Like battlekow, I am disclaiming all knowledge of events in Arizona yesterday.

A good way to get that taste out of your mouth is to focus on the matchup today: Ben Sheets and his sub-3.00 ERA against Tom Gorzellany and his 6+ mark.  It's best not to think about how Gorzo has pitched against the Crew.

Game time is 1:05 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Go Brewers!

The starters this afternoon are Manny Parra and Brandon Webb.  Webb is probably the better pitcher, but for what it's worth, Parra has been better over the last seven starts.  (Or six starts, or five starts, doesn't really matter where you draw the line, as long as you're focusing on the last month to six weeks.)

Game time is 2:40 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

If you haven't already, be sure to scroll down and check out battlekow doing...well, he did something, and you should see it.

Go Brewers!

Matchup is Seth McClung and Yusmeiro Petit.  We're back within 5 of the division lead, but as long as the Cubs are playing the Giants, we'll need to keep winning to stay there.

Game time is 8:40 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Go Brewers!

In the 2008 National League, batters don't fare as well against relievers as they do against starters.  This shouldn't come as a surprise--batters only see relievers once; relievers can throw harder in their shorter stints; and many relievers are called upon because they are well-suited to retire one or more of the batters they are going to face.

More specifically, the average NL batter hits 258/329/408, for an OPS of 738.  Against relievers, he manages only 244/325/379, an OPS of 704.  It's not an enormous difference, but it's noticeable, and it's not a fluke.  In 2007, league average was 757 and average vs. relievers was 724--almost an identical difference.

Of course, the next logical step is to look at the Brewers by this measure.  By OPS, the Brewers have the 6th best offense in the league, at 750.  Against relievers, they are tied for 8th with the Rockies at 696.  In other words, our OPS versus relievers is about 20 points lower than you'd expect it to be.

This does raise something of a chicken-and-egg issue.  Relievers aren't all the same (thank you, Captain Obvious).  In close games, we're likely to see the best relievers a team has to offer; in blowouts, we get the worst.  Anecdotally, it seems like the Brewers have played a disproportionately high number of close games this year, suggesting that the relievers we're seeing are of higher quality than average.

(The other team that springs to mind, the Braves, offer something of a counterpoint.  Despite losing more one-run games than a soccer team, the Braves are right about average, hitting relievers with an OPS about 30 points lower than their average OPS.)

It's always tough to compare one year's team to another, but there is a lot of continuity between the '07 lineup and the '08 lineup.  It turns out that the '07 Brewers, much like the '08 Braves, are almost exactly average in this regard.  785 overall OPS, 750 OPS versus relievers. 

You might also be interested to know how individual Brewers are doing against relievers.  The laggards are Hardy, Hall, and Cameron, while Fielder is the only guy with a lot of ABs who is hitting well.  (That surprised me, since he's the one guy who often results in a pitching change for the opposition.)  Here's the complete report.

I suspect this, like most splits, will even out before long.  But more importantly, if we're going to talk about it (which seems like a foregone conclusion), we need to have our numbers straight.  The Brewers are about average against relievers, and the difference between their vs-relief numbers and their overall performance is a little worse than average.  Like the variety of "clutch" stats I touched on yesterday, it's probably not a cause for concern.

I think Daron Sutton is out to get us.  In the first inning last night, he was talking about how the D-Backs just can't seem to beat the Brewers.  He might as well have announced during the pregame that Dave Bush was throwing a no-hitter.

Tonight's starters have a combined age of 155 77, with a lot of that burden carried by Randy Johnson.  RJ is starting to pitch like an old guy, only not as well as Jamie Moyer, the quintessential old pitcher in the 21st century.  He coughed up 7 runs in two of his last three starts, and his ERA is only a smidgen better than Dave Bush's.  That said, he did hold the Red Sox to two runs in his last start, and that's nothing to sneeze at.  (Also, don't sneeze at Randy.  Literally.  He'll get angry, and he'll also get hurt.)

Jeff Suppan goes for us, and despite a blip a couple of starts ago, he's still in the middle of an impressive run.  His ERA in May and June combined is 3.38, and he's given up only four longballs in that time.  (Could be luck, but either way, I'll take it.)  Another interesting note from Supp's gamelog: he's only gone over 100 pitches four time this year.  Despite that, he's averaging just a tiny bit below 6 innings per start.

Enough of that...game time is 8:40 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Go Brewers!

It wouldn't be a Brewers broadcast without a mention of the Crew's struggles with RISP, especially with 2 outs and RISP.

(Actually, I don't know if they're still talking about this--it feels like weeks since mlb.tv has given me Brian and Bill.)

Anyway, it is technically true that the Crew is below average in this department.  With RISP, the Crew is a bit below league average, with an sOPS+ of 97.  (sOPS+ is a handy Baseball-Reference stat meaning OPS relative to league average for that situation.  100 is average, less is worse, more is better.)

Look at RISP with two outs, and it's worse: That's down to 86.  The worst offenders are Weeks and Kendall, both of whom are OPS'ing under 500, though Braun is at a mere 590.  We should probably bench him, or at least pinch-hit for him in clutch spots.

However, there's an interesting contrast if you keep hunting through the splits.  Broadcasters love to talk about 2 outs/RISP because it is a proxy for clutch...but it's only a proxy.  Obviously, there are important moments in a game with less than two outs, and key at-bats without runners in scoring position. 

One way to measure them is by leverage (details here), which takes into account the base/out situation as well as inning and score.  (Bottom of the 9th in a one-run game is pretty important, even with the bases empty.)  Despite the numbers above, the Brewers are above average in high leverage situations.  Also surprising, Braun is among the best on the team, with an OPS of 881.  Prince is dominating in such spots, at 1.203. 

Along the same lines, the Crew is above average when a game is "close and late," as well as better than the norm in one-run, two-run, three-run, and four-run games.  (Just below average in tie games, though that's kind of meaningless, since a lot of games are ties in the early innings, which is hardly the definition of clutch.)

Of course, many of these numbers come in relatively small samples--Prince has had 45 high-leverage at-bats, and the team as a whole has had fewer than 400 PAs with 2 outs and RISP.  Given that important situations (high leverage ones, anyway) don't seem to faze the Crew, it may be that the 2 out/RISP numbers will come around, resulting in a few more runs simply due to luck.

Or, I guess, Doug Melvin has signed, drafted, and traded for a bunch of guys who can't handle the pressure.  Your call.

It's no surprise that the D-Backs are leading their division, but it is a surprise they're doing so with a .500 record.  I guess that lower-class NL Central has to beat up on somebody, right?

Starters tonight are Dave Bush and Doug Davis.  Bush has three quality starts in a row plus a 3.89 ERA in his last seven outings, while Davis has done even better lately--all three of his most recent starts were QS's, all three came in interleague, including one against the Red Sox.

Game time is an alarm-clock unfriendly 8:40 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Go Brewers!

For a few hours, it's very easy to calculate the pace we're on.  At 81 games in, double our current record, and you have a 162-game result: 88-74.  That's on the middle to high end of preseason predictions, and I think that, despite sitting in third place, we have to be happy with 44 wins in the first 81 games.

What's impressive to me is how successfully the Brewers have overcome any number of issues, all without seeking outside help.  This is a positive reflection on Melvin & Co., who may not have built a perfect team, or even the best possible team with the budget they had, but who certainly built a deep team with lots of options.  Think about some of the problems so far:

• We got exactly three starts from Gallardo, and we're not getting any more.  Many of us expected he would be our ace this year, when coupled with the assumption that Sheets wouldn't hold up for 30 starts.  Also discouraging, Dave Bush made Barry Zito look good for much of April and May.
  
• The highly-paid part of the bullpen has basically been a disaster.  Gagne was inconsistent and then hurt, Riske missed plenty of time, Turnbow was worse than worthless, and Mota has resorted to throwing teammates under the bus to bring his ERA down.  Of the veterans, only Torres and Shouse have performed at or above expectations.
• The offense took a *long* time to get going.  Prince hit like Sean Casey for a month, Rickie Weeks is currently starring in a performance art piece called "The Pop Fly," and the last bit of bloom has disappeared from Bill Hall's rose.

Yet, with all of that, 44 wins.  Not the easiest schedule, either.

What's working?

• Sheets has been the pitcher we expected Gallardo to be, and more.  Most importantly, he's done it for 16 starts and 110+ innings.  Many of us expected to get one Cy Young contender out of Sheets and Gallardo, so maybe this will be a wash.
• The rest of the rotation has stepped up.  Of the current rotation, Bush is the only pitcher with an ERA+ below 100, and he's at 87, which is barely below average for a starter.  The rotation as a whole has an ERA of 4.11, which includes a bunch of forgettable Villa and Bush starts.  All five guys have been stellar for the last month, with only the occasional blip.
• We've gotten solid performances, for the most part, from the bullpen replacements.  Guys like Stetter, DiFelice, and Dillard weren't really in the plans for the first half, but each handled themselves just fine.  Best of all, Salomon Torres has handled the workload of two regular relievers (he's at 44.2 IP right now), and would probably be All Star Game-bound if he had begun the year as the closer.
• The offense has almost completely come around.  Consider this: The Brewers are below average at only two defensive positions, second base (84 OPS+) and catcher (96).  96 barely counts as below average, and who knows, if Rickie didn't get hurt, maybe he would've turned it around by now.  We could still stand for more from Prince, but the lineup is solid from 1 to 9, at least when Parra's pitching.
• And that, of course, leads us to Russell Branyan.  If you ever doubt the role of luck in baseball, remember that the only reason we have Branyan is that our Triple-A club is close to his house.  And now he's slugging .721.  I don't see any need to elaborate on that.
• The defense isn't the best in the league, but its hugely improved from last year.  Prince looks as bad as ever, and Branyan might actually be an upgrade on Hall, but when you see the ball headed anywhere else, you can actually assume it'll be caught.  Even Ryan Braun looks like a pretty good left fielder most of the time.

Back to the big picture.  44 wins sounds pretty good, but even taking the schedule into account, it is a bit of a mirage.  Our run differential is back in the negative after last night's game, meaning we should be right about at .500.  We're 17-7 in one-run games, and our bullpen isn't good enough to explain that one.

In other words, we're lucky to be as close as we are right now.  There are reasons for optimism, since I still think the Cardinals are due to hit a rough patch, and we shouldn't suffer through a lot of the problems that made April so difficult to be a Brewers fan.  Beyond that, we are clearly the Central division team with the best opportunity to improve the team; we'll see who is available and how much they'll cost, but we certainly have the prospects and payroll space to acquire just about anybody a team puts on the block.

What's a little harrowing is that 88 wins--pleasant as that might be for the Brewers in a vacuum--may not be good enough to get into the playoffs in this division.  It'll take a continuation of some of the better performances (Russell, I expect you to keep slugging .700!), a fair bit of luck, and probably a big July acquisition.  (Yes, "big" is a pun.) 

Despite all those caveats, it's great that we can be having this discussion at the half-way point.  Two months ago, it looked like we were headed in a very different direction.

It's a bit disappointing to see the Cubs get swept over the weekend and only pick up one game in the standings.  A little more disappointing is to notice that the Cardinals did capitalize on the opportunity.  We sit 4.5 back of the Cubs, and 2.5 back of the Redbirds and the wild card.  Anyway, on with the Cup...

BR Box Score

FanGraphs Win Probability Chart

As dixieflatline pointed out last night (just scroll down), Gagne is back on the roster, while DiFelice heads back to Nashville.  It must be a bit disappointing for Mark, as he surely knows Randy Choate is on his way back.  We may not be stacked with great relievers, but we are stacked with marginal ones, and it might take more than one injury to get DiFelice back to the bigs before September.

Also regarding DiFelice, Yost commented that he needed to work on getting lefties out.  His results were pretty drastic: righties were 6 for 34 against him, while lefties were 8 for 19.  Batting average is an okay measure for DiFelice, since he didn't walk any of the 55 batters he faced.  Oddly enough, his splits were very nearly the reverse of that in Nashville this year.

Back to interleague for a second.  Now that it's wrapped up, we've confirmed another year of AL dominance, with an overall record of 149-102.  Only three NL teams were above .500 in interleague: the Mets and Reds at 9-6, and the Braves at 8-7.  (Of course, five of those losses were one-run games.)  The Crew was one of three teams at 7-8.

Back to the links.  I'm sticking to my policy of not linking to a certain newspaper site, but I'll happily read and just as happily link a dismantling of a Michael Hunt column, like this piece at The Yost Infection.

Couple of notes about trade targets.  A name you heard a lot in the offseason, but not so much since, is Joe Blanton.  Now, he might not even be the second most desirable starter on the A's.  Baseball Musings wonders whether he'll get any interest at all.  I suspect he'd do well the first time around the NL, though he might not be a great long-term option.  If the Brewers were convinced he was a project worth taking on, he could be around for longer than just 2008, as he's two more years away from free agency.

If we're talking about relievers, Ron Mahay may well become a target.  I'll admit, this Dugout Central piece has him correctly pegged as "The Most Under-Appreciated..."  I not only had forgotten about him, I'm not sure I ever knew he signed with the Royals.  The Royals will almost certainly make him available, and he's got a reasonable (for a reliever) deal that goes through 2009.

Jeff at Lookout Landing finds some images to represent his ideas of various MLB clubhouses.  Quite the experience.

CJ Nitkowski, the former MLB pitcher, wrote an article for the AP about Japan's very different interleague structure.  Good stuff.

The Crew is in Phoenix, opening a series against the D-Backs tonight at 8:40.  Until then...drink up.

I'm crunched for time this morning/afternoon, so consider a combined game thread and super-short Cup.  Here's the Cup part:

• BR Box Score
• FanGraphs Win Probability Chart
• Some Jim Powell interviews
• Mota's ERA went down while he didn't pitch.  (Insert snark here.)
• If you wonder where washed-up big leaguers go, I found them: the roster of the Long Island Ducks.   There are quite a few former MLBers in the rest of the Atlantic League, but the Ducks are way ahead of the pack.
  

And now the game thread:

The matchup today is Ben Sheets and Kevin Slowey.  Sheets is now 9-1 with an ERA of awesome.  Slowey has a sub-4.00 ERA as well, but he's given up 10 homers in 63 innings, which makes me think Branyan will go deep in 3...2...1...

Game time is 1:10 CT, and here's the BR Game Preview.

Go Brewers!