Milwaukee Brewers First Half Recap

I can sum up the Milwaukee Brewers’ first half in one word: fail. The Brew Crew finished the first part of the season at a paltry 40-49. There are many reasons to why the Crew is in this position.

The team’s batting has been fair, the defense has been decent, and the pitching has been awful. I’ll pick apart each aspect of the Brewers in this article, starting with batting.

The Brewers’ batting has been just what you’d expect it to be, a lot of power, and not much of anything else. Milwaukee has continued to hit a lot of homers, but they lack small ball skills terribly, and it’s come back to haunt them on numerous occasions. As of late, their first five batters in Rickie Weeks, Corey Hart, Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, and Casey McGehee have all been a big home run threat, which is nice, but they’re going to have to focus a little more on the fundamentals of batting if they want to improve.

The Brew Crew’s defense has steadily improved over the past couple seasons, and it’s starting to show this year. New additions Jim Edmonds and Carlos Gomez have brought defensive stability to the outfield, and Ryan Braun is improving. The infield is solid defensively. They don’t make too many errors, and have some Web Gems every now and again.

Base running is something you usually don’t think about, but the Brewers make you notice their base running, and not in a good way. Stealing is a lost treasure throughout the whole MLB, and the Crew is no exception. On the base paths is where you notice Milwaukee. They have made tons of costly base running blunders that have taken away crucial runs, so that needs to improve greatly.

> Fans can find a great selection of Milwaukee Brewers apparel & hats online through MLB Center and Pro Baseball Fans!

The Brewers’ pitching is like a bad car accident. It’s a horrendous sight, but you can’t look away. The starting pitching has slacked greatly. They seem to hit better than they can pitch. Yovani Gallardo has been the only bright spot, as he has pitched well after a rocky start to the year. Randy Wolf and Dave Bush have been inconsistent, as has the rest of the rotation.

Bullpens can make or break a team, and the Crew’s pen has done much more breaking than making. There have really been no standout relief pitchers for them, and it has made for a miserable experience for Brewer fans. At the beginning of the season, the closer spot was also a weak point for the team, as the legendary Trevor Hoffman got off to a shaky start, which came as a surprise after his success last year. Then, along came John Axford. He had been light’s out thus far, and is definitely the team’s long-term closer. Even better is that Hoffman has returned to his old form, and has proved to be an effective setup man. Chances are Ken Macha lets Trevor get to 600 saves in the second half, which will allow him to retire the way he should, on top.

All in all, the Brewers need to make some big improvements if they want to even come close to the playoffs. Eventually, the team will have to trade Prince for pitching; because there’s no way that they’ll retain him after the 2011 season. We’ll see how the second half goes, and hopefully the Crew makes it somewhat interesting for the Milwaukee faithful.

By: Zach Rastall
MLB Centers Milwaukee Brewers Correspondent

> View all of the MLB baseball news articles from MLB Center.