My apologies for the lack of reviews last week.  Life often takes priority over BC, but those priorities will be taken care of in the up and coming weeks and a couple of bi-weekly reviews are on their way for your viewing pleasure.

Here at Bernie's Crew we want to continue to improve our work and be one of the most original and reliable blogs on the internet.  With that being said, instead of going through the 2008 season, give some grades and simply review the different sides of the game, I'm going to do a weekly/bi-weekly series (time permitting) to review the season of each individual player.  Upon completion of each review, we should be able to judge if this player lived up to their expectations, what should be expected of them in the 2009 season and what they'll need to improve as they continue to their career.

I'm sure there were a few people who couldn't wait for this review to come out.  After all, according to some beat writers, I'm a complete homer when it comes to Rickie Weeks.  But let's be honest for a second.  I like Rickie Weeks and enjoy watching him play most of the time, so it may sound like I'll be biased towards the guy, but the fact of the matter is, these reviews are not intended to be biased.  In fact, I do my best to be as objective as possible, and look at both sides of the argument.  With that being said, let's take a look at Rickie Weeks.

The end of the 2007 season was quite fruitful for the Brewers starting second baseman.  In the final month of the season, he hit .245/.409/.571, while belting nine home runs and walking 26 times.  But at that same time, Rickie struck out 35 times.  Unfortunately, it was that giant .980 OPS that got fans and the experts on the Rickie Weeks bus.  As a result, expectations for the young man were at an all time high.  After all, September 2007 was just a glimpse of what the Brewers had drafted, right?  And the more the experts talked, the more the fans did as well.

Enter April 2008.  Rickie's going to be the man!  Right?  Wrong.  He's more likely to be exactly who he's been, a low average hitter with a very reasonable on-base percentage.  Weeks April ended with a .208/.333/.356 line, with three homeruns, 20 K's and 17 BBs.  An awful start that really deflated the excitement that had gained so much steam in the offseason.  However, what has often gone unnoticed in Rickie's game is his running.  In the first month of the season, Rickie ended up with five stolen bases and only one caught stealing.  On top of that, he ended up scoring on 23 of the 40 times he reached base, showing his base running prowess.

The problem, however, is that despite the good things with Rickie, there comes more bad things as his bat continued regressing into the month of May, where he hit .211/.320/.376.  Another brutal month led to rumbles among the fans, whose inflated expectations were being drowned out by their even more inflated disappointments.  The most unfortunate part of Rickie's month was the decrease in his walk rate, which dropped from 17 to 12 and his increased K-Rate which jumped from 20 to 23.  While he was able to score 17 runs during the month, his shortcomings were far more overwhelming.

June was quite a hard month for Rickie.  Early on in the month, Rickie was riding a five game hitting streak, but was stalled after spraining his knee in a game against Colorado.  As result, Rickie played just 12 games in the month and hit .250/.309/.375.  But signs were pointing upward.  After returning from the disabled list on June 22nd, Rickie recorded three multi-hit games including a three hit game against Atlanta.

This brief stint of success bred the kind of consistency I had hoped for and others found hopless.  Rickie hit .250/.344/.425 in the month of July, with two home runs, 10 RBIs, four SBs, nine walks and 25 Ks.  Unfortunately, for Rickie, the only thing Brewers fans remember about the month of July came in the final week, when Rickie committed his ninth error of the year in the first game of the Cubs series.  For some fans it was the ball game and to be the end of Rickie's tenure as the starting second baseman.  For others it was just another way for the Brewers to lose.  Whatever the case may be, Rickie's weaknesses were on display, especially considering the Brewers had just traded for veteran second baseman Ray Durham.

Rickie bounced back just fine after his falter in the Cubs game, though he was benched for the next two games against the Cubs best two righties.  But Rickie didn't back down as he hit .247/.344/.395 in August, a near mirror image of his month of July.  There was nothing spectacular about this month, just an average hitter with a slightly above average OBP.  The media began to harp on this.  Average just wasn't good enough for this team, though they could have used more average players throughout the year.  ::Insert Corey Hart::

Whatever the case may be, Rickie jumped all over the month of September, hitting .283/.415/.528 to finish out the season, hitting three hom runs, taking 11 walks and striking out just 14 times.  This is what Yost was waiting for, even though he was no longer there to see it.  Rickie had a similar finish to the year in 2007 to pad his numbers.  Unfortunately, Rickie's 2007 run started a month earlier, and as a result saw the bench far more often in September 2008.  You can't really blame the coach though, as his replacement, Ray Durham, hit .314/.407/.549 over that same period.  Imagine if they could have got that production out of third base in the process.

Rickie's final line looks like this: .234/.342/.398, 14 HRs, 46 RBIs, 115 Ks, 66 BBs, 19 SBs, 5 CS, and my favorite Rickie stat, 14 HBPs.  That is an extremely frustrating line.  Especially from a player who was 'supposed' to break out in 2008.  The hardest thing to swallow is not the batting average or huge drop in slugging, but the 32 point drop in OBP.  Rickie's only defense in 2007 was his .374 OBP.  He didn't build that defense in 2008.  But was Rickie's year really all that bad?  The numbers indicate so, but thinking back on the season, I remember Rickie getting robbed of more base hits than any one.  A great indicator of that would be Rickie's .277 BABIP (batting average of balls batted in play).  The league average is just above .300.  If Rickie could have gotten a little help, he may have been able to pull off a .245/.355 season, which probably would have gotten folks off his back.  With that being said, he didn't.

Meeting Expectations:   As a result, Rickie did not meet expectations in 2008, but he was not all that far off.  A .245/.355 batting line would have undoubtedly done so.  The unfortunate thing is that Rickie was made out to be a liability on the team despite hitting just below what some/most people should have expected out of him.  The truth is, Rickie Weeks is not as good as advertised out of the draft.  Is he a Major League ballplayer?  Absolutely, but he is average across the board, despite his physical talents. 

Included in those physical talents is Rickie's defense.  Weeks was attacked incessantly throughout the 2008 season about his misplays and turning double plays.  In the end, Rickie was charged with 15 errors, with about four or five bad throws that went uncharged because they didn't go for bases.  You can probably take away three or four of those errors because of Prince's inadequecies at first base, so 15 is probably dead on.  How bad is this?  It's not terrible, but it's far from good.  If you really think about it, though, this is what fans should have expected.  Rickie has had rock hard hands his whole career, and has never been accurate with his arm.  They just assumed that his bat would make up for his blunders.

But again, quick wrists, a good first step and speed don't always equate to a great ballplayer.  It must be remembered, though, that Rickie doesn't earn that much money and the Brewers can afford to pay him what they do considering the amount of potential he still has.  Nobody expects him to play September ball year round, but if the pressure goes away, and Willie Randolph can get into his head a bit, fans may be surprised in 2009.

Predictions:  All of those fans who think the Brewers should trade away Rickie Weeks need to calm down.  Again, he's not a great player, but there are much bigger holes on this team that are worthy of money.  With no one in the minor league system ready to play second base, the closest being AAAA Calix Crabbe, Rickie is going to be around for a couple more years.  But don't let that be discouraging.  Willie Randolph was a career .276/.373/.351 hitter, who played an excellent second base.  This will be, to my knowledge, the first time the Brewers will have a proven ballplayer on their staff year round, and hopefully this will be a positive influence on Rickie.

How much a coach can really do for a player will be on display in this case?  I'm a firm believer that a coach has a different effect on everyone.  For most, his teachings don't do a whole lot.  It's up to the player to understand the game and use the encouragement of the coach to continue on and stay team oriented.  For others, the fundamentals aren't crisp, and the nuances of the game are still a mystery.  This is still the case for Weeks.  Will he all of a sudden explode on to the scene?  Of course not, but RIckie will improve in 2009 as the eyes of disgust veer away from him.  Look for Rickie's average to jump up to .250 and some of that power stroke he showed in the minors to make more of an appearance.  That is provided he gets continuous playing time, that with Macha at the helm may not be there if he struggles at the start of the season like he has for most of his career.