Brewers designate Boone Logan for assignment

You could tell Boone Logan was on thin ice based on Craig Counsell’s comments after his past couple outings.

Logan was signed as a free agent to get left-handed batters out. He couldn’t do that — albeit in a small sample size — and the Brewers decided they couldn’t wait around for him to figure it out.

With a roster move needed to get Freddy Peralta on the 25-man to make tonight’s start in Pittsburgh, the team decided to cut bait on the failed free agent experiment.

Logan only amassed 10.2 innings as a Brewer, covering 16 different outings. But after missing much of the first part of the season after getting hurt in spring training, Logan never quite could shake off the rust. Even if his strikeout rates were as good as advertised, he walked 10 batters and gave up 15 hits — including 3 home runs.

Left-handers hit .409/.536/.818 against him, going 9-for-22 with 5 walks, 3 doubles, and 2 home runs. While it’s tough to judge any pitcher on a 20-AB sample, the fact that Logan was supposed to be a luxury and the team already has Josh Hader and Dan Jennings to get tough outs against lefties worked against him.

Counsell seemed to try to get Logan extra work over the weekend to get him going, and it didn’t quite work out. While he was only charged 2 earned runs in 2 outings against the Phillies, he still walked 3 and allowed 4 hits (including a home run) in 1.1 innings. Afterwards, Counsell was about as blunt as Craig Counsell is capable of being:

Signing relief pitchers is always a risky ordeal, but even if you want to be critical of how some of them have worked out for David Stearns, at least he’s known when to bail out instead of trying to justify the signing over an entire season. Stearns faced a similar situation last year with Neftali Feliz and didn’t hesitate to let him go, either.

Statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference