April 02, 2006

NL Central - Brewers

The Brew Crew is seemingly everyone's pick to have a breakout season this year. Their pitching has been quietly great under the tenure of Mike Maddux and their young positional prospects are beginning to emerge. The success of the team depends on how well these youngsters play. On offense, they already have a good table-setter in Clark, 2 RBI guys in Lee and Jenkins, but they still have light-hitting Koskie and Miller at 3b and catcher. J. J. Hardy had an awful, awful first half of the season, but turned it around and put up decent numbers in the second half. Weeks has crazy amounts of speed but has a hard time getting on base. He still walks a fair amount of the time, so he seemingly has a good eye but he also is prone to the strikeout. If he improves his BA he should be pretty good offensively. Defensively he's been quite a liability however. Fielder likelwise needs to show the power that he had in the minor leagues to make him a quality 5th batter.

Pitching-wise, this team quietly has one of the 5 best rotations in the NL, despite not having a single ace. Mike Maddux really knows how to work these guys. Their bullpen is decent. Turnbow and Wise are quite good but the rest of the bullpen is a question mark.

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