Brewers Preview on Brewers.com
There is a rather indepth preview of the 2005 Milwaukee Brewers on Brewers.com. Adam McCalvy poses a few questions that will surround the club during spring training and throughout the regular season (article here).

The biggest thing offensively will be if Brady Clark can come close to repeating his success at the plate. Just as a personal observation, it seemed like a lot of Clark's hits were jam shots that fell in over the infield or perfectly placed groundballs through the infield. Some of that is the result of being a contact hitter, as the study done by Vorous McCracken have taught us, a ball put in play has a rather large amount of randomness involved when determining whether it is a hit or not. The bottom line is that the Brewers offense cannot handle another .314 OBP on the top of the lineup.

Personally, I'm a little nervous about Victor Santos being in the starting rotation. He was 3-9 with a 5.97 ERA in the second half of 2004 after an incredible first half. He hasn't really had much success in the Big Leagues, sporting a career ERA of 5.20.

Heading into 2005 the Brewers do have a few options with the starting rotation. Ben Sheets and Doug Davis are a legitimate 1-2 punch at the front of the rotation. To fill out the final spots of the rotation the Crew will have their choice of Santos, Chris Capuano, Ben Hendrickson, Jose Capellan, Jorge de la Rosa and Wes Obermueller, who threw the ball really well in September. Obermueller is an interesting pitcher. He has great stuff, mixing in a high 80s sinker and devastating change up with an adequate curveball. He just needs to throw strikes and he needs to stay mentally tough. I'm sure most Brewers fans out there remember him cruising for five innings, walking the leadoff batter after going 0-2 and then completely melting down.

Now with the NFL season over, baseball is on the horizon. Pitchers and catchers are reporting in about a week, and before long we'll have highlights on Sportscenter from the Devil Rays split squad versus the University of Florida.