The Brewers and Super Secret Spies

The fact that the Brewers' starting rotation is slowly but surely turning into YoGa, Suppan, and a ball of yarn got me thinking about pitchers and trades.  All the reports out there are suggesting that there is no Sabathia trade looming on the horizon: not only are we still too early in the season for other teams to throw in the towel, but it doesn't sound like there are difference-making pitchers to be had, especially with Peavy and Bedard on the DL.  (Plus, as much as I love it when the Brewers make a deal, I somehow don't see acquiring Doug Davis as the missing piece of our playoff puzzle.  And with a lack of other options, whoever lands a pitcher like Davis will be giving up far more than he's worth.)

That got me thinking about the ideal trade candidate.  

For a situ like the Brewers are in --- flirting with the playoffs but mostly broke --- you're really looking for someone who (a) once was good, and in the not-too-distant past, but (b) is struggling enough now that he would be both available and not too costly in terms of what you have to give the trading team (while acknowledging that you can address some of the risk/reward with the cash and prospects that inevitable get included).

Of course, trading for a struggling pitcher doesn't do much for you --- after all, the Brewers have plenty of those right now.  So what you really need is (c) a way to turn said struggling pitcher back into a productive  member of society your pitching staff. This is kind of like what we attributed to the Melvin/Maddux combination: performing the alchemy of turning lemon-flavored Turnbows into lemonade-tasting all-star relievers.

I can see two immediate obstacles with this goal.  The first problem is, you would need to be able to identify such a player without him being on your team in the first place, which means someone who knows what he/she is looking for would have to watch lots and lots of videotape.  The second problem is, you would need a reason to think that you would be able to fix this person when the other team could not, so it would require some knowledge about other clubs: are they not as dutiful when it comes to reviewing the video, does their pitching coach have a reputation of not clicking with the players, etc.  (Keep in mind that if you're in this position in the first place, then you have reason to doubt your own pitching coach: how is it that 3/5 of our rotation has started to totally suck for the past month, and Billy Castro has somehow not been mentioned, either on here or in the newspapers?)

So this is what I've been wondering: do the Brewers --- or any team in baseball, for that matter --- keep track of non-Brewers players throughout the year, especially the struggling ones, with an eye toward fixing them?  Or, to come at it from another direction, how were the Brewers able to identify players like DD, Podsednik, and Turnbow as players they could turn into gold?  Or is it a truly hit-or-miss sort of thing: for every Podsednik, there is a De La Rosa?  Did we get lucky, or was there a plan involved?

In other words, do we have super secret scouts who follow major-league teams, looking for trading deadline bargains?  This sounds like mostly idle speculation, but landing someone like Doug Davis was a real godsend.  In each of 2004 and 2005, he pitched 200+ innings with an ERA under 4.  How much would that be worth now?  Because we paid only about $500,000 in 2004 and $2 million in 2005 --- styrofoam peanuts compared to what his performance was actually worth.  Finding a diamond in the rough is a major coup, and I'm wondering just what resources are devoted to that very thing.  A team willing to spend money on season-long major-league scouting...well, it seems to me they'd have a leg up on finding that diamond.