When Brewers fans talk about their favorite team these days, many do so through clenched teeth.

That's understandable.

A 6-3 victory over Los Angeles Monday afternoon at Miller Park snapped the Brewers' losing streak at 10 games. In addition to vanquishing the team's meager post-season hopes and the chance for the team's first winning season since 1992, the skid riled up a lot of fans.

The natives are getting a restless. They want answers. They want accountability. They want a guarantee that this won't happen again. They want someone's head on a platter. They're howling for manager Ned Yost to be fired. Or, hitting coach Butch Wynegar. Those fish aren't big enough for some fans, though. They want to blame general manager Doug Melvin for putting this group together or owner Mark Attanasio for not giving Melvin a bigger payroll with which to work.

Here is a bit of breaking news: Attanasio isn't going anywhere. Neither is Melvin. If the Brewers don't lose EVERY game the rest of the way, Yost will be back, too.

In the next few days, you're going to hear a lot of people dumping on the Brewers. (Beginning Sunday, most of them will turn their attention to the Packers). Some of the criticism will be provocative, reasonable, biting and valid. The other 95% will be complete and utter crap. To help you differentiate the two, we offer our take on some of the more common talking points emanating from barrooms and Barcaloungers. We'll start with the big one:

Yost has got to go.

No matter how many injuries a team suffers or how many players underperform, managers are always in the cross hairs when things go bad. It's part of the job. Yost certainly has made some questionable moves this season. So have Joe Torre, Jim Leyland, Tony La Russa, Willie Randolph, Jerry Narron and every other manager in the game. The difference is in how the teams perform and how the performance is perceived by the public.

When the Marlins lost 31 of their first 42 games, rookie manager Joe Girardi was given a pass because most people figured he had been dealt a team of young inexperienced players. Now that the Marlins have crawled back to .500 (with a gigantic assist from the Brewers), Girardi is being hailed as genius and a bona fide manager of the year candidate.  

A year ago, Yost got some notice in manager of the year polling. Today, many fans want him fired. That's life in the big leagues. Many people in Milwaukee think that Yost took a team that was on the brink of the wild-card race heading into mid-August and screwed it up. Outside Milwaukee, a lot of people are complimenting Yost for holding things together as long as he did.

Forget the injuries for a moment and look at the numbers. The Brewers rank 15th in the National League in team offense, 15th in team pitching and 13th in team defense.  Based on Bill James' Pythagorean theorem for figuring out a team's expected record (Runs scored [squared] / (Runs scored [squared] + runs allowed [squared]) the Brewers should have a record of 59-78.

I'm not suggesting that the 2006 Brewers have overachieved in anyway, but does anything in those numbers scream "postseason contender" to you?

Yost has made his share of strategic missteps this year, but the circumstances don't seem to warrant a pink slip. Not yet, anyway.

(Note: To the bloodthirsty masses, a local writer who expresses this opinion is labeled a "homer," "apologist," "shill" or simply a "coward who is too gutless to tell it like it is." A national writer or broadcaster (Buster Olney, Jayson Stark, Jerry Crasnick, etc) is simply dismissed as being distant and "not really knowing enough about the situation.")

Save those e-mails, folks. And, while you're at it, save the notes about Yost "not showing emotion in the dugout" and "not being able to motivate his players." We heard that about Ray Rhodes, Terry Porter, Davey Lopes, Mike Sherman and every other unsuccessful coach that has passed through these parts. Yost takes losses as hard as any manager in the game, but he keeps his composure on the bench and in media interviews. That's an asset, not a liability.

For all of the "Fire Yost" people, we ask: would any other manager have done better with this group, given the payroll, slumps and injuries?

The Brewers are using injuries as an excuse.

Actually, they're not. Reasonable people certainly may point to injuries as an explanation for what has happened, but Doug Melvin and Ned Yost really haven't done any whining about it. Why should they, really? They've only lost their ace and No. 4 starter for half the season, their starting third baseman, shortstop and second baseman and their top setup guy. Oh, and they traded one all-star corner outfielder and saw another play his way out of everyday duty.

Last week, Journal Sentinel reporter Tom Haudricourt asked Yost about the injuries. The manager's reply: "I don't feel pity about that. You have to be able to adjust and move forward, with whatever you have. My mind-set has always been that I don't cry about what I don't have. I just try to do the best with what I've got."

Yep, sounds like an excuse to me.

If the Brewers had a better road record, they'd be right in the thick of the pennant race.

The Brewers' road record of 23-46 is beyond pathetic. It's one of the worst in baseball. There is no denying the fact that if they had won 10 more road games this year, they'd be right in the hunt.

But, it's still a stupid thing to say.

As far as I can tell, there are three primary reasons for the Brewers' crummy record away from Miller Park:
 
1. The home team always has an advantage. In addition to batting last, the home team has fan support, familiarity with the surroundings and the "sleeping in their own bed" thing going for it.

2. Most teams in baseball capitalize on this advantage and play better at home. (Last I checked, the only teams with better records on the road than at home this season were Philadelphia and San Diego).

3. The Brewers have run into bad luck and played badly on the road this season.

The discrepancy in the Brewers' home-road record is a statistical quirk of the season. You can wrestle with it all you want. What if the Brewers had won 10 more games on the road, but lost 10 more at home? What if a team went 82-0 at home and 0-80 on the road?

I've heard it suggested that Ned Yost is doing a bad job motivating his team on the road. People who espouse that theory conveniently ignore the fact that he ALSO MANAGES THE TEAM AT HOME! If you're going to hold Yost solely responsible for the team's road struggles, how do you discount the airline pilots, hotel maids and even those gray uniforms?

The road record is striking and it will be discussed. But, it's not really important in the grand scheme because there just isn't a logical explanation for it.

The Brewers have had trouble scoring runs since they traded Carlos Lee.

On the surface, this is hard to argue. The problem is that the Brewers weren't exactly tearing up the league when Lee was around, either. The storm clouds began to surface early. Very early. Remember the giddy days of April? It seems like 100 years ago now, but the Brewers opened the season with a 5-0 record and were 6-3 after their first nine games? In those nine games, the Brewers were out-scored 38-34. Their 34 runs were the fewest in the majors at that point.

As for Lee, have you looked at his stats lately? He's hitting close to .300 with 32 homers and 100 RBI. But, he's also experiencing a second-half swoon for the second straight year. Lee hit 10 homers in April and went into the all-star break with 26 homers and 73 RBI. Since the break, he has six homers and 27 RBI. That pretty much mirrors his 2005 season, when he hit 22 homers and knocked in 76 runs before the break and had 10 homers and 38 RBI after. You could make a pretty good case that the Brewers' offense misses leadoff man Rickie Weeks more than Lee.

Lee's second-half dropoff was largely overlooked last year, because Geoff Jenkins was incredibly hot. That brings us to another Brewers talking point:

Yost stayed with Jenkins too long.

When you hear someone say this, all you really have to do is ask "Did you see last season?" Jenkins was hideous in the first half, then turned out one of the hotter 2 1/2-month stretches of his entire career. Yost was simply hoping for a repeat performance that never came.

Yost has been patient with players in the past. Wes Helms got off to a hideous start a few years ago, but Yost stayed with him and he became the first Brewers third baseman in decades to hit 20 homers in a season.

What about Bill Hall in 2004? A lot of managers would have written the kid off after watching him hit .238, post a .276 on-base average, whiff 119 times in 390 at-bats and commit 19 errors in 87 defensive starts. Yost stayed with Hall and he's probably the team's MVP this season.

In the first half last year, J.J. Hardy was completely overmatched at the plate. Yost stayed with him and Hardy figured things out.

Yost also was patient with Derrick Turnbow this season. The results weren't great and he probably could have made a move sooner, but the alternatives -- until Francisco Cordero came along -- weren't all that attractive.

A lot of Yost bashers say that the manager "ruined" Turnbow when he hooked him from a game May 17 against Philadelphia. That's an interesting theory, but you have to remember that the game in question occurred on a Wednesday. Turnbow had taken a loss on Saturday night and blown his first save of the season on Sunday. After allowing a few runs and getting the hook on Wednesday, Turnbow came out the very next night at recorded a 1-2-3 save. He went on to convert three of his next four opportunities before the meltdown really kicked in.

I'm not ready to say that Yost's hook helped Turnbow, but I can't say it started the skid, either, because the wheels were already coming off. Besides, if a guy can't handle something like that, he might not have the makeup necessary to be a closer, anyway.

Yost has benched Prince Fielder in two recent games against lefties. By doing so, he is doing a disservice to the player, the fans and the integrity of the pennant race and shown that he simply doesnt' care about winning.

I heard this one on the radio recently and found it hysterical. Unlike most young left-handed sluggers, Fielder has nothing to prove against lefties. He showed he could hit them in A-ball and he hasn't stopped. I haven't talked to Yost about these recent decisions, but I've seen enough games to know why he's doing it.

Prince Fielder looks tired.

Yes, he's young. Yes, he's strong. But, he has never been through a full major-league season before and the final few weeks are a meat grinder. Yost knows that Fielder hit .221 in the month of August. He sees his bat dragging through the zone. He knows that he probably could have given Fielder an occasional rest earlier in the season, but he didn't because runs were scarce and Prince was productive. In order to keep the kid from going into a final-month death spiral that will sabotage his stats and any slim chance for rookie of the year consideration, Yost will probably rest Fielder at least once a week the rest of the way. What's the best day to do that? When there is a left-hander on the mound, of course.

As for the notion that Yost is "hindering Fielder's development" by taking away his at-bats against southpaws, all I can say is this: Fielder has collected 143 at-bats this season against left-handed pitchers. That's the highest total on the team.