Why I hate the losing on the road

Believe it or not, it's not the losing.  It's the why.  I'm analytical, but also emotional.  To not allow myself to be bothered by the actual losing, I just have to remember that even the best baseball team will lose a lot.  Even Philadelphia, with the best record in baseball, is still going to lose 60 games.  That's still a lot of evenings sitting glumly with your beer (or vodka/Dew).

But what really bothers me is I just can't figure out WHY the Brewers are losing on the road so much and so badly.  You might say it's because they've played against good teams so far on the road.  That doesn't really doesn't work because they won 2 of 3 from Philadelphia and lost 4 in a row against the Nationals.  Besides that, the Brewers swept division-leading St Louis at home and lost 2 of 3 to the Mets.  The quality of the opponent isn't correlated to the home/road records.

What about the park?  Sure, this year, Miller Park is leaning more heavily batter-friendly, but historically, it's pretty close to neutral.  And if the Brewers are a power-hitting team, park effect can explain the poorer showing against San Diego and the Dodgers, but doesn't explain their performance against the Yankees.  (Sure, the Yankees are just overall a good team, but Wednesday night was the Brewers best opportunity to beat up a bit of a struggler in New York's rotation.  That didn't happen).

I'm not even going to look at RISP.  That's just such a stupid stat, that I can't even stand discussing it.  It's just absurd to think that hitters somehow will try harder just because runners on base.  They're trying hard to get on regardless--no hitter wants to strike out or GIDP.

I'd like suggestions if you got them, because we're halfway into the season--park factors can't explain it (the Brewers have visited enough different parks to equalize them), imbalance in road opponents (saying that the Brewers road opponents have been predominately good) doesn't exist and much as Shawn Marcum would like to explain it away with Yostian thinking, it's not all just bad luck.

The home record simply isn't sustainable.  Hell, if it DOES keep going like this, it won't matter what the road record is, but it statistically isn't viable.  The road record doesn't even really need to be good (or even "ok"), it just can't be terrible.  But without understanding what's causing the road issues, I'm not sure how it can be fixed.  And I hate not knowing.

Casey and Yuni can't really be that bad, can they??

Unfortunately, yes.  On Saturday, I stumbled across an article that I believe was on cbssports.com that discussed 2011's biggest disappointments so far.  Unfortunately, I can't find the article anymore, but I'm not really talking about those players--it just served as inspiration.

With Baseball Reference's help, I looked at ranks of qualifying players.  My initial thoughts were that with the struggles players like Adam Dunn, Jason Werth and Dan Uggla have been having, Casey and Yuni would rank in the lower quartile or so, but not be rock bottom.

I was wrong.  There are 162 "qualifying" players in MLB.  In OPS+, Casey is 156 with a 66 and Yuni is 157 with a 65.  For comparison sake, Dunn is 144th with a 76, Uggla is 160th with a 61.  The worst player by OPS+ is Chone Figgins (OPS+ of 40.  40!!).  

The real problem is right now, (Yuni's 3-4 day today and his "HR" yesterday notwithstanding), neither player is doing anything well.  Casey is 152nd in OBP (.283) and Yuni is 159th (.255).  Only Uggla, Tejada and Figgins are worse.  Yuni's only saving grace is a LITTLE bit of slugging (he's 136th).  Casey is 151st.  One can easily argue that Casey is the worst player on the Brewers right now.  Casey has history, though, so I'm not ready to entirely give up on him.  Yuni did have ok-ish offensive numbers with KC, but historically, Yuni's never really done much.

In my mind, this puts the Brewers in a very difficult position.  There are no viable internal options at SS (not even really any options that would be a reach or a stretch).  The only solution is a trade.  There are going to be people arguing for relief pitching, but I remain adamant that this is not only a bad idea generally it's also just not necessary.  Braddock remains an option once the team is confident his issues are resolved and Saito if he can stay healthy is a very good 8th inning option to have in the pen.  

Taylor Green is probably a bit of a reach option at 3B, but what does that mean?  We bring him up and Casey goes to the bench, because I'm fairly sure he's out of options and even with his performance this year, he probably wouldn't clear waivers.  I understand the PCL is generally offense heavy, but this isn't rookie ball.  In 66 games so far, Green has a slash line of .309/.374/.544/.918 with 11 HR and 38 RBI.  He has 25 BB and 41 K.  (The walks and K's are a little sketchy, but not too bad).

Since the Yuni problem isn't solved until a trade can be done, which means waiting for sellers to sort themselves out, I am ready to argue that the Brewers promote Taylor Green, giving him the starting job at 3rd for 2 weeks or so.  If it doesn't work out, nothing much has been lost anyway and he can go back to AAA.  If he even hits .260/.310/.430 or something, that would be a huge improvement.  It's not a desperation situation now because of the team's play and standing, but it can't go on for the rest of the season with performance like this.

Time for Casey to Take Advantage

After tonight's game, Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire made it clear the Twins had made it a point of not wanting to let Prince Fielder beat them (doesn't every team?), but he did anyway.  The key point of the game was the Brewers 7th.  Counsell had popped out, Weeks and Morgan followed with singles and Braun had popped/flied out to short right.  So Prince is up with runners at 1st and 3rd with 2 outs and the score 3-2, Minnesota.

Keep in mind, Casey McGehee would be up after Prince.  Casey HAS been hitting a bit better of late and definitely getting better at-bats even in his outs, but he still has been struggling and Gardenhire elected to pitch to Prince.  A Jose Mijares fastball with bad location was seared to right and the ultimately winning runs scored.  With Prince on 2nd and 2 in, Casey grounded out to first.

With every clutch hit, Prince is going to see fewer and fewer hittable pitches.  If keeps his plate discipline, it'll be tons of walks...if not, lots more strikeouts.  Realistically, the Brewers could have Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, Troy Tulowitski and Jose Bautista all in a row and Prince still wouldn't get much to hit.  Protection may be overrated and over-emphasized, BUT, if a guy is going to kill you and the next guy is nearly no threat at all, the decision to pitch around or intentionally walk the killer guy gets super easy.  

This gives Casey an opportunity.  Seen as a bad hitter or not, having just walked a guy, the pitcher isn't likely to fool around.  Casey SHOULD see more fastballs and if he continues working on finding his approach, the sharply hit balls will become base hits and the "just got under it" flies will become home runs.  Take advantage, Casey.  Do what you did last year and either make the decision on how to handle Prince hard or make them pay when they take the easy way out.

Why do managers make stupid decisions?

I know your reaction when reading this post's title was "I KNOW, right?"  But the serious part of this question is are the stupid decisions really stupid and in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter?

First, the decisions are probably not "stupid", but more likely "questionable" or "curious".  The one Runnin' Ron Roenicke decision that's been gnawing at me came in the bottom of the 9th of Wednesday's game.  3 consecutive singles and a sac fly from Morgan put the game at 6-3, Tampa Bay.

Here's where the headache begins.  Runners are on 1st and 2nd with 2 outs.  The bench consists of Craig Counsell, Mark Kotsay and George Kottaras.  Roenicke sends up the 0 for his previous 15, .236 BA, .283 SLG Mark Kotsay.  Huh?  The weird thing here is that the entire bench consisted of left-handed batters and RRR puts the coldest of the 3 up to bat?  Well, maybe he has good splits vs Farnsworth?  Not really--he was 4 for 15 lifetime.  Maybe he didn't want to use Counsell because he would've had to have come in at SS in case it went to extra innings.  So he was playing for a tie?  Can't be--that's just dumb.  But Counsell was only 2 for 9 in his career vs Farnsworth, so he's no better than Kotsay and his season stats are atrocious anyway.

But wait, what about Kottaras?  That is where the headache becomes an "IV morphine" migraine.  Then "you can't burn your backup catcher" rule is ridiculous--you're still down by 3 and you can't play for the tie.  Kottaras has never faced Farnsworth, but he's obviously the best hitter of the 3 remaining options. Why doesn't he bat?  RRR tells the press after the game, "George was on deck...it's just which guy you want to hit first".  Uhh, what?  First of all, why is Lucroy being pinch-hit for AT ALL?  So RRR's plan was PH for the catcher with an OF and then if that guy got on base, then you're going to use your back-up catcher to PH for the pitcher's spot?  Good Lord, that's simply asinine.  I mean, I get that clearly RRR wasn't playing for the tie, so you might as well empty the bench...but there are 2 outs, you need to continue the game and you bat the worst hitting of 3 options FIRST?

Put the loss on the offense going 7 innings without a run after a 2-run 1st...but Roenicke sure didn't do much to help win the game in the 9th, either.

Please, please, please don't trade for a RELIEF PITCHER!

If you're reading THIS, I'm sure most of you have already read the rumor that George Kottaras is being "made available".  The most likely trade partner is logically San Francisco, which is turning over every rock (no, sorry, no "The Rock" joke here) looking for catching help.

Jim with Bernie's Crew tweeted earlier a suggestion that the Brewers should try to get LHP Dan Runzler.  Jim definitely has his finger on the pulse of more players than I do...but after a review of his stats, I'm not totally convinced.  

This is NOT a criticism of Jim or the suggestion.  It's just a suggestion and we're getting to the time of the year where it's fun just to talk out trade possibilities and throw stuff around.  The concern I have:  Relief pitchers are, for the most part, a dime a dozen.  Sure, we might argue the Brewers bullpen is terrible or has hit the wall or whatever.  But I say Roenicke is flat-out mismanaging the pen.  (Forget Monday night, thanks to Bob Davidson stealing the show).

Hawkins might have a implosion waiting to happen, but until he's used in more high-leverage situations and DOES implode, then his very solid performance this year so far is going to waste.  And once the 10 days has passed, the Brewers need to get Braddock out of time out and bring him back to Milwaukee.  Tell Axford he needs to tell Zach when it's time to wakey, wakey if you have to, but leaving him in Nashville is just stupid.  

From my view, the Brewers biggest weaknesses are shortstop and the bench.  Counsell is DONE (but serves an acceptable role on the team for now as a backup IF).  Kotsay can make contact, but he'd be lucky to hit the ball out of TD Ameritrade Park, much less any MLB park.  Brandon Boggs, meanwhile, is toiling away in Nashville.  

Trade for a SS when the right deal comes along, while getting Wilson a couple starts a week.  Cut Kotsay, bring up Boggs and USE HIM.  I don't pretend this will suddenly solve all the Brewers woes, but I think the Brewers really only have the pieces to make one trade.  History tells us trading for relief pitchers doesn't work most of the time.  The best return is one that improves the biggest holes...and that's what Melvin should be looking at.

Will the Brewers play on the road kill their all-in season?

I didn't intend for this post to simply be a gripe about how the "Brewers can't hit on the road", but those problems can't simply be dismissed as something that eventually come back closer to the mean or that they will just "get better".

The Brewers split OPS on the road is 90.  So, yeah, not good, but not out right atrocious.  We are nearly 1/2 through the season (about a week at home from halfway and a series away from halfway on the road).  So sample size can't explain why the team's BA is 50 points lower on the road and their OBP is 60 points lower.  It might be just be a function of the road stats relative to the home stats.  (The home stats are so good, it makes the road stats look worse than they are).

The NL average slash line on the road is .248/.313/.378/.691 and the babip is .292.  The Brewers road slash line is .234/.292/.370/.662 and their babip is .267.  The babip is a clue to the Brewers poor road record.  (They are "unluckier" than the average road team, which is already bound to be "unluckier" than they would be at home).  The point being, in my view:  A team is generally worse on the road to begin with and the Brewers can't afford to be 10% worse than the average.

Personally, it seems very unlikely the Brewers could maintain their current performance at home all season.  That means that regardless of the reason, the hitters are going to have improve on the road.  And I really don't mean to beat a dead horse here, but 2 generally poor hitters on the team, Yuni and Gomez,  have some of the worst road splits.  Part of that improvement is going to have to come through less use of Gomez (already happening) and a replacement for Yuni.  I simply can't find any alternative to making a trade for a SS, even if he's only incrementally better.  Mevlin is all-in and if he can make this trade by giving up only 1 mid-level and 2 lower-level guy it's absolutely worth it.

Can't we all just...WAIT?

Say you're a Brewer fan and don't watch any games on TV, don't follow along on Gameday and don't listen to the radio.  Instead, if you choose to only read blogs or perhaps follow the Bernie's Crew Live Blog, you might find yourself like our friend "stix".  (Sorry, stix).

Stix is a perpetual pessimist.  The Brewers offense is terrible (it shuts down after scoring a few runs, it relies too heavily on the home run), the baserunners are stupid (the Runnin' Ron Roenicke (#RRR from now on) philosophy is killing the team), the bullpen is horrific, on and on.  And, it doesn't seem like he's ever around when they win...and if he is, the Brewers were lucky to win or there were dozens of things they did wrong.

But, is this true?  Well, to the point, does even matter?  The Brewers just played game 71 of 162.  We're nearly halfway there.  Did anyone REALLY expect the Brewers to have a 10 game lead here?  I think we all knew, somewhere, this was a going to be a battle to the end.  Can't we treat tonight's loss to Boston as one those "Aww, fuck it all" games?  The starter left after 1 IP and 44 pitches, the alleged LOOGY left most of us wondering, "How did Melvin and #RRR decide THIS was the guy to bring up after disciplining Braddock?" and Estrada saved the bullpen from a full-on meltdown.

So here's what I'm going to do:  Be overjoyed with the wins, especially those against the self-appointed, baby-eating arbiters of respect and their leader, Lord Albert.  And tell myself after the losses:  This is a perfectly acceptable reason to make another drink.  But most importantly, I'm going to WAIT.  Wait until it's obvious they are out of it or that if the Brewers make me ask Capital One to pay them thousands of dollars for playoff tickets, they will be useful.

I don't have a clue...

To be honest, I started getting really involved in Twitter just to get information easier.  (To be technical, I wanted to treat it as way to aggregate all the sites, writers and bloggers on my favorite things; mostly Brewers and Packers related).

I commented frequently on blogs and message boards and found myself not able to express myself in 140 characters, especially when I needed to go off on a rant.  Hopefully, you'll find these posts to be well thought out and reasonable.  But, I won't pretend there won't be hyperbole, some profanity (ok, FINE, a LOT of profanity) and probably some outright "WTF is he talking about" moments.

If you find yourself here, I appreciate feedback--constructive and positive.  I'm not terribly good at advanced sabermetrics, deep player evaluation or really anything that other blogs already do well.  [Way to market yourself as a unique source of information, Corey.  -Ed.]   I'm just a fan who likes baseball.  (And football.  And weather.  Oh, and vodka.)  Give me a follow @brewfangrb.  I already follow a lot of folks that are the inspiration for this.