Arguing “these struggling Brewers do not have even the slightest resemblance to the Brewers who came out of spring training with the chance to compete for the wild card,” the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Michael Hunt tells Ned Yost’s lynch mob to cool off.
We are not translating hieroglyphs off an Egyptian tomb here when we say that the Brewers’ power was built around Lee, Jenkins and Weeks. Trade one, bench one and lose one, and it’s not hard to see why the Brewers haven’t been producing runs (until Tuesday), particularly with a lineup more patchwork than an Appalachian quilt.
In a season of appreciable expectations, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. You know things are bad when the replacements (or the replacements for the replacements) – Gabe Gross and Laynce Nix – get hurt, even rendering pointless the trifling details of what the Brewers wanted to do with their outfield in the final month.
It’s stunning, then, to hear people somehow equate this situation with the Brewers of the past, as if there is some continuing relationship between this team and the grimmer parts of the franchise’s history. There is no connection. The pieces are mostly there, or at least they were before Sheets couldn’t get out of Maryvale. The foundation again made itself apparent against the Dodgers with Corey Hart, who drove in six runs in the 9-0 victory.
And while change for the sake of change is sometimes advisable, the Brewers should’ve learned a lesson with Phil Garner, who never had the players. There was never a question of his knowledge and insight, which are apparent in Houston. Then again, the Astros have players.