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A Contending RotAtion From weakness to strengthby Brian Carriveau

In mid-December, just a few days before Christmas, Zack Greinke met with the Wisconsin media for the first time.

With the in-state Green Bay Packers in the middle of a playoff chase, inquiring minds needed to know what the newest member of the Milwaukee Brewers thought of the team in Titletown.

While not a Packers fan per se, Greinke admitted, “I like Aaron Rodgers for a fantasy quarterback, but he got drafted too high and early this year. I almost worked out a trade for him and Greg Jennings, but it fell through.”

Himself the centerpiece of arguably the biggest trade of the hot-stove season, Greinke was playing the part of general manager for his own fantasy football franchise.

“The problem probably in baseball, too, is you always want to get something but you like what you have,” said

Greinke. “It’s hard to give up what you have in fantasy football, too.”

Greinke had empathy for Brewers general manager Doug Melvin, who paid a steep price to put his team into pennant contention. Melvin sent shortstop Alcides Escobar, center fielder Lorenzo Cain, and pitchers Jeremy Jeffress and Jake Odorizzi to Kansas City in exchange for Greinke, shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt, and cash.

The Brewers were left with one of the most depleted farm systems in baseball, but they also assembled one of the better pitching rotations in the National League.

“I knew it was going to be a costly trade,” said Melvin. “We gave up some very talented players. The one thing about it is, we’re getting a young pitcher, 27 years old and with a Cy Young Award, and someone who’s very energized to be in the postseason.”

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Phase OneAs a precursor to the Zack Greinke deal, the Brewers acquired former Blue Jays right-hander Shaun Marcum in early December, sending 2008 first-round draft choice Brett Lawrie to Toronto. Struck on the eve of the annual Baseball Winter Meetings in Orlando, FL, the deal improved the Brewers starting pitching, but the team was still probably an-other piece away from significantly improving the rotation.

In 2010 the Brewers starters had the second-worst ERA in the National League at 4.65. In 2009 they were dead last at 5.37. So, the team still had a lot of ground to make up to get back to respectability, but it was a start.

In Marcum, the Brewers are inheriting a pitcher who has excellent control and a near uncanny ability to strike out opposing batters despite not having overpowering stuff. Armed with a fastball that can’t even register 90 mph on a radar gun, one might think Marcum would overcompensate and throw as hard as possible. Instead, he’s learned to be more effective by taking some velocity his pitches.

“One thing I learned last year with John Buck as our catcher, he taught me to take speed off all my pitches,” said Marcum. “So instead of throwing my 88 to 87 mile-per-hour fastball, throw it around 84 or 85. Instead of throwing my changeup 81, 82, take some off of it where I was getting it down around the end of the year to 71, 72 miles per hour.”

Marcum throws his fastball as little as any player in the majors, instead relying on his off-speed stuff and precision. His change-up is about as nasty as it gets.

“I developed a change-up when I was young, and it’s been one of those pitches that helped me throughout my career,” said Marcum in an interview with ESPN Radio 540 AM in Milwaukee. “And it’s something that I have to continue to use, not being a guy that throws 95. It’s definitely going to be a challenge in this new division learning hitters.”

The fact that Marcum succeeded in the loaded AL East, of all divisions, makes it even more impressive. The right-hander should benefit from pitching in the National League, where he doesn’t have to face stacked lineups that include the designated hitter day in and day out. Going up against lineups like the Pittsburgh Pirates and Houston Astros more frequently should be relatively easy compared to the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Tampa Bay Rays.

Doug Melvin tried to warn against too much optimism, however.

“The difference between ERAs in the American League

and the National League is only .12,” said Melvin. “So just coming to the National League, facing pitchers doesn’t guarantee you’re automatically going to improve your ERA. So there’s a lot of components to your team that have to work too.”

The team stands to improve in the walks allowed depart-ment with the addition of Marcum as well. Ranking second in the NL as a staff, the Brewers gave up 582 walks last season, while Marcum ranked fourth in the AL in 2010, giving up less than two walks per nine innings (1.98).

Perhaps most important of all, the trade for Greinke never would have happened without initiating phase one of improving the starting rotation first.

Phase TwOHeading into the offseason, it had been speculated for over a year that the Brewers would trade Prince Fielder since he will only be under Milwaukee’s control through 2011. Fielder isn’t especially interested in signing a contract extension unless it blows him away. With Ryan Howard inking an extension with the Philadelphia Phillies last season and Adrian Gonzalez agreeing to a new deal with the Boston Red Sox in the offseason, the market has been set for high-profile free agent first basemen.

Plus, Fielder has an agent in Scott Boras who simply won’t be denied a very lucrative contract for his client. The power-hitting first baseman knows he’ll make upwards of $100 million in free agency, all he has to do is wait.

The Brewers could have traded Fielder during the offseason knowing that they don’t have a very good chance of re-signing him going forward. But by keeping Fielder and trading for Shaun Marcum, Milwaukee sent the rest of

While his strikeouts were down in 2010, Zach Greinke still features a dominant repertoire of pitches.

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baseball a message. The Brewers were originally on Zack Greinke’s no-trade list, but those two decisions were able to get him to change his mind.

“We put the list together pretty fast,” said Greinke, “and the way I was kind of thinking about it at the time was, Prince––who is a very good player––I knew he had just one year left and didn’t know if they were planning on trading him or what the plans of Milwaukee were this offseason.

“So [I] kinda just wanted to see if they were going to try to restock a little bit, then it wouldn’t have been one of my first choices. But when they decided to keep Prince and then traded for Marcum, it ended up... I would have put them in probably the top three teams I would have preferred to get traded to. So it all worked out good.”

Doug Melvin confirmed Greinke’s line of thinking.“We weren’t on the original list, and then Zack said

that the list can change,” said Melvin. “He’s a pretty bright, intelligent guy, follows the game. I think that when he saw we picked up Marcum and appeared that Prince was going to be here, his list changed and he wanted to be a part of our organization.”

Melvin pulled the trigger to acquire Greinke on December 19, and sent a signal to Brewers fans everywhere

that the franchise was in “win now” mode. Just as in 2008 with the CC Sabathia trade, the team made a commitment to winning. But, the Brewers have organizational control over Greinke and Marcum for the next two seasons, rather than the three months they had Sabathia.

“I told Zack that,” said Melvin. “I said, ‘Zack, this is like getting CC but having you for two years, or I hope longer, as opposed to just a few months.’”

Like Marcum, Greinke throws strikes and induces ground balls. But they’re worlds apart in that Greinke is a power pitcher, capable of reaching the mid-to-upper 90s on his fastball.

The AL Cy Young Award winner in 2009, Greinke led the league with a ridiculous 2.16 ERA, .43 home runs per nine innings, and 1.073 WHIP. Those numbers did regress a bit in 2010, which was some cause for concern. His ERA jumped more than two runs per game to 4.17 and he gave up 18 home runs after allowing only 11 in 2009.

But the argument can be made that Greinke also became a more well-rounded pitcher in 2010, relying more on his change-up than ever before and effectively mixing all his pitches. The result was a fewer strikeouts, but also more ground balls.

“He throws 94 to 96,” said Melvin. “He’s got a good breaking ball, good curveball, and slider, and he throws strikes. And with Marcum and Zack both throwing strikes, that was one of our issues with starting pitching last year. So we’ve got two strike throwers in there that we hope will go deeper into the game and put a lot less stress on the bullpen.”

CObblIng TOgeTher a rOTaTIOnGreinke and Marcum join a rotation that already includes holdovers Yovani Gallardo, Randy Wolf, and Chris Narveson.

Shawn Marcum’s WHIP has decreased every year he’s been in the majors since becoming a full-time starter.

Yovani Gallardo recorded 200 or more strikeouts in both 2009 and 2010.

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It’s hard to predict the pecking order the staff will place them in due to factors like breaking up righties and lefties or defer-ring to seniority.

For argument’s sake, Greinke could be considered the new staff ace, slotting Gallardo, Marcum, and Wolf at the two, three, and four spots. Narveson may battle Manny Parra for the fifth spot in the rotation, but it’s very possible that the Brewers could decide Parra is better off in the bullpen.

With the exception of maybe Narveson, the Brewers have an above-average pitcher at every spot in their rotation, making them one of the most fearsome in all of baseball. In fact, Greinke, Gallardo, and Marcum all started on Opening Day in 2010.

Among the holdovers from last year’s squad, Gallardo is a pitcher that looks to be improving year to year. With twice as many wins as he had losses––a 14–7 record––2010 was arguably his best year, and he’s ranked second in the NL with more than nine strikeouts per nine innings in each of the past two seasons.

As long as Wolf can build on his strong finish last season—6–3, 2.67 ERA in his last 13 starts—he’ll be a better option than his overall 2010 numbers would indicate. At the very least, he’s a workhorse, ranking in the top ten in innings pitched in the NL in each of the past two seasons.

Narveson, meanwhile, hasn’t been spectacular, but he did at least compile a winning record in 2010, his first season as a mostly full-time starter.

Taken together, the Brewers would seem to stack up well against other rotations across baseball outside of perhaps the Philadelphia Phillies. Given their acquisition of Cliff Lee via free agency to join a group that already includes Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, Cole Hamels, and Joe Blanton, not many teams are going to put up comparable production over a 162-game season.

But with the exception of Philadelphia, the Brewers–¬–at least on paper––look as if they would be able to match up favorably against any starting five in the league, including the impressive young rotation of last year’s World Series champion San Francisco Giants—Matt Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, Jonathan Sanchez, and Barry Zito.

“It’s hard to rank different rotations,” said new Brewers manager Ron Roenicke. “You look at Philly and what they’ve done, it’s a pretty incredible rotation. The Giants, you saw the young guys with them, what they did in the playoffs last year with them. We are really good in our rotation. I don’t want to rank them, but we are really good.”

Inside the NL Central, the toughest competitors as far as starting pitching would be the St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds. The Cardinals’ trio of Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright, and Jamie Garcia are as formidable as they come even if the back end of their rotation is slightly weaker. The resurgent Reds, who returned to the postseason for the first time since 1995 last season, boast a young and deep group that has the potential to be very good. With the likes of Johnny Cueto, Edinson Volquez, Travis Wood, and Bronson Arroyo, they have the capability of being great as long as they can be consistent.

So where do the Brewers rank?“You know, you can gauge that when guys are healthy,”

said Doug Melvin. “And that’s the biggest fear a general man-ager has, probably a manager too, is staying healthy. And with pitchers, even Zack alluded to that, he said that with a pitcher you never know how long your career is going to be so you want to have a chance to win. But if we’re healthy, we’re going to have a much, much better staff than we’ve been since I’ve been here.”

wIn nOwIt all comes back to the “win now” philosophy, not only from an organizational standpoint, but for guys like Greinke as well. The young man doesn’t know how long his career will last, so he wants to be part of a contending team––a big reason he wanted out of Kansas City.

“When I was hired, Doug mentioned at the press confer-ence that he wanted to upgrade the pitching staff, the starting staff,” said Roenicke. “That’s not easy to do. It’s hard to get good starting pitching, and he got two really good starting pitchers. It was a nice early Christmas present.”

And Brewers fans hope it’s the type of gift that keeps on giving. MSP

Brian Carriveau is the editor of the Maple Street Press Brewers Annual and Maple Street Press Packers Annual. He writes about the Brewers for PocketDoppler.com, and is a Wisconsin newspaper columnist.

Behind the strength of Randy Wolf’s 19 hits and .247 batting average in 2010, the Brewers also hope they have

one of the best groups of hitting pitchers in the majors.

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