The NL's Best in the West

By: Big Rygg

We all know not to put too much stock in Spring Training numbers, but the fact remains that your Milwaukee Brewers are currently tied in the loss column for the best total in the Cactus League at 7. The Brewers also have the best overall record of any NL team in the Cactus League (tied with the Mets overal for NL teams).

So...what does this mean? The easy answer is: not much. After all, we've played a lot of games against teams from the American League that we won't play during the regular season. Having said that, winning twice as much as you lose is still a nice feeling.

But there comes a time when it would be nice if all of our pitchers would contribute to these wins instead of a lot of the effort coming from two guys that (for some reason) still aren't sure whether or not they'll be suiting up in Chicago on March 31st.

Ned Yost is on the record as saying that the off day kind of provides the gap between segments of Spring Training. He said that prior to the off day guys are primarily working on the physical aspects of the game; in other words: getting their bodies ready to endure the grind of 162 regular season games. Then, according to Yost, after the off day comes the real ramping up of the mental part of the game (especially for pitchers).

Eric Gagne has said things that support this theory as well. He has said that he's been working on his pitch location and controling his breaking pitches up until this point, but that starting tonight it's time to start thinking about counts, situations and basically getting hitters out.

Personally, I think this is one time when Ned Yost couldn't be more right. I just hope that the roster is on the same page and also that it means more results. I think it's pretty obvious that our offense is close, but our pitching needs to catch up in a hurry...especially if Manny Parra and/or Carlos Villanueva don't break camp in the rotation.