With today's news about Jeff Suppan's "stiff neck" and promises from those in Arizona of some kind of announcement still to come, I had high hopes for Doug Melvin's appearance on WSSP 1250's "The Big Show" today.  Best case scenario, Melvin lets us know what's going to happen with Soup.  At the very least, we'd hopefully have a little light shed on the situation.

No such luck.  Doug was in midseason "GM-speak" form, not really saying anything of substance and dancing around the harder questions. Not only did we not get any answers, but we were left with even more questions.

When asked about the starting rotation, Melvin basically told us what we already know -- our top four are Yovani Gallardo, Randy Wolf, Doug Davis, and Dave Bush.  Melvin reiterated that the 5th spot won't be needed until April 15th, and he still has five days to make some final decisions.  He said "it'll be determined later on what specific roles will be," but it sure sounded like Chris Narveson is at least headed for a bullpen role.  Melvin did add that everyone has to be ready at any point, because the #5 spot in the rotation is seldom held by the same person all year.

When asked who the odd man out will be, he again said he still has some time to determine that, and that it's a tougher call than he's had to make in the past.  They then asked how much Suppan's salary plays in to the decision, and Melvin said it won't be the sole decision maker, adding "We have released high-payroll players before."

So nothing really happening on the pitching front, at least for now.  The juicy nugget came when Melvin was asked about the starting outfield, and I'm going to transcribe this word-for-word, just to make sure I'm not taking anything out of context.

The question: who will be the starting outfielders?

The answer: "It's probably going to be Gomez and Braun and, uh, right now we're looking at our other options. We're gonna... we have more left-handed bats this year so some left-handed hitters may play, uhm, more often than they have in the past. Edmonds has had a good spring, Corey Hart has not had a good spring up to this point. Jody Gerut has struggled, uh, and that. But we'll wait and see, you know. We'll determine that when the season starts. I think our outfield has a chance to be fairly productive in that regard. It's going to be a different look than what we've had in the past, there's going to be a bit more left-handedness to it, going to be a bit more speed, probably not as much power but, you know, there's still five days left here... we still have that amount of time left before we make some final decisions about the roster."

Well, then.

I thought I was crazy when I first heard that answer -- did I just hear Melvin quickly rattle off Gomez and Braun as starters in the outfield, and dance around the idea of Corey Hart keeping his job in right field?  Looking back, yeah, I did.  And WSSP ran with that soundbite as the main selling point of this interview on their site (if you want to listen to the whole interview, here it is).

Even though Hart has been abysmal this spring and Jim Edmonds has been hitting pretty well while talking about all the playing time he's expecting, for some reason I still had a hard time believing anyone other than Hart would be standing in right field on Opening Day.  Now?  I'm not so sure. 

This is definitely shaping up to be an interesting final week of Spring Training, to say the least.  On top of deciding how to handle Jeff Suppan, the Brewers now have to decide what they're going to do with Corey Hart -- if neither sees significant playing time, that's over $16 million sitting around, basically doing nothing but collecting checks.

It's one thing when Anthony Witrado speculates that Jeff Suppan might be in jeopardy of not making the starting rotation -- this is, after all, the same guy that's been known to speculate that the Brewers might try to trade Ryan Braun.  I tend to take any rumors he runs with with a gigantic grain of salt, and I'm not alone, which is a pretty sad thing to say about a team's beat writer.

But when Tom Haudricourt posts an update a few hours later which brings the issue up again, perhaps we're on to something here.

Here is what Witrado wrote:

It isn’t clear what Jeff Suppan will do yet, but Macha said it’s a possibility that the team has a camp game on the minor league side that Suppan can get work in.

That smells a bit fishy. If Suppan is scheduled to line up in that fourth or fifth spot, which he’s sort of been slotted to do through this spring, then he should be pitching in the “A” game. The fact that Macha doesn’t know what Suppan is supposed to do yet seems odd.

Is it a release waivers deal? Is he in the mix for a trade? Is he going to be DFA’d? Does this mean absolutely nothing and Suppan is just not pitching in the main game and there’s nothing more or less to it? There are scenarios in play, but we’ll have to stay tuned to see what comes of this uncertain situation.

It’s just weird because the staff usually has these things mapped out as far as a pitcher’s schedule is concerned. Especially Rick Peterson.

Haudricourt chimed in on the subject while telling us that Yovani Gallardo will be the team's Opening Day starter:

But, when asked what Suppan would be doing that day, Macha said, "Hopefully, I'll be able to answer that tomorrow. That's my best answer."

That cryptic response made reporters wonder if something is going on with Suppan, if perhaps the Brewers are thinking about not keeping him despite his $12.5 million salary in 2010. An official from another club said he had not seen Suppan's name on the release waiver wire, so that process apparently had not begun.

Maybe it's nothing more than having to wait until Tuesday to hear that Suppan is pitching in a minor league game to get his work in. But usually a pitcher, especially a veteran pitcher, knows what his assignment is the day before he's scheduled to pitch.

Let's just say some red flags went up with Macha's response to that question.

Indeed.

We heard rumors a few days ago that the Brewers had discussed a possible Jeff Suppan-for-Chris Snyder swap with the Arizona Diamondbacks, but like I said, that would be a deal that wouldn't make much sense for the Brewers.  Considering the fact that the 5th starter wouldn't be used very much early in the season, I still think it would be a surprise if Suppan wasn't thrown into that spot to start the year.  You can give him a few starts while skipping his spot in the rotation as much as possible, and if he doesn't prove to be up to the job by mid- to late-May, you can cut ties and slide Manny Parra or Chris Narveson into that spot.

Perhaps we'll know more by the time Tuesday is done.  If Narveson impresses again, it could lead the Brewers to finally decide to pull the trigger and cut ties with Suppan.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a Brewer fan that won't be pulling hard for Narveson on Tuesday, to say the least.

Everyone seems to be picking the St. Louis Cardinals to win the National League Central.  Hell, even I am.  But one national writer is going out on a limb -- Fox Sport's Jon Paul Morosi is picking the Brewers to win the Central, and doesn't even have the Cardinals in second place.  Maybe he should start talking to Keith Law about how to deal with an army of angry St. Louis fans.

From Morosi's piece:

The Brewers scored 785 runs last year, the most of any National League team that didn't reach the postseason. As long as Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder are batting in the middle of their lineup, they should continue to have plenty of offense.

In fact, Ken Macha's mashers might be even more productive this year, thanks to a healthy Rickie Weeks in the leadoff spot.

But the big change – and the reason why they will win the division – is an improved pitching staff. General manager Doug Melvin signed Randy Wolf, Doug Davis and the perpetually underrated reliever LaTroy Hawkins. And some homegrown pitchers (remember this name: Zach Braddock) will be ready to contribute soon.

There is no way that the Brewers will have the second-worst team ERA in the league, as they did last year. And that's why they will be playing in October.

That's certainly a surprise, especially after reading Michael Hunt's "turd in the punch bowl" column about the team's rotation.  I wish I had the optimism to make that kind of pick, but I can't bring myself to pick the Brewers higher than a tie for second place.  The Cardinals definitely have some holes outside of Pujols/Holliday in the lineup and Carpenter/Wainwright in the rotation, but their Top 4 guys are better than any other Top 4 in the division.

Still, it's always nice to see some respect for the team from the national writers.

Bob Uecker was officially inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in a ceremony broadcast last night on USA.  Tom Haudricourt was there live-tweeting the event (who ever thought that they'd see the day TH would be providing updates for a WWE event?), and later posted the entire speech from Uecker.  To fit everything into a one-hour broadcast, they obviously had to edit some things down, and here's what aired:

An interesting note from Ken Rosenthal today -- the Brewers briefly discussed a Jeff Suppan-for-Chris Snyder trade with the Arizona Diamondbacks, but didn't want to take on Snyder's $5.75 million salary for next season.

Trading Suppan would definitely have it's benefits -- for one, you wouldn't have to worry about how poorly he'd pitch every 5 days, and the Brewers wouldn't have to worry about trying to find enough innings for Manny Parra and Chris Narveson in the bullpen.  But at this point, I can see why the Brewers are reluctant to make this deal.

Suppan's contract is up at the end of the year, and they'll be freeing up over $12 million (even more when you consider Bill Hall will no longer be their responsibility, either).  With Prince Fielder expecting to cash in big with his last season of arbitration eligibility, that money will come in handy.  While it would be nice to get something for Suppan rather than just letting him rot on the roster or releasing him (something that Rosenthal's sources say isn't likely), this particular trade wouldn't make sense.

Knowing the Diamondbacks' financial situation, any deal would probably be dependent on the Brewers eating a significant portion of Suppan's 2010 salary, on top of taking the full value of Snyder's deal.  As I mentioned, he's slated to make $5.75 million next season, with a $750,000 buyout for 2012.  That's simply too much money for the Brewers to be spending on a salary dump trade, let alone for a catcher with a career .233/.333/.398 line.

If the Brewers are going to end up paying Suppan anyway, they might as well keep him around for as long as they possibly can and see if they can squeeze a few more quality outings from him.  It'd be nice to get something for him in a trade, but only if the return doesn't require the Brewers to spend significant amounts of money beyond this season. 

I'll continue to hold out hope that the Brewers simply give him his walking papers, but since that isn't likely, let's just hope he surprises us a few times and doesn't hurt the team too much.