I'll be the first to admit that a weekend sweep at the hands of the Astros sucked. Just about everything that can go has gone wrong, and it's painful to watch.
But we all need to take a step back. We're a month into the season, we've got an anemic offense, an imploding bullpen, a bunch of five-inning starters, and...we're above .500.
That's right: Nothing is clicking on all cylinders, and we're on pace for about 84 wins.
84 wins, of course, won't do the job this year. But there is also no way that the Brewers offense will remain in the bottom half (!) of the league in runs, home runs, slugging, and generally non-suckiness. There is no way that Manny Parra will stay in the rotation if he can't get through the 5th inning. There is no way the bullpen will be this bad over the course of the season, and making things better, there's no chance we'll continue to play this many extra-inning games.
Making all of this even better, there is no way that the Cardinals are really a 100+ win team (that's their current pace) and especially with no Rich Hill, I find it hard to believe that the Cubs are a 90+ win team (their current pace).
Eventually, I think I'll have to just ignore baseball commentary for the first two months of the year. For every 10 "trends" that people think they spot, maybe--maybe--one of them is for real. You can look at this Brewers team and think that Melvin did a horrible job, putting together a better defense at the expense of a disastrous bullpen, no back-rotation starting, and a mediocre offense...
...or you could realize that we're somehow winning games in what could easily be the worst 30-game stretch of the season.
Every baseball team has bad games, bad weeks, and bad months. If we were scuffling and going 16-15 in July, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But since it's early May, it's hard to resist the temptation to look at the rate stats (oh no, Villa's ERA is 5.50!) and multiply the counting stats by five (oh no, Prince is only going to hit 20 home runs!).
Don't do it. This is a good team, and it's a pretty decent team even with Yovani Gallardo. We'll be playing important games in September, and it won't be because Doug radically revamped our slumping roster. He knows better than that, and we should too.