When CC Sabathia raised his arms in the air after inducing the game winning double play on the last day of the season, it was the 12th complete game thrown by a Brewers hurler in 2008, good for second in all of baseball. Crew starters threw 983 1/3 innings (5th in MLB), posted a 3.86 ERA (3rd) and 1.31 WHIP (7th). Meanwhile, the hitters were busy scoring 750 runs, which put them pretty much right in the middle of baseball (17th) for team scoring. It's pretty safe to say that it was the rotation's ability to pitch a lot of good innings that landed Milwaukee in the playoffs for the first time since 1982.

The national baseball press has mostly focused on the loss of the twin-aces that fronted that effort in 2008 as means to write off the Brewers hopes for a repeat trip in 2009.  Replacing Ben Sheets and CC Sabathia obviously isn't going to be easy. Together they threw 329 innings in only 48 starts with a 2.52 ERA, struck out 286 while only walking 72. They accounted for all 12 complete games and had 3 shutouts apiece. That is some serious run prevention and inning eating being done there and not the sort of gap that one can just easily fill.

If the 2009 rotation is going to pull its weight, Yovani Gallardo is going to be a big part of the effort. After getting off to a late start due to a knee injury, Gallardo was sidelined, presumably for the season, in a freak collision with Reed Johnson of the Chicago Cubs in only his 3rd start of the year. Yo rehabbed his heart out and was able to make a miraculous comeback to start on September 25th and once in the playoffs. Considering he was only able to give 24 innings last year, his return to health amounts to a pretty big addition to the 2009 staff. If he's able to live up to and build on his 134 1/3 innings of major league success thus far in his young career, he should be a solid frontman for the Brewers. His 3.35 ERA is more than a run below the park adjusted league average in that time and his 2.69 K:BB ratio shows a maturity well beyond his 23 years. Considering the non-pitching nature of the injury and his quick recovery from it, there doesn't seem to be any more risk of injury for Gallardo than any other young pitcher. There is some question as to how many innings the Brewers will allow him to throw in 2009, considering his lost 2008, but he was up to 188 innings in 2007 between AAA and MLB, so they shouldn't have to skip him very often if at all to keep the innings around a reasonable number.

In 2008 Manny Parra took another step on his long road back from an injury riddled minor league career and established himself as a credible major league pitcher. Overall, in 166 innings Parra posted a slightly below park adjusted league average 4.39 ERA. His 147:75 K:BB ratio is decent enough, though to take the next step he'll probably need to put some more distance between those numbers. Parra will also need to cut down the 1.54 WHIP, not only because so many of those runners will end up scoring but also because they increase the number of pitches he has to throw and prevent him from working deep into games. The big lefty was at times dominating and at times maddeningly erratic. He pitched his way out of the rotation by mid September, but considering the fact that he was already well over his 2007 inning total (133), we can probably attribute it to tiring. A step forward from Manny is another key to the 2009 rotation living up to it's potential.

Since being acquired in the Lyle Overbay trade before 2006, Dave Bush has been a solid, if somewhat unspectacular starter. He started poorly and eventually found himself in AAA, but starting on May 27th through the end of the year he posted a 3.38 ERA. After a down year in both departments in 2007, Bush reverted back closer to his 2006 levels with a 4.18 ERA and 1.14 WHIP. The strikeouts aren't where they once were (109) but the walks are still solid (48). The main concern raised by his 2008 performance was his ridiculously low .238 BABIP, which tends to indicate that he was somewhat unnaturally lucky. More balls are almost certainly going to fall for hits in 2009, and the best way to combat that would be a spike back up in his K rate to something more in line with his 2006 numbers.

It is easy to overlook what Jeff Suppan is, and will likely be, and focus on what he is not because of the large contract he signed after the 2006 season. Given the the decline in his peripheral stats in the years leading up to signing the contract, the bottom-falls-out season that he suffered through in 2008 was something bound to happen eventually. His ERA+ (ERA compared to park adjusted league average on a scale where 100 is average) has been on a steady decline since 2005. If all of that wasn't enough to put a fan in a bad mood, Suppan is now entering the expensive part of his contract, where he will be paid 12.5 million per year the next two seasons. Still, all is not lost. Suppan did suffer from a highish .306 BABIP and he was struggling with some injuries last season. If he can stem the deterioration in ERA+ and hold steady around 5.00 while pitching close to 200 innings, he should be good enough to keep the team in many games and give the offense a chance to win. No one in their right mind would give him a 2 year, 25 million dollar contract now, but it doesn't have to be a total disaster.

The Brewers may have decided to go after another Cardinals inning eater when they signed Braden Looper, but this time the price (4.75 million for one year) was right. Looper began his professional life as a starter, but had been converted to relief work by the time he reached the majors with the Cards in 1998. In 2007, the Cardinals made the odd-at-the-time decision to covert Looper for work as a starter. After a decent season in 2007, he was able to turn in a slightly better than league average ERA of 4.16 in 2008 while pitching 199 innings. He's not a big strikeout guy (108), but neither does he walk many batters (45) and his WHIP (1.31) is solid back of the rotation stuff. He's not going to make anyone forget about Ben Sheets or CC Sabathia, but if he can keep the ball down and get his groundouts, he'll be able to fill the gap reasonably well.

Teams rarely make it though a season using only 5 starters. One can pretty much count on a 6th starter getting a good number of starts and more often than not a 7th or even 8th starter will also be needed at some point. Unless he is otherwise occupied closing games (and perhaps even then), the man that the Crew will turn to first in the case of a need for another starter is Seth McClung. McClung made 12 starts in 2008, averaging just over 5 IP per start and posting a 4.24 ERA in those games. He managed this by taking a bit off the top end of his fastball and focusing on pitching to contact. If he can harness his sometimes erratic command, he should at least be able to be a credible stop gap performer at the back of the rotation and possibly even a bit better than that. After undergoing Tommy John surgery for the second time in his career last season, Chris Capuano is back and throwing with the Brewers this spring. Not much information about his performance thus far has been leaked to the press, but if he can regain some of the velocity he lost in 2007, Capuano could be a pleasant surprise and needed reinforcement sometime around the middle of the year. Cutter artist Mark DiFelice will almost certainly see some time in the big leagues in 2009, and though he is probably best suited to mop-up relief and ROOGY duty, he could be a stop gap starter in a pinch at some point. Though it is an extreme long-shot, if top pitching prospect Jeremy Jeffress were to take a major leap forward in his command and consistency, he could find his way to the big leagues at some point late in 2009, though it would probably be in a relief role.

Barring an everything-goes-right miracle from the starters on hand or a major aquisition before the trade deadline, the 2009 rotation is not going to carry the Brewers into the playoffs as it did in 2008. That being said, unless the group on hand suffers from signifigant bad luck on the injury front and/or regression, they probably will be good enough to hold serve and allow the team to compete for a playoff spot if the offense and bullpen can step up a bit from their 2008 efforts. Such is the life of a mid market team, where nothing good lasts long and the formula for winning has to be constantly reevaluated and adjusted according to resources and talent on hand. It's never good news to lose pitchers like Sabathia and Sheets, but it doesn't have to be a death sentence.