Milwaukee Brewers Blog - Between the Green Pillars : Carlos Villanueva

It's Been Too Long

Ryan Topp — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:49:44 GMT

I'm not even sure where to start after such a long absence. Since I last posted a lot has happened and it seems like there is a lot to catch up on.

The Ray Durham trade was a good one. They didn't give up too much to get him and he offers a lot of flexibility for the club off the bench and as a contingency plan for Rickie Weeks. My longstanding opinion on Weeks still stands, they need to try and give him every opportunity to succeed because his talent makes him a potential monster. That being said, if Weeks is mired in one of his slumps in September, they need another option to leadoff and Durham provides that. There has been a lot of unnecessary hand wringing that Yost hasn't played Durham enough, though Weeks has been far from terrible in the last month with the bat. Still, the fact that the trade created uncertainty doesn't mean it was a bad idea. Durham is a useful player and a good option to have in whatever role he eventually ends up filling.

The Brewers have all of a sudden become real road warriors. After defeating the Reds on Wednesday, they are now 11-2 in their last 13 games on the road, an outstanding departure from their recent past. With any luck, this will persist and we can all stop talking/hearing/reading about Ned Yost's alleged inability to win on the road once and for all.

Getting swept in 4 games at home by the Cubs hurts. A lot. It's the sort of thing that can send a team into a downward spiral of losses, especially when it's followed by 6 games on the road right away. Fortunately, this team rebounded nicely with a 4-2 trip and seem to have stabilized. Sweeping the series in St. Louis gave them some wiggle room and despite some serious offensive struggles since the break the team has a 12-8 record and is in better position than they were before the break. That's not a complete success, but it's far from bad.

Yost is still misusing Carlos Villanueva and someone needs to put a stop to it. Since going to the pen, Carlos has a 1.75 ERA in 36 innings. There is no justification for using a player of that ability and production in low leverage "mop up" situations on a regular basis, especially when you consider the type of high leverage innings that have gone to inferior pitchers like Mota and Gagne. Now that Seth McClung is in the bullpen on an everyday basis, they should be able to give CV more meaningful innings, which would be a much wiser use of the given resources.

That's all for now, but it's great to be back. Now it's time to toil through all the minor league numbers of the last few weeks and prepare a Prospect of the Week feature.

Ned Yost Managing Scared

Ryan Topp — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 07:08:00 GMT

I have to start off by saying that part of me understands and sympathizes with the situation Brewers manager Ned Yost faced regarding his pitching in the late innings of the Brewers 9-1 victory over the Pirates on July 4th. He was less that 24 hours removed from watching three relievers cough up 6 runs and the lead in the 9th inning of the loss to Arizona on Thursday afternoon. That is going to play with the head of any manager, and cause them to at least rethink their use of certain relievers in certain spots.

What a manager cannot allow is have a loss like the one Thursday cause him to start using his best relievers in situations where they are not necessary to ensure a win because of fear of his other relievers. From my perspective, that is precisely what Yost did in pitching Carlos Villanueva for 3 1/3 innings, despite the fact that they team had a 7 run lead when he entered and an 8 run lead for his final 9 outs.

Villanueva has been one of Yost's best relievers since being removed from the rotation. Coming into the game on Friday the 4th, Villanueva had pitched 20 1/3 innings in relief, posting a 2.66 ERA and striking out 20 while only walking 4. He's also gone from giving up a HR about once every 4 innings when starting to about once every 10 innings in relief. The fact that he pitched well early in starts and crumbled the second and third time hitter saw him lends some credibility to the theory that he is best suited to relief and that he is a pretty good reliever.

It is somewhat understandable that Yost would go to Villanueva in the middle innings. When he called on him with 2 out and 2 on and a 7 run lead in the 6th to get the final out of the inning, he was clearly trying to stave off any sort of momentum the Pirates may have been able to build. Using a good reliever there makes a lot of sense. In fact, many managers would not have made that sort of move, and more probably should. It is even somewhat justifiable that Yost would send Villanueva back out there for the 7th after another run had scored in the bottom of the 6th. CV had thrown only three pitches in the 6th and he at that point he might as well go a full inning since he's already up and in the game.

Where it gets much dicier is when Yost allowed Villanueva to hit for himself with two outs and a runner on second in the bottom of the 7th. This would have been a very good time to lift him in favor of a pinch hitter instead of allowing him to stay in for a number of reasons:

It increases the chance of adding to the team's lead.
It makes Villanueva available to pitch a few days sooner. He now has to sit out the remainder of this series and possibly longer, and lifting him in the 7th would have certainly left him ready for Sunday, and probably available in an emergency on Saturday.
A reliever only has so many innings he can reasonably be expected to pitch before the performance suffers. While there is no concrete number to point to, there is certainly a limit to what the human body can tolerate. Using up 3 innings of one of your best relievers when your team is leading by 8 runs is not something that a team can do with regularity and keep that reliever fresh enough to pitch in close games.
Right now, Villanueva is the only reliever on the the team who can be reasonably expected to be able to go more than 2 innings at a time. Should Dave Bush or Jeff Suppan get torched early in the following two starts, Yost would have to burn though a series of relievers to get to the end of the game. That would likely leave the team short relief options in the days following that game.

Like I said at the top, I get that Yost was in a tough position. Coming off an epic bullpen collapse the day before, he is understandably gun shy of going back to those same relievers a day later. Had he lifted Carlos in that situation and the worst happened, it would be a major catastrophe for this team. Yost faces constant scrutiny and second guessing for not pulling struggling relievers fast enough, and there is a general sense in the fan base that he doesn't know how to manage a bullpen. Any disaster would have heightened that scrutiny.

In the end, this is just one game and there were some special circumstances (the game the day before and the huge holiday crowd) that had to have pushed him to leave Villanueva in there longer than he might have otherwise wanted to. Still, he is going to have to get over this fear of catastrophe in a hurry, because big league managers cannot use their best relievers in blow out wins very often and have them available when they are really needed, to hold close leads.

Getting The Most Out Of The Pitching Staff

Ryan Topp — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:53:00 GMT

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.

Black Friday

Ryan Topp — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:49:06 GMT

Time to assess the damage from the first really ugly day of the season:

* Losing Yovani Gallardo almost certainly for the season obviously hurts. A lot. Gallardo had already established himself as a very good number 2 starter behind Ben Sheets. That one-two was arguably the best top pair in the division, and Gallardo himself represented some serious Ben Sheets Injury insurance, which feels like more of a necessity than a luxury. All that is gone now, and what the team is left with is a fragile Ace in Ben Sheets, and overpaid inning eater who doesn't eat quite enough innings in Jeff Suppan, a guy who has yet to live up to his peripherals in Dave Bush, a young pitcher still sorting out his command issues in Manny Parra and....

* Starter Carlos Villanueva is starting to live up to all that talk that his stuff would be over-exposed starting full time and that he would be best suited to a relief role:

First time through the order in 2008: (.170/.278/.340/.618)

Second time through the order in 2008: (.294/.333/.451/.784)

Third time and more through the order in 2008: (.439/.442/.878/1.320)

Giving up back to back to back homers the third time through the order throws those 3+ numbers out of whack a bit, because we're still looking at a fairly small sample. Still, those numbers scream to me "long reliever-spot starter" but unfortunately the injuries to Capuano and now Gallardo and the dismissal of Claudio Vargas leaves the team with no better option to replace Villanueva in the rotation than Jeff Weaver, and he isn't even ready yet.

* As if all of that wasn't enough, the offense is now officially falling back to earth hitting with runners in scoring position after getting off to a blistering start to the year that was wholly unsustainable. The Brewers left 12 runners on base last night, three times leaving the bases loaded.

Add all of that up, and you have a recipe for a very nasty day. The news that Gallardo had gone down was then pushed aside by a wholly frustrating game. Lets hope there aren't too many more days like Friday, May 2nd this season.