Multiple reports from mlbtraderumors.com and Tom Haudricourt of JSOnline.com say that the Brewers "are on the verge" of signing free agent pitcher Randy Wolf. Most sources agree that it will be a three year contract, though no one seems sure on the exact dollar figure at this time. $25-30 million total seems likely.

Wolf would represent a significant upgrade to the Brewers' pitching staff.

The 6'0" lefty performed well for the Dodgers last season, sporting a 3.23 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP, perhaps partly due to pitcher friendly Dodgers Stadium. This will be his age 33 season in 2010, so I would be very leery of going more than $10 million per year with him. The Brewers cannot afford to make another costly mistake like they made with the disappointing Jeff Suppan. You have to figure that even if Wolf regresses somewhat from his performance last year, he would still be an improvement over four-fifths of last year's Brewers rotation. Only Yovani Gallardo finished the season with an ERA under 5.00. Two of their starters finished with ERAs over 6.00. Clearly significant impovement is needed if the Brewers hope to compete with the Cardinals, Cubs, and the rest of the NL Central.

It's been a while since I've made a post on this blog.

Part of the reason was that I lost enthusiasm as the season waned for the Brewers. Their shoestring pitching staff simply did not hold up, as many experts predicted it would not before the season began. When your team is throwing the likes of Carlos Villanueva and Mike Burns into the rotation during the stretch run, you know things are bleak. While pitchers like that have their uses, pitching as starters for a team trying to make the playoffs is not one.

Thus far, it has been an interesting off-season for Brewers GM Doug Melvin. He moved quickly to re-sign veteran closer Trevor Hoffman to a fair contract that keeps the back end of the bullpen solidified. He also traded fan favorite shortstop J.J. Hardy to the Minnesota Twins for center fielder Carlos Gomez. While trading Hardy was not unexpected, due to the presence of blue chip shorstop Alcides Escobar, trading him so early in the off-season came as a surprise. While some fans have voiced disappointment in the move, Hardy was coming off a brutally bad 2009 campaign which included him serving a stint in AAA, and comments from Melvin made it obvious he was not going to get much more in value than what the Twins were offering.

The acquisition of Gomez signals that Mike Cameron will not be a Milwaukee Brewer in 2010 either. The veteran center fielder figures to get a bigger contract than the Brewers were willing to offer elsewhere. Perhaps he will land back in his former grounds at Petco Field in San Diego.

Doug Melvin seems to be following a strategy of clearing as much salary as possible in order to repair the disappointing pitching staff. He did not offer salary arbitration to any of the team's departing free agents, including Cameron, catcher Jason Kendall, or shortstop Felipe Lopez. It seems clear that due to the still struggling economy, the Brewers' budget for 2010 figures to be similar to this past season's. Melvin reportedly flew out to Los Angeles earlier this week to solidify the team's budget with principle owner Mark Attanasio, in order to determine how much flexibility is available to make offers to free agent starting pitchers.

This brings up the biggest question of the off-season, not just for the Brewers but for many MLB clubs. The free agent pitching class this off-season is not very strong. John Lackey is widely regarded as the biggest prize of the off-season, but even he is not a true top flight ace akin to C.C. Sabathia, Cliff Lee, or Roy Halladay, etc. The pitcher ranked slightly below him may be a more realistic target, as Lackey figures to get a contract similar to New York Yankees pitcher A.J. Burnett (5 years, $82.5 million).

That player would be Randy Wolf, who was not offered arbitration by the financially struggling Los Angeles Dodgers. (Their ownership is involved in a messy divorce). Rumors have started to swirl that the Brewers either have offered or will offer him a three year contract, possibly in the $25-30 million range. This may be early speculation at best.

Wolf is an intriguing answer to the Brewers' starting pitching woes. He carried an ERA this past season around 3.10 and a WHIP just north of 1.10. This would represent a tremendous upgrade to the likes of Jeff Suppan and Braden Looper, and would give Yovani Gallardo someone to help carry the rotation's work load.

So it's been almost a month since I've written an entry on this relatively new blog, and for that I apologize. For me, summer is not only a time to enjoy baseball, it's a time to enjoy the 3-4 months of actual nice weather we get here in the state of Wisconsin. So I've been doing some camping and other various outdoor activities.

Just to comment on the latest trade rumors: The Brewers need to get a top tier pitcher if they want to stay in contention this season. They are currently ranked 4th in the NL in runs scored, but only 13th in pitching overall. That is a big differential, and it's no secret that teams don't usually get into the playoffs with a mediocre rotation like the Brewers currently have.

Yovani Gallardo has been doing an admirable job in the top spot, but he's only 23 years young, and has never pitched a full season in the majors. Manny Parra also seems to be doing better since his stint at AAA Nashville just a couple weeks back, but himself has never pitched a full season as an MLB starter.

Rounding out the rotation you have Braden Looper and Jeff Suppan...both solid, if unspectacular. Suppan's most recent outing was pretty pathetic, giving up 6 runs in the first two innings of an outing against the Pittsburgh Pirates (right after their starting first baseman Adam LaRoche had been traded to the BoSox, no less).

Oh wait...I only mentioned four guys. Mike Burns, recent call up from the Nashville Sounds, was pretty awful in his last start. He was never expected to be a permanent solution for the rotation, either. He has been serving as a fill-in for Dave Bush, who is currently injured and won't be back for at least two to three more weeks, according to reports.

In the midst of the fourth loss in a row that the Brewers suffered last night at the hands of the Minnesota Twins, back home at Miller Park, we saw more of the same from third baseman and continual target of fan annoyance, Bill Hall.

I haven't been able to post anything here in the past couple weeks. It's been pretty busy with work and other family stuff going on. Such is life.

The Brewers had a tremendous come from behind win last night. They won a 14-12 slug fest against the Cleveland Indians, the first meeting between the two teams in a three game series. The win was highlighted by Prince Fielder's first career grand slam.

Prince is having a tremendous year so far at the plate, hitting .295 with 16 homers and an OPS over over 1.000. It's hard to believe that he had not hit a grand salami so far in his nearly four years in the bigs. However, last night was the night it finally happened, when he went yard on Rafael Perez. It probably helps that he doesn't have to worry about money anytime soon...he signed a two year $18 million contract with the Brewers during this past off-season. The Brewers actually control him for one more year after next season, which makes talk of trading him a bit premature. Let's discuss that for a moment, though.

That may leave the team in a bit of a conundrum. After this season, they have him for two years, and his value is quite high. I would expect they'll likely end up trading him after next season, but no sooner than that. He's too important to the Brewers lineup right now to let go, even for high level prospects. Most great teams have at least two impact hitters in their lineup protecting each other, and right now Prince and Ryan Braun make a potent combination. This is especially important with the likes of JJ Hardy and Mike Cameron slumping recently.

Speaking of possible trades, the Brewers are faced with a problem that will have to resolved sooner than later. Manny Parra, who I have written about previously, had another terrible outing on Friday, and was sent down to the AAA Nashville Sounds immediately after the game. The Brewers will use a four man rotation for the next couple weeks, due to off days allowing for this. However, it's doubtful Parra will be back even after those two weeks. The Brewers want to make sure he has everything working correctly before bringing him back.

They have a couple solid enough arms at AAA in Mike Burns and Tim Dillard. However, neither of these project to be upper rotation types, which is what the Brewers are believed to want in order to continue their playoff push (they're in first place in the NL Central, by the way). With a rash of injuries to the likes of Jake Peavy and Roy Halladay, the price of a trade for a premium pitcher who's still healthy like a Cliff Lee or John Lackey has likely gone up quite a bit.

I would expect something to happen around early July, much like the heralded trade for CC Sabathia last season. By then, more teams will realistically be looking to become sellers, and that may open up some more options than trading for a low level starter like a Brad Penny (sorry BoSox fans, we don't want him either).

Nope, not that Manny...not the one currently in the middle of a 50 game suspension. This one is about another Manny.

Manny Parra of the Milwaukee Brewers has turned himself into a lightning rod of criticism after an abysmal start last night in Florida. Florida has not been kind to the Brewers, as they haven't won a game in Miami since '07. The Crew just doesn't seem to have much luck playing in the cavernous football stadium now redubbed "Land Shark Stadium."


There you see a typical shot of what constitutes a packed house in Miami. It's pretty comical. Hopefully their new stadium, featuring a retractable roof coming in 2011, will help boost the woeful crowds the Marlins play to. At least then the almost daily rain won't be an issue. On the upside, at least it gave Brewers Hall of Fame announcer Bob Uecker some material to work with last night on the radio, as he remarked "someone needs their mouth washed out with soap" when the attendance was announced at over 10,000. Most people actually there remarked there were likely less than 500 in the seats. "Paid, not seated", as usual with these things.

Anyway, the Brewers have something of a tough situation right now with their pitching. They've had to rely on their bullpen a lot, and after releasing awful reliever Jorge Julio yesterday, called up Mike Burns from AAA Nashville. So, going into the game, manager Ken Macha was looking to get a decent number of innings from his 26 year old starter.

What he got was just four innings pitched, 100 pitches thrown, and 10 runs surrendered. The horrific performance inflated Parra's ERA to 6.75. His WHIP is an unispiring 1.83. That's over 11 starts.

Quite the eventful weekend in baseball all around. The NL Central continues to be quite tumultuous, as the Brewers went from first place, to second, back to first in the span of a handful of games. It's a tight division right now, indeed. After getting swept at the Metrodome last weekend, it was nice to see the Crew come back and squash the ambitions of the Cincinnati Reds for the time being.

 

Brandon Phillips was quoted after Sunday's game as saying, "I feel we're a better team than the Brewers...we lost because they did the little things and we didn't do the little things. They're a good team but this should never have happened."

Well, Mr. Phillips was not the only one to sell Milwaukee short so far this year. It seems like every pundit out there glanced at the Brewers roster during spring training and said "Whoa! No C.C. Sabathia or Ben Sheets! They're going to stink this year! They won't be better than fourth place." Well, they didn't start last season with Sabathia either, and Gallardo was gone most of last year. One could argue that Gallardo has been a more than adequate replacement for the injury prone Sheets. So, this year's team may have a pitching rotation more similar to last season's than some were willing to admit.

 

Now if they could only shake the Cardinals, who look to do their usual "hang around near the top of the division all season" routine. I just don't see them having the depth to make the post-season this year, despite all their fans' talk about how "classy" and historic their franchise is compared to the Milwaukee Brewers (I may expound on that very topic sooner than later). While they did take the series against the Crew  this past week, overall the Brewers have been dominant against them in recent history. I think the Brewers will continue untucking more often than not against their division rivals this season.

 

Speaking of rivals...how 'bout those Astros? Cecil Cooper looks like he may be in line to be the third manager axed so far this season. When you're playing in a six team division and you're beneath the Pirates, you know you're having problems. Maybe it's just age catching up with the 'Stros, but a fire sale may soon be in order. Roy Oswalt could be a key trading chip, as rumors mount that he may not mind a change of scenery, though he supposedly has said he would not accept a trade to the White Sox. There seems to be a pattern lately of NL aces not wanting to play for Ozzie Guillen's team.

That's enough for today. I'll be back with more thoughts later this week, and may even post some pictures from our family's trip to Miller Park this past Friday.

In my blog entry from yesterday, I mentioned the Jake Peavy rumors in connection with the Milwaukee Brewers. Let me expound on that a little bit more in the second entry of my humble MLBlog.

So, I've never had a blog before. But, being that it's the year 2009 and everyone else seems to have one these days, I figured it was about time for me to enter the big ol' "blogosphere" that all the kids are talking about these days.