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?