Tag Archives: latroy hawkins

The Brewers lost: WTF RRR

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A lot can be said about Ron Roenicke's handling of the Brewers in the 2011 NLCS. I'm sure that much of it will key in on his stubborn decision to start Shaun Marcum in game 6 despite all signs pointing to that not working out very well. Some people will argue that it should have been Gallardo in this spot and that we could have just "figured it out" for game 7 and that is a good, popular argument. I am not here to make that argument.

Baseball is not a game of small sample sizes. Shaun Marcum should not be judged by his last two starts and Ron Roenicke had every reason to believe that the "real" Shaun Marcum would pitch in this game. Did I believe that myself? Absolutely not. I think Marcum has pitched too much this year and his arm has simply had enough. It's clear to me watching him that this is the case (the way he struggles, the way he avoids hitters), but nobody seems to want to acknowledge it. Or at least Ron Roenicke didn't. So much of being a baseball manager is "having faith in your guys" or some crap like that and in this case it screwed us, but Shaun Marcum starting this game is not what lost this game. (And no, it wasn't the defense either.) What lost us this game was this:

  • Top of the third. 6-4 St. Louis.
  • Narveson gives up a homerun to Pujols, obviously.
  • Berkman's stupid face grounds out.
  • Matt Holliday single.
  • David Freese double. F this guy so hard, btw.
  • Yadier (sweet neck tat, brah) Molina intentional walk.
  • Punto sacrifice fly.
  • LaTroy Hawkins enters the game.

I am not going to bore you with charts or WPA or whatever else, but let's be absolutely clear about this: THIS WAS THE GAME. To put it simply the Brewers scored six runs in this game and by the time the Cardinals scored number seven this game was over. Runs 8-12 did not matter. They sucked, but they did not matter. It was this and only this that decided this baseball game. It'd have been nice not to give up 4 in the first or another in the second, but that didn't kill us. This sequence did. It was the most important sequence of the game and Roenicke blew it. Continue reading »

A Guide to Recognizing Your Brewer Injuries

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This week we all learned about Zack Greinke's basketball related injury that will keep him out for 4-6 weeks and delay his Brewers debut by a few weeks. It isn't the end of the world, but at the same it's not exactly what we had in mind for our new superstar and it sucks. What sucks even more is that Zack Greinke isn't the only Milwaukee Brewer currently experiencing an injury. In fact, there are quite a few of them and it's getting to the point where it's hard to keep up with all of them. That's why we decided to do the Milwaukee Brewers Universe a favor and create a comprehensive guide to all the aches and pains currently ailing the home town team. What can we say? We aim to please. Continue reading »

10 Worst Milwaukee Brewers of 2010

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Lost in the shuffle of how awesome 2011 is going to be with the additions of Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum, was how truly awful 2010 was. Despite our optimism, this team was eliminated by May and had most fans clamoring for a fire sale at the trade deadline. A lot of the reasons for the team's lack of success were stupid ("Ryan Braun is spending too much time on his restaurants and clothing line!"), some of them had basis in reality ("Coffey is eating too much!"), and some of them were just about Ken Macha sucking, but I don't think anyone can deny how much these ten people screwed up the Brewers' 2010 season.

That's right, it's end-of-the-year list time, and instead of looking back on our favorite moments (of which there are two, trading for Shaun Marcum and trading for Zack Greinke), we want to look back on the ten people who screwed the Brewers in 2010 harder than any of the guys your mom brought home. Luckily for us, just like your mom's "night visitors," most of these guys won't be back either. Continue reading »

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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 »

Miller Park Drunk vs the Brewers bullpen

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I am the biggest optimist who writes about the Brewers on a regular basis. Every post I write either says "relax" or "calm down" or "save some of that glue for me to sniff". I don't think the Brewers are this bad. I don't think Doug Melvin did a bad job of putting this team together. I didn't think they would play this poorly and against LA they kind of proved me right. I'm an optimist and I believe in this team. At least I believe in most of it.

Last night's loss sucked, but even the loss itself wasn't enough to send me over the edge. What sent me over the edge was this story from Adam McCalvy that featured these gems of information:

Hawkins said his command has eluded him in all but his first two outings this season, and now his velocity is gone, too.

Here's what I don't understand about this. If you don't think you have good control and you don't have good velocity (and honestly, you should be able to tell when you're in the bullpen warming up) shouldn't you tell somebody? Shouldn't you say, "hey maybe someone else should take the ball today. We have a chance to win and I don't have my best stuff." I always warn my girlfriend when I don't have my best stuff (and she's just an inanimate blow-up doll of Precious from the movie Precious (Based on the novel Push by Sapphire).)

You have a GUARANTEED contract for the next two years, it's not like you have to prove yourself to make the money. (Just ask David Riske.)

Trouble is, Hawkins' best pitch has not been very good of late. He was pumping 96 mph fastballs with ease during his four scoreless outings to begin his Brewers career, but on Thursday he didn't top 91 mph.

Once again, things that could have been brought to someone's attention YESTERDAY!

"You can make mistakes if you throw hard enough. You can't make mistakes at 88-90 [mph]," Hawkins said. "If I knew what it was, I'd tell you and I'd fix it. ... It definitely doesn't put your mind at ease, that's for sure."

And this right here is what completely sets me off. "You can't make mistakes at 88-90 mph". Do you know who makes mistakes at (not 90) (not 88) eighty six mph? Our closer, our ace reliever, TREVOR HOFFMAN! Continue reading »