Monday, September 15, 2008

Holy Crap: Brewers Fire Yost

Another glimmer of hope?

That's what the headline at JSOnline says anyway. Right now I can't get it to load. I'm hearing it's Sveum for the rest of the season. I wish it was Kapler. Or Harvey Kuehn's corpse.

Update: It's loading now. Here's the press release. Sveum is the manager with Simmons staying on in an advisory role.

Update #2: Here's an espn article on the firing. It includes this quote from a Brewers player that wished to remain anonymous *cough* Braun *cough*:

"I think we have sucked in September so far... And I don't think it's his fault that we can't hit or pitch right now, but something had to change."

Update #3: Tom H. think Mark A. pulled the trigger on this one. I think that's probably true.

Update #4: Robin Yount will be the new bench coach for the remainder of the season.

31 comments:

Tracker said...

Sveum. You knew it would be somebody from the dugout at this point of the season but Sveum? I'm completely underwhelmed.

DannyNoonan said...

Me too. It's bad timing. It probably should have been done way earlier or in the off season. There's bound to be some transition problems now, and not enough games to acclimate.

That said, something had to be done. Maybe they'll start kicking ass now.

Benjamin said...

At the very least it will remove Sveum from coaching third base.

DannyNoonan said...

That could get us a win or two.

Benjamin said...

I hope that this means that changes will be made to the lineup starting tomorrow. This can't be a time to keep the status quo on the field and hope that the change in management personnel will be enough.

E.S.K. said...

Today is a day that just keeps on giving, and my birthday isn't even til tomorrow!!

(I called for Svuem two years ago...this may be a "be careful what you wish for" situation)

Tracker said...

If Sveum's been occasionally overaggressive with the send sign, I'll cut him some slack since the Brewers have been so unproductive with guys on base. Guy just doesn't seem like managment material though.

The language on SImmons implies that he's been demoted. Wonder if he's out of the dugout.

Tracker said...

You called for Sveum? That was hard to hear amongst your repeated calls for Kremblas. What did you see in Sveum then?

DannyNoonan said...

The more I think about it, the more I wish they would have let Kapler take rest of the season. He's part of the team already, he has management experiance, and he's not part of the Yost regime.

It would be just like when Lance Harbor coached the West Canaan High football team to the state championship in Varsity Blues.

Anonymous said...

That quote is totally Braun.

Anonymous said...

Also, the Cubs have another no-hitter going against Houston.

Eric said...

Wow. I've said since the SAbbathia trade that the Brewers would not make the playoffs with Yost at the helm. Now they just might.

Brewers will win 89 games this season.

E.S.K. said...

To be totally honest Tracker, I do not remember right now why I called for Svuem, other than that I like his aggressive approach.

I have also been a giant Kremblas shill, yes. And I still think he would have been the perfect guy to promote, since most of this team has won a championship with him.

E.S.K. said...

kind of a shitty day to close a blog, eh?

E.S.K. said...

"That's a difficult one to answer myself," said Melvin, who will address the matter further in a 6:30 p.m. CT press conference at the team hotel in Chicago. "The club is just not performing close to the way they performed earlier. We have 12 days left and we don't know what could jump-start the club. This was, I guess, the only thing we thought had a chance of jump-starting the club.

Attanassio is obviously meddling.

Anonymous said...

Hopefully now I can pitch fewer than 130 innings tomorrow night.

E.S.K. said...

shut up CC. Get back on the mound

DannyNoonan said...

I hope that Sveum realizes his assignment now is not to do everything just like Ned did. Really, this is the opportunity to bench Bill hall, limit Gagne to mop-up duty, give Kendall a break and let that Salome kid rake a little. That sort of thing. My biggest fear is that nothing will change except the agressiveness of the 3rd base coach.

Eric said...

Good point Danny. The point of the exercise must not be to carry on.

Maybe Kapler isn't managing becasue he's needed on the field.

Who _should_ manage the Brewers? assuming they don't hire from without.

Sveum?
Simmons?
Kremblis?
Kapler?

Anonymous said...

Freeway.

E.S.K. said...

I think we can expect some radical changes on Tuesday.

Hopefully Svuem finds a way to cut Bill Hall

E.S.K. said...

Kremblas and Simmons are adiosed from the club.

You have to be kidding with Kapler.

There is only one answer

JEFF CIRILLO!!!!!!

PaulNoonan said...

From Joe Sheehan:

Yost elected to walk Howard to face Pat Burrell. This was... well, it strains my vocabulary to find the right word for it. Howard cannot hit left-handers, and would be a platoon player if performance mattered anywhere near as much as reputation does. Or if he had a competent manager. Howard is at .228/.313/.458 against lefties in his career, .212/.287/.410 this year. Howard. Can't. Hit. Lefties. Shouse, on the other hand, is in the major leagues for exactly one reason: lefties can't hit him, to the tune of .175/.192/.289 this year, and .211/.263/.325 for his career, which includes a bunch of years when he was barely a major leaguer. Manuel sending Howard up against Shouse was a continuation of a theme for the Phillies: not hitting for Howard when he has little chance of doing something good. He was giving Yost an out, and Yost gave it right back.

That set up Shouse versus Pat Burrell, which cried out for a right-handed reliever. After all, Shouse is a pure specialist (.307/.390/.455 vs. RHB career; .293/.371/.446 this year). The only way walking Howard even might make sense is if Yost were to bring in a righty to try and get a double play out of Burrell. Burrell doesn't have the big platoon splits he showed earlier in his career—he's a dangerous hitter against both kinds of hurlers—but leaving Shouse in to face him was asking for trouble.

Think about this for a second. Yost had a 481 OPS pitcher facing a 697 OPS hitter. He elected to issue an intentional walk in that situation to allow an 817 OPS pitcher to face a 905 OPS hitter with an additional runner on base. That's when you start looking around the roof of the stadium for snipers, because gunpoint is the only place where that kind of decision makes sense.

DannyNoonan said...

"There is only one answer

JEFF CIRILLO!!!!!!"

Imagine if we had Rillo at third instead of Bill Hall. That'd be nice.

E.S.K. said...

That's when you start looking around the roof of the stadium for snipers, because gunpoint is the only place where that kind of decision makes sense.

that is why he gets paid

Anonymous said...

The last paragraph of Joe Sheehan's makes me sick. I didn't realize it was that bad.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad I found this commentary today. Since 2:00 when I got a text that said Yost was fired, I thought, "I would really like to read what ESK and PaulNoonan have to say about this." Head to the good old WSB - freaking closed. While I'm not overwhelmed by the commentary, at least now I know... ;-)

The Sheehan article with the stats on the Shouse - Howard/Burrell sequence is fantastic stuff, and ESK's right, the sniper comment is indicative of why he gets paid.

(And for the record, I could not have been more wrong when I said at the beginning of the season that Gagne would get 35 saves. Wrong, wrong, wrong.)

E.S.K. said...

Silverwolf, it happened after I left work and I had class last night.

I'll have some thoughts on it today.

Sorry for underwhelming you brotha.

PaulNoonan said...

I'm fairly swamped right now. My analysis, in a nutshell, is that this should have happened months ago, and that the only reason that Sveum is likely to be better is the fear of God/Attanasio.

PaulNoonan said...

Alternatively, he may do some stupid crap like bunt more frequently. I can actually stand that if he makes better personnel decisions.

The Asian Badger said...

No question Mark A. put the gun to the head of Melvin on this one. After all, it's his money. The golden rule and all that.

It was the right move.