The 2012 Milwaukee Brewers-a lost season

Okay, so we are up 5-1 over the Cincinnati Reds after 7 innings on a beautiful night at Miller Park.

 

Then RR puts in K-Rod for the 8th inning. What? What did he think was going to happen? Did he think it was August of 2012 when the Brewers were good and we could count on K-Rod and The Ax Man to finish things off? Well, obviously this put the game in jeopardy and he takes K-Rod out just in time. Now he puts in The Ax Man, OH my god, RR must want us fans to see another meltdown by this team!

 

So the lead was still 5-2 but the bases are loaded, I felt like leaving to avoid seeing the Brewers lose again but as I thought about it I saw a ball looking like it was going to be a base clearing double somehow caught by Hiroyuki Aoki. If not for great Defense all night by our Right Fielder we totally lose this game. The Ax Man survives the 8th with the team still up 5-3. Up 6-3 going into the 9th I was excited to see who might be the NEW Brewers closer (we need to try someone because it has been obvious for a month that The Ax Man and K-Rod can no longer do it) and what does RR do?

 

YEP, He puts the Ax Man back out there. Crap he really has lost it. RR is stuck in 2011. Well the Ax did finish it off and we did win 6-3 on my final Brewer game of this lost season BUT the credit for this save must go to Aoki and the win to the Home Runs the team hit and to the starting pitcher Yovanni Gallardo. The problem is that after The Ax finally did get another save, RR is sure to keep sending him out there, the Defense will not always bail him out so we can expect the final two months of this bad season to include many more losses.

 

The Brewers will finish about 72-90 in 2012. Why did things go so bad? Not having Prince Fielder surely hurt the team a lot. Many injuries early in the season made things difficult. The biggest problem was the bullpen that was better than average last season, especially K-Rod and Ax, and much worse than average this season, especially K-Rod and Ax again, but sometimes in life it is not what happens to you but how you react to it. Much like what happens to me in my own life, RR did not handle it well. In fact managing a major league baseball team is just to much for him to handle. We saw how he messed up the 2011 NLCS and now this season he and his team was never able to recover from things that happened to them because he is too resistant to change.

 

Ryan Braun cannot do it all by himself and some bright spots did emerge this season. It is too bad that we had to trade Zack Greinke away but we did add three good players in that trade and the new Shortstop just played his first game as a Brewer. It is hard to be real confident about what next season will bring but I know this:

 

In my opinion the Milwaukee Brewers need a new manager for 2013!

What do you think?

What is wrong with the Brewers? (5 players to blame)

When a team starts 11-14 it is never just one thing. Yes we do miss Prince Fielder but I need to place most of the blame on the the pitching. Yovani Gallardo has been the ace of this staff for years now and we are still waiting for him to reach potential. Up until this season he was progressing okay but I always felt like once we acquired Zack Greinke, Zack should be considered the #1 guy.
Yo is 1-3 with a 5.79 ERA...the only way to describe this is TERRIBLE.
Zack is 3-1 with a 3.94 ERA...also not as good as expected but still unbeaten in Miller Park.
Randy Wolf is 2-2 with a 6.84 ERA...he has not been worth his contract.
Shaun Marcum is 1-1 with a 3.19 ERA...he is better now than in the playoffs last season
Marco Estrada is 0-1 with a 3.71 ERA...solid in relief and now a starter because of a season ending injury to Chris Narveson...BIG LOSS... who is missed because the bullpen suffers from losing Estrada. I like Marco as a starter but the relief pitching has become a huge problem. part of this problems is because the starters are not able to go enough innings.

The bullpen overall has been HORRIBLE with the worst being K-Rod. Francisco Rodriguez came back to the Brewers this season because no team wanted him enough as a closer to give him the kind of contract he was looking for. Are his best years behind him?
Right now as the Brewers set up man he is 0-3 with a 6.57 ERA...he is second to Yo on my list of where the blame should fall.

John Axford is 0-1 with a 4.70 ERA...he is doing his job being 5 for 5 in save opportunities however.

Overall Brewer pitching is 11-14 with a 5.04 ERA. No offense can be expected to put up over 5 runs every night so the pitching is the biggest problem here. The Defense is still a problem as well but better than in past years so it can't be blamed for the poor start.

What about the hitting?

George Kottaras .304 with 3 HR and 9 RBI in limited action is the only bright spot.
Carlos Gomez .292 1/5...better than last season and I think he should be the regular CF
Ryan Braun .283 7/17...not what we expect but I am not worried about our biggest star.
Corey Hart .280 6/13...solid overall, we need him to become a .300 hitter
Jonathan LuCroy .279 2/8...just what we expect and need from him.
Norichika Aoki .269 1/2...he might be able to help us as he gets more playing time
Alex Gonzalez .263 4/14...this is what we expect and a little more
Mat Gamel .246 1/6...he was looking okay but is now out for the season...BIG LOSS
Aramis Ramirez .207 2/10...these are not clean up hitter numbers, he needs to get hot
Nyger Morgan .175 0/0...what happened to T. Plush, losing is not fun!
Travis Ishikawa .172 2/5...he will stay on club as he plays 1B but he is no answer.
Rickie Weeks .172 3/6...time to face it, he has become a solid second baseman but as a hitter, he will never be the star we hoped he would be.

Izturis .167 0/1...obviously the Brewers have a very weak bench.

Overall the Brewers are hitting just .229 with 32 HR and 98 RBI. The fact that we are 11-14 is actually hard to believe. These numbers look like a club than loses twice as often as they win.

Here are my top five under performers so far:

1. Yovani Gallardo
2. Francisco Rodriguez
3. Rickie Weeks
4. Nyger Morgan
5. A. Ramirez 

THINGS ARE MUCH WORSE THAN I THOUGHT!...all we can do is look for solutions. Manager Ron Roenicke really messed up in the playoffs last season but this lack of production can not be blamed totally on him. THE TIME IS NOW to do something about it. He has a lot of options here one month into a six month season sitting at 11-14 after 25 games with 137 games to go. There is plenty of time but is there enough talent? If things don't turn around I think Doug Melvin might be the one to go but maybe both of them. The question is...What lineup would you put out there given the options you have with this team. Please post comments with your plan.

Here is my plan:

First off, don't worry about any players feelings and bring up some other guys from the minors to replace the ones who continue to fail to produce off the bench. The five starters will stay the same for now but only Zack Greinke has a secure spot in the rotation. Gallardo is not going anywhere either but might need some rest and be later in the rotation. Only Ax is secure in the bullpen. Look to trade an outfielder and consider any offer for any player other than Braun. As far as the starting lineup I think a few things need to be tried here in May and I would start with dropping Aramis in the batting order and get Carlos Gomez and Norichika Aoki in the lineup every day and play more small ball:

1. Gomez CF
2. Aoki RF
3. Braun LF
4. Hart 1B
5. Gonzalez SS
6. LuCroy C
7. Ramirez 3B
8. Weeks 2B
9. Greinke P

Brewers Win with complete game shutout by Yo (4/5/11)

It is great to have that first win but now it is time to start scoring some runs. Yovani Gallardo not only pitched a complete game shutout but it was a 2 hitter AND it was Yovani Gallardo (YoGa) who scored the only run.

Yo twice had similar games last season but this was his best yet. I think he is a true Cy Young Award candidate. Zack Greinke, a former American League Cy Young Award winner will be able to pitch for the Brewers at some point. Shaun Marcum and Randy Wolf will be solid starters I believe but will have bad games like they both did the first time out this season. Chris Narveson had a very good first outing and the plan is for him to be the fifth starter.

The Brewers need to bring someone up from the minors to pitch tonight (4-6-11)because of the Greinke injury but I think this starting staff is going to be a great one. The key is to need the relief pitchers as little as possible. Nice job by Ron Roenicke allowing YoGa to pitch all nine innings last night. The pitching staff is good enough to be a champion but the sub-par Defense could hold this team back. When ever a pitcher is struggling, like all members of the bull-pen right now, they need a solid Defense behind them to pick them up but the Brewers don't have that.

Good hitting can overcome a lot of things but right now it is the Brewers biggest weakness. The amount of runners left on base game after game for the past few seasons is alarming. If the Brewers can find a way to score more runs that what they leave on base this team will have a good season. The fact that it did not take a Home run to score the run last night is a good sign but we need to do that a few times in every game to win consistently. The inability to score those two runners thrown out at the plate in the 8Th inning last night would have cost Milwaukee the game if not for the masterpiece thrown on 4/5/11 by Yovani Gallardo!

The Brewers 0-3 start, no need to panic yet but...

This is not how this "all in" Brewer season was supposed to begin. I think a rookie manager with more of a veteran ball club might not be the right match. This has me craving football but with the possibility of the NFL not coming to an agreement in time to start playing meaningful games in September, we need the Brewers to be good more than ever. This is the perfect season to win it all and have everyone in the state paying attention throughout this journey.

They look like the same Brewers as the last two seasons. Ron Roenicke needs to show us he is different from the most recent managers. You tell me, does this poor start already tell us that the Reds are much better than the Brewers? Should any hopes of winning the National League Central be adjusted to just hoping for a Wild card spot?

Playoffs? PLAYOFFS? What am I even talking about?

I JUST WANT TO WIN A GAME!!!

World Series or Bust!

As a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers for 31 years now, I go into every spring training with an excitement of maybe this is the year that the Brewers will surprise and contend for a world title. But every year, they some how find a way to let me down. As the years wore on, I began to lose faith and started to wonder if I would ever see my favorite baseball team play in October. Major League Baseball is set-up like no other sport. Only the teams with money can contend because there is no salary cap. It's an unfair system and I can't believe they haven't fixed it yet! Bud Selig has been given so much credit for creating the wild-card berth but I think his legacy will be remembered for the steroid era and not getting a salary cap for baseball.
With that being said, I'm putting all my chips into the middle on the Milwaukee Brewers playing in the fall classic and winning it! In my opinion, they have a one year window to make a run in the postseason because they added some critical pieces through trades. They added a 2009 Cy Young award winner in Zach Grienke and Toronto's ace Shawn Marcum, who was thier opening day starter last year. They strengthened thier bull-pen with the signing of Takashi Saito, who had a great year with the Braves last year after posting a 2.83 ERA! The Brewers took a lot of heat from the media because they thought adding Yuniesky Betancourt was a down grade from Escobar. But, if you compare thier numbers, Betancourt exceeded Escobar in almost every category. And lets not forget, Escobar was shaky at times on defense last year! The last piece to the puzzle that the Brewers added was Manager Ron Roenicke. It's hard to say wheather or not this guy will be a good Manager because there is no history to go by.
ESPN experts Buster Olney and Tim Kirchen have picked the Brewers to finish second and third in thier division and I think thats an outrage! I'm not sure what else the Brewers have to do to get some national respect because I give the Crew an A+, in terms of offseason additions. I truely believe that if the Brewers don't win it all this year, I will die an old man without ever seeing the Milwaukee Brewers win a World Series!