Ricky Bottalico is no longer a Brewer, nor did the Crew get anything in trade for him. Too bad...it was a great Melvin signing in the same way his pickups of guys like Matt Wise, Derrick Turnbow, and Dan Kolb have been. Just didn't work out as well.
The team whose bullpen most closely resembles Milwaukee's is probably Atlanta's, and I've noticed over the last few years that the Braves will take flyers on many guys with the expectation that some won't work out. Gabe White was a bust for them this year and Kolb didn't fill the role he was expected to, for instance. But like the Brewers, the Braves always have somebody stepping up--this year Jorge Sosa and Blaine Boyer have far exceeded expectations.
So, in Doug Melvin's efforts to make a bullpen out of scrap-heap guys, a failure here and there is to be expected.
I'm in process of tabulating win probabilities for every relief outing for the Brewers this year (should be done by the end of the weekend, fingers crossed), and Bottalico was--by that measure, anyway--quite good up through May (that's as far as I've gotten so far). More on that in a couple of days.