5/30/04 - Brewers (Santos) vs. Padres (Valdez)

[tomwopat]

these stats on telemundo are horrible. they showed kiesch's OBP instead of his AVG when he came up, and hoffman's ERA is just wrong.

[DHonks]

How intimidating is that...our "feared" slugger just the first pitch 4 feet backwards.

[PeaveyFury]

Hoffman's all over the place and Jenks swings at the 1st pitch and fouls out to the catcher... time to sit his butt on the bench for a game or two.

[scoop53714]

This team might still be 2 over .500 but they arent playing like the team everyone thought was so "fun" to watch a few weeks ago. This isnt a fun team anymore. They have absolutly no one hitting the ball hard. They have gone several games without hitting the ball with any authority.

 

Basically, this sucks.

[PeaveyFury]

And I'm sure glad we gave him that gigantic contract extension to 'keep the fans happy'.

[DHonks]

so do we play Clark tomorrow instead of Jenks? I guess we could throw Ginter in the OF and play Hall (in case of injury, they just slide around). Option 3 is Kieschnick of course. Although that one game last year in left wasn't pretty.

 

No matter what, you can't win when your 2 and 3 hitters go 6-9 and are supported by your 4 and 5 hitters going 0-9. Jenks needs to drop in the lineup. Perhaps Hall or Spivey cleanup tomorrow

[sjgunny72]

Look at the brite side i guess they didnt strike out 9 or more times today and had more than 5 hits. Where did the team of last month go. I hope hall will get a chance soon.

[AJAY]

Maybe the Brewers fans and the Dodgers fans should get together and form a support group or something. Being offensively challenged is not fun.

[danzig6767]

This last week or two goes to show just how much Overbay was carrying the offense.Now that he's cooled off the offense has gone in the tank,it's time other guys do something.If Overbay hadnt gone on that major tear,we'd be talking about a struggling offense for quite awhile.

[tomwopat]

all in all, i can't say i'm dissapointed. we took 3 out of 6 from two of the better teams in baseball. our pitching was good enough to give us victories when our slumping hitting struggled against their good starting pitching.

 

our starting pitching has really found its stride. i'd much rather have consistent starting pitching, along with kiesch, adams, wise, and kolb pitching well than our offense hitting the cover off the ball. our team has enough offensive depth so when the podsedniks and jenkins are struggling the grieves, counsells, halls and ginters can pick up the slack and contribute.

 

the only thing that's consistently bothered me is yost. i was at the game on friday. not bringing in kolb at the top of the 9th, and having spivey swing away stand out as "what were you thinking?" moments.

 

edit: i forgot hall!

[batman]

I braved the rain to take in today's game at MP and it was rather disappointing. Some thoughts:

 

- Very nice crowd, many of which arrived late. A pretty good chunk of the "peak" crowd also stayed till the end, which was nice to see.

 

- Santos didn't pitch terribly, but he didn't pitch well either. Way too many pitches early in the game, and he just never got on track. Hopefully this isn't a case of the league "catching up" with him. If he struggles again in his next start, it's time to get worried.

 

- Ben Grieve can rake. Watching him take batting practice was just beautiful... line drive after line drive after towering flyball. He had a real nice game, too, obviously, although he wasn't able to come through early with the bases loaded. Still, three-for-five with two singles and a double is mighty nice to see. His OPS is up to .865, and I hope he sticks in the three-spot. Not seeing Clark replace him was much appreciated, too.

 

- The team as a whole is swinging at way too many pitches early in the count. Jenkins seems like he's trying not to walk. They need to get back to the patience and plate discipline that was fueling the offense early in the season. Giving Jenkins a day or two off would be nice, but that would mean more Clark and a lot less flexibility in the outfield. We desperately need to jettison a pitcher and bring up Liefer or Macgruder or someone. A guy like Jason Conti or Mark Smith or Zocco would be really nice to have about now.

 

- Pinch-hit for Bennett. Please.

 

- Mike Adams rules. Two innings, no baserunners, two strikeouts. He da' man, and he really, really looks good out there. Seems to be having fun, too, which is great to see.

 

- Got a Geoff Jenkins "mini-bobblehead". It's tiny, but pretty cool. Or rather, it would be if he didn't suck. Badly. I'm calling you out Geoff, on behalf of the entire Brewerfan nation - stop sucking.

 

- We left 12 guys on base as a team. That's unfortunate.

 

I'm not real optimistic about tomorrow's contest 'cause they should be pretty jet-lagged. Matt Wise was announced as the starter so it'll be a Johnny Wholestaff day. Hopefully they can pull it out, but it'll be tough.

 

That's all I got.

 

~Bill

[rluzinski]

What's great about Jenkins is we have him for 3.5 more years. I can't wait to see how bad an old, injuries Jenkins is!

 

In 2007 he'll probably be a spot starter, and we'll ride the arses of everyone who was so happy to see him signed. What I don't get is we have Hart and Nelson coming up in the next 2 years. I guess that means they both can't get a fair shot at the bigs. How on earth could they?

 

Jenkins has never had plate disipline. That is always what seperated him and Sexson. Sexson learned how to work the count, Jenkins knows how to swing for the fences on every swing. When he's hot, alot of those swings work, but when he's not, he just looks awefull.

[tyguy20204]

You guys are way too quick to give up on Jenkins.

[batman]

You guys are way too quick to give up on Jenkins.

 

I'm not giving up on him, but the Brewers have played 29.6% of their season and Jenkins' OPS is .716. That is just not acceptable for the guy who is supposed to be our "franchise" player/slugger, not to mention a guy making almost a third of our payroll. I think we have a right to be frustrated at this point.

 

~Bill

[tyguy20204]

Quote:

---

I'm not giving up on him, but the Brewers have played 29.6% of their season and Jenkins' OPS is .716. That is just not acceptable for the guy who is supposed to be our "franchise" player/slugger, not to mention a guy making almost a third of our payroll. I think we have a right to be frustrated at this point.

---

 

I was referring more to rluzinski. I think you have a right to be frustrated - but also you must realize, it being 29.6% of the way through the season, that there still is a lot of ball left to be played.

[batman]

I was referring more to rluzinski. I think you have a right to be frustrated - but also you must realize, it being 29.6% of the way through the season, that there still is a lot of ball left to be played.

 

Oh, sure... of course. If Jenkins goes on one of his trademarked hot streaks and smacks four homers in five days, I think we'll all be really happy. It's just that we've now been waiting almost a third of the season for that to happen... he'll have to hit pretty well the rest of the way if he wants to get his numbers up to where the team would like them to be. It's not like Geoff is hitting like Jeter, but I think we're past the "don't worry" stage and into the "keep an eye on this" stage.

 

~Bill

[DuWayne Steurer]

The question is, WILL one of his hot streaks make up for almost 1/3rd of a season of sucktitude? It seems to me that Jenk's hot streaks tend to mask the fact that a good majority of the time over the course of every season he's pretty much average or slightly below.

 

I'm starting to think I'd much rather have a guy who's not SOOOO streaky. A guy who hits .280 every week with 2 homers, rather than a guy who goes 4 weeks hitting .250 without a homer and then goes on a week long tear where he hits .420 with 6 homers. Yeah, I know supposedly at the end of the year .280 with 35 homers means the same regardless of how he got it, but at this point I almost have to wonder.

[tyguy20204]

Along the same lines Roco, I don't think Jenkins was this bad last season when not having one of his hot streaks.

 

He's usually not this cold, but then again, this is just based on my memory.

[bucksbeat]

Jenkins played like this in 2002 before he hurt his ankle. He was hitting something like .240 in June. Not unheard of for Jenkins.

 

At this time last year Jenkins was hitting .265 (.340 OBP) with 30 Runs 11 HR and 35 RBI.

 

The good thing compared to last year is Jenkins has only struck out 42 times. He struck out 54 times at this time last year. I wouldn't worry about Jenks much. If he had 11 homeruns at this point his R, RBI, SLG would be near last year.

 

He is entering his favorite months..(Last Year)

 

June: .327 (.395 OBP) 21 R 8 HR 26 RBI

July: .279 (.367 OBP) 14 R 2 HR 11 RBI

August: .360 (.452 OBP) 16 R 7 HR 23 RBI