Can anyone in Huntsville or Nashville help our horrible bottom of the rotation in Milwaukee?

[SoCalBrewfan]

There is good pitching in the system, but it's mostly in A+ ball and below, in the person of very young guys as well...most of the best pitching prospects at the lower levels were drafted out of HS and/or signed as DFEs after a year or so of JC ball. They have a lot of 20-year olds, like Jeffress, Braddock, Bryson, Anundson, Periard, and it's going to be a while before any of those guys will throw 180 innings in the big leagues. (If it ever happens, that is.) Barring a Gallardoesque run of dominance, those guys are going to go step by step through the system. (It's not out of the realm of possibility that Jeffress or Braddock could move more quickly but there are reasons for caution in both cases...and almost all very young pitchers need to develop secondary pitches as well as build up to the innings count before they can be counted on as possible rotation help.) They do have a few older pitchers in A ball who could move a bit more quickly, but they tend to be second tier prospects.

 

Hammond is probably the best SP prospect in AA/AAA right now, but the jury is still out on him. He throws harder than the other lefties in the high minors, and appears to have rebounded from a very disappointing '07 season. (The BA prospect book says he bulked up too much and lost velocity last year.) If the bottom falls out on the Brewers' pitching this year (we're close already, to be sure), and Hammond continues to pitch well, we could see him in Milwaukee this year, but I doubt that would happen in the immediate future. Someone in the system was quoted as saying that Derek Miller would pitch in the big leagues, and he's got a great minor league stat line, but the reports I've seen suggest that his stuff is not at the level of some of the other guys. Welch has his advocates as well, and there's always hope that Narron could get some Jamie Moyer mojo. But I would guess that any of those guys would struggle against big leaguers, at least at first, and that we wouldn't see them in 2008 unless and until the team is cashing in its playoff hopes.

 

Still, times are very nearly desperate, so things could change quickly. I sure didnt see a scenario coming in which Jackson, Dillard, Defelice and Stetter would have pitched in the bigs by May 25.

[TuesdaysWithRillo]

It looks like we are a year away from our Huntsville guys developing into Major League pitchers and the Nashville starting pitching is just plain bad. I wonder if we'll give Weaver a pitty start or not. We're gonna have to rely on the bats this year in Milwaukee.

[Gopher74]

We're gonna have to rely on the bats this year in Milwaukee.

Then we're not likely going to win more than 81 games.

 

There's still a lot of hope with this pitching staff. Sheets and Suppan have both been very good. We need Parra to keep pitching like he has the last 3 times out, but going deeper. We need McClung to pitch well, or Villy to, and we need Bush to find a way to be consistent.

 

Without Gallardo we're going to have to rely on someone pitching over their head, OR figuring it out real quick, but it's not like we've got a rotation of Matt Kinney's. We've got some talented arms.

[PrimeTime955]

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[Gopher74]

I try to be pretty reserved about guys in the lower minors and the chances that they could come up and help us this year, but the fact of the matter is that for this team to really do anything this year and get back into it, they're going to need a couple players like Aquilar to come out of nowhere to be a really effective player for us at the end of the year.

[TuesdaysWithRillo]

Without Gallardo we're going to have to rely on someone pitching over their head

That would require the luck of the 2008 Chicago Cubs.