I know that I'm posting quite a bit on the bullpen lately, but that has been the major issue with the Brewers so far and so that's what there is to talk about. Many of the moves that General Manager Doug Melvin made shore up the bullpen in the off-season have had success, albeit of varying degrees. Salomon Torres has been very good and both Guillermo Mota and David Riske have been mostly successful with a few rough outings that inflate their numbers a bit. The Eric Gagne signing has, however, been a fairly unmitigated disaster to this point. There has been a lot of talk and analysis of the fact that the Brewers let Fransisco Cordero take the larger offer from the Reds, but not as much talk about the other options the Brewers had besides those two. 

The other veteran closer on the market last winter who had fallen on harder times recently was Troy Percival. At the time he signed with the Rays, there was talk that he was down to Milwaukee and Tampa Bay in his decision making process. Percival is doing in very well in Tampa Bay. So far in 16 innings this year, Percival has a 2.25 ERA, a .563 WHIP, a 15/2 K/BB ratio. Sure, two of his seven hits allowed were round trippers, but he's saved 10 of 12 opportunities and worked 12 totally clean innings in 16 tries. Compare that to Gagne who in 18 2/3 innings has a 6.27 ERA, a 1.875 WHIP, a 18/14 K/BB ratio. He's converted 9 of 14 save opportunities and has only 6 clean innings worked in that whole time.

What's worse is that Percival signed a 2 year contract for 8 million dollars with a possible 4 million in incentives. Sure, the fact that Gagne is only signed for a year is great, but it's for more than the 8 million that has to be paid to Percival. If he winds up pitching well for the Rays this year, they will get him at a relative discount for next year and still pay only a little more for two years than the Brewers paid Gagne to struggle this year.

It may be that Percival just wanted to go to Tampa Bay and the Brewers were a second option that he never seriously considered. Still, at this point it looks like Melvin should have rolled out the red carpet and made an offer that Percival couldn't refuse to try to lure him to Milwaukee. Assuming they still would have signed Riske and made the trades for Torres and Mota, it's hard to argue that they wouldn't have a signifigantly better bullpen this year with Percival than with Gagne.

The day Mark DiFelice worked towards for over a decade finally came on Thursday May 15th, 2008 with his call-up to take David Riske's spot in the bullpen for the Brewers. This is the first time he will pitch in the majors, and if his minor league numbers translate at all he may be able to surprise a few people.

In AAA this year he struck out 28 in 23 innings pitched, while only walking one hitter. He has allowed 20 hits, so his WHIP is 0.91. Those numbers are strong, and lead one to believe that he's a bit better than the 3.91 ERA he posted. Allowing 3 homers in 23 innings is a problem, and he has had some off and on problems with the longball throughout his minor league career, so that will have to be watched.

Given the current state of the Brewers bullpen, there is room for someone to step up and make a name for themselves, possibly even as a closer, if they can get outs without giving up too many runs. That DiFelice strikes guys out, doesn't walk many batters and limits the number of hits he allows may make him the sort of guy who could come from nowhere and pitch at the back end of the bullpen, at least for a while. It's definitely a good opportunity for him to show what he can do in the majors.

We shall see. 

Carlos Villanueva had his best start in three tries on Tuesday the 13th, which isn't saying much after he had his brains beaten in by Houston and Florida the previous two outings. A big part of his "success" was the fact that he kept the ball in the yard after giving up 6 homers in those previous two starts, though Matt Kemp did hit him hard in the first for a ball that might have gone out elsewhere.

As noted in an earlier blog post, Villanueva has had progressively more and more trouble getting outs as batters see him a second and third time. Currently, he has an OPS against of .672 the first time through the lineup, .930 the second time through and 1.175 after that. Last night he actually had more trouble early and then kind of settled into the game in the 5th and 6th innings, which just goes to show that this sort of thing doesn't hold true every time.

There is a strong case to be made that he is simply miscast as a starter and that he would be more valuable pitching 2 to 3 innings every three days or so. If the Brewers had not lost Gallardo and Capuano to injury and given Vargas his walking papers, I think there would be a very strong case to be made that CV should be in the pen. As things stand currently, with Jeff Weaver at AAA likely being the man who would replace him, there still may be a case for making the move.

Even if Weaver isn't able to be as good as Villanueva (though I think he can be comparable), the team probably can upgrade it's pitching staff as a whole by moving CV to a role where he stands a good chance at having a lot of success. Of course, that is as long as Weaver can eat some innings and keep the ball in the yard. With Villanueva coming off a decent start, now may not be the time to make this move. If he reverts back to giving up a lot of homers in the middle innings, this is a move that should be considered.

Much had been made of Eric Gagne being deposed as "closer" for the Milwaukee Brewers, at least temporarily. He is out because he simply couldn't string together 3 outs consistently enough without allowing runs to score. There are some reasons to think that he might be able to be better at doing that than he is at the moment, but we'll save that for another discussion.

What we are left with at the moment is the dreaded Closer By Committee. Manager Ned Yost called on Salomon Torres (whose  numbers aside from runs allowed are actually not that different from Gagne's) to pitch the 9th on Sunday. Yost had a backup plan ready, and when Torres allowed two of the first 4 batters he faced on, Yost called on lefty specialist Brain Shouse to get the last out. He did so, after allowing a predictable single to the last right hander on the St Louis bench.

Obviously, it isn't an ideal situation for a team to be left without a closer because the man expected to fill that role failed. Still, the idea of mixing and matching relievers to get the final outs of close games isn't as crazy as the adherents to the LaRussian bullpen would have us believe. Teams got along fine without designating a certain one pitcher to pitch the 9th inning with a lead of 3 or fewer runs for over a century.

The Brewers do have several useful bullpen arms to turn to in this crisis, and they should be able to convert leads at a reasonable rate. Eventually, though, the team is probably going to want to look for a proven "closer" to pitch the 9th if Gagne cannot resume his duties. Why? I'm not even really sure, other than to say I think they need to get another quality arm, one capable of dominating hitters fairly consistently because the current crop is useful, but not intimidating.

I would like to see the Brewers have someone capable of missing a lot of bats and not walking too many guys in the bullpen by mid summer, and I don't think that person is really out there yet.

Since my last substantive Brewer post, the team has endured 5 straight losses and now come back to win a big game against the division leading Cardinals. In that time, there has been a lot of speculation on Ned Yost's future with the Brewers and the overall direction of the team.

It's hard to say exactly what General Manager Doug Melvin and owner Mark Attanasio are thinking in regards to Yost's position, because they have been largely silent on the subject. Sure, they re-upped Yost before the season by picking up his 2009 option, but that was probably more of a move to avoid the dreaded "lame duck manager" situation.

The temptation for fans who have been waiting a long time for Yost's dismissal (which seems like most of them from where this writer sits) is almost to simply expect that he will continue to darken their door as he has for so long. There does, however, seem to be a mounting tension surrounding team. JS beat writer Anthony Witrado talks quite a bit about it in this chat. Taken together with the fact that this is his 6th season at the helm and that the Brewers are now in a position to expect to be competitive, it is difficult to imagine that  Yost's future with the franchise isn't in serious jeopardy at the moment.

The Brewers win on Friday night may turn out to be the start of something big or nothing much at all. For Ned Yost to keep his job, it will probably need to be more the latter than the former.