Posted by Steve
Well it seems like the Brewers avoided disaster with Ben Sheets’ injury, as his X-Rays and MRI revealed no serious damage. He’s obviously still in pain though, because he said he can’t grip a baseball. The team put him on the DL today.
They called up Manny Parra and Grant Balfour to fill in for Sheets and Chris Spurling, who is attending to family business.
I like these moves, but if Sheets is out for more than a few starts the Brewers are really in trouble. The team has been largely injury free, but these little ones to Hall, Sheets, etc. are starting to add up a bit.
Balfour has pretty much dominated AAA hitters. He had a 1.87 ERA and a 68/15 K/BB ratio in 43 1/3 innings. The walks are a little high, but the strikeouts are very high too. If there’s a bright spot, it will be nice to see Balfour a little to assess him at the major league level before the trade deadline.
Parra has re-emerged as a serious prospect after being plagued by injury for a few seasons. His perfect game in just his second AAA start was well documented as well.
It will be interesting to see what they do to fill in for Sheets’ starts. Wishfully thinking that Sheets only misses two starts, I’d think Parra could take them before falling back to the bullpen. I’m going to assume that Yo will slide back into the rotation though. He’s clearly the most talented option, but he’s really only got about eight or nine starts left this season before the Brewers are in the “Prior Zone.” Yost was quoted the other day as saying he’d love to be able to wait until August to move Yo back, so I guess we’ll see. I’d also consider Villanueva an option to make a couple spot starts as well. Stay tuned…
Hope all turns out well with Spurling, and get well soon Sheeter.
