Trust Issues

Happy one year Balls, Brats and Beer anniversary! It's been a fun ride.

You know what's insane? The Green Bay Packers play on August 13. Yeah...that's Saturday. I'm more than excited to see actual football again, but there's another team in Wisconsin that deserves just as much if not more attention for the next few months or so. Lately, this team has been winning, winning and...winning. They have created a lot of buzz around the state of Wisconsin with their play at home and their play in general, winning 11 of their last 12 games and stretching out a three game division lead over the St. Louis Cardinals. Did I mention that all 12 of those games were against division opponents? Granted, six of them were against the lowly Houston Astros, but three were against the Chicago Cubs (just had an eight game winning streak) and the other three were against the hated Cardinals. The Brewers are 65-50 and about to face off against the Cards again in what has become a two team division race; this time in St. Louis. It's just as big as if not bigger than last week's series at Miller Park because we are that much closer to playoff time and it will be a tougher task for the Brewers to go into a hostile environment and succeed. When it's all said and done, I expect the Crew to take one game of the three game set to retain the division lead, but of course the fan in me would like to see the Brewers win AT LEAST one game.

A two game lead would be nice to have heading into the weekend series against the struggling (to put it lightly) Pittsburgh Pirates. The ongoing season series with St. Louis will only continue to get bigger as we get later into the season - the Brewers have nine more to go against the Cardinals. Before this series begins on Tuesday, there's something I'd like to address: trust. As the season has progressed, I've found myself gaining more and more trust with the Milwaukee Brewers - in the first month of games or so, I trusted:

Ryan Braun
Prince Fielder
Rickie Weeks*
Shaun Marcum

These were all players that in mind deserved to be All-Stars, and three of them were. Notice how the low number of players correlates with how poorly the Brewers were playing early on in the season. However, as more games were played and more players came back from injury, I began to trust more players like:

Jonathan Lucroy
Yovani Gallardo
Randy Wolf
John Axford
Nyjer Morgan

The Brewers were performing better and barely managed to be in first place once we got to the All-Star break (which seems so long ago now), and then they had to survive a brutal road trip. By going 5-6 in Colorado, Arizona and San Francisco, the Brewers somehow managed to remain in first and that's when they went on their recent tear. In the first part of the second half of the season, many more players started to become reliable which helped the Brewers get over the losses of Rickie Weeks and Carlos Gomez to injury:

Corey Hart
Yuniesky Betancourt
Zack Greinke
Kameron Loe
Takashi Saito
LaTroy Hawkins

Current trust count: 15 (Hitters: 7, Pitchers: 8)

Other players on the roster, like Casey McGehee and Francisco Rodriguez, are on their way to earning my trust, which would make a total 17 players on the trust list. McGehee's three home run outburst showed he might be getting his stroke back (finally) and although K-Rod has had some sketchy moments in his time in a Brewer uniform, the Brewers have yet to lose a game as a result of K-Rod. Some guys simply don't play enough to earn my trust (Josh Wilson, Mark Kotsay, George Kottaras, Carlos Gomez*, Tim Dillard), some haven't been in a Brewer uniform long enough to earn my trust (Felipe Lopez, Jerry Hairston Jr.) and some haven't quite performed well enough to earn my trust (Craig Counsell, Marco Estrada, Chris Narveson). Agree with my reasoning or not, the point is that we feel better about this team each and every day. When the offense was struggling, the pitching was superb; as of late, with the pitching not performing quite as well, the offense has been pounding the baseball. This helps explain how close the number of players I trust is between pitchers and hitters. And just because I don't trust a player doesn't mean I don't think they are performing well for their role. This season, I began to take a liking to Go-Go because I could accept that he was only good for world class defense in center and good base running. With the Narve-Dog, he is probably one of the most reliable number five starters in baseball. Other players provide good depth and fill in nicely when needed.

Not much to complain about these days, and that's saying something, because I almost always have something to b---- about. Playing poorly on the road? The Brewers are 8-6 on the road post All-Star break. Replacing McGehee? He is beginning to provide stability in the five hole. Lack of production from guys not named Braun and Fielder? Almost everyone has stepped their game up on offense over the past week. Kameron Loe? Totally shutting down hitters in any situation he's called on to enter. So on that note, be sure to check out the Cards/Brewers series this week. It's a biggie and who knows what fireworks we'll be treated to with that nut case Tony LaRussa sitting in the opposing team's dugout.

Like I said at the beginning of the post, the Packers' opening preseason game is right around the corner. There have been a few minor injuries that some players are dealing with (most notably Greg Jennings (hip flexor), Tramon Williams (hip flexor) and Mason Crosby (ankle)), but for the most part we should be seeing everyone participate in the game Saturday against the Cleveland Browns. Earlier talks around the Packer practices have revolved around how the offense has looked sloppy, but this has to be expected considering how much time players missed during the lockout. I didn't get a chance to watch the Family Night intrasquad scrimmage since I was up north, so I'm excited to see the 2011 Packers in action for the first time and give my feedback on the game.

Along with a season preview for the Packers, a look ahead for the much-hyped Wisconsin Badgers will be coming soon. I know I said that I would be previewing Bucky on August 10, but I feel like that's too far away from the start of the season (September 3), so I'll plan on waiting another ten days before I do my write-up on the Badgers. And since Green Bay begins their season on a Thursday night on September 8, I'll give my Packers' preview about five days after my Badgers' preview. Last year I was a rookie blogger and didn't know what to write about right off the bat, so I was a tad early on my football season previews. Sorry to let you all down, but we've got a good Brewers team to distract us from that disappointment you're feeling.

Thanks for staying with me over the past year. Let's hope there are many more to come.