Focus for Brewers Must Remain on Pitching

The Brewers 2012 season started with a lot of optimism and I think, not unreasonably.  They spent a fairly reasonable amount to put a solid offensive....blah blah blah everything every other much better written Brewers blog has written...well, you know what?  Screw this.  You all know what happened.

The bottom line is in 2013, the offense is NOT a problem.  Sure, Aramis isn't likely to repeat a slash line of .300/.360/.540, lead the league with 50 doubles or drive in 105.  Then again, virtually no one expected him to do in 2012 to begin with.  Ok, fine, Corey but Braun isn't going to repeat .319/.391/.595 with 41 HR or a 159 OPS+!  Says who?  Maybe he'll hit 38 HR instead or bats .303.  BFD.  He's Ryan Braun.  We're moving on. 

The big and sort of confounding problem is the pitching.  There's a need for at least 1 very good starting pitcher than can be depended on to give 180-200 innings and hopefully something like a 110 ERA+.  Doug Melvin can't be afraid to spend $12 million a year here if necessary.  A nice thing to have would be a back of rotation guy that can give Roenicke the ability to pick the best 2 of the remaining guys they used in 2012.  I like to think Wily Peralta and Marco Estrada go here.  Chris Narveson is just a question mark coming off his injury and if he can contribute, great.  But for the moment, it's better to try to plan as if he's not there.

Then, on top of that, there's a need for probably at least 3 bullpen guys.  I see no problem going into the season with Axford put down as "closer" (I know a closer is not a thing, but it'll have to do for now).  Jim Henderson was a nice surprise and if the market doesn't allow for obtaining a defined "set-up guy" (hey, another thing!), penciling Henderson here is fine.  The Brewers still have Mark Rogers, Tyler Thornburg, Mike Fiers (who I think is the best bet for the 3rd pitcher in the rotation if only 1 starter can be signed in free agency), Brandon Kintzler and Manny Parra to fit in or replace.  I'm not as down on Parra as others might be--I admit there's not a whole lot of positives in looking at his 2012 stats, but he was the victim of a over-burdened bullpen.  Ryan Topp (@ryantopp) made a good observation on this generally when we were talking about Kameron Loe--that the rotation's early struggles put pressure on the pen and made Roenicke do things he probably wouldn't have otherwise done.

Alright, so what do we have to work with here?  Here are the top candidates for starters:

Edwin Jackson:  4.03 ERA, 189.2 IP, 1.218 WHIP, 8 K/9 and 98 ERA+ 

Ryan Dempster:  3.38 ERA, 173.0 IP, 1.197 WHIP, 8 K/9 and 124 ERA+ (although he was decidedly less effective for Texas despite a 7-3 record for them).  A 3 year/$36-39 million deal for Dempster in the market wouldn't surprise me.  But given his age, I'd prefer the Brewers look at 2 year/$24-25 million type deal with an option for a 3rd year based on say, 170 IP in 2014.

I think the Brewers should also consider Dallas Braden, who appears to fully healed coming off shoulder surgery and would be a good candidate for an incentive-driven deal or Brandon McCarthy.  In fact, according the San Francisco Chronicle's A's blog, he was just recently cleared to resume full baseball activities and he said this is about the time he would start training in the off-season anyway.  His injury is not really a pitching concern like Braden's and the Brewers should be able to offer him a pretty competitive deal.  His H/9 of 9.3 is not as alarming as it really looks, considering the size of O.co Coliseum.  Other options might include Dan Haren or Anibal Sanchez, but he seems to have set a contact demand that the Brewers not only can't meet but probably just chucks any reasonable chance of negotiating.  Finally, I suppose there's still the pie-in-the-sky idea of trying to go after Zack Greinke...and $23-25 million a year on him is a far better deal than the same money on Josh Hamilton would ever be.http://

What about relievers?  Like every other off-season, picking these guys is a complete crapshoot and frankly, I don't trust my own judgment in picking the best options here.  The best option, talent-wise, is probably Mike Adams, but a) he'll likely command a deal not worth doing (something Affeldt-like perhaps?) and b) there's the bad separation when Adams had his stint previously in Milwaukee.  

Personally, the guys I'd like to look at is Jason Grilli or Jon Rauch (his WHIP was damned good .988), his ERA was pretty good (3.59) and his HR/9 was just fine, but his K/9 is so-so (I'd like it higher than 6.6 for a reliever, but that's just me).  Rauch should be fairly affordable (perhaps $4-4.5M) as long as we can keep it under 3 years.  I absolutely HATE these 3 year deals to relievers.  Other suggestions or am I just wrong?  Hit me up on Twitter.