Sheets, bullpen, close door on Fish

Not much to say about this one. Ben Sheets went six scoreless with 7 K and 1 BB; Villanueva, Wise, and Cordero finished it off. KoKo is now 21-for-21 in save opportunities while Sheets improved to 6-3, dropping his ERA to 3.51.
Looked like Sheets had some nasty stuff today as there were a lot of swings and misses. And it was great to see him finally post something of a dominant K/9 and K:BB.
The big news for me is that the crew drew seven walks. Seven! I mean I know Dontrelle Willis has been walking a lot of guys, but this bodes well for the Crew. I am forever wanting them to increase their walk rates. Corey Hart took two in the lead-off spot (god, I hope that lasts — both him leading off and him walking in the said lead-off spot), while Hardy, Braun, and Fielder (aka Fish-Chicken, The Rabbi, and Jiggly Puff) all had one.
The other two BB came from Tony Graffanino, who also grounded into a double play with the bases loaded and proceeded to slam his batting helmet on the ground, requiring soothing from first base coach Ed Sedar. I mean, it would have been nice to see Graffy get a hit there or something, and it’s good that he’s competitive and all that, but I guess I found it kind of funny. I mean, he stinks, after all. Doesn’t he know that?
Someone who doesn’t stink is Ryan Braun. He doubled again today and scored.
But someone else who stinks is Jose Capellan. He wasn’t pitching all that well in Nashville, so why did the team bring him up to blow Saturday’s game wide open? My guess is that they want to give him a chance to do something in the big leagues so that they can boost his trade value. At least, that’s what I hope it’s for. He’d given up 37 baserunners (23 H, 14 BB) in 28 innings against only 22 K. Don’t fool yourself by looking at the 3.86 ERA alone. He’s just not that good, and now he’s lost us a game.
It doesn’t matter much. I heard that whoever has the worse June between Dave Bush and Claudio Vargas will be replaced by Yovani Gallardo. At that point, whoever ¡Gallardo! replaces in the rotation would be moved to the ‘pen, and Capellan would be optioned back to the minors, if not traded. That is providing that they don’t deal Bush or Vargas before then, but I don’t think Melvin would do that until we can be sure that the Yovani Experiment is successful.
Check out what the regulars at brewerfan.net have to say on the issue. The forum seems to be rife with anti-call-up-¡Gallardo! sentiment. I don’t understand why. There is such a thing as limiting pitch count, and breaking him in through limitations. To boot, it’s not like a pitch thrown in the major leagues is more likely to blow out someone’s arm than a pitch thrown in the minors. He’s going to throw those pitches regardless. Why not have them be with the parent club? A pitcher like Gallardo is not going to get much better by throwing minor league innings. He’s got great poise, control, and command, he misses a lot of bats, etc.
People on the brewersfan.net forum cite Francisco Liriano‘s case. What they fail to recognize is that Liriano has battled injuries since he started pitching, which is one of the reason’s why the Giants were willing to part with him in the first place. (Two other reasons include Brian Sabean hating young players, and Brian Sabean being dumb.) No such history with Yovani. Keep him under 100 pitches per start, maybe even 90, to ensure that he goes longer into the season. Also, if they call him up, it’s not like they can’t send him down if he struggles through a few starts.
Bottom line is that pitch counts and other monitoring/limitations can be done in AAA, or in the majors. If there’s a chance that Gallardo will be a stud and give Milwaukee numbers like he’s given Nashville, then we need to have that start now.
Moving on. In the game that Capellan lost for us, Chris Capuano hit a HR and struck out 10 in 7 IP. That’s awesome. Corey Hart also hit one out.
Looks like we pretty much own the Fish. We’ve won the season series at 5-2. That’s about all Florida is good for — handing the Brewers wins.