The Brewer Chronicles

Jeff Sackman wrote up a five questions Brewers preview over at the Hardball Times today.  He talks about Bill Hall’s move to center as well as the team’s defense.  He then closes things out with a look at third base prospect Ryan Braun.

The Brewers added another arm yesterday when they traded Brady Clark to the Dodgers for Elmer Dessens.  With a glut of outfielders, this move makes sense and the Brewers got a fair pitcher in return.  Dessens will start the season for the Brewers as a long reliever and Bob Melvin said that he’ll fill a role similar to what Dave Burba did for the team back in 2003 and 2004.

Also worth nothing is it looks like Carlos Villanueva will make the Brewers rotation.

It was announced the other day that second base prospect Rickie Weeks will be at the top of the lineup again for the Brewers.  Not a bad move although Weeks will have to work on cutting down his strikeouts.  There’s no doubt that he’s a guy who can score upwards of 120 runs, he just has to get on base.

Weeks’ weighted mean average PECOTA projection has him at .275/.358.457, which isn’t bad.  They have him scoring only 78 runs but that’s with only 518 plate appearances.  If he’s hitting leadoff every day, he should top at least 650 if not 700 plate appearances.

Tim Brown at Yahoo recently profiled Brewers young slugger Bill Hall.  It talks about how Hall was probably misused early in his career as well some guys that he compares favorably too because of his versatility.  Good read.

Alright, we’re getting closer to the real season and it looks like I’m not the only one excited about all of the young talent the Brewers have.  In the column by Evan Grant, he touches on everything from Doug Melvin’s approach to how Jeff Suppan fits into the rotation.  Nice read here.

In a great column by Brewers blogger Jeff Sackman, the Brewers were shown to have the best bench in the National League.  Good stuff here and the column is a great read.

The Brewers were the highlight today of Baseball Prospectus’ recent Hope and Faith series and Will Carroll tackles the question of what the Brewers have to do to win the World Series.  He touches on the Brewers very solid and young infield as well as taking a look at several of the team’s prospects.  Good stuff and like Carroll, I’m optimistic about the Brewers chances this year.

Baseball Prospectus recently interviewed Reid Nichols, the Brewers director of player development the past five years.  The interview touches on the state of the Brewers farm system as well as how Nichols got around to taking the Brewers job.  Nice read.

Here’s solid article about Ben Sheets and how he’s developing a change up.  Man, if he could pick up a third pitch it’d be huge.  He’s obviously an ace already but this could put him into the elite tier of pitchers.

Not a bad start for one of the Brewers top prospects.  Ryan Braun had a monster game in which he homered twice and drove in seven runs in a 14-8 win over the Athletics.  Oddly they other seven Brewer runs were all driven in by different hitters   Vinny Rottino also homered for the Brewers.

Claudio Vargas was shelled to the tune of five runs in the first two innings.  Zach Jaskson threw 2 1/3 innings and gave up only one run while Derrick Turnbow pitched a perfect ninth.