With trade time approaching, is it time for a little shake-up?

I know that things are going really well right now, but there are still some glaring problems with our 2011 Brewers. I will tell you what is not one of those problems, the starting rotation.  Most of the problems I see are in the lineup and on the field.  The win last night was huge.  Talk about getting a monkey off your back.  That does not mean that all of a sudden this team will be perfect.  Here are a few scenarios, or things that I can foresee happening over the coming weeks.

– Prince Fielder will finish the season in a Brewers uniform.  The team is certainly not out of the playoff picture at all, in fact quite the opposite.  They are only one hot streak away from taking a strong hold on the NL Central.  So, I think it is pretty safe to say that Prince will not be traded before the All-Star break.

– Casey McGehee could be trade bait, or dropped lower in the lineup.  As much as you may not want to hear this, I think the bloom is off the rose.  Last season all I heard was, “McGehee is going to fall apart eventually”.  Those nay-sayers might have been right.  Casey is without a doubt the biggest rally killer on this team.  After every game I look at the LOB (left on base) stats, which is nothing more than how many runners were on base when you ended an inning.  A good day for McGehee is 3 or 4, the average day is 6 to 7, and lately it has been more like 8 or 9 each game.  He is not fit to be batting 5th in this order, so you drop him to 7th or 8th and put Hart in the 5 spot and Morgan takes over the #2 spot.  Batting 5th is something you have to earn and McGehee is practically giving it away by batting a meager .246

– What does the team do with Carlos Gomez?  I would side on trading him.  See what you can get in exchange for a guy who has all kinds of speed, but not a single ounce of plate discipline.  Not to mention the fact that he is the frickin’ scarecrow when it comes to running the bases (get it, no brain).  The market for a guy like this is going to be really small, but they should at least try and get something for him.  Watching Nyjer Morgan play the last few days has made it pretty obvious that Gomez’s days in Milwaukee are numbered.  If they could parlay him into a young middle infield prospect, I would take that deal and run as fast as is humanly possible.

– Yuniesky Betancourt is pretty bad too, so the Brewers should consider dangling him out there for trade possibilities.  This guy has been more than we expected defensively, but his bat has been much…much worse than advertised.  Yuni is making Craig Counsell look like Ted Williams.  Josh Wilson has already shown (in his very limited playing time) that he could probably do the job just as well as Betancourt.  That being said, why keep Wilson, Betancourt, and Counsell?  One of them has to go.  It should probably be Counsell, but that’s like firing the President of the United States…not happening.  That leaves Yuni, hopefully the team will be smart and at least test the market for this guy.  Let’s face it, he will not be back with the team next year anyway.

– Could we possibly use Chris Narveson as the center piece of a trade?  I have always liked Chris and have only wanted to see him succeed, but times are changing.  Marco Estrada showed us at the start of the season that he is ready to be an every 5 days pitcher.  Narveson only shows that in strange cosmic bursts of energy that no one can predict or avoid.  He is like the blackest of black holes, beautiful to look at, until it is barreling towards you threatening to wash your existence into nothingness.  Sometimes he looks like a future ace…but other times he looks like Jeff Suppan’s illegitimate love child.  He could be the perfect piece to help re-build our farm system a bit.  Narvy is a young, left handed pitcher.  Teams will gladly go out of their way to try and make a deal for that type of guy, record aside.  Then the problem becomes who else would go with him, because he is not good enough to be the only player in a deal.  Then again, I said the same thing about Charlie Villanueva.  Trading Narveson makes a lot of sense to me.

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Brewers are going for their first series win on the road since they took two of three from the Phillies.  For the record that series was played from April18-20….So it has been a while since they won a road series.  Let’s hope they can close the deal with Marcum on the mound.