Sampling the '10 Brew

Baseball is my sport.  Always has been.  Hell, look at the damn URL of the page you're on right now.  If that doesn't convince you of this truth, nothing will.  Either that, or some twat waffle decided to plagiarize me, and just got outed for it.

But at any rate, I played the game from the time I was old enough to stand up until I was too old to still be in high school.  From the time I got off all fours, my dad had me getting accustomed to a tee-ball bat.  And now, as an adult, I still love the game.

That being said, it's been a hard ride.  If I grew up in Florida, or Boston, or Atlanta, or even Arizona, I would have happy childhood memories involving baseball.  Instead?  I grew up in Milwaukee, futilely supporting a Brewer team whose main consistent quality was suckitude.  I mean, for Chrissakes, Rafael Roque once was our opening-day starter.  Before Adam Dunn and Mark Reynolds existed, Jose Hernandez was the King of the K--only without offering the 40-home run power that Dunn and Reynolds do.  And that's not even touching on the Gary Sheffield trade, the Antoine Williamson draft, the Bob Hamelin and Jeffrey Hammonds signings, or anything dealing with Curtis Leskanic.

(At this point, I'm going to pause the column for a second so that Brewer fans can stop twitching angrily.  Calmer down there, buddy.  It'll be alright.)

The fact of the matter is, my baseball childhood was one of shame and failure.  Every fall, I would pick a real team to follow for the post-season, since the Brewers were pretty much shutting it down by the second week of August.

Then, all of a sudden, things changed.  In 2008, we found ourselves in the thick of a pennant race.  And though we would come in second in the division to the Cubs, I got my first taste of the post-season in my life.  Hell, we even managed to win a game.

If this was a movie, that would be a turning point.  The team would keep improving until they reached the top, and my two decades of blind faith would be rewarded.  Right?

Real life doesn't work that way.   Ben Sheets shut down for a year and, when he came back, we didn't even make a half-assed effort to bring him back.  C.C. Sabathia, the most picture-perfect fit for Milwaukee ever, was bought by the Stankees.  To replace them, we relied on our minor leagues--though our best pitching prospects were all in the mid-level minors, and the stiffs we were relying on (see Burns, Mike) were incompetent.  Instead of making another playoff push, we regressed back to "alright .500 team."  And the front office is seemingly happy with this, based on their off-season moves.  Some highlights:

-Trading JJ Hardy for Carlos Gomez.  An awful move that I've already discussed.  Let's not be redundantly redundant.

-Signing Randy Wolf and Doug Davis.  I like the Davis signing--he rejuvinated his career in Milwaukee once already and he has historically pitched really well in Miller Park.  Wolf, on the other hand, is an overpaid innings-eater, who benefitted from a historically weak free-agency class to sucker the Crew into a Gawd-awful contract.  He's the left-handed Jeff Suppan.  And we're already unhappy with one Suppan.

-Signing LaTroy Hawkins.  Was Doug Melvin watching when he pitched for the Cubs?  You'd be hard-pressed to find a shakier relief pitcher in all of baseball, now that the aforementioned Leskanic has retired.

-Signing Gregg Zaun.  Don't get me wrong, I'm hardly a Jason Kendall fan.  He was overpaid and overrated.  But without question, Zaun is a downgrade.  He's a career backup who has survived as a good glove, no hit player at a position where your backup can be good glove, no hit.   But he's going to be our starter.  Backup George Kottaras, claimed off waivers from Boston, isn't any better.  And Angel Salome and Jon Lucroy are both at least a year away.

Is this year's team any better than the .500-finishers of a year ago?  I don't see it.  I'm a fan of the "let's take a flyer on a guy who someone else gave up on" strategy that the team has succeeded with in the past--just look at Davis, Danny Kolb, Derrick Turnbow (at least for a little while), and Gabe Kapler.  But you want those guys to be no-risk pickups, where if they don't work out you aren't hurt.  If Zaun doesn't have a career year, we're in trouble.  If Gomez flops (a realistic possibility, considering his failure to this point to assemble even a .300 OBP), we gave away our best trading chip for nothing.  If Wolf and Davis aren't reliable #2 and 3 starters, respectively, our staff is just as shitty as it was a year ago.

Optimistic Prediction: 90 wins and the Wild Card.  For this to happen, we're talking about Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun both having MVP-caliber seasons, Davis and Wolf both being 12-win, sub 3.75 ERA guys, Gomez figuring out how to take a pitch or two, and either Salome or Lucroy breaking out early.

Pessimistic Prediction: 70 wins, fourth place (behind St. Louis, Chicago, and Houston).  We're not dipping below the Reds or Pirates, at least.

Realistic Prediction: 80-84, third place (behind St. Louis and Chicago).  Mark it down, and join me in taking a shot to another year of mediocrity.