An Early Edition of Friday's Hnarrative

When I woke up Wednesday morning and heard on the radio about the biggest one day shakeup the entire year I was ecstatic. Although the Brewers may be a far ways from being mathematically out of the playoffs the realistic window is closing fast. As far as the major league roster is concerned, Bill Hall was moved to assignment and Hardy was sent down to AAA. I’m looking forward to checking out the new faces we’ve moved up in Escobar, Iribarren, and Bourgeois. Including another probable major league stint from Gamel in the closing months of the 2009 season we will get a great chance to see the future of the Brewers. This excitement is bittersweet however knowing that even though Melvin claims this not a “white flag,” it’s about as close as you can get. Either way it should generate excitement and more profit for the rest of the season, which I’ll continue to patiently wait to be applied to our player payroll. The final part of the Wednesday shakeup was the firing of the Brewers pitching coach, Billy Castro. If you would like to know my feelings on this move I suggest reading my Wednesday Hnarration. Instead I’d like to focus on the roster moves that took place.

Let’s start with Bill Hall. If any team is desperate enough to pick up his large contract what a plus. It’s rather clear that Hall had worn out his welcome in Milwaukee over the past two years or so. Over that time Hall’s role has regressed from a clutch hitter and a mainstay in the starting lineup to a lackluster defensive replacement. Although our former Mother’s Day savior did have success clutch hitting this year, it felt like he couldn’t get a hit in the first 6 innings of a ball game. When you get excited about a walk from a player so you don’t have to witness him swing a bat that player has got to be awful. It’s fairly clear that even though results are supposed to drive whether or not you should stay on the major league roster for the Brewers (just look at Jorge Julio and Brad Nelson); Melvin wanted to give him a real good chance to pull it around to save face on signing Billy to such a bloated contract. Even if he were to stay with the club the rest of the year he would just waste away on our bench like he has all year long. I would much rather get a chance to see the aforementioned younger faces in pinch hitting roles and spot starts. I do have to give props to The Doorman (you can see him behind the visiting dugouts the majority of Miller Park games) for supporting Hall by wearing his jersey to last night game. My respect for The Doorman grew once again with that move.

Now onto the case of the tough luck of JJ Hardy. He has had a heck of a grind this season. If you look back it would be tough to find at-bats where Hardy would give away an out. He had a ton of hard hit balls which went right an outfielder or to the left side of the infield. In addition to that his defense is still above par and is blessed with one of the strongest arms on the team. After watching him this year I have no reason to believe he will not be a major leaguer for a long time to come still. Whether or not the majority of those years are spent in a Brewers uniform remains to be seen and is dependent on a lot of variables. As far as the short term is considered, we can only hope JJ will be able to loosen up, get hot at the plate, and return to the Brewers soon to provide us with some offense he has been unable to produce so far this season. That will only matter if the Brewers are still in the playoff race by the time his run at Nashville over, which is definitely not a known fact. Either way it will be interesting to see what our infield will look like next year assuming Gamel and Escobar perform up to their expectations in addition to Hardy, the return of Weeks, McGeehee, and very possibly Bill Hall.

That’s all I got for you today. You’re only required to read on if you’re Ted Thompson. I would like repeat my convictions I voiced on Wednesday about Vick. He would provide a wonderful backup to Rodgers would get hurt and just imagine all of options you could have on offense with both Vick and Rodgers on the field at the same time. If you want to know how powerful we would be just consider if you were facing that as a defense and how difficult it would be to make a game plan for that. I know he’s got baggage, but I think it is over exaggerated from what it actually will be considering how hard Vick seems to be trying to rectify his atrocious acts. Thanks Ted.