Rick Peterson joins Brewers as pitching coach

Injuries, poor performances, and free-agent losses led to Milwaukee’s rotation ranking dead last in baseball with a 5.37 ERA this season, and the Brewers have hired former A’s and Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson to fix things. Peterson built up a very strong reputation while working with “The Big Three” of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, and Mark Mulder in Oakland from 1998-2003, but struggled after taking the same job with New York, reportedly played a big part in the disastrous Scott Kazmir-for-Victor Zambrano trade, and was fired in mid-2008. Peterson worked under Ken Macha in Oakland and Willie Randolph in New York, and that pair is now the manager-bench coach combo in Milwaukee. They obviously thought highly of his work and Peterson explained that “our philosophies are aligned” after making his two-year contract official at a press conference this afternoon. There’s clearly a lot of work to do with a pitching staff that allowed the second-most runs in the league, but Peterson at least begins his tenure with a dependable veteran closer in Trevor Hoffman and a young top-of-the-rotation starter in Yovani Gallardo. His biggest test may be trying to turn Manny Parra’s career around, assuming of course that the Brewers don’t trade the 26-year-old left-hander.