Tag Archives: eight games

Milwaukee Brewers: Up In The Air

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By and large Brewers fans have given up on the 2012 season. It's over they say. Sell they say. Rebuild they say. It's hard not to blame the people that say this. The Brewers currently sit at 40-45, eight games out of first place and six games behind the second Wild Card. A run at this point seems impossible, but as I've said before it isn't impossible only improbable. It's not over yet. Things are still very much up in the air.

And there are at least two people who agree with me on this. One of them is Ryan Braun who said that he thinks the Brewers are "right in this thing" and the other is Doug Melvin who will wait until these next nine games over before making any tough decisions. Some people might think that this is shortsighted or that Doug (or maybe even Mark) are thinking with their heart more than their head, but personally I like it. This isn't Katie and Tom's marriage, there is still time to turn this thing around.

Three teams ahead of the Brewers in the Central. They are all in the thick of playoff contention and the Brewers next nine games are against them. The team deserves a chance to prove itself against those teams. If they don't, sell. If they do? Well.... Continue reading »

In defense of Doug Melvin

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I don't know how it happened. I don't know when it happened, but somehow at some point I became a Doug Melvin apologist. I don't think that Doug Melvin should be fired. I think Doug Melvin should be signed to be the team's GM forever. As the Brewers have now lost their last 9 games seemingly everyone is calling for the head of Doug Melvin. I don't agree with them. I looked all over the internet and I could only find one other person who agreed with me, his name is Al. (FYI, We did this before the Brewers won yesterday.) Warning, this be long.

MPD: As of this writing the Brewers have now lost 8 games in a row. Of the eight games I would say that five of the games were lost by the starters and two were lost by the bullpen (with the final game being Sunday's against the Phillies which I would say was lost by one centimeter of Corey Hart's bat.) Now, everyone is calling for people to be fired. Some I agree with (Hoffman), some I could care less about because it won't make a difference (Macha) and the final one, I just don't understand. That final one is Doug Melvin, the mustached general manager. People are saying that because he put the team together that sucks right now that he should be fired for it. It's not just casual fans, it's diehards fans too and the argument is is logical. After all, he is the one who signed Doug Davis, Trevor Hoffman, Jeff Suppan, LaTroy Hawkins and throughout his GM career he's never been good with the pitchers. Those pitchers I mentioned are the ones that have underperformed and someone has to take the blame for them, but to me it shouldn't be Doug Melvin. Everyone who has performed poorly does not have a track record of performing this poorly and you can't blame Doug Melvin for that.

Trevor Hoffman has been awful, but he showed zero signs of decline last season. He is throwing the same pitches at the same speed he always has, but he's missing his spots. Does that mean he is done? Or is it something else?

Doug Davis hasn't been great, but he's also faced some bad luck (.415 BABIP.)

LaTroy Hawkins was hurt.

Claudio Vargas? Well, you can't win em' all.

Todd Coffey has had five bad outings and 15 shutout ones, but he's on pace for a lot of innings right now. That can't be good.

In your opinion Al, what has been wrong with this pitching staff, whose fault is it and what can be done to fix it? Continue reading »