I want to preface this by saying that I don't think Axford is on the same career path as Turnbow, but having lived through 2006-2007 as others have mentioned Axford's recent struggles bring to mind the demise of another recent cult-hero closer from the Brewers I looked up their stats:

The July 2006 cutoff for Turnbow is a little random, however looking at his game logs that year, while he hadn't been stellar to that point, he completely fell of the face of the earth form the remainder of that season (only 1 save, and an ERA of 13.06 from that point on). If I remember correctly, that was about the same point in time when he was elected to the All-Star team.

For those of us who remember Turnbow's implosion, he was mostly undone by control. This is born out by the stats above where his walks per 9 jumped from about 3.6 to almost 7.7. While Axford's control may be a little off from last year, his biggest downfall is the more hits allowed and what seems to be a little bit of bad luck. Hopefully Ax will turn it around. He was used pretty hard last year, especially down the stretch and through the playoffs and that has carried over into this year as well. Perhaps that has something to do with it as well.