Jeff Suppan is a hot topic for throwing barbs at. He has always been my whipping boy because he simply gets paid too much to be a Brewer. A small market team can't make big market mistakes. We may have paid market value for Jeff Suppan, but market-value was WAY overpriced. His career numbers are completely average. He's a "club-house" guy and a "crafty veteran", but that only goes so far. Sean Casey was a legendary nice guy, but he still backed it up with his bat. Suppan is 128-125 career with a 4.66 ERA, that's just not good. He came off a solid 3 year stint with the Cardinals getting aroudn 190 innings and finishing 16-9, 16-10, and 12-7 respectively culminated with a big-time postseason where he was 2006 NLCS MVP and he was worth something. Truth of the matter was he was never going to be a Greg Maddux who could defy age, but also teach young pitchers how to be the best they could be. We got an old pitcher getting older and he never had great stuff, but the marginal loss of speed that's common with getting older is killing Suppan. He's not finding the strike zone and when he is it's equivalent to BP. You can't tell me the Brewers couldn't start a revolving door of prospects to throw as a No. 5 starter that couldn't go 4 innings and give up 5 earned runs.
The problem is compounded by the Brewers being a small-market team without much money. The Yankees can continue to make it rain, as can other big-market teams, but Milwaukee cannot throw cash around like that. Nobody possibly thought Sabathia was going to get re-signed, but we got 1/2 the compensation we thought we were going to. This free-agent market left our staff razor-thin, and Torres' retirement just twisted the knife into the bullpen. Hoffman's stats declined last year. He was still very solid, but throwing 6 million at him is just a stop-gap. Looper was a solid pick-up to eat up innings, but he certainly won't come close to Sabathia, or even Sheets of last year. The Brewers have Ken Macha, but aren't playing the "Moneyball" games of the A's. You need to get value for aging veterans you can't afford to re-sign, AKA a shitload of prospects, but more importantly cannot afford to make BIG mistages in free agency. They picked up Holliday, Giambi, and Nomar at VERY discounted rates, 2/3 pan out they did an UNREAL job. Even if Holliday jumps ship after this year they will likely get back a few high draft picks since he'll be one of the best players in free agency. The Red Sox aren't a very good example normally but pulled great value for Smoltz, Penney, and before that Sean Casey. Veterans like that are obviously attracted to the poossible World Series every year, but the Brewers could have been a contender for Penney if they didn't have 12.5 million dollars committed to Jeff Suppan. Pedro is still around, but once again we don't really have any money to put towards anybody.
That is why the titled of this is what it is. Sup tastes like shit because we're married to the guy for 4 years and are getting treated like the Sham-WOW guys hooker from the relationship. I'm not saying he isn't a good person, I'm just saying paying him that much money on a team like Milwaukee is equivalent to giving your friends $200 for a Red Dog at the Bar.
Thanks to Baseballreference.com for the statwork and making me look competent.
Bottom line the Brewers are too good to rebuild, but not good enough to contend and we're going to chew on it for a few years.
No comments:
Post a Comment