There's not much to talk about in Brewer Land until the end of the postseason, so 'tis the season for player grades.  When I did these last year, it ended up being so long that I broke it up into three parts -- D's and F's, B's and C's, and A's.  I'll do the same thing this year, starting with those that are bringing up the rear.  For the sake of comparison, last year's stinkers can be found in the October 2009 archives.

D's
Alcides Escobar (D+): We knew there would be growing pains, but I think even the most pessimistic among us expected more out of Escobar offensively.  Compared to last season in AAA, his walk rate actually stayed the same and he cut down his strikeouts, but the big difference was the .264 BABIP this year, as opposed to the .343 BABIP he had in Nashville.  There were also some growing pains defensively, but by the end of the year he started to consistently make the plays that led to his reputation as a very good defender.

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Stop me if you've heard this one before -- the Minnesota Twins lost a playoff game to the New York Yankees.  Minnesota's loss was the 8th straight postseason defeat at the hands of the Yankees, and their 11th straight playoff loss overall.  Even though I don't have a real rooting interest in the series, I have to imagine it's frustrating to be a Twins fan in October lately. 

The Twins' recent playoff struggles caused Matt Lindner, ESPN.com contributor and fellow Bloguin-er at Ground Rule Triple, to ask if the Twins hold the record for most first-round exits since the inception of the Wildcard.  I was interested to find out myself, so I used baseball-reference's postseason page to keep a tally.  You may be surprised who tops the list, and no, it's not the Twins.

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Roy Halladay threw a no-hitter in Game 1 of the Phillies' NLDS against the Reds.  You might've heard about it. 

While it was definitely cool to see the no-hitter unfold while watching it live on national television, the coolest part for me was getting to see "our" Brian Anderson call the game.  While we, as Brewers fans, were robbed of hearing BA call one for our team a couple years ago, you have to feel good for him.  Listening to some of the other announcers this postseason, it's pretty clear we have a good one.  Hopefully he decides to stick around longer than his predecessors, but there's no doubt he's eventually headed for bigger and better things.

For now, he gets to have his call of the historic moment -- just the second postseason no-hitter ever -- replayed over and over again.  His call of the final out is below, and as we already know, BA is awesome when it comes to big moments like this.  He gets excited with the final call, but quickly gets out of the way and lets the crowd tell the story.  I always appreciate it when the announcers don't get caught up in trying to chime in with what they're hoping will be a timeless call.

We're bound to hear countless names connected with the Brewers' manager opening over the next few weeks from a million different sources, but until the interviews start, it doesn't do much good to talk about who the next manager is going to be.  Jack Moore did a good job of summing this up at Disciples of Uecker when the news of Ken Macha's departure came out.  Still, considering that Doug Melvin's job likely depends on this hire, it'll probably be a long, drawn out process.  Kyle Lobner at Brew Crew Ball counts 28 names already brought up, and I'm betting he'll have more by the end of this week.

Since this is such an important hire for Melvin, he's bound to expand his horizons a bit.  Perhaps he'll think outside the box, and look for candidates in a more modern way.  Maybe craigslist could help.

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The Brewers' loss to the playoff-bound Reds on Sunday ended their season at 77-85, which is certainly a disappointing record and probably about 5 to 10 wins fewer than most people were expecting.  While this season was the source of a lot of negativity about this team, there were some positive things that I think we can look back on this offseason.

Check them out after the jump because, yes, I found that much to be happy about this year.

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