Talkin' Baseball: Brewers '09 post-mortem

With the Brewers season drawing to a close, our Talkin' Baseball writers discuss the past several months and look ahead to next year.

Jason: Well Steve, here we are at the finish line. I’m tired. This team absolutely wore me out. I am lumpy, misshapen, and beaten beyond recognition. Last week you asked “Was it really so long ago that everybody seemed to care about this team?” and it truly is hard to fathom it was only a year ago I was watching the Brewers sneak into the playoffs in the most exciting games I’d ever seen this stupid team play.

Maybe I should have known better and set my expectations lower—way, way lower. The Crew did in fact lose its top two starters, and its number one was only, you know, the best fucking pitcher in baseball during the second half of last season. Still, I can’t help but feel like this team underperformed, even beyond the obvious targets of J.J. Hardy, Jason Kendall, et al. I’m just not sure where to direct my frustration. Sure, the pitching was abysmal, but could that ugly group have reasonably been expected to do much more? I’ve had quibbles with Ken Macha here and there, though not enough for me to turn on him. Boring? God, yes. All his fault? Unlikely. Maybe Doug Melvin could have signed another arm or two in the off-season, but of the available free agents, who would have made that much difference?

I can’t believe all that goodwill the team instilled in me last year is already starting to ebb. It shouldn’t be gone this quickly, should it? Obviously as a Brewers fan I have low expectations. I don’t expect the World Series. But I can’t conceive of any moves that’ll get me as excited for next year as I was for this season. Trade Prince Fielder? That won’t do it, even if we get the world in exchange. Trade some of our mid-level talent for a mid-level starter? Eh.

So is there any hope for next year? Or do I just have to accept that our three-year window has passed and another rebuilding era is likely in the works—even if Mark Attanasio won’t admit it?

Steve: Okay, okay, okay, Jason, let’s not start putting shotguns in our mouths just yet. You sound like someone who’s just had a bad break-up, or me after the last episode of Battlestar Galactica: You’re letting a shitty end to an otherwise good relationship tarnish what should be positive feelings about the overall experience. Yes, this season was frustrating, especially the last half, when watching the Brewers was like watching kittens drown in slow motion. But the Brewers were in control of their own destinies going into the last month of the regular season. Just because fans knew they wouldn’t make a move up the standings doesn’t mean couldn’t have, had they played better. Not that long ago it wouldn’t have mattered either way. Don’t forget that.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the season. Remember how good the Brewers were in April and May? That wasn’t just a mirage. If the Brewers hadn’t lost an improving Rickie Weeks, a slumping (though still solid) Corey Hart, and most of their starting pitchers to injuries for part or all of the season, you’ve got to think that they would have made up at least a couple of the 10 or so wins that will likely separate the ’09 Brewers from the ’08 world-beaters. Heading into next season, the Brewers will still have two of the best young sluggers in the National League, a gaggle of young talent that should either perform better or provide ample trade bait should we need a mid-season push, and a decent-ish starting pitching staff that’s proven it can perform well enough if it stays healthy.

So, yeah, of course there’s reason to hope. But I do think we should make one big move in the off-season: Fire Ken Macha and put Willie Randolph in the manager’s seat. I don’t blame Macha for the Brewers’ tanking this year. But I also wouldn’t rush to give him credit if we were in the NL Central catbird seat. Macha is a vacuum where excitement and charisma go to die. He’s a non-entity. Randolph, on the other hand, is a likeable father figure who brought Weeks back from the dead. I have a bad feeling that if we don’t give Randolph the skipper job, somebody else will (and soon) and we’ll be stuck with the boring uncle you never talk to leading our team to another middling season. So, let’s act now. You with me?

Jason: Fair enough. Maybe undue histrionics are in my genes, but when you put it those terms, it makes sense. I guess we will end up finishing just 10 games or so worse than we did last year, and when you factor in all the injuries, that’s not so terrible. As constructed though, I still think the Brewers were at very best an 85-win team. I just have memories of walking out of a bar after Ryan Braun’s season-capping home run last year, fueled by little more than chicken wings and adrenaline, pumping my fist and screaming at no one but the sky for five minutes. All I needed was a bible and I could have been offered a gig guest-hosting The 700 Club. I miss those days.

What I guess I’m reacting to more than the record is how utterly lifeless the team looked once the spiral began in July. It’s not something that’s measurable, but I could just sense the season going down the crapper with three months to play. I had no confidence whatsoever they could drag themselves out of the season-collapsing vortex, and they didn’t. And you’re right; this is at least in part a reflection of the manager. Okay, you sold me. Let’s call Doug right now and tell him to fire Macha’s ass!

I have some reservations about being the team that fires a manager two years in a row, though I think there’s enough merit to pull the trigger. And if Macha and Yost exist on opposite poles of the dead-ass/puckered ass continuum, Randolph seems like a perfect middle ground. So now that that’s settled, let’s end on a high note. Did you have any cool indelible memories from this season? I have three: The 14-12 win against the Indians when we came back from five runs down twice, my first trip to Wrigley Field (a place I wanted to hate, but loved) for an 11-2 Crew win, and watching the superhuman fielding of Alcides Escobar. As the kids say, dude is wicked sick, and if he’s not an All-Star/Gold Glover within two years, I’ll eat my hat.

Steve: When people look back on the ’09 season, most of the discussion will surely center on the consistent awesomeness of Prince Fielder, who racked up one of the all-time best Brewers seasons ever behind the plate this year. (Fielder’s main rival is himself from the ’07 season.) As I wrote earlier this year, I don’t understand why Fielder always seems to take a backseat to Braun in the hearts of Brewers’ fans. Braun is great, but until he hits over 40 homeruns and drives in more than 110 RBI in a season—which Prince has now done twice in three years—he won’t really be the man on this team. For the time being anyway, the Brewers know who they can count on when they need someone to go apeshit and start hunting for scalps in the opposing teams’ dugout.

Speaking of Braun, here’s the thing I’ll remember about ’09, and it seems like an appropriate stupid way to end this season’s “Talkin’ Baseball.” See you dudes in April.