There is a good amount of things to unpack from Tom Haudricourt’s informative Q&A with Milwaukee Brewers manager Craig Counsell. There’s not a ton of things that are surprising, besides, the idea that Hernan Perez could be the starting for the second baseman for the team. I believe most people including me saw it as a two-man race between Jonathan Villar and Eric Sogard, but Counsell included utility man Perez in the mix. Is Perez good enough to warrant a starting position?

With apologies to my father who is a leader of the Perez fan club, I say no. Brewers would be better off exploring another option in free agency when it comes to second base versus what they have right now. Perez is what he is, even if, that’s a vanilla answer. He’s a solid utility player but doesn’t add much to the team. He had over 400 at-bats in the last two years, and there isn’t much to glean from it. Perez batted .259 with only a .289 on-base percentage. He isn’t exactly a productive player at the plate. Perez does some nice things, but there aren’t signs that he warrants a starting position.

This could be smoke from Counsell to keep Perez motivated to start Spring Training though. Every player who is probably on the 25-man roster wants to be a starter at the beginning of Spring Training. Counsell is right to weigh the options of Perez at second base as his defense has been solid through the years, yet more at-bats for the utility man probably hurt the offense at a larger scale. We’ll see what happens with the second base race.

It’s good to have the Brewers back in Arizona. It’s weird as hell they’re still many free agents out there, but so be it.

Charlie.