With the headline news earlier today of Derrick Turnbow’s designation for assignment, the Brewers have officially commenced the disassembly of one of the more absurdly constructed bullpens of recent memory. Yes, folks, Doug Melvin spent this past offseason building a veritable junk heap of formerly famous one-inning guys. The Brewers compiled Frankenstein’s bullpen nearly entirely out of the discarded parts of one-time closers’ dead bodies. Melvin bet nearly $25 million of someone else’s money that pitching coach Mike Maddux, one of the great bullpen journeymen of the modern era, could sew the parts together into a lead-protecting and damage-minimizing short relief machine.

Needless to say, even the best laid plans go awry with alarming regularity. (more…)