Goodbye, Gallardo

Ben Hendrickson. Will Inman. Jorge de la Rosa. Jose Capellan. Jake Odorizzi. Jeremy Jeffress. Eric Arnett. Zach Braddock. Mike Jones. Manny Parra. Dana Eveland.

That is a list of pitchers who are not 5th in Brewer franchise history in wins, 6th in games started, or 1st in strikeouts. They are also not 1st in strikeouts per inning and winning percentage and 3rd in ERA among long-term Brewer starting pitchers with 750+ career innings. None of these pitchers has been an All-Star or a Silver Slugger.

They haven't started on Opening Day for the Brewers 5 times, and they haven't started Game 1 of a playoff series, regardless of whether they had been the season-long ace for a division winner, or returned to the mound 5 months of tearing an ACL to pitch critical innings and help the Brewers hold on to a Wild Card berth. They also didn't start the series-deciding game that led the Brewers to their only playoff series victory in the past 33 years.

None have any career home runs, much less 11 of them. None have ever scored the only run in a Major League game while throwing a shutout in a 1-0 win. Nor have any hit a solo home run while throwing 8 scoreless innings in a 1-0 win. None drove in a run with a double and won in their big league debut. None have struck out 14 batters in a game. When you Google " [insert name here] does it all", the first 4 stories aren't game stories about their pitching / hitting combo winning the Brewers a game followed by an article about a luxury car.

There might not be such a thing as a pitching prospect. But the ones that turn out like Yo make all those crazy and overhyped expectations worth it, because once in a while one of those guys actually does make it through. For a lot of good reasons, it was definitely time to move on, but the sober analysis can wait for another day.

But for now: "Don't beat him up too bad, he's gotta pitch tomorrow!"