Blast From The Past- Remember This Guy?

Much of the Brewer fan base has ripped on the completely worthless Jeff Suppan and even guys like Randy Wolf and Doug Davis have been ridiculed as a waste of money and a bad pickup. I went down memory lane to the year 2000 when we reacquired a pitcher to be in the rotation just as he was a few years before. His name? Jaime Navarro.

At the time we got him in an offseason trade, Navarro had gone 9-14, 8-16 and 8-13 in his last three years with the Chicago White Sox.  His ERA in those three years was 5.79, 6.36 and 6.09 respectively.  Despite that, we brought him back to town and even picked up the $5 Million he was owed. The result? He went 0-5 with a 12.54 era in 5 starts. Those starts resulted in 18 and 2/3 of an inning pitched which means he averaged less than 4 innings a start.

After being released, he resurfaced with the Indians where he went 0-1 in 7 games, including two starts, with a 7.98 era. Finally in the 2003 season he split time between Louisville, Newark and a Mexican League Team going 12-8 with a 4.57 era.

Before Doug Davis went on the DL, I actually dreaded his starts a bit. The high pitch counts, high era and the slow pace of the game was just not fun. Of course, I dreaded Suppan's appearances too because he gave up a lot of home runs and the team was always playing catch up.  Today, I know that Suppan, while not alarming anyone with stellar performances, probably wasn't the worst pitcher to throw on a uni for the club. In addition, Doug Davis can only do better than he has so far this season. I am rooting for him for sure.

But most of all, as a long suffering Brewer fan, I can be happy about the fact that we are now ten years removed from those dreadful days of Davey Lopes and Jerry Royster when we didn't have any shot of competing and we racked up loss after loss with a bunch of has beens. If anything, we can be happy that some of the guys who the fans have really picked on this year just don't make you cringe quite as much as some of the names of that era. Can you believe we even thought it would be a good idea to bring Jaime Navarro back? Glad those days are behind us and we are a competitive team!