was behind that firing ( i assume Senor Mustachio himself) has the biggest set of balls in the world. i don’t think it’s bad to get rid of him , as i didn’t think much of him myself, but the timing….damn….makes you wonder how high the heat is on others in the organization.

With that amount of talent on the roster, the Brewers should have been cruising to a playoff spot. That they may very well not make it should affect Yost, in my opinion.

very unusual to fire the manager of a contending team this late. A lot of Brewers’ fans probably wish it had been done months ago. Melvin is either very brave or very scared.

That suprises me as much as anything.

That’s what happens when you give Jason Kendall a lot more ABs than he deserves.

It’s all Doug Melvin’s fault! For not giving us Yovani Gallardo in exchange of Laird. JK. I have no idea why they’d fire at such an odd time.

Not quite.

While it may be tough to outbid the Yankees, who almost certainly will pursue Sabathia (new boss Hank Steinbrenner has said as much) in an out-of-control bidding war, the Angels could still hold something of a homefield advantage for the California native. However, folks close to him suggest that he’s become more open-minded toward all locales after loving Milwaukee a lot more than he expected, and a recent report by Newsday’s Ken Davidoff suggested that Sabathia has at least delayed breaking ground on the dream home he’d been planning in Orange County, Calif.

Heyman reports.

Yost seems really stupid in the way that he lets Sabathia throw 120 pitches in a 7-0 game and in many other ways, but this rarely happens when a team is in the middle of a playoff race in september

just makes no sense at all.

What is Dale Sveum, and his extensive managerial experience, going to lead the Brew Crew to the playoffs now in the next couple weeks?

just go rec happy and rec any fanpost done yesterday or today?

Seriously, this is news and fanpost worthy, but why rec it?

In the eighth inning of yesterday’s first game, the Brewers were tied 3-3. Guillermo Mota allowed a leadoff single to Jayson Werth, and was lifted for Brian Shouse so that Shouse could face Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. (Charlie Manuel’s refusal to always put a right-handed batter between those two is a big reason why the Phillies will have trouble winning a short series.) Utley sacrificed Werth to second, setting up Shouse versus Howard.

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.

So it was no surprise that four pitches later, the Phillies were up 7-3. Burrell singled in one run, and Shane Victorino cleared the bases with a three-run homer to left.

That really is ridiculous, when you’re talking about a team that needs outs and wins like it needs air.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=8077