Longevity doesn’t necessarily make you worthy of a specific position. In many cases, simply because someone’s been there a long time there’s a sense of entitlement and invincibility. 

In Billy Castro’s (Pitching coach for the Milwaukee Brewers) case, he earned the spot. Billy had been the Brewer’s bullpen coach for 17 years and this was his 1^st year as the pitching coach. This year’s poor performance and injuries within the starting rotation have proven to be too much and someone had to take the fall. Earlier today Brewers GM, Doug Melvin, made the call that Castro had to go. A coinciding move was made to send J.J. Hardy to Nashville for his lack of production and Billy Hall was optioned, and most likely will be released, as well. Hall and Hardy were sent down for their own ineptness, Castro, for others.

Hardy has always had a streak or two within him, each and every year, which boosted his career average to a respectable .270. This year, no streak was to be found. J.J. has been nothing short of awful at the plate hitting only .229 and this is after a .300+ month of May. Ken Macha has preached accountability and, with Doug Melvin’s nudging, he’s finally held a former All Star accountable. Hall had already been removed from the line-up and sent down prior to his sinking today.

In Castro’s case, the cross hairs should be pointed squarely at Melvin. Melvin is the one who assemble a cheap gathering of lackluster arms that came with a sporadic hefty price tag. Suppan and Looper are sucking their last breath’s as pitchers in the majors, Parra has a plethora of untapped talent but his own immaturity has been the obstacle, Gallardo is what we expected, Bush, once criticized, was the ace of the staff before he went down with injury and that delievers you to the bull pen. The overworked bull pen is an assembly of “hopes”, “finds” and some veteran talent. Everything had to be perfect for this season to be successful and it was Castro’s responsibility to keep them perfect; a daunting task for even the best of pitching coaches. It’s almost as if Castro was being set up to fail. Not on purpose mind you but when we were staring down the barrel of this season, you could certainly see this coming.

On a professional level, Macha will now get to bring in his own guy to help turn around this pitching staff and in today’s reality, that’s the way it should be. On a personal note, I’ll miss Billy. He’s always been a frank, stand-up guy who’s been nothing short of a pleasure to deal with. He’s a fun, jovial personality and he’ll be missed.