An argument I've made many times before on this blog is that a single week of games doesn't matter as much as the entire season does. When the Brewers had their "horrible" weekend where they lost 3 out of 4 to the Phillies many Brewers fans were panicking and assuming that this team was not good enough to compete in the playoffs. Remember that? Here is what I wrote then:
Remember when the Brewers won 22 out of 25? Did you think that was going to be forever? Teams have winning streaks and they have losing streaks, it's a part of baseball. Sometimes it's because the pitching stinks, sometimes it's because the hitting sucks and sometimes it's just because they get outplayed and maybe run into some bad luck. That's what this was, that third thing. Get over it. We're going to the playoffs.
And they did and it was fun for a little while.
The Brewers won 96 games during the regular season which makes them the 2nd best team in the National League and tied for third best team in all of baseball. They were the best team in the National League Central and there will be a sign going up that says "2011 NL Central Champions" which is something that nobody else can do next year. Those are a huge, huge accomplishments and they are reason alone to celebrate. That says more about this Milwaukee Brewers team than any single week of the season possibly could and that includes this past week.
The Brewers won 6 more games than the Cardinals during the regular season. They were the better team all season long and the record books will always show that. Then the Cardinals got into the playoffs because the Braves fell apart and they beat us in the NLCS. It sucked, but the playoffs do nothing to show us who is actually better. It just shows who won more games during that week and that is why baseball is stupid. Continue reading
I can't say that I've ever actually believed in Casey McGehee. You look at his career in the minor leagues and you just don't see the player that we see everyday. In 2005 at Triple-A Iowa he had 497 at-bats, hit 12 homeruns and had a .774 OPS. That was the best season he ever had in the minors. Last season he hit 16 homeruns with a .859 OPS in only 355 at-bats and was the Brewers 3rd most valuable player. It didn't seem right. It seemed like a fluke, it was like if someone told you that after all these years of terrible programming Tyra had suddenly became a great talk show. That isn't to say that Casey was the minor league equivalent to Tyra, but that's about how much sense it made.
I've been getting a lot of this "what did you expect? You knew this team was crappy" crap lately and it is really annoying me. I didn't expect the Brewers to be the 1927 Yankees this year or even the 2009 Yankees, but I do think they will compete. They aren't this bad and this bad isn't really that bad. Look who they've played so far: