Christmas Comes Early!!

Even though the Brewers have been playing very poorly for the last couple weeks, there has been a flury of moves that has me very excited. First, the Brewers were able to find some incompetent GM in the name of Jim Bowden to take 2B Junior Spivey. If it wasn't enough just to get rid of him, Doug Melvin was able to acquire an actual, serviceable, big league pitcher in return!

Spivey was leading MIL in strikeouts, and is fourth in the Majors right now with 61. He has struck out an awful rate of once per every three at bats. Spivey's defense has also been somewhat overated as well. True, he has exceptional range that allows him to get to balls that most second basemen wouldn't get to, but with that said, his fielding percentage compared to all MLB second basemen is .969, good for a Chuck Knoblach-like rank of 16th out of 17 qualified 2B, thanks to ranking second in errors with seven. Ok, say fielding percentage isn't a true measure of one's true defensive ability. Range factor is a more conclusive stat. It is calculated by: ((PO + A) divided by innings). Spivey's RF was 4.63, which is ranked 14th out of the 17 second basemen who have qualified. To be honest, Junior Spivey just wasn't very good. He turned in one good half of a season for Arizona in 2002 and that has been it.

The pitcher GM Doug Melvin got from the Washington Nationals was Tomo Ohka. Ohka will be moved into the 5th spot in the starting rotation in place of the erratic Wes Obermueller. The reason Ohka was available was because of his on-field actions concerning Nat's manager Frank Robinson. He showed him up on field when Robinson went out to the mound to make a pitching change. Ohka refused to give him the ball, forcing Robinson to physically get the ball himself, thus clearing a way for Tomo Okha to be traded. If you look at Ohka's career stats, they are pretty similar to that of Ben Sheets, if you remove his Cy Young caliber 2004 season.

Here are the stats for the revamped starting rotation:

			W		L		ERA		G		GS		CG		SHO		SV		SVO		IP		H		R		ER		HR		HBP		BB		SO
	1. C Capuano		5		5		3.40		13		13		0		0		0		0		84.2		75		35		32		10		5		31		67
	2. D Davis		8		5		3.86		14		14		2		1		0		0		91.0		80		42		39		11		2		40		69
	3. T Ohka		4		3		3.33		10		9		0		0		0		0		54.0		44		23		20		6		1		27		17
	4. V Santos		2		5		2.74		13		12		1		0		0		0		75.2		62		27		23		9		3		30		53
	5. B Sheets		2		6		3.51		8		8		0		0		0		0		51.1		46		26		20		9		0		13		48