Here We Go...Again...

by South Side Rob

Being right about something that is bad for a team can be very frustrating. According to a recent article on Brewers.com, Ned Yost is trying to convince Doug Melvin that we need to start the season with 8 bullpen arms instead of 7.

I mentioned sarcastically that Ned Yost would love 10 arms in the bullpen if he could get away it. Games in April will take near 3-1/2 hours as Yost turns into statistical matchup guru after the 5th inning of every game regardless of how close the game may be. This is bad for many reasons.

1. If games are not close, some relief pitchers (long relievers) can go a week or more without work which makes it very difficult to stay sharp.
2. When taking the ball from the starter and asking 3 or more relievers to be on their game is too much to ask. Constant bullpen moves were a large reason why games were lost late last season. The bullpen was burned out more because Yost was tinkering with match-ups. Starting pitchers were being pulled well before throwing 90 pitches.
3. Key late-inning pinch-hitters are no longer available on the bench because it was replaced in form of that extra arm in the bullpen. How many times last year did we run out of position players in extra-inning games were even a late-inning pinch-runner made sense? I can remember about 6 or 8 occurences. How many games were we out of 1st place? 2 games. Oh yeah, Yost went into Spring Training blaming our defense, I forgot about that.

If you want 8 arms in the bullpen, you might as well go with a 4-man rotation. Paying Sheets and Suppan 10+ million dollars this season for throwing 70-80 pitches per start is a complete waste of payroll. I do realize that McClung has had a nice Spring but Yost rather have extra arms than bats. Simmons and Melvin have to step up here and set Yost straight. Also, Melvin knew this was a problem heading into camp. Perhaps Melvin over-valued his arms this off-season rather than making a few moves so that this did not become a problem. Does anybody remember Robin Yount being very vocal about having less options off the bench because of all the toys Yost had in his bullpen? Oh yeah, it was reported that Yount wanted to spend more time with his family which is no longer why he is our bench coach. Maybe he just wanted to be around smarter baseball people like his children.

People can line up, and post and tell me I'm wrong but you better come with a darn good reason because this (I believe) is very bad for this team heading into this season...