Friday, May 9, 2008

Brewers

Well, it's time for me to say a thing or two about the Brewers. Of course, I've been saying for a long time that with was going to be our season. I even left work early on Opening Say just to watch the game on TV. I mean look at the line-up Weeks, Hardy, Braun, Fielder, Hart, Hall- so many young hitters, plus the arrival of Cameron for veteran leadership. And the pitching looked better than decent with lots of youth plus fragile Ben Sheets and a slew of quality relievers. Things were looking great indeed. 2008 is the year of the Brewers.

And look at us on May 9th - 16-18, 4th in the Division, 6 game losing streak including sweeps by the Astros and Marlins. Man. The Brewers look like a bad team. Let's quickly dissect what is going wrong.

1. Offense- The Brewers simply are not scoring runs. That's pretty easy to see. It is not just one person, but everyone. Batting the pitcher 8th actually seems to be helping. Some say as Prince goes, so goes the Brewers. I disagree with that. I mean it would help loads if he was hitting like last year, but look at Hardy, look at Hart, look at Hall all are playing vastly below their levels.
Way to fix it? Not sure of changing the line-up will help at all. I'm hoping that getting hot will be contagious. I'll calling out J.J. Hardy to get his shit together and start the dominoes.

2. Gagne/Turnbow - I'm pinning this one more on Gagne than Turn-blow. 5 blown saves? Wow. The league record is 14. Just think, if we win one of those that we lost (I think we lost 3 0f the 5) we are .500, if we win two, we are two games above 500. Big difference.
I like Torres, Mota, and Riske, but I don't think any of them are long-term closers. So again, do we just ride the wave?

3. Jeff Suppan - 1-2 with a 5.22 ERA, not horrible numbers, but not what you want from your number two man, which he was at the start of the season without Gallardo and now is again. This one I am worried about.

4. I'm in Montana - yep, is it karma, or is it because I am not there to cheer our boys on?
I'm thinking this will actually be the reason for the Brewers upcoming turnaround. The Brewers are bound to go to the playoffs.


So how do we change these things? I don't really know. I am confident, though, that the Brewers are a good team, possibly a great team. They will turn themselves around. I feel they do need a catalyst, something to fire them up. Maybe a fight or a walk of homer or something like the Prince/Capps thing from last year.
I do not know, but I'm calling the turnaround starting tonight (or maybe tomorrow because I'm not sure if the Brewers will get a chance to read this by gametime) . You heard it here.
We love the Crew!

1 comment:

Tony Brown said...

3-1 since this blog post. I won't call it a turnaround yet, but hopefully it is the start of something good.