This loss wasn’t Ken Macha’s fault. Few of the Brewers’ losses during this epic fail of a losing streak — up to 9 games now — have been Macha’s fault. But if this losing streak is telling us anything, it’s that something drastic is going to need to be done to snap this team out of its funk.
During the skid, there’s been exactly one game that you could say the Brewers should have won — Hoffman’s blown save in Cincinnati. The middle relief has been brutal, giving up a total of 30 runs in the 6th and 7th innings of this streak, but the entire team looks like it would rather jump off that bridge beyond PNC Park than play another game for Macha.
I know it’s cliche, but there’s been very little intensity in the past 9 games and no sense of urgency. The worst part of this losing streak is that no one seems to give a damn, and Macha isn’t helping by saying they’re at least trying hard to win and not trying to do something (anything!) to change the atmosphere surrounding this team.
Firing Ken Macha won’t fix the vast majority of the Brewers’ problems. It won’t make the starters work deeper into games. It won’t restore the bullpen’s effectiveness. It won’t make the offense snap out of its slump. But as Jack Moore of Disciples of Uecker put it on Twitter, there’s just no upside in keeping Macha around. The Brewers’ season is already in serious trouble and we’re not even into June yet.
Any turnaround with another manager would likely be regression back to the mean and mostly luck, but it also seems highly unlikely that such a turnaround would be possible under Macha. For that reason, there’s just no good reason to keep him around any longer.
W: Javier Lopez (1-0)
L: Randy Wolf (3-4)
SV: Octavio Dotel (9)
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