Rain or shine, one thing is near-certain: If you turn a lead over to The Ax, you keep it.

Closers are often maligned by the statistical community as an overrated role, and the money they make is viewed as disproportionate to the work they do. However, when closers do show up to do their work, it is always in high-leverage situations and they are expected to never fail.

Eventually all closers do fail from time to time. But if it seems like our mustachioed man is above average in that category, it's true.

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What Rickie Weeks is doing this season – or not doing, depending on your perspective – is bordering on historical. Given Weeks’ successful past (and anticipated future) and the facts that he is still fielding well, he is being well compensated under a long-term deal, and the Brewers are suffering from a number of injuries to their infield and don’t have many options, we can anticipate Weeks to continue starting at second base for a long time yet.

Truly, the man is suffering. Whatever it is that a person learns over the years that gains them sufficient comfort in the batter’s box to swing at baseballs in an efficient manner, Weeks has lost. For the time being we are under the impression that this is just a horrible, horrible slump and that Weeks will recover at some point.

But if he doesn’t recover this season he is on his way to making history in a bad way. I’ve provided a list of the people who in the entire history of the game have as many or more plate appearances than Weeks and a lower batting average. When you’re on a list with names like Bob Uecker and Bill Bergen, you know you’re in some very rare (bad) territory.A couple things to note about Weeks and the rest of the players on this list – none of them were ever considered an above-average offensive player at any time in their careers, none of them we able to draw walks the way Weeks continues to do, and none of them ever struck out as much as he has so far. I’m not sure what this means, other than it’s a slump, not an accusation that he’s incapable of hitting.

Here’s some information about the players on this list that Rickie is threatening to pass on his way to #1.

Jim Mason was the SS for a 1975 Yankees team with Bobby Bonds, Sandy Alomar, Catfish Hunter and Thurmon munson. He slowly lost his job to Fred Stanley because of his terrible hitting, and after kicking him into a backup role they managed to get to the World Series in ’76. Mason struggled for many years to hit his weight, ending with a career average of .203 in over 1700 PA.

Tyler Colvin in 2011 had a terrible sophomore season for a terrible Cubs team, and the team lost enough faith in his ability that he was traded to the Rockies in the offseason. He seems to have rebounded quite nicely in his new environment, and may eventually be a productive player some day.

Bob Uecker in 1967 was playing the last year of his career, starting with the Phillies and then traded to the Braves for Gene Oliver to back up Joe Torre at catcher. The highlight of his season was hitting a grand slam off of Ron Herbel of the Giants. Uecker joked that “the manager of the Giants came out to the mound to take Herbel out and with him was Herbel's suitcase.”

Brandon Wood in 2010 is the only player on the list who comes close to Weeks in the percentage of strikeouts per plate appearance. After a horrible 2010 and slow start in 2011 he was picked up off waivers by the Pirates, who kept him for only one season. He currently toils for the Rockies’ AAA affiliate in Colorado Springs.

Charlie Armbruster was a catcher for the 1906 Boston Americans. His .196 average the year before was an illusion of small sample size, and given more opportunity to play he showed his true inability to hit the ball. In 1907 he was purchased by the Chicago White Sox and never hit safely again.

Fritz Buelow – another catcher – split his time in 1904 not hitting for the Detroit Tigers and the Cleveland Naps. Despite his clear inability to hit a baseball he held on for a few years in a reserve role, ending his career with the St. Louis Browns.

Jack O’Neill, a catcher in his rookie season in 1902 for the Cardinals, rewarded his manager’s faith with a miniscule .371 OPS. He was never given a full-time opportunity and played 5 years for the Cardinals, Cubs, and Boston Beaneaters.

Bill Bergen – born William Aloysius Bergen – was the Granddad of Hitting Bad. He was 6’ tall and looked like Clint Eastwood, but at the plate he swung the bat like Clint Howard. Amazingly, Bergen played 11 years in the majors. His plague of a career was unleashed on the league in 1901 by the Cincinnati Reds, but he played most of his years with the Brooklyn Superbas. He held the record for consecutive hitless at bats for a non-pitcher for over 100 years (until it was broken by Craig Counsell), and his career average of .170 is the lowest of any player in the majors with over 2000 PA, including pitchers. His 1909 and 1911 seasons appear on this list, two of his 8 consecutive sub-.200 seasons.

Ray Oyler was an all-glove, no-hit shortstop for the Detroit Tigers. After his horrendous 1968 season in which he hit .135, he was drafted third by the expansion Seattle Pilots in 1969.

Bill Killefer was not actually a terrible hitter, especially for catchers in his era. In his 2nd season with the St. Louis Browns he was still a kid, backing up Jim Stephens. In his limited chances though, he hit a terrible .124 in 1910 to place 2nd on this list. He was traded the following year to the Phillies, and began a pretty successful career in a platoon role, playing in over 1000 games over 13 season with the Browns, Phillies, and Cubs. After losing the 1918 World Series with the Cubs he enlisted to fight in WWI, but mustered out in time to join the 1919 season. Far from his humble beginnings, Killefer ended with a .238 career average. After breaking a finger in 1920 he became the Cubs manager (after Johnny Evers) from 1921 to 1925, and he spent the rest of his life as a manager, coach, and scout with multiple organizations.

Frank O’Rourke has the honor of being first on this list, by merit of having one short, terrible hitting season as a rookie for the Boston Braves in 1922. It didn’t discourage him however, and he bounced between different organizations for a number of years, playing in the majors and minors, until landing with the Tigers in 1924. The Tigers traded him to the St. Louis Browns in 1927, where he had his best season, finishing 13th in the MVP balloting that year. He finished his career as a .254 hitter, and went on to be a manager, including managing the Milwaukee Brewers of the AA from 1931-1933.

Comparing this season's record at May 25 to previous Brewer seasons, no club has ever started as poorly as the 2012 squad (or worse) and ended up with a .500 record or better. The closest comparison is the 2010 squad, which started 18-27. They played slightly above .500 after that to finish at 77-85, good enough to get Ken Macha fired.

If we played like the 1989 squad, we could go 63-55 the rest of the way and finish exactly at .500. I'd be happy with that outcome, but we wouldn't make the playoffs. What we could really use is a finish like 1992. We started that season 20-22, but played .600 baseball from that point on and finished 92-70. If we played .600 ball for the rest of the year we would be 89-73, which would definitely put us in contention for a playoff spot.

Maybe. Playing .600 ball from here out might get us to the playoffs, and I don't think with all of our holes that we're capable of it. I think we're already a selling team.

So we're in the second half of January now, and Prince Fielder is not yet signed as a free agent. I think it's probably pretty easy for Scott Boras to get people interested in having Fielder be a part of their team, but the hesitation enters when they start talking about contract length. Teams would love to sign Fielder through 2015, without a doubt. If he said he was willing to sign a contract for just those years, the numbers could get silly. Unfortunately I think they're looking for nothing less than six years, and probably closer to eight or nine.

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I am of the opinion that things generally happen for a reason. The bigger the thing, the more likely the reasoning. Today I happened across an article about the Miami Marlins being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for their sweetheart stadium deal with Miami-Dade County. Considering the moves the Marlins were looking to make this offseason and the people they were messing with, the timing of this investigation comes as no surprise to me.

In Los Angeles, Frank McCourt is in the process of selling the Los Angeles Dodgers (possibly to a group headed by Magic Johnson). The scandalous way he ran the team, funnelling millions of dollars of revenue away for his own interests while leaving the club barely able to meet payroll, finally drew attention from the league, but not from the Feds. Baseball has a special layer of exemption that goes beyond their monopoly-exempt status granted by Congress during darker financial times. The same way that police won't step on the field to arrest Ndamukong Suh for stomping on a player, the Feds won't step in to investigate poor financial practices because it expects that Baseball itself is going to handle potential problems, with a greater level of interest, and in a more appropriate manner.

The League has a wide range of powers to investigate and even take control of franchises if it deems that a club has problems that threaten league play. It's like condominiums - you own it, but the association can kick you out if you're a nuisance to the building. The league sent in an army of pencilnecks to set Frank McCourt straight, but there hasn't been the same question of impropriety concerning the Marlins. As far as baseball is concerned this is just business as usual, and considering the Commissioner's historical involvement in the Marlin franchise, federal intervention probably wouldn't be the first choice if there were a problem. If you've been participating in the Book Club you're aware of how Selig has been involved in blackmailing communities into building new stadiums. They don't want attention drawn to that.

But someone sent the Feds in. They didn't come to this decision on their own, they were pushed into this decision from outside forces. The Marlins are not the only sports franchise to ever be the beneficiary of a sweet stadium deal. The article points out that the San Francisco Giants are the only franchise to privately build a new stadium in the last 50 years, the rest have mostly been at taxpayer expense. And the local politics have rarely been unanimous. There are always councilmen and county executives and mayors and governors that roll up their cuffs and wade into the fray with their opinions on how taxpayer money should be spent, and in the end the franchise almost always gets its way, with a new building they didn't pay for.

So having the SEC show up on Miami's doorstep is out of the ordinary. Considering the breach of standard and the consequences to the ballclub for doing so, there are really only two reasons why this would happen now. First, the Marlins could have done something that was egregiously shady for even the stadium financing process, something overt and disgusting and profitable in excess of historical deals. If this were the case I think we would have seen more in the press about it before the SEC stepped in. The SEC is more about practices than crime scenes; if people are threatened the FBI shows up, if everyone is a little too happy then the SEC takes notice. But there isn't anything on the surface that distinguishes this deal from dozens of others, in my opinion.

The second reason is that the timing is exactly what is needed to prevent major stars from committing to playing in Miami. Well, not everyone, of course. I mean, if you're getting offered a free agent contract for three years at good money to play for them, you're not going to turn it down just because some accountant from an agency didn't like how the stadium was built. A contract is a contract, and the investigation might not be done in three years.

But let's say your contract was going to run somewhere from eight to ten years. Maybe you're not just looking for a ton of money, but also thinking about your legacy. Do you want to be the biggest star on a club that is in the press every day for suspected criminal activity?

Yeah, this is starting to sound a little conspiratorial, but you'll forgive me if I question peoples' motives when the money being thrown around starts to exceed $200 million, in addition to the pride involved. I've seen some guts of some public relations plans that have made me question our political process. I know that the right amount of money will buy you a segment on 60 Minutes. And I have a strong suspicion that the SEC didn't just wake up this morning and decide that there might be a financial crime being committed somewhere in Miami-Dade. Someone with enough influence made a phone call, with a promise, and made this happen. Passan is a journalist, and to his credit does not draw the strings together without evidence, but he leaves them there for people to see the possible cause.

And the fallout will be that big names might not land in Miami. In fact, competing offers can be thrown out in some cases because of the turnoff. Pujols is much more likely today to land in Chicago or St. Louis than Miami, and the Cardinals probably don't need to raise their offer now. Reyes might start answering the Mets' phone calls. With a potential suitor out of the running, Fielder might not wait for Pujols to sign. Oswalt & Buehrle could avoid Miami. Beltran and Rollins might look elsewhere.

And the timing is perfect - just before the winter meetings begin. Miami was looking to make a splash, but someone beat them to the punch.

I remember Jim Edmonds.  He played 73 games for the Brewers, and you, Mr. Betancourt, are no Jim Edmonds.

For 149 games in 2010, Casey McGehee did an excellent job of producing offense in the 5th slot behind Prince Fielder in the Brewers lineup.  He had career highs in almost every offensive category and produced 104 runs batted in.  Then disaster arrived from Cuba via Kansas City, and Casey's numbers went into the toilet.

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We're playin' together
But it's not a farewell
Most of us will be back
For next year, who can tell?
I guess with only two weeks to go
It's no time to go slow
(To go slow)
Will we have a chance like this again?

It's the final countdown
The final countdown

Ohh
We're heading for Philly and still we stand tall
'Cause they've seen us and know we can play ball
With so many great players, only one team can move on
(Can move on)
I'm sure that it'll be one hell of a show

It's the final countdown
The final countdown
The final countdown
(The final countdown)

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Before we take too much delight in BTC's prediction that the Brewers wouldn't win the division and/or exceed 90 wins this season, we should also note that the overpaid talking heads of sports reporting also couldn't see this coming.  Below for pure entertainment value is the predictions made by SI and ESPN personnel about how they predicted the division winners would end up this season.  I was especially fond of Steve Berthiaume's courageous pick - God bless'm - of Houston winning the NL Central.

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Here it is the imagery with a bit of photoshoppage
Just a bit of a break from the sports page
Just a little somethin’ to break the monotony
Of TRL's insanity and divisional rivalry
A little bit out of control it’s cool to demonstrate
That we can laugh at anything if we properly illustrate
Give me a soft subtle mix
And if ain’t broke then don’t try to fix it
And think of the summers in years ago
Adjust the image and let the paintbrush go
Pop in my cd and it's photoshop time
And put your mouse on cruise and lay back cause this is summertime

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We have the good fortune in this community of having well-educated analysts who provide honest and fair assessments of players and performance, and in spite of their allegiance to the blue and gold, give their impartial opinions of where the team stands.  Our fans are also steeped in the terminology and skilled in the methods of measure, and they care passionately about their team and anxiously hope for its return to the postseason.

Well, not quite all the fans I guess.  Some of us prefer our analysis more qualitative than quantitative, preferably with pictures, pop-ups, and paper dolls.  For those people like me who treat their sports more like a comic book than a science, take the jump for an Illustrated First Half Review.

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A FanPost must be 75 words or more, so I begin by bringing you a few words from Samuel Coleridge about Miller Park.

In Milwaukee did the Brewers
A Retractable-Dome decree,
Where Bernie, from his chalet threw
Himself along the golden slide
Down into a mug of brew.

So twenty-five acres of fertile ground
With walls and panels circling ’round,
Let in the sunlight and keep out the weather
Where our beloved athletes run and play;
The fans eat, drink and cheer together
Ensured of never a game delay.

"One Player At A Time"

(With apologies to Johnny Cash)

Well, I left the Rangers back in 2001
Did a year of consulting in Boston for fun
Then came to work as GM of the Crew

Every year I'd watch the big markets win
They'd up the ante and I'd have to give in
And watch my free agents bag the riches they were due

One day I devised a stratagem
That should be the envy of most any GM
I'd use my talent to find the diamonds in the rough

Then I'd throw them together into the fire
And forge us a team with relentless desire
I'd have me League's best team with second-hand stuff

[CHORUS]

I'd get it one player at a time
And it hardly cost me a dime
You'll know it's the Brewers when we come to your town
We're gonna play the game with style
We're gonna drive everybody wild
It's the little town and the big markets in a showdown

So the very first day when I punched in
With scouting reports and inside tips from friends
I started working the phones to feel out trades

Now, I never considered myself a thief
Most GM's wouldn't miss one piece
Especially if I strung it out over a decade

The first day I called up Weeks from the farm
And later he was joined by Fielder and Braun
And we started signing the best talent we could bank

Then I got the Diamondbacks on the phone
Waved a big first baseman in front of their nose
And took home six new players to join the ranks

Now, up til then my plan went all right
'Til we sat down with the roster one night
And that's when we noticed that something was definitely wrong

Our center fielder couldn't hit his weight
Our best shortstop was 38
And our pitching staff was a horrid mess

So I called up my pals in KC and Toronto
Sold some prospects and sang a song or two
And netted two aces - one a former Cy Young no less

Our bullpen came together great
With a setup man who stood 6-foot-8
And a crafty closer with a handlebar moustache

I hired a new manager who was pretty bright
He knew how to position the fielders just right
And he pulled that team together in a flash

We struggled in April and a bit of May too
But we got it together and when we got thru
Well, that's when we started to take the League by storm

Our aces shut out teams left and right
The lineup started hitting homers out of sight
We picked up speed when the weather started to get warm

We were a powerhouse when we played at home
In the friendly comfort of a retractable dome
The big markets were scared to play us at our place

And the manager turned aside to me one day
While watching his players turn a double play
And said, 'I tell you Doug, I smell a pennant race.'

[CHORUS]

I'd get it one player at a time
And it hardly cost me a dime
You'll know it's the Brewers when we come to your town
We're gonna play the game with style
We're gonna drive everybody wild
Your fans will buy tickets to watch you get beat down

Calling all photoshops!

It's time to put together a pictography of fan spirit to help our Brewers break out of their funk.  We all know that the past week is just an anomaly of small sample size that will blend into the larger body of production over time, but possibly the RNG* Gods require a devotion to turn around the Brewers' luck.  So here's my effort, and make sure you add your own graphics in the comments.  We need to kick start the cosmos, show the karma keepers what you've got!

*Random Number Generator

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During the game tonight against the Reds Doug Melvin visited the TV broadcast booth and then slipped away to Rick Peterson's old webinar booth to take some questions from drunk fans from Old Vegas.  I knew we were all busy watching the game so I tabbed out and took some screen shots in case he said something that was interesting.

Enjoy.

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It's still early in the season but after 15 games - depending on what numbers you use and how you judge the overall effectiveness - we just might have the second best defense in the NL so far.  Yes, this sounds a little crazy if you know the players as well as we do by their reputation, but the numbers don't lie ... do they?

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It's not just rainy here, it's snowy.  It's cold, windy, wet, and I'm fighting to keep the coals lit so I can grill some brats for the starving children.  Since the game is rained out and Mudville's joy must wait until tomorrow, I might as well use the opportunity to post some silly photoshops in the hope that if you haven't seen one or two of them, you might find a reason to smile today.

As always, you're encouraged to post your own in the comments :)

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From the final, bitter dregs of the 2010 season to the heart of a search for a new manager, these are the computerized scribbles that punctuate my days as a fan.  It's been a while since the last roll-up, so it would be a Herculean task to try and link them all to their original posts.  For some of them, I guess you had to be there - and judging from the thinness of some of those game threads, you weren't.

Don't worry, 2011 is coming fast and Ron will save us!  He's got better baseball lineage than Cal Ripken and could inspire Steven Covey to change careers. 

Follow the jump for the photoshops!

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Our season may have spiraled out of control - like a lonely floating Cheerio that refuses to be flushed down the drain - but our sense of humor and joy remains.  We may be in the bottom half of the division, but we're a better team now than when the season started, and along the way the Crew has given us some reasons to cheer and be hopeful for next year.

Ever-looking for a reason to smile, here are this month's useless scribbles.


(Previous archive is here.)

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Ok, so Fingers has his number retired and I thought that was kind of odd, seeing as how he only played for the Brewers for a few years.  I like Fingers as much as the next guy, but I don't understand the criteria.  Was it simply because of how awesome he was when he was here and that he ended his career here?  Anyway, that got me thinking and I wondered how Fingers' awesome year in 1981 stacked up against Axford's performance this year.

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Is this a real league?
Is this just fantasy?
Ten games back from the wild card
No escape from reality
At least we're at home
Look up to the dome and see
I'm just the manager
I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go
Little high, little low
Any way the game goes
It's all about the batters to me, to me

Dougie, I just benched a kid
He was serving up grapefruit
Wasting pitches, trying to be cute
Dougie, his career has just begun
But now he's gone and thrown it all away
Dougie, ooh
Didn't mean to make you cry
We've got another game this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on need to work with the batters

Too late, game time has come
The Pirates are next in line
Wish we could play them all the time
Goodbye, quiet clubhouse
I've got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the crowd
Dougie, oooooooh (Anyway the wind blows)
I don't want to lose
Sometimes wish I'd never taken this job at all

[Guitar Solo]

I see a kid saying he's our center fielder
Poppycock, Poppycock, you can see how the bench feels
Dale Sveum and Randolph, waiting for the handoff, fiends!
(Trevor Hoffman) Kameron Loe (Trevor Hoffman) Kameron Loe
Trevor Hoffman six hundred
Two more to go-o-o-o-o
I'm just the manager nobody loves me
He's just the latest one after Nedly
Spare me this season, it's a monstrosity

Leads come, Leads go, will you let me pitch Loe?
Peterson! No, we can not yet use Loe
Send in Loe
Peterson! No, we can not yet use Loe
Send in Loe
Peterson! No, we can not yet use Loe
Send in Loe (We can not yet use Loe)
Send in Loe (We can not yet use Loe) (Never, never, never, never)
Send in Loe, o, o, o, o
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
(Oh Bernie Brewer, Bernie Brewer) Bernie Brewer, let me go
The Hall of Fame has a wing put aside for me, for me, for me!

So you think you can cheat us and take away our strike zone
So you think you can shut us out in our own dome
Oh, baby, just one pitch away, baby
Just gotta get three out, just gotta get our third out right here

[Guitar Solo]
(Oooh yeah, Oooh yeah)

It's all about the batters
Pitching is easy
It's all about the batters
It's all about the batters to me

Any way the game goes...

I'll use my minimum requirement of 75 words in the preamble to request suggestions for the name of this series of fanshots.  The title is kind of bland, and I'm much better with pictures than wordses.  Post a suggestion if you have one please.

Also, people have had questions for when and why some images were done, so on suggestion I tried to dig back through the thread history a little and provide some context where I could for most of the pictures came from.

Previous archive is here.

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Seasons sometimes do turn on a single pitch.  One second you can almost taste victory, the next you’re left wondering where you went wrong.  Unfortunately, being ‘one pitch away’ has become a bit cliché in a season filled with mistakes and disappointment.  I decided to go back and look at the games this season and figure out where changing a single pitch would have changed the outcome.  So, here’s a short trip through a half-season of what-could-have-been.

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It's been a month, so I guess it's time to post yet another roll-up of the graphics tucked away on different game threads and misc. discussions around BCB.  Add your own in the comments if you have any!

Previous archive is here.

Fan posts must be 75 words, so here's a haiku to fill some space:

Lord Albert Pujols
Does not care for the Brewers
So disrespectful

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I had this idea almost immediately after starting the last one and had to get it done before I forgot to do it.  So, here is the answer to the question "what if we viewed a manager's job security as a fight to climb up a cliff to avoid being eaten by alligators, in order of success this season, with any manager having been fired since Macha took over the brewers having already been savagely devoured?"

It's a complicated description, but is just proves again that a picture is worth a thousand words.

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I'm a firm believer in the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.  So, on request here is the newer version of "What if you could tell everyone's salary by the size of their head in a team picture?" image.

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Another installment of the silly graphics I doodle in the middle of your threads.  Add your own in the comments!

The first archive is here.

It's a little known fact that FanPosts must be at least 75 words in length or they can't be published.  So rather than typing 'blah blah blah' 50 times I will now rewrite the lyrics to 'my favorite things' as an ode to the company that occasionally spams our forums with pooh bear ascii art:

handbags from gucci and furs sewn from foxes
sunglasses and jeans packed in original boxes
chanal, nike, dior and more name-brand bling
these are a few of my least favorite things
when we get spammed
from goladymall
and I'm feeling sad
I remember that mcgehee is a hitting machine
and then I don't feeeeeel so bad

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We had the thought come up recently about what the most frequent timing is for the dismissal of a manager. Forgetting for the moment whether or not a change should happen, and just assuming that one might be impending, does recent history of managerial moves point towards a common timing?

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