What Went Wrong

I debated putting Gabe Kapler in the What Went Right portion of this small series, but he really has come out of nowhere considering the low expectations everyone had of him coming off of a year of coaching. I guess I could have put "Solid Veterany Bench Goodness" on the rights for the first part of the 2008 season.

Again, I want to preface this post by saying this is about management/braintrust macro-decisions, not the in-game moves or specific player performance (which I will tackle another day). The "right" portion is much more extensive than the "wrong" portion thus far and I hope to not add to this in August when I think I'll reflect on this stuff again. Here we go:

01 Signing Eric Gagne
I haven't minded the signing of Gagne: the one year flier on a previously dominant closer who happened to be down on his luck after getting Massholed. I figured if a designated closer will set shallow minds at ease, then so be it (it should be reiterated that I don't feel a typical end-of-game-finisher-to-rack-of-a-meaningless-stat guy is necessary except for downtrodden teams looking to bilk establishment-minded GMs – your best reliever should be used in the highest leverage situation, but I digress). In any case, Gagne was anointed closer for the year at $10mm, pushed Turnbow to the eighth inning (then subsequently the sixth once Mota/Torres arrived, then to mop up, then to the emotional trash heap at Nashville). OK, dance for me clown! He's converted 11 of 16 saves with little command: nearly a 1:1 SO to BB ratio, 2.017 WHIP and an ERA at almost 7. Atrocious! He's been consistently awful despite throwing at the same three pitches at the same velocity since returning from his massive injury two seasons ago.

There is hope and there is time to turn his season around, right now he is rehabbing in Nashville and should be back soon. Torres has done a great job with closer duties, which means Yost and his "hot hand" approach may prevent Gagne from closing until much later. At least it's only a one season contract.

02 Holding on to Turnbow a little too long
Right now he's a very expensive minor leaguer with crazy strikeout totals and an even crazier 3.23 WHIP. It's probably unfair of me to put him in the "wrong" category, but it appeared as if the fans were way ahead of the curve on this one. Perhaps if he mends his psyche and pitches like he did a few years ago, he could return or be traded. If not, I don't know what the Brewers will do with him.

03 Continually moving Bill Hall
This was spurned from the "good" move of signing Cameron and moving Braun to left and, again, it may be a touch unfair. But this has caused unrealistic expectations among Brewers fans about Hall's ability and Hall has responded rather ingloriously. His poor hitting against righties carried into the field where he's committed a number of errors and eventually necessitated calling up Branyan (still, this is "good"). Obviously when trying to build a winning team, some guys are asked to do more than others, and I think Bill Hall has for the most part done so … his "super sub" year of 2006, learning center field at the expense of his hitting last season, moving to third this year … but the small minds of casual fans turned on him, he turned on us, and no one's happy with the situation. Of course, if the team wins, no one cares about the situation. I still feel bad that he had to play under Jerry Royster, that's enough suffering for a lifetime.

Standings: Cubs will lose this afternoon, so the Brewers move up one-half game to five back of the leaders. They are one game out of both second place in the NL-C and the Wild Card.