In 2012, people forget that Brewers actually had a good team. Prince Fielder had left for Detroit. But Brewers had a strong season from Ryan Braun, an emerging Jonathan Lucroy, Yovani Gallardo pitched great all season, and team got a strong half year from Zack Greinke before trading him to Los Angeles. They had seven of nine starters hit 10 plus home runs (Sound familiar?), but they had a nightmare of a bullpen. Milwaukee blew so many games that season. The bullpen had 27 losses by the five main pitchers. History is repeating itself five years later.

Let it be known that 2017 isn’t that bad. John Axford and Francisco Rodriguez traded off on being tire fires almost every series. Who can forgot a road trip to Kansas City where Brewers lost on walk-offs for three straight games. Corey Knebel provides some stability, but other than him, the bullpen is about as trustworthy as a condom that’s been in your wallet for multiple years. Milwaukee could have been 6-1 this week, but thanks to the nightmare that resides in left field, they went 3-4 with all four losses attributed to bullpen. Milwaukee is 4-11 in one-run games this season.

We already discussed how Josh Hader will not be a bullpen option for the team, but Brewers need to start moving guys in here to see if they can find something with their Triple A squad. The two names that pop up are Wei-Chung Wang and Michael Blazek. Wang has done a great job moving through Brewers system and currently, he’s 4-0 with a 1.86 ERA all of the pen. Blazek is having a bounce back year only a 3.41 ERA with two home runs allowed all season in Colorado. Brewers can fiend off the nightmare by exiting Oliver Drake and Carlos Torres for these two players.

One thing that’s saving Milwaukee’s ass is they play in surprisingly the worst division in baseball. St. Louis Cardinals have lost seven straight games, Chicago Cubs are playing .500 baseball with a slew of issues and Pittsburgh appears to be a few pieces away from being something. That means Brewers are still in first place. But it has to pain Brewers fans to know that this week they could have made serious ground of St. Louis plus Chicago in some respect if their bullpen held it together.

We’ll see what happens with this part of Brewers. David Sterns will not go out and try to acquire someone at this point to cure the issue, yet he sees these numbers too and knows even if Brewers were .500 in these games, they’re a 35-26 team. He needs to figure out a way to remedy the problem.

Charlie.