Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club
Manager Craig Counsell will be overseeing a club in transition.
When Wily Peralta — a guy who won just five games in 2015 and ended the season on the disabled list — is named your team’s Opening Day starting pitcher, you’re in for a long season.
You’re probably already aware that the 2016 Milwaukee Brewers will be a club in transition. New general manager David Stearns, who wasn’t even born when the Brewers played in the 1982 World Series, took over last fall for Doug Melvin and promptly cleaned house.
Not only did he fire five of Milwaukee’s seven coaches, but Stearns also replaced half of the team’s 40-man roster. Just about the only recognizable non-pitcher names remaining are outfielder Ryan Braun (still the Brewers’ most fragile player and suffering repercussions from offseason back surgery), catcher Jonathan Lucroy (so sure he’d be traded that as of last weekend he didn’t even have a place to live in Milwaukee) and second-baseman Scooter Gennett (perhaps the most drama-free player on the entire team).
Returning pitchers include Matt Garza, Jimmy Nelson and closer Will Smith. But Smith tore his lateral collateral ligament on the outside of his right knee while taking off his spikes following a March 24 Cactus League victory over the reigning World Series champion Kansas City Royals and might need surgery. (I can’t make this stuff up.)
Of the newcomers, pitcher Zack Jones, acquired in an offseason draft, will open the season on the disabled list with a shoulder injury, and outfielder Rymer Liriano, who arrived in January from the San Diego Padres, was drilled in the face by a pitch from Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Matt West and now is sidelined indefinitely.
The Brewers hadn’t announced their final roster at the time of this writing, but these are just some of the issues second-year manager Craig Counsell is dealing with in preparation for Opening Day at Miller Park on April 4 against the San Francisco Giants. No wonder he looked so harried in those spring training press conferences.
Facing adversity is nothing new for the Milwaukee Brewers, and several other teams — including such 2016 World Series contenders as the Houston Astros and Chicago Cubs — have undergone similar rebuilding projects.
But the Brewers will rebound; they always do. Besides, after the team’s abysmal 68-94 season in 2015, things can’t get much worse.
