Results tagged ‘ Jason Kendall ’
Brewers By the (Jersey) Numbers: #20 Jonathan Lucroy
Today is St. Patrick’s Day in the United States of America, but at least as important, if not more so, is the fact that today is 20 days away from Opening Day!
You read that correctly. There are less than three weeks to go, Brewer Nation!
Today while you’re likely out partaking in some adult beverages and/or watching the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament’s Round of 32, be safe. Getting hurt (or God forbid worse) simply isn’t worth missing out of Opening Day.
But sometimes playing it safe can’t keep you injury free and you might miss Opening Day after all.
Such was the case last spring with today’s subject:
Jonathan Lucroy.
During a normal drill during Spring Training last year, Jonathan Charles Lucroy broke the pinkie finger on his throwing hand. (Lucroy bats and throws right-handed.) It caused Lucroy to begin the year on the disabled list as Wil Nieves and George Kottaras began the season as the two catchers on the 25-man roster.
Lucroy was reinstated to the active roster on April 10th and immediately worked back into the starting role. He had a nine-game hitting streak to begin the season once he got back to Milwaukee and was named the team’s Player of the Month for May.
Overall for the year, Lucroy batted .265/.313/.391, in 430 at-bats over 136 games (114 starts). He scored 45 runs, drove in 59, and totaled 114 hits (16 doubles, 1 triple, 12 home runs) while striking out 99 times and only walking 29 times.
More important for a catcher though is how he performs defensively. In that regard, the Brewers had a 3.63 ERA when he caught (1043.2 innings, 421 earned runs) and went 68-46 when he started. Lucroy threw out 21 of 98 runners attempting to steal, good for a 21.4% rate.
What’s more is that there have been more than a couple of articles written over the winter about Lucroy’s ability to frame pitches and help get borderline strike calls for his pitchers.
He was also inserted late in games which he did not start to pair up with the late-inning relievers. He is much more defensively sound than George Kottaras and those late changes helped evidence that.
Lucroy joked at one point during the season that he was the closer off the bench for the closers in the bullpen.
Back to the bat, Lucroy is having by far the best Spring Training of his career. Coming into today, Lucroy is batting .571 (12-of-21) and slugging .857 by way of three doubles and a home run. He’s also recorded his first Cactus League stolen base.
It’s been related by the beat writers that Lucroy has really taken well to the instruction from first year Brewers hitting coach Johnny Narron. If the results in the regular season and over the course of the long summer reflect the improvements he’s made so far, it’ll be a banner year for third year big-leaguer at the plate.
If there is any knock on the way Lucroy has performed to this point in his career, it’s in the fact that he is only the starting catcher 80% of the time. He might get more days off than that of course with day games following night games, or the occasional double-header, but he’s only the #1 option for four of the five starting pitchers in Milwaukee’s rotation.
That’s not entirely Lucroy’s fault, of course, but the face remains that he and left-handed starter Randy Wolf have been unable to get on the same page. Wolf likes to pitch a game a certain way. He has a very specific game plan and knows what he wants to throw in any situation. Lucroy hasn’t gotten it yet. He needs to work harder to be able to catch Wolf and not force manager Ron Roenicke into having to catch Kottaras (or more accurately “not Lucroy”) against tough left-handed pitchers.
Lucroy and Wolf have been paired together this spring and it seems to be working well enough so far. Having said all that, every catcher not named Jason Kendall needs some days off and catching Kottaras every fifth day all the time at least helps keeps Lucroy fresher.
As for being on the club on Opening Day, things are looking good for Lucroy there as well. Getting the start on the mound on Opening Day will likely be Yovani Gallardo, one of the four that Lucroy catches.
What all that means is that when Miller Park announcer Rob Edwards is rattling off the members of the Milwaukee Brewers prior to first pitch 20 days from now, it’ll be Lucroy’s name he calls out in the batting order as “in the bullpen” while he’s warming up Gallardo.
It may be a small thing, but making your first Opening Day roster means something to a ballplayer. But there’s something special about Opening Day.
For Jonathan Lucroy, it doesn’t signifying anything that we don’t already know. He’s the starting catcher and will be so for the majority of 2012.
But you just never know what it might mean to the individual. Hopefully in 20 days, we’ll find out what it means for Lucroy together.
Milwaukee Brewers Sign Five, Including C Zaun
By: Big Rygg
The Hot Stove season in baseball can be a very exciting time. It’s the first real baseball-heavy stretch of time in the sports media since the end of the World Series and, chance are, the first time you’ve really heard much about your team since the end of the regular season.
The big event during the off-season in baseball are the four days collectively known as the Winter Meetings. The Winter Meetings are a gathering of all of Major League Baseball’s General Managers (amongst other MLB officials). A ton of agents and even usually a handful of players make the trip as well. It is a chance for everybody to meet face to face and, thusly, to get a LOT accomplished in a relatively short amount of time. Groundwork is laid, dialogue is begun, negotiations get underway and, when all the stars align, players get signed to contracts.
In 2008 the Milwaukee Brewers were a part of the big storyline of the Winter Meetings, that of course being the CC Sabathia sweepstakes (congratulations to CC for winning a World Series Championship, by the way). That didn’t work out in Milwaukee’s favor, but it certainly was fun to have all the national media focused on the Brewers for a couple of days.
Last year, Doug Melvin was focused pretty much solely on Sabathia during the Winter Meetings and didn’t really accomplish anything. This year, however, Melvin is casting a much wider net into the free agent waters, specifically into the Sea of Starting Pitching. It has been said that the Brewers are basically looking into every available free agent pitcher. Having signed two arms already (the rehabbing Chris Capuano along with John Halama), the Brewers have gotten started fairly quickly this year. The Winter Meetings don’t even start until this coming Monday, for what it’s worth.
But, two pitchers that are questionable at best if one were to rely on them to start 20 games in 2010 (and for Capuano that games-started number could be one) is not enough for this team. Fortunately, Melvin, assitant GM Gord Ash and the rest of the front office realize this fact.
And, since pitching isn’t the only need for this organization, the Brewers have been active in areas other than pitching too. The Brewers made a trade in acquiring a new center fielder, Carlos Gomez, from the Minnesota Twins for SS J.J. Hardy. They signed a 16-year-old (pending age verification) shortstop, a young OF prospect who had a taste of the big leagues last year in Trent Oeltjen and a new starting (more on that later) catcher in the tastefully-named Gregg Zaun.
Allow me to focus on the new backstop in Milwaukee for a bit. There has been much discussion amongst fans already as to what exactly the Brewers are gaining by signing Zaun as opposed to simply retaining the services of two-year starter Jason Kendall instead.
First and foremost to this off-season’s agenda of acquiring as much starting pitching help as possible, this move saves the Brewers money. Kendall earned $5 million last year. With so many servicable options available on the upcoming market, Melvin made the decision that the team couldn’t afford to pay $5 million for a catcher again. There was never a report on whether Kendall flat out told Melvin to take a hike or whether he would’ve considered resigning at a reduced rate. Kendall was said to have greatly enjoyed his time as a Brewer, so it’s nice to think that he would’ve at least considered it.
To focus on what actually happened, though, is to realized that Gregg Zaun was approached by as many as six teams in this first week of free agency. He has said that the Brewers separated themselves pretty quickly from the pack. It helped that Milwaukee could offer a chance to be the primary starter. nearly-40-year-old catchers (or ballplayers of any position at that age) seldom hear those words. Now, Manager Ken Macha has seemed to be a no nonsense guy in his first year. That would seem to indicate that if Zaun isn’t performing at an acceptable level, then he would lose a start or two per week as whomever the backup winds up being will gain that playing time. Zaun is veteran enough in this league to know that performance is what hangs onto a job.
Should Zaun falter and his backup be called on…well, I don’t know what to tell you at this point because there is no certainty who that backup will be. Rumors flew (and continue to fly) since the end of the season about giving highly-touted prospect Jonathan Lucroy a shot to make the leap from AA to the big leagues. Then again, had prospect Angel Salome not missed so much combined time in 2009 due to injuries, might it be his name that would’ve been getting ballihooed about? There’s also the realization that Mike Rivera has been a decent backup the last few seasons as well at the big league level, thereby making him the devil they know, so to speak. Backup catcher is a much more important decision this year because Gregg Zaun will not be starting 130+ games.
Enough sidebarring. What else is the team gaining with Gregg Zaun behind the dish? How about more power, a higher batting average and, since Zaun is a switch-hitter, a second left-handed bat against right-handed pitchers. A little more balance can make a big difference.
As for the things Kendall excelled at (blocking the plate, blocking up pitches in the dirt, calling a game), Zaun is good at all of those things too. Let me put it this way, without going to find defensive statistical numbers… When you’re 38 years old and still playing in the big leagues, it’s usually not because of your stick anymore, especially behind the dish. Why do you think Henry Blanco is still playing? A cannon arm is among the top reasons why.
So when you add it all up, is there really any debate as to whether or not the Brewers made the right call? Of course there is. That’s the beauty of baseball and of all sports. Until the games are played on the field/court/rink/etc, you never know. But at least in baseball, statistical analysis provides a pretty darn good idea.
Despite all of this, though, the team needs more help. Formally offering a contract to Craig Counsell is a good start (depending on the value of said contract), but it’s hardly enough. The Winter Meetings begin in Indianapolis, Indiana in three days. With Doug Melvin and company being able to spread their focus around in 2009, let’s all hope that more irons in the fire yield better results in the long run.
Where For Art Thou, Offense?
By: Big Rygg
What a night for the Milwaukee Brewers…and I mean that in a negative way.
Save for back-to-back home runs on consecutive pitches by Prince Fielder and Casey McGehee, the Milwaukee Brewers were unable to muster any offense on a night when they were once again playing against a National League Division’s worst team.
In the Brewers’ defense, the San Diego Padres had been playing quite well when Milwaukee came to town on Friday. That was evidenced by the fact that they were able to overcome a 7-1 deficit on Friday night. However, despite the Brewers scoring 7 runs with two outs in the 2nd inning of Friday’s game, the Brewers have been very quiet at the plate in this series.
What’s more, they got an acceptable start from journeyman Mike Burns in the game tonight but Burns may as well have given up three hundred runs as three since there Brewers were unable to put more than two on their own on the board in support.
Burns gave up those three runs over 5.2 IP, giving way to Mitch Stetter with men on in the inning and two away. Claudio Vargas, pitching in his first game since being reacquired by the Brewers prior to the non-waiver trading deadline, allowed one huge insurance run to score in the bottom of the 8th inning. Heath Bell came on, and after allowing a leadoff single to McGehee, struck out Cameron, got Frank Catalanotto to fly out to left and induced a pop out off the bat of Jason Kendall to end it.
Not everything is going wrong for Milwaukee lately, but enough things are going wrong at the same time so that the end result is a loss.
Last night we had a solid run total despite it all coming in one inning, but the pitching staff and defense couldn’t hold San Diego down. Tonight, we got good enough pitching to win most nights, but the offense decided to go to sleep for the most part.
Will the Crew be able to put it together tomorrow afternoon and salvage one win against the NL West’s worst? With Carlos Villanueva on the bump for the beermakers, there are no guarantees.
It doesn’t get easier by any stretch of the imagination on Monday night either as after the Brewers finish a three-game series against the last place Padres, they start a three-game series against the class of the National League, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
But it all boils down to the fact that the Brewers have been unable to put enough parts of the game together at the same time to win some ballgames at the most crucial stretch of the season.
Four hits tonight (two of them the aforementioned solo home runs) and while they accumulated nine hits on Friday night, only three of those came outside of that big 2nd inning. Throwing that inning out, that’s only 7 hits in 17 innings. That’s not going to get the job done unless the Padres start walking 10 hitters a night.
The Padres, owners of the league’s worst team batting average mind you, have amassed 17 hits and 12 hits in the two games thus far in this series. Yes, that’s 29 hits in 16 innings. You don’t have to look much farther to figure out why they’ve won these two games.
Bottom line, the Brewers need to get it figured out and fast if they’re going to keep it close into September this year.
I’m not in the mood for silver linings on this one, but perhaps a post in the coming days will focus on some positives that can be picked out of the dreck that’s being dumped on the field lately.
Until then, let’s just remember that tomorrow’s another day and that at 3pm tomorrow afternoon, the game is 0-0.
Let’s get one tomorrow and try to keep our head above water for a bit longer.
Brewers Play Part of ChiSox from Major League
By: Big Rygg
For anyone that has seen the iconic, timeless, awesome movie that is Major League, you know that the Indians defeated the Yankees in a dramatic one-game playoff in order to advance to the post-season.
What they don’t tell you officially until Major League II is that the Erie Warriors lose in the ALCS to the Chicago White Sox, the team’s antagonist in the second film.
Well, the Milwaukee Brewers swept the Cleveland Indians in the stadium formerly known as Jacobs Field. And while the team won’t be taking a 757 back to Milwaukee (they’re headed to Detroit tonight), they put on quite a hitting display during a series which featured a Rick “Wild Thing” Vaughn bobblehead giveaway, Bob Uecker throwing out a first pitch and even a Bob Uecker autographed jersey prize to a “follow-the-ball” video board game.
The totals for the Brewers in the three games? 30 runs on 40 hits!! (And that we gave up 25 runs on 34 hits? Who cares? We won all three games!!)
Individual totals for the hitters (in alphabetical order by player’s last name):
Ryan Braun 6/13, 1 2B, 1 3B, 1 HR, 7 R, 6 RBI, 2 BB, 1 K
Mike Cameron 2/14, 1 3B, 1 R, 1 RBI, 2 BB, 5 K
Frank Catalanotto DNP
Craig Counsell 4/9, 1 2B, 1 3B, 4 R, 2 RBI, 3 BB, 0 K
Prince Fielder 6/11, 3 2B, 1 HR, 8 RBI, 3 BB, 1 K
Mat Gamel 3/14, 2 R, 1 RBI, 2 BB, 3 K, 1 SB
Jody Gerut 0/2
Bill Hall 1/10, 1 HR, 1 R, 2 RBI, 2 K
J.J. Hardy 5/12, 1 HR, 4 R, 4 RBI, 2 BB
Corey Hart 6/14, 2 2B,1 HR, 3 R, 4 RBI, 1 BB, 1 K
Jason Kendall 3/8, 1 RBI, 1 BB
Casey McGehee 3/9, 1 2B, 3 R, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 1 K
Mike Rivera 1/4, 1 R, 1 BB, 1 K
Take a moment to really let that soak in.
I’d write more now about the series, but I started this last night after the game and am finishing it today after work because I fell asleep while writing it. Suffice it to say, it was an amazing three days for the offense.
Let’s hope that’s the part of our game we bring with us from Cieveland to Detroit.
Spring Training – Game 1 – Milwaukee vs. Oakland
Today is the first full game of the spring. You might not recognize half the names after the 5th inning, but competitive baseball is about to be played again.
Flub-tastic!
By: Big Rygg
I was at this afternoon’s nationally-televised game, and I cannot tell you how disappointed I felt upon leaving the stadium.
Let me set this up for you a bit first…
I can handle losing. As a life-long fan of the Milwaukee Brewers, I’ve gotten very good at being able to handle losing. What really gets my goat, sometimes, is how we go about losing.
Tonight, we were down 0-3 through 6 and 1/2 innings. While the bats didn’t exactly come alive in the bottom of the 6th, we did lay off enough pitches to walk two runs in. It was a great display of plate discipline by the men involved. Then, in the bottom of the 8th, Prince Fielder showed one more time why he’s our MVP. His game-tying solo home run was the type of thing that leads us to victory!
Then, with the bases-loaded and only one out (Corey Hart was retired by Russ Springer on a fly ball), Jason Kendall was at the dish and Ned Yost called for a squeeze play on the first pitch. Bill Hall broke from third but Jason Kendall didn’t get the bunt down. In fact, Jason Kendall didn’t even square to bunt and simply took a called strike one.
He missed the sign and Bill Hall was very out.
Possibly liberating was the fact that Kendall grounded out to short to end the inning, and play that may have gone for a double play anyway, but then again as any official scorer will tell you, you can’t assume a double play.
And that, my friends and loyal readers, it what made this afternoon’s game so frustrating. Yes, Gagné could have shut them down in the 9th to give us a real chance to win it in the bottom half or even in extra innings, but the bottom line is that we should have been going into the 9th inning with a lead in the first place. If we take only a one-run lead into the inning, do we possibly lose anyway if Gagné gives up two? Maybe, but had we gotten the squeeze down, who’s to say what else could’ve or would’ve happened in the rest of the 8th?
A missed sign…the possible difference between back-to-back victories and having gained absolutely no ground in the NL Central.
Kendall was rightfully hard on himself in post-game comments to the media, but he deserves mention here specifically as he completely missed the call.
But, tomorrow is another day, and another chance at victory!
And you can bet your *** that Kendall doesn’t miss a sign tomorrow.
One more thing…for all of you fans that love to boo your own players, it doesn’t help. Groan, moan, shout, throw your hands up, sigh…there are lots of ways to express frustration without raining down a chorus of boos. Gagné was terrible today, no doubt about it, but other than making yourselves feel better, what’s the point of booing a guy that’s out there with the intent of helping your team win?
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