It wasn't Davey Lopes' fault his three best relief pitchers were all on the disabled list.

It wasn't Davey Lopes' fault the Brewers' friendly schedule-maker started his season playing three of the four incumbent National League playoff teams, followed by the Giants in San Francisco.

It wasn't Davey Lopes' fault that Eric Young was 6 for his first 47 as a Brewer. Or that Glendon Rusch had the highest batting average of anyone on his team who had batted more than one time. Or that, like last season, the Brewers had more strikeouts (115) than hits (112).

But if Lopes didn't see his firing coming before it booted him out of his office Thursday, he wasn't paying attention.

He saw half his coaching staff overturned over the winter -- always a sign of front-office discontent, and often a precursor to the manager's demise.

He was 51 games under .500 as a manager, two years and 17 days into his managerial tenure. His team hadn't had a two-game winning streak all season -- and had gone eight months and 56 games since its last three-game winning streak.

The Brewers were winless at home this year in games in which their pitcher didn't hit a homer (averaging 1.4 runs per game in the losses). They'd just been swept by (gulp) the Pirates at Miller Park. And they hadn't drawn a crowd of 30,000 since Opening Day, or even 20,000 on this homestand.

And oh by the way, did we mention Lopes was on the final year of his contract?

It's hard to argue Lopes had a lot to work with on a team currently on the road to its 10th consecutive losing season. And it was amazing how many of the players he did have to work with were hurt more than they were healthy.

But GM Dean Taylor came from Atlanta, where he never witnessed anything like this. And remember that Taylor's theme song when he arrived was that it was time to build a winning mindset around the Brewers. Nineteen months later, it was hard to make an argument things were getting better.

Lopes was liked by most of his players. But his sometimes gruff exterior could rub outsiders the wrong way. He came in billed as aggressive and relentless. But he never had much of a chance to utilize that philosophy with a team that couldn't make contact and barely stole more bases last year than Ichiro (66 to 56).

Nevertheless, it was clear on Opening Day he was managing on a short leash. And Thursday, he just ran out of leash.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.