The 2012 Milwaukee Brewers Season can't really be summed up in a few words or quick sentences but I'll try. As far as words go these ones seem to fit: inconstant, pitching, scuffle, tease, struggle, maddening, disappointing, encouraging, hopeful, mind-numbing and frustrating. Here's a couple of phrases that I have picked out: what could have been, too little too late, fatal flaw and positive outlook for the future. I'm not going to go into detail as to why I picked those words or phrases out but if you watched the Brewers this year then you know exactly they describe the season. If you weren't a faithful viewer or you checked out at some point I'll try to drop some hints along the way as to why those words or phrases mean something. I'll get more into depth in the next month or so when I feature the offense and pitching in separate articles where I can break it down by player and compare my 2012 predictions to their 2012 final statistics. All in due time but let's address a couple of things right off the bat here.
Here's what worked. I said that the offense wasn't going to be a problem in 2012 and when all was said and done it wasn't. The Brewers led the NL with 202 Homeruns but also proved that they could play some small ball by leading the NL with 158 Stolen Bases. They were 5th in the NL in On Base Percentage and 1st in Hit by Pitches, which led to them leading the NL in RBIs with 741. That's a lot of offense man. Sure they got off to a very slow start and it hurt that Aramis Ramirez didn't heat up until June and Corey Hart didn't find his stride until a permanent switch to 1st base was made, but even in the early months of the season the offense wasn't really losing them games. The Starting pitching for the most part kept them in games long enough to win. They were 9th in the NL in ERA and were 2nd in the NL with 875 strikeouts (the pitching staff as a whole would lead the NL with 1402 strikeouts). They suffered through injuries (Chris Narveson), winless starts (Marco Estrada) and trades (Zack Greinke) but newcomers like Mike Fiers, Mark Rodgers and Wily Peralta really stepped up and gave us hope for the future. I'll get more in depth on that as well as a couple of other surprises like Carlos Gomez putting together a quality season, the shortstop of the future Jean Segura and the best catching duo in Jonathon Lucroy and Martin Maldonado that I've ever seen. So stay tuned to the blog for those articles.
Here's what didn't work. This was probably the worst Brewers bullpen I have ever seen, and I have sat through some really rough years. It's hard to imagine that the entire bullpen would all have a bad year but that's what happened in 2012. You can't put all of the blame on Axford although it's easy to do because blown saves in the 9th tend to sting a little harder. But KRod, Manny Parra, Kameron Loe and Jose Veras all blew their fair amount of games outside of the 9th inning. There wasn't even one reliable arm in the bullpen that Manager Ron Roenicke could trust at any given moment so he was left with very few options. And yes, one of those options was the legendary Tim Dillard who was able to further his legend with every pitching appearance. Rickie Weeks and Nyjer Morgan, the primary set-up men for Braun and Ramierz, were just awful in 2012. There's this saying that the Brewers offense goes as Rickie Weeks goes and in the first half of the season Weeks wasn't going anywhere. His batting average dropped as low as .152 and when he rebounded in the 2nd half the offense rebounded with him. That's weird how it works. Nyjer Morgan and Tony Plush must have gone away on holiday because they weren't around in 2012. They lost playing time to Carlos Gomez and Norichika Aoki and served mainly as a pinch hitter in the 2nd half of the season. Morgan as you know was one of the biggest reasons why the Brewers were so successful in 2011 both on and off the field as his antics kept the club loose and helped them to have fun. Without Tony Tombstone and Tony Clutch, the offense struggled at times. Injuries. You can't predict injuries happening but you can have depth at the Major and Minor league to not allow it to affect your team. With a payroll around $100 million and a minor league system empty at the AAA level, they weren't equipped to deal with the losses of Chris Narveson, Alex Gonzalez and Mat Gamel. By the time the starting rotation stabilized with Mike Fiers, Wily Peralta and Mark Rodgers, Jean Segura settled into shortstop following the Greinke trade and Corey Hart was moved permanently to 1st, it was too little too late. These moves should have been made a lot sooner and I was calling for all of them (with the exception of Segura was was not on the team yet) the second the injuries occurred.
There's so much more to get into and I will expand on those ideas later but I'm going to save that for the Offense and Pitching articles. Referencing back to my 2012 Overall Predictions article that I posted on March 22, here are some of the predictions that I made:
- The Brewers will finish with a 90-72 record, once again winning the NL Central and returning to the Playoffs for the 2nd year in a row. The Brewers finished with a 83-79 record (3rd place in the NL Central) and missed the playoffs, missing the 2nd NL Wildcard by 5 Games.
- Cincinnati Reds will finish 2nd, St. Louis Cardinals 3rd, Chicago Cubs 4th, Pittsburgh Pirates 5th and in their last year in the NL Central the Houston Astros will once again finish dead last. The Cincinnati Reds finished 1st (97-65), St. Louis Cardinals were 2nd (88-74), Pittsburgh Pirates were 4th (79-83), Chicago Cubs were 5th (61-101) and as expected the Houston Astros were the worst team in baseball and in 6th place (55-107).
- The Brewers will once again easily draw over 3 million fans and flirt with the all-time attendance record. Despite a rough start the Brewers drew 2,831,385 fans which was good for 11th in MLB and beating out cities with better teams (record-wise) like Cincinnati, Washington and Atlanta.
- The Brewers will send 3 players to the All-Star game in Kansas City - Ryan Braun, Zack Greinke and either Corey Hart or John Axford. Ryan Braun was the only Brewers player in the All Star Game but one could argue that Zack Greinke (9-3 record, 3.32 ERA) was snubbed. Corey Hart wasn't anything special and as we all know, John Axford was God awful.
- Brewers fans will have completely forgotten about Prince Fielder because they will finally come to the realization that pitching and defense win games (not Bill Hall). They will also become more educated on the small ball aspects of the game such as bunting runners over and using the hit and run due to the lack of spectacle of the long ball. The Brewers offense was outstanding and they led the league in homeruns, so fans still dug the long ball. But under manager Ron Roenicke they also led the league in stolen bases and utilized the suicide and safety squeeze bunts more than I've ever seen.
A lot of credit has to go to Ron Roenicke and Doug Melvin for the work they did this season. Replacing Prince Fielder's production seemed to be nearly impossible, but Melvin signed Aramis Ramirez in the offseason and the 1-2 punch between him and Braun was as good if not better than the Braun/Fielder combo. Signing Norichika Aoki gave us the leadoff hitter we have been searching for and allowed Weeks to drop down in the order where he belongs. The Greinke trade brought us our shortstop for the future along with 2 pitchers that might be a part of the team in a few years. And several pitchers that he drafted finally made it to the majors and performed well, which should quiet the whole "Doug Melvin cannot produce young pitching" talk. I've got no issues with him whatsoever as a General Manager and I hope that he sticks around for some time because in my opinion he is one of the best in the game.
Another move that Melvin made prior to the 2011 season was hiring Ron Roenicke. In 2011 he led the team to 96 wins but that wasn't enough to impress a lot of critics of this first time manager. Most people would say that with the offense, pitching and shut-down bullpen that the Brewers had, he could have fallen asleep Ken Macha style and managed on autopilot. When the team struggled in 2012 the doubters pointed their fingers at Roenicke and said that he was the wrong man for the job. Those people are wrong once again. It is often in a time of great struggle that you are able to see a person's true character and this season we saw Roenicke as the kind of Manager who could rally his players to a 36-23 record over the final 2 months of the season to lead his club to a winning record. For those of you who don't think that was a big deal consider that they were 12 games under .500 as late as August 19. To even be in the playoff conversation until the final week of the season is nothing short of amazing. The Brewers could have totally mailed it in and faded away quietly into the night, but they instead turned it into a playoff chase. That kind of mentality starts at the top with Roenicke and trickles on down to the other coaches and the players. He sets the pace for everyone and I am more than excited that Melvin extended his contract through the 2015 season if they pick up the option on the last year. At this point I would expect to have him around beyond that because I for one believe that he has proven himself worthy to lead this team. And he also seems like a perfect fit for not only these current players but also the ones that will move from the minors to the majors in the next few years.
I know that I wrote a whole lot of things here so I apologize if your 4th Grade Reading Level doesn't allow your small brain to process all of this information. If that is the case I bid you adieu and I thank you for giving my site another 'hit' and my ego another boost. If you possess the intelligence to follow along with these words that are cleverly strung together to form complex sentences, then make sure you come back for more over the coming weeks because we are just getting started man. Within the next few weeks we are going to be breaking down the players on both sides of the ball and comparing my preseason predictions to their actual final stats. For me this is one of the most fun things that I do in a given baseball season because it allows me to test my knowledge as a Brewers fan. I'm not going to lie - it is going to get weird and I may take my pants off. If that sort of thing gets you all hot and bothered like Rock reminiscing about catching Juan Nieves' no-hitter then make sure you come back for some more. I might even throw in Robin Yount's UD (unnecessary dive) for good measure to close it out and preserve that shit longer than a jar of strawberry jam.
- pookon -
