluzinski]

The problem was not that the brewers traded young prospects and acquired linebrink. the problem was that the brewers waited too long before taking any action. if the brewers had acquired Linebrink a month earlier when it was evident there was a problem, they probably would have been able to keep their lead, won 3-5 more games and won the division.

 

3-5 more games from an extra month of a guy like Linebrink? That's way out there, to say the least.

 

Bush proved last month he's not an adequate starter. But rather than going out and obtaining a starter equal to Gallardo's ability, the brewers are trying to plug the dam with the available gum on hand.

 

Gallardo has been out for less than a week. It's crazy to expect Melvin to have already traded for a sub 3.75 starting pitcher to take his place. He'd be lucky to be able to do it at all. A pitcher like that on the open market is.... well not usually on the open market.

 

a team that always focuses on the long term will never win a pennant.

 

I'm sure you can come up with plenty of your own examples proving that statement wrong. You don't have to trade away all your prospects to win a pennant, as much as sports radio suggests otherwise.

[Tbadder]

I don't think the Brewers are a "good team." But I think they are the best "excellent team in waiting" in the National League. They're creating a pipeline of position players to the major leagues that would suggest the upper echelons are not too far off. If they are able to supplement the pitchers through trade or free agency then "good" will come very quickly.

 

For example, if the Brewers had acquired Haren in the off-season and Gallardo hadn't went down, I'd think they'd be the class of the league. (Just throwing out an idea).

[mothershipconnection]

Not "should be" or "potentially," but actually a good team right now. In my mind, the short answer is no.

 

Within those parameters, I totally agree with you. Yes, they have the potential to be a good team, but as they stand right now, especially without Yo, several hitters struggling, and Gagne blowing 5 of 14 save opportunities, they aren't performing like a good team.

 

Yes, you do have to offer arby to get picks, but I doubt the Brewers would pass on offering it.

 

Pretty much no way they'd pass unless he blows his elbow out near the end of the year, in which case he takes the one year arby deal to regain his value and be overpaid in '09. If Sheets is at all healthy, he'll reject the arby offer in a nanosecond and take a big multi-year offer elsewhere.

[Paulus88]

a team that always focuses on the short term never has sustained winning. The truth is it is a balancing act and unfortunately the Brewers have to be more cautious and sure of their moves because thier margain for error is so small. The last thing the Brewers need to do is panic and overpay.

[joepepsi]

Well, I didn't expect the hitting to be soooo bad, so it's difficult for me to answer the original question given the current state of the offense. I expected 90+ wins with Gallardo and a healthy Sheets, and a more balanced, experienced offense. Now, I just don't know.

 

I'm not much into clubhouse character or Veteran Gamer or any of that kind of stuff, but one big thing the Brewers are missing is a veteran bat. Other than the Diamondbacks or Marlins, there are no other teams where the lineup is built around talent this young. The Cubs offense is based on 3 veterans, Soriano, Lee, and Ramirez. The Red Sox have quite a few talented kids on the roster, but the team is still centered around Manny and Big Papi. While the Rockies are relatively young, most of their key hitters had a handful of seasons as major league regulars entering last season. As much as it would pain me to see it happen, they may have to trade some of the core youngsters for a veteran or two this offseason, if they don't make the playoffs this year.

 

That said, I still expect this team to improve as the year goes on, provided the coaching staff doesn't go into panic mode like they seemed to last year. I'm not sure about Villy, but Parra could be really good by August; almost a complete replacement for Gallardo. The offense should come back stronger in the heat of summer after the early season struggles. Gagne aside, I still think the bullpen is better than last year. So, I guess I this year playing out in total opposite to 2007. They're going to spend Spring learning to adjust to adversity, then really hit their stride sometime in mid-June.

 

They are on a 83.5 win pace right now, and seem to be at a significant low point. Facing this kind of adversity and still on pace for last year's win total signals to me they are a good team. Quite possibly a VERY good team, even without Gallardo. The offense has improved over the last week or so. If Parra matures and Sheets stays healthy, the other 3 only need be average to make them playoff contenders. I think they'll be around 90 wins and in the playoffs. It's a more balanced team than last year, but one still trying to find it's way.

[GenoSeligPrieb]

"f we believed that there were an 87 win team before Yo's injury, they are probably around an 84 win team without."

 

Up the thread here, Russ, you surmised that the YoGa injury drops us only 3 games in the grand scheme of things. Is that the result of a Sabremetric formula, or is it a feeling you have? I'm not jumping on you, because I obviously respect you, but wouldn't you think, just watching them start games, that the difference between a shut-em-down SP like a Gallardo, one who gives us a great chance to win, say, 2/3rd's of the time or better, down to a AAA starter like Dave Bush is more profound than that?

 

Annualize YoGa to 33 starts this season, and account for a rough guesstimate as to how many of those quality starts the pen would blow for Yovanni, and I could legitimately see us going 19-14 in games he starts.

 

But what if it's now Dave Bush instead making those starts? Would you lay cash that simply replacing YoGa with Bush can get us as high as 16-17? More like 12-21, I'd guess.

 

If Bush was only 3 games worse than Yovanni Gallardo, he never would have been demoted.

 

"And if you thought they were a 90 win team before the season started, why would the loss of Gallardo make them even average or below?"

 

Because he puts less stress on our pen, for one. And because his potential ERA under 4 (under 3? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/wink.gif ) has a domino effect on the offense, the defense, even on Ned. Replace a Gallardo with a guy who was so bad as a starting pitcher that he was sent to the minors pretty late in his career, and who burns through the bullpen even in his best starts, taxes a team in a big way.

 

WITH a 100% healthy YoGa, even with Hardy, Weeks and less production from Prince and Ryan, we could have still finished 87-75. But now that he's replaced with a Dave Bush for the rest of his 2008 starts? I expect 80-82.

 

THAT'S why I'd love to pull off a trade for a "seller" team as soon as possible, and at least get a .500-ish pitcher to stanch the bleeding...

[DrWood]

The brewers are an NL-champion-level team vs. LH pitching, and are a

fighting-it-out-to-escape-the-bottom-of-the-division team vs. RH pitching.

I wish it were the other way around.

[rluzinski]

Up the thread here, Russ, you surmised that the YoGa injury drops us only 3 games in the grand scheme of things. Is that the result of a Sabremetric formula, or is it a feeling you have? I'm not jumping on you, because I obviously respect you, but wouldn't you think, just watching them start games, that the difference between a shut-em-down SP like a Gallardo, one who gives us a great chance to win, say, 2/3rd's of the time or better, down to a AAA starter like Dave Bush is more profound than that?

 

First, can Bush please not forever now be called a AAA starter, because he made one start there? I think that's probably a bit unfair. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

 

There's a huge difference between Bush and Gallardo. Bush is probably expected to give up an extra run per 9 innings (4.7 ERA vs. 3.7 ERA) or about 20 extra runs over 180 innings (I probably shoudl be using 200 innings?). 10 runs = 1 win (rule of thumb that holds up pretty well). so there's 2 wins. I threw in an extra win to account for the effects on the bullpen and other misc. things. I'm not trying to pretend it was some sophisticated sabermetric analysis, just a back-of-the envelope estimation. Someone could probably convince me it's closer to 4 wins when all is accounted for. 6 or 7? I can't see how, personally.

 

People almost always overestimate the effect one player has on a team's record. I can appreciate why, as it just feels that Garrardo isn't even on same planet as Bush, performance-wise. But when you think about it, Bush give up around an extra 2 runs every 3, 6 inning starts. That's alot but it's not dramatically so.

[yfinn6]

The Brewers aren't consistent at all, and in my eyes that makes them not a good team. Not a bad team either, but not a good team. I think if they gain consistency on offense and get even a little bit of pitching they could be good to great, but that Gallardo injury still stings me today. I thought with he and Sheets our rotation was good, and that our offense would come around with the bullpen and defense being hit or miss. Some days it could be great other days junk.

 

I've really tried not to have any type of knee-jerk reactions with Gallardo's injury, in another thead on another part of this forum a poster said he (or she) would wait a few more starts until they thought whether or not this team needed a trade. I can agree with that, though my opinion on whether or not this team needs a trade means diddly poo since Melvin knows (hopefully) when a trade needs to be made. It's way too early for teams to give up anything without giving up all of our Minor League studs.

 

I think we could see a real rough stretch for the Crew here, somebody needs to step up - both offensively and pitching wise - and get some confidence rolling throughout this team so they start playing like they're capable of for a stretch of 10-20 games.

[JJHardy7]

I do not believe they were a good team with Yovani healthy. I don't want to come off the wrong way, but I do think some Brewers fan (myself included) have overhyped this team or put too high of expectations. When the Brewers weren't picked by the media in most circles to make the playoffs some of us thought it was outrageous and the media has no clue what they're talking about -- I do hope the Brewers can prove them wrong. I think part of this "problem" is that we've waited so long to see the Brewers in the playoffs and we want to believe it can happen and when things don't work out we just look at history. I think this leads to some being a little two critical. Gross and Turnbow have received a ton of hate around here (some warranted), but I honestly do not believe our 24th and 25th roster spot is going to make or break us at this point. Some have said 1 down 1 to go, etc., but in reality those two had little to do with the Brewers season up to this point.

 

There were also several threads about how the Brewers must have CV and Parra in the rotation or management/organization is not fielding the best team. CV has been soild, but I don't think he's proven over the course of time he's the type of player that can get the Brewers over the top. Parra is still very raw. I think CV can turn into a very solid starter, but that's not a sure thing at this point and Parra isn't consistent quite yet. These two pitchers are both quite young and add a young Gallardo in the mix and we were relying on extreme youth with 3/5s of our starters.

 

The Brewers also added some players who have had success in the past, but also have a question or several questions about them. Mike Cameron, Eric Gagne, Torres, Mota, and Kapler all have unique situations and we don't know how they'll perform over the course of the season. The signings of Cameron and Gagne were risky when they happened and are still risky at this point, but again it's a long season. Cameron looks like he'll be a nice player in the lineup, but I can't assume that over a handful of games.

 

Another main reason why I don't think the Brewers are "good" in the short-term is the lack of certainty in AAA. Last year at this time we had Braun and Yo and got off to a very good start. This year we have some nice players in AAA, but I think it's safe to say we don't have known talent that can help -- especially with starting pitching and the Brewers approach with certain AAA players last year not getting called up.

 

Finally, I think our main hitters on this team are still developing. Fielder, Braun, Hardy, and Hart all has good years last year, but scouts, pitchers, and coaches have had time to examine their seasons and have most likely found a few holes in their swing or ways to get them out. It may take these guys 1/2 the season to figure this out and adjust and their performance may suffer a bit. I also think Rickie Weeks isn't going to live up to expectations this year and I really hope I'm wrong. Weeks needs to be moved in the lineup or sent to AAA.

 

I think the Brewers are very close to a good team, but the thing that scares me is that they put a few band-aids on the roster that don't appear to be long-term fixes so this next off-season regardless of where the Brewers finish will bring its fair share of questions.

[brewjihad]

I'd just like to point out that the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals won a World Series with an 83-79 regular season record and a rotation that included Chris Carpenter, Anthony Reyes, Jeff Weaver, and Suppan.

 

This team will face an uphill struggle to get to the playoffs, of course. But lets take it easy, folks, they're not that bad off yet.

[kramnoj]

I'd just like to point out that the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals won a World Series with an 83-81 regular season record

 

This is true, but I don't expect this 2008 division to be Comedy Central, and I don't expect the Wild Card to be available for a mid 80's win team. Your point stands that if the Brewers got lucky with the combination of others misfortune, a playoff bound Brewer team could go deep. I think it's safe to say that the Brewers making the playoffs isn't likely, but not impossible.

[brewjihad]

but I don't expect this 2008 division to be Comedy Central, and I don't expect the Wild Card to be available for a mid 80's win team.

 

Very true. The point was more that some people are saying that the Brewers present rotation isn't good enough to win, and the Cards won it with a guy who is comparable to Sheets in Carpenter, Reyes who that year was a lot like Villanueva or Parra is now, and we already have Weaver and Suppan http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif.

[geddymd73]

Wow, how did the Cardinals get away with playing 164 games in a single season? They must have cheated and snuck in 2 more games. The Brewers sure could have used 2 more games to play last year.

 

The Brewers are going nowhere with 83 wins this year. Right now we're further back from 1st than we ever were at any point last year.

[brewjihad]

The Brewers are going nowhere with 83 wins this year. Right now we're further back from 1st than we ever were at any point last year.

 

If you read my previous post, the comparison was not necessarily saying that the Brewers can do anything with 83 wins, but that the St. Louis rotation wasn't very good that year and that that type of rotation can still win a World Series.

[joepepsi]

Nice post JJ Hardy7

[logan82]

JJHardy7 wrote:

There were also several threads about how the Brewers must have CV and Parra in the rotation or management/organization is not fielding the best team. CV has been soild, but I don't think he's proven over the course of time he's the type of player that can get the Brewers over the top. Parra is still very raw. I think CV can turn into a very solid starter, but that's not a sure thing at this point and Parra isn't consistent quite yet. These two pitchers are both quite young and add a young Gallardo in the mix and we were relying on extreme youth with 3/5s of our starters.

There were also some people who thought CV wasn't as good as his ERA suggested. Also a lot of peole who thought we should keep Parra in AAA for at least half the year to keep his innings down and retain Vargas.

[Big Reed]

I will agree that the cardinals won a world championship in 2006. I will not agree that they were a great or even a good team that year. They did have an experienced manager and a tradition of winning which may have led to success in the play-offs. I don't expect a team with less than 85 wins to win a division in the next 5 years. if the brewers want or expect to win the Central division or the wild card, they need to focus on getting 90 wins as their goal rather than trying to compare their record to the cards or cubs. if the brewers can shoot for 90-95 wins they will not have to worry what any other team in their division does. Focus on yourself and your own wins - not your competition.

 

Unfortunately, I see the brewers in the 85-87 win category and hoping to backdoor their way into the play-offs at the expense of some-one elses' misfortunes. i see posts saying the brewers are only a lee or pujols injury away from a division crown. The brewers are a fielder injury away from being in last place. Good teams play through player injuries; bad teams don't. Rather than pinning on hopes on some other team's possible injuries, it would sound a lot better if brewer fans thought this team could beat a healthy cards or cubs team for the division championship. rather tha n placing our hopes on pujols getting injured, it would be nice if we placed our hopes on our own players performing to expectations. a true competitor gets no satisfaction of beating a depleted team. they want to win when both teams are at their best. I want to beat a cards team that has both Mulder and Carpenter at their best and glaus and pujols cranking them out. if the brewers can do that, then they are a great team.

[JJHardy7]

There were also some people who thought CV wasn't as good as his ERA suggested. Also a lot of peole who thought we should keep Parra in AAA for at least half the year to keep his innings down and retain Vargas.

 

Oh I agree. It wasn't 100% one way or another, but there were comments IIRC that the Brewers don't want to win if CV or Parra were in AAA and pretty much the Brewers wouldn't be fielding the best team, etc. I think both of those players were overhyped a bit. They're still in the very early stages of their career and so far they haven't made the dramatic impact some thought they would.