With an apparent need for pitching due to injuries to Zack Greinke, Mark Rogers, and Manny Parra, the Brewers struck on Friday, acquiring Sergio Mitre from the Yankees from Chris Dickerson. I would assume that Mitre slides into the fifth starter role for the beginning of the season, and afterwards he will be a candidate to fill a bullpen slot. Dickerson’s exit effectively guarantees a roster spot for Brandon Boggs as the fourth outfielder.

Mitre is unimpressive on the surface: a career 5.27 ERA with time split as a reliever and a starter. However, his peripheral numbers are far better – 4.72 FIP and 4.28 xFIP, and over the last four years – the ones that actually matter when trying to project future performance – he has a 4.81 ERA, and similarly better peripherals. His ZiPS projection calls for a 4.71 ERA and a 93 ERA+, which is projected in the American League. That’s not great or even good by any means, but that’s serviceable depth and certainly above replacement level. And that’s precisely what this Brewers team needed.

Furthermore, Mitre should be useful as a reliever. He’s historically been much better against right-handed hitters (4.22 FIP against RHB, 5.34 against LHB), and a move from a mixed role to straight relieving should allow him to be more effective across the board. Leveraged correctly, Mitre should be a capable, nearly league average reliever. Not exciting, but it holds value.

The problem with the deal isn’t Mitre, it’s the fact that it took a promising outfielder with an option remaining in Dickerson to get the deal done. Dickerson has his issues – primarily a penchant for the strikeout bordering on the ridiculous – but as an athletic outfielder with plate discipline and power potential, there was reason to be excited. It’s very possible that Dickerson’s power will never be what it looked like in 2008 (17 HR in almost 600 PAs between AAA and MLB), and if that’s the case both Dickerson and Mitre are very close in value.

However, I don’t see any way in which Mitre and Dickerson should have had equal value in the current baseball market. Mitre is two years removed from Tommy John and hasn’t performed particularly well for New York. Perhaps I’m just conflating Dickerson’s value, but he is a former top prospect who has a .267/.356/.403 career line in the Major Leagues. Mitre should’ve been available for a low-A or AA filler prospect, not a legitimate part of some team’s bench.

At the same time, it’s hard to imagine this move negatively impacting the Brewers too much. Depth was desperately needed at pitcher, as all three of the Brewers’ top starters have had issues finishing (and in the case of Greinke, starting) 200 inning seasons. With Marco Estrada, Mitre, and Mark Rogers, the Brewers can go eight starters deep without having to freak out. Brandon Boggs and Jeremy Reed should be able to perform adequately as bench outfielders. I will certainly miss Chris Dickerson, and I think he was too high a price to pay for Mitre, but the overall impact on the team probably isn’t even enough to deserve the words spilled in this space.

The Brewers added former Rangers outfielder Brandon Boggs on a major league contract today. The outfielder has good minor league numbers, typically posting OPS numbers in the .850 range, built on solid walk rates (12-15%) and moderate power (.200+ ISOs in the low minors, .180 in AAA last season), but he struggles with the strikeout. Boggs has played all three outfield positions but has the most major league experience in left field.

Boggs does have an option left and will likely compete with Chris Dickerson and Carlos Gomez (both also have options remaining) for the two backup outfielder positions. This almost surely means that Joe Inglett, the utility man that can’t actually play anywhere, will be gone next season. Inglett’s bat was very productive for the Brewers in 2010, but his consistent injuries and lack of glove hamstrung the Brewers lineup too much.

News came out yesterday that Chris Capuano will replace Manny Parra in the starting rotation, beginning on Saturday. I’m not terribly excited that Parra has been removed from the starting rotation, as I would’ve liked to see what he could do in the last month and a half. That said, the bullpen may be the long term solution to Parra, as I point out (among other things) here.

That said, I’m actually moderately excited to see Capuano’s return to the starting rotation. Capuano has quietly pitched very well between his two starts and 15 bullpen appearances. His strikeout rate is nearing a batter per inning, he’s walking fewer than three per nine, and his home run rate is slightly below average. His FIP and xFIP both sit slightly below his 3.72 ERA, suggesting that Capuano still has, at the least, MLB ability.

His velocity may be inflated from his time in the pen, but his 87.5 MPH average fastball speed is faster than all of Capuano’s seasons with the Brewers except for 2004. Really, almost everything about Capuano’s 2010 season tracks his previous seasons with the Brewers very well, from swinging strike rate (10%) to distribution of pitches (57-18-25 fastball-slider-changeup) to GB/FB rate (1.17).

Honestly, I’m hard pressed to find something about Capuano that’s really that different from the Capuano that we saw in 2006 and 2007. That means we could be looking at a guy that could post a FIP in the 4.00-4.50 range, which would be a huge boon for this team, as long as a deal can be reached to keep Capuano around for the 2011 season. Of course, we can’t ignore Capuano’s extensive injury history, but there’s nothing to lose right now and much to gain. If Capuano can show the ability to consistently retire Major League hitters in 2010, that could make life for Doug Melvin and the Brewers much easier as they plan for 2011.

McCalvy puts it best:

#Brewers reinstated OF Jody Gerut from the disabled list and released him. No place for him with Lo Cain playing so well.

The Brewers are loaded with outfielders now, with both Cain and Chris Dickerson on the team now as well as Carlos Gomez on his rehab assignment. I expected Gerut to hit well – he hit 14 HRs in a short season with San Diego in 2008 – but it just wasn’t to be, and Tony Gwynn Jr. has turned out to be a perfect fit in San Diego despite looking nothing like a Major League player during his time with the Brewers.

I thought the Brewers would come out ahead in this trade, but Gwynn has turned himself into a solid big league player and Gerut might be out of baseball. Overall, though, it’s hard to be disappointed with the state of the Brewers outfield right now, so it’s hard to get too bent out of shape about this one.

LaTroy Hawkins is back to the DL, which is only the most recent setback for Hawkins, in the first year of a 7.25 million dollar contract. Hawkins had shown good stuff before he went on the DL for the first time, but nothing has really gone right since. This deal is looking very reminiscent of the David Riske contract, which is one that Doug Melvin would certainly like to take back, although Riske seemed like a decent reliever, much like Hawkins, at the time of the signing.

The Brewers will replace him with Mike McClendon, a 25 year old righthander who was having a pretty solid season with Nashville. McClendon has only allowed 5 runs in his 40 innings of work to date, and, as the club cited in choosing him over Carlos Villanueva, he’s running a crazy 48%-22% GB-FB ratio. He has a stupendous 2.50 FIP (mostly due to the 0 home runs allowed, which is slightly unrealistic in the majors) and also a 3.31 tRA, both fantastic numbers. I don’t know anything about his stuff, but he strikes people out (35 in 40 IP), doesn’t walk many (12 BB), and when you combine that with a high amount of ground balls, that adds up to outs. Now it just remains to see if it can translate to the Majors.

Carlos Villanueva has been pitching well in AAA, and as I said when he was sent down, I don’t want to see him lost in the shuffle. However, McClendon has a good enough profile that, both short and long term, it’s hard to see this move hurting Milwaukee.

A source close to ESPN’s Keith Law (Insider link) has informed him that the Brewers have pulled Prince Fielder and Corey Hart off the trade market.

They have decided they’re close enough to contention that they’re not selling, so Hart and Fielder are off the market,” Law said, citing an executive from a rival club that was interested in a Brewers player.

There are a couple things here that need addressing.

First of all, the Brewers are not in contention. The Brewers are 9 games back of Cincinnati and 8.5 games back of St. Louis. Coolstandings gives the Brewers a 0.3% chance to reach the postseason; Baseball Prospectus is much more optimistic, at 0.45%.

This year, wins are no longer at a premium. Does it matter if the Brewers finish with 75 wins or 79? Possibly a little, as far as next year’s attendance goes, but that could easily be offset by the higher draft pick netted by a lower win total. Realistically, wins will only start mattering to Milwaukee if the Reds and Cardinals team buses crash into each other on the way to a game, or if, as people have been saying for two months now, they can rattle off a ten game winning streak. Both are unlikely.

I have a hard time believing that the front office doesn’t recognize this. If they don’t, nothing that I ever write will mean anything, because I assume that the people in our front office are rational actors. It’s possible that this is an edict from Mark Attanasio at the very top, and that would be very disheartening, as a meddling owner can absolutely kill a team. Drayton McLane in Houston meddled his way to bringing in a 5th starter and two mediocre prospects for one of the best pitchers in the league.

What do I think it really means? Possibly that Attanasio, as he’s said on multiple occasions while visiting the broadcast booth, believes that the Brewers are too close to contention next year to deal these important pieces.

Now, he might be right – as soon as the Brewers got rid of the toxic Jeff Suppan and removed Trevor Hoffman from the closer’s role, the team has vastly improved. When Suppan was released on June 7th, the Brewers were 23-34. Their current record of 48-55 isn’t exactly setting the world on fire, but it means that in the interim they have a 25-21 record, good for a .543 winning percentage, and that’s the best record in the division over that time frame by a half game over Cincinnati and a full game over St. Louis.

There’s a good reason to believe that the Brewers can sustain this kind of performance. Ryan Braun is in a down year, and should perform better over the rest of this year and next year. Prince Fielder, despite his poor first half, is still showing monster power. Rickie Weeks is becoming one of the preeminent second basemen in the league, and despite his most recent start, Yovani Gallardo is a legitimate ace. Hart has shown fantastic power, although there’s still no guarantee that he’s this good. The list goes on; the team’s weakness is starting pitching, but everything else is set, essentially.

However, this idea of contention in 2011 would preclude the possibility of a Fielder or Hart trade in the offseason. I still think the Brewers would be willing to trade either player in order to pick up a MLB ready starting pitcher – say, Ricky Nolasco, or something to that effect – but not to pick up minor league talent.

There’s also the possibility that this is simply Melvin’s response to an unfavorable market. Dan Haren and Roy Oswalt (plus $11 million!) brought in terribly unfavorable packages, and Melvin might just think that the market isn’t ready for him to deal. That way, if a market develops in the offseason, he could get good value for Hart and Fielder, and if not, then they try to contend in 2011.

I also think that Hart’s hand injury has a large part in this, as that likely killed his market value. You could make the argument that Melvin should have acted earlier here, but again, it didn’t seem like a favorable market was there, and I’d rather keep Hart than trade him for an underwhelming package like the Diamondbacks and Astros have received recently.

Ideally, I still would’ve liked to see the Brewers play the market over the last hours of the trading deadline, and it’s possible that we see a lesser piece like Jim Edmonds, Todd Coffey, or Carlos Villanueva go. I really doubt, however, that this decision really changes anything. The market just didn’t seem to exist right now, and so the Brewers will have to try again either in the offseason or at next year’s deadline.

Carlos Villanueva was sent down to AAA after today’s game, according to Adam McCalvy, in order to make room for LaTroy Hawkins’s return from the DL.

Villanueva has had a pretty solid year this year, particularly when you look at his peripherals. Yes, he’s walking more batters than his previous career marks, but the increase in strikeouts more than makes up for it. 2010, at least entering today’s game, represented career highs in both FIP (3.48) and xFIP (3.38), although part of that is due to this year being Villanueva’s first as a full time reliever. More important, though, is that Villanueva’s swinging strike rate of 13% is the highest of his career, and swinging strike rate is the best indicator of a pitcher that can draw strikeouts.

Due to the fact that this increased strikeout rate is only in 48 innings, ZiPS only projects a 4.05 FIP for Villanueva, actually well worse than the 3.40 projected for Hawkins. Competetively, this move is pretty meaningless, as the Brewers are replacing a solid, right handed reliever with another solid, right handed reliever, and it’s hard to argue with using Villanueva’s remaining option here. Still, I hope Villanueva doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. He has good stuff and misses bats like crazy, which is pretty much what you need in a relief pitcher.