Tag Archives: spring training

Corey Hart is hot

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MLB: Brewers vs Astros May 27Not in the good looking sense, of course.

But in the playing good at the baseball sense, he is killing it right now. (Not only that but he also pairs well with Cold Mountain Creek.) He currently has 9 homeruns in 39 games (compared with 12 in 115 last year) and is really starting to heat up at a time when the Brewers could really use him.

Nobody can be sure as to why this is. You can attribute it to his new contacts, not swinging at the outside slider, the Insanity Workout, luck, working with Dale Sveum more or the inspiration he gained from watching The Blind Side. His numbers don't tell a story of a wholly different player, so you just can't know for sure what it is.

Luckily, I have a theory. The reason for Corey Hart's improvement thus far this season is simple, Jim Edmonds is a Brewer.

Corey Hart has been considered to be one of the Brewers building blocks for years now. In the minor leagues, he was never in danger of not starting and ever since his arrival in Milwaukee the same has been true. The Brewers have simply never had another option.

In 2008 he should have been benched in September (or at least given some rest), but he wasn't. After Kapler got hurt there was no one else.

In 2009 he was given every opportunity to play until an appendix ended his season.

Now in 2010, for the first time since joining the Brewers, he had a threat to his job and he didn't like it. Continue reading »

Where would we be without Casey McGehee?

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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.

Yet here we are, 2010 and Casey is still doing it. He currently leads the Brewers in homeruns, RBIs, people saying what a great guy he is and looking like some guy that'd be in my softball league. He also ranks second in OPS, batting average, doubles and hits. As well as third in jerseys worn at Miller Park. (Seriously, those things are everywhere.) The point is that guys who are doing what Casey McGehee is doing aren't supposed to be guys like Casey McGehee. They are supposed to be studs like Jason Heyward of the Braves, you're supposed to see them coming. They aren't supposed to be guys claimed off waivers that make the team out of spring training. I'd love to set the Doug Melvin haters straight and credit him with this move, but honestly even he didn't see this coming. No one did (especially Tyler). Continue reading »

Corey Hart > Jim Edmonds

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I wouldn't call myself a big Corey Hart fan. In my personal rankings of "Brewers I like to make fun of whenever possible" he ranks right below Ryan Braun. This isn't to say that I don't like Corey Hart as a baseball player, I just think he's, well, mostly pointless. He's valuable when he's good and I like him, but when he's not good I have no use for him. (Unlike Rickie Weeks who struggles and I make ten thousand excuses for.) If Corey Hart falls off the cliff I'll be the first one calling for his head, but if he breaks out as a star I'll be clamoring for the Brewers to keep him. My feelings on Corey are 100% performance based. I don't really care about Corey Hart either way and I refuse to watch The Blind Side no matter how badly he wants me to.

Now, Corey Hart has struggled mightily this spring (something like 1 for 27) and the Brewers spring training invitee Jim Edmonds has been doing pretty well for himself. So well that the Brewers are considering making right field into a platoon with Edmonds taking most of the at-bats against right handed pitching. This makes pretty good sense. A quick look at his splits show that throughout his career Jim Edmonds has killed right handed pitching (career .954 OPS (!)) and that Corey Hart has fared better against left handers (career OPS .854). Beyond that, as a career center fielder Edmonds should be better, possibly a lot better defensively in right. This is the kind of move you like to see your team making. A smart decision based in performance and giving the team the best chance to win. I really want to get behind this move except there is one minor detail that the team seems to be completely ignoring and that's the fact that.. Continue reading »

Gallardo named Opening Day starter

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In a move that was surprising to Randy Wolf's mom, Patricia Gallardo's ex-boyfriend Joel and like, five other people Yovani Gallardo was named the Brewers Opening Day starter for 2010. It's quite a contrast to last season when manager Ken Macha decided that winning on Opening Day wasn't really a priority to him and started Jeff Suppan. (Yes, the same Jeff Suppan who the Brewers are currently considering paying a whole lot of money to not play for them.)

Macha actually said that he "thinks he's ready for it." Really? Do you think the sky is blue? Do you think sex leads to babies too, Ken? Seriously, this is something that should have been announced in May of 2009. Gallardo is the Brewers best pitcher, by far, and whatever "pressure" is put upon him by being the Brewers number one starter is as made up as my girlfriend who lives in Niagra Falls. You can't be sure if it was Gallardo's 2009 season where he became only the fourth pitcher in Brewers history to have 200 strikeouts in a season (despite skipping his last few starts), his spring training showing, the quality of the other options or something else that changed his mind, but he did. Whatever it was we should all take solace in the fact that Macha made the right choice this year.

Gregg Zaun is awful and why you don’t get worked up over spring training

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My buddy John called me the other day to talk a little bit about the Brewers, one of the things he said to me was "dude, Gregg Zaun is awful." Now, I'm pretty sure that he judged this completely off of the one televised game the Brewers had shown at the time. Or maybe he is basing it off of his career numbers. Either way, he is pretty sure that Gregg Zaun is awful. Which is okay by him because "as long as you are a Brewers fan, you shouldn't expect any production out of the catcher position".

Of course, he's right. Dave Nilsson and BJ Surhoff were probably the two best catchers the Brewers have had in the past twenty years and their best seasons came away from the dish. The rest of the list is filled with a who's who of backup catchers from other, far better teams. If your team has ever signed Jason Kendall and had him be considered an "upgrade", you can be pretty sure your catcher wasn't that good.

Of course, he's also wrong. You don't judge Gregg Zaun by the same standard that you judge, say, Corey Hart. A catcher's body gets extremely beaten up over the season (and in Jason Kendall's case, his face too), while Corey Hart's just gets tatt-ed up. Hitting isn't the be-all, end-all of the catcher position. As an outfielder or a DH, Gregg Zaun IS awful, but as a catcher he is average to above average. It's all relative. (He's also wrong because as of this writing Gregg Zaun is hitting .417 in spring training! WOOO!) Continue reading »