Joe Sheehan Pays Attention

From his article today:

The last two games have illustrated the Brewers' primary weakness, their bullpen. While they have received good work from Salomon Torres and Brian Shouse for most of the season, mentioning that merely highlights the fact that their two best relievers are Salomon Torres and Brian Shouse. Torres blew Monday's game, and while he bounced back to pitch well last night, the lack of depth behind those two was exploited in extra innings.

The fact is, Ned Yost isn't riding CC Sabathia for kicks; he's doing so because his bullpen is not only the weakest part of his team, but probably the weakest pen of any above-.500 team in baseball. He has two moderately effective journeymen relievers, and then an assortment of less effective journeymen relievers. The Astros at least have Jose Valverde missing bats in the ninth inning, the Cardinals have the homegrown Chris Perez, and the Mets have some effective matchup pitchers in front of Luis Ayala. The Brewers have guys who walk far too many batters and don't strike out nearly enough of them. Any game in which Ned Yost has to go to the mound carries with it the potential for disaster. Yost takes criticism for his handling of the pen, and not undeservedly, but you can't run from the fact that the pen, assembled from spare parts by Doug Melvin—a decision I did not criticize—isn't championship-caliber, or anything close.

The Brewers' struggles open the door for the Phillies, the Cardinals, and even the Astros. The Phillies are particularly well-positioned to effectively create a second path to the postseason for themselves; they host the Brewers for four games starting Thursday, and they miss Sabathia in that series. Without wishing to foster panic, I wonder if Yost wouldn't have been well-served to plug in Seth McClung or Carlos Villanueva or Zach Jackson for today's matinee against the Reds, pushing Sabathia into the Phillies series to face Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and company. The Phillies will head into that matchup needing only to take three of four games to make the wild card a realistic option for them, and with Sabathia not in the picture, their doing so is more likely.

Notice anything in that bolded section? I normally don't really like posts where people obsessively comb over articles and point out mistakes (excepting, of course, the wonderful work done over at the JS, which has so many errors that finding them has become a game), but if you're going to write with Sheehan's arrogance, you better damn well know if one of the things you are suggesting is impossible because, well, the team traded away that player two months ago. Nice work, Joe.