One more loss! One more loss which could've been a win! And you call yourselves professionals. I have never, ever seen a worse group of twenty-five players! You don't think as a team, you don't play as a team, you don't even LOSE as a team! You've all got your heads so far up your butts, you can't even see the light of day! One more loss and I... I'll do this...[throws a chair at a rack of bats] to each and everyone of you! There's this thing called talent... they don't have any of it!! That is courtesy of the great George Knox (played by Danny Glover in the movie Angels in the Outfield) who couldn't have said it any better. In case you haven't been following, the Brewers just lost their 9th straight game and I am starting Day 2 of my Hunger Strike. After the 2nd loss against the Cincinnati Reds (which resulted in a 2 game sweep) I vowed to stop eating until the Brewers win another game. I was feeling pretty good about tonight. Randy Wolf was 8-1 with a 3.07 ERA in his career against the Pittsburgh Pirates. And let's not forget that the Brewers outscored the Pirates 36-1 in a 3 game sweep of the Pirates at PNC Park on April 20-22. After going 0-6 at Miller Park against the Braves and the Phillies and 0-2 against the Reds at Great American Ballpark, you would think that PNC Park would be a safe haven considering their success there this season. But when the Pirates scored 2 runs in the 2nd inning I knew that this game was over. That is because the Brewers were 3-21 (now 3-22) when the opponent's score first. That means that the Brewers only have a 14% chance to win if they don't score first! That is fucking pathetic! I understand that playing from behind is tough and having the upper hand puts you in a position of power, but when a team gets ahead of you in the 2nd inning you still have 7 FUCKING INNINGS TO SCORE SOME GOD DAMN RUNS AND BE IN A POSITION TO WIN THE GAME!!! It's like the other team scores and they collapse and are like "I'm the bag. Let's phone this one in and try again tomorrow." Fuck that. This shit is absolute horseshit and I personally have never seen the Brewers play this poorly.
Our current record (as of May 19, 2010) is 15-25 for an embarrassing 10 games under .500. That includes the current 9 game losing streak. What the hell happened? Every single day they figure out a way to lose the game. One day it's the starting pitching. The next day it is the offense. Then the bullpen blows a lead. Then the offense struggles. And then the defense messes up a routine grounder and extends an inning. Something is wrong with this team. And unless something happens soon were in for a pretty long summer here in Brew City. But maybe, just maybe things have to get worse before they get better.
How much worse can things get than 10 games under .500? If they keep losing at this pace manger Ken Macha will almost certainly be fired. While not all of this is necessarily his fault, someone does have to die for the sins committed by this team. And the manager almost always takes one for the team. I have nothing against Ken Macha but it is in my opinion (and apparently I'm not alone in this thinking) that he is not the right manager for this team. I don't think that he is bad but his laid back style is not conducive this this fiery team. Dale Sveum seems to be the right man for the job and the sooner that Macha gets fired the sooner that Sveum can take over. After all, Sveum managed the team that won the NL Wild Card in 2008 and made the 1st playoff appearance since 1982. Why Melvin didn't give him the job and hired Macha instead is beyond me. I guess I'm just not as smart as Doug Melvin is. But I believe that the players respond better to Svuem that they do to Macha and something needs to be done to light a spark underneath this team to turn them around. An old man who is sleeping during the game so that he can wake up at the crack of dawn to get his senior discount on his Moons Over My-Hami at Denny's tomorrow morning fails to connect with the youthful players on the roster. It's science.
The other reason that things need to get worse before they get better is so that the Brewers can fall so far out of contention this year that they are forced to trade Prince Fielder. This is a good thing. We need pitching. Our biggest bargaining chip is pound for pound the biggest player on our team. The Prince. I don't want to hear that Melvin is even considering signing Fielder to a long term contract worth in excess of $20 million per year. That would absolutely cripple the franchise much like Melvin did when he was GM of the Texas Rangers and he signed Alex Rodriguez to that absurd deal. Only recently (some would argue last or maybe even this year) have the Rangers recovered from that payroll debacle. If 2.5 million fans pass through the turnstiles at Miller Park every year, the Brewers payroll should hover around the $80 million mark. So if you pay Prince you are telling me that you are going to commit 20% of your total money to 1 player? Are you out of your fucking minds? That is a recipe for disaster! Sure Prince is a great player, but the game starts and ends with pitching. Prince can only do so much, but he can't throw a no hitter or keep the other team off of the scoreboard. So Prince needs to be traded for Major League ready pitching or some high level pitching prospects. And if the trend continues Prince is going to be traded sooner than later, which would be a wonderful thing.
So I'm on to Day 2 of my Hunger Strike. I emailed the Sportsradio 1250's Usinger's Brewers Post Game show with this little nugget, "Sparky maybe you should start the sleep strike now. I personally started a Hunger Strike after yesterday's loss and I will not eat until the Brewers win another game. 30 hours and counting. From the looks of it I am going to go hungry for a while. I'm doing all that I can to get the Brewers going because there is no way the team is this bad. Let's go Brewers - end my Hunger Strike. - Iceman on the Eastside." Sparky's response was "He's not eating? The Brewers are going to kill someone. They may kill him. A hunger strike? I don't advise that. That's not a good idea." Then Tim Allen chimed in with "I'm going to get a taco on the way home." Let it be known that Sparky has vowed to start a sleep strike if the Brewers lose both games in Pittsburgh. I'm not willing to go that far because I will go batshit crazy if I don't sleep for a few days, but I have no problem going a few days without eating because I am fat. I have reserves. I can handle not eating for a couple of days, but the way that the Brewers are playing it might be more than a couple of days. If anything Sparky's not sleeping is more detrimental to his health than my not eating. But what the hell do I know?
Tomorrow the Brewers complete this brief 2 game series against the Pirates before heading up to Minneapolis for a weekend series. Chris Narveson has been pretty good as a staring pitcher in late 2009, Spring Training of this year and in the 4 starts he has made in 2010. But his 5th start will have him faced with a daunting task - keep the Brewers in the game long enough to avoid their 10th straight loss. Even though being a Major League baseball player is right up there in my top 3 wishes, I would not want to be in Narveson's shoes tomorrow night. But the best thing about baseball is that there is almost always tomorrow because they play 162 games. You know the Brewers can win tomorrow. It could happen!
- pookon -
www.pookon.com
email: pookondotcom@gmail.com
