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September 2008 - Posts
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You could not have scripted a better Fan Appreciation Night at Miller Park. Yovanni Gallardo with an inspiring and impressive return to the National League picture. Longtime Brewer Bill Hall with a big two-out double off an otherwise dominant Zach Duke. Corey Hart with an amazing "how'd he do that?"-slide into first base and a terrific catch in right field. Santa Claus aka Eric Gagne showing extreme fan appreciation with five thousand freebie's and throwing a bonus scoreless rack. Miller Park rocking and rolling like never before, rally towels unfurled.
Oh, and Ryan Braun with a walk-off grand slam in the tenth inning of one of the most must-win games in the history of the franchise.
Lots of good tape for you from one of the biggest days in Brewers' history, including the sounds of Miller Park and the audio highlights in our Game Report after the sweep was complete.
Yovanni Gallardo joined us after the game. Hear his comments HERE.
Gagne's gesture to the fans today was commendable and unexpected. He explains what his motivation was HERE.
One of the wily vets gave us his observations about the current Brewers' situation before Thursday's game. Brian Shouse weighed in on the Jockey Pregame Show.
And now a Cubs-Brewers' three-gamer to determine whether Milwaukee can celebrate a playoff berth for the first time in twenty-six years?
Good luck sleeping.
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It has come down to this: A six game "season" at Miller Park with the Brewers separated from the playoffs by one game. When the schedule for 2008 first came out, we all looked at this final week and thought, "if the team is close at the end, at least they will get to finish at home where they have played like the '27 Yankees for the last couple of years." The latter notion has been shaken a bit by recent events, and I really don't know quite what to expect this week.
Will the fans pack the ballpark, as they have all season, and create such a healing, positive electricity that the stumbling Brewers' wounds will all be magically healed? There is no doubt that when the Brewers' fans become a Tenth Man and fully support their heroes, flawed and otherwise, the team is almost impossible to beat at home.
Or will the fans, weighted down by twenty-six years of disappointments, arrive exasperated with patience-tanks showing empty even before they have seen a pitch, ready to pounce on any highly-paid athlete who makes a mistake? We saw some of that on the last homestand as the September slump blossomed into a full-blown-swoon. The players were shaken by some of the harsh reaction certain teammates received on that 3-7 homestand. We can all acknowledge that professional athletes have to be able to ignore certain things and still play at a high level, but there is no doubt that a positive crowd can help a team win, and a negative crowd can hurt. That's why they call it a "home-field advantage," because, theoretically, the home crowd makes the local team harder to beat. If the atmosphere is poisonous enough, as we have seen in many instances in other cities and other sports, the advantage can be muted or even reversed.
DISCLAIMER: I am not in any way saying the fans were wrong to boo, or were not within their rights to say and do anything they please with their game tickets. The fans pay the players' considerable salaries along with those of the front office, business office, stadium staff, parking lot attendants, security team, media, and broadcasters (yes this is in order of hierarchy). I have boo'd at sporting events myself, back when I was younger and less patient. I am also not blaming the fans for any on-field performances by the players.
The point of this is not to dump on the fans, but rather to simply point out that one of the remaining keys to the Brewers' quest for post-season baseball lies with those very same fans who have suffered the most over the last quarter of a century. For the sakes of everyone concerned, I really hope the Tenth Man arrives early, enjoys the trappings of one of the best stadiums in all of sports, settles into their seats, and does everything possible to will this team past the Pirates and Cubs and into the place that has only been a dream since 1982: The Major League Baseball playoffs. Based on the way the team looked on the last road trip, nothing short of that will be enough to get these guys righted and playing like they did from May through August. If changing managers with twelve games left in the season did not work, then what will?
There are many storylines to follow in the final week of the 2008 season, but that is the one I will be watching the closest.
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It has been a fascinating week in Brewers' baseball, with more story-lines at this one time than at any point in franchise history. As badly as I feel for Ned Yost, who unquestionably gave his heart and soul to the franchise, I think the bold move of changing managers with twelve games to play was a worthwhile gamble. Based on how the team looked in the first two weeks of September, and especially on how they played in Philadelphia, it is hard to imagine that the club as it was constructed at that time would have somehow righted itself and been able to make the playoffs. Even Yost admitted that he did not have the answers, and I don't pretend to either. However, anyone who has been around pro sports for a long time will have seen examples where changing the manager or head coach has sparked a team, and the Brewers have to hope that this is what happens to them down the stretch. It may be a precedent-setting move in baseball to fire the manager this late in the season but, if it works, Milwaukee definitely will not be the last team to try it. No matter what, you have to admit that the Brewers are literally trying everything they can think of to end this playoff drought. I do not think Yost would have been able to keep his job into 2009 anyway because of the way the team trended downward in the last quarter of the season in each of the last two campaigns, so the gamble probably only cost Yost twelve-games-worth of tenure. Ned Yost handled the whole situation with as much class as any manager or head coach ever has. I was impressed. If I were setting the odds in Vegas on whether Yost will manage in the Majors again, I would make them even money or better. As with most managers, I think we will see Yost learn a lot from this first managing experience and end up being a much better manager with his next team. He will be a very attractive candidate in the future for a franchise which is rebuilding and is graduating a lot of talented young players to the Major Leagues from the farm system. Dale Sveum is a great baseball man and has a resume which demands a chance to manage in the Show. The players really like Dale a lot and respect him tremendously. I do believe he is the right man at the right time, especially with Robin Yount sitting next to him, to try to spark the team to the finish line. He is calm and unflappable. He has already made a couple of changes which I think are spot-on. Sveum is as old school as they come. What this team needs to do, for the rest of '08 and beyond, is to get back to some tried and true baseball basics. Championships are rarely won with home-run-derby-baseball. Sooner or later, you have to be able to advance runners, execute situational hitting, and take care of the ball on defense so that when you hit the predictable stretches of homerless ball you can still win games. I doubt you will see any dramatic about-faces in such a short time period, but an old-school-approach is bound to be a good influence on this team. Sveum certainly got an interesting test in his second game as manager when Ben Sheets departed with yet another injury after just two innings in the biggest start of his life. The "forearm tightness" pushed over the first of many dominoes which fell between the second inning and the end of the game. There were no missteps by the new Brewers' skipper despite having to navigate a treacherous path all game long. It could have been a disastrous loss for Milwaukee which would have dropped them a game and a half out of the wild card at the same time their longtime ace Sheets was lost, possibly for the season. Instead the bullpen produced one unlikely hero after another, each pitching like it was the game of their lives (which it was), while the offense was being willed to victory by the suddenly unconscious Prince Fielder. It was just one game, but oh did it feel like old times for the besieged Brewers. The cold post-game beverage tonight will taste like a glass of water after a walk across the desert.
I was interested in hearing from Jack Zduriencik, the best scouting director in baseball in my opinion, regarding what he thinks about the big league Brewers' current plight. I recorded the conversation and you can hear it HERE. This morning on Brewers 360, we discussed the Yost firing and the Brewers' prospects for recovering and still making it into the post-season in 2008. You can hear the segment from WTMJ's morning show HERE. Last night I got in the chat room with a bunch of Brewers' fans and chewed the fat in the 5th inning, as I do every Tuesday night. You can see what we covered HERE. The rubber match of this series in Chicago starts at 1:20 PM CT...we'll talk with you at 12:45 PM as the Jockey Pre-game Show commences. Which direction will this season take next?
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What started as an early-September swoon is now inching its way into mid-September. After losing to Philadelphia in the series-opener last night, the Brewers are now 3-8 in the season's most critical month, and the offense has all but disappeared. As a team, Milwaukee is hitting .219 this month, which is cause enough for concern, but when/if a Brewer actually gets as far as second base, the next batter is hitting all of .174. Add it all up and the club is averaging less than three runs per game since the page was turned from August (2.8 runs per game). For perspective, for the season the team is 3-29 when scoring less than three runs. There is no way to find a positive trend in all that.
Perhaps even more worrisome is that the club suddenly cannot even beat left-handed pitching, which it has bullied mercilessly all season. The Brewers have lost to five straight southpaw starters, a sure sign that a plague is among us. Milwaukee has been the best team in baseball against lefties throughout 2008, but that has suddenly and inexplicably been reversed, and dynamic Philly left-hander Cole Hamels is waiting to go to the mound in a few hours.
Believe it or not, that is not what troubles me the most. That distinction belongs to the question of home field advantage. Milwaukee has been just about the best home team in Major League Baseball for the past two years...that is no secret. But by the time the team was wrapping up a nightmarish 3-7 homestand to open September, there was sudden widespread sentiment that it might be a good thing that the Brewers were heading out on a road trip. What?! The very idea that the team might be better off anywhere but Miller Park, even Philadelphia, is apocolyptic. Knowing that the Brewers will finish the season with six games at Miller Park, including a closing three with the Cubs and their traveling fans, it is hard to be optimistic about a strong ending to the regular season.
The math is still pretty fair for the Brewers in terms of the post-season outlook. They still have a three game lead over Philly and Houston with fifteen games to play. The Phillies have not been playing particularly well, and all the talk before the series here began was about Charlie Manuel's club "pressing" and "trying to do too much." Sound familiar? Still, the Phils played a good game last night and picked up a much-needed win, which might relieve some pressure. Cecil Cooper's Astros are so hot and loose right now that I'm surprised Ike didn't take one look and turn back to the south. There is no non-weather pressure at all on Houston and, as we saw with the Rockies last year, their hot streak has taken on a life of its own.
There is pressure on the Brewers and lots of it. The fans, much more mindful of the last twenty-six years of baseball history in Milwaukee than the players are, put their pressure on during the last homestand, showing no patience or tolerance for sub-par play whatsoever. The standings and calendar are applying rising pressure. There is also plenty of self-imposed pressure, which can be the worst kind, because these guys want to succeed so badly. Pressure rarely elevates performance. Most of the time, the opposite is true. Welcome to September pennant-race baseball. There is also tremendous pressure on a pretty long list of other playoff-contending teams. The White Sox, Twins, Rays, Phillies, Diamondbacks, Cubs, and Cardinals have all had significant lapses while trying to handle the same factors that are dousing the Brewers' flames. The teams which handle the pressure the best will survive, and those which cannot find a way to relax and play the way they are capable will go the way of the '07 Mets. This is baseball's "natural selection" process at work.
Somehow the Brewers have to switch back to trying to impose their swagger, confidence, and talent on the opposition instead of trying to run out the clock on the regular season. I really think the Astros are playing great because nobody expects they can actually pull this thing off, while the weight of expectations stemming from holding down a playoff spot most of the summer are dragging the Brewers down. This has become a test of character, confidence, and leadership. The Brewers will need all three of those in healthy doses to survive the last two and a half weeks of this season.
To answer the original question...yes, I am worried. Very worried.
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***Major League Baseball denied the Brewers' appeal of the poor decision by Pittsburgh official scorer Bob Webb which ruined CC Sabathia's first career no-hitter, but the carefully worded statement was an interesting read. "It was the collective decision of the committee that the judgment of the scorer was not 'clearly erroneous,' which is the standard set forth in Official Scoring Rule 10.01(a), and thus did not meet the criteria for League reversal of the call." It was hardly a ringing endorsement of Mr. Webb's decision, but it sounds like they have set such a high hurdle for reversing a call that everybody on the committee might have truly felt it was an error but they still would not have had just cause for reversing the call. By the way, I sampled the opinion of Brewers' principal owner Mark Attanasio tonight before the game, and you can hear what he thought HERE. MLB may not have been able to call it a "clearly erroneous" decision by the official scorer, but it was, at best, a poor decision. It is a shame that Mr. Webb compounded an initially poor judgment by being too stubborn to admit his own mistake. CC Sabathia and all witnesses to that game had to pay the price for that stubbornness.
***We had an interesting wide-ranging discussion in the Tuesday 5th Inning Chat earlier this week as I took questions on the Cardinals, September call-ups, Yovanni Gallardo and more. You can read the transcript HERE. I had a good conversation with Gord Ash about Yovanni today before the Padres' opener. Gallardo has taken his first round of Pitchers' Fielding Practice (PFP), which is a big hurdle to clear. He will throw another simulated game this weekend. There are still no forecasts from the Brewers about Gallardo's possible return, but Gord did say that if things continue to progress, they will send Gallardo to Arizona to pitch against the Instructional Leaguers (look out boys!) in an effort to get him ready for big league action. I think the big issue will be whether Gallardo can learn to trust the knee enough to play naturally. If he doesn't have setbacks, I am starting to like his chances of being a part of the playoff bullpen, if indeed there is one. ***I have enjoyed visiting with some of the Brewers' top prospects who have ascended to the big team this month. My interview with Brad Nelson recently was one of my favorites of the season. You can check it out HERE if you would like. If you are one of those worried about 3B Mat Gamel's defensive ability, you will want to hear my chat with him from earlier this week also (GAMEL) We talked at length about his glove work and his time with mentor Don Money.
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